Before we get into things, a return has occurred and we’d like to welcome Precursor back to the dev team!

Ryan

Worked on some changes for base kits with yclepticon, with changes to both starting space and resists. The space changes should allow a tech/rarity equivalent expander to fit in a base from the start, so you don’t have to juggle small expanders just to be able to fit the ones you actually want to use. For example the T12 store bought kit has 300 space so you can fit size 250 transdims. The resist changes are detailed in this dev notes post.

Jey

Prereset patch coming up on thursday evening! Other stuff too, but it’s just the same as last week. The beta is now in an usable state, but it’s nowhere near ready to become live client and will likely have to wait until after reset to be fully fixed.

Col Legno

I’ve been fixing a bunch of little things and planning the galaxy layout for SM22.

Blue Dwarf

I’ve been working on a couple of small bugs, firstly stopping the AI Outposts from spawning inside AI owned/protected galaxies, such as Earthforce Perilous Space Outpost and issues involving ownership of HQ, Outposts and the Palace when leaving or being booted from your team.

Player questions!

We had some pretty cool questions this week

Question 1

What is your favorite Boss in all of Star Sonata?
Jey: DC

Jeff: Iq’Bana

Ryan: I always liked Iq’Bana most visually.

yclepticon: Lion or Poseidon

Blue Dwarf: All the bosses! … Not really sure, Blob has cool scripting but is annoying to kill (because of his script)… Actually, Astro Santa, even if he doesn’t quite work as I wanted him to.

Theodore: Rhino

Col Legno: Copper, It was the first I could solo, and it was fun learning how

Question 2

Do you guys think this game will ever hit mainstream?
Jey: I do hope for it to grow a few times bigger than it is now. But mainstream would be horrible, the game plain simply isn’t designed to accommodate millions of players.

Ryan: I think mainstream is a pretty big stretch but I feel like we have a lot of room to grow even if we stay “tiny” compared to games like WoW.

Col Legno: Nope ss will never hit mainstream
But I think it’ll be more comfortable in it’s niche

Question 3

Did you guys ever wanted to plan on doing something big for this game?
Jey: Big is rather relative, many of the updates are big if you consider all the work that goes in them . Unless you mean C2 kind of big, then there can’t be all that many since we worked many years on that before it was even able to render c1 galaxy .

Jeff: C2 was pretty big. Alien invasion were pretty big. Tech 21 and tech 22 were pretty big. We have some new ideas for the future, but nothing that’s ready to be announced yet.

Ryan: I’ve always wanted more dynamic content in the game rather than static bosses you go kill so it’d be more than “go here kill that”.

Blue Dwarf: I’ve not particularly done much big stuff so far, although I have some cool wishes if they ever come to be of stuff. It might not seem big to players but for us it’d be big. Rewriting missions and added a epic staged-mission type thing to replace mission chains would be good and I’d love to play around with the universe generation to create some more interesting galaxies or solar systems and add other things like supernovae and comets/meteors.

Col Legno: If ss was my full time job I’d have big plans. But with a day job, all I really want to do atm is fix things

Here’s the link to submit a question!

Jey

Still working on the beta client issues. I got a few mostly fixed, but some of them make very little sense in the scope of what was changed in the beta. I am also in the process of investigating a windows 10 related freeze but still uncertain as to if its caused by ss or by an issue in the drivers.

Col Legno

More Subspace mission fixes and bug testing!

Blue Dwarf

I’ve been looking into a rather cryptic bug with our wild AI placement at universe generation. It seems a bunch of our spawners weren’t being placed correctly, but after cleaning up and fixing a few other things I can’t find anything wrong! So I guess it magically fixed itself (or maybe one of us fixed it without knowing).

Jeff

Finished the new account dialog screen. Now with pretty colours and Earthforce lady!

Player questions!

Totally forgot! But we need some more so ask away!

Here’s the link to submit a question!

Jey

Still working on fixing the issues on the current beta client, progressing steadily but still unable to give an eta, could be now or could be this weekend. There is a full patch in preparation, date will be announced once it’s certain. I also did some slight tweaks to our database configuration to reduce the website slowdown whenever the team scores are updated.

Blue Dwarf

Not a lot of interesting stuff going on in my world of late, but I’ve got some good stuff on my plate for next week!

