Patch and Updates Notes

[INovaeFlavien]

0.5.0.0 ( Friday, 26 July 2019 )

Hey everybody, welcome to Infinity: Battlescape patch 0.5.0.0 and to our very first Asteroid backer week-end !

If this is your first time playing, make sure to report any problem you encounted, bug, technical issues or general feedback on our forums.

We will record footage for our upcoming Steam trailer during this week-end. Two “community events” ( players assembling together to play ) will be hosted on Saturday the 27th at 19:00 UTC, and Sunday the 28th at 19:00 UTC. Make sure you join if you’re available and if the game runs well for you !
For more information please read this thread: I-Novae Community Events

The game is currently scheduled for Early Acess release on Steam around the end of September 2019 ( two months left ).

We’ve iterated on visual polish; all ships are now textured; we revamped most visual effects. The new OST composed by Markus Zierhofer is also in. We’ve also iterated on the UI menus, added capital ships missiles/torpdoes and new flak canons.
For the full patch notes, please see: Patch and Updates Notes

Keep in mind the game is still in development and is still lacking, especially in terms of content ( we’ll add more environments, ship upgrades and missions at a later stage ).

Enjoy !

-The I-Novae Studios team

Visual and Audio Polish

• Added corvette and carrier textures and skins. Note that the carrier one was rushed (uv-mapping is basic in many places) and the hangar entrance was close visually (you can still fly into it like a ghost) for the purpose of recording the Steam trailer video
• Added a sun glow effect around the sun. The effect is volumetric: the closer you are to the sun, the larger and brighter it will become, to the point of making your entire view go white. Inversely, the further away you go, the small the sun and glow will appear
• Various improvements to the sun’s shadow maps. In general, the maximum range at which shadows can appear has been increased. In extreme settings mode, shadows can appear at up to 120 Km
• Added Original Soundtrack from Markus Zierhofer and removed all the old placeholder music
• Added doppler limit to avoid high-pitched sounds due to relative high velocity difference (ex.: warp)
• Implemented Soft-Z transparency for various particle effects, avoiding sharp Z-intersections with surfaces
• Weapon projectile impacts now use accurate hull intersections instead of hitting on the bounding box of the ship (Note: as a side effect, it’s become slightly harder to hit a far-away ship since the actual mesh is like half the volume of its bounding box)
• Revamped projectile impact effects, using directional sparkles
• Projectiles can now bounce based on the angle of incidence on the target hull surface. Armored hulls also cause a lot of bouncing (ex.: interceptor shots on a destroyer)
• Projectiles can now pierce through a ship when the amounts of damage is significant compared to the total ship’s hitpoints (ex.: interceptor getting hit by a capital ship MK6/MK7)
• New torpedoes and proximity mines explosion / impact effects
• Revamped or added smoke contrails for missiles / torpedoes
• Revamped damage trail smoke when a ship is getting low on hitpoints, or has major systems damage
• Added “battle smog” particles, that get dynamically generated in a battle based on impacts / explosions. Smog disappears are 30 seconds. Smog effects use lit particles, meaning they’ll reflect light from explosions or other events happening
• Massive explosions / shockwaves (capital ships exploding, mines exploding) now cast shadows around the area
• Added shrapnel and debris to exploding ships. Individual debris can be bumped on by the player’s ship
• Added an animated warp tunnel effect when flying in warp. Removed the old entry/exit effect placeholders
• Added sparkles effect in cockpit when ship is damaged or on heavy impacts
• Added new thruster effects, which dynamically change based on thrust intensity or turbo-boosting
• In cockpit views the external hull of the ship is now rendered at a lower LOD quality level (slight performance improvement)
• Uprades to various station modules. It’s still in a bit of an incoherent state: most stations will have a mix of old / new modules. A new “Odyssey” station was added, which only features the new modules
• Added new splash loading screen

Gameplay and AI

• Kinetic damage model is now deterministic (but still probabilistic). This means that if your shields are at 75%, then every 1 out of 4 projectiles will reliably pass through the shields and hit the hull
• Fixed bug with near-depleted shields absorbing all kinetic damage but not leaking the remainer damage to the hull ( ex.: missile hit on a 1 point shield )
• Added environmental radiation damage (from sun and gas giants, when you get too close to them)
• Implemented hardpoints / weapons damage model. Weapons now have hitpoints and a hit box, and can be destroyed, especially on capital ships. Note that shields are still protecting them. Destroyed weapons emit smoke
• Increased repair rates on capital ship docking spawns by a factor of x3
• Implemented missiles and torpdoes for capital ships. Note that locking is done by keeping the camera on the target
• Implemented flak canons (available on Destroyer and Carrier). Flaks deal a moderate amount of splash damage. A single nearby exploding shot is usually not much of a threat, but a large barrage of 4-5 shots can be deadly. They’re more accurate at 1-2 Km range, and less
  effective at 4-5 km unless the target is very big. Max range is around 5 km. They can be deadly against interceptors that wander too close, but they’re bad a deadling serious damage against bigger targets
• AI bombers can now use torpedoes against capital ships
• AI commander now takes into account ship status (hitpoints remaining) when recalculating battle odds/chances of victory (previously: was all-or-nothing, even if a ship had 1 HP left, it was still considered “alive” and add a full weight in the odds calculation)
• AI capital ships can now fire missiles and torpedoes too !
• Weapons balance tweaks: slowed down turning speed of corvette’s turrets;

Menus and general UI

• Added battle missions list to the mission menu tab. The missions are colored based on the importance and chances of winning. Critical missions are usually displayed in deeper red
• Starmap menu now shows unsorted list of targets. Note that the starmap isn’t functional yet - we’ve had to drop that feature for this patch, but hopefully it’ll get refined in the next one!)
• Reduced default tooltip delay in UI (from 0.5s to 0.25s)
• Added 2 more slots for weapons radial menu
• Added HUD help screen (available in ESC system menu)

HUD, Controls, Input

• Fix for auto-warp speed limit alert, now based on speed cap and checks for engage conditions (basically, the alert was too intrusive before)
• Unified “SetCursor” and “AddCursor” events into “Cursor”. This new event automatically detect relative versus absolute mode now (based on the type of input attached to the event. Ex: a mouse will be relative, a joystick absolute)
• Added check for mouse and joystick input event conflict (you can’t use both mouse and joystick for the same input event)
• Fixed warp failure message, now displays correct target entry speed instead of always “500 m/s”
• Fixed damage localization (“blood reddening effect around the screen edges upon taking a hit”) to work in relative camera orientation (previously: was related to your ship’s nose. If the camera looked in another direction, like in capital ships mode, the damage localization was incoherent
• Ship systems / states do not show up at the top of the HUD anymore in their “normal” state, to avoid cluttering the HUD. They only appear when there’s a warning (orange) or when broken (flashing red)
• Removed old HUD 3D “trailings” effects for threats. This was kindda made obsolete by smoke damage and other HUD helpers
• Experimental feature: reverted auto-turn controls on capital ships: turning is now automatic unless you press space to disable auto-turning ( aka. brake ). Note that manual turning still overrides automatic turning (or brake )

General Bug fixes and Improvements

• Fixed leaderboard in team stats menu, which was showing a mess instead of a proper list of player names
• Fixes for automatic upgrade of input profiles, many things were broken
• Physics fix for ghost collisions spawning at world origin during the initial frame, right after an object has been created
• Fixed random crash bug when opening debug graph stats
• Fixed client crash at startup if user config xml was corrupted / messed up

Misc

• Added name randomization for NPC ships. Names are drawn from a pool and then some characters are randomly “mutated” according to a set of rules
• Added FPS limiter setting as an alternative to V-Sync. The problem with V-Sync is that it’s all-or-nothing. For example if your monitor refresh rate is 60 Hz, then you’ll get a butter-smooth 60 Hz if the game can render at above 60 fps,
  but if it dips below 60 fps it’ll immediately cut the framerate in half (to 30 fps). This can happen multiple times within a second (due to the quick change in amounts of stuff to render), resulting in worse visual stuttering.
  This FPS limiter aims at limiting the framerate to a certain threshold (ex.: 60 fps), but not cut the framerate in half if it dips below (ex.: it can still render at 50 fps), which should lessen the stuttering in quick-changing loads.
  If you are streaming on the same machine than you’re playing, you might want to give this setting a try:

1. Disable V-Sync in the launcher dialog.
2. Edit UserClientConfig.xml in C:\Users\XXX\Documents\I-Novae Studios\Infinity Battlescape
3. Add or change “FPSLimit” to 60 under the “Graphics” node

• Added ability to override individual quality settings from global quality level. Also requires a manul editing of UserClientConfig.xml. Under the “Graphics” node, add or set the following values from -1 (automatic), 0 (low), 1 (medium), 2 (high) and 3 (extreme): “TexQuality”, “LightingQuality”, “ShadowQuality”, “GeomQuality”, “TerrainQuality”, “PlanetsQuality”
• Added a /Stats command in chat to display global ships statistics on the server

[INovaeFlavien]

Hotfix patch 0.5.0.2

A small hotfix to address some of the most pressing issues from last patch:

• Fixed flickering of warp tunnel effect
• Warp tunnel opacity is now a function of speed. At “low” speeds ( < 1000 Km/s ) the view shouldn’t be as obstructed as before
• Tweaks to camera vibrations for flak canons
• Slight balance update on flak canons ( increased splash radius but decreased precision of flak canons )
• Added back ship contrails in atmospheres
• Increased albedo of contrails for missiles / torpedoes
• Fixed HUD’s corvette “nearest resupply” indicator ( nearest was itself, so the indicator didn’t show up )
• Capital ships auto-turn is now a toggle ( default: space bar ). It’s disabled every time you respawn to avoid collisions with the docks
• Reduced by half the “dying” time for Interceptor and Bomber ( and slight reduction on Corvette ). Death will feel more instant
• Increased probability of “CRITICAL” battles in game so that the match doesn’t last forever. Note that probabilities are adjusted in favor of the losing team as a way to “balance” the game and allow turn backs. That means that if you’re on the losing team, you’ll have a higher chance of seeing critical attack missions, while your own defending missions will have a lower chance of being critical.

