Please don’t stop the music! – Interstellar Rift development update 023

We have a fairly small update for you this week, we are working on some bigger stuff but we found time wrap a few new things into a patch.

First up! Exterior blocks and interior props now influence your ship’s mass, instead of just the number of claimed interior tiles. Now, the each interior prop has its own mass, meaning a room filled with devices makes your ship heavier than a big empty room. In addition, exterior tiles now also add to the weight of the ship.

Since this was quite a big change to the balance, we took this opportunity to tweak the game a little better. If we did this right, it should be very difficult to build a fast ship powered by solar panels alone (unless you spend a very large time charging power cells). A couple of hydrogen generators should be enough to power a small ship and T2 generators should be used on the larger ships.

Next we have an all new jukebox so you can put on some nice music on your voyages. The jukebox comes pre loaded with 6 tracks that will liven up your quiet space ship. Simply place the jukebox onboard a ship or station and enjoy.

In order to make it a little more clear what’s inside of crates, we changed the color of each crate to what it contains, meaning iron crates are grey, copper crates are orange and water tanks are blue.

We would also like to thank the community for tracking down some nasty bugs for us! Among others, we managed to tackle a nasty server crash, a visual bug involving underpowered extractors and a bug which made all the asteroids disappear. Keep it up, this really helps us improve the stability and quality of Interstellar Rift!

We hope you enjoy this Interstellar Rift update and stay tuned for some big new things in the coming weeks! make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook or drop by our forums!

 

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Special Delivery! – Interstellar Rift development update 022

So after the holidays we’re back on our regular 2 week schedule and this time we’re adding a new cargo teleporter. We’re also returning the ability to export and share ships with other players outside of the game.

The new cargo teleporter allows players to teleport up to eight cargo crates at a time to any cargo pad, fuel tank or other cargo teleporter. Simply place your cargo crates onto the teleport pad then select where you want them to go from the interface. If you have hydrogen containers on the teleport pad you’ll also have the ability to teleport them straight into a hydrogen tank and thus refuel that ship. Like all teleporters there are currently no restrictions on which ships you can teleport your cargo to. Eventually a system will be put in place where you’ll need to be granted permission in order to teleport to ships which you do not own.

We’ve also taken this opportunity to enhance the teleportation effects. Although since our particle system is not yet operational the effects are somewhat limited but they should communicate what just happened a little more clearly.

Another feature we’ve re-added is the ability to export a ship you’ve designed to a file. This file will be saved on your hard drive and can be sent, downloaded and/or traded to anyone you want. To do this, simply open the ship editor, load a ship then go to the save menu and click export.

To import, go to the load menu in the ship editor and click the import button. Open the file you wish to import and save it like a regular ship afterwards.

Fuel tanks will no longer require hydrogen to construct. However this also means that they will now spawn empty. To fuel your ship you will need to teleport fuel onboard using a cargo teleporter or have fuel containers in your inventory which you can dump into the fuel tank manually. We recommend to have a few solar panels installed on your ship just in case.

We hope you enjoy this new update and let us know what you think on Twitter, Facebook or on our Forums.

New Construction Options – Interstellar Rift development update 021

We hope everyone has had a wonderful christmas and a fun and safe new year’s eve. Now that the holidays are behind us, It’s time to get back to our regular bi-weekly update schedule.

starting today we’re adding the second part of the ship production pipeline. As of today asteroids will no longer contain iron or hydrogen etc. They will instead contain iron ore, copper ore and water. These base resources now need to be fed into the new refinery and converted into building materials. You can insert the raw material into the refineries hopper in a similar manner to storing the resources in the vault. Once resources are placed in the hopper, the middle screen of the refinery will now display what materials you can refine with whatever is in the hopper. When you’ve selected what you want to refine, the refinery will start producing that material until the input hopper is empty or the output conveyor belt is full. When the resource you refined is done simply grab it off the conveyor belt and you can store it on a cargo pad or in the vault.

