Naev Development Blarg (Page 1)

• Naev 0.12.0-beta.1

  BY BOBBENS, ON NOVEMBER 16TH, 2024

  This year, we’re starting the betas a bit early given the large amount of content modified and added. As always, this release contains a large amount of changes done during the past year which likely have introduced a lot of bugs and issues that we want to iron out before the final release of 0.12.0.

  Now, this release changes a lot of how the game currently plays, and, while it is highly recommended to start a new game, it should be possible to just load up your old saves without too much stuff being changed. In particular, some of the major changes are:

  1. Nearly all the ships are now modelled in 3D with fancy lightings and tilting effects!
  2. You can now capture ships!
  3. New ships and ship variants!
  4. Faction reputation is no longer a single global value, but more nuanced and local.
  5. New challenging area to access many secrets.
  6. In-game Wiki full of mechanics and lore explanations!

  If you try it and find any issues, please report them at the issue tracker. Discussion about the game can be had on one of the various discussion forums and chatrooms we have. Check them out here!

  You can get the new version from any of the sources below:

  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  Full Changelog

  • Gameplay
    • Ability to capture disabled ships
    • Faction reputation is no longer universal, but varies on systems
      • Direct faction hit changes are shown as messages
      • Your actions will more directly affect ships in the system
    • Significantly increase maximum potential fleet capacity
    • Excess energy to battery recharge efficiency is now a flat 50% instead of varying based on charge level
    • Gave the Za’lek sting a slight detection buff
    • Can only have a single patrol mission active at a given time
    • Pirates are less numerous during Chapter 0
    • Dvaered Arsenal has no fighter bays and fewer slots
    • Lowered CPU cost of some fighter bays
    • Decreased CPU and energy provided by large core slots
    • Pillaging ships affects reputation
    • Significantly increased the amount of fuel provided by outfits
    • Camouflage burster gives a speed bonus while active and disables when out of stealth
    • Can scan ships with ‘u’ key
    • Gave the Quicksilver another medium structural slot
    • Beam weapons have minimum delays instead of minimum durations
    • Can stealth when missiles are locked on
    • Deployed fighters take stress and damage over time when their mother ship is destroyed
    • Electron Burst Cannons and Za’lek Heavy Drones have had their damage per second lowered
    • Improved point defense
      • Spittle Tubuloid Cluster is now a utility and does more damage
      • Guardian Interception System does double damage
      • Missiles explode when intercepted
    • Bounties have explicit time limits
    • Derelicts should appear in remote systems
  • Quality of Life
    • Added colourblind correction mode
    • Exposed more colourblind options to the user
    • Can modify game speed directly instead of using a slow mode difficulty for accessibility
    • Messages get folded instead of repeating
    • Asteroids no longer fade out if close to or targeted by the player
    • Display fuel consumption for ships in the equipment overlay
    • Added option to match speed with the slowest ship in the fleet (on by default)
    • Made it so ships in the equipment screen do not change order based on value
    • Mark spaceport bar tab when there is an important NPC
    • Weapon set keybindings change window tabs
    • Use short outfit names when displaying groups of outfits
    • Shown more useful things you have when buying outfits with things other than credits
    • Can sort and filter the mission computer
    • Added small optional bounce to NPCs when they start talking
    • Inform the player when they don’t meet mission requirements for some important missions
    • Can add new plugins directly from the options menu
    • Can toggle whether autonav stops when missile lock-ons are detected
    • Added colour coded factional backgrounds in the shipyard
    • Can rotate shipyard image for ships with 3D graphics
    • Prompt when deleting notes
    • Added accessibility option that allows skipping story minigames
    • Can view and change all your ships in the equipment tab when there is refuelling
    • Reduced space dust size by 50%
  • Content
    • New in-game wiki with explanation on gameplay mechanics and lots of lore
    • 8 new missions
      • The Onions call
    • 4 new ships
    • 13 new ship variants
      • Give a new twist to existing ships
    • 6 new outfits
    • New area with unique challenges
    • New events
      • Get more Sirius abilities
      • Find the dark side of the Nebula
    • New NPC portraits
    • New generic NPC and News messages
    • Reworked trails to make ships feel more speedy
  • Engine
    • Support for 3D models
      • Lighting is based on system stars
      • Fancy effects for special systems
      • Ships tilt slightly when rotating
      • Simple animations are supported and used when applicable
    • Support for an in-game wiki
      • Can process YAML, Lua, and markdown
      • Cross-link support
      • Support for custom widgets
    • Stats (except inverted stats) are now additive instead of multiplicative
    • Try to merge saves if multiple directories correspond to the same player
    • More robust weapon set support that can handle multiple overlapping weapon sets
    • Faster handling of asteroids with large exclusion areas
    • Added fuel_usage_mod ship stat
    • Fixed player losing navigation targets when unidiff is applied
    • Fixed ai.idir giving wrong answer by M_PI_2 in some cases
    • Threaded more loading components
    • Lua require now caches chunks
    • Dropped SDL_image fallback
    • Use higher internal timer for all platforms
    • Support for Tracy
    • Spobs that are not landable yet generate presence will be shown on the map
    • Warn the player if they try to use a name with all space characters
    • Decoupled the collision system from the rendering system
    • Added a low memory mode to use fewer and smaller textures with 3D
    • Lazy load ship and outfit graphics to reduce memory usage and decrease load time
    • Use clang-format to format all the C code
    • Use enums internally to represent keybindings instead of strings
    • Always use replaygain information when available when loading vorbis files
    • Stop repeating the same warning after a fixed amount of times
    • Support for outfits that don’t break stealth
    • Editor has partial support for universe diffs
    • Editor has separate configuration and file dialogues
    • New ship stats
      • Global weapon range, damage, fire-rate and energy usage
      • Range ship stat for all specific weapon types
      • Turn, speed, and accel for launchers
      • Shield downtime modifier
    • Deprecated old faction API in favour of the new one for local / global standings
    • Added support for temporarily overriding faction standings
  • Fixes
    • PSO and Mizar nebulas have trails again
    • Removed fancy background mode
    • Can remove fighter bays with deployed fighters
    • Sol is less friendly
    • Fixed rare cases where fighters would not be able to dock
    • Fixed hypergate and wormhole effects getting stuck
    • Obelisks tell if you have completed them already
    • Fixed space dust disappearing with certain jump abilities
    • Boarded pilots become permanently disabled if they lose space-worthiness
    • Double tap will activate feather drive like blink engines
    • Fixed camouflage burster not activating stealth
    • Fixed bug where beams were counted as giving energy in the equipment optimizer
    • shadowvigil: claim entire route
    • sh01_corvette: should be completable on easy difficulties now
    • patrol: fixed escorts and fighters becoming hostile if hostile to the mission giving faction
    • Fixed debugging paranoid builds under Windows
    • Fixed autonav not respecting shield thresholds
    • zbh10: Godheart and friends get at most 1 fighter bay per ship now
    • Fixed ESS Trinity being bribeable
    • Cargo on fleets with be displayed to make room for mission cargo when necessary
    • Made it so Shadow Vigil doesn’t try to go through Surano system for reasons
    • blackhole/zbh09: fixed softlock during a cutscene under certain conditions