[INovaeFlavien]

0.5.1.0 ( Saturday, 17 August 2019 )

A major balance patch. Half the changes are experimental ( especially movement tweaks to the interceptor, and gimbaled weapons ). This patch also includes major NPC/AI updates, hopefully making dogfights with AI more dynamic. NPC carriers will try to stay away from threats
while NPC corvettes will try to resupply nearby allies.

Balance

• Interceptor got a +50% linear thrust increase. Originally I wanted to double the values, but it was a bit extreme. +50% is very significant ( in fact iirc that’s the highest it’s even been since the start of the project ) but it’s not so fast that it feels too fast ( at least that’s my personal opinion from my internal tests ).

• Bomber got a +30% forward thrust increase but a slight nerf on the side propulsion. So it can reach higher speeds faster, but its strafing abilities are nerfed.

• Other ships ( corvette + capships ) have no mobility changes. The turn rates / angular accelerations are also unchanged for all ships.

• Speed cap has been slightly increased for interceptor and bomber but remains the same for other ships ( Interceptor was 360 m/s before, now it is 400 m/s ).

• Fixed weapons are now gimbaled ( aka. convergence on the target ). Gimbal angle is set to 2 degs. Shooting targets is now much easier ( in terms of having to be super accurate to keep your navigation cursor on the lead reticle, which was quite hard ).

• Since it’s so much easier to land shots, I had to rebalance long-range accuracy by making the interceptor guns less precise ( aka. increased the random spread ). It’s not super big ( 0.3 degs ) but significant enough to want to attack at close ranges ( although hitting at 1-2 km is still easier than before ).

• Interceptor gun shots are also now less deadlier ( reduced their damage ) and the interceptor has +50% more hitpoints to allow it to survive more easily. Keep in mind that even with all these changes, an inty can die within a dozen seconds if you don’t pay attention and dodge / boost vs concentrated incoming fire.

• Nerfed a bit the regen rate of shields. It was pretty high, so sometimes it felt frustrating that you landed a couple shots and the shields regenerated in a few seconds, like nothing happened. Shields regen rate is still significant but not as high as before.

• Increased weapons hitpoints for MK5 / MK6 / MK7. Doubled the hit box size for all weapons ( including small ship’s ). Damaging weapons is now much easier. Another change is that weapons can be damaged even when shields are up. This now gives a good purpose for interceptors to make a difference in battles by disabling capital ships weapons.

• Revamped missiles / torpedoes sockets on the Destroyer and Cruiser. All torpedo launchers are now frontal / forward facing. It was awkward on the destroyer how torpedoes launched vertically. Also, there are now more missile launchers. On the cruiser they have an X profile, similar to the carrier.

• Tweaked projectiles velocities for all weapons. In general: interceptor weapon guns have slightly slower projectiles, while large capital ship guns have faster projectiles ( up to 2.2 Km/s for an MK7 ).

• Blaster damage increased. As many players noted, the blasters were considered next to useless. Kinetic guns are easier to use and guaranteed damage, whether on shields or hull. Blasters however can only damage shields, so if they made as much damage as guns there was no incentive to use them other than ammo vs energy usage.

• Implemented weapons convergence. Since we want to test gimbals on the interceptor, I assigned the bomber’s shotgun to be converging. Distance calculation is automatic and based on distance to lead reticle of target.

• Revamped collisions damage. We’re also going to experiment with ramming damage for the bow of the destroyer ( aka. it’ll inflict damage bonus when hitting at the right location ).

• Nerfed and reduced curve agressivity for explosions splash damage. Manually killing proximity mines in an interceptor should now be far easier.

Gameplay

• Added a braking mode ( default: hold space ) to input controller

• Weapon groups are now toggleable via keys ctrl-1 to ctrl-0

• Fix for disabled the speed cap not allowing to set a target speed higher than the speed cap

• Removed global damaged state for weapons ( weapons can be individually broken now, so the global state was redundant and annoying )

• Switched to server-side collisions for large ships colliding with small ships. That means that capital ships, in particular, will no longer go crazy when getting rammed by small ships. Capships vs capships collisions will also feel much better. This comes at a cost though: by ignoring client-side collisions in these scenarios there can be some inter-penetration of ships for the duration of the latency between the client and the server; so at high latencies, you can potentially see ships get into other ships for a small amount of time. It’s still a much better solution than the crazyness coming from client-side collisions.

• Aim-at cursor on capital ships now performs a ray intersection to determine the cursor’s depth along the ray, making it easier to hit nearby geometry.

• Speed cap is now increased when overcharging propulsion

• Weapons damage model now bypass shields (weapons can be damaged even with full shields)

• Corvettes can now repair damaged weapons on all capital ships

• Corvette aura no longer repairs or resupplies the destroyer

HUD

• Target indicator icons were revamped. They’re now thicker and more opaque. The currently selected target icon should now keep clearance over the target. An arrow with the target’s name, distance and speed will appear next to the selected target

• Moved energy emissions to top-left corner of the screen, next to weapon stats

• Improvements to HUD weapon groups, now color encoding the weapons state ( active, firing, disabled, out of ammo, broken… )

• Players are now notified when they destroy target weapons. They also get a small credits reward.

• Tweaks to external camera view range

AI

• Revamped AI routines related to flight, dogfight mechanics and introduced new tactics (barrel roll, staying in a blind spot, strafing, etc… )

• NPC corvettes will now try to repair/resupply nearby allies

• Added threat avoidance. Carriers in particular, will try to stay away from enemy capital ships

• Added static scenery avoidance. All ships should now try to avoid infrastructure modules

• Added a way for allies to temporarily form-up / regroup on nearby allies, when the target is far away

• NPC capital ships now have a team indicator (HVK = Havok, SCR = Scoria, CPL = CPL Tech)

Bug fixes

• Fix for tabbed buttons in game menu, incorrectly positionned in wide screen ratio

• Game now pops up an error message upon failing to initialize engine

Misc

• Tweaked starfield density so that bright stars are less uniform

• Tweaked battle smog effect ( colors, distribution )

• Added support for overriding font charset in engine

• Localized string arguments now use $(ArgN) syntax instead of %s / %d ( which could cause crashes if badly used )

• Tweaks to camera vibrations and some particle effects;

• All ships now default to cockpit or internal view upon spawning

[INovaeFlavien]

HotFix 0.5.1.1 ( server only ) ( Sunday 18 August 2019 )

A server-only hotfix to address some of the most pressing issues from yesterday’s patch.

• Fixed haulers failing to enter warp and follow their path - this effectively killed the economy and spammed the server with hundreds of haulers over time ( to the point no battles could take place due to the server reaching its bots capacity, all haulers )

• Fixed haulers dying right after spawning at factories ( long-time bug ). This was caused by planets having too much gravity compared to the hauler’s vertical thrust capabilities. The temporary solution was to give haulers overcharge engines to counter-act gravity. In a future patch, we’ll have to increase the haulers’ vertical thrust.

• Fix for AI carriers not slowing down when a player is trying to respawn - slowing down will now take priority over other AI tactics

• Fixed “weight” of various tactics, and particularly avoiding threats vs coming back to the battlefield - hopefully this should address carriers being chased by cruisers and fleeing away at 100+ Km from the battles

• Nerfed ramming damage and reduced collision damage a bit; collisions in warp are also reduced

[INovaeFlavien]

0.5.2.0 ( Friday, 30 August 2019 )

Welcome to the second Infinity: Battlescape backer week-end.

This is our last playtest week-end before we launch the game on Steam in Early access, in a month. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but the game is starting to come together.

This patch introduces the first functional version of the star map on which you can visualize the solar system and its main Battlescape, Rethe Prime. It’s possible to center the camera on an actor, move / rotate the camera around a focal point and see the planetary orbits. The next stage is to introduce more information on the star map, including icons for smaller ships or installations from a distance.

