Evochron Legacy is a freeform space flight simulation that focuses on 'lone-wolf' survival gameplay and pilot controlled spacecraft management. The environment setting is a vast seamless style universe where you can perform many activities including buying, trading, spying, racing, escorting, delivering, emergency responding, mining, exploring, weapon/equipment crafting, cleaning solar panels, clearing paths through asteroid fields, recruiting, protecting, hiring crew members, fuel harvesting, building stations/cities, and designing/selling ships. Some objectives are part of the game's contract system with established parameters and pay levels while others are available for you to set up on your own terms through your choices of where to go, what to do, and how to do it.
Demo installer for Evochron Legacy version 1.0488...
Version 1.0488 includes the following improvements:
- New font to provide better legibility, improved numeric/letter distinguishing, and dedicated lower case character set.
- Displayed button values in configuration menu now use numerical range (starting at 1) rather than index range (starting at 0).
- HUD gunsight, target indicators, and pitch ladder updated for finer details, reduced color saturation, and a cleaner/simpler appearance.
- Button images updated to reduce width of highlight bars at edges and vertical shading aligned for a thinner and more consistent appearance with scroll bars and indicator bars.
- Ship and object collision alert system added, providing a warning when the ship's vector may impact an asteroid, planet, moon, station/city, cargo container, shipwreck, or certain other structures.
- New item restoration system for multiplayer added to recover lost items stored in a destroyed command module, even if significant time has passed, if replacement command module is built.
- By player request, initial close proximity build module binding restrictions/dependencies added to cities to align with space station build module behavior.
- Quadrant Territory and Economy map labels moved to text lines for easier editing and 'Neutral' territory category added for 'IND' affiliation.
- Space station shield, power supply, and weapon turret modules now require retaining their dependent modules in range in order to function.
- Spacecraft landing gear could remain temporarily visible on another player after they engaged a terrain walker, now fixed.
- Potential cause for a very rare runtime error message when client terrain detail setting is mismatched from server fixed.
- Physics adjustments to player ship after cargo changes may not have correctly applied after build operation, now fixed.
- New cargo delivery point path indicator added to HUD (to help guide player to delivery point below receiving ship).
- Command module now counts as 2 power supply modules for dependency credit and has extended energy coverage (1000).
- Docking fee notice could display incorrectly in single player for a newly constructed command module, now fixed.
- 'IND' built weapon turrets will no longer automatically attack ALC or FDN ships without them attacking first.
- New cockpit strut structures added to military and civilian cockpits for a more detailed appearance.
- Instructions updated to include new images that align with recent graphics changes and improvements.
- HAT/POV control mode changed to provide drop down selection menu rather than left/right toggle.
- New 'Rev Y' reverse vertical mode added to Pan, Strafe, and Snap View HAT/POV control options.
- Weapon lab missile stats updated to better align with standard missile stats for comparison.
- In weapon lab, more missile casing armor now adds hull strength for higher speed rating.
- Server programs updated to enforce build dependency changes server side in multiplayer.
- New subtle animation effect added to landing/docking and cargo delivery indicators.
- By request, music tracks from previous titles in the series added for more variety.
- Base yield level for custom missiles in weapon lab increased by about 100 points.
- Player request for an option to auto-save entire message log to text file added.
- Station under attack alerts could sometimes display incorrect player, now fixed.
- Target scanners can now display material levels near planet terrain surfaces.
- Planets can now vary high and low levels of materials across their surfaces.
- Improved UI alignment and support for 5:4 resolution ratios (ie 1280X1024).
- City command module sector build limit changed to four.
- Several minor fixes and UI improvements.
Notes:
The new multiplayer lost item restoration system will now recover items stored in a station hangar for a command module that is destroyed by another player while the storing player is offline or in another sector, even if time has passed as long as a replacement command module is built in the same sector and the items continue to be displayed in the 'Hangar Details' list. This way, you can effectively recover lost items from a destroyed command module by simply rebuilding it at the same location, even if significant time has passed. The system will also allow recovery of items stored in an old command module built while playing on a different server by building a new command module in the same location while playing on a new server. You can also change the name of the station, which doesn't have to match the original. The sector location simply has to be the same. Single player and multiplayer self-destructing lost item conditions will still apply, so if you destroy your own command module, the items will continue to be lost. This exception for item restoration is specifically for multiplayer to accommodate a player request since that environment is more prone to lost/destroyed station command modules.
The new text font is now in place and is designed to primarily address three requests/issues. First, the new font moves away from the 'all caps' structure of the old font, providing a more distinguishable lower case character set. The new font also provides new numerical characters that are designed to be more distinguishable from similar letter characters (5 and S for example), making it is easier to tell the difference. The third objective is to provide a more legible character set overall, making finer text details easier to read on various displays and indicators that use them. The characters are more consistent in their structures (line width/height and overall horizontal/vertical size) and spacing in between characters/lines has also been increased to reduce the reported crammed/cluttered appearance of the old font.
Space station shield, power supply, and weapon turret modules now require retaining their dependent modules in range in order to function. If they lose a link to a required module, they will lose power (their lights will visibly turn off) and will become ineffective. This change may have some side effects, including any partially built stations possibly needing dependent modules to be built in order to expand/activate their functionality. City modules only have dependency requirements upon building. Once built, they can sustain themselves from the resources of the planet.
Materials that can be mined from planet surfaces now vary randomly, creating 'pockets' of higher, mixed, and lower value materials that can be recovered. Players that equip their spacecraft with a target scanner can see the percentages of each material when they fly at a low enough altitude (similar to how the contents of an asteroid can be viewed when targeted). The scan is done directly below the player's ship, so they can fly over the spot they are scanning to retrieve the materials in the indicated percentages. Scanning results are displayed on the lower right section of the HUD. Required altitude is currently around 500, so players will generally need to fly a 'nap of the earth' style low altitude pattern to perform faster scans.
The customizing kit has been updated with the new landing/docking indicator texture information.
An option to save the entire message log to a text file is now available. To enable the option, include a blank text file named 'messagelogsave.txt' in the game's install folder (Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Evochron Legacy for Steam or \sw3dg\EvochronLegacy for the direct download version). The game will then automatically save all lines in the message out to a text file in the save data folder (default location is c:\sw3dg\EvochronLegacy) every time you save or quick save your profile. Each saved message log will carry the format 'messagelog[timestamp].txt' (where [timestamp] is a unique timer integer). To disable the option, simply move or remove the 'messagelogsave.txt' file.