New Autonav

BY BOBBENS, ON JULY 30TH, 2023

This post is about development on Naev 0.11.0.

Pirates have always been an issue for the law-abiding player. They are everywhere and relentless. However, with the addition of patrol lanes in 0.9.0, the universe has become a safer place, at least where the patrol lanes exist. Although that made things much easier for the player, a gaping flaw was that the autonav system did not understand how to use these lanes. For 0.11.0, we implemented the long awaited feature that autonav will now use patrol lanes if configured to!.

So how does this work? By default, autonav will use patrol lanes of non-hostile factions when jumping, and will not use them otherwise. You can configure it to not use lanes for jump, and also to use lanes for landing on planets or stations from the new settings option accessible in the info menu. The settings button replaces and incorporates the “Set GUI” functionality.

To get this working the entire autonav system was scrapped and rewritten, this also has the added effect of being much more accurate and efficient when travelling around. Overall it’s a win-win situation! Hopefully this will ease the early game and save many pilots from meeting their fate at the hands of the hordes of marauders lurking in the darkness.

As always, you can opt-in to the nightly beta branch on steam, or download the nightly from itch.io or github to get the latest and greatest of Naev development. Due note that this can be unstable, and make sure to back up your 0.10 saves first!