This patch also contains a first version of the system menus. The number of options / parameters in each tab ( Gameplay, graphics, audio, controls and account ) are currnently limited, but we’ll add more as time goes on. The most important part ( key and input rebindings ) should be more or less functional. As it’s an early version, please backup your profile config files often (especially if you’ve made custom ones) and report any bugs, thank you !

If you’re an old time supporter you’ll also be happy to hear that full-screen mode has been fixed and it should now be possible to switch between windowed and full-screen mode via alt-enter. The monitor refresh rate has been unlocked too.

As usual a disclaimer: keep in mind the game is still in development and is still lacking, especially in terms of content ( we’ll add more environments, ship upgrades and missions at a later stage ).

Enjoy !

-The I-Novae Studios team

UI, Menus, HUD…

• Gimbal weapons no longer reset to center when target is out of the gimbal cone ( unless they’re far off screen )
• Reduced font scaling minimum size
• FMOD global audio volume implementation
• Added starmap holographic rendering, camera controls, target selection, map icons and colors
• Added station module spawn markers
• Added system / options menu, ability to change some gameplay settings and audio settings
• Added input profile editor and key rebindings to system menu
• Reworked max view pitch / yaw angles for absolute input modes

Bug fixes

• Fixed full-screen mode not sticking
• Engine now utilizes default monitor refresh rate instead of fixed 60 Hz
• Fixed load-time crash due to a rare multithreading bug in rendering the splash screen
• Fixed flight assist not going over the speed cap… when the speed cap was disabled
• Fixed turrets not appearing anymore on static actors like stations
• Fix for last LOD level not having the correct skin ( always scoria, even being in havok )
• Fixed various bugs related to input mapper

Misc

• Smog particles should no longer look gimbaled ( roll when approaching ) due to using a new billboarding technique
• Tweak for AI corvettes scoring actor to resupply ( preferring players )
• Tweaked LOD power / formula to be more agressive at lower quality settings, while being slightly optimized at higher quality settings;

[INovaeFlavien]

0.5.3.0 ( Saturday, 07 September 2019 )

Balance tweaks

• Reduced linear thrust on interceptor and bomber to be half-way through the previous level
• Increased rotation dampener for joysticks to stop angular momentum more quickly
• Re-tweaked speed caps on interceptor / bomber
• Slight increase of bomber hitpoints ( 300, up from 250 )
• Very slight decrease in turbo boost initial strength
• Increased angular thrust on bomber by ~50% for pitch / yaw
• Decreased max turn rates on Interceptor by ~20%
• Tweaks to spotlight cone angle on hangars
• Doubled hitpoints on interceptor / bomber weapons
• Increased gimbal guns angle from 2° to 3°
• Decreased gimbal guns turn rate from 10°/s to 3°/s
• Increased gimbal guns projectile speeds by ~15 to 30%
• Slight increase to blaster’s damage
• Slight decreased of gimbal gun’s spread ( more accuracy at distance )
• Decreased max range to ~2.5 km for capital ship’s MK4 auto guns/blasters

Star map

• Fixed loss of target when physical actor transitions to virtual indicator
• Fixed grid positionning / rendering
• Root planet will now act as default grid reference actor if none exists
• Added simple LOD system for rendering planets and orbits with higher tesselation quality
• Added names of planets and bases

UI and Controls

• Revamped capital ship auto-turn mode: now uses left-shift by default to set a target orientation. Hold left-shit to turn towards the camera orientation. Space now toggles auto-turn mode (press left-shift to set the desired target orientation once).
• Added per-joystick device settings in input bindings menu
• Added force-feedback / vibrations checkbox in device settings
• Added mouse / wheel sensitivity slider
• Re-organized settings and parameters in their tabs
• Fixed tooltips for UI text blocks
• Improved / unified direct and target rotation controllers, which should make it easier to aim for joystick players
• Gimbaled hardpoint direction no longer resets to center when target is out of screen
• Cleaned and removed old menu code / launcher settings now obsolete with new UI
• Fixed weapon lock alert stuck beeping when missile launcher gets damaged
• HUD now uses target abbreviation codes instead of full class name (ex.: INT instead of INTERCEPTOR)

Bug fixes

• Fix for destroyed bases still showing up in respawn actors list
• Fixed IgnoreConflicts events list not being saved properly in input profiles

Misc

• Error correction performance optimizations
• Revamped AI to randomize brain / behavior and assigned a rank to it ( plus naming NPCs by rank ). That means bots have variable difficulties; ranks are as follows: Ensign, Lieutenant, Commander and Captain. Higher ranked AIs can do more evasive maneuvers, barrel rolls, better timing chaffs, flee or aim more precisely.
• Added tricount budget of 10% for updating low priority shadow maps
• Increased volume for shield and weapon hit feedback sound effect

[INovaeFlavien]

0.5.4.0 ( Tuesday, 17 September 2019 )

This patch focuses on UI and menu flow. It introduces the main menu, the server browser, Steam authentication (currently non public), a new team switching dialog and a major revamp of the spawn system, which is now happening from the starmap.

As this patch introduces major architectural code changes, it is possible that new bugs were introduced in relation to game flow and menu navigations. Please test it thoroughly and let us know if you encounter any issue.

Work on the star map is still a big work-in-progress.

UI / Menus

• Introduced main menu with three functional entries: multiplayer, options and exit
• Introduced Steam authentication (currently only available through non-public Steam builds)
• Introduced server browser. In addition to listing available servers, it also performs the client version check, reports the server players activity and the ping to the server
• Revamped the spawning system. It is now map based. Browse through the list of available bases, then click on the “Spawn” button on the center bottom of the screen
• Note that you’ll be spawning with whatever ship you have selected in the Ship tab. If the ship is too expensive, the spawn button will be disabled
• Revamped spectator mode. The F8 key no longer works. It is no longer possible to spectate an enemy. To spectate a player, select him on the star map in the targets list. The “Spawn” button will be replaced by a “Spectate” button
• Note that as a consequence of the same button being contextual, it is currently not possible to spectate a carrier (which acts as a mobile spawn) as the “Spawn” button will be prioritized. We’ll probably introduce an alternative mode of spectation through the contextual target menu later on
• Revamped team selection and switching. The first time you join a match you’ll be automatically placed in a team selected by the server for balancing purposes. You’ll then be asked whether you want to keep this team or switch to the other team
• You can switch to another team during respawn by going in the Team tab and clicking on the “Team” button at the bottom center
• Switching to another team is free the first time in a match, and after that costs 25% of the total credits
• It is now possible to return the game’s main menu from the system menu (escape)
• It is now possible to eject (request a respawn) from the system menu (escape, when in game)
• It is now possible to switch teams from the system menu (escape, when spawning
• Server connection and disconnection errors no longer cause a return-to-desktop; the game will just return to the main menu and pop up an error dialog
• Added a field-of-view slider in the graphics options menu tab
• Added a way to clear an event key in the keybindings menu (right-click will clear the event’s keys)
• Added tooltips to options menu

Star map

• Star map view now defaults to top-down and resets to top-down after each spawn
• Star map now displays the list of targets in a hierarchical way
• It is now possible to move the camera by dragging the left mouse button
• Star map now shows icons for targets
• Focused actor is now being highlighted in the targets panel on the left
• More work on recoloring targets on the star map
• The distance value is now calculated between the target and the focused actor
• When spawning the last player position is shown as a big red icon
• When in game the current player position is shown as a big yellow icon
• Added a previous / next button to cycle through possible spawns

Bug fixes

• Fix for input mapper not detecting negative axis 2 and 5
• Escape now works to access main menu even if no event is bound
• Fixed tooltips not disappearing when parent object gets deleted
• Fixed missile lock acquisition sound that still played on main menu

[INovaeFlavien]

0.6.0.0 ( Thursday, 26 September 2019 )

This version is the Early access candidate. It contains a lot of improvements related to the Steam build (non public yet), more settings, bug fixes and leftovers from the previous patch.

It also contains some asset updates (more upgraded station modules) as well as the new audio sound effects to replace most of the old placeholders.

There’s still a day left before we launch in Early access. That’s very little time left, so tomorrow we’ll be mostly focusing on server performance, backend improvements and what we can do in terms of client polish / fixes. As usual, please report
any emergency issue on the forums.

Thanks to the community for all your support and patience over these past years. We still have a lot to do, but the game is shaping up and we look forward to seeing a lot of new faces in game in a day or two !

