StarMade 0.175 Custom Server Textures, Fixes, and Secret
Hello players,
another update with new features and bug fixes. Due to some more pressing bugs with multi slots and some finally fixed server issues, this update is being pushed a little bit sooner than I thought.
Here are the new Features:
Build Helper Restriction
Build helpers now allow building restriction to be turned on and off. Build restriction means, that you can only build or remove inside the Build Helper area. This should make using them even easier. Furthermore, most of the work has been put into a thread to prevent the game from freezing and eventually disconnecting when selecting a build helper.
Dynamic Prices
This last piece of the crafting update has now been done. Prices of items are now based each other
Secret little Special Feature
A secret feature has been added. I will talk about it in detail tomorrow. You will maybe run into it if you explore a neutral space station that has not been found before on foot. This is a proof of concept of what is to come next
Custom Server Textures and adaptive BlockConfig
This feature was requested for some time. Admins can now create their own blocks without having to resort to the default sheets, which eventually overwrite it. Also distributing custom texture has been not an easy task. Furthermore, a modified config had to be changed every time the game updates. All these problems are no longer an issue.
Here is how it works:
An admin can place the texture sheet and their normals (if needed) into ./StarMade/customBlockTextures/64, 128 and 256 as custom.png and custom_NRM.png. The game will create a the default structure when starting it once with the update. These textures are packed into pack.zip when starting the game and sent to the clients. The clients can accept or decline the download. Server admins are responsible for their content.
The adaptive BlockConfig works in a similar matter. Copy the BlockConfigImportTemplate.xml in ./StarMade/customBlockConfig/ to ConfigImportTemplate.xml. This file is a stub with two examples. The file will merge with the current block config, only replacing fields that changed, or adding a new block if it didn't exist before. In the blocks.properties there have meen made 256 values to use which won't get overwritten by something else in the game.
Clients ask for a hashcode before downloading so they can verify if they already have the textured cached for that server, so each client only needs to download the textures once, or when they changed.
Server save optimization
This optimization should help servers that have huge lags when the server is saving the game, especially with bigger stations and planets. It also increases performance if a lot sector changes are done.
Server crash fix
Another crash on servers has been fixed. This harder to find issue was caused by a running condition.
Other Bugfixes
As always, thanks to the testers!
Multiple warpgates are now working on the same space stations (as it was always intended). Also the multislot bugs should be fixed. If not, please report.
Thanks for playing StarMade,
- schema
