Death, a minor inconvenience – Interstellar Rift Development Update 082


After a brief incubation in the experimental oven, we feel this patch is ready for prime time!
First on the list is the new Skrill stinger, this agile Skrill creature can’t wait to give you a hug upon which it will explode with joy! This new enemy can be found star systems with a Skrill rating of 2000 and higher.

We’ve also taken the time to revamp several of the game’s menus. Primarily the server browser and the respawn menu. The server browser now allows you to sort servers based on name, player count, and on another new feature, password protected servers. You are now able to set a password for your server so you and your friends can play without fear of having to deal with uninvited guests. You can set your passwords from the in-game menu or from the server config file.

The respawn menu has also had a major overhaul. Plus respawn costs have been added based on the distance of the target ship. This is to provide more of a penalty for dying and respawning.
You will now also see a list of nearby available ships when respawning, you can always respawn on friendly ships within a range of 100 kilometers, the Black Pit, or your starter station. After respawning on a ship in the same system that is more than a 100 kilometers from your grave, you will have to wait 15 minutes before being able to do this again. The Black Pit and your starter station will always be available though.

We’ve also taken the time to add the ability to turn lights on and off. Simply look at any light in the game and press e when prompted to turn it off. We will soon be adding in the ability to turn off lights per room.

This update also includes a healthy dose of bug fixes, and server optimizations, as this is where our primary focus is at the moment.

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! 

Carpe Nuke’m – Interstellar Rift Development Update 080


Nuclear power is here! This patch introduces the nuclear fission reactor to Interstellar Rift! Finally you will be able to power your large ships with a more efficient fuel source.

Nuclear power however is not without risks. The reactor operates on three resources, The first of which are fuel rods which come in three variants, Uranium 238, Plutonium 239, and finally Plutonium 241. These are ranked from least to most powerful. Once a fuel rod is depleted, the fuel rod in the slot will become a depleted fuel rod marked by the D after the type number, also the fuel rods core will be empty. These depleted fuel rods can be used to craft the next tier of fuel rods. However you will need 4 depleted fuel rods to craft one of the next tier.


The second type of resource are heat sinks, these items need to be inserted in the small slots on the side of the reactor. The heatsinks keep the reactor from overheating. But like the fuel rods they come in 3 different tiers, each tier is capable of handling a higher heat output, and has a longer durability. Once the reactors heat output exceeds that what your combined total of heatsinks can handle the reactor will start to take damage.

The third and final resource required to run the nuclear reactor are the turbines, just like the other two these come in three varieties, Iron, Steel and Platinum turbines. The turbines are required to generate power. If you activate the generator without turbines it will consume fuel and generate heat but it won’t generate any power. Each tier of turbine will last longer and generate more power.


You can configure the nuclear reactor to suit your ships needs while still keeping it economical. But at it’s absolute maximum output the generator will output around 30k of power.

In addition to the nuclear reactor we have also included the new Tech 3 Engine, This new engine is designed to be used with a nuclear reactor as it needs a lot of power and will be rather inefficient when used with hydrogen generators. The T3 engine is designed for large ships, not so much for smaller ones. And the engine will cap out at around 800 m/s


Also in this patch, two new construction resources, Aluminium and Lead, both used for the new reactor. Aluminium and Lead are quite common and can be found in most systems. Another new resource however, Uranium, can only be found in systems with a Skrill rating of over 3000.

Aluminium, Lead, and their ores can be bought in most shops. Uranium can only be bought as a refined resource and is one of the most expensive resources in the game. Fuel cells can not be bought anywhere, though you may find depleted ones on ships belonging to the Drifters.

Big changes have been made to the underlying systems of Interstellar Rift, in relation to saving and joining a multiplayer game. These changes are live in this branch and you can enable them for your single player games via the options menu.

For multiplayer servers however, you will need to set a flag in the server.json file in your Interstellar Rift appdata folder to true. This flag is called: “CreateGhostClients”, if you also want to keep track of all the ghost clients that are made, enable the next line as well; “GhostClientConsoleVisible.” This will show a console window for every running ghost client. These clients will do the heavy lifting of the save and load function of Interstellar Rift in the background, mostly eliminating any ingame hiccups. They are still a work in progress though and might negatively impact performance. Our own server will be running with these turned on, but you might have to check for yourself if you find them to be optimal for your gaming experience.

As always,we hope you’ll enjoy this update! and we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide as it will only help us make the game better. See you Starside!

-The Split Polygon Team

Learning new Lingidies- Interstellar Rift Development Update 078


The first official patch for 2017 is here!

So after a short while on the experimental branch we feel patch 0.1.37 is ready for prime time. Over the past few days we’ve already seen a very positive response, and great feedback, to the new translation tool. And we appreciate those of you who have already taken the time to translate part, or the whole game to your native languages. We will have some community reward tokens in the near future for those who help out the game in significant ways, including translations.You can only find these new translation files on the steam workshop for now, but we are working to make them available from an ingame menu as well.

For more information about translations, and how to upload one yourself, click here[www.interstellarrift.com].

This patch will also make the new cargo missions available to everyone. Players will find these cargo missions only at GT trade stations. We will add them to the other factions as well at a later date. With this new mission we also introduced the ability to teleport cargo directly from your ship to the mission dropbox on the target station. Note that is currently only possible with the large cargo missions. Missions that require only a few crates will still require you to teleport over to the station and hand them in manually. Note we will be adding this functionally to the rest of the missions at a later date.

Skrill are now smarter as they try to dodge bullets, fly in more unpredictable patterns and attempt to ram your ship. Skrill hunters have also become more deadly as they now try to match speed with the ship they are attacking and make attack runs. Additionally we have also removed the behaviour where Skrill would not attack ships above a certain weight class. Skrill should now attack you regardless of what ship you are currently in. This should make going into Skrill infested star systems much more challenging and fun.

We’ve also spend some time on fixing up the options menu to be more in line with the industry standard. These enhancements will soon be making their way into an in game options menu as well, removing the need to go back to the main menu to make simple control tweaks.

As always, we’d appreciate any feedback you’re willing to provide as it will only help us make the game better. We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and we’ll see you star side!

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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