-The I-Novae Studios Team

UI / Menus

• Fixed issues related to target indicators incorrectly displayed in non-standard camera field-of-view: that very annoying bug that made indicators stretch on the sides of the screen
• Added HUD field-of-view slider in graphics options. It can be set independently from the camera field-of-view, but it is recommended to keep the two values close
• Added language selection to general options menu. Currently supported: english, german and chinese
• Ships are now properly sorted in the star map under their parent station or planet
• Added player name to options menu. Warning: it should be changed on the main menu; changing it in game will not be replicated to other players unless the player re-joins a server
• Implemented graphical options menu. Warning: resolution, screen modes or quality changes currently require a restart of the game
• The old windows launcher dialog containing basic settings has been removed by default. It can still be used for emergency reasons (like messed up full-screen resolution) by running the executable with -launcher on the command line
• More options menu work: HUD / radars selection, controls sensitivity, bug fixes…
• Added menu sensitivity slider. This can be used to make the mouse cursor move at a different speed in menus compared to the normal game
• Added direct mode flight sensitivity. Note that if the sensitivity is too high, direct mode does not allow to exceed the maximum turn rate, which can make the controls feel random as it takes many frames to “absorb” the input
• Info popup (like match startup or battle notifications) now appears on top of the UI / menus
• Added a button per event in keybindings menu to clear its keys
• Also added a checkbox per axis event to flip the value
• Increased scrollbar focus loss default distance

Bug fixes

• Fixed capital ship control scheme movements while opening menus
• Fixed small bug in key detection threshold in the keybindings menu
• Tab ( entering the game menu ) switches back to spawn menu when in spectator mode
• It is no longer possible to fire missiles, torpedoes or mines in match warmup / ending
• Fixed list of active players on client menu and server
• Fixed player join / leave messages spamming with a high number of player
• Fixed a small bug related to sending the respawn base list before indicators were created, the first time the client connects

Assets

• Audio sound effects revamp; most of the old placeholder sounds were replaced. Non-exclusive list: all thruster/engine sounds/boosting, most weapons sounds, all ambient sounds and many ship systems sounds
• Upgraded multiple station modules to their new look (new materials, textures and colors)
• New detailing pass for the corvette hangar
• Corvette spawn holographic marker is now the same than for fighter hangars (more visible from a distance)

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.1.2 ( server-only ) ( Sunday 29th 2019 )

This is a server-side only patch. You do not need to reboot or patch your client to get access to it. Just join one of the servers labelled version “0.6.1.2”.

As there are people on the other servers right now, and we don’t want to forcefully shut down these servers, we’ll be doing the patching in staggered stages. The first stage is already done, with a bit more than half the servers being already patched. I have scheduled a soft reboot at the end of the match on the other remaining unpatched servers. Tomorrow we’ll finish patching them.

Changes:

• Fixed multiple server crashes related to firing chaffs / missiles / mines when the player count was above 100

• Disabled ramming bonus for the Destroyer

• Collision damage now takes into account ship health ratio ( a colliding ship will cause less damage if it’s on low hull health ) and is better tuned. Note that there is a minimum amount of damage percentage ( 25% ) no matter the health of the ship.

• Tweaked collision damage formula. We increased a bit the amount of damage at lower speeds ( so you’ll take more damage in an interceptor if you bump into a station at 100-200 m/s for example, be careful ). Damage is now fully symmetrical.

• In terms of design, the goal was that a destroyer ramming a cruiser at 2 km/s would end up in the death of the destroyer, leaving the cruiser heavily damaged ( but not dead ). This scenario is assuming that both ships are at 100% health.

• Missiles / torpedoes should no longer stay alive forever after they have a target locked

• Missiles / torpedoes should no longer stay alive when their target is too far away or in warp

• Fixed multiple issues related to persistency of credits and team selection / switching. Note that we highly suspect that there are remaining bugs related to credits persistency. This will need more investigations, but if this happens to you, please let us know in which condition it happened ( match just started ? middle of the match ? end ? how long since the last time you re-joined the match ? are you sure the match hadn’t rebooted ? are you sure you joined the same server ? etc…

• Fixed a bug which caused turrets to not repair on ships that are at full health, despite being in the correct hangar / docking bay

• Disabled spawning at neutral installations. Players were confused and deathmatching / getting killed in their first minutes of starting. It didn’t help that the first station in the list for all players was probably the neutral one.

• Refreshing indicator names and players list upon team switching ( note: also needs a future client patch to properly refresh the players list in the UI )

• Implemented anti-griefing / auto-kick system for servers

• Reduced player name length requirement from 3 to 2 min characters

• As servers performance seems to run quite well, we increased player max limits to 300. This will also increase the potential amount of bots / battles on servers, as bots fill in for players.

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.2.0 ( Friday October 4th 2019 )

Game balance

• Turbo boost cooldown parameter is now set per ship. Interceptor boost cooldown was reduced to 0.5s (from 1.0s) and bomber to 0.75s (from 1.0s)
• Increased initial boost intensity for interceptor ( +20% ) and forward / backward boost ( +12% )
• Reduced boost intensity on lateral thrusters for interceptor ( -25% ) (note: since initial boost was increased by +20% the end result is similar for lateral thrusters and higher for main/back engine )

Some people have been complaining that the Interceptor felt “slow”. We tried increasing accelerations in the past but it proved troublesome due to the engagement distances, making hitting enemies even more difficult. Instead, we’re looking at rebalancing the game in small steps to see how we can improve the ships “feeling”. Our first step here is a buff of turbo boosting.

• Increased proximity mine launch speed to 100 m/s (from 50 m/s)

AI destroyers and some players got caught into their proximity mine exploding (due to accidental contact or splash damage from another mine) right after they launched a mine. Increasing the launch speed should help with that.

• Improved bounty rewards to be less agressive and generate less credits ( the reward starts lower, but scales by +50% for each bounty rank )
• Limited bounty max rank to 3, to avoid insane bounties
• Player will now receive a notification when the enemy commander placed a bounty on him

It’s still very easy to generate credits in the game right now, but keep in mind we don’t have the credits sinks yet (besides dying). Instead of adjusting the ship prices we’ll try to adjust the rewards prices iteratively each patch.
In this patch we’re starting with bounties, which were probably the more imbalanced. A bomber killing a capital ship with a bounty could easily earn double or triple the price of that capital ship in a single kill. Bounty rewards now start lower, but can still generate a decent reward if the bounty reaches rank 3. In addition, players will now get informed when a bounty has been placed by the enemy commander on their head

• Tweaked warp ramming damage formula

Ramming damage seems to be in a decent spot… when not in warp. The problem is that damage increases far too quickly at higher velocities such as in warp. Aiming at an enemy ship in warp is also easy, so the risk vs reward ratio is too good at the moment. Instead of completely removing warp ramming damage we reduced the amount of damage caused by warp ramming at velocities higher than 1 km/s. The reduction factor isn’t linear but based on a logarithmic scale, so doubling the impact speed does less than doubling collision damage.

• It is now possible to recharge shields at hangar / docking bays

The rate at which shields recharge might still need some tweaks, and we’re aware of some issues with the repair/resupply rate of people “camping” at the spawns and firing non-stop missiles/torpdoes. We’ll revisit these mechanics in a future patch

• Weapons tweaks: slightly faster turn rates for auto-turrets
• Increased max range for mk4 / mk5 auto-turrets and defense platforms
• Increased hit points for mk5, mk6 and mk7 guns
• Increased damage from static defenses

MK4 auto-turrets range was increased to make the Destroyer fit his protection role again small crafts better. The range was almost doubled. The static defense towards / guns also needed a serious buf to detract surprise attacks and earn time for defenders to spawn or come back. In a future patch we’ll add base attack notifications to the starmap.

Hitpoints were increased, starting on the MK5 (just a little), MK6 (quite a bit) and MK7 (a lot more). It will be harder to destroy the large guns on capital ships now. It was frustrating for capital ship players to have their main guns destroyed so quickly.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a rare issue where game executable does not launch due to symbols such as $ appearing in the user Documents path
• Fixes for “invalid login length” message upon connecting to a game server
• Fixed destroyed weapons still absorbing damage despite being down and preventing the ship from being damaged

UI / HUD

• Options menu will now enumerate controllers from Direct Input asynchronously

Some users had massive slowdowns / 10-to-30 seconds freezes when entering / exiting the options menu. After our investigations our conclusion is that some input drivers are not improperly detected and cause Direct Input to not answer until a time-out is reached. We can’t do much about that, however the controllers enumeration will not proceed in the background instead of blocking / exiting the options menu. Note that if you modify keybindings, applying the changes might still take a long time. However if you modify other game settings without changing keybindings, there should be no slowdown anymore.

• Added more information messages when using various ship systems / weapons fail

A generic failure sound has been added. Locking sound volume has been increased. More warnings show up when for some reason you cannot fire or launch missiles / torpedoes / mines

• Fixed “warp engage” alert which was lingering too long compared to other alerts
• Fixed an issue with carrier spawning around Glimmerfall and instantly dying

Improvements

• Added ships engine / thruster sound fade ins/outs (it’ll now take half a second for most sounds to smoothly start and stop)

• Improved loading times of background images in the GUI

• Added voice volume slider in options menu

Voice command spam was real. One bug was fixed with global volume not affecting voice commands. The range of voice commands has been decreased to 10 Km (full volume) and 100 Km (65% volume). Voice commands over 100 Km aren’t audible anymore

• Added a priority icon to battle missions screen, to make it more clear what battles are recommended to join

We found that far too many people were joining battles that were lost, and by the time they arrived, the battle had ended. The coloring rules have also been simplifies: green for battles being won and red for battles that are either critical or high priority. High priority battles are battles with contested odds (40-60% range) and that are about to start, or have started recently.

