As I’m sure everyone noticed, we have had a lot of problems this reset. Some of it because we weren’t ready on time, other due to the unavoidable need to track and fix year+ old corruptions that happened to cause problems in the uni reset patch. We worked intensively during the week to bring everything back to a normal state as quickly as possible and I can now say somewhat safely that the server is at a pretty good performance level (it is actually running faster than it was last uni now and should be more reliable thanks to the new memory validation).

A beta client is now available that contain fixes for most of the dumps that were sent (2 of which appeared broken / corrupted and as such i couldn’t see the problem, but it might be the same as other dumps). You can download the beta client from http://www.starsonata.com/dl/StarSonata_2_beta.exe. If you crash on the beta client, please be sure to send in your starsonata.dmp alongside a short description of what you were doing to dmpfile (at) starsonata.com

The visibility issue will probably only be fixed on Sunday, but at least from the quick checking I done on it, it appear to only be client side. AI etc should see you at your normal visibility, but your client sees everything as ultra high visibility.

The catching up event will begin now, from Saturday 1h30am to Wednesday 1h30am, experience gained, team experience gained, workhours and colony years will all be 3 times faster than normal

For those interested in the server fixing process, keep reading…

The major issues encountered were from code written years ago, a specific one could be traced to 8 years ago. Those were the kind of problem that caused crash that were extremely hard to track and properly fix. I spent months working and fixing those slowly but the harder ones kept escaping my grasp. I knew they were there since their signature was still in the crash that happened every few days / weeks depending on luck, but i could never pinpoint exactly where it came from. There were in total 5 such corruption source, 4 of which were only possible in a multiprocessor (as in multiple physical processor, not multiple core on a single processor) configuration.

After upgrading our memory fence from an old x86 asm call to an sse2 approach and modifying our map and set containers to use our own mutexed implementation instead of using directly the stl. Many of the real problems started surfacing (mostly hitting some memory redzone i added to our containers since i knew the corruption was container related). Fixing those took way more time that i could ever have expected, but this is now mostly behind us.

The first version I wrote was built in a way that it required no code change for all the thousands of variables using those container to actually use our new threadsafe version, but this implied keeping the original interface which is very poor when it come to acquiring / releasing locks (it had to be done in every calls, and iterator acted as a stack lock object so that once you requested an iterator on such container, only the thread owning the iterator could work with it until you were done with the iterator etc).

With that, most of those crashes went away and were replaced by a somewhat large lag (this happened about 30 hours ago, at which point server became a lot more stable, but also about 15 times slower). This called for a faster alternative for some of our most accessed containers (like for instance, the list of all souls in the universe or the list of items in a ship), for that i used a singlelockcontainer object approach. The difference with this compared to the previous one, is that it is not a “plug and play” replacement for the map or set (or any object in its case), it require actual code change to every location accessing the object in question, but at least enforce it. Without cheating the system knowingly (calling a reference and copying the pointer or similar “hacks”) it is impossible for a piece of code to access its content without first requesting a lock. Once the lock is granted the object can be read and written to by the thread which locked it. This is an order of magnitude faster than the “plug and play” approach, but is generally not worth using for small containers or containers only used for direct access etc.

I slowly replaced the slow parts with the new faster singlelockcontainer until the performance were at a point where the overhead from validating and enforcing memory access to all those containers did not actually affect performance, which is about where we are now.

Next step is to fix all the client issues and a few remaining server bugs, but very soon we should be back to weeks+ uptime on the server without crashes.

** UPDATE 16.10.2014 **
Server is currently having some problem with the fixes (the fixe is actually revealing tons of other problems, proving to be very annoying to fix, but unfortunatly most of those problems depend on live architecture and cannot be reproduced on our test server…. Once all those issues are fixed, the server will undergo a catching up bonus period, during which you will gain 3times the normal xp, 3x team xp, workers will be 3x as fast and colony will grow/tick 3x as fast. The bonus will last for 48hours, this could be extended if the server keep on having problems.
– The bases will receive a static + 1bil hull in a way that we can turn it off live without server restart. This way, we can schedule the base “fix” once everything is working, since i know with all those downtime / crash most people wont be here as the server come back up. The bonus will be exactly 1bil hull (unless it would bring you above the 2bil limit), so you can easily see how much hull your base will have after its removed by doing -1b)

So as many noticed, this reset came with some pretty annoying server unstability And client unstability. We have been working pretty hard to rectify the issues but well, some of them (namely the server crash) are by no means simple to fixes. I personally been working essentially all day and night since reset on those and can finally say that its close to being resolved.

