Jey

Beta client! Details here.

Blue Dwarf

I’ve finished up my map and handed off to Ryan to integrate onto our website.

I’ve also fixed a bug with the calculation for costs of built items when their blueprint builds more than one item and I’ve been thinking over the design and how the item and mission viewer would work.

Col Legno

I’ve finished up the T21 skill mission changes and they’re in testing. I’ve added a new prize for the end of the last Subspace mission and hope to finish testing the rest.

The Vert

I fixed some spawners jumping out of galaxies when they were not supposed to. I fixed it in the XML for one spawner in Enigmatic Sector and one in Sol (that pesky damn Broodmother!)

I have finalized the individual wild slave balance that so many players have requested, and which was planned and discussed a long time ago. Titan Bigger Greens, Green Battleships and Qokuji’qi are much more balanced now. This only affects their wild slave form, and not the spawner itself.

We’ve also discussed fighters for a bit, but we need some more time on this and get the content developers together to progress on this.

Ryan

Among other things this week, I helped integrate Blue Dwarf’s map into the website. We’ll also be exposing the universe info in JSON format under a starsonata.com/api type url, we’ll give you more details in an upcoming blog post. I’ll be moving over the next week, so you probably won’t hear to much from me for a couple weeks.

ergosphere

Unfortunately we don’t often get updates from ergosphere due to time differences, however I was sent this from him!

The below images are of the Kalthi Commander, which I have made a model and textures for. The Kalthi Terminator will look the same as it, except larger. I have also made textures for the Armored and Wrathful versions of the Kalthi Commander in a similar way to the other Perilous Perilous Space Kalthi ships that I have made.

Player questions!

Question 1

“Whats your favorite alcoholic beverage?”
Suit: I’d say I like beer. But not the American type. Belgian/Dutch beers.
Guinness is nice too.
But it depends on the situation. When out to dinner, wine is preferable.
Or a random evening, sometimes a single malt Whiskey

Blue Dwarf: Cider for me, prefer sweet to dry. Rekorderlig, Kopparberg, Aspall and Old Moot Cyder specificly.

Col Legno: Chocolate Martini.

Jey: Rum.

Jeff: Uuuuummmm, I’ll say right now it’s Ouzo. I also like a nice dark rum.

Ryan: Margaritas for me

Question 2

“Is there any plans to develop/implement Tech 23 in the future? If so what kind of time frame if any can we expect on its implementation?”

Jeff: We don’t really have any plns or thoughts right now
Jeff: I believe our current plan is to resubmit to steam and new content areas.

Here’s the link to submit a question!

Has to be said, pretty slow week. But slow weeks give us the longest meetings it seems!

Jey

An update hails down from the Great White North!

Jey has been up visiting his home town, but tells us he’s planning to do a patch soon. His client work is ‘pretty much done’. The final performance increase is around 23 times in high activity scenarios (e.g., base combat).

Blue Dwarf

I’ve been working on the bug where aura projectors affect others in locations they shouldn’t (such as non-PvP galaxies).
The map has been recieving some tweaks and tests to present older browser issues with some information on why it’s broken, instead of just breaking in their browser.

Col Legno

I realized I forgot to make an instance for roaming Hermes. I set up an instance for him and it’s nearly done.

The Vert

I fixed a bug where I had added Micro Vacuum Scoop twice in the drop tables, where one should have been a Mini Vacuum Scoop.

Ryan

Alien invasion fixes seem to be working and should be patched in sometime soon!

Player questions!

Question 1

Actually two questions, since they’re the same question
“When will tech 21 and/or tech 22 base gear be implemented?”
and
“When can we expect to see t21 and 22 base stuff being worked on? Can we get a fairly quantitative answer?”

We had a pretty length discussion on this in our meeting today. The overall result is that we’ve agreed on an acquisition method for these skills and are now beginning to plan it out.

Question 2

“There was a fair amount of discussion about a base slot revamp, any updates on that?”
yclepticon: It’ll be considered in parallel with the SM 21-22 project.

Here’s the link to submit a question!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

My map is nearly done, just some minor fixings to be done and it’ll hopefully get integrated over the next week (but no promises). A heads up, it doesn’t work on IE9 currently.

I’ve also been though our Speeling Error thread and fixed up a bunch of our silly mistakes!

Col Legno

I’ve created instanced Dungeons for the T21 missions: Electric Plant (electric eel), Guardian Hideout (Guardian Missions), and Pilot Farm (arena missions). The galaxies are essentially done and functional but in need of testing. Guardian Hideout and Pilot Farm still need to be decorated. I’ve fixed drops not working in the wave spawner and will probably fix credits not dropping from the wave spawner this coming week. I’m are planning to remove the randomization and replace it with 3 day lockouts for each mission instead. I’ll be getting back to fixing up the subspace missions next week.

