Starsector 0.54.1a Release

Wait, what? Yep, you read it right. For Business Reasons, we’re changing the name of the game to Starsector. All I can say about it is this will not have any impact on how things proceed around here – these things happen to projects from time to time, and I hope that everyone will be on board with the change. (If you’re not, my apologies. If you are, thank you for your continued support!) Personally, I’m looking forward to moving ahead with the new name, and am very excited about the future.

Onward to what’s new in 0.54.1a. It’s a bugfix and polish release, much like the other .1 releases that follow up a major one. Unlike those, though, it’s taken over a month to put out. That’s the case for two reasons. One, the name change took some extra doing. Two, the 0.54a release was stable enough that there was no urgency in putting this version out – so, we’ve been able to work on the campaign design and do some prototyping along the way, laying down some groundwork for the next major release.

The major items in 0.54.1a are:

  • Redesigned character screen (screenshot)
  • New “emp arc” mechanic for the Tachyon Lance and the Ion Cannon, improvements to the High Energy Focus ship system
  • Lots and lots of bug fixes and modability improvements

You can find the full patch notes here. Please download the new version using the links below.

Alternate download links: Windows Mac Linux

Starfarer 0.53a Release

The 0.53a version of Starfarer is now out! This update is focused on fleshing out the combat gameplay, and future releases will focus on campaign features. That’s not to say that combat won’t receive any more attention – but this release does wrap up all of the major planned combat features.

What’s new:

  • Ship systems – each ship gets an active ability – flares, burn drive, a combat teleporter – and many more
  • Phase cloaking – three new ships that use the cloak as a primary defensive system
  • New mission featuring phase ships
  • Tons of AI improvements, new modding features, and bugfixes

You can see the full patch notes here.

Download the new version using the buttons below – you’ll need to reinstall the game, but shouldn’t have to enter the activation code again.

If you’re using OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and are having trouble running the game, use this version instead.

WTF is Starfarer?

As most of you probably know, Starfarer was featured by TotalBiscuit in his WTF is…? series a couple of days ago. In fact, chances are that if you’re reading this, you came here because of that video.

A couple of things: one, this is really, really awesome. I can’t express how happy and excited I am that Starfarer is reaching a lots of new players. It means a more active community, more player feedback, and of course, more financial resources to support ongoing development. Two, it also means that our web server is struggling mightily with the herculean task of handling all this traffic. I’m looking into ways of improving its performance, so hopefully we can do something about it in the near future.

In fact, it looks like it’s doing a bit better now – but I can’t tell if it’s because traffic has dropped off a bit, or because the configuration changes I made are helping. Ah, the vagaries of trying to optimize a live server.

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