We’re currently experiencing some unexpected downtime following the micro patch to address the source of the recent crashes.

It seems that the server is crashing on load and we’re currently looking into it.

Thank you for your patience.

+ Asteroid belt fix for the belts that are small and only contain one type of asteroid (asteroids were spawning in under 30 seconds, was supposed to be 5 hours, now is far less and more in line with what other belt spawners are).


* Emperor Tithe is now 10% of scooped credits, items sold to colonies, and items sold to AI stations.
* Fixed a bug where prospecting nodes in Perilous Space would be able to appear in the lowest danger factor of Perilous Perilous Space.
* Fixed a bug where vacuum scoops were not pulling in items due to the changes that did not let them act on items the owner could not scoop.
* Increased scoop autoshutdown from 30 sececonds to 2 minutes.
* Tweaked decay message to add details if its not the active ship.

Suit isn’t here this week, so I’ve taken over his lovely weekly blog!
Don’t forget that universe reset is this weekend guys.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been tracking down and fixing a bug involving high CPU usage when alt-tabbing.

Once he’s got that fixed, he’s preparing a patch to fix Vacuum scopes, increasing the timer from 30 seconds to 120 seconds and the pulling. Additionally any other fixes other devs need in.

Ryan

Ryan implemented the changes to Emperor’s tithe as well as added the additional Imperial Chest drops that we discussed last week. He’s been fixing the leader-board issues on the website and its mostly back in order but there is still a bug with the player rankings. He’s is currently looking at a bizarre slave healing bug that causes aggression.

Jeff

Jeff has handed out some reward skin items to players which ergosphere has produced for us and has been taking care of business stuff.

Blue Dwarf

I’ve done the scaling spawn times on spawners that we mentioned last week. If the time between kills is short then the spawn time will be reduced, specifically for The Nexus to help deal with potential heavy influx of players.
I’ve made it so that peons will be able to abandon/transfer their stations now, just like their lonely-teamless friends.
More error checking is performed when setting up mining slaves.
Slave ‘Show Status’ will contain the state of durability of the slave’s gear
I’ve fixed the wild AI XP reward capping bug and a bug during universe generation occasionally causing small asteroid belts having a spawn rate that is too high.

This is a patch containing a lot of internal changes that were required for our steam integration to work, not all that much to say about it in patch notes until everything is actually turned on.

None the less, here are the notes.

* 14 new server crash found and fixed.
* 8 different client crashes tracked and fixed (around 3 crash left that i know off but was unable to pinpoint, keep those dmp flowing)
* A few minor client optimisations, especially when in a ship with a lot of different items.
* Achievements are now enabled, but cannot be rewarded unless you have a steam client (which are not available yet), When you get an achievement on regular client you receive a message in event and it will be awarded to you as soon as you connect using a steam client (no need to redo them)
* Added all the files needed for steam support on the server side.
* Added bonus XP for the first time capturing an AI with each different type of hull. Added /caps chat command to list how many and which unique hulls you have captured. At least for now, capping a new ship type is set to give a flat 500 XP.
* Made Ambushinmatrixes (Seer Radar Jammer items) not trigger if your weapnos’ damage is less than 0 (shield transferences)
+ Fixed a spawner bug in protoplasmica that caused spawns to only start dropping keysyncs on the second spawn.
+ Added experience tag to a lot of spawners under 120 in low/mid level galaxies so the spawned ai will provide experience.
* Removed augs from ares warriors and replaced them with an OL
* Made it so that vacuum scoops will not effect items that the owner is not allowed to scoop
* Vacuum scoops will now shut themselves off after 30s
* Improved the speed on sp related transactions (the delay should be a lot shorter now)
* Made energybanks report their energy per second rather than energy per generation interval (1.2s)
+ Fixed particle emitters. Player/ ai Holo projectors as well as particle emitters in effected galaxies have been fixed.
* Fixed a display error for skill point debt/credit
* Item factories no longer work on abandoned bases
* Small changes to the roaming UrQa’qa Qu’ishi boss
* Added a new functionality to prevent specific items (ai only items) from being used by players.
* Fixed an issue where Lunarian and Selenite Ray and Beam had their stats swapped around
* Added fires to several heat damage weapons from Perilous Perilous Space
* Small improvements to Lunarian Bank and Selenite Bank
* Improved the Hybridized Paximinus to make it in line with the Paximinus stats

Well, the universe might be ending soon, but we decided it was time for another meeting.