Ryan

I think I’ve narrowed down all the issues I’ve been made aware of for the alien invasions, and the fixes should be on test soon (with accelerated invasions) for testing. I’m just getting over a nasty cold so things have been a little delayed, but now that I’m getting better I should be able to resume work on the website patch soon.

Player questions!

Seems like my plea for more submissions last week worked well as we have lots of questions. I forgot to actually ask during the meetings, so we’ll only be fielding two questions this week as a lot of us disappeared after the meeting.

Question 1

“Will there ever be a XML type service, where the community can have public access to Market Checker Prices, Galaxy Map and etc?

I would imagine some community members could make some excellent services with these resources for the rest of us to enjoy and use.”

Blue Dwarf: This is partially already in the pipeline! The map I’ve been making gets the universe data by dispatching a XMLHttpRequest for the data from the server. However, the data included here is very stripped down. The data for the map is served up as a JSON object of all the galaxies, indexed by their ID. This is what Free Market looks like

"2052402974":{
  "t":"",            // team presence
  "u":61,            // userbase count
  "n":"Free Market", // galaxy name
  "x":-0.727036,     // position on map
  "s":1,             // special galaxy (purple name)
  "o":0,             // owned
  "b":2,             // spacestation count
  "w":[              // galaxies connected to this one, by ID
    "2052386930",
    "2052386940",
    "2052386946",
    "2052386958",
    "2052386964",
    "2052387152",
    "2052627944",
    "2052627960"
  ],
  "a":0,             // anchor galaxy (e.g., Deep Space)
  "df":0.1,          // danger factor, but 100 times smaller
  "p":0,             // protected
  "l":0,             // layer id
  "y":-0.39123       // position on map
}

Once the map is up, the JSON entire (discovered) universe will be publicly accessible.
For the mission and item viewer, me and Jey have planned a similar interface but there’ll be a backend php script which will provide filtered down results so users only download information they need.

Ryan: it’d still be nice to do an api at some point (though probably not in xml)

Question 2

“What is your day jobs?”

Theodore: I make braille signs.
Col Legno: I work for a company that writes legal software. Mostly big lawsuit stuff.
Blue Dwarf: My day job is SS, at least that’s the only thing I get paid to do. I’m also currently at uni (Computer Science, now going onto first year). For Ryan, Jey and Jeff, as far as I am aware, SS is also their day jobs.
ylcepticon: I teach art to very small humans
yclepticon: everyone is small compared to SPACESHIPS

Here’s the link to submit them!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

The web map is looking much better than last week. The map now shows anchor galaxies (such as Absolution) correctly on both layers, supports working out autopilot routes (although this still needs some work), improved UI and added the ability to toggle some extra display options, like colouring galaxies owned by the same team together.

While it’s mostly there, it could still use a little bit of work.

I’ve been through the suggestions system and cleaned up a few that we’ve done/we’re not doing, and managed to get us to review a couple.

Col Legno and Theodore

Fixed a bunch of stuff in subspace missions. Still working on the Blue Photon arm and the second Earthforce arm. Going to take a short break from subspace to fix up some of the t21 daily missions. Plans are to make custom dgs to house the pilots and the guardians. There will be bosses at the ends, but we also plan to keep the roamers in so that if a player can’t get to the boss at the end of the DG, they’ll still have the option of finding the roamers. We’re going to decrease the DF of the roamers range so they won’t go into perilous perilous.

Jey

Still working on the client performance / fixes. I also did a few tweaks on the webserver to reduce the website lags from backups and scores update.

Player questions!

Totally forgot to do them! Many apologies although we are in need of some more questions. It seems some of your submissions are more of statements… Or paragraphs rather than questions. Pretty please submit us some more! They don’t even have to be about the game but could be about us ourselves.

Here’s the link to submit them!

More wiki stuff!

It looks like we’ll be moving items away from the wiki. After speaking with Jey our plan is to add a new page to the website, which we can fill with information from the server. It does mean a few drawbacks, though, such as the inability to add comments to items. However we get the ability to add extra data into the table, such as the current market prices (and perhaps past prices).

It also looks like missions will be getting similar treatment, so you’ll be able to browse those too!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

So a large portion of my update was involving the wiki changes. Although over the weekend I’ve also been working on something else rather cool.