Col Legno

I have had a horrible frustrating week of no internet! But despite that, I managed to fix the sentinel spawner issue in Trials of Adum. After it’s patched in you’ll be able to do the trials without being auto aggro to the sentinels.

Ryan

Moving!

Jeff

Working on a new look for the new account dialog.

Player questions!

Question 1

What are your favorite aspects of Star Sonata? Such as combat, building bases or the colony/ruin system.

Col Legno: I like having alts on everyone’s teams and know peoplg. Game politics and social interactions.
Jey: trading and politics
Jeff: building bases
Ryan: bases and teams
Blue Dwarf: Story, lore and universe generation and teams in the days when I was more active.

Question 2

Anything more you can tell us about the Steam launch, understanding you cant reveal everything now. Such as when it happens will be it be something mid-uni or timed to align with a uni reset? Are servers prepared to handle that big of a influx of new players in the Nexus? Any big changes or other things in the works you guys are doing specially to support and refine the game for the steam launch?

Jey: Uni reset is not needed for steam
Jey: Server have a queue system planned to handle the influx
Jey: Rest is content so I cant answer those, but i hope more cleaning / bug fixing to ensure as smooth as possible experience for new players

Here’s the link to submit a question!

Universe Reset

Ahab’s Bubble and Squeek brews have been dropping in quality lately and that can only mean one thing! The Space Rats are falling ill. Enquiring with Farmer John, Ahab has established this is because the binding forces of the universe itself are breaking apart! Creaky the Robot predicts the final collapse will occur at August 29th, 1PM in the Earth time of Eastern Daylight Time. We hope to see you all on the otherside!

Jey

Beta client! Details here.

Blue Dwarf

I’ve finished up my map and handed off to Ryan to integrate onto our website.

I’ve also fixed a bug with the calculation for costs of built items when their blueprint builds more than one item and I’ve been thinking over the design and how the item and mission viewer would work.

Col Legno

I’ve finished up the T21 skill mission changes and they’re in testing. I’ve added a new prize for the end of the last Subspace mission and hope to finish testing the rest.

The Vert

I fixed some spawners jumping out of galaxies when they were not supposed to. I fixed it in the XML for one spawner in Enigmatic Sector and one in Sol (that pesky damn Broodmother!)

I have finalized the individual wild slave balance that so many players have requested, and which was planned and discussed a long time ago. Titan Bigger Greens, Green Battleships and Qokuji’qi are much more balanced now. This only affects their wild slave form, and not the spawner itself.

We’ve also discussed fighters for a bit, but we need some more time on this and get the content developers together to progress on this.

Ryan

Among other things this week, I helped integrate Blue Dwarf’s map into the website. We’ll also be exposing the universe info in JSON format under a starsonata.com/api type url, we’ll give you more details in an upcoming blog post. I’ll be moving over the next week, so you probably won’t hear to much from me for a couple weeks.

ergosphere

Unfortunately we don’t often get updates from ergosphere due to time differences, however I was sent this from him!

The below images are of the Kalthi Commander, which I have made a model and textures for. The Kalthi Terminator will look the same as it, except larger. I have also made textures for the Armored and Wrathful versions of the Kalthi Commander in a similar way to the other Perilous Perilous Space Kalthi ships that I have made.

Player questions!

Question 1

“Whats your favorite alcoholic beverage?”
Suit: I’d say I like beer. But not the American type. Belgian/Dutch beers.
Guinness is nice too.
But it depends on the situation. When out to dinner, wine is preferable.
Or a random evening, sometimes a single malt Whiskey

Blue Dwarf: Cider for me, prefer sweet to dry. Rekorderlig, Kopparberg, Aspall and Old Moot Cyder specificly.

Col Legno: Chocolate Martini.

Jey: Rum.

Jeff: Uuuuummmm, I’ll say right now it’s Ouzo. I also like a nice dark rum.

Ryan: Margaritas for me

Question 2

“Is there any plans to develop/implement Tech 23 in the future? If so what kind of time frame if any can we expect on its implementation?”

Jeff: We don’t really have any plns or thoughts right now
Jeff: I believe our current plan is to resubmit to steam and new content areas.

Here’s the link to submit a question!

Has to be said, pretty slow week. But slow weeks give us the longest meetings it seems!

Jey

An update hails down from the Great White North!

Jey has been up visiting his home town, but tells us he’s planning to do a patch soon. His client work is ‘pretty much done’. The final performance increase is around 23 times in high activity scenarios (e.g., base combat).

