Details of the changes in 0.55.0 :
- Help system overhaul : Wrote up and updated most sections of the space help menu, and did a major overhaul on the interface.
- New Shields Control system : Shields can now be manually turned on or off, or set to 'auto' - meaning the shields are turned off automatically if you fire and turned on automatically a bit later on once you stop firing. Note it takes 25 seconds to charge and re-activate standard shields once they have been turned off.
- New players now start with Standard Shields by default
- Weapons can no longer be used when shields are active
- Added DELETE to toggle shield status in space, and F4 to change player target.
- Maximum speed available when under red alert increased : This is now a factor (1/3) of the ships max ion speed.
- The starting ship (Interplanetary Shuttle) now has a 10t cargo bay
- Can now use mousewheel for lists/scrollbars. Scrollbar graphic improved.
- uPnP support added : If a user is on a LAN and invisible in space due to router/firewall restrictions (i.e. unable to make direct peer-to-peer connections), in some circumstances uPnP will allow the user to be seen. uPnP and port forwarding support will need to be available on the user's router. uPnP should also make it much easier for people to get their own world visible on the galaxy, without having to manually forward ports.
- New information display on the spacestation trade screen : Providing info about the items available for purchase.
- Various bits of work on the space UI : Moved the comm station menus to underneath the ship drives, tidied up the trade report & gal radio screens a lil, changed the infImp input window, removed some bits of UI when in stardrive, etc.
- Space mining improvements : UI tidied up. New users now start with a 'Uridium Mining Kit' by default - this can mine water and uridium from asteroids for 'free'. A purchasable 'Advanced Mining Kit' is available that mines metals and minerals.
(Graphic effects for all this will be added later). Activating mining now needs shields to be turned off beforehand.
- Missiles and bursts are banned in fed systems.
- Bounty system disabled in fed systems.
- Major overhaul on the existing ship settings : Renamed 'Police Fighter' to 'Spearhead AXA Fighter'. Renamed 'GalFreighter' to 'Unicorp Freighter V1' (and readded the GalFreighter as a new ship with better stats. All of the ship speeds, acceleration rates, control responsiveness, armour and other settings have been significantly changed.
- 'Fighters' can no longer be equipped with cargo bay extensions.
- Transport ships are limited to a 10t cargo bay extension
- 4 new spaceships added
- Reduced space starting cash to 10cr.
- Significant rebalancing of the galactic economy : particularly in terms of the range & type of products available in the starting systems.
- New nebula graphics
- New fonts : used throughout.
- "Factions" (mostly) renamed to "Squads" : On a whim :]
Work-in-progress :
- New settings screen for world owners
- New shadowing system
- New water rendering techniques
Bugfixes
- fix for ship orientation load sometimes not working correctly (and possibly making the game unplayable for some users without a reinstall).
- changed the window resize method to reduce risk of directX reset failures
- Bugfix for asteroids spawning multiple times in starsystem. Made sure asteroids are included in starting systems.
- fixed bug that let you activate stardrive multiple times
- fix for bug in distance-to-asteroid calculation which caused the mining kit to malfunction 'randomnly'
- Fix for current ship damage sometimes getting 'lost'.
0.55.0 Release Notes
Hey Mit good to see the TU hasnt been abandoned. I was always trying to find ways of improving TU's visual by bench testing high res or "HD" textures on my planets and such. my first one was the "HD" countach, then was the HD sky's happily adopted by Zaroba in Zoric a while back. then was my "HD" planet which was bench testing "HD" land textures. Only problem was it only has one texture graphic setting, and that was whatever downloaded your stuck with for the other players that joined the planet. so that meant if your pc or laptop has poor gpu it would slow your pc to a painful crawl..
here's a link to my screen shot of my HD land texture http://theuniversal.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8590
This game with a few 3d engine tweeks can be made to look amazing, it handles hd textures great but only if you have the hardware for it. What i suggest is making some sort of texture adjusting setting, such as "high res" "med res" "low res" or "max res" which could be put into the world editor also so it has it pre-sized for download.
i would add more but at 1am my mind is tired. hehe
might add more to this tomorrow or another day.
here's a link to my screen shot of my HD land texture http://theuniversal.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8590
This game with a few 3d engine tweeks can be made to look amazing, it handles hd textures great but only if you have the hardware for it. What i suggest is making some sort of texture adjusting setting, such as "high res" "med res" "low res" or "max res" which could be put into the world editor also so it has it pre-sized for download.
i would add more but at 1am my mind is tired. hehe
might add more to this tomorrow or another day.