This map is currently generated from universe backup data. It’ll probably be appearing on the website some point soon, after some face lifting and finishing touches.

Over this coming week I’ll also be going over the suggestions we currently have in the system and removing those that are no longer relevant.

Ryan

I’ve been working on fixing some glaring problems with the alien invasion stuff as mentioned last week. I’ve identified several issues with the spawners that hold galaxies and have gone through most of the alien spawners to address them.

Col Legno and Theodore

We have been tidying up mission text for the subspace missions, working on improving the prizes at the end of the subspace mission chains and fixing up broken tags so the missions can be done in their intended order. Next up for the missions is taking some close looks at the instancing for the missions and considering decoupling high level prize missions (ie fighters and missiles) from low level mission chains.

Suit

He was absent from the meeting! Also, this Friday he’s off exploring France for two weeks, so we’ll see him when returns

Jeff

We ran some Reddit advertising over the long weekend to several subreddits, spending a bit more than last weekend. The results were a bit worse, averaging 30 cents cost per click and not that many new players as a result. Will probably not do too much more advertising for now, and just keep focusing on the Steam launch.

Jey

Making sure my client optimizations do not cause more problems than they fix. This is a rather lengthy process due to the long testing phases between fixes, but is coming along.

Player questions!

Question: Any chance of us seeing player versions of more AI ships such as stellas, similar to the way the NF/GB ships were done?
Jeff: Sure, if players are interested in it and a content dev gets interested in it.

Question: Any possibility of getting a total dps/ total healing done in squad for an instance?
Jeff: Would be nice, I thought about it before. Some people have been against it in the past.

Question: Are you interested in introducing a “player status” bar to every player, in which we could set whether we’re afk, busy, DGing etc.? As an addition we could set a time limit and if we’d be passive for so long, the client would automatically set us “afk” until we move again.
Jeff: Not opposed to it. If it were an upvoted suggestion, we could do something like this.

Finally, a heads up for next week. Our meetings are changing time and will be a few hours later.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

Stolen from Suit once again! No, seriously, he had to leave.

First off, wiki stuff!

For this meeting, we’ve invited SunDog here. We’ve had a discussion on how we could change the wiki to be even more useful. It’s very hard to do. We’ve discussed ways to add missions and items to the wiki automatically. I won’t go into detail on this, because it’s quite technical (and took us half an hour).

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

Monthly event! I had a little problem getting the Improcerus event started on Saturday (I might’ve crashed the server and found a couple bugs) but other than that it went well.

Bug squishing and odd bits of cleaning up behind the scenes.

Ryan

He’s been working on integrating the Steam API into our web server, to do, stuff.

Theodore

Theodore is still working on testing and fixing up the Subspace mission chains.

Suit

He arranged the wiki meeting and found some more questions from you guys. And he’s been very busy with university!

Subspace Issues

Ryan will be looking into some of the bugs regarding the invasion mechanic, as a temporary measure we’ve reduced the colony suitability nerf to 2% per level from 5%.

Player questions!

Question: When will tech 21 and/or tech 22 base gear be implemented?
No current plan for this, but it’s on the eventual to-do list.

Question: When are termite mounds getting a beefed?
No current plan for this, but it sounds like a good idea.

Question: Are Ruins something that are potentially being updated in the near-ish future? Vast amount of items in them are useless / no updates for t21/t22.
This sounds like a good idea.
Blue Dwarf: SoonTM to all of them.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

It’s finally here! Apologies for May’s forgotten event, that was the weekend of my last uni exam for the year and then I was away the following weekend.

So to cut to the chase this event will include +150% XP, double DG and drop mod chances for six days (ending July 2nd, 13:00 server time).

Finally, starting with this event, all future weekend events will be every four weeks rather than the third weekend of every month and BobboBot on our IRC knows when the next event will be, which you can find out for yourself by sending ‘!countdown event‘ to him.

Enjoy the weekend folks!

The special bonus event:
In Improcerus there is a wave spawner, configured to spawn 9 iconic-ish AI in series. Improcerus only allows tech 0 ships and no slaves.

Provide me (post it in the forum) with a screenshot of the kill (in event chat) + your squad, and I’ll reward your squad once verified. The rewards will go to the squad leader, to be divied up.

For each kill there is a credit reward
1b credits for the first kill,
2b credits for the second,
4b for the third,
6b for the fourth,
8b for the fifth,
10b for the sixth,
14b for the seventh,
20b for the eighth and
40b for the ninth kill.

Additionally, if your squad makes over 30b your squad will get a free Zebucart skin (which’ll go on all Zebucart variations), if your squad makes over 10b your squad will get a permanent unique holoprojector.