• Increased warmup / countdown until battle missions start, to give players more time to prepare / transition out of other battles

The countdown to battle start was often too short, 2-3 minutes. If the player was busy with another battle or doing something else, by the time he took off, travelled in warp and reached the battle, that battle was already in the middle phase. Increasing the countdown duration to battle start should give players more time to coordinate and prepare.

Assets

• New engine sound on Interceptor

Many people have been complaining about the high pitch engine sound on the Interceptor so while we’re working on an improved version we’ve replaced it by a new placeholder

• New Odyssey station lights pass
• Added ambient occlusion and colors to station Hub B module
• Carrier final texturing, improved materials and updated skins (green stripes were out of place). Added ambient occlusion

Misc

• Added more debug info for DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED into the logs when presenting the back buffer

This error is typically caused by a video card that doesn’t have enough video memory, or has an obsolete driver. We recommend upgrading your video card drivers if this happens. There has been a few cases of users that have modern / powerful video cards AND updated drivers and still have these issues. For these people this video might help (caution: follow advice at your own risks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWAVe1km_g)

• Improved server disconnection messages
• First-time run of the game will now bring up a window to select the starting quality / screen mode / resolution
• First-time run of the game will attempt to auto-detect the quality level based on the computer’s cpu performance ( note: we need to take into account the gpu too, but ran out of time to implement it yet )

Server

• Fixed performance issues related to refreshing the players list UI, causing too many events. This in turn generated random stutters for all players on the server, every second

We’re still monitoring server performance. It is possible that there are other sources of stutter / slowdowns, but keep in mind a number of issues could also be coming from your connection to the server

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.3.0 ( Thursday October 11th 2019 )

Game balance

General

• Reduced min boost ratio energy requirement from 25% to 10% for all ships

Boost had a requirement that energy was at least at 25% of its max. There is no feedback when failing to engage boost, which could result frustration from players not understanding why their ship didn’t boost when they pressed the key. We need to work on better feedback, but by reducing the requirement to only 10%, ships have “a bit more juice” and can still engage boost for a last thrust.

• Reduced credits rewards for destroying turrets / weapons
• Reduced credits rewards for destroying ships

Last patch nerfed credits rewards related to bounties. This time we nerfed credits rewards for destroying ships or turrets. The rewards are largely unchanged for destroying small ships, but mid/cap ships kills will no longer generate as many credits as before.

Interceptor

• Increased energy points from 150 to 175
• Increased energy recharge rate from 7.5 to 12 points per second
• Increased max heat points from 125 to 150
• Increased turbo boost thrust rate from x2.0 to x2.5
• Increased max chaffs from 10 to 16

Another interation towards better maneuverability for the Interceptor. It received a small boost update combined with more energy, to allow for boosting more often/efficiently and using blasters at the same time.

Bomber

• Increased energy recharge rate from 6 to 10 points per second
• Increased max chaffs from 16 to 20

Corvette

• Increased max chaffs from 20 to 24

Destroyer

• Increased hitpoints from 15000 to 20000

Cruiser

• Increased hitpoints from 30000 to 40000

Carrier

• Increased hitpoints from 40000 to 60000

Weapons

• Tweaks to locking times for missile / torpedo launchers: slightly lowered on small ships, slightly increased on capships

Chaffs

• Doubled duration (6s to 10s)
• Increased launch speed (40 m/s to 100 m/s)
• Increased range (1 km to 1.5 km)
• Tweaked launch angle (behind and up)

Missiles required too much attention from the player on the receiving end. Chaffs will be more efficient and launch further away from the ship, resulting in less splash damage. The doubled duration and increased amounts of chaffs on all small ships ensure that chaffs will not run out as quickly as before.

Collision Damage

• Reduced collision damage by half and reduced warp ramming damage by another 50%

The ship doing the ramming should cause less damage, but will still receive full damage. Collision damage in general was halved due to many players hitting docks when starting with their capital ships

New features

New chat box and team chat

• Added a new UI for the chat box with 4 default channels: All, Global, Team and Local
• All agglomerates all messages received from other channels
• Global channel messages are sent to all players on the server
• Team channel messages are sent to all team members on the server
• Local channel messages are sent to all allies in the local zone of the player (roughly 1000 Km)
• You can enter/exit chat mode via Enter/Return/Escape like before
• You can press Tab to cycle through the channels; the current one is where the messages will be sent to
• Each channel has its own color to identify the channel more easily (especially useful for messages in the All channel)
• Messages are now scrollable when you enter chat mode. Default is 30 messages
• A Channel’s tab background color flashes when a new unread message is received in that channel
• Added chat auto-close mode mode in Options -> Gameplay (this will close chat mode after every single message typed). Default is off
• Voice commands will go in the Local channel
• Text content is verified for errors before being validated and sent to the server (to avoid errors like empty strings, accidental key presses, too long messages etc… )

Training

• Added youtube links with 8 video tutorials in the main menu (note: only a placeholder in Early access until the gameplay is finalized and we can produce in-game tutorials)

Assets

• Updated some station modules materials and textures
• Fixed holes in station Hub B

Bug fixes and misc

• Final fix for “name is invalid” error on the server when players have a name shorter than 3 characters

• Improvements to key detection, especially related to throttles (throttles where often blocking input detection due to always sending non-zero values)

• Added input profile for Logitech Extreme 3D Pro

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.4.0 ( Thursday October 17th 2019 )

This patch focuses on bug fixing and improvements to the existing functionalities, with a number of significant changes to the chat box. Note that control scheme unification and input improvements could not make it in time,
so we’ll most likely be including them in next week’s patch instead.

Game balance

• Rebalanced resupply rates / costs, in particular it will now take many seconds for corvettes to resupply missiles / torpdedoes on another ship
• Reduced shields recharge and resupply rates on spawning points
• Spawning points will no longer recharge / repair / resupply if they received damage in the last 10 seconds (note: this already applied to corvettes)

Resupplying was imbalanced, and possibly still is. It should now take more time for the corvette to resupply ammo to nearby ships, especially missiles/torpedoes

• Small reduction of chaff’s duration, launch speed and activation distance (chaffs were buffed a bit too much last patch)

• Adjustments to credits rewards for ships deaths and battle participation bonus

The battle participation bonus was very unbalanced and giving too many credits for kills during battles. The credits rewards have been rebalanced. Overall it’ll be more difficult to accumulate a lot of credits now if you aren’t careful

• Increased torpedo damage from 3500 to 5000

After last patch’s buff to the capital ship’s hitpoints, bombers in particular needed to be more threatening to capital ships

Chat box

• Chat box welcome messages show up when entering the game instead of when the client initializes
• Team channel now also displays local zone channel (including voice commands)
• Auto-close setting for chatbox is now the default
• Initial implementation for private message chat. Type /msg playername text to open a private channel to another player
• Added commands /team /global /local commands to chat in a different channel than the one currently being selected
• Added support for custom chat channels. Use /join channelname to create or join a custom channel. Warning: channels are public, and not password or team restricted
• Implemented a /mute command to mute a player in all chat channels
• Fixed chat box being visible despite HUD being hidden

Improvements and features

• Installation modules can now self-repair too (this also includes turrets on modules). However once the module is destroyed, it no longer repairs / come back up

• Spawn button can now display “can’t afford” or “not available” states if the selected ship is too costly, or if there are no spawns available left at the selected base

• Selected spawn now defaults to closest upon dying, unless a manual spawn was set

• Added buttons to filter spawns, players and other entities on the starmap

The “select closest spawn” button has been removed: it is now the default upon dying, unless you had manually set a respawn base before dying. Three new buttons have been introduced,
to filter out spawns, players and other entities (that last one includes enemy bases). All three filters are enabled by default. If you want to more easily see which spawn bases are
available, you can just disable the “players” and “other” filters to only keep “spawns”/

• Added randomness in probability curve for selecting ship classes in battles generation

This was almost a bug: the algorithm deciding which NPC ship classes to spawn when a battle starts was using the same seed for all battles. Different battles and waves will now use
different seeds, bringing more “variety” to the battles in terms of ships composition. It is also possible to see battles with a higher proportion of small ships / interceptors
or other battles with a higher proportion of capital ships. Overall, this change should add variety to way the battles “feel”.

Bug fixes

• Revamped spawn system to better take into account selected ship class
• Fixed stuck situations when it wasn’t possible to respawn in an interceptor when the capship spawns had been destroyed

Destroyed capital ships spawns were especially problematic when the matching was ending, sometimes getting players in a stuck loop where they tried to downgrade their ship, but the available spawns list wasn’t correctly refreshed.
This shouldn’t happen anymore.

• Fixed hauler pathing and death at arrival that happened at some stations

Investigating and fixing this bug took an entire day of work. Haulers were often colliding with station modules upon arriving at their destination, exploding and losing their cargo. This disrupted the flow of resources and team credits income.
Haulers should now behave much better. I’ve still witnessed a rare occurence of haulers coincidentally reaching the destination docking platform at exactly the same time (despite spawning from different factories!) and pushing into each others.
But this should be extremely rare and not disturb the resources flow.