Also you may notice that the back of the refinery has five ports. These are meant for future refinery upgrade modules that can be attached to it. The current plan is to allow players to choose either more refinery slots or to refine more advanced materials. Expect to see more info about this when we get closer to implementing it.

In order to let players get familiar with the process, a set of public use refineries have been placed on the mining station.

Expect many more resources and build materials to be added to the game in the coming weeks and months.

Our second big feature of 2015 is the redesign of the ship connection editor. Over the past few months we’ve noticed that many people built ships and simply forgot or didn’t understand how to connect the power systems. So in order to make the system more easy to use we’ve changed it so power is now distributed through groups. When you first build your ship every device is connected under a single power group this ensures that even if you don’t want to use the power connection editor your ship systems will still receive power if you have a power source and a fuel tank onboard. Later down the line when we implement combat, players can create multiple groups so that when power cores are knocked out other systems that are grouped under different power groups will still remain operational.

We hope you’ll enjoy the new crafting system and let us know what you think. If you want to follow us for more info check out our Facebook, Twitter or engage with us on the Forums.

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A chilling prospect – Interstellar Rift development update 020

In the cold abyss of space, ice asteroids have formed! Mining these asteroids with a resource extractor will grant you supplies of hydrogen. This means that for the first time in Interstellar Rift fuel will be consumed by ships when you fly around.

In this update we are starting to roll out energy consumption for all devices in Interstellar Rift, starting with engines. This means that unlike before when devices only required a set amount of electricity to operate they now constantly consume fuel and electricity (Ion engines would fill their buffers with electricity, but not actually consume any of it).

This system will be expanded in the future as we ready more devices. For this update only the ion engines will consume electricity, all other devices will still work indefinitely as soon as their buffer has been filled.

In order to construct ships, players now need to mine ice asteroids as ships require the tanks to be filled before you can spawn them. This to prevent players from spawning a ship that has no power (doors and other devices will not work without power). Tanks can be filled up and emptied by inserting or extracting fuel tanks from them. We are planning on introducing battery packs for players in upcoming updates, to make sure that players can always charge and use devices that have no power.

As mentioned in our previous update the ship helms will now start using ingame monitors as we continue to work on updating every device with our new ingame screens. The old space flight interface remains for now in the exterior camera. These monitors will be tweaked over the coming updates to improve ease of use and readability.

We also fixed some issues with helms that caused them to get locked up if multiple players tried to access them at the same time. Among the bugfixes are also server stability updates as we continue to find and eliminate bugs that cause unstable servers.

Due to the upcoming holidays, this will be the last update of Interstellar Rift for 2014, updates will continue in the new year.

As always, you can reach us through our forums, by following us on Facebook or Twitter or by simply sending us an e-mail. All your feedback is welcome and only serves to help make Interstellar Rift a better game for you!

Happy holidays from everyone at Split Polygon!

Hide away your valuables! Interstellar Rift development update 019

Are you tired of losing all your resources every time you leave the server? Are you sick of constantly having to mine all those resources again and again just to build a small ship? Well have we got the update for you!

This week we’re introducing the first parts of persistent server saving, starting with the vault. Vaults are star system wide banks where players can safely store their belongings. These vaults can be found on NPC stations, players can deposit and withdraw their items at any vault within the same star system. If you construct a ship from a station with a vault, the resources within the vault can be used to construct that ship in addition to the resources in that stations cargo bay.

What this means is, that once a player has managed to get his valuable resources to a vault, those resources are safe from other players, they cannot be destroyed or stolen from that point on. We are using the vault as the first step to persistent world saving, meaning they will still be available to you when you leave and rejoin the server, or when the server is taken down for whatever reason.

We have also changed the way we save ships to prepare for world saving. This means they are now saved in a database. Although this doesn’t have many direct effects for the player, it does have some side effects:

• Ships load much faster in game.

