Early Access version 38

[InterAction_studios]

MAIN CHANGES

Yet ANOTHER ANOTHER ANOTHER ANOTHER another update that attempts to fix lost profiles .

Again, a lot of small improvements in this update. The obvious thing is the change in the Lightning Fryer weapon, which can now chain between targets, giving it almost +100% damage under certain circumstances. Although inspired by @1galbatorix1’s Weapons Balance Program, note that this is just a preliminary change, and the final balancing has yet to happen. No other Lightning Fryer stats have changed. I just thought it would be easier to gauge the impact of chaining as stand-alone, rather than mixing it in with other changes.

Bug/Idea medals will be awarded later in the day. Your medal cannot be awarded if your in-game callsign doesn’t match your forum name (send it to me in a private message).

COMPATIBILITY

You will lose:

• any in-mission progress
• any menu options you have configured

CHANGELOG

New features – Tweaks – Bug fixes – Internal changes

• Deleted users that haven’t logged in in the past 4 weeks and have less than an hour of playtime.
• Collected keys no longer award any points (@BoggY Idea) (change wasn’t applied to v.37 @minasam123 Bug)
• Absolver Beam charging effect: Fixed wrong placement of newly-spawned particles (single-frame visual glitch) (@SonicCrazyExe @minasam123 Bug)
• Galaxy: Added rumble sound for wormholes (@Nikito Idea)
• (v.35 fix was incomplete) Increased precision of HUD Progress Meter to avoid rounding 99.99% to 100% (@TuongLamVN Bug)
• Fixed buffer sizing in Logger constructor.
• Fixed bug with some Charity potentially spawning outside visible area in waves with a large zoom (e.g. Egg City, Supernova) (@anon27929001 Bug)
• ESC now works to return to main menu after getting disconnected from server (@Boggy Idea)
• Fixed bug: Damage amplifier is not affecting pitch of plasma/lightning/positron until first target is hit (@Sufi Bug)
• Improved low-level logging.
• Profile files are now verified against registry (lost profiles debugging).
• Disallowed “clean sweep” bonus in “Enemy Queue" (@SonicCrazyExe Bug)
• Profile screen: Corrected “wormhole” to “wormholes”.
• Contacts list can now be sorted by date/name/status, and keyboard keys jump directly to contacts starting with that letter (@trueuser Idea)
• Sort criteria now persist for the whole session.
• Squadrons list is now sorted by name, and keyboard keys jump directly to squadrons starting with that letter.
• Sorting buttons now only appear if list has at least 3 items.
• Fleet can now be sorted by date/class/name (@Kylo-Hen no medal desired)
• Skills are now sold by Heroes Academy (rather than Aftermarket) (@OneWingLunarian Idea)
• Fixed lossy (narrowing) network decoding of 64-bit integers.
• Strengthened login network protocol.
• Contacts list now uses different icons for pending incoming and outgoing contact requests (@trueuser Idea)
• Reworked collision code for cones (tapering beams) (more accurate collisions).
• Now compiled using multi-processor compilation (/MP)
• Improved performance of spring-based enemies (V3info on-demand caching)
• Fixed Egg Cannon (variation ‘4’) appearance probability (@Sammarald Bug)
• Renamed “Tenantomwan” to “K’tithrak” (requires galaxy regeneration) (@Kylo-Hen no medal desired)
• Fixed SQL query leaks (most active squadron, space race results).
• Added support for beams to split and chain between targets.
• Improved handling of badly-encoded strings.
• Default loadMode is “opportunistic” again.
• Absolver Beam is now upgradeable (8 levels).
• Lightning Fryer now chains between a maximum of 4 targets (+87.5% max damage) (@1galbatorix1 Idea)
• Absolver Beam firing sound is now deeper the more powerful it is (frequency inversion).
• Strengthened anti-cheat measures.
• Added 2 new planet textures (heightmaps); can appear on “Inferno”, “Frozen wasteland”, and “Barren rock” planets.
• Added “Stereo panning” in sound options (@Daxxxis Idea)
• Strengthened network protocol security (network compatibility broken)
• Changed game server DNS to “gameservers2”.
• Increased disconnection timeout from 30 seconds to 60 seconds (@Recruit_75 Idea)

BACKUPS

You are reminded that during Early Access you are responsible for backing up your own progress. Make a copy of everything under C:\ProgramData\InterAction studios\CIU (including all sub-folders). Never rename files or move them from one version folder to another. Simply make a copy and then later put it back exactly where you found it.

[minasam123]

Yay, finally.

[OneWingLunarian]

Gotta try that lightning fryer

[minasam123]

this is awesome.

[marksam123]

Time to download this sweet update!

[minasam123]

@InterAction_studios why my cursor looks like a loading cursor?

[InterAction_studios]

Because:

@InterAction_studios

Default loadMode is “opportunistic” again.

Mouse bug

I think you’ll benefit from bEnableDelayedLoad=No Also, your disk usage is pinned at 100%. This is very suspicious and will slow your system down a lot. Is it always like this? Select “Open Resource Monitor” at the bottom. Select the “disk” tab and see if you can identify why your disk is being used so much (sort by “Total B/sec”) Starting with v.35, bEnableDelayedLoad is replaced with a new “load mode” that has 3 settings: Immediate: Everything loads at start-up (same as bEnableDelayedLoad=…

[BoggY]

How does “Class” option work? I don’t really see any pattern here

[kokokokos]

Maybe it’s worth adding it to options so you don’t need to manually change the files?

[minasam123]

IDK, either.

[BoggY]

Also what’s with the insane upgrade price for Absolver Beam?

[InterAction_studios]

@BoggY

How does “Class” option work

Bah, it’s broken. Fixed in v.39

Bug

@BoggY

Also what’s with the insane upgrade price for Absolver Beam

I was afraid it would be too powerful to start off at 8. Incidentally, all upgrade prices are way too low for something that you get and keep forever. They’ll be increased in some future update.

[Stardrone]

How the lightning fryer’s new chain mechanic actually works? It seems that it works only if the targets are really near and you don’t fire manually.
And it doesn’t always work (especially in zoomed-out waves)

[minasam123]

@InterAction_studios Instead of the wave insight displaying “Shoot the Core!”, it’s a blank.

IDK if intentional or not. mission name:
incredible opacification.

[youraveragegrant]

I like how the settings keep resetting every single time, including enabling Satellite Auto-Fire by default, which really pisses me off…so try as much as possible to make it so the settings set up in the previous version don’t get reset.

Also, I’ve discovered that the Apple Core is far too weak against the Absolver Beam and I was thinking of either making it its strength or increase its health.

[minasam123]

same, i don’t know why.

[anon27929001]

Because the apple core has a lot less health compared to other bosses. And I think it’s fair, considering it has a lot of scenarios it’s not good for, too

[InterAction_studios]

@minasam123

Instead of the wave insight displaying “Shoot the Core!”, it’s a blank

It’s too early in the mission for the insight work. Wait until the first wave starts.

[minasam123]

this will be cool if it showed the first wave, but nevermind, i skipped it.

[youraveragegrant]

I understand the pricing of the UP, NG and AB, but why is Positron Stream more expensive than every weapon besides those when it’s extremely weak? (Unless damage output has greatly increased)