Yay, more meeting stuff!

First off, let’s welcome a new member on the team… Theodore will now help us improve the game!

What’s changed since last week?

Now, for stuff we’ve done since last week for Steam!
The account creation for Star Sonata is going to be slightly different. There will be an e-mail recheck and a confirmation if you’ve typed your password correctly. This is to improve the first startup of the game. It’s nothing exciting right now (in terms of looks), but we’re working on this. Functionality had the first priority.

We’ve also enabled SS to autofill the content of your account name etc, for a faster account creation for steam users.
Steam Wallet will be live soon.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been working on the client, basically non-stop all week. This is to add some of those fancy login features, but also performance wise. The client should be improved greatly! He’s testing using a 40 bases vs 40 bases setup firing at max rof. That’s his benchmark. So, having a client optimized to be able to handle that… Pretty neat, don’t you think?

As a comparison, the old client at low will freeze on load. The current beta client gets 8fps. The new client will get 15 fps. With lagkiller on, the new client reaches 80 fps. Since the load from the scenario is mostly cpu and not render- related, there’s basically no difference between low and high settings.

He’s also confirmed that every player could, in theory, use the Steam Client, even if you don’t use it on Steam. This doesn’t really affect you guys, but it makes it a LOT easier for us to push updates.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s made some of the changes to the account creation dialog. He’s also added some decimals to the team xp tithe report (so you won’t see just 1 xp all the time).

The Vert

Vert’s added a t22 version of the Flamberge! It’ll be called the Voulge.

He’s also been chatting with yclepticon, about station slots for galaxies. Right now attackers get unlimited slots, which defenders get a 25 base limit for unattached slots. This should be changed, and we’re looking into it for possible solutions.

Ryan

Ryan’s been prepping to update the webserver code in preperation for steam. Ran into a few issues on his test server, but managed to fix them.

He has also been looking into a long-standing vis issue with seers, but couldn’t find anything yet. He’s waiting on a list of affected characters to compare them to non-affected characters and track down the issue.

He also fixed an issue with BvB kits. Yay for bug fixing!

Theodore

Theodore’s busy with setting up to see what can be done. Stuff like haunting the bug forum, hopping in the game and asking around, or anything of the sorts.

Suit

I’ve gathered your questions and selected a few. It did come to my attention that some players used the question area to complain about the game. Sorry guys, but the dev questions is for QUESTIONS! I’m getting a lot of complaints in there. I asked you guys for questions. I’m sorry, but I’m not presenting those complaints to show in the blog as well. We’re aware of a lot of the complaints anyway, and we’re looking into those. Getting a 5 page story about something you don’t agree on (without any questions in there!) doesn’t help me when I’m looking for questions.

Player questions!

Q1: Is there any planning on new content zones similar to Arctia, Vulcan, Mira and Jungle coming soon?

Jeff: No. At this moment we’re focussed more on getting accepted by Steam
Vert: I have some ideas, but the progress on this has halted for now.
Jey: I’m not content!

Q2: When is BobboBot coming to the SS client?

Blue Dwarf: BobboBot himself will never come to Star Sonata because he’s an IRC bot. However, if you’d like something added to the game (such as colony suitability, work needed and the sorts), you could always ask.

Q3: How is the effort going to improve documentation? Such as linking the wiki to in-game descriptions so all us players can provide our labor in fixing this rather than having to point out inaccuracies and typos in the bug forum.

Jeff: Linking the wiki to ingame descriptions isn’t easy, and it would not be recommended. A real-time link is heavy (load-wise). More likely we would export the balance sheets and have a converter to convert it to the wiki. If we wanted to do it, that would be the way.
Suit: The main issue is also that some stuff is not available to the players, and we’d prefer to keep it that way.
Ryan (in response to Suit): We could add a tag that it’s been on the player marketplace, in this way everyone can have seen it.
Jeff: If people would like to see this link to the wiki, it could always officially be suggested.

Q4: How’s your day going?

