Star Made

Welcome Curated News
61

No. Here are 3 very valuable and easy to get items…

  1. Wood
  2. Cactus
  3. Ice Planet Rock

By the way…schematics for my vehicles will be added soon :smiley:

62

don’t forget plexi glass, but if I was running the game, I would decrease the selling but leave the buying alone. This is b/c glass is so popular and found so much and so easily that we rack in the millions much to easy. On one shop I got 5m from 3.5k glass
another I got 4m for 4k glass
its a game of chance but for something so common you shouldn’t be able to get a that much money for it
btw 40k hulls gets you 4m
but that’s a lot of hulls…

EDIT: izzy could you make the max speed limit at 75? its not to high or to low and is still a good battle speed.

63

I just mine out those random stations. I get 20m+

64

Maybe a simpler method would be to limit the max amount that shops will buy.

65

they hold 10k… that makes the hull selling not… the easiest… but still easy enough, but I think on certain items the sell price need to be decresed or what I would prefer, every 100 the sell for 1 of that item is the max limit is decreased by 1k, so say the shop will buy glass for 1500 each, the shops max would be decreased by 5k. b/c of the 500 (notice the 5) so say something sell 2.1k though? the minimal decrease would be 5k so you can sell decent but the better the sell the less you can sell. Why do I post it here? might as well use the starmade forums

66

http://star-made.org/content/starmade-dev-update-meta-items

Submitted by schema on Wed, 07/17/2013 - 02:21

Hello,

Here is a little update on what I’m working at the moment.

The last days were dedicated to fix some bugs and improve performance. I managed to make significant steps in the save/load system, that is responsible for loading in all blocks in sectors. More on that when the update is released.

I made an special thing (similar to pyramids) for earth planets, but I’m not spoiling the fun of exploration by telling what.

I’m also working on a completely integrated (and abstracted) system for having items other than blocks in the game. The neat thing about the system is, that every item is unique and fully synchronized (on demand to save bandwidth), by client and server. This means there is any kind of data structure possible, and as easy to implement as writing a class with 2 inherited methods for de/serialization.

My first example item class was just simple text books, but I will do more in the coming days. They will also come in most handy when doing character-items (like hand weapons, drills, armor, etc)

(I also misspelled the name of my first logbook… oh well)

I can’t give an ETA on this yet, since this is a core feature (along with the optimizations, that also are very delicate) that requires testing to check for game breaking bugs.

Thanks for playing StarMade,

  • schema

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67

http://star-made.org/content/starmade-00938-meta-items-new-factories

Submitted by schema on Sat, 07/20/2013 - 23:32

Hello and welcome to StarMade,

Additional to a lot of bug fixes and optimizations, this version is introducing an all new meta-item system, and a new factory system.

Meta Items

A structure for items that have a completely free set of data has been implemented. It was actually one of the most time consuming parts of the update to create an abstract system, where I can just define new types of items with just one class. The hard part was to abstract the system over the network, so the items will not only be consistent with the world (saved, and loaded/unloaded with the universe), and for it to be synched over the network, but also to implement a way that items are only sent on demand, so network overhead for items that a player is not even near of won’t happen.

Log books

Log books are the first class of items that have a very simple purpose: You write things in it and anybody else who opens it can read it. No more, and no less. This might be a good tool for RPG servers to get a customized lore across.

Log books will spawn in pirate bases and ruin chests only. They cannot be bought or sold (yet).
There is anew file in the /data/config/ directory that lets admins define the default messages that will randomly be assigned to a spawned logbook.

There is also an admin command “/give_logbook playername” for admins to create it.

Recipes

The second meta item that is introduced in this version is the first one that will have impact on the game play. More about it below.

New Factory System

I was planning for a long time to change the factory/block-crafting system. The root of my thoughts were always: in science-fiction games, recipes will never be completely natural. No matter what you do, the items in a game like that will be as natural as putting wood and iron together to make a pickaxe. And that’s also not what this game should be about.

So with the current system it’s unbelievably hard to learn and remember recipes. If you still did, I’m very sorry :(.

Basically the basic system will stay the same.

Here is the short version of how it works now:

  • Only one factory remains (factory input)
  • No fixed recipes are bound to that block
  • put a recipe in the top left slot
  • it does exactly that

In the old system I originally wanted to make way longer production chains instead of having 4 factories doing everything. But that system requires to add a new block type for every single product there is. This is way to much cumbersome. So I “outsourced” what the factory does into the meta-item “recipe”

A recipe is basically just that: It takes some ingredients and outputs a block. Out the recipe and the ingredients into a factory and the factory will make that block if you also put in the ingredients. Since there is only one type of block produced by recipe, you will need to chain-connect factories together to create the desired outcome.

Recipes are pretty much unique and can’t be sold. That’s why they are a valuable trading asset with other players. The can be found in pirate bases and ruins. And they can also be bought in shops.

Unlike normal blocks recipes don’t require credits to be bought. They require 10,000 (value can be changed by admins) block of the block you are creating a recipe for.
The ingredients however are random in amount and type, so there are “good” recipes and “bad” recipes. But this highly depents on the player. If you get a recipe that makes sand into hulls, and you don’t have any sand, a player based on a sand planed might be very interested in that.