Blue Dwarf

I’ve been working on the bug where aura projectors affect others in locations they shouldn’t (such as non-PvP galaxies).
The map has been recieving some tweaks and tests to present older browser issues with some information on why it’s broken, instead of just breaking in their browser.

Col Legno

I realized I forgot to make an instance for roaming Hermes. I set up an instance for him and it’s nearly done.

The Vert

I fixed a bug where I had added Micro Vacuum Scoop twice in the drop tables, where one should have been a Mini Vacuum Scoop.

Ryan

Alien invasion fixes seem to be working and should be patched in sometime soon!

Player questions!

Question 1

Actually two questions, since they’re the same question
“When will tech 21 and/or tech 22 base gear be implemented?”
and
“When can we expect to see t21 and 22 base stuff being worked on? Can we get a fairly quantitative answer?”

We had a pretty length discussion on this in our meeting today. The overall result is that we’ve agreed on an acquisition method for these skills and are now beginning to plan it out.

Question 2

“There was a fair amount of discussion about a base slot revamp, any updates on that?”
yclepticon: It’ll be considered in parallel with the SM 21-22 project.

Here’s the link to submit a question!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

My map is nearly done, just some minor fixings to be done and it’ll hopefully get integrated over the next week (but no promises). A heads up, it doesn’t work on IE9 currently.

I’ve also been though our Speeling Error thread and fixed up a bunch of our silly mistakes!

Col Legno

I’ve created instanced Dungeons for the T21 missions: Electric Plant (electric eel), Guardian Hideout (Guardian Missions), and Pilot Farm (arena missions). The galaxies are essentially done and functional but in need of testing. Guardian Hideout and Pilot Farm still need to be decorated. I’ve fixed drops not working in the wave spawner and will probably fix credits not dropping from the wave spawner this coming week. I’m are planning to remove the randomization and replace it with 3 day lockouts for each mission instead. I’ll be getting back to fixing up the subspace missions next week.

Ryan

I think I’ve narrowed down all the issues I’ve been made aware of for the alien invasions, and the fixes should be on test soon (with accelerated invasions) for testing. I’m just getting over a nasty cold so things have been a little delayed, but now that I’m getting better I should be able to resume work on the website patch soon.

Player questions!

Seems like my plea for more submissions last week worked well as we have lots of questions. I forgot to actually ask during the meetings, so we’ll only be fielding two questions this week as a lot of us disappeared after the meeting.

Question 1

“Will there ever be a XML type service, where the community can have public access to Market Checker Prices, Galaxy Map and etc?

I would imagine some community members could make some excellent services with these resources for the rest of us to enjoy and use.”

Blue Dwarf: This is partially already in the pipeline! The map I’ve been making gets the universe data by dispatching a XMLHttpRequest for the data from the server. However, the data included here is very stripped down. The data for the map is served up as a JSON object of all the galaxies, indexed by their ID. This is what Free Market looks like

"2052402974":{
  "t":"",            // team presence
  "u":61,            // userbase count
  "n":"Free Market", // galaxy name
  "x":-0.727036,     // position on map
  "s":1,             // special galaxy (purple name)
  "o":0,             // owned
  "b":2,             // spacestation count
  "w":[              // galaxies connected to this one, by ID
    "2052386930",
    "2052386940",
    "2052386946",
    "2052386958",
    "2052386964",
    "2052387152",
    "2052627944",
    "2052627960"
  ],
  "a":0,             // anchor galaxy (e.g., Deep Space)
  "df":0.1,          // danger factor, but 100 times smaller
  "p":0,             // protected
  "l":0,             // layer id
  "y":-0.39123       // position on map
}

Once the map is up, the JSON entire (discovered) universe will be publicly accessible.
For the mission and item viewer, me and Jey have planned a similar interface but there’ll be a backend php script which will provide filtered down results so users only download information they need.

Ryan: it’d still be nice to do an api at some point (though probably not in xml)

Question 2

“What is your day jobs?”