Important notes

First off, there was a lot of attention regarding bugs and exploits. One player has been banned for 3 months. More on this later.

We have taken action for the Imperial Seal bug abuse. We can’t punish the exploiters, so instead we’re rewarding the honest players. Imperial Seals will drop from all t21 and t22 bosses, starting next uni.

So, who’s done what?

Jey

Jey’s been cleaning up our new servers and finalizing the patch preparations.

Some people might have noticed some issues regarding their e-mail addresses. This was because of our new server (but not our fault! Yay!). Because we have a new IP, Microsoft didn’t recognize it and it was automatically blocked from their mailing lists. Setting our server to match their policies exactly should stop this from happening.

He’s also been running extra tests on his private server, so we could skip having the patch on our livetest server before going live.

The Vert

Fixed a bug regarding the Divine Prophet. People got stuff they weren’t supposed to, naughty naughty!

Superitems will be added to t22 ships in Perilous Perilous Space.

Suit

I’ve finally finished the player versions of the Nightfury and Green Battleship! They’ll be in on the uni reset.

Speaking of uni reset, I noticed that we were missing our guide. Click here for the guide for the universe reset!

Ryan

People used a bug to get AI-only items. A player has been banned for this for exploiting it. Ryan’s going to add an AI-only tag to a bunch of items, so players can’t get it anymore.

He’s also committing the client-side things for Space Point purchases.

Now for a sadder announcement… Ryan’s removing some of our explicit AI names. No more laughing at R-rated AI!

Jeff

Jeff has been charging PayPal subs which didn’t go through because of the blocked mailing list.

Still no review from Steam! Gah!

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s done a few things that’s already been said above. He’s helped me with my finishing touches on the ships and he’s fixed the AI-only stuff you guys weren’t supposed to get.

He’s also finished working on BobboBot with some fancy new commands (like !countdown), you can find out about that in our IRC. Our updated IRC rules are now included in the main rules! Click here to see the updated IRC rules.

As a change to the Nexus, if AI are killed very quickly, they will respawn quicker. This is to prevent people needing to wait a long time for certain AI to spawn. Hopefully this will be in by uni reset.

Other stuff

We discussed a new reward for being Emperor. The emperor’s team could take a tithe from all AI-base sales, all scooped credits and all Colony profits.

Alright guys, I have some terrible news.

We’ve changed servers, of course. This enabled us to do a lot more, performance wise. We’ve been looking around for extra stuff we could do. Jey’s been doing an awesome job at trying to keep up with us messing around, but we went too far.

I pushed the server hamster too far, and it’s gone berserk. It’s now chanting about the end of times, and somehow I think it’s right. We have 2 weeks left, on the 16th of May the hamster will turn into a destructive force we have never encountered before. I tried to save us, but… Our universe is ending. The team’s done the best they can, but we can’t fix it. I’m sorry, everybody. It’s been a nice universe, and I hope we’ll survive the blast and perhaps find civilization in a next dimension.

Alright, now to make sure everyone gets it:

Universe reset Saturday the 16th of May at 1PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time. The server downtime will hopefully be kept to a minimum.

Wow, the third week already!

So, who’s been doing what?

Jeff

Jeff has renewed the server payment. It looks good so far!

Our game page hasn’t been reviewed yet by Steam.

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf has been cleaning up the code for BobboBot, which is our automated IRC bot.

Jey

Jey’s nearly done with setting up the livetest on the website.

Due to a lot of crash fixes, he hasn’t been able to push the update through yet. It’ll be on livetest asap, after which it can be done on the live server.

Suit

I got lots of feedback on the previous weekly dev post regarding the palace bug.

The problem being, with such a widespread use of this unintended feature, it’s nearly impossible to find everyone who has used this.

Ryan

Ryan has been fixing website issues related to the server migration. He’s trying to fix the leaderboard updating.

Other stuff

Steam beta after live patch! Yay!

