We are still alive!

by cisco211, 2015-10-14 15:50:51

Above 2 years ago we wrote the last news. But this doesn't means that the project died, we are stil alive and working hard. Since we wrote the last news a lot has been changed. Some of these changes were a higher level cap, Salvaging, graphical user interfaces for salvaging and fabrication, new locations, new bosses and so on. On the 3D unity client we later figured out that Unity 3 didnt has a good UI engine so we abandoned the Unity3 3D client project. Later in 2015 Unity 5 were comming out, so i started again looking into Unity 5 and found the new awesome UI Engine which is really great and easy to work with, but then again we noticed that Unity 5 still has no buildin multithread system (which we really need), so i stopped again working on it. So for the Unity stuff you can see that as research or an experiment to see how well HSR can be done in Unity. And as long it dont has buildin multithreading we dont want to continue on Unity. The latest unity dev client btw. is very recent to the current version, ready to support 2D and/or 3D and the code management is very nice so we could directly continue it as soon Unity will get multithread support. Meanwhile i also worked on a new patching system to reduce the traffic. A beta to test it came already out and worked very well, but the planning on the patcher were a bit chaotic, atm the new patching system exists as AutoIT (windows only) and Java (needs to install Java runtime), but the choosen languages are bad to get it working cross platform without the need of additional runtimes or libraries. The current plan is to rewrite the new patching system in native CPP so we can get cross platform support without the need of additional stuff like runtimes or libraries. Another building site is the launcher. I noticed ppls dont like him, because he may cause problems on few users, mostly caused by the permission system on windows itself. Another problem on that launcher is, he only works in Windows and maybe on Linux with wine too. So i thought why do we have the launcher as an external program, it would be much better to have the launcher stuff directly inside the client. I also were a bit pissed about the current situation on this project, so i were almost up to leave the project, because not much happened in the past from supa/angus side. So i told supa that and asked supa to help out on the cpp client, to also get the launcher directly integrated into the client. And exactly this is, what im working on atm. You can already test the integrated launcher build here: http://hostilespace.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2482 The launcher integration is almost done, its much easier to use than the old launcher and the client now really supports character based action button management without the need to configure them on launcher. You may also have noticed that a lot of the graphics had changed. PsiTek is doing the new graphics atm and they look very good. He also counts now as official project developer and cooperates close with me supa and angus now. He also got new ideas to extend the game and already made the concept graphics for it. So yes we are still alive and working hard on it in our free time. We also move more and more away from the Interadventure Inc. copyright problems, through replacing the audio/graphics with selfmade stuff. Still tons of work todo and it eats a lot of our free time, but no worry if this project would really die we would for sure tell you that. Just keep in mind, we do that work voluntarily without earning any money from it. We pay all 3 servers (API, Forum, Game) from our own pocket (its payable), without the need of money from players. So dont be mad if the project progress only goes slowly. Its still better to have the project free to play for everyone and developed in freetime instead having it as an expensive and "seems to dead end" commercial project. PS: Sorry about my bad english ^^ HSR Development Team.

Anyone There???

by Supanova, 2013-08-22 21:45:31

We really need to use this news feed more often........ *cough*, yea... Ok What's been going on? Well, where to start, I guess start from the last post which was, yea.. umm, quite a long time ago... A mention of 3D, ok. We started off using a pure 3D engine, Irrlicht. Progress was steady, but slow, and technical difficulties within the engine, regarding lighting, meant we had to abandon the project. But all was not lost, a lot of the code was salvageable for the next venture. Unity. Unity was suggested to us by Eric (Blitz himself) and progress was rapid. Cisco came on-board to help with the scripting and we got some pretty good results very fast. While this was going on Angus and I continued to reverse engineer the current Interadventure client, more on this later... As regards to the host, there have been a lot of updates, fixes and new content added. Several new bosses and 100's of new items. The most notable feature added is the new fabrication system, which is accompanied by a salvaging system, giving the player total control over every aspect of their items' attributes. Quite a powerful system once the player fully understands it. The last few months have seen a drop in game updates, due to it reaching some form of "stability" both with reliability and game-play balance. This does not mean we've not been busy... As mentioned earlier, we have been working on a cross-platform 2D "clone"of the current client. Yea, I did say "cross-platform". This will give us the power to continue development of Hostile Space. Near future plans (next 6 months) include:- Alpha testing of the new 2D client. Replacement of all the current graphics. Tool-tips will be implemented. Client to include information on slash commands in-game. Quest engine to be fully implemented. Quests to help new players navigate around the galaxy. Begin an advertising campaign. None of these plans are set in stone, nor in this order, and may change at any time. HSR Development Team.