• Fixed incorrect sound location for special effects attached to an actor (ex.: impact sound)

Impact sounds were always played at the actor origin. Usually not a problem on small ships, but on a station, a hit could have happened kilometers away from the origin, so it was a deaf impact…

• Fixed positionning of chat box and main menu in non-standard / wide screen aspect ratios / resolutions

• Fixed crash bug at startup due to corrupted quality settings

• Fixed bouncing projectiles flipped orientation

• Projectiles can bounce on static actors too now

Weapon projectiles were flipped after bouncing. They were never bouncing on non-ships such as bases…

Misc

• Improved algorithm for selecting default starting spawn base

Upon joining a game for the first time, the server tried to select the first spawning base available. The new algorithm is smarter and tries to place the player at an allied base where there are other players, and possibly a battle

• Server browser population now displays player count as a number and not as a percentage
• Added support for FMOD live update for modding. Disabled by default, but can be manually enabled in ClientConfig.xml

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.5.0 ( Monday November 4 2019 )

This patch contains major architectural changes related to input events and key bindings. Control schemes can now be specified per ship, the Virtual Cursor navigation mode and Direct control schemes were unified, and new bindings were introduced for capital ships, allowing full rebinding of strafing keys. As a result, some of the bindings might be empty or no longer work properly. We implemented an automatic configuration upgrader so that players do not have to remake their input profiles, however due to the complexity of the changes it is possible that some events might have to be fixed or updated manually. If you do not use a custom configuration and run into trouble, we simply recommend pressing the “reset to defaults” button.

Note that we got ride of some obsolete profiles that were not working properly anyways: X52, X56 and T-Flight Hotas X. If you have a working, fully functional profile for one of these HOTAS, or some other not-officially-supported-yet HOTAS, do not hesitate to send us your config file so that we can include it in a future build, thank you !

Balance changes

• Increased torpedo count on bomber from 6 to 8
• Small reduction of death credits rewards to make it more challenging to keep a capital ship
• Haulers vertical thrust increase by 50% so that they can fly upwards on planets without engine overcharge

Some minor balance changes. Bombers should now be more threatening to capital ships as they won’t have to resupply their torpedoes as often as before. Killing other ships will also be rewarded with a few less credits.

Flight Model

• Updated manual thrust flight model when overriding flight assist. The new model should be more responsive, especially when using analog inputs or controller arrows
• Fixed corner directions not having enough thrust when using using an 8-way arrow/hat for strafing
• Fixed the long-standing bug of overriding throttle manually in warp, which somehow slowed down the throttle

We discovered that the amount of manual thrust in the corner directions wasn’t reaching 100% due to a bug, so we reworked the manual thrust physics so that it’s more coherent and works as expected

• Introduced a hard-brake option in controls settings to specify if the brake key also overrides manual thrust/strafe. Default is on
• Fixed braking continuously starting / stopping at zero throttle / speed

This technically wasn’t a bug, but a question of priority. When you’re holding the brake key, but are still holding a manual thrust/strafe key, would you expect your ship to brake and ignore the manual thrust inputs ? We saw divided opinions on this subject, so we decided to add a setting for this behavior

• Revamped warp exit speed: it will now set the throttle to match the warp entry speed (instead of resetting the throttle to zero)

Before the change, the warp exit speed was always set to the minimum warp entry speed (ex.: 240 m/s on the interceptor) no matter what the real entry speed was. After the change, your ship will exit warp at the same speed it had when entering warp. Throttle will also be set to that value instead of zero

• Added more vertical thrust to haulers so that they can hover / take off more easily on planets without overcharging engines

Input / Controls

• Fixed a major bug with key + axis combinations that made key combinations sometimes not work as expected

This was a major bug that caused key combinations conflicts. This should now be resolved

• Added support for tooltips and localization to input events. All events should now have a proper name and tooltip
• Added support for display order (sorting) for events and event groups. Categories should now make more sense and be more intuitive
• Improved key conflicts: they’re now displayed as a warning underneath the corresponding input event entry in the keybindings menu
• A value bar appears for each event entry in the keybindings menu
• A value bar appears for each axis entry in the device calibration menu
• Cleaned up the key bindings menu (made the keys button larger, with a smaller font, and removed the event type as it is now usually mentionned in the event name)

These changes should make the keybindings menu cleaner and easier to work with. A small bar representing the current detected value should appear below every single keybinding, make it easy at a glance to see if keys/axes are properly detected. Conflicts will now appear below each input binding too, make it easier to see where the issues are located

• Unified events between Virtual Cursor navigation mode and Direct mode
• Introduced a Capital Ship mode with separate events / key bindings (it is now possible to use separate strafe keys)
• Removed many hardcoded keys / combinations in events. The automatic profile upgrader tries to keep the same configuration, but might need some tweaks, especially for capital ships bindings

All those changes should make it easier for players to figure out how control scheme works and how to rebind keys. In the previous version, the Virtual Cursor control scheme (which was the default) used “CursorX” and “CursorY” events, whereas most players tried to bind “ShipYaw” and “ShipPitch” which only works for Direct mode. This generated a lot of confusion and frustration and lead many people to thinking rebinding keys wasn’t working properly. With better event names and events unification, this problem should now be solved

• Fixed major issues related to event values being polled in the physics step versus the UI thread, which caused mouse samples to get lost/ignored
• Fixed major issues related to mouse wheel. It is now properly treated as a relative axis with framerate independence
• Fixed a bug with changing mouse movement or wheel sensitivity in the controls settings which didn’t apply the changes until restarting

Mouse wheel wasn’t framerate independent, so it behaved differently if you had 30 fps versus if you had 300 fps. In general, mouse inputs weren’t polled at the correct frequency so samples could be lost, resulting in erratic behaviors at high (100+ fps) framerates. Mouse sensivity settings changes weren’t correctly applied

• Added new input event bindings: scan mode and mine launch
• Removed F4 key to cycle through control schemes. Control schemes can now be set per-ship in the controls settings menu
• Fixed view switching from cockpit to internal when changing control schemes
• Camera / head look now automatically resets after a delay, which can now be set via a slider in the control settings menu (default: 2 seconds)
• Introduced a camera absolute mode, in controls settings to specify if camera movement uses incremental values or resets the values for every event input
• Revamped colors in radial menus, to make the selection more obvious / stronger
• Fixed some ship movement inputs still being active in radial menus (ex.: you could move forward / backward while a radial menu was open)
• Removed obsolete profiles: X52, X56 and HotasX - we need replacements !

Other Bug fixes

• It is no longer possible to spawn at a carrier in warp (if it had a very low warp speed)
• Fixed a carrier respawn bug which didn’t check the proper respawn conditions (it was possible spawn at a carrier in movement)
• Fixed client crash when loading the game with an input profile that does not exist anymore (now defaults to Qwerty as expected)
• Fixed crash when finishing to send some text after getting disconnected from a server
• Fixed incorrect matching of spawn type when calculating team scores statistics
• Fixed static base credits generated by installations resulting in stale match endings

An annoying bug that resulted in credits being no longer resulted when there was a low amount of bases alive at the end of a match, resulting in a status-quo and no battles being spawned. It was then the responsability of the players to finish the match by destroying the remaining bases, but since there is no challenge it was just a chore. In this patch, battles should now be generated (although at a lower frequency) and result in an automatic match ending

• Fixed other ships’s thruster effects still firing when their ship is powered down

Misc

• Reduced thickness of armor/speed curved bars on HUD and removed the text/status information
• Added random reactivity to AI ship powering back up after being powered down

AI ships that got powered down, powered back up almost instantly no matter the NPC’s rank. Now it can take a few seconds for the NPC to react

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.5.1 ( Thursday November 8 2019 )

A small patch with a bunch of HUD and star map fixes.

HUD

• Updated font for monospaced numbers ( curtesy of Pendrokar )
• Redesigned HUD central elements: removed text and icons; made the curved bars thinner and shorter
• Removed set throttle notifications
• If the selected target is behind a planet, an “Obstructed” notification will now appear on top of the target’s indicator name

Starmap

• Trade routes now show up on the star map rather than in the 3D viewport
• Fixed a bug with blinking icons on the star map when they were obstructed on the main HUD
• Trade routes are now team colored

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.6.0 ( Friday January 10th 2020 )

Hey all, sorry for the time it took to release this patch. We encountered a lot of internal issues related to the AMS (aka. Anti-missiles/torpedoes/mines system) lasers implementation. Please keep in mind this is only a first implementation, and as such, until we get more player feedback, is likely to cause some balance issues. The patch also contains multiple bug fixes as usual.

AMS (Anti-missiles/torpedoes/mines system)

• Initial implementation for AMS lasers for capital ships

• AMS are currently available on destroyers (4 hardpoints) and carrier (2 hardpoints). To promote the escort role of the destroyer, the cruiser currently does not have any AMS system

• AMS produce green-colored lasers that hit their target instantly and cause a very low amount of damage over time

• AMS lasers automatically target heavy missiles, torpedopes and mines within a 10 Km range. Since light missiles are no serious threat to a capital ship, they currently do not target light missiles

• Remember to enable the AMS systems in your ship’s weapons radial menu (they’re disabled by default)

• Introduced heavy missiles and renamed the old missiles to light missiles

• Light missiles are available on small ships (interceptor, bomber, corvette) and do the same amount of damage as before (150)

• Heavy missiles are available on capital ships and do more damage (500) but are less maneuverable than light missiles. They’re still faster than torpedoes.

