Starmade v0.19431 - No More Turret Lag, Jump Inhibitors & Admin Tools
Hello players,
This update is meant to clean up some stuff that has been in the queue for a while. It is also an update for server admins to make their lives a little bit easier.
Turret/Raildock Optimization
Due to optimizations in several parts of the code to reduce the quantity of collision checks and make them faster altogether, as well as some relief in the docking chain updates, approximately 90% of turret lag has been eliminated. Depending on turret sizes and count, ships that before had a hard time to get 5fps with active AI now run smoothly with almost no lag due to turrets.
Also, some advanced algorithms have been implemented to reduce lag on very large turrets, once again making use of special properties in a block game. If anyone is interested in the techniques used, please leave a comment and I’ll write up a dev blog for it.
Jump Inhibitors
In pvp, the advantage of being able to change multiple one-block jump drives to jump into an enemy sector, fire all weapons, and jump out has been rightfully criticized a lot.
To combat this situation, but not to nerf long distance traveling, a new system has been introduced: The jump inhibitor.
This system works exactly like the jump drive with the difference that a player doesn’t have to actively charge it. It can be turned on/off at will. When on, the jump inhibitor will discharge all jump drives in the same or adjacent sectors. The rate of discharge depends on the amount of modules used on the jump inhibitor. This means if you have a strong enough jump drive, you can still overcome the jump inhibitor.
Inventory Management
Better creative mode inventory
The creative mode inventory has been improved to now copy & paste items to the hotbar instead of moving them. Also, the search will no longer blend out filtered items, but display them one after another.
Inventory Pulling add-ons
You can now set an inventory to pull whole categories (same as in a shop). This should make automated inventory management a lot easier.
You can now also pull meta items.
Admin Tools
Server Update Lag Monitoring Tool
A tool to monitor sectors and objects that take very long to update has been added. This will make it easy to identify any sector where a lot of slowdown is happening. You can turn on the monitor in the general options ingame, but you have to be admin to enter the detailed view (F7). Lag will also be recorded so you can check on lag-spikes after they happened. Be aware that the reason, the “server not responding” message can appear is not only due to objects taking long to update on the server. It could be a simple network lag, too.
Restrictions for the Game Config
Admins can now add restrictions to the GameConfig.xml to better control their server and prevent possible abuse/lag.
There are examples for possible restrictions in /data/config/GameConfigDefault.xml (if you already have an existing GameConfig.xml in your install dir, you have to edit that, as the default is only a template that gets copied if no config exists)
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Restrict ships by mass or block-count
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Restrict ship computers by count per type
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Restrict ship systems by connected groups per computer (prevents monster salvagers)
Starmote has been revived
The tool now once again works, but is still a little barebone. A lot more features will be added in the future though.
Temporary Bans/Whitelisting
Admins can now issue temporary bans. Players will be notified about the time remaining on their ban on attempting to connect to that server.
The option has been added to the standard ban commands like for example
"/ban (playername) (kick) [reason] [time]"
Wave management
Admins can now manually manage spawnable waves. This will be applied to all the spawning AI on the server.
Each wave can be assigned a difficulty (should be between 1 and 10 for now), and even a faction.
Upon the game requiring a wave it will use the closest difficulty of a wave with the faction it needs to spawn on.
Wave Management can be accessed in the admin tab of the catalog.
If no wave is set for a faction, and the AI requests one for it, the old system of 'enemy usable' flags will be used.
Texture updates
As some of you may have noticed, we are in the midst of working on new texture features.
In the coming weeks, emissive, specular and shine maps will be added to the game. The project is ongoing and still in infancy, should you spot any anomalies please report your findings to Kupu. He has an open thread for such things in the Texture Pack sub-forum.
http://starmadedock.net/threads/kupus-thread.839/
#IMPORTANT#
As we found that the quality suffers too much from compression to the point where the next lower resolution looks almost better than a compressed higher one, Texture compression has been disabled as a default setting from now on. If you are experiencing extreme FPS drop, we recommend you either reduce the resolution of your texture pack, turn off normal maps, or re-enable Texture Compression in the Advanced Options within the Starmade launcher.
Emissive and Specular maps will soon be available in the Pixel pack for those running on slower systems.
Fixes
T580 Nullpointer while saving of Station blueprints from multiplayer to local
T576 Amount sellable appended instead of replace when overselling using sell amount
T551 Turrets are not saved and linked correctly in shipyards
T546 Using "create docking" on station causes nullpointer
T544 reboot key combo (tab+y) in astronaut mode causes nullpointer
T543 Multiple Shipyards on single station cause issues
T531 Add resolution: 3440 x 1440 to selectable game resolution
T529 Unable to split multi stacked items
T525 doors and forcefields can make a ship invulnerable
T517 Multiplayer: Loading designs does not work.
T511 cannot deconstruct to design/without design if shipyard inventory is full but has linked empty chests
T510 undocking ship from shipyard will not allow you to redock it
T501 Cooldown/reload animation not intuitive
T490 Planet part entities does not vanish even without any blocks
T489 ship catalog manager does not sort anymore
T467 Highlighting/selecting sectors on galaxy map
T463 placing block on asteroid not previously built on drops asteroids' original mass to 0
T450 Fix for entity-flag exploit does not affect already created entities.
T436 Factories on asteroids
T428 Stay attached to ship while being logged out
T415 Unable to kick members out of faction
T233 Chat kick and ban options
T225 radar jammer pirate exploit
T99 Structure Tab: UNABLE TO LOAD GUI-UNIT: Jamming System
Thanks for playing StarMade,
- schema and the Schine Team