• .ship files can no longer be loaded, to still allow you access to your old ships, we’ve added an import function to the editor load menu. By using this feature you can update your old ships so they will once again be available in the build menu.

• Servers should be more stable. We continue to monitor server stability, although this is an iterative process, a completely stable server is one of our main goals at this point.

Over the coming weeks we will be adding more features to persistent server saving. Such as ship ownership, ship positions, player positions and many others.

Another long overdue feature we’ve added is proper first person cockpit view. Players can now walk up to a pilot seat and sit down. The camera will automatically switch to first person mode, from which players can now control the ship. Later down the line, all of the monitors in the cockpit will become active and can be used to manipulate different systems aboard the ship. Also some of the existing cockpits will be redesigned to better accommodate these new screen features when they go live.

To get this working, helms are the first prop that feature some functionality you can look forward to in future updates for other props, namely we can now select specific elements of props rather than the whole model (such as a single chair in a cockpit).

Finally, we have also added a couple of new props to the game. Among these are a disposal unit to cleanly dispose of your unwanted crates, an all new small helm, and a couple of new industrial exterior blocks.

We hope you’ll enjoy this new update and as always you can reach us through our forums, by following us on Facebook or Twitter or by simply sending us an e-mail. All your feedback is welcome and only serves to help make Interstellar Rift a better game for you!

If you want to support us further, you can vote for Interstellar Rift in the IndieDB Indie of the year awards by clicking the button below!

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The universe is expensive! Interstellar Rift development update 018

It’s time to sign up, because from this update onwards you’ll need an Interstellar Rift account to be able to play the game. But don’t worry, these accounts are free and registration is quick. We need these accounts to be able to save your inventory, ship and other server related information. This means that in upcoming updates you will finally be able to actually own a ship yourself, instead of sharing it with everyone on a server.

Please note that the new accounts are only for in-game use, the accounts for the community forums are still separate.

To make a new Interstellar Rift account, go here

For this update we have also added resource costs for every piece of ship interior. There are two resources in the game right now, Copper and Iron, and you’ll need to mine these before you can build a ship. For your convenience, we have also added a mining station which spawns along with the starter station to gather resources with.

This is how ship building works right now;

1. First, you must use the resource extractor that can be found on the mining station to mine some ores. These ores will be stored in crates next to the extractor.

2. The crates must be placed on cargo pads (any cargo pad will do, but they cannot remain on the extractor.)

3. The ship editor terminal now shows an overview of costs for every ship, as does the editor. On the display of the ship editor terminal you can see how much resources are stored on a station, and if you select a blueprint it will show you how much that blueprint costs, and how much resources you’ll have left after construction a ship.

Eventually you’ll be able to store your materials inside the station’s vault to ensure the resources remain yours, and can only be spent by you. but for now all resources placed onboard a ship can be used by everyone until we add the vault.

For now, all ships must be build with resources but we will allow you to set up your own servers and games to make use of creative mode in the future.

The ores you mine can be used in unrefined form right now, but we will implement ways to refine them into proper construction resources in the upcoming updates as well as add more available ores and resources to build with.

The addition of resource costs is a game changing feature and we’re going to need your help to balance this to be fair and fun to use.

 

I want to push the button! – Interstellar Rift development update 017

In our first development blog we showed you how we intend to make the terminal screens work. Then a few weeks later we released the initial version of the game without those features. Now more than 7 months later we’re re-introducing it. After today you’ll be able to operate certain machines and system by activating the monitor and simply clicking on functions on the screen.

Not everything is functional yet because we are still designing some of the interfaces. But expect more of these screens to pop up all over your ships. This however means that some of the old devices and systems have to be redesigned to incorporate screens and the like. The prime example for this patch being the teleporter. Which has been moved to the props category and will have to be placed again in all your ships. This is just the first iteration of these new interfaces and we will be working on improving their performance and ease of use.

