Current Build and Known Bugs

The current major build of Drifter is 0.5.x (code name "Nostromo") and the current minor build is 0.5.1.

Release Notes

0.5.1

• Drifter 0.5.1 introduces a large number of bug fixes and improvements. For bugs fixed in this build please see the bugs section below
• The game now saves to a special auto-save save file when you dock with a station and arrive in a star system
• You can now adjust the scale of the HUD from the Graphics Settings
• The HUD angle was adjusted slightly
• Added a "Quit Game" button to the main menu
• Added improved log messages to help debug crashing on startup
• The button click confirmation sound has been made less obnoxious
• Adjusted button colors to improve contrast with button text
• Additional groundwork for ship modules

0.5.0

• The biggest change with Drifter 0.5.x is it introduces a fundamental alteration in the galaxy creation algorithm. Now the game creates a cluster of inhabited worlds in one corner of the galaxy with the rest of the stars being uninhabited. This is to lay the groundwork for the exploration mechanics I want to add to the game soon
• I have added a rudimentary tutorial which goes through the basics of how to fly and operate your ship. There is definitely a lot more to be done here but I figured it would be nice to not just completely drop new players off the deep-end when they start
• There have been a number of new weapons added to the game:
  • Energy-based projectile weapons: Muon Blaster, Proton Pulse Rifle
  • Physical projectile weapons: Autocannon, Mass Driver
  • Beam weapons: Gamma Beam, Neutron Lancer
  • Missile weapons: Rocket Pod, Missile Launcher Mk. II, Twin Missile Launcher, Hydra Missile Launcher
• Existing weapons have been re-balanced
• Modified the game's fixed-function lighting model to improve the way planets are lit
• When entering and leaving Slipstream the camera's FOV changes to give a better feeling of space being "warped" by the Slipstream drive
• More screenshake!
• Further groundwork has been laid for the introduction of ship modules. They should be added as a 0.5.x point release

Bugs

The following list of bugs/incorrect behavior is known to exist in the current build. Below that is a list of bugs that are known and have been fixed for the next build.

Please report any bugs you encounter that haven't been noted here either via. the Drifter Backer Forums or via email to contact@celsiusgs.com.

Known Unfixed Bugs

• It appears that Drifter crashes on some Macs with Intel HD 4000 GPUs using OS X 10.9 Mavericks. I am currently attempting to fix this issue.
• Drifter does not have very good support for full screen on Retina MacBooks. Until this can be fixed, please try setting the game's resolution in such a way that the window takes up most of the screen.
• Occasional OpenAL (music) instability. This can usually be "reset" by changing systems or docking at a station.
• Full screen mode on some systems does not correctly register the position of mouse clicks.
• Billboard animations do not animate correctly on Linux.
• Setting the game's resolution to include a dimension that is not a multiple of 4 causes the game to crash when attempting to save. Fixed for 0.5.2.

Fixed Bugs

0.5.1

• Delivery missions could sometimes end up with an uninhabited system as their destination
• Saving while your ship was undocking or waiting to undock caused issues when loading that save file. You can now no longer save while the undocking sequence is in progress
• Escape pods come equipped with standard ship equipment, when they should not have. Escape pod equipment is now locked to the escape pod and can not be removed
• You could swap armor on a damaged ship when you shouldn't be able to
• Slipstream did not deactivate properly in proximity of asteroid fields that are very close to their parent star
• Slipstream camera FOV inadvertently affected in-game galaxy and star maps while active.
• Saving the game while waiting for the jump sequence to complete would leave your ship uncontrollable if you loaded from that save game. To mitigate this you can no longer pause the game during the jump sequence
• Loading a save after dying caused a crash
• Initial missions in start system had incorrect destination systems when starting a new game after player death
• Player mission log was not cleared after player death

0.5.0

• A number of issues that were caused by saving the game while docked at a station have been fixed. If you notice any further irregularities after loading a game while docked please let us know
• Fixed a bug that was causing galaxy database corruption in some instances
• Fixed a bug where certain game systems would not be properly reset upon restart after the player dies
• The game's rendering engine has been fixed to allow the game to run on certain Intel GPUs on Windows where it wasn't able to run before
• Fixed a bug that was causing the game to crash on start-up on certain GPUs across all platforms

Upcoming Features

This is a list of features that are being implemented for the next build.