After more than a month of work, update 0.8.0 has been released.

What’s New?

The main focus of this update was graphical polish and game stability. As a result, while there is little in the way of new content, there are a number of updates and changes aimed at improving the player experience and giving a more polished feel. In line with this aim each unit now has its own unique death animation alongside some much improved and more dynamic explosion, fire and smoke effects.

In addition to this some of the existing textures also got an upgrade with the visible seam on the space background image being removed, the planets having their textures rescaled so they no longer look like a smeared mess and some updated nebula's which now look at least 10% more realistic. (Providing of course you squint and don't look too closely)

Besides the more mundane background changes aimed at making the game feel more polished there were also some more direct graphical changes which should hopefully improve the gameplay and make it a more pleasant experience. This being a new overlay to visually show where you can call in reinforcements and a new upgrade outline on buildings to show when and what upgrades are being built.

For a more comprehensive list of what has changed you can either look at the bottom of this post or check the in-game change log. Which is accessible from the main menu.

Update 0.9.0

With update 0.8.0 behind me it's time for me to focus on update 0.9.0 which if all goes to plan should be out sometime in January or early February.

While I don't want to spoil too much about the update I think it would be a good idea to set expectations accordingly and it's for that reason that I'm going to announce that update 0.9.0 will be an update focused on improving the AI. It's something I've put off for a long time and having now got Stelestial Contact: Solar Storm to a point where I'm happy with many of the systems and mechanics already in there. (Even if many of them still lack the polish needed to flesh them out) The final part missing is a competent AI to play against.

But as I know an update focused solely on the AI would be somewhat underwhelming. I also have plans for both a new type of unit and to finally make some updates to the textures used by the units themselves. Beyond that, who knows? At the very least I aim for this update to be as large as each of those before it and so don't be surprised to see something you weren't expecting.

Closing Thoughts

Now that I have gone over all the point's I wanted to, I'll ask that if you have any questions or queries then do not hesitate to ask. Alternatively if you have any feedback then please let me know either here or on the main page. With all that said, that's it for this update and as I said before I'll be back in around a month's time for update 0.9.0 depending of course on how well the AI rewrite goes.

Finally a full list of all the changes, updates and additions can be found both below and in game:

• Added a reinforcement overlay to space battles to show where on the battle map new units can be spawned in
• Added a button to show and hide the reinforcement units providing some are available
• Added a new animation to the battle GUI which plays when either the freecam or tactical views are toggled
• Added a new animation to the tactical view GUI which plays when the tactical view is toggled
• Added a new animation to the freecam view which plays when transitioning to or from it
• Added a new explosions system with support for more than one type of explosion and added three new types of explosion as an example
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Starfighter
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Bomber
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Corvette
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Frigate
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Missile Ship
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Battleship
• Added a unique death animation to the Alien Starfighter
• Added a unique death animation to the Alien Corvette
• Added a unique death animation to the Alien Frigate
• Added a unique death animation to the Alien Battleship
• Added a unique death animation to the Kessoni Starfighter
• Added a unique death animation to the Kessoni Corvette
• Added a unique death animation to the Kessoni Missile Ship
• Added a unique death animation to the Kessoni Battleship
• Added a unique death animation to the Human Space Station
• Added a unique death animation to the Alien Space Station
• Added a unique death animation to the Kessoni Space Station
• Updated the shield of the Human Corvette to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Human Frigate to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Human Missile Ship to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Human Battleship to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Alien Corvette to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Alien Frigate to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Alien Battleship to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Kessoni Corvette to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Kessoni Missile Ship to match the base mesh outline
• Updated the shield of the Kessoni Battleship to match the base mesh outline
• Updated space station mesh's to remove openings visible during animations
• Updated reinforcement area to also include asteroid fields as a place units cannot spawn into
• Updated nebula clouds to use the particle system instead of static mesh's
• Updated the background image used in space battles to remove a visible seam
• Updated damage to be based on the weapon/turret instead of the ammo, allowing turrets to deal different amounts of damage despite using the same type of ammo
• Updated map information to be more modular
• Updated fire and smoke particle effects to be more pronounced and gave the fire particles a small amount of glow
• Updated the explosion particle effects to have the same glow as fire particles
• Updated explosions to play a sound when they are triggered
• Updated the look of engine particles and made them emit a small amount of light
• Updated the F1 key to toggle the GUI instead of displaying out of date help information
• Updated building upgrades to show in the world as they are being built
• Updated the scale of planet textures
• Fixed a bug where the freecam view and tactical view could still be toggled after the battle had ended
• Fixed a bug where the freecam view and tactical view would result in the original GUI being shown when pausing the game
• Fixed a bug where the mining outpost would change its material when breaking apart
• Fixed a bug where the game would crash if the mouse was placed over a squad based unit that had been destroyed
• Fixed a bug where the unit information panel for space battles could overlay the game speed buttons depending on what information was being displayed
• Fixed a bug where the human space station would display the incorrect team colour when in a map with more than one human space station
• Fixed a bug where laser beam turrets wouldn't use the new fire and smoke particle effects
• Fixed a bug where units would try to unset a target after it had been removed from the battle, causing the game to crash
• Fixed a bug where ammo was sometimes unable to get the correct reference to the ammo manager, causing the game to crash
• Fixed a bug where the clicked position on the minimap wouldn't match up with the in world position
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to move the camera out of the map bounds by clicking and dragging on the minimap
• Fixed a bug where the Human Bomber was unable to turn towards its destination, causing it to only travel in a straight line