Now as for the real reason of this post, along the many bugs that came with the reset. One in particular is bound to have some large effect once fixed. Stm base hull bonus, they currently receive 55% hull bonus per level instead of 5.5% per level. This will be fixed in a patch alongside the server crashes.

Once a specific eta is available, server shutdown timer will be set (and reset on crash), in the meanwhile make sure your stations have enough extensions to not overhaul after the fix and keep a large enough reserve of fuel / rations to ensure your base can last even if it get overhulled by the patch.

This week’s update is going to be the last weekly update I do — as I shift my role within Star Sonata a bit. I’ll still be making updates but they’re not going to be scheduled as they are now, instead they’re going to happen less frequently, mainly when I have something exciting or interesting to announce.

For those of you wondering, this is a result of me moving from my position as a full-time developer to a part time role as I pursue other career goals. I’ve really had a blast working full-time the last few years with Jeff, Jey, Blue Dwarf and the other developers so I’m definitely sticking around. I’m still going to be working on exciting new content, bug fixes, etc, I’m just reducing my involvement (much like I did when I first left for university all those years ago, for those of you who might remember Star Sonata 6-7 years ago). I’ve been a part of the game’s community, and the game’s development, for over 10 years at this point and I’ve loved every moment of it. I’m definitely never leaving!

Now, onto the actual update portion of this post.

This past week was mainly about making some last minute changes and additions before we start the new universe. Chief among these included finishing the loot tables for the Jungle. There are a lot of items to be obtained there, as well as quite a few blueprints to build those items, so that equals out to a quite a bit of content work. I’ve also added a new blueprint feature — allowing blueprints the option of taking equipped items. This is something they currently can’t do and will no doubt be useful in upgrading equipped items, like base lasers or dampeners, automatically. I also spent a fair amount of time working with The Vert on something I’m very excited about, Junkyard project.

Normally, I ask The Vert to QA content I’ve worked on (like Arctia or the Jungle) so it was a fun reversal to QA something he’s worked on. In addition to testing, I also helped him rework the Junkyard’s introductory mission structure a bit so it’s more dynamic; no more of that pesky docking between missions! Finally, I worked on enabling the easter egg mission mechanic on all the item classes that he needed so we could turn your dusty DG loot into shiny new Scrapnotes!

That’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back again with another update when I have something new and exciting to report! Until then, feel free to post questions, comments or suggestions in the forums!

* Base rebalance summary
** Most base gear stats were rebalanced to increase their overall power and reduce the impact of stm (stm are still important, but non stm bases won’t be as defenseless).
** Class skill no longer affect bases, but new base only superitem were added allowing for bonus to be applied on bases strategically. They can be found in Lagrange, Lyceum and Vervaardiger.
** X/Y/Z versions of base gear is no longer transferable between bases and ships, instead they’re built directly on the station as a set using mostly time and common resources. All kits come with the 3 blueprint preinstalled to upgrade them.
** Andaman Laser Z and Achilles Laser Z will be automatically replaced from your inventory by Vervaardiger ‘Berhinger IV’ EX-Z and Vervaardiger Station Lance SG-Z respectively. Those are part of a new line of “permanent” end game base lasers to go with superlasers, cannons etc.
** Non-base weapons can no longer be equipped to user bases.
** PvP invincibility aura is removed (the ability to tow your ship from stasis made it unnecessary).
** Added Outpost Drones. These 36 hour duration temp drones can be used with a user base to own territory not connected to a Team HQ. Outpost drones don’t get any class skill or trade skill bonuses.
** The 10 bases per user limit per galaxy has been removed.
** No longer any limit to the amount of attacking kits that can be deployed (so long as you can deploy one kit in enemy territory, you can deploy up to the galaxy limit!)
** Galaxy limit on bases is now on a per team basis. Even if you have 50 bases in a galaxy, the enemies can also deploy 50.
** Attacking team can now take over abandoned destroyed stations in enemy territory (radiation also destroy the base now).
** BvB kits will expire 12 hours after deployment if the galaxy is still owned by another team (there is a team reminder about it).
** If the ownership connection is broken (the galaxy used to BvB from dies/unown) the bvb kits will become abandoned and free for the defender to capture.
** You must own the galaxy next to your target for at least 24 hours before being able to bvb from it.
** Userbase have 1 superitem slot.

