Introduction

Patch v1.05b has been released! Before we begin, I'd like to lay down a principle of Strides Interactive; that is - regardless of how good or badly the game has been received, regardless of sales, we'll continue to maintain the game as much as possible according to the roadmap.

At a bare minimum, the game must be functional. If it's broken, we'll fix it. We'll never leave a broken game in release - that'll be pretty unprofessional of us.

Regression

As the engine improves, some workflow will be changed and this will more or less lead to regression bugs appearing even when it used to work in previous versions. Therefore, as much as we try NOT to upgrade the game along with the engine, sometimes this is unavoidable. On our end, we do as much testing as possible with our limited hardware and software even.

Support for Windows 7

Technically we still support Windows 7, but we no longer have the means to test the game on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 already. This is due to a recent upgrade we've made to our test machine which now runs on Windows 10.

The test machine will remain on Windows 10 until such a time that most players have moved on to Windows 11.

Unfortunately though, some issues that are found on the newer OS versions do not appear in older Windows 7 and since our previous development laptop had neared its expiry, we weren't able to test for certain behaviors on that laptop either.

Therefore, right now, we'll only dare affirm that we support Windows 10 and 11. Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 will still be technically supported.

New Features

None. This patch is mostly a bug fixing patch.

Changes

- Game runs on VS2017 runtime now; this should NOT affect you since we've already selected VS2019 redistributables that includes VS2017.
- EMP Cannon level 1 and 2 will now fire more frequently, making it usable like a normal weapon. However its damage is halved as a result. Nevertheless, the tactical value of the weapon has been improved tremendously.
- Do note that ships can no longer be perma-disabled by EMP cannons.
- Added some arguments which certain players can key-in to get around certain problems. Namely the recently CPUID crash encountered by one of the players. This is not an issue as I've tested on both Ryzen 7 4800H and i5-12400 without any issue. However, to get around this issue which most likely to be a CPU issue, here're 2 commands REQUIRED:

-skipcpudetection -forcesse2

Place these 2 commands under Launch Commands to get the game to get around CPU detection.

Right-click on Starlight > Properties > General > Launch Options

Bug Fixes

1. Fixed a bug where joystick RT and LT buttons do not work AT ALL
   
2. Fixed a bug where joystick buttons can be assigned but doesn't work in-game
   
3. Fixed a bug where joystick preset can lead to erroneous assignments.
   
4. Fixed a bug where keyboard preset works even when there isn't any
   
5. Fixed a bug where damage-persistent weapons do not inflict ANY damage.
   
6. Fixed a bug where multi-hit damage-persistent weapons do not inflict ANY damage.
   
7. Fixed a bug where damage-persistent weapons report the incorrect amount of damage dealt to the target and subsequent damage inflicted.
   
8. Fixed a bug where the game STUTTERS before almost every wave in all game modes. While the game will still lag with heavy combat situations, it should NOT stutter anymore due to the game itself.
   * We cannot guarantee stutter-free gameplay if there're many background apps running that may bottleneck the CPU or if the CPU is throttling due to heat or power limitations.
   
9. Fixed a weird movement bug in Stage 4 boss where the boss will strangely move off-screen and suddenly pop back into position.
   
10. Fixed a weird regression bug whenever you collect Shield Bonus and the incorrect particle appears like a random scrolling of different sprites.
    
11. Fixed a weird regression bug in the ending where certain 3D explosions look like multiple small dots.
    
12. Optimized the game slightly when it comes to turret creation and re-instantiation of certain effect objects.
    
13. Fixed to a certain extent where mines will start blinking when they appear in large numbers. This still appears for certain ships and we'll try to fix it in future patches. They can still be hit; it's just a little jarring.
    
14. Fixed a major bug with Survival mode where it'll get stuck in Survival #3 forever.
    

Conclusion

I've gotten questions like - oh why are you still working on Starlight etc.. thing is - there're 2 points:
1) The game must remain playable without major breaking bugs and controllability issues.
2) The roadmap promised to customers must be fulfilled.

Whether the game is profitable or not or whether there's a huge player base or not is irrelevant.

As long as we have people giving good feedback, we'll do our best to investigate and fix the issue if possible. The only reason why we can't fix it? - that's because we do not have the means to access the issue in its full scenario.

The stuttering issue only came up AFTER we upgraded our test rig to Windows 10. The direct cause of it wasn't even a performance issue but rather a synchronization issue between the logger and its threads who might be waiting to dump logs at the same time. The starvation period is what led to the stuttering.

Therefore, please be assured that we're doing our best. Patches do take time and some changes require the ENTIRE game to be tested from head to tail. For v1.05b that was certainly the case. Apart from the Arcade tutorial, I've tested EVERY SINGLE STAGE, through campaign and survival to ensure that the patch legit works for everyone.

Thanks again for your support!
Strides Team