• Rebalanced missiles, torpedoes and mines hitpoints so that they’re harder to kill

• Slight reduction in activation time for missiles, torpedoes and mines

• Reduced chaff activation range from 1.25 Km to 1.0 Km

• Removed chaffs from destroyers, as they now have AMS

General / gameplay

• Target speed now resets to zero automatically after exiting warp
• Increased ramp-up / warmp-up propulsion factor
• Tweaks to missile detonation and distance calculation algorithm (sometimes missiles were exploding too far away from the target)

HUD / Interface

• Changed default font
• Fixed friendly fire warning while being on the spawn menu / star map
• Added a checkbox in the controls menu for automatic view reset
• Added effects quality setting to options menu

Bug fixes

• Fixed options menu staying opened after clicking “apply” with settings asking for a restart
• Fixed invalid initial position of navigation cursor when entering the game due to accumulating mouse input on the splash screen
• Fixed /SetSkin server crash when player is on spawn menu
• Other minor coherency fixes / checks for player commands
• Fixed a bug that caused some input event groups to randomly stop working
• Fixed a bug with error correction that gets ignored when client receives server’s tick before client validated its own
• Fixes and checks related to custom quality levels which were causing crashes, or weren’t being take into account properly for smoke / damage effects
• Fixed lack of camera control in spectator and kill-cam mode
• Fixed rare server crash during corvette ammo resupply
• Fixed a bug that caused weapon muzzle sounds to sometimes originate from the actor center instead of the actual gun position

Eye tracking

• Added eye tracker interface + experimental Tobii eye tracking support
• Added eye trackers selection list to the controls menu

Misc

• Updated many stations / modules layouts (some modules had gaps and holes)
• Added input profile for Logitech X-55
• Particle system culling now better takes into account per-particle size to calculate its bounds
• Slight Increase of brightness of space debris

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.7.0 ( Saturday February 8th 2020 )

This patch mainly aims at laying down the foundation to revamping the weapons groups / management system and introduces a number of important changes. On small ships (up to Corvette, included) weapons are now exclusive (you can only select one weapon group active at a time). On capital ships, it is possible to toggle automatic vs manual firing and aiming. The locking system for missiles / torpedoes has been updated to be less constraining (locks are acquired instantly so that you can fire as soon as you select a target). Finally, we updated the radial menus and assigned a new weapons selection contextual menu to the right mouse button (for keyboard profiles). The goal of all these changes is to prepare for the upcoming HUD update.

Weapons groups

• Weapon groups are now exclusive on small ships: for ex. selecting blasters will unselect guns
• Weapon groups on capital ships can now cycle between disabled, automatic and manual firing
• Revamped missile locking system and alerts. To fire a missile, just select the missile’s weapon group and press fire. Locking is instant as long as the conditions are met (enough ammo, in range, not on cooldown etc…). The angle restriction has been rempoved
• Revamped HUD weapons list (now showing group ids, name and ammo as a bar)
• Reduced amount of heat generated by laser AMS by half
• Most weapons groups are now active by default on capital ships (default configuration: automatic)
• Cleaned up corvette groups: there’s now only one group for kinetic guns and one for blasters
• Changed ordering of some groups on destroyer to go in increasing power

Input/Controls

• Revamped keyboard input profile for weapon groups hotkeys (1-9 activates the matching weapon group, instead of ctrl 1-9). Note: ctrl 1-9 is now used to set the throttle.
• Chaffs have been moved to the middle mouse button instead of left-alt (for keyboard profiles)
• Removed “Secondary fire” and “Missile fire” input event
• Revamped radial menus: introduced the Flight mode menu (default: hold X on keyboard, which is the ex key for weapons)
• Cleaned up other radial menus and reduced their content so that they fit into 10 slots
• Moved the weapons radial menu to the right mouse button (for keyboard profiles)
• Radial menus now resize dynamically according to the amount of slots they contain (ex.: a 4 slots radial menu will look smaller than a 12-slots)
• Added an optional event to cycle through active weapon groups ( “CycleWeapons” ). Currently left unassigned by default

Bug fixes

• Fixed music volume slider in audio options that required a game restart to take effect (it can now be changed on the fly)
• Fixed camera free-look not working when spectating / in kill-cam of a capital ship
• Fixed missiles/torpedoes still locking and tracking a target even when satefy lock is off

Misc

• Increased a bit AI probability to fire missiles/torpedoes
• Revamped AI to actively manage weapon groups in a smarter way. The AI now takes into account more parameters, such as heat (for ex. interceptors switch to blasters when kinetics are overheating), ammo depleted, damaged weapons, etc…
  They try to switch to the weapons with the best DPS according to their target.

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In this image you can see the weapons group HUD update. For each weapon group, from left to right:

• Weapon group ID ( matching the number hotkey )
• Number of usable weapons ( not damaged, having ammo, not under cooldown ) over the total number of weapons in that group
• Name of the weapons in that group
• [*] if the weapons are automatic
• A bar showing the average amount of ammo for weapons in that group. Note that energy weapons ( blasters ) share their ammo together ( so the bars will be synced ). Kinetics use per-hardpoint ammo, so it’s technically possible that some hardpoints have exhausted their ammo while others still have some ammo. The bar represents the average. The orange portion represents the ammo already exhausted. When the whole bar is orange, none of the weapons in the group have any ammo left.

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.8.0 ( Saturday February 29th 2020 )

This patch is the first iteration for the new HUD. It mostly focuses on small ships; while it also works for capital ships, it still needs multiple tweaks and improvements that will come in future iterations.

Also note that the targetting system (and the target indicators) and the planetary indicators will be revamped in the next iteration. The patch also introduces HUD color themes (you can change them in the general options menu) and adds support for Russial localization.

HUD Changes

HUD changes are too numerous to list, but here are the main changes:

• The default color theme is now green (but you can also set it to blue or orange in the general options menu)
• The speed and energy bars have been redesigned and moved to the left side of the screen
• The right side of the screen is now reserved for the selected target’s information. The information panel on the top-right corner of the screen has been removed. It’ll be re-introduced later as a special target MFD
• The bottom-left center part of the screen now displays counter-measures (CM) and the overcharge mode (None, Engine, Weapons, Shields)
• The bottom center part of the screen is now showing your ship’s armor and shield points are a percentage
• The bottom-right center part of the screen is displaying the heat percentage and the currently selected weapon and its ammo count
• A circle and locking status information is now displayed at the center of the screen when selected a missile / torpedo launcher (note: disabled for capital ships)

General

• Improved per-turret targetting selection: now takes into account distance, tries to minimize rotation angle, prioritizes the selected target and/or the incoming missile threat (for AMS)
• Increased hitpoints for most turrets (MK4 to MK7) as they got destroyed too quickly in big battles
• It is now possible to fire missiles even in heat overflow mode

Bug fixes

• Fixed client crash bug when selecting a target far away with a missile launcher
• AMS / lasers no longer fire after engaging warp

Misc

• Increased width of system menu (to better fit longer localized strings)

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.6.9.0 ( Saturday March 21th 2020 )

This patch is the second iteration and overhaul for the HUD. It introduces most of the missing features, including tweaks for the capital ships HUD, a new planetary HUD, a revamp of the targetting indicators, a revamp of the ring radar, a warp tunnel helper to show the path to an objective and a bunch of other HUD tweaks.

Note that some features are experimental. Due to the high amount of HUD changes and tweaks, it is likely that this patch has introduced new bugs and will require further tweaking. Feedback is more than welcome so please let us know on the forums what you like or dislike with the new HUD features. Thank you !

-The I-Novae team

Capital Ships HUD

• Initial implementation for capital ship HUD and tweaks compared to small ships
• Armor / shield points are moved above speed bar and central information has been offset, to avoid covering the ship
• Removed hemispherical radar from capital ship HUD: since capital ships have a free rotating camera, the hemispherical radar wasn’t as useful and was covering the ship. With this radar removed, the view is now clear

Planetary HUD

• A planetary HUD now pops up when approaching a planetary surface
• This planetary HUD displays a heading bar (plus the heading angle in degrees, compared to the north pole of the planet) and the pitch angle, compared to the horizon
• Moved altitude meter on the bottom left side of the heading bar

HUD targetting / indicators

• Added an arrow at the HUD center to show the direction / angle of the currently selected target
• Added max target indicators limitation in combat vs navigation modes (+ slider in options menu). This is a major step towards decluttering in large battles
• Removed HUD cycling: the F3 key is now simply toggling on/off the entire HUD. The automatic vs manual HUD modes have been removed
• There is still a concept of combat versus navigation HUD. The simple difference between the two is whether you have a target selected or not. Without a target, you are in navigation mode and the HUD shows more target indicators
• The HUD switches to combat mode when you select a target. It then highlights only the highest priority targets
• Target selection (default key: G) is now taking into account priorities/threats as well as your ship type (ex.: a bomber will prioritize selecting capital ships, while an interceptor will prioritize enemy interceptors and bombers).