* There is now a check to keep players from accidentally selling their last ship in a base.
* Roaming range fixes on spawners
* Fixed some heph weapon blueprints with incorrect ingredients
* Fixed a bug with loading wild AI causing no spawners to be created under certain circumstances
* Increased firing vis default for missiles from 100 to 500
* Gave MIRVs extra firing vis
* Fixed squads not getting new leaders appointed when required
* Extended the PvP warp timer to docking in AI stations.
* Reduced the number of missiles the Inequalization superitem launches (because we have salvos now).
* Changed the mission goal of ‘Combined Augmenters’ (AT3 mission) to complete the Minor Defensive Augmenter mission rather than return the augmenter.
* Changed the wormhole in Crater Highland to unlock when Corrupted Guardian dies
* Added skins Bloodied Vaco and Zeus’s Antu.
* Fixed a bug where Rewired ET bonus was calculated wrongly.
* Fixed the Olympus Drone Master Augmenters requiring Drone Master 21, by lowering it to 20.
* Added a checkbox to the Ship Statistic Window to toggle showing crit effect affected stats.
* Fixed Strontium Overloader mission.
* Removed all auras from the planets and moons in Tartarus.
* You can now tow your deep stasis ship by hitting R to dock and selecting to tow.
* Added message to tow confirmation dialogs stating that’d damage your ships equipment.
* Removed Xeno Torpedo and Super Molten Copper drops (wild AI new uni).
* Fixed missing texture for Alien Egg Ships.
* Added new line to the construction dialog GUI to denote construction speed bonuses.
* Neurobound debris now has an additional visual effect to better show that it’s neurobound.
* Fixed a typo in “Into the Rabbit Hole” subspace mission.
* Fleet Commander Transwarp Devices will no longer teleport offline players.
* Berserker class skill bonuses now properly multiplies with other bonuses.
* Added new Projectile Speed, Transference Power and Transference Efficiency aura mods.
* Shipbound items can no longer be sold from userbases.
* Fixed Exchange of Knowledge mission.
* Reworked the Tartarus spawners so you’ll always get 9 Shard Dust from AI and 1 from the mission, totalling 10.
* Fixed a bug where team skills wouldn’t let you train to the correct max level.
* Skin content holoprojector prize. Will be handed out after the patch (possibly few hours if early BST) to one character of each winner.
* Visages attached particles emissions now properly fade out when the object they are attached is removed.
* Changed the shield bar color to a green tint when friendly, blue when neutral, and yellow-orange when enemy.
* Fixed an issue with frameskip being applied even if logicfps is async from the gamefps (detachrendering).
* Fixed a client side thing that caused drones to be considered neutral and not friend with you (used for target ring color along other thing).
* Fixed a bug with the paxian t22 dailies (Paxian Dispatch Orders sometimes gave no item).
* Fixed the bug where you had to warp twice into an instance if you didn’t have a squad.
* Added new item type called Thruster, and gave some to the Target Dummies in Nexus to make them more exciting.
* Ship can no longer be item formed if they have any removable items inside them. This should prevent most cases where the wrong ship was item formed.
* Fix for dampening stat color in ship stat window.
* Skill point debt or skill points credit status on avatar tab.
* Removed Augmenter Stats from the Drone stat string
* Added Transference Efficiency and Power Auramods.
* Warp Gremlins and Warp Interdiction fields now prevent Transwarp.
* Shipbound items can no longer be sold from user bases.
* Removed tweaks and credit drops from Undead Jey’s guards, moved to Undead Jey
+ New Alien World Boss, Gurujana Ekam
+ Added Alien Miniboss spawners to Pajca and Sas arms of Subspace.
+ New Alien Invasions in Peri Space that activate based on ownership of Subspace.
* Aliens will now prefer to invade galaxies near already alien occupied territory if such territory exists.
* Alien garrisons now scale based on their proximity to other alien owned galaxies.
* Increased the number of aliens spawned for invasions.
* Boss AI now have the ability to give players missions.
* Added Strontium 90 missions for Subspace Aliens.
* Fixed issues causing multiple subspace outposts to spawn.
* Fixed Flaming Lantern missiles.
* Roaming Olympus AI (Ares Warriors, Baby Cyclops, etc) now properly have teams.
* Added a Roaming Stingray Spawner
* Roaming Cronos, Roaming Hermes and Roaming Stingray now properly have teams.
* Monochrome AI will now drop items from loot tables properly.
* Roaming Cadets will now use the proper names list.
* Added the galaxy name to the mission completion message.
* “Special” galaxies will always be visible on the starting map.
* Gave Agamemnon Fighters Self Destructors.
* Added support for stations to vend items only if you’ve completed a specific mission.
* Made it so Pretender Hermes won’t fill the galaxy with drones.
* Fixed the Red Photon Research Entry Way laser sun.
* Fixed a typo in the player progression missions.
* Made the player progression missions autocomplete and start.
* Fixed Arctia base visage.
* Trade slaves in Wild Space now fall under PvB protection rules.
+ Added Junkyard and content related to Junkyard.
+ Added the Jungle, a custom dungeon.
+ Added Jungle Blueprints and items.
* Added soaks (and bleeds for negative soak) to diffuser stat string.
* New Jungle-themed skins.
+ Added Aluminum Sheet Smelting Schema to Ring.
* Updated /age to display the time better.
* Improved /debug net to also display a rundown of upload bandwidth usage for the last minute.
* Some improvement to the orthographic camera when rendering objects that are far on the z (those need perspective or they dont look like background objects. This doesn’t cover every type of background objects yet and theres still an issue with culling background objects).
* Improved the map download so that it doesn’t affect weak connection as much but download faster if the connection allows it.
* Fixed an issue causing tractor to not display for people who were not in the galaxy when the tractor was started (or if you reconnect while a tractor is active).
* Performance improvement in the shader rendering.
* Bandwidth reduction on spaceobject, laser, effect and explosion data.
* New stats for Zarkara Sattva.
* New stats for Amplificative Oscillation Ion Emitter.