Jeff: Right..
Blue Dwarf: Good, had pub dinner!
Jey: I’m hungry
Suit: Wat.

That’s it!

Would you like to see your question in next week’s blog? Ask it here!

See you next week!

Awww yeah. We’re back!

What’d we miss?

Jeff’s been on holiday (explains the no meeting part, partially).

There’s been a few developer applications. We might have some new people in our team soon!

Steam has sent us feedback on our client. We’re fixing those issues, it’s some basic stuff (e-mail confirmation, creating an account, etc). I’m not going into detail on this, but we’ve had a long discussion on this.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey did some client data gathering, mainly with BvB action (a LOAD of data to go through) to improve the client. This is to avoid lag, crashes and the sorts. Jey will post his own blog about this, since it’s a huge story!

Also, a few hiccups on the server have nbeen fixed. Backups were using too much bandwith.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s found a bug, special galaxies didn’t have a t19 blueprint limit in the Earthforce layer. It’s been fixed! (Yay or boo, depending on how you look at it.)

Yclepticon

Some features on BvB were checked and not really working as intended, we’re looking into this. Nothing big, but worth looking at and improving, for you guys.

Ryan

Ryan’s finished some webserver stuff, we need to patch to the live web server for the Steam Wallet. Also, Space Point Exchange’s been finished.

Team XP for killing bosses has been implemented, just needs to be patched in. Exciting!

Suit

I had a question from a player; Will armada drones be looked at? (Base drones)

Blue Dwarf will look at them. Some are indeed underpowered, and he’ll see what he can do about it.

This added a new idea for me… Player input into our weekly blog! I’ve made a link where you can put your questions, perhaps we’ll answer it in our next meeting/blog. Post your questions here!

That’s it for this week. See you next week, everyone!

I didn’t even make the meeting. But hey, here’s another update! It’s a very short one, since it was a quiet meeting.

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s added a special tag to galaxies, if warp beacons are allowed or not.

The Vert

Vert’s discovered a bug with warp beacons. It’s been tested, and Blue Dwarf fixed that. There’s also some other minor bug fixes.

The big UrQa Capship boss had some tiny bugs, those fixes should be in soon.

Any other news?

No.

Well, kind of. I’ve had some hectic times, which caused me to be unable to make any meetings or do any work. If everything continues like this, I should be fully back by the end of this week. At least I made this blog again!

See you next week!

Hijacked again! I’m getting good at this. Also the first meeting of the new universe, which went very smoothly I think we can all agree.

The updates

Jey

Jey has been working tirelessly tracking down the crash that appeared around 10PM server time a few days ago and was effecting us again around the same time yesterday. He found the source which involved slaves that used fueled energies.

Jey has also fully enabled that backup system, which allows us, as in other developers, to retrieve saves of the universe, useful for tracking down bugs and suchforth.

The Vert

The Vert has created superitems for some of our newer player ships, the Kalthi ships, Harrier, Mercant Navy Contriver, UrQa’qa Qu’ishi Qa and Divine Behemoth.

He’s now looking into designing some new overloaders for stations.

Blue Dwarf

A player had reported that a Subspace shortcut had been generated between a Wild Space galaxy and Perilous Perilous Space galaxy, having decided that this is not intentional I’ve moved the exit wormhole in Perilous Space and fixed the issue for future universes.

The balance god, yclepticon, requested that the base series of drones, that is Apollo Drones through to Andaman Drones, had their Transference Resistance removed and replaced with +100% Transference Efficiency so that they would not be such a liability to use in galaxies. Also for Ambrosia and Andaman Drones specifically I’ve reduced the number of pellets (projectiles) the Gourd weapons shoot to 1, less projectiles mean less lag in those intense battles, such as when fighting in Anatolia.

A note about Suit

There is a high chance that I’ll also be covering next weeks blog post.
Unfortunately Suit’s partner got involved in an severe incident and is currently in hospital and our thoughts are with them.