A long needed update

by Angus, 2013-08-22 21:27:29

A long time since the last update but being a new site, it deserves one. The last news was posted on November 2011. Since then, we have been VERY busy. We are no longer using "serversoft" binaries and are now running our own coded reverse-engineered server, allowing us to roll out bigger and more fulfilling updates. We started with a week of "private" testing in which 2 members from each clan helped us test bugs with full admin access, we then opened the server up for public testing for another week. The server was quite buggy during early days, as expected really, however it is much much better now. Full feature updates and changelogs can be found on the forum organized by code revision. As for the client, we are still using InterAdventure's client. We have upgraded the server to be compatible with the last released client (although we have NOT implemented primaries) which runs at a resolution of 1024x768 rather than the previous 800x600 and has far greater stability. With the old client, players were struggling to stay connected for half an hour without disconnecting or crashing out with a stack overflow whereas with the new client, many players are staying connected for almost 24 hours. With the new client also came new "features", boss rings, grass tiles, WASD rotation based movement (rather than directional arrows as before). We have also patched the client to allow up to 30 hulls, so you can expect some never before seen content! I must also mention the work Cisco has done to help. With myself and Supa working away on the client and server, it would have been impossible for us to also code the launcher and the new website to the standard they are now. Cisco offered to help by writing a launcher which developed into the official launcher which is now also used for character creation. He has also developed the new site and design to replace the previous (which was only supposed to be temporary in the first place), so awesome job! With the server now our own, the next step is to create our own similar client. 3D anyone?

Client progress

by Angus, 2011-11-11 18:02:00

The current client is quite unstable and we believe it is the source of some players having a short hiatus before beginning play again. This is mainly because 4-5 crashes an hour is unacceptable and we completely agree. Because of this, we have directed all our efforts on getting a better client released in the next few weeks. As well as stability, it will also incorporate some of the features that have been requested through the forums. Keyboard (WASD) driving? Rotation-based movement? Real windowed mode? An updated map view? Real crawling hulls? Grass tiles? Yep, all of these will be incorporated! It's going to be the largest client update yet and we hope it'll be well received!

Summary of the last months worth of updates

by Angus, 2011-10-15 18:29:00

Since the last news post, the number of updates applied both serverside and clientside has been quite immense. I should probably mention that we hit 500 registered players the other day, not bad considering we've done no advertising. We went through quite a long period (about 3-4 weeks) in which we were having to use the live server to obtain debugging information regarding a bug that was only happening on live, we were unable to replicate it locally. Basically, the host was trying to read an entities faction value from the stack, but it had already been popped. One of the most wanted features to be implemented into the game is plussing of weapons. It means every player is able to customize and tweak their items exactly how they want to, making setup unique. Well, we've implemented it! Albeit, we have used a workaround and have hardcoded every item at every level into the definitions, it works clientside. The initial download on the clientside is much larger than it was before, but it shouldn't cause any issues unless you're playing on a connection with massive latency. I am working on a more sophisticated algorithm to generate items on the fly (much like what happens with alien plates) and it is proving to be quite a challenge, however, it will get finished and implemented! The second large update was the introduction of automated character creation. Beforehand, it was required for players to post on the forum if they wanted a new character, this is no more! After lots of work (including having to program a new client from scratch), we've finally completed a complete game account system in which users are able to create characters themselves, automatically. It's quite a breakthrough in regards to alleviating the workload on us. The third large update was the addition of weapon haste. The first attempt at implementing it worked quite well, but ended up unstable. Over the last few weeks Supanova had been refining the previous code up to the point where we now have working weapon haste for both players and mobiles. As well as these large updates, many smaller updates have occured. These include more large ships added to the client, various balance tweaks and brood items and mobs improved. We have quite a number of updates on their way, including a new launcher update, a new site design (since this one was only temporary) and other various ingame fixes and additions.