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• Sporadic Naev Newsletter Vol. 4

  BY BOBBENS, ON JULY 21ST, 2024

  This year we’re having another edition of our Sporadic Naev Newsletter. We’ll be covering some of the improvements that will appear in the 0.12.0 release, and more importantly, discuss a feature almost 15 years in the making: Naev going 3D! Now, this doesn’t mean gameplay is going 3D - gameplay is fundamentally unchanged - however, the ship models are now in 3D, allowing us to do new fancy effects and lower memory consumption while at it!

  Less Pirates in the Early Game

  One of the major complaints that Naev always gets is how ruthless pirates are, especially in the early game, when the player has no proper defenses. Although the past several releases have tried to mitigate the issue by establishing a safe starting area with no pirates, and adding more introductory missions to help the player get started, for those players that strayed too far from the starting area, it was often fatal. Now, Chapter 0 will feature significantly less pirates, that will ramp up to normal when the player reaches Chapter 1. This should give the player time to get better ships and survive the pirate menace.

  

  In order to implement this feature, the in-game universe editor was significantly reworked (yet again!) to support universe diffs, that is, instead of saving the entire universe, only changes with the default are saved. While this has been used only for reducing pirates, for now, this is going to come very in hand when implementing the next stages of the major campaigns, where the universe will undergo many significant changes. It will definitely be a good investment for things to come.

  Naev, now in 3D!

  So, while this is something that was proposed around 15 years ago, this is something that has been quite active in the works for almost 5 years now. During that time, it has been rewritten twice: first using object files and more traditional rendering, and now using gltf files with physically-based rendering. As we’re not using any sort of game engine, it was all written from the ground up, and includes some fancy things like variance shadow maps, FidelityFX filtering, high dynamic tone mapping, and super sampling. There’s still many things to do, but this finally lets us start to do fancier things that were infeasible using spritesheets. That said, spritesheets are still supported, however, 3D models are the recommended way of adding new ships.

  

  It has taken a lot of work, but all the ancient models have been updated to work with the newest blender, and many models have seen upgrades in different aspects like texturing, engine glows, broken geometry, and animations. Some ships have had to be nearly completely remade to work with current standards. There’s still a lot to do, but they look much better, and the same model can be used in the shipyard, communication window, and in-game.

  With 3D, we finally can also have ships tilt slightly when turning. This makes flying feel much more natural, and the tilt shows off more highlights and details of the ships. While we were hoping to add blinking lights and more details, those have not yet been implemented, but there is a real possibility that they will come sooner and later, once some logistics are figured out.

  For now, only ships have been reworked into 3D, but we hope to have planets, stations, and asteroids to join them in the near future. Some effects such as the backgrounds, wormholes, and the likes will still be kept in 2D, however, it will all work much better together. Oh, and last but not least, we’ve taken this opportunity to add 4 new ships to flesh out a bit more the Naev universe!

