Cloudy with a chance of Missiles! – Interstellar Rift Development Update 073

After a few days of simmering in the experimental branch we’re releasing patch: 0.1.35 into the wild! Bringing with it, missile launchers, a new resources, holotable improvements and more!

First and foremost introducing the missile launcher! These weapons are placed in interior mode and can only be attached to an exterior wall much like windows and t2 engines! Each missile launcher can hold up to 4 missiles and can be fired from the console on the missile launcher or from the cockpit! There are two missile types the normal missiles do 1000 damage and travel at 600 m/s. These cost 40 Brass, 30 Steel, 70 Nitrous Oxide. The second missile type is the advanced missile and this one requires a new resource called TNP which can only be found on the Logicorp Chemical Plant. The total recipe is 40 Brass, 30 Steel, 100 TNP. These missiles do 10,000 damage and travel at 800m/s.

We’ve also overhauled the holotable’s system mode so that it’s more useful and easier to use. System mode will always have the sun in the centre of the display surrounded by the planets.
Everything that is orbiting that planet will be grouped under that planet and in order to see those object simply press E on that planet and it will expand revealing everything that orbits it. This way you can easily target objects from long distances. Ships and stations that are not orbiting a planet will be displayed on their own and their relative position will be visible in the main system mode view.

Additionally we’ve updated the gun with a new cross-hair that reacts to when you hit something giving more player feedback. We’ve also added a dedicated holster button (Default key: H), and added new messages that you get via in game mail. These tell you about any ships you might have lost and at what location you stored your ships.

Thank you all for playing, we hope you’ll enjoy this new experimental update and we’ll see you starside!

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!

Hallowed be thy pumpkin – Interstellar Rift Development Update 069

Greetings one and all and welcome to that most scary time of the year. Halloween is upon us and the denizens of the galaxy have gone all out in their decorations.

The 4 major factions have turned their stations into havens of terror and despair to fill the people with dread! But they do not need to be the only ones spreading the horror around the galaxy for they have made their decorations available to all who bring them their bounty of candy!

Mysterious asteroids have appeared around the galaxy, not filled with ores but filled with candy! Spooky pumpkins have miraculously been conjured around the galaxy to fill you with fright. But their use need not end there. For these pumpkins hold the key to more candy for your decorating needs!

Please enjoy Interstellar Rift’s 2016 Halloween update!

Happy Halloween everyone!

-The Split Polygon Team

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Stellar Stability – Interstellar Rift Development Update 068

The theme for this update has been stability and desync fixes. The majority of time has been spent on fixing crashes and fixing several bugs and ironing out some other issues.

We have also added in a much requested feature; no combat zones around the faction starter stations.
These are there to prevent spawn camping and griefing. In a radius of 3km around these stations your ships weapons simply won’t function. These new zones are still under review and we will adjust them when/if necessary.

Additionally the repair tool now has third person animations, which means that you can now see other people using their repair tools. The repair beams have also been added to the repair drone to make it clearer as to which ship they are repairing.

We’ve also further improved the space flight marker compass with the ability to filter out certain types of markers. Debris now also has individual markers making it easier to track loot from destroyed ships and aliens.

We have also updated the chat box GUI, which will now scale with screen resolution and has a few extra upgrades such as CTRL-V capability and autocomplete on usernames when TAB is pressed. Clicking on a username will now automatically set the chat to whisper the next message to them.

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 or you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you starside!

Engineering a Skrill infestation – Interstellar Rift Development Update 067

After wednesday’s appetiser on the experimental branch it is time for the main course. This patch introduces a brand new Skrill enemy, the hunter!

This skrill is most commonly found in packs with skrill grunts. However it is much faster than the grunts and it has a special attack that can cripple ships by infesting the ships with eggnites. These creatures attach themselves to a ship’s power generation devices and partially drain them of power which can cause some systems to run much less efficiently. Which can make you an easier target for the skrill grunts since the hunter itself doesn’t do much damage. Fortunately these eggnite projectiles cannot go through shields so make sure to keep them up if you don’t want your ship to be infested. Additionally hunters also dramatically boost the aggression of all other skrill around them. So don’t think you’re going to be safe if you’re in a large ship now as these creatures will now attack you as well.

The eggheads at Logicorp have created a new terminal which lets you control individual systems from a single terminal. Its primary functions include the ability to switch power groups on the fly so if you have damaged or destroyed generators you can now transfer power from an intact generator to this damaged group. Additionally you can also control the life support systems for every room through the engineering terminal, making it a little easier to cut off life support to certain sections of the ship which you are not using or use it for some more nefarious activities.