Aside from the new direct control monitors we’ve also been working on our upcoming account system which will allow you guys to actually own ships and have servers store your characters data. Such as where you logged out, what items you had in your inventory, you ships permissions and more.

In the coming weeks we are going to roll out our new registration system. and allow you to create your new Interstellar Rift accounts. These accounts will determine your in-game username and your forum accounts.

We will be posting more info about user accounts and registration when we get closer to implementing them. For now please enjoy this new update and as always, your feedback comments and just general discussion is more than welcome on our forums, Twitter or Facebook.

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Over the rainbow! – Interstellar Rift development update 016

Tired of the old, grey paint scheme for your mobile home among the stars? Worry no longer! for today we’re introducing paint schemes for ship interiors!

That’s right folks, as of today we are going to let you colour your ship interiors by choosing from a variety of colour palettes. In the ship editor, a new paint button has appeared on the right hand side of the screen. When placing new blocks, they will automatically be coloured in the currently selected colour scheme. But you are also able to change the colour of existing blocks by clicking on them while the paint mode is active. You are able to give each individual block a different colour scheme. We’ve had some fun testing this new feature and we cannot wait to see what you guys come up with!

I can already hear you asking: “But what about ship hulls?”. Well, those are coming in the very near future. But in this patch, we had to focus on interiors to make sure the tech was working as intended. Now that we know it does, we can start to focus on ship hull paint in an upcoming patch.

But thats not all, we are also introducing the first stage of targeting. For the moment that means that the space station and every player ship will have target marker. This is to make it easier for players to find each other and to make it back to starter station. Eventually, we intend to allow players to highlight ships and other objects in space.

In addition to the new features we have also implemented a few bugfixes, chief among them are bugs that crashed servers after a while. we have tested it and servers should once again be functional. of course if you are hosting a server and have found the server still crashes after this patch we’d like to hear from you.

We hope you enjoy this new update, and if you have any more suggestions for colour palettes and other features we’d love to hear from you on our forums, Twitter or Facebook, whichever you prefer.

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Mining with my spacecraft – Interstellar Rift development update 015

In this patch, we’re adding the beginnings of space mining!

Since there is essentially no gameplay in waiting while you point a mining laser at an asteroid and it is not generally considered “fun”, we have done some thinking about other ways to implement this feature. As such, we have implemented the extractor unit.

Instead of using mining lasers to harvest resources from asteroids, the extractor unit will let you teleport asteroids and chunks of asteroids onboard your ship, straight into your extractor unit. It will then automatically start harvesting. As the resource extractor fills up, boxes will appear on the hopper pad. Once the hopper is full, these boxes will need to be transferred to a cargo pad before the resource extractor can continue its work.

Once the asteroid is mined out, it will disappear and you will be able to teleport another asteroid aboard and begin the process anew. This will allow players to harvest resources while performing other tasks and exploring the universe.

This introduces another new addition to the game; the inventory system and the ability to pick up storage crates. Storage crates can hold one type of resource and a player can carry a couple of them at a time. Players can collect storage crates from the extractor’s hopper and place them on standard cargo pads. Each cargo pad can hold up to 8 storage crates.

Further down the line, we will continue to explore other options of mining. We are not saying mining lasers will never be in the game. As a matter of fact, considering multiplayer and asteroid scouting, it can definitely have be a very fun and interesting mechanic. Every feature in Interstellar Rift is an iterative process and we aim to actively search for the implementation of every mechanic that feels the best for the game.

We hope you enjoy these new additions and let us know what you think. What would you like to see added or changed. Your feedback is very valuable in these early stages, so don’t hesitate to voice your opinion on our forums.

There are only a couple more steps left on the road to alpha! So stay tuned and, as always, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest info and screenshots!

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Interstellar Rift Pre Alpha Teaser Trailer

Because we are going to present our game at the INDIGO event in Utrecht, we made a teaser trailer, check it out below.

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