Universe reset will happen today 1pm EDT (1pm server time)

Hello guys As a few players requested, I am going to make a quick blog post on The Junkyard. The Junkyard is a new galaxy, located in Earthforce Space, a scrapyard ran by Creaky the Robot.

In this galaxy, players can turn in their unwanted items and other items that they might consider as junk, for Junkyard Scrapnotes. These Scrapnotes the player can turn in for a variety of disposable item rewards What do I mean with disposable? Let me explain a bit more in depth!

Every item you can obtain from The Junkyard, or mission chains that starts in The Junkyard, have some sort of mechanic that makes them disposable, meaning that the item will not be permanent. It either means the item is sticky, you can’t scoop it, it is a missile or a tweak, or the fighter does not return to the ship after you have launched it Now, you might be thinking: “Why should I use this?” The answer lies in the balance and utility. Hopefully these items will be considered useful enough to be worth turning in your junk for, and in turn I aim to make Junkyard a successful item sink for both popular and not-so-popular items

Right now, the galaxy only contains a limited amount of item rewards, but we aim to increase that amount some time next universe. The goal is to introduce some new fighters, drones, missiles and possibly some tweaks, to the galaxy The junk you can turn in is also currently limited to the items that are found in the DG drop tables, and the UberBossWorld drop table, which is the drop table that is shared between a lot of ubers in this game, that drop items that are closely related to the ones you get in a DG. In time we might expand this to include more items that players can turn in. If players have suggestions to what kind of disposable items they wish to see, feel free to suggest so in the thread on the forum that is related to this blog post!

This week’s update introduces a brand new content zone that will be coming to Star Sonata 2. It’s not Micron — welcome to the Jungle!

The Jungle is a new custom dungeon (like Arctia, Vulcan and Mira) that will soon be coming to Star Sonata. It is targeted at level 200 to 400 and contains 13 new galaxies and over 50 new items, techs 12 to 16.

