“You are here!” – Interstellar Rift Development update 006

Are you tired of getting lost on your own spaceship? Tired of trying to find the bathroom in the maze of corridors you’ve just erected? Well, trouble yourself no longer! The Interstellar Rift internal map system will allow you to quickly find where you are aboard your ship.

Firstly, we added the much requested large helm. This new bridge module has three seats. two for the pilot and navigator and one for the captain. We look forward to seeing what cool new ships you make with this new piece.

 

With version 0.0.7 we’re introducing the first part of the internal sensor grid. Starting today, the AGOS. wall and desk terminals have been made active. For the time being, you will only be able to access the “Systems”, which will bring you to the internal map of the ship you are currently on.

Using the up and down buttons you’re able to switch between different floors. The third button will center the map on your position. Eventually, the interior icons will have tool tips that display the status of the ship systems when you click on them. The map will enable us to do a lot of cool stuff in the future such as monitor where your crew is aboard your ship, seal doors, vent the atmosphere from certain compartments and much more.

We’re also chugging along on the network code behind the scenes. While these features are not yet relevant for you guys, they are very important for the longevity of the game going forward. This week we’ve started on device network sync. We’re also re-tooling some of the device connection mechanics based on your feedback and our own internal testing.

Here’s a little sneak preview of the upcoming Device Connection System (and new font renderer), coming to you in a future update:

We hope you enjoy this weeks update and as always, drop us a line in the forums, facebook or twitter.

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All Aboard! – Interstellar Rift Development Update 005

The first real steps into on-board machines! Try out the new Ship Editor Terminal and hop around using the Teleporters.

This week’s update brings you the first milestone on the space lane to the implementation of working space flight. The next time you launch the game you will start aboard a standard starting station. To check out your ships you’ll now have to go to the Ship Editor Terminal and select the ship you want to use. When you press the “Start Construction” button, your newly constructed ship will appear in space next to the Starter Station. To board your new ship simply walk over to a teleporter and activate it by pressing “E”. After selecting the ship you wish to teleport to, you will instantly be teleported. In v0.0.6, Teleporters have no power requirement as of yet. We just want to make sure they work as advertised before we hook them up to the powergrid.

We have updated the way the ship editor works as well. The Ship editor can now also be accessed from the Ship Editor terminal in-game in addition to accessing it from the main menu. We have also taken some advice from you guys and changed the way deleting props works. Now, when you right click on a prop it will only delete that prop, and not the entire room. The room tile will only be deleted once the selected room tile is empty.

We had to change the folder in which the game saves it’s config and ship files. This is because some users (especially those on windows 8) experienced problems saving their ships.
To preserve your existing ships, copy them into %appdata%/roaming/InterstellarRift.

As usual, these systems are still early in development and your feedback is much appreciated. Please feel free to drop by our forums and let us know what you think. A Split polygon Employee will be along shortly to answer any questions you might have.

 

Interstellar Rift v0.0.6 can be downloaded here.

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