Hot Shots! Part Deux – Interstellar Rift Development Update 071

In this update we are enabling some more offensive and defensive capabilities as we add plasma pistols and meal packs, plus a healthy dose of bug fixes.

The new SI-3 Plasma Pistol by Sentinel Security Systems can now be printed in a 3D printer, as can the ammo that it fires. The plasma pistol can be used to destroy Eggnites, damage devices, and eliminate other players. It can be stored in a weapon rack, and the ammo can be kept in a locker. These weapons are disabled on starter stations however, preventing people from killing each other before they can reach their ships.

The plasma pistols have been available on the experimental branch for most of this week and during that time we have tweaked them a little. We have added recoil, tweaked the walking speed while aiming down sights, added sprinting animations, and tweaked the animation speeds.

We have also (finally) introduced a way to heal. Food cartridges can now be printed from the 3D printer from Skrill meat. Each of these cartridges heals 10 per use and has 5 uses (a player has 100 health max). We are working on ways to allow for these to be obtained in other ways than printing them. Food cartridges can be stored in lockers as well. To use a food cartridge hold it in your hand and press and hold the left mouse button down.

Also in this update, we have been working on tweaking the way resources spawn in the galaxy. The system map now accurately shows the spawn rates of resources in those systems. Before this change there could be discrepancies between the values shown on the system map due to multiple random values working on top of each other.

What this means for you guys is that some rare resources now no longer spawn in Hadron. There is still a chance for beryllium to spawn, as well as gold and platinum. To find the other rare resources you will have to travel to other systems. To offset this change they are now much more abundant in those systems as they now have a chance to spawn in every field in that system. What we hope to achieve with this change is less reliance on random values to find resources, and more on using scanners and holotables.

We have also been working on localization. We hope to be able to release the option to translate the game, and share that translation with the community, within a couple of updates.

Thank you all for playing and if you want to stay up to date with all Interstellar Rift news you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you star-side!