Another update...

by Angus, 2011-08-24 21:58:00

As some of you may know, weapons (such as brood) were added a while back. When we added them we made sure that they contained the skill additions just like in 2.0. This means that the host reads and saves the weapons with the skills and the amount to add is attached to each weapon. That was fairly easy fairly easy to achieve. Over the past week we have been hard at work getting the host to read the extra skills and amounts and add them to the player global skill values. Fortunately, finding the memory space for this was fairly simple. However, finding a way to constantly update the modified skill values when your base skills were changed was a little more tricky. But, we worked it out. The core work for weapon skill addition is in place, the host is now capable of reading the players base skill, reading the weapon skill stat and finally adding that amount into the new memory offset that contains your modified skill values. The next step was to have the host read the new modified skill values from the definitions added to the base skill and use that skill every time the player performed an action.. The last step is to find where skills such as beam, bolt, disruptor, precision and dodge are used and have those areas read the modified skill values rather than the original. We are hoping to get a test server running sometime tonight to test the modifications. Hopefully there wont be too many problems. Character management is coming along very well, even though it's taken longer than I originally anticipated. I hadn't thought it through properly when I started and so had to re-write some of it. I've got the hardest parts done; the method of actually importing the characters to the server during runtime, securing all the forms, and getting a solid user system going. The first thing you'll all have to do when it is up and running is add your existing characters to your account (so, the ones that you already use). This part of the system has already been tested by a few, so at least we know that works! Following this, you'll then be able to create new characters although deletion will not be available until I can work out a way of performing this safely while the server is running. There will be a delay of ~10-15 minutes after you fill out/submit the form to when you can use the character. I'll work on reducing this at a later date once I'm sure everything else is working smoothly. The ETA for a testing release is later this week and for the public, if not next week, next weekend.

We ran aground

by Angus, 2011-07-14 20:00:00

Well, we ran aground with our last client update! It appears that doubling the locker space apparently invaded memory used by the scanner and player stats tab of the HUD. This resulted in stack numbers (item stacks) being inaccurate and players having the ability to toggle the scanner by filling a certain locker slot with an item. We've fixxed this by offsetting some other memory regions.

New page, guide added

by Angus, 2011-06-24 22:11:00

We always planned to have a player guide/getting started tutorial at some point on the main site and Gunslingers has helped kick-start that by providing us with a 25minute long video tutorial, covering all the basic actions and explaining most details that new players need to know. Thanks Gunslingers!

Continued progress

by Angus, 2011-06-22 19:04:00

The playerbase is continually growing (we created 5 more accounts today) and the server is continually being tweaked. We've almost got larger lockers working, which means you'll be able to store 40 items rather than the current 20 (like it used to be). Work on the completely recoded server has resumed with some extra guys assisting, which should be a huge help. Some more work on character creation pages has been done; it should be possible to create characters yourself sometime in the next few weeks.

More updates

by Angus, 2011-06-19 15:22:00

We've been busy the last few days. Supanova has been writing definitions for the server, bringing back 'Evolve' for Telepaths as well the Missile Sentry for Engineers's ina new form called a 'Droid', which introduces a new twist. A full changelog can be viewed Here As well as server updates, we have also been working on other things. We now have a fully working automated backup system, clans are now saved correctly saved between server boots and we've almost got the storage lockers to double capacity without too many adverse effects. The automatic character creation system is coming along quite nicely. It will be quite advantageous for us not having to do it manually, but also the end user not having to wait for us to wake up every morning! We have tried tracking down a few more older players, again, if you know anyone who used to play, send them this way!

Site update

by Angus, 2011-06-16 20:00:00

The new frontpage is up, and the forum is starting to get more active. On my list to do web-wise is to get a registration page written up and attempt to automate character creation (will be quite a nice addition), as well as theming the forum to match the front-page. The whole thing really needs a complete revamp but getting the client and server going is more important on the agenda. Content-wise, this will be updated with in-game guides and lists to help new and old players. This should include: - Fab lists - Command Lists - Galaxy map We've already got a larger initial player-base than we expected to have at this point, and more people are wanting to join daily. Overall, it's going pretty well.

Server updates

by Angus, 2011-06-14 22:00:00

The server has been updated. Changelog below. - Medusa protector loot fixed. - Sirrah ruins added. - Sirra Protectors drop the following:   - Traxiant Armor.   - C4 Pulse Torpedo.   - Valkrie Bombe.   - Zoben Shields Mk2.   - Transpotent L10.   - Inertia Master X300.   - Venom Amp A1.   - Oracle Series K.   - OmniBox PII. - Balanced a few zones.

Dedicated server anyone?

by Angus, 2011-06-10 12:00:00

With the larger registration quests than we ever anticipated, we have bought and set up two dedicated servers to handle the game and accompanying systems, both running with 100mbps dedicated lines. It should reduce the lag a bit on the player end which we know was an issue.