Another major addition is the inclusion of repair drones. With this we are giving players the ability to repair hull and engine damage. These drones can be launched using a disposer and then be controlled by use of a normal terminal through the sensor menu. In order for a drone to do its job it will have to be loaded with iron. Which means that you will have to eject a crate of iron along with the drone and then tell it to grab it from the drone menu. Now the drone is ready to repair and follow any target that you give it. The repair drones have a maximum follow range of 4 kilometers and they will go into sleep mode if they are ever out of range and stop following your ship.

These busy little bee’s can be built in the assembler using iron, brass and silicon.

As a final cherry on top we have overhauled the cockpit marker compass to now be constrained in a circle instead of the edges of the screen. This should make finding your targets much easier as we’ve also changed up the way we display markers which are on top of each other. They will now expand and display all of the text in one or two lists around the target marker. Additionally targets which are behind you will also have a secondary arrow next to them indicating that they are behind your ship, and you now have the ability to deselect targets by pressing “Y” (rebindable in the options menu).  In upcoming updates we will also add filter options to give pilots even more control over their interface.

We have noticed some issues with performance and networking when playing multi-player, and we will be focussing on resolving these issues over the coming weeks. This might however limit the amount of new functionalities in the next update, but we feel like focussing our efforts on a smoother and more stable playing experience should be top priority. 

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 or you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you starside!

 
– The Split Polygon Team

Fine Tuning  – Interstellar Rift Development Update 065

After a brief period in experimental stage we feel the next Interstellar Rift update is ready for prime time! This time we’re introducing a much requested feature. The ability to edit your current ship

That’s right, the ship you currently have in space can now be edited by going to the ship editor terminal. The ship editor terminal now has a new button called “modify ship” from here you will be able to select one of your ships in range and directly load that into the editor where you can make any change you want to your ship and apply it directly to your ship, as long as there is no one onboard the target ship.

 

These edits will take into account how many resources are onboard the ship itself, on the station you are on and, if available, how much is in your vault.

We’ve also added a gravitational anchor device which you can use to anchor ships and stations to a single location. This will make it easier for you to create permanent bases in space. The anchor will make any ship or station function like any other generated station when activated. If the station gets bumped away it will float back to the original position where the anchor was first activated.

Additionally we’ve also added in the ability to assign targets to deployable defense drones. Using the sensor menu on terminals you will be able to select your drones and tell them what to shoot at! Including other players.

Alternatively you can also set them to attack anything on sight that is not part of your fleet.

Hydropex and regular trade terminals will now deposit hydrogen directly into your fuel tanks if you have your ship selected while purchasing.

The editor has also received some additional work. As devices now properly display their power stats such as power consumption, drain, and more.

We hope you’ll let us know what you think of this patch in the new feedback thread. We’ve reinforced our team with a few new members so expect to see some bigger updates coming soon!

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 or you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you starside!

– The Split Polygon Team

Space? Meet suit. – Interstellar Rift Development Update 063

In this update we are adding new, music, new characters, and some quality of life updates for the editor!

Space is dark, cold and quiet, but we’ve tried to remedy a little of that last aspect with some new music. You’ll hear new tunes when mucking about in hyperspace, travelling to faction owned stations and in close encounters with Skrill and other enemies.

Additionally we are implementing our new character models with this patch. And finally allow you to swap genders. In the main menu you will find a new character customization button. For this patch you will be able to swap genders but soon you will also be able to change the colors of your character as well. While the animation system for these characters is much more elaborate, much of these functionalities are still unused. We are working at implementing more animations so players can see each other use the GRIP for example, but also the repair gun and other items that we’ll be adding.

But wait! There is more. We are also adding the next stage of our editor rework. We’ve added the first tutorial tooltips to the editor that will pop up whenever it is appropriate. These should make it easier for everyone to figure out what each function does and how it is meant to be used. There’s only a limited amount of these right now, but we are looking at feedback and determining where these are needed the most.

We’ve also condensed several building blocks to fit under their own individual categories. To access these blocks simply hover over on their icons and the alternate and offset versions will be displayed above it.

We’ve also been working under the hood, severely lowering the size of safe files with some new optimizations. This might also have a positive effect on joining servers, as there is way less data that needs to be transmitted.

As part of these optimizations we have also introduced new options for rebuilding galaxies. You can now choose on of three modes when rebuilding, with the options now varying from a simple rules update to a full rebuild of every system and everything they contain.

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 and Facebook, or you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you starside!

– The Split Polygon Team

Patching her up! – Interstellar Rift Development Update 061

The past weeks we have been working on a new system that will allow a ship’s individual systems to be damaged and destroyed. This will add more depth to combat as well as introduce interesting new scenarios that players can find themselves in. With the exception of ship’s engines every device on a ship can be broken, from a door to a refinery everything can be destroyed. When a device has been damaged it will have decreased performance. And when a device is completely destroyed most of them will stop functioning altogether. Devices can become damaged when your ship takes hull damage. Which of your devices get damaged is dependant on where bullets or other objects impact your ship and the location of the device.