Higher level parts will prefer manufacturing items as their ingredients, and those are the only type of item-recipes that require minerals/etc to buy instead of the items itself (would be rather hard to gather 10k protein)

Notable optimizations

On one side I managed to make lighting calculations faster.
On the other, saving and loading will now use a new threaded random access algorithm, that will write and read data much faster. So this will hopefully get rid of a lot of sources of lag on servers.

Please be sure to keep backups, since a change in this part of the engine is very delicate.

More bug fixes

  • got rid of shutdown hooks: only used in absolute emergency (should never happen, even on crash)
  • server errors are now displayed instead of just shutting down
  • fixed false modified blueprint triggering when adding blocks afterwards
  • fixed “unknown faction” although faction exists
  • added check for ghost players
  • fixed bug where too many files could be deleted when a structure gets destroyed
  • fixed bug that left a invisible version of the mothership if it was removed with docked ships attached
  • fixed bug that turned docked ships into ghosts if mothership was removed
  • missiles now display and update shield hits correctly on the client
  • added notification to re-orientate if rotational system is entered
  • mouse check for GUI elements that are not drawn anymore but were flagged as “mouse inside” will now always deactivate the flag on the end of the frame. This should fix the permanent tooltip bug.
  • improved performance of wedges and spikes by not drawing faces that aren’t visible (next to a solid block), in the same way the normal block algorithm already does
  • implemented server option to customize speed of rotating stellar systems (or to switch it off)
  • improved segment(chunk) reading performance by buffering the header for segmentRegions
  • improved segment(chunk) writing performance by also using buffered headers and switching to java NIO FileChannel MappedByteBuffer for random access
  • console&rcon(starNet) commands are now only interpreted as chat broadcast if they start with /chat
  • price of blueprint will now include price of all docked structures
  • shops now safe against missiles
  • blocks of other factions can no longer be activated with docking beam
  • shop spawning can now be customized by admins

Also you might find a new surprise waiting at earth planets :slight_smile:

A video with tutorial for the new factory system will be out soon.

Thanks for playing StarMade,

  • schema
68

Anyone else having trouble logging in? Since the server outage on Saturday I haven’t been able to log in. I thought it might be because a new version was available (0.938) but after downloading that it’s the same thing… EOFException. The log says:

[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:30 PM] STDOUT: [OUT] [CLIENT] trying to connect to starmade.aloha.pk:4242
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:30 PM] STDOUT: [OUT] [CLIENT] establishing new socket connection to starmade.aloha.pk:4242
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:30 PM] STDERR: [ERR] [CLIENT] Trying TCP…
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:30 PM] STDOUT: [OUT] CLIENT SOCKET CONNECTED TO SERVER
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:30 PM] STDOUT: [OUT] [CLIENT] logging in now… clueless
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] java.io.EOFException
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] at java.io.DataInputStream.readInt(Unknown Source)
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] at org.schema.schine.network.client.ClientProcessor.run(SourceFile:559)
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] org.schema.schine.network.exception.DisconnectException: You have been disconnected from the Server
(either connection problem or server crash)
ActualException: EOFException
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] at org.schema.schine.network.client.ClientProcessor.run(SourceFile:623)
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:33 PM] STDERR: [ERR] at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
[Jul 21, 2013 8:02:35 PM] STDOUT: [OUT] [ClientProcessor] EXIT: Input Stream closed. Terminating Client Processor
[Jul 21, 2013 8:03:30 PM] STDERR: [ERR] Connection Dialog Terminated → EXIT 0
[Jul 21, 2013 8:03:30 PM] STDOUT: [OUT] [CLIENT] CLIENT SHUTDOWN. Dumping client data!

69

try again, should work now. let me know if it doesn’t.

server updated:

http://star-made.org/content/starmade-00938-add

Submitted by schema on Sun, 07/21/2013 - 06:11

Hello,

just a little fix/addOn for the latest update: Recipes won’t use items, that do not have the InRecipe Tag set to true in the blockConfig.xml. By default this value is set to what items are available in shops.

Also, servers/clients will no longer crash if an inventory with invalid block types is added (they are discarded)

The recipy buy amount for new installations has been set to 5000 (if you’re updating you can remove the server.cfg to get the default one on next start)

Both versions are compatible, so you can play on old servers with the new version.

Thanks for playing StarMade,

  • schema
70

Yep, works great! I’m enjoying flying around and destroying planets. Not many pirates tonite. :slight_smile:

71

server updated:

http://star-made.org/content/starmade-009381-recipe-levels-fixes

Submitted by schema on Wed, 07/24/2013 - 03:22

Hello and welcome to StarMade,

in this update, a way to increase the efficiency of recipes is introduced, as well as multiple fixes for clients and servers.

Recipe Levels

Recipes will now record, how many blocks where produced with it. This value is stored on the server to make it save from modification.

The base value for a level can be customized in the server.cfg. Each level will add more percent of the total for the next to be reached.

