The journey from taxie driver to NGO superpower begins with a single step. You are a disgruntled employee of Skybus Interstellar, the world's premier taxie service, who has stolen their company issued ship and has big plans for the universe.

Post news Report RSS High Albedo: Twisted Skies - v1.1 Released

After many months of neglect, this game gets some well deserved love and care. This release brings many bug fixes and AI improvements that make the game far more fun to play.

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It's Happening!
You probably thought this project was abandoned. Well, it was. After releasing v1.0 I got a new job that caused me to have to make some adjustments in my life, and my hobby fell to the side. No longer! I have returned and am committed to building the High Albedo universe.

As always in my articles, you can click the image to see the full size version.

Player owned Condor flying over a gas giant.

So what's in this release exactly? Well, tons of fixes and improvements! This version doesn't add lots of new features, but it does polish many of the ones that were lackluster in the initial release, and fixes some nasty bugs that plagued the game. Lets take a look at some real world examples.

New Features

  • Added an effect when a ship uses the jumpdrive.
  • Renamed all systems to have non-random names!
  • Totally overhauled trading AI is more competitive than ever.
  • Universe wide traders will now jump away if their shields drop below 40%.

Balancing

  • Player will now start with PNBCs on their Cab instead of ERPCs.
  • Stations can no longer be bumped.
  • Jumpdrives can now only be ordered to jump to known locations.
  • Jumpdrives now land you in a smaller radius relative to the system center.
  • Increased collision damage 10x.
  • Traders now wait 5-25 seconds docked in station when running trade AI.
  • Increased station docking port reservation times.
  • Capital ships and fighters now use the same collision avoidance algorithm. Fighter one was superior.
  • AI speed limit (for safety) increased by 33%.

Interface Changes

  • Added a time dilation indicator to the overview window.
  • Windows that share the center of the screen now automatically hide each other when shown.
  • Property window will no longer show debris 'owned' by the player.
  • It is now possible to specify custom resolutions in fullscreen mode.
  • Planet names no longer clutter overview window.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed bug where some stations, late in game, would dock you in weird places.
  • Autopilot follow command works properly in all cases.
  • A station that dies will now kill everything docked with it.
  • Attacking NPCs will no longer target ships docked at stations, they will target the station instead.
  • Looped weapon sounds will no longer keep playing forever if the ship died before the sound was stopped.

Between a renamed universe, improved traders, custom screen resolutions, and the end of the sound loop bug, I would say this is a pretty solid update!

Lava.

What's Next?
I have outlined a plan to expand this game. First, I want to get any feedback possible from the v1.1 release to find areas that still need improvement. If you find any bugs or annoying things, let me know what they are, and if you think something should be different please include a suggestion on improving it.

Now, here's my short roadmap for future development.

  1. Capturable fighters. I want fighter pilots to bail so you can capture them.
  2. Options to supply stations using your trade ships.
  3. New ship classes to bridge the gap between fighters and capital ships.
  4. New weapons, especially some more ammo based weapons.

Details on these points will be given in future articles. Once these points are addressed, I want to add plots the player can complete. These plots will give interesting and useful rewards but will be quite challenging in both logistics and combat.

This guy is having a bad day.

Well, there you go!

It feels good to be back on this project and I look forward to your support and hope you enjoy playing High Albedo!

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