Another week full of fun things and interesting news! This is going to be an interesting one, since The Vert has a big update (Which is on the forum as well, I’ll link it later in the blog). Also, some information regarding Steam as well!

So, who’s done what?

Jeff

Jeff has been working on advertising. We also have a new landing page, check it out here!

Blue Dwarf

Bobbo thought the monthly event was supposed to be next weekend. Derp.

Furthermore, he’s been cleaning up the content folder (It’s really big!), like deleting old stuff from client 1.

As a final change, live (right now already!) the Plantarium (Starting next uni, it’ll be called the Planetarium) has been changed to f2p only instead of being level 200-. Enjoy!

The Vert

Vert’s found something with the spawners of Nightfury’s, Hives, Delquads and some more. We’re going to look into that.

Also: colonies! Yes, the issue that you guys wanted us to look at. Vert’s analyzed it all now. From looking at it himself to checking player feedback from 2 years ago up to the present day, he’s found the good and bad aspects of the Alien layer. His full update can be found here.

Theodore and Col Legno

Theodore and Col Legno have been going through the subspace missions, to find every bug possible. They’ve found a bunch, we have a proper list of that now. This varies from missions saying they’ll reward a ship while actually rewarding an item, or safety lock not working properly.

Jey

Jey wasn’t here for the meeting. However, we had his updates through the notes. From what we’ve read, he’s done more client optimization.

Suit

I’ve taken the feedback on the wiki, and I’ve proposed it to the dev team. However, Jey and Ryan weren’t here for this meeting. Wiki generally is a pain, Jey and Ryan have most knowledge of this.

The idea for the wiki would probably be along the lines of: If it’s been on the market place, it’ll come to the wiki. I’ll give you guys an update on this next week.

I didn’t like how we didn’t have an event this weekend. I’ve bothered Blue Dwarf to activate it tonight already, but he’s doing it friday and he’s going for something fun. If it doesn’t happen this friday (meaning: he forgot), I promise you guys, there’s going to be a MASSIVE event as a compensation.

Player questions!

Question 1: Whens the alien colony feature going to be fixed?

Vert: Check out my forum post.

 Question 2: hey Suit. Can we widen the Transference effect back to c1 levels? So you can actually see it is a Yin Yang instead of just being an oval cut in half.

Jeff: I don’t really see a problem with them at this moment, I can see it. However, if somebody from the dev team wants to play around with it, I wouldn’t mind.

Suit: I like the idea. Lower techs are still quite wide, but when you get more range you’ll have more of a beam-like instead of the actual transference effect.

Col Legno: I agree, transferences like the Emp Wand are quite narrow, but still okay. Where the real issue comes in is the alien ones. They’re really thin beams and don’t even look like shield transferences.

Theodore: I noticed the alien ones as well, those can be annoying from time to time.

Blue Dwarf: First world problem: Not seeing your yin yang anymore.

Question 3: When is the game going to be officially released on Steam? I just keep hearing “soon”(TM)

Blue Dwarf: SoonTM.

Jeff: We have a list of things needed for the introduction of Star Sonata to Steam. Steam gave us feedback on some things they wanted us to change, we’re doing that at this moment. We’re about halfways on the list, this is stuff like changing the ‘Create account’ dialog, or pushing Steam Wallet stuff.

Would you like to see your question featured in a Dev blog? Ask them here!

Well… That’s it! See you next week!

Yay, more meeting stuff!

First off, let’s welcome a new member on the team… Theodore will now help us improve the game!

What’s changed since last week?

Now, for stuff we’ve done since last week for Steam!
The account creation for Star Sonata is going to be slightly different. There will be an e-mail recheck and a confirmation if you’ve typed your password correctly. This is to improve the first startup of the game. It’s nothing exciting right now (in terms of looks), but we’re working on this. Functionality had the first priority.

We’ve also enabled SS to autofill the content of your account name etc, for a faster account creation for steam users.
Steam Wallet will be live soon.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been working on the client, basically non-stop all week. This is to add some of those fancy login features, but also performance wise. The client should be improved greatly! He’s testing using a 40 bases vs 40 bases setup firing at max rof. That’s his benchmark. So, having a client optimized to be able to handle that… Pretty neat, don’t you think?

As a comparison, the old client at low will freeze on load. The current beta client gets 8fps. The new client will get 15 fps. With lagkiller on, the new client reaches 80 fps. Since the load from the scenario is mostly cpu and not render- related, there’s basically no difference between low and high settings.