A level basically means more output: e.g. a recipe that makes 4x Yhole nucleus into 1 hull, will produce 2 hulls at once at level 2 for the same ingredients (4x Yhole nucleus).

Other noteworthy changes and fixes

  • fixed crash when trying to sell recipes
  • recipes can now be sold for half the amount of blocks it takes for it to be created (amount can be customized in server cfg)
  • introduced recipe levels
  • fixed crash when selecting a meta item in advanced build mode
  • fixed server crash due to integrity check request in invalid regions
  • improved integrity check method
  • improved octree memory access speed
  • fixed possibility for mouse activating items or GUI when in camera mode
  • implemented security algoritm to prevent data corruption and to eventually spot the root cause.
  • hopefully fixed invisibility in advanced build mode (does not replicate on my card, so I’m fixing into the blue)
  • fixed possible thread synchronization issue causing a buffer to not exist in rare instance. (buffer was created but not everybody knew of it at once)
  • fixed beacons staying after removing the beacon block (don’t know about all cases of this bug though)
  • implemented icon bakery to output single block icons in any resolution
  • fixed issue that would change to a docked ship with control key
  • docked ship+mother ship can now be cycled through with up/down keys
  • anti stuck protection for astronaut mode now manual (can be activated within 8 seconds after being in astronaut mode)
  • fixed Yhole nucleus not being placeable
  • changed xml tag names for all blocks to “Block” to make it easier to parse for 3rd parties (the game itself doesn’t care about the tag names)

Thanks for playing StarMade,

  • schema
72

We should have a starmade forum.

73

+1

74

server updated:

http://star-made.org/content/starmade-009381-critical-server-fix

StarMade 0.09381: Critical server fix

Submitted by schema on Tue, 07/30/2013 - 17:32

Hello and welcome to StarMade,

as you can see this version does only increase the build number. That means that old clients from the same version can join updated servers, and updated clients can join old servers.

The main thing for this version is a critical fix for the server I’ve been hunting a long time for. It’s symptoms are lags, and complete server freezes (disconnects via ping timeouts, and unable to join again). It seemed to be caused by some clients with bad connection and/or high ping.

Technical:

Some people suggested that I should put each connection into its own thread, so let me start by assuring: It was never done any other way. The game wouldn’t be able to run at all in multiplayer had I every connection handled in one thread. The thing about threads is, that they need to synchronize in certain parts. This is done by locking certain objects so only one thread at a time can access. You cant have multiple threads accessing the same list for example as that would cause unpredictable behavior and crashes. However using locks can lead to something called a deadlock. In it’s simplest form: Thread X waits for Object A and locked Object B already while Thread Y waits for Object B and locked Object A already. In this case it was much more complicated. Bottom line is that there was a possible never returning method (flush for client with certain type of connection not answering) in a locked part of a thread making all other threads and the main thread itself wait for that method to return and unlock that part. I moved that method out of that locked part, and while the method can still be stuck, it will no no longer block the other threads.

Other fixes:

  • fixed spawning point mess up when rejoining a game
  • fixed critical (especially on servers with many players) bug where possibly an update could be skipped for players when another player joined the game
  • added external thread to check if the server has frozen. It will produce a threaddump every 5 seconds of freeze to really help with debugging

Thanks for playing StarMade,

  • schema
75

updated again…

http://star-made.org/content/starmade-009382-fix-fix

StarMade 0.09382: Fix for the fix

Submitted by schema on Tue, 07/30/2013 - 22:39

Hello again.

I apologize for the current bugs. As always: Don’t panic :slight_smile:

The last fix had a pretty bad effect on the network. The instruction to send data if there is nothing more to add was in the wrong position, which causes unforseen lag in sending info to clients.

Furthermore there are several optimizations and fixes to the system:

  • reverted sector switch function for now to style before update

  • cached segments are now loaded much faster as list of available cache files is cached itself

  • some optimization to the pipeline of requesting segments for clients

  • new segment (chunk) region signature optimization: this option is off by default as it needs testing. You can turn in on in the ingame options “use region signature”. It will basically speed up requests for segments that are part of a saved structure (like ships, and anything else that has been generated already).

The client will ask for an 8x8x8 signature of segments, upon receiving knowing exactly which parts are empty, and do not have to be requested at all. This saves a huge amount of overhead local as well as in the network. In the best case (an completely 8x8x8 region of segments empty) it’s with region signature on 12 byte request and 88 byte answer versus the old system (region signature off) 6144 bytes request and 10752 bytes answer + 512 times more local overhead.

Thanks for playing StarMade,

  • schema
76

we might just need to create a subsection for this lol

77

or just put on the server status thing: Version: 0.09382

78

oh and if a guy named pxyc reads this: faction homes are invincible (that’s right, 100k missile arrays wont do a dent in it, nor the best laser you can make.). Don’t remove it b/c it gives away your location. Unless you got a lot of big ships that aren’t docked. Then maybe a looter might go for it. But don’t worry to much.

79

server updated I think

80

nice review about the game from PC Gamer StarMade combines elements of Minecraft, EVE and Elite for voxel-based space adventure | PC Gamer