Suit isn’t here this week, so I’ve taken over his lovely weekly blog!
Don’t forget that universe reset is this weekend guys.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been tracking down and fixing a bug involving high CPU usage when alt-tabbing.

Once he’s got that fixed, he’s preparing a patch to fix Vacuum scopes, increasing the timer from 30 seconds to 120 seconds and the pulling. Additionally any other fixes other devs need in.

Ryan

Ryan implemented the changes to Emperor’s tithe as well as added the additional Imperial Chest drops that we discussed last week. He’s been fixing the leader-board issues on the website and its mostly back in order but there is still a bug with the player rankings. He’s is currently looking at a bizarre slave healing bug that causes aggression.

Jeff

Jeff has handed out some reward skin items to players which ergosphere has produced for us and has been taking care of business stuff.

Blue Dwarf

I’ve done the scaling spawn times on spawners that we mentioned last week. If the time between kills is short then the spawn time will be reduced, specifically for The Nexus to help deal with potential heavy influx of players.
I’ve made it so that peons will be able to abandon/transfer their stations now, just like their lonely-teamless friends.
More error checking is performed when setting up mining slaves.
Slave ‘Show Status’ will contain the state of durability of the slave’s gear
I’ve fixed the wild AI XP reward capping bug and a bug during universe generation occasionally causing small asteroid belts having a spawn rate that is too high.

Well, the universe might be ending soon, but we decided it was time for another meeting.

Important notes

First off, there was a lot of attention regarding bugs and exploits. One player has been banned for 3 months. More on this later.

We have taken action for the Imperial Seal bug abuse. We can’t punish the exploiters, so instead we’re rewarding the honest players. Imperial Seals will drop from all t21 and t22 bosses, starting next uni.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been cleaning up our new servers and finalizing the patch preparations.

Some people might have noticed some issues regarding their e-mail addresses. This was because of our new server (but not our fault! Yay!). Because we have a new IP, Microsoft didn’t recognize it and it was automatically blocked from their mailing lists. Setting our server to match their policies exactly should stop this from happening.

He’s also been running extra tests on his private server, so we could skip having the patch on our livetest server before going live.

The Vert

Fixed a bug regarding the Divine Prophet. People got stuff they weren’t supposed to, naughty naughty!

Superitems will be added to t22 ships in Perilous Perilous Space.

Suit

I’ve finally finished the player versions of the Nightfury and Green Battleship! They’ll be in on the uni reset.

Speaking of uni reset, I noticed that we were missing our guide. Click here for the guide for the universe reset!

Ryan

People used a bug to get AI-only items. A player has been banned for this for exploiting it. Ryan’s going to add an AI-only tag to a bunch of items, so players can’t get it anymore.

He’s also committing the client-side things for Space Point purchases.

Now for a sadder announcement… Ryan’s removing some of our explicit AI names. No more laughing at R-rated AI!

Jeff

Jeff has been charging PayPal subs which didn’t go through because of the blocked mailing list.

Still no review from Steam! Gah!

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s done a few things that’s already been said above. He’s helped me with my finishing touches on the ships and he’s fixed the AI-only stuff you guys weren’t supposed to get.

He’s also finished working on BobboBot with some fancy new commands (like !countdown), you can find out about that in our IRC. Our updated IRC rules are now included in the main rules! Click here to see the updated IRC rules.

As a change to the Nexus, if AI are killed very quickly, they will respawn quicker. This is to prevent people needing to wait a long time for certain AI to spawn. Hopefully this will be in by uni reset.

Other stuff

We discussed a new reward for being Emperor. The emperor’s team could take a tithe from all AI-base sales, all scooped credits and all Colony profits.

Alright guys, I have some terrible news.

We’ve changed servers, of course. This enabled us to do a lot more, performance wise. We’ve been looking around for extra stuff we could do. Jey’s been doing an awesome job at trying to keep up with us messing around, but we went too far.