Note that the priority/threat formula is experimental and might need future tweaks.

Ring Radar

• Updated ring radar to use the new arrow design. The ring radar shows all the combat mode targets (by default: the 5 highest priority targets)
• Added a slider in options menu to control radius / size of ring radar

Navigation tunnel helper

• Added a navigation tunnel helper towards long-range objective in warp mode

Note that the tunnel display is experimental. In particular, at the moment it is straight. We are still working on generating a tunnel along an orbital curve to avoid planets / massive obstacles

Other HUD Improvements

• Added max weapon range info to HUD
• Increased font size for armor / shield hitpoints display
• Added cursor hovering to highlight targets and display their names (experimental)

Misc:

• Strings localization update for German and Russian languages
• More tweaks to HUD color themes

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.7.0.0 ( Saturday April 25th 2020 )

This is the final patch focusing on the HUD overhaul. It introduces virtual MFDs (multi-functional display) that aim at providing HUD customizations to players. The default MFD layouts have already been changed on all ships.

This patch also includes other UI tweaks, related to the HUD or some star map improvements.
In the next patch we’ll be focusing on the star map and a new sensors overlay system, then it will finally be time to move over to more gameplay !

-The I-Novae team

HUD and virtual MFDs

To open the MFD layout setup screen, hit F4 while in-game. The layout provides 14 MFDs, and each one has a button to select the current data page to be displayed in it. Some pages require dual MFDs and aren’t available at the left/right sides.

Some pages can be centered on two MFDs in “dual display” mode. When available, an arrow button will be displayed on top or below the MFD screen.

The currently available MFD pages are:

• Loadout (weapons list)
• Target (only displays basic stats at the moment, but this MFD will show a holographic 3D view of the ship in a future patch)
• Communications (chat box)
• Electronic Warfare (EW) (at the moment, only displays energy emissions and detection status)
• Front radar
• Back radar
• 3D radar (spherical radar)
• Mission / objectives
• Squad (not implemented yet)
• System notifications / messages

More pages might be available in the future - if you have feedback on pages you’d like to see, please let us know !

Also of interest: cockpits currently have MFDs that aren’t functional, but in the next patch those should be available as working MFDs too.

Note that MFD layouts are persistent (changes are saved automatically) and per ship class. You can transfer MFD layouts from your current ship to another ship in the gameplay settings menu.

UI / HUD changes

• Added a separate slider setting to control the max amount of displayed ring targets ( as opposed to combat targets )
• Fixed cursor hovering which was highlighting all targets within a certain range: now it only highlights the closest target
• HUD text now has a dark outline (instead of a drop shadow)
• Removed helmet deformation effect from root, main and tab menus;
• Fixed “not enough credits” text clipping issue in ship selection screen
• Improvements to star map targets panel: now properly uses team colors; distance text is smaller; added spawnable/unspawnable icons to be more clear on where a player can respawn at
• Added back status icons on top / bottom of the HUD MFD panels
• Improved readability of warning alerts

Bug fixes

• Fixed delta speed (mouse wheel up / down) being inconsistent in warp (it had a different sensitivity when scrolling down and instantly went back to zero)
• Fixed a small bug with HUD speed being sometimes displayed in menus
• Fixed an issue in menu flow that opened an empty spectator menu when you hit escape in the options menu while in spawn

Misc:

• Updated in-game Discord link to open the welcome-and-rules channel

[INovaeFlavien]

Patch 0.7.1.0 ( Friday May 8th 2020 )

This is a transitional patch that contains a lot of improvements and fixes related to the MFDs (multi-functional displays) and HUD. In particular, it contains new settings options, a fix for the new HUD in wide-screens, the introduction of physical MFDs in cockpits (as well as a revamp of the virtual MFDs and seat positions).

A couple of various improvements are also included, like temporal anti-aliasing (note that the game still defaults to SMAA until we get feedback about TAA and if it’s good enough to be made the new default) or the ability to use the numpad keys to set the cockpit view.

The next big item on the upcoming tasks list is sensors overlay - which will be replaced the ‘quote’ key which was previously bound to 3D radar zoom in. It still needs a few days of work, and will probably become the focus of the next patch.

Note that as per community request we’ll be resuming our development updates in a new format (what we previously called “weekly updates”, but won’t be weekly anymore) and that might be merged with patch notes in the future. We’ll also post a quaterly update, with focus on priorities and refreshing the roadmap. We’ll post one of those next week.

-The I-Novae team

Cockpit physical MFDs

The interceptor, bomber and corvette now all have functional physical MFD screens. As previously, you can edit the layout and which MFD pages go on where by bringing up the MFD layout setup (default: F4). There are 4 screens in the interceptor and bomber (note: some screens are redundant on the bomber’s top frame). The corvette has 3 screens. Capital ships do not have cockpits, so they cannot use the physical MFDs systems.

IMPORTANT: the seat positions were tweaked in all cockpits, as well as the camera’s vertical field-of-view, that went from 60° to 70°. This allows every ship to display the physical MFDs at the bottom of the screen in the “default” view. Since there could be some overlaps with the HUD’s virtual MFDs that some people might have customized in the last patch, we decided to reset the virtual MFDs layout to restart from a “clean” state. This means that if you had customized your vMFDs, you might now have to do it again.

If you do not like the physical MFDs and wish to just use the HUD’s virtual ones instead, we introduced seat adjustment offsets in the General -> HUD options menu. You’ll find 3 new sliders that control the vertical, front/back offsets as well as the head pitch. Changing the head pitch is currently not recommanded, as the crosshair will no longer be centered and gameplay might feel awkward.

Numpad keys can now be used to turn your head in the cockpit (4= left, 5=center, 6=right, 8=up and 2=down). The corners (ex.: up-right) aren’t implemented yet

Temporal anti-aliasing

We’ve introduced a new anti-aliasing method, temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to the game / engine. The game still defaults to SMAA, however you can enable temporal anti-aliasing in the graphics settings options menu. You’ll find a setting to change the “AA method” (it’s also now possible to disable anti-aliasing, for those of you that have a low-specs computer and need max performance). There’s also a setting for “AA quality”, which is dependent on the type of AA method applied. It doesn’t do anything for SMAA, but for TAA it changes the number of samples and the application or not of a sharpening filter.

In general, you should find that SMAA gives you minimum anti-aliasing and suffers from a lot of flickering. TAA is much better, but can suffer from ghosting effects (especially when you quickly zoom in or out) and slightly blurs the image (which is why we apply a sharpen filter in post-processing as a counter). TAA is slightly more expensive than SMAA in terms of performance.

Once we gather enough feedback about the quality / performance tradeoffs of TAA, we might make it the default AA method (at least on high-end computers)

HUD fixes and improvements

• Fixed new HUD / MFDs wide-screen layout

• Wide-screen fixes for starmap and ship selection 3D viewport (they didn’t use the correct camera’s aspect ratio)

• Fixed a potential crash if you died while editing the MFD layouts

• Fixed a bug that still rendered MFDs despite switching the HUD off (F3 key)

• Fixed carrier “player spawn notification” layout for the new HUD. It will now show up as another line in the systems notification MFD

• MFDs now also flickers like the rest of the HUD when the engine / power is partially damaged

• Fixed warp engage warning after exceeding the soft cap speed, which was disappearing too quickly (most players didn’t notice it)

• Removed dark, very transparent (it was barely visible ) background over some text MFDs (ex.: objectives MFD)

• Swapped left / right arrows on collapse MFD buttons, which feel more natural

• More shadow outlines around some text in the system notifications or mission MFD

• HUD bottom-screen’s decoration lines now only show up when virtual MFDs are present, to avoid cluttering the physical MFDs at the bottom of the screen

• Tweaked (increased a bit) font size, opacity and layout of system notications MFD (the text was too small to be readable sometimes)

New customizable options or settings

• Tweaked graphics settings menu: it is now possible to change quality parameters individually, which will set the global quality level to “custom” automatically, which feels a lot more natural to the user
• Added target hit mark sound effect toggle in the audio options menu
• Added a slider into the HUD settings in the options menu, in order to control the separation between the ship/target info and the center of the screen
• Cockpit seat settings (offets and head pitch) can be customized per ship (see general settings)
• Added a screen shaking slider setting in the graphics options menu

General and bug fixes

• Respawning in a capital ship now defaults to third-person camera
• Increased max camera vertical-FOV from 80 to 100 degrees
• Changed default camera vertical-FOV from 60 to 70 degrees
• Tooltips now have a darker background, bigger font and padding
• Inactive/disabled sliders now appear darker in the menus
• Fixed joystick options window contour that was always displayed in blue, ignoring the current color theme
• You now get a critical hit notification when you destroy an allied ship’s weapons by accident
• Fixed a bug that required a restart despite not changing any graphic settings, the first time the user opens the options menu

Misc

• Added new muzzle flash effect for MK6 / MK7 kinetic guns on capital ships