The Jungle is an expanse of space within the borders of the Zaphragi Empire. Veterans might have met the Zaphragi via the Zebra Armada in the Serengeti. Here, pilots fight against an incursion into Earthforce Space from the Jungle Armada caused by mysterious reasons. Pilots must venture in the hostile and savage jungle to take out the leaders of the Armada and keep Earthforce Space safe from further invasion.

The Jungle Armada consists of Leopard, Monkey, Bear, Elephant and Tiger variants of the current Zebra Armada ships. All of these will be player obtainable. Veteran players won’t have to miss out on the fun as we’ll also be releasing the new textures as skins for your current tech 20 Zebra ship!

Again, much like Arctia, Vulcan and Mira, the Jungle adds yet another custom dungeon to the game focused at helping lower level player have a place to level up and get some pretty useful upgrades. With the addition of the Jungle, players will have multiple custom dungeon options from level 20 all the way to level 400! The low to mid-level still could use a little more work, but with all the recent content additions, it’s definitely getting better!

That’s it for this week’s update, come back next week for another update! Until then, post questions, comments and suggestions in the forums!

Ladies and gentlemen!

So, as you may know, I’m Suit. I used to do support tickets as QA, but I also do some texturing and player contact, like the blogs and Facebook.

So, to have a bit more of a connection with you guys, I’d like to make a blog about me. You can ask me anything in the comments, and I’ll create a new blog on the 20th of October answering EVERY question you ask. So, ask me anything you’d like to know!

Regards,

The classiest Dev alive

Summer’s gone and Winter is coming, the leaves are turning brown, there are conkers to be found, the nights are drawing in and the kids have recently gone back to school. All of this can only mean one thing…

Halloween is soon! As such, it’s about time we got a competition going. This year’s competition is gunna be a bit different to any we’ve had before so listen (or read) carefully for the instructions; because you’ll be carving pumpkins!

You will (probably) need the following:

• A pumpkin (which unfortunately will have to be bought, unless you grow pumpkins).
• A sharp cutting implement, like a knife (youngsters should have adult supervision for this — We’re not responsible if you slice yourself open).
• A light producing device, such as a candle, to sit inside your pumpkin.
• A camera to take a picture of your creation.
• And anything else you feel like adding.

Prizes:
Five winners will be picked from the entrants the weekend of the 31st and will be given the following:

• A permament and neurobound holoprojector; unique to this competition.
• 5 of each Undead Miner.
• 5 of each Bite tweak.
• 5 Pumpkin Shards.
• A collection of temporary holoprojectors and sound projectors.

Dates:

• Competition start: 30th September (12 noon server time).
• Entry deadline: 31st October (12 noon server time).
• Winner’s announcement: 31st October (or later that weekend).

Rules & Judging:

• Entries should be posted to the forum thread (link is at the bottom) before the end date.
• The submissions will be judged on execution, creative design and of course, bonus points for Star Sonata themes.
• Your pumpkin must be original work belonging to you; if found otherwise you may be disqualified.
• Your photographs of your submission must have a sign with the account name (or main character) you are using to post as part of the photograph.

When you submit your entry, make sure you have good picture(s) of it. You can take multiple pictures of your submission; if your pumpkin is to be lit inside, pictures of it lit in the dark and a picture of it unlit in the light would probably be a good idea.

This week’s update isn’t going to be a traditional update. I’m working on a pretty cool project, but at the moment I’m not quite ready to release all the details. Instead, I’ll just leave you with this teaser screenshot!

I’ll be back again next week with a reveal of exactly what I’ve been up to. Until then, feel free to post feedback in the forums!

With Bageese no longer with the development team, Suit felt like something was missing. He went on a search on how he could stop this, but had no idea. He finally decided he could no longer bear this, and contacted the Lyceum scientists to try and go back in time.

Long story short, something went wrong with the black hole generator and the universe as we know is going to end.  They are unsure how long they can hold the black hole generator from spinning out of control, but they predict that it will swallow the entire universe saturday the 11th of October at 1PM Eastern Time. Hopefully the almighty adum will be generous and will be able to re-create everything, so the server should be back up shortly.

If this is your first universe reset, click here for a guide!