I pushed the server hamster too far, and it’s gone berserk. It’s now chanting about the end of times, and somehow I think it’s right. We have 2 weeks left, on the 16th of May the hamster will turn into a destructive force we have never encountered before. I tried to save us, but… Our universe is ending. The team’s done the best they can, but we can’t fix it. I’m sorry, everybody. It’s been a nice universe, and I hope we’ll survive the blast and perhaps find civilization in a next dimension.

Alright, now to make sure everyone gets it:

Universe reset Saturday the 16th of May at 1PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time. The server downtime will hopefully be kept to a minimum.

Wow, the third week already!

So, who’s been doing what?

Jeff

Jeff has renewed the server payment. It looks good so far!

Our game page hasn’t been reviewed yet by Steam.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf has been cleaning up the code for BobboBot, which is our automated IRC bot.

Jey

Jey’s nearly done with setting up the livetest on the website.

Due to a lot of crash fixes, he hasn’t been able to push the update through yet. It’ll be on livetest asap, after which it can be done on the live server.

Suit

I got lots of feedback on the previous weekly dev post regarding the palace bug.

The problem being, with such a widespread use of this unintended feature, it’s nearly impossible to find everyone who has used this.

Ryan

Ryan has been fixing website issues related to the server migration. He’s trying to fix the leaderboard updating.

Other stuff

Steam beta after live patch! Yay!

**Update** The biggest part of the migration is now done, the web and game should be fully functional, but the migration is still in progress in parallel so expect a few hiccups here and here.

the new irc is accessible using irc.starsonata.com port 7777
or
kiwi irc
or
mibbit irc

As mentioned in http://www.starsonata.com/blog/new-servers-migration-soon/ we have been working on new server hardware / location to increase performance on the webserver/database/test servers and in doing so found upgrade for all our machines. The downtime will begin at 11h00 pm ET (server time) and will last about 8 hours

I have been doing just about everything that could be done without causing downtime to shorten / facilitate the final transition. But a final downtime is still needed to move the dynamic data (forum data, game database), to update the dns and tie everything together on the new servers.

During that downtime, the website will be switched over to a maintenance page. Forum, wiki and blog will all be disabled to allow for a clean transfer. The game server will also be stopped to allow for the database and website communication interface to be transfered without problems.

Website and other secondary services will come back up as they become available. The game server will be the last thing to come back up and in all likelyhood won’t happen before those 8 hours are elapsed.

Another week, another blog!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

He’s been swamped in coursework and other tasks from university this week. Sadly, he couldn’t do much in Star Sonata.

Jey

Jey has been busy fixing crashes on our live and livetest server.

Also, for our new server some updates! A lot of technical talk, but it comes down to this:

More automated stuff for backups/restarts, simpler commands and a better watchscript for restarts. Also, a new test server which  automatically updates/compiles.

Ryan

Ryan has been working on the webserver support for Steam checkout. There was also a bug with the Emperor’s Palace which has been fixed now. Furthermore, Ryan’s been discussing an interesting new concept with Yclepticon. I’m sorry, it’s a surprise! More about this in another blog.

Suit

I’ve been looking at possible droprates for the GB/NF player versions. What’s the droprate? A mission? A ship? I can’t say! You’ll see it when it’s implemented.

Jeff

Busy with Steam. Our Steam page is up for review at this moment.

Any other discussions?

We’ve had a few interesting discussions this week. I’ve summarized them for you guys.

Team score and BvB

Since the team scores are quite high to be able to BvB, we’ve had a discussion on lowering the team score required to be able to BvB. We’ve been thinking of a team score of 50 to be required.

Team skills

Similar issue as with the team score system. Since there are many strong teams, new and lower teams are having difficulty climbing up the ranks to become stronger and better. We’ve been thinking of the possibility of a new system which is less linear than the current one.

And we’ve had a short discussion on building indestructible bases and running for Emperor as devs. But I don’t think I should put that in here, I guess.. Oh well.

That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with more interesting news and discussions. This weekend I might be able to high five any Irish players around, since I’ll be visiting there friday-monday.

See you next week!