**Update** The biggest part of the migration is now done, the web and game should be fully functional, but the migration is still in progress in parallel so expect a few hiccups here and here.

the new irc is accessible using irc.starsonata.com port 7777
or
kiwi irc
or
mibbit irc

As mentioned in http://www.starsonata.com/blog/new-servers-migration-soon/ we have been working on new server hardware / location to increase performance on the webserver/database/test servers and in doing so found upgrade for all our machines. The downtime will begin at 11h00 pm ET (server time) and will last about 8 hours

I have been doing just about everything that could be done without causing downtime to shorten / facilitate the final transition. But a final downtime is still needed to move the dynamic data (forum data, game database), to update the dns and tie everything together on the new servers.

During that downtime, the website will be switched over to a maintenance page. Forum, wiki and blog will all be disabled to allow for a clean transfer. The game server will also be stopped to allow for the database and website communication interface to be transfered without problems.

Website and other secondary services will come back up as they become available. The game server will be the last thing to come back up and in all likelyhood won’t happen before those 8 hours are elapsed.

Another week, another blog!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

He’s been swamped in coursework and other tasks from university this week. Sadly, he couldn’t do much in Star Sonata.

Jey

Jey has been busy fixing crashes on our live and livetest server.

Also, for our new server some updates! A lot of technical talk, but it comes down to this:

More automated stuff for backups/restarts, simpler commands and a better watchscript for restarts. Also, a new test server which  automatically updates/compiles.

Ryan

Ryan has been working on the webserver support for Steam checkout. There was also a bug with the Emperor’s Palace which has been fixed now. Furthermore, Ryan’s been discussing an interesting new concept with Yclepticon. I’m sorry, it’s a surprise! More about this in another blog.

Suit

I’ve been looking at possible droprates for the GB/NF player versions. What’s the droprate? A mission? A ship? I can’t say! You’ll see it when it’s implemented.

Jeff

Busy with Steam. Our Steam page is up for review at this moment.

Any other discussions?

We’ve had a few interesting discussions this week. I’ve summarized them for you guys.

Team score and BvB

Since the team scores are quite high to be able to BvB, we’ve had a discussion on lowering the team score required to be able to BvB. We’ve been thinking of a team score of 50 to be required.

Team skills

Similar issue as with the team score system. Since there are many strong teams, new and lower teams are having difficulty climbing up the ranks to become stronger and better. We’ve been thinking of the possibility of a new system which is less linear than the current one.

And we’ve had a short discussion on building indestructible bases and running for Emperor as devs. But I don’t think I should put that in here, I guess.. Oh well.

That’s it for this week! I’ll be back next week with more interesting news and discussions. This weekend I might be able to high five any Irish players around, since I’ll be visiting there friday-monday.

See you next week!

Hey, everyone!

As I love informing you guys on everything, I’ve asked the others from the dev team if I could post information from our weekly meetings (yes, we have those!)

Whenever possible, I’ll make some notes on the weekly meetings and I’ll update you guys on what’s been done, and what’s being planned in the near future (except for surprises, because, you know… surprises).

Anyway, we’re off!

So, who’s done what?

Blue Dwarf

Blue Dwarf’s stopped easter. (Boo!)

He’s also worked on some achievement bugs for Steam. He’s working on implementing achievements such as building a base, etc.

Ryan

Ryan has been working on the payments through Steam, to allow you guys to buy both spacepoints and subscriptions through Steam. He also figured out a bug with subspace spawners that were causing hundreds of ai to spawn an hours and fixed it. Before the fix there were over 1606 ai ships in a gal!

Jey

Jey’s been working on the integration of the new server, doing a lot of testing of it all. It looks very positive. Quoting him, the database is “swimming in ram”, the server should hold our live + test servers quite easily.

He’s going to do a full patch, hopefully friday or monday (in the best case scenario. If he encounters any issues, this could be delayed). If all goes well, the server will be migrated the following day.

Jeff

Jeff has been working on banners for Steam. Here’s a few of them! These are some first versions, we’ve been discussing on which ships we should use for this. They should be interesting, but not too high tech (so players can pilot the “banner” ships quite quickly in the game). They also shouldn’t be too dark, since it’s often against a dark background so the ships would get lost in it.

Suit

I’ve been… Making this blog, I guess? I have no idea.

I’ve been playing around ingame, spawning stuff for people in the Colosseum, which was really fun. I got to talk to a lot of you guys, you all gave me some really nice input and/or feedback which I’ve also discussed with the team. I’ll definitely try and be ingame more often.

So, that’s it for this week! As I’ve said ingame, after the server migration, we’ll be able to hand out some Steam beta keys. I’ll keep you updated on this.

See you next week!