He’s also confirmed that every player could, in theory, use the Steam Client, even if you don’t use it on Steam. This doesn’t really affect you guys, but it makes it a LOT easier for us to push updates.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s made some of the changes to the account creation dialog. He’s also added some decimals to the team xp tithe report (so you won’t see just 1 xp all the time).

The Vert

Vert’s added a t22 version of the Flamberge! It’ll be called the Voulge.

He’s also been chatting with yclepticon, about station slots for galaxies. Right now attackers get unlimited slots, which defenders get a 25 base limit for unattached slots. This should be changed, and we’re looking into it for possible solutions.

Ryan

Ryan’s been prepping to update the webserver code in preperation for steam. Ran into a few issues on his test server, but managed to fix them.

He has also been looking into a long-standing vis issue with seers, but couldn’t find anything yet. He’s waiting on a list of affected characters to compare them to non-affected characters and track down the issue.

He also fixed an issue with BvB kits. Yay for bug fixing!

Theodore

Theodore’s busy with setting up to see what can be done. Stuff like haunting the bug forum, hopping in the game and asking around, or anything of the sorts.

Suit

I’ve gathered your questions and selected a few. It did come to my attention that some players used the question area to complain about the game. Sorry guys, but the dev questions is for QUESTIONS! I’m getting a lot of complaints in there. I asked you guys for questions. I’m sorry, but I’m not presenting those complaints to show in the blog as well. We’re aware of a lot of the complaints anyway, and we’re looking into those. Getting a 5 page story about something you don’t agree on (without any questions in there!) doesn’t help me when I’m looking for questions.

Player questions!

Q1: Is there any planning on new content zones similar to Arctia, Vulcan, Mira and Jungle coming soon?

Jeff: No. At this moment we’re focussed more on getting accepted by Steam
Vert: I have some ideas, but the progress on this has halted for now.
Jey: I’m not content!

Q2: When is BobboBot coming to the SS client?

Blue Dwarf: BobboBot himself will never come to Star Sonata because he’s an IRC bot. However, if you’d like something added to the game (such as colony suitability, work needed and the sorts), you could always ask.

Q3: How is the effort going to improve documentation? Such as linking the wiki to in-game descriptions so all us players can provide our labor in fixing this rather than having to point out inaccuracies and typos in the bug forum.

Jeff: Linking the wiki to ingame descriptions isn’t easy, and it would not be recommended. A real-time link is heavy (load-wise). More likely we would export the balance sheets and have a converter to convert it to the wiki. If we wanted to do it, that would be the way.
Suit: The main issue is also that some stuff is not available to the players, and we’d prefer to keep it that way.
Ryan (in response to Suit): We could add a tag that it’s been on the player marketplace, in this way everyone can have seen it.
Jeff: If people would like to see this link to the wiki, it could always officially be suggested.

Q4: How’s your day going?

Jeff: Right..
Blue Dwarf: Good, had pub dinner!
Jey: I’m hungry
Suit: Wat.

That’s it!

Would you like to see your question in next week’s blog? Ask it here!

See you next week!

Awww yeah. We’re back!

What’d we miss?

Jeff’s been on holiday (explains the no meeting part, partially).

There’s been a few developer applications. We might have some new people in our team soon!

Steam has sent us feedback on our client. We’re fixing those issues, it’s some basic stuff (e-mail confirmation, creating an account, etc). I’m not going into detail on this, but we’ve had a long discussion on this.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey did some client data gathering, mainly with BvB action (a LOAD of data to go through) to improve the client. This is to avoid lag, crashes and the sorts. Jey will post his own blog about this, since it’s a huge story!

Also, a few hiccups on the server have nbeen fixed. Backups were using too much bandwith.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s found a bug, special galaxies didn’t have a t19 blueprint limit in the Earthforce layer. It’s been fixed! (Yay or boo, depending on how you look at it.)

Yclepticon

Some features on BvB were checked and not really working as intended, we’re looking into this. Nothing big, but worth looking at and improving, for you guys.

Ryan

Ryan’s finished some webserver stuff, we need to patch to the live web server for the Steam Wallet. Also, Space Point Exchange’s been finished.

Team XP for killing bosses has been implemented, just needs to be patched in. Exciting!

Suit

I had a question from a player; Will armada drones be looked at? (Base drones)

Blue Dwarf will look at them. Some are indeed underpowered, and he’ll see what he can do about it.

This added a new idea for me… Player input into our weekly blog! I’ve made a link where you can put your questions, perhaps we’ll answer it in our next meeting/blog. Post your questions here!

That’s it for this week. See you next week, everyone!