A major new version of the Ascent game client has been released to all players after extensive testing and development with our Beta group.
The new client enhances all aspects of gameplay and ties in with the new server infrastructure to provide you with a greatly improved game experience. The visual look and feel of the game has been updated, and a large number of Quality of Life fixes and bug fixes have been made.
The new client and server architecture are ready for the next phase of development, but more about that soon.
Enhancements and QoL improvements
- The game engine has been upgraded to a new version. This means everything from the physics system, loading times, stability, memory managements, visuals, audio, and networking performance have all been improved
- The game server has also been upgraded from libraries current in 2013 to libraries current today. Most server-side operations are faster as a result, and several long standing server-side issues have been fixed
- The game server infrastructure has also been upgraded. The main effect is greatly improved performance for large player-built colonies and starbases.
- New shaders and effects system means every frame looks better than previous versions.
- Graphics quality settings have been bumped up. What is now "Fantastic" is significantly more expensive to render than it used to be. The old "Fantastic" settings have been demoted to "Beautiful" for players with older systems.
- A computer command has been added to delete structures in colonies and starbases. This is intended to interface with third party colony planner tools, which will need to be updated to work with it.
- The elected player Senator for a system now displays when you are near the star in space. The system used to show governors at planets (and still does) but now Senatorial seats are displayed in the same manner.
- NPC trading in particular and daily batch processes in general have received a number of enhancements with this release.
- Large colonies and starbases are now much faster to update server-side as a result of a combination of infrastructure upgrades, library upgrades and code review.
- Programmable habitat domes now process a bit faster server-side making them a little bit more intuitive to use. It should be a tiny bit easier for new players to configure a breathable atmosphere, the right temperature and gravity ranges etc.
- Autopilot EOD camera and map visuals have been updated. These should now look better and be a bit easier on the eye
- Ships you have parked in space (either because they are a carrier and you undocked, or by mounting a Hawk on them and undocking into the Hawk) now have their own Autopilot category and icon, making them easier to find.
- The effect of overloaded mass on Hawks and Carrier-borne ships has been reduced. This should make switching between your carrier and smaller craft, or a larger craft and Hawk much more convenient and viable for regular gameplay.
- Available zoom-out distance for larger ships has been increased by player request
- Zoom levels no longer reset when you hyperjump or use a jump gate
Fixes
- Stock markets will no longer display player buy or sell orders where the player can't afford to buy the goods anymore or does not have space in their warehouses to fit the goods.
- Numerous small annoying issues with stock markets and batch processing have been fixed
- A rare issue with displaying player-made jump gates has been fixed
- Some minor fixes to NPC commands have been made. Specifically, the text queries for the NPC's current route, ejecting cargo, querying their passenger quarters
- A rare issue with seeing other ships (NPCs, other players, and your own parked ships) where it would display multiples of the same ship has been resolved
- Parked ships were sometimes initialising with the wrong set of colliders, making it hard to dock with or interact with them
- Parked ships sometimes didn't follow planetary rotation properly, meaning they would blip away from you instead of remaining in place when grav anchored around a planet
- Other minor bugs with the dock/undock process for Hawk and Carrier operations
- Numerous other minor fixes have been implemented
Known Issues
- Night vision mode is not applying to all objects in this version of the client. A fix may be available in the near future
Changed files in this update