Theodore: I make braille signs.
Col Legno: I work for a company that writes legal software. Mostly big lawsuit stuff.
Blue Dwarf: My day job is SS, at least that’s the only thing I get paid to do. I’m also currently at uni (Computer Science, now going onto first year). For Ryan, Jey and Jeff, as far as I am aware, SS is also their day jobs.
ylcepticon: I teach art to very small humans
yclepticon: everyone is small compared to SPACESHIPS

Here’s the link to submit them!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

The web map is looking much better than last week. The map now shows anchor galaxies (such as Absolution) correctly on both layers, supports working out autopilot routes (although this still needs some work), improved UI and added the ability to toggle some extra display options, like colouring galaxies owned by the same team together.

While it’s mostly there, it could still use a little bit of work.

I’ve been through the suggestions system and cleaned up a few that we’ve done/we’re not doing, and managed to get us to review a couple.

Col Legno and Theodore

Fixed a bunch of stuff in subspace missions. Still working on the Blue Photon arm and the second Earthforce arm. Going to take a short break from subspace to fix up some of the t21 daily missions. Plans are to make custom dgs to house the pilots and the guardians. There will be bosses at the ends, but we also plan to keep the roamers in so that if a player can’t get to the boss at the end of the DG, they’ll still have the option of finding the roamers. We’re going to decrease the DF of the roamers range so they won’t go into perilous perilous.

Jey

Still working on the client performance / fixes. I also did a few tweaks on the webserver to reduce the website lags from backups and scores update.

Player questions!

Totally forgot to do them! Many apologies although we are in need of some more questions. It seems some of your submissions are more of statements… Or paragraphs rather than questions. Pretty please submit us some more! They don’t even have to be about the game but could be about us ourselves.

Here’s the link to submit them!

More wiki stuff!

It looks like we’ll be moving items away from the wiki. After speaking with Jey our plan is to add a new page to the website, which we can fill with information from the server. It does mean a few drawbacks, though, such as the inability to add comments to items. However we get the ability to add extra data into the table, such as the current market prices (and perhaps past prices).

It also looks like missions will be getting similar treatment, so you’ll be able to browse those too!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

So a large portion of my update was involving the wiki changes. Although over the weekend I’ve also been working on something else rather cool.

This map is currently generated from universe backup data. It’ll probably be appearing on the website some point soon, after some face lifting and finishing touches.

Over this coming week I’ll also be going over the suggestions we currently have in the system and removing those that are no longer relevant.

Ryan

I’ve been working on fixing some glaring problems with the alien invasion stuff as mentioned last week. I’ve identified several issues with the spawners that hold galaxies and have gone through most of the alien spawners to address them.

Col Legno and Theodore

We have been tidying up mission text for the subspace missions, working on improving the prizes at the end of the subspace mission chains and fixing up broken tags so the missions can be done in their intended order. Next up for the missions is taking some close looks at the instancing for the missions and considering decoupling high level prize missions (ie fighters and missiles) from low level mission chains.

Suit

He was absent from the meeting! Also, this Friday he’s off exploring France for two weeks, so we’ll see him when returns

Jeff

We ran some Reddit advertising over the long weekend to several subreddits, spending a bit more than last weekend. The results were a bit worse, averaging 30 cents cost per click and not that many new players as a result. Will probably not do too much more advertising for now, and just keep focusing on the Steam launch.

Jey

Making sure my client optimizations do not cause more problems than they fix. This is a rather lengthy process due to the long testing phases between fixes, but is coming along.

Player questions!

Question: Any chance of us seeing player versions of more AI ships such as stellas, similar to the way the NF/GB ships were done?
Jeff: Sure, if players are interested in it and a content dev gets interested in it.

Question: Any possibility of getting a total dps/ total healing done in squad for an instance?
Jeff: Would be nice, I thought about it before. Some people have been against it in the past.

Question: Are you interested in introducing a “player status” bar to every player, in which we could set whether we’re afk, busy, DGing etc.? As an addition we could set a time limit and if we’d be passive for so long, the client would automatically set us “afk” until we move again.
Jeff: Not opposed to it. If it were an upvoted suggestion, we could do something like this.

Finally, a heads up for next week. Our meetings are changing time and will be a few hours later.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

Stolen from Suit once again! No, seriously, he had to leave.

First off, wiki stuff!

For this meeting, we’ve invited SunDog here. We’ve had a discussion on how we could change the wiki to be even more useful. It’s very hard to do. We’ve discussed ways to add missions and items to the wiki automatically. I won’t go into detail on this, because it’s quite technical (and took us half an hour).