There are currently two ways to repair your devices, the first is by going to a station equipped with a Store-o-Tron or a HydroPEX service kiosk. The second one is by using the Logicorp C51 Repair Tool. This nifty tool allows you to repair broken devices by firing a beam of raw materials and repair nanites at the devices. This tool requires ammo canisters to power the device, both of these can be built in the 3d printer. Additionally the repair tool also has a plasma cutter that allows you to damage devices.

The repair tool has a resource cost of 100 iron, 50 copper and 25 silicon.

The repair tool ammo has a resource cost of 25 copper and 25 iron.  

The repair tool also marks the first step into the implementation of our FPS system, currently you will not be able to kill other players with it. But this will allow us to test the underlying item systems and animations. Also you will not be able to see other players hold these repair tools because our current character models do not support these animations yet. However we are currently working on new character models which are nearing completion which will support these new animations so look forward to seeing new female and male character models very soon.

Additionally we have also been doing more work under the hood and you should see a significant improvement with loading times and a reduced number of hiccups when flying around. Note that saving the server will still cause a hiccup. There is also a very small hiccup when dropping out of warp near a large number of ships. Work on server performance will continue to be an ongoing battle which we have no intention of giving up on.

We have also added a significant number of new window types that will let you be more creative with your ships, there are more to come!

A new feedback thread will be up where we hope you’ll let us know your thoughts on the new repair tool and ship damage, please note that device health and gun damage and repair rate are still in heavy need of balancing so feel free to let us know what you think.

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 or you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you starside!

– The Split Polygon Team

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Updating the editor – Interstellar Rift Development Update 060

This week we are bringing in a new set of stability fixes, as well as some much needed improvements to some already implemented systems. Beginning with the rift generators. We have implemented a means for you to search for the system you want to travel to. This should make finding your destination star system a bit easier. Note we are still looking at a route planner for the rift generator which will likely come in a later update.

Next, we have a revamp of the Ship editor UI. Since we started on IR, the editor has changed significantly and over the course of the past year we have added in features that the UI simply wasn’t built for and thus they have somewhat been bolted on. And has resulted in a somewhat disjointed editor where some obvious but necessary features were overlooked.

This new editor UI, while still incomplete, will leave room for us to further improve it and add new features without destroying the intended aesthetic. It will also work better on higher resolutions as the UI is fully scaleable.

This is the first step in a series of editor improvements we will be doing over several updates, where we will add new features and further streamline the design and workflow. And as with all our new features your input in this would be greatly appreciated!

In addition we have also made some significant stability fixes to both the client and servers which should result in overall better performance and and fewer crashes. While improving stability and performance is an ongoing process, we hope this update will be a significant step forward in making the game much more enjoyable to play, at least from a performance standpoint.

Also in an effort to better inform you guys we have added in an RSS reader in the menu which will always link to the latest patch notes and significant news about Interstellar Rift

Finally, we have also added some new props to decorate your ships with.

During the last patch we have introduced the use of a centralised feedback thread on the Steam forums to help us condense the feedback about a particular patch in one central location. And we feel that this was successful enough to keep it going. So if you have feedback you wish to convey please do so in the new patch 0.1.28 feedback thread located here:

Steam Forums

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 or you’re free to leave your thoughts on our forums! We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you starside!

– The Split Polygon Team

Giant space marbles and floating balls of fire! – Interstellar Rift Development Update 059

Today the final frontier expands with a nicer background. We are adding realistic distances within star systems as well as stars and planets. These new planets will now serve as points of interest where stations and more will spawn.

In addition to planets we are also taking the training wheels off the warp drive and allow you to accelerate up to 1.5 AU per second at warp factor 9. These new warp factors will be required in order to make your way around the new star systems. That said the faster you travel the more power you will require. As your power consumption in warp is now dependant on your ship’s mass as well as the warp factor at which you are traveling. We realise that these high speeds will make it easy to overshoot your targets. To help combat this, ships will automatically shift back to a lower warp factor the closer you get to a planet. That said you will be able to override this by simply accelerating again. But be warned, your ships are not rated for atmospheric flight, traveling straight into a planet or a star will damage and eventually destroy your ship.

For the time being we only have gas giants and stars as celestial bodies in Interstellar Rift, but we are looking to expand this to include rocky planets and moons as well as different types of stars.

But wait there’s more, we’ve also added several new server stability fixes, and updated the cockpit interface so it displays in which system you currently are and more!
As with most of the systems we implement these are not the final versions, and your feedback is much appreciated. So please feel free to let us know what you think of warp and planets so that we may improve upon them. For this very purpose we have made a patch 0.1.27 feedback thread on the steam forum where you can leave all your thoughts. Alternatively, please feel free to share your thoughts on our forums, Facebook or Twitter!