Mouse/Cursor over to interact with objects - not required for deliveries.
You now get paid for jobs!
You can now see how much mass you’re carrying, and make sure to check the information before you take a job, it will tell you if you’re overloaded! Click the “i” or press i, or “Y” to get the details in the job board.
Windows Direct X 10 option removed from the Itch startup selector, it performed very poorly for people with DX11. You can still launch the game with -dx10 to use that mode.
DX12 raytracing mode added to Itch startup selector. This mode will only ship with the deluxe edition, but feel free to check it out for now! It will be very slow if you don’t have an RTX card.
Everyone seems happy with the size/performance of the “Standard Edition” so far, but please let me know if you have feedback.
New UI interaction still in progress - working fine for ship configuration and job board, but the new UI concept for the scanning interface is still WIP.
The keymapper is still fussy, and has been disabled for the moment. It will return!
Lots of graphical tweaks and tunings.
UI/HUD system is undergoing a massive change, somewhat starting to show.
We’re not quite there when expected due to taking time to make sure gameplay didn’t suffer too much on gamepad, but we’re at the point where deliveries can now be completed, you can loop them, and make a fair bit of cash.
There’s still a bit more weirdness than I’d like to call it WP0, but we’re very close.
This update addresses a number of fixes for issues and feedback brought up during P6.
Don’t forget to go vote on the patreon - your feedback will make the ship handling either more arcade or more physics-based: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67098864
Known Bugs (working to address ASAP):
The detail overlay is not working with the gamepad quite right yet, you may have to press the “scan” or “interact” button with the mouse.
Some cursor/focus issues with the gamepad still
Parking too fast can still yeet you right off to the edge of the map, requiring a restart of the game
Initial screen still has some gamepad fussiness if you toggle between buttons repeatedly
Updates:
You can now see how much mass you’re carrying, and make sure to check the information before you take a job, it will tell you if you’re overloaded! Click the “i” or press i, or “Y” to get the details in the job board.
New UI interaction still in progress - working fine for ship configuration and job board, but the new UI concept for the scanning interface is still WIP.
Lots of graphical tweaks and tunings.
UI/HUD system is undergoing a massive change, somewhat starting to show.
You can now fly around the planet if you don’t want to wait for a lunar orbit.
LOD and performance tweaks for the space stations.
Go to the pedestal with a ship hovering over it and configure a ship. Right now, they’re all free.
Put the center cursor over it (mouse or right thumbstick) and then press the interact button. (Either press A or click on it). This will open the ship customizer.
Browse through the available parts, and assemble a ship you like. Press Apply (or the Y button) to attach the parts. Make sure to attach a bridge, a body, and at least one engine before you press A (or accept) to update your ship. You can revisit any time you like.
Now go get work:
Go to the big job board screen, put the center cursor over it (mouse or right thumbstick) and then press the interact button. (Either press A or click on it). This will open the job browser.
Loads of jobs will be randomly generated, and you can look around at them. Inspect the details for the jobs by clicking on the job and then either clicking on the “i”, pressing “i”, or pressing the “Y” button your gamepad. This will switch to the job details and show you important information like how much cargo mass you can carry and how much cargo mass that job is. If you exceed by too much, you’ll go very slowly, or possibly be unable to move at all.
Accept the job you want by either pressing “A” or clicking to accept. At the moment, your ship will just be instantly loaded with the cargo.
Depart through the doors down the gangway/dock to your ship.
It does have a little learning curve to handle the ship, so I’ll break that down right here.
Gamepad mode. For keyboard mode, use the WASD instead of D-Pad, and the arrow keys instead of the left thumbstick, and the middle mouse button instead of the joystick left special.
When you run out to you ship, it’ll put you in third person mode by default.
Use the right d-pad a bit for some thrusters to move away from the dock
Rotate the ship heading with the left stick to point up and out (use the right stick as you like for a good view)
Press the right bumper 1x (or more, depending on how overloaded you are) to put on a bit of main engine thrust
Gracefully exit the station through the hangar doors, and keep climbing to leave the forcefield
Fly around however you like, go to full thrust, whatever.
Use the left special (the two boxes icon on xbox) to switch views. Press on the left or right thumbstick to zoom in/out in the camera.
When delivering cargo - make sure you check if your ship can handle the mass of the cargo. If you’re over mass, you’ll go slower. Possibly not even be able to move (in which case you can cheat and use the d-pad or wasd to just go 0.6kms anyhow and make a lot of money with a lot of patience)
Deliver the cargo by just flying to where the arrow points. To deliver to the moon is still a bit “crash into it” but the rest are set up ok so far.
Landing:
Re-enter the station at a nice slow controlled speed.
Pull up to the dock/gangway with the arrow over it slowly and carefully.
Keep approaching it slowly until you end up in the character mode again.
You folks are providing priceless assistance tuning the game and features for release!
Known bugs with this short step release (that will be fixed when we go to patch 8)
No thrusters in keyboard mouse mode (wasd/arrow keys both are used for navigation, not split out anymore)
Rotation of ship in the ship customizer is temporarily broken
External ship free camera mode (accessed by switching views) doesn’t re-orient itself with R
Ship roll with C/Z only goes one direction
(you can tell the focus of this short step patch was gamepad arcade mode control overhaul?)
Most of this has been fixed now in the very small 7c patch, except for the third person free look camera stuff, which is pretty minor and a bit of an odd fix.
Hopefully someone with a VR headset will check out the new interior mode and let me know how that works. I believe that was one of the main drivers for it, as requested by @FadedKamui.
ALPHA 0 Patch 10a:
Interior bridge piloting is now available for both Conns.
You can now use the view toggle (middle mouse click or the right special on the gamepad) to switch between several camera views - including 2 interior.
The test scan view has been turned off to be replaced with the coming soon message.
This is the final Unreal Engine build for Smugglers. Due to unexpected circumstances, the project will be undergoing a fairly intense review of all art assets and then a port to another engine.
The interior piloting views should support a VR headset! Give it a shot, let us know.
This build has some pretty mammoth bugs. Still working on the texture streaming, level streaming, walking around on planets, and streaming in a planet map to run around.
Planned for the next patch: well - a lot. Stay tuned, it’s going to be a ride.
Some UV work is still required to fix a few minor glitches, and of course I haven’t learned how to use the rigged engines yet, but at least the rigging seems to have imported properly.
These ships are now completely vertex shader based now, and the entire ship uses a single material now making it as efficient as it was under UE4. The vertex based shader should give us a lot of flexibility for player customization.
Up next are the final pieces, and then I’ll probably save the greeble material for a later revist. After the ship is done, it’s going to be time to start working on planets.
Alpha testers just got sent links to the very first version with all the raytracing and texture features cranked all the way up and animated ship and station.
A pretty solid test for the “deluxe” edition footprint.
Performance reports so far: @MiguelB: 144 FPS in Linux/Windows with an RTX 3060 @JustJess: 12 FPS in Linux with an Intel HD 650 @stenpett: 120 FPS in Linux with 1650 TI @stenpett: 60 FPS on Steamdeck @SnakeEyes319: 158 FPS in Windows with an RTX 3080 TI @SnakeEyes319 : 60 FPS in Windows with an RTX 2070 @Mytho: 60 FPS in Windows with a 1050 TI @edallical: 144 FPS in Windows with Radeon 6700XT
This shot on Godot I think stacks up pretty well to how it looked on UE4. We’re still some placeholder art pieces, but the models, shaders, and textures are coming along nicely!