  Linear Energy Regeneration

  Although many players had not noticed, energy regeneration in Naev used an RC (Resistance-Capacitor) charge curve, which meant that energy would regenerate faster the less you had, and slowly taper out. This was not properly conveyed to the player and has now made linear. Now 100 GW of energy regeneration will always be 100 GJ of energy generated per second. While it is not possible to keep exactly the same behaviour as before, outfits and ships have been adjusted to try to be as similar as before the change.

  Quality of Life for all!

  A lot of Quality of Life has also made it into the nightly. Spaceport bar is marked with red exclamation points when there is an interesting NPC, there is support for sorting and filtering mission computer missions, repeated messages get folded in the GUI, asteroids won’t disappear when the player is nearby or actively targeting them, and much more! This should ensure a smoother experience for the players and get rid of lots of small friction.

  

  Additionally, the game uses lazy loading and threading to load much faster than before, starting up much faster and using less memory in general.

  Concluding Remarks

  All the aforementioned fixes can be already tasted in the nightly branch which can be obtained through the steam beta, github, or itch.io. They will be included in the next 0.12.0 release which is scheduled for December if you’d rather wait for a more stable release instead of risking the bleeding edge. If you’re interested in seeing the full changelog, including things that have not been discussed here, it’s available on github. With that, this concludes the Sporadic Naev Newsletter Vol. 4, and see you again in the next one!

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• Naev 0.11.5

  BY NAEV DEVTEAM, ON JUNE 13TH, 2024

  This is a minor release, that mainly provides build support for BSD systems. However, an important issue where the combat hologram projector could make escorts hostile and some missing jumps in the FLF-Pirate map have also been fixed.

  If you are interested on helping the Naev project, you can get in contact with other players and developers from the contact page.

  You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:

  

  

  

  

  
  

  Full Changelog

  • Fixed FLF-Pirate map not providing jump information
  • Fixed the combat hologram projector making escorts hostile
  • Build system no longer libdl on platforms such as BSD

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• Naev 0.11.4

  BY NAEV DEVTEAM, ON MARCH 9TH, 2024

  This new version contains a diversity of fixes, including a crash when selling deployed ships, and some issues that still appeared on some platforms when using autonav. We are also glad to announce that this version includes two complete translations: Japanese and Spanish. Most of the outstanding issues have been resolved and we hope that this is the last release in the 0.11.x series.

  If you are interested on helping the Naev project, you can get in contact with other players and developers from the contact page.

  You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:

  

  

  

  

  
  

  Full Changelog

  • More guards against divides by zero in autonav
  • Fixed warnings on certain OpenGL drivers
  • Fixed toolkit not rerendering when right-clicking on tabbed windows
  • Fixed Marius enclave description
  • Tweaked Za’lek Diablo and Mephisto stats so that they are better suited to their respective roles
  • Updated flicker drive, blink drive, and hyperbolic blink engine descriptions to be more complete and correct
  • Initialize outfit Lua scripts when added in the equipment view so that flicker drive signature gets properly computed
  • Flicker drive no longer displays -10% signature range bonus twice when equipped
  • Fixed crash when selling deployed ship
  • Gave the Dvaered warlord event better criteria so they don’t attack the hypergate
  • shark/sh01_corvette: have the pilot jump in from the same system as the player
  • minerva/kex03: have mission claim the crimson gauntlet to prevent unwanted spawns
  • dvaered/gauntlet: have mission claim the system if it can, but not fail if it can’t
  • trader/trader_escort: player can only escort one group of traders at a time
  • neburesearch/neburesearch_01: use the correct faction when complaining
  • Fixed some typos and revised writing
  • Translation updates

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• Naev 0.11.3

  BY NAEV DEVTEAM, ON JANUARY 25TH, 2024

  This new version hopefully fixes the bug that causes autonav to crash the game in specific conditions, fixes autonav breaking when loading old saves, and increases the yields of mining five-fold. Other minor bug fixes and translation updates are included in the update. Thanks to all those reported and involved in the fixing!

  You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:

  

  

  

  

  
  

  Full Changelog

  • Don’t run discovery event when in cinematic mode
  • Do a better job of updating old save autonav settings
  • Added more checks so tutorial messages don’t appear in claimed systems
  • Fixed blinking not breaking stealth
  • Fixed auto-hail message colouring
  • Only do updates with positive delta ticks
  • Fixed cargo disappearing when buying a ship when over the cargo limit
  • Don’t let the player trade ships when they have mission cargo
  • Fixed not being able to turn off point defense weapons
  • Fixed Za’lek drone bay being cheaper than the mini-bay
  • Flicker drives can not be stacked and are mutually exclusive with other blink drives
  • Decreased Nexus Drill Lance mining malus from -80% to -15%
  • Increased all mining yields by roughly 5 times
  • sciencegonewrong/02_sciwrong: make the drones not hostile to other factions
  • neutral/baron_comm: fixed trivial warning when trying to clean up baron comm event
  • neutral/wastedump: fixed getting rid of cargo while landed
  • Translation updates

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