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

Monthly event! I had a little problem getting the Improcerus event started on Saturday (I might’ve crashed the server and found a couple bugs) but other than that it went well.

Bug squishing and odd bits of cleaning up behind the scenes.

Ryan

He’s been working on integrating the Steam API into our web server, to do, stuff.

Theodore

Theodore is still working on testing and fixing up the Subspace mission chains.

Suit

He arranged the wiki meeting and found some more questions from you guys. And he’s been very busy with university!

Subspace Issues

Ryan will be looking into some of the bugs regarding the invasion mechanic, as a temporary measure we’ve reduced the colony suitability nerf to 2% per level from 5%.

Player questions!

Question: When will tech 21 and/or tech 22 base gear be implemented?
No current plan for this, but it’s on the eventual to-do list.

Question: When are termite mounds getting a beefed?
No current plan for this, but it sounds like a good idea.

Question: Are Ruins something that are potentially being updated in the near-ish future? Vast amount of items in them are useless / no updates for t21/t22.
This sounds like a good idea.
Blue Dwarf: SoonTM to all of them.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

Another week full of fun things and interesting news! This is going to be an interesting one, since The Vert has a big update (Which is on the forum as well, I’ll link it later in the blog). Also, some information regarding Steam as well!

So, who’s done what?

Jeff

Jeff has been working on advertising. We also have a new landing page, check it out here!

Blue Dwarf

Bobbo thought the monthly event was supposed to be next weekend. Derp.

Furthermore, he’s been cleaning up the content folder (It’s really big!), like deleting old stuff from client 1.

As a final change, live (right now already!) the Plantarium (Starting next uni, it’ll be called the Planetarium) has been changed to f2p only instead of being level 200-. Enjoy!

The Vert

Vert’s found something with the spawners of Nightfury’s, Hives, Delquads and some more. We’re going to look into that.

Also: colonies! Yes, the issue that you guys wanted us to look at. Vert’s analyzed it all now. From looking at it himself to checking player feedback from 2 years ago up to the present day, he’s found the good and bad aspects of the Alien layer. His full update can be found here.

Theodore and Col Legno

Theodore and Col Legno have been going through the subspace missions, to find every bug possible. They’ve found a bunch, we have a proper list of that now. This varies from missions saying they’ll reward a ship while actually rewarding an item, or safety lock not working properly.

Jey

Jey wasn’t here for the meeting. However, we had his updates through the notes. From what we’ve read, he’s done more client optimization.

Suit

I’ve taken the feedback on the wiki, and I’ve proposed it to the dev team. However, Jey and Ryan weren’t here for this meeting. Wiki generally is a pain, Jey and Ryan have most knowledge of this.

The idea for the wiki would probably be along the lines of: If it’s been on the market place, it’ll come to the wiki. I’ll give you guys an update on this next week.

I didn’t like how we didn’t have an event this weekend. I’ve bothered Blue Dwarf to activate it tonight already, but he’s doing it friday and he’s going for something fun. If it doesn’t happen this friday (meaning: he forgot), I promise you guys, there’s going to be a MASSIVE event as a compensation.

Player questions!

Question 1: Whens the alien colony feature going to be fixed?

Vert: Check out my forum post.

 Question 2: hey Suit. Can we widen the Transference effect back to c1 levels? So you can actually see it is a Yin Yang instead of just being an oval cut in half.

Jeff: I don’t really see a problem with them at this moment, I can see it. However, if somebody from the dev team wants to play around with it, I wouldn’t mind.

Suit: I like the idea. Lower techs are still quite wide, but when you get more range you’ll have more of a beam-like instead of the actual transference effect.

Col Legno: I agree, transferences like the Emp Wand are quite narrow, but still okay. Where the real issue comes in is the alien ones. They’re really thin beams and don’t even look like shield transferences.

Theodore: I noticed the alien ones as well, those can be annoying from time to time.

Blue Dwarf: First world problem: Not seeing your yin yang anymore.

Question 3: When is the game going to be officially released on Steam? I just keep hearing “soon”(TM)

Blue Dwarf: SoonTM.

Jeff: We have a list of things needed for the introduction of Star Sonata to Steam. Steam gave us feedback on some things they wanted us to change, we’re doing that at this moment. We’re about halfways on the list, this is stuff like changing the ‘Create account’ dialog, or pushing Steam Wallet stuff.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

Well… That’s it! See you next week!