Vector is finished and out now on Steam! This update proved to be much more work than I had anticipated. My original plan was to finish work on Vector before New Year’s, but I ended up working on it until the very last minute, quite literally. There’s still a few loose ends left to tie up art wise, but overall I am really happy with how this update came out. Both in terms of gameplay and visual quality, Stable Orbit took a giant step forward with Vector. Fingers crossed that you all end up liking it as much as I do!

Change Notes

This update brings the art of Stable Orbit up to near final quality, removing most of the placeholders and introducing intricately detailed module designs. Gone too are the yellow discs that served as module connection points and in their place are new, animated, petal door connectors based on the “Common Berthing Mechanism” design used on the International Space Station. Additionally, the rendering pipeline has been overhauled completely, offering higher quality graphics on high-end machines and scalability options for lower end PCs. Vector also introduces new gameplay elements:

• A new Node module, allowing you to build pressurized connections between crew modules and laboratories
• Severe damage or loss of power will now cause Habitat modules to become unusable, marooning the crew that was stationed there and reducing their productivity
• Severe damage to storage modules will now result in temporary loss of the resources stored there; if the module is destroyed, those resources will be lost permanently
• Severe damage to structural modules will now disable their connectors, blocking expansion from those modules until they are sufficiently repaired
• Severe damage or loss of power to Shuttle Docks will now cause the corresponding supply shuttles to become grounded or be unable to dock

Other Improvements:

• Added a UI scaling option
• Added in-game music
• The station panel, crew panel and message bar will now remember their pinned state between games
• Message bar now groups similar crew or module status messages together

Bug Fixes:

• New crew members will no longer board if oxygen has run out
• Solar panels and radiators now fold and unfold in simulation time (i.e. the animation will pause if the simulation is paused)

[ 2017-02-02 17:05:35 CET ] [ Original post ]