The gateway to a larger universe – Interstellar Rift Development update – 056

Ladies and gentlemen, today we open the proverbial Rift gate to a much larger universe with the introduction of the Spatial Rift Generator. With this device you will be able to open a spatial rift that you can use to travel to new star systems.

The spatial rift generator is a massive device that requires its own type of fuel on top of a large amount of power. This new fuel comes in 3 variants, Xanthium, Di-Xanthium and Tetra-Xanthium. Each of these fuel variants can be bought as well as refined.

Xanthium is the most basic of the Rift Fuels and is used to generate rifts that are rated for small ships (up to 100k mass). Di-Xanthium is the second tier and rated for medium ships (Up to 1 million mass) and Tetra the last tier and rated for large ships and entire fleets up to 10 million mass. To refine Xanthium you need the following materials.

To refine Xanthium you need the following materials:

• Beryllium + Deuterium + 100 Nitrogen = 100 Xanthium

• 100 Xanthium + 1 Mercury + 100 Nitrogen = 100 Di-Xanthium

• 100 di-Xanthium + 1 Osmium + 100 Nitrogen = 100 Tetra-xanthium

Once generated, a spatial Rift will remain in space until its mass rating has decayed to 0. When the rift is decayed to 0, it will collapse and disappear.

Whenever a ship passes through a rift its mass will be subtracted from the total mass rating of the rift. In addition a rift will also decay over time.

Rifts are also independent from the ship that generates them. Once generated any ship can pass through it until it has completely decayed. Rifts will also remain in the world when the ship that generated it is destroyed.

We realise that not all ships are big enough to accommodate a rift generator hence why we are also introducing public use Rift hubs which are operated and maintained by Hydropex. Rift Fuel can also be bought here.

To use the rift generator simply select a star system from the holographic interface then on the terminal it should say how much and which fuel you need. Then place the appropriate fuel on the receptacle and press engage on the terminal. The rift generator will start to charge and generate the rift near your ship. Every rift requires one million power, the generator has a built-in capacity and will charge from any available power in the group.

Because we now have multiple star systems we have moved the resources which spawn in each system around. This is to encourage exploration of new star systems.and to give you a reason to venture out into new systems.

It has recently come to our attention that some people in the community have started an attempt to translate the game. You might find this difficult since much of the text in the game is embedded deep in the code. And as you might have noticed, we have a lot of Interfaces. We are currently in the process of separating the text into separate files that will make it easier to translate the game. So look for that in the near future.

As with most of these features interstellar travel is unfinished and will undergo changes in the coming weeks/months. So please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think and how it could be improved. In the meantime we hope you enjoy today’s patch and as always, if you would like to know more and  see sneak peeks at upcoming patches please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, our own forums or our Steam forums.

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Cartographic conundrums – Interstellar Rift Development Update – 055

Introducing the new Holotable! this device will let you see a 3d holographic representation of your surroundings, and the local star system. Using this new mapping tool you will be able to target individual objects that surround your ship. And send this target information to the helm and your gunners allowing players to work cooperatively in both planning their flight plans as well as in combat scenarios. The Holotable is synchronized across multiplayer so everyone on your ship will see the same map. The Holotable will soon become a necessary part of most ships that traverse deep space and new star systems. Some features of this device are still in development and will become much more useful as we implement multiple systems.

We have also added new missions and expanded the number of objectives that you can have in these missions. For example, some of the new cargo missions will first tell you to retrieve special cargo from one station and then once you’ve picked up that cargo you will get a new objective to transport it to a new station.

We hope to increase the complexity and quantity of these missions in the future in not just cargo runs but also cargo missions and exploration missions.

In addition to the above features we have also added a new graphics option HBAO+

This feature was already present in previous versions of the game however it was limited to the editor. Now that we’ve worked out the bugs it has been enabled throughout the entire game. However it does impact performance so if you experience lag we suggest you turn it off in the options menu.

This patch might seem a little light on content, this is because we are working on larger features that require multiple update cycles before they are ready to be put in the game.

We have some cool stuff coming down the pipeline such as the nuclear reactor, cross system jumps, new character models and first person combat. All of which are currently in active development. Look for these new features in the coming months!

As always, we hope that you enjoy this weeks update and if you would like to know more and  see sneak peeks at upcoming patches please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, our own forums or our Steam forums.

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