~Closed Alpha Playtesting~

[Cael_Aislinn]

IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE CLOSED ALPHA SERVER:

Devs please get playtesting! The biggest push is now for bugfixing and cleaning up major issues before opening up the server. Even if you're not reporting bugs (or don't know how to do it properly via Github issue tracking) you can still test stuff and give feedback on how things are going. It's not fun or glamorous but it's close to the most important thing to be done right now and what we need to spend most of our time doing.

Some stuff to check specifically:

- Testing flight mechanics of fighters (Longswords) and dropships (Pelicans). None are placed on the map so they need to be manually spawned.
- Capital ship flight mechanics (go to bridge then click on a helm console, bridge is east of hydroponics/cafeteria/mess hall).
- Prominent map issues (there are still significant parts missing lighting or power and some sections aren't even greyboxed).
- Client/HUD/view etc issues with the "Look out to space" verb.

Ask in Skype for tutorials or key control schemes for driving/flying stuff. Universal control scheme is basically numpad arrows to orient towards a direction, spacebar for temp thrust, numpad 5 for toggle thrust. Small ships also have cruise engines which are toggled via verbs on the "Vehicle" tab.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THE CLOSED ALPHA SERVER:

Ask someone very nicely and I'm sure they'll give you access

[BDpuffy420]

Updating the server now.

[BDpuffy420]

Rebooting the server, also on a side note there will be an announcement post regarding our current development and what not.

[BDpuffy420]

Updating the server with new map edits.

[BDpuffy420]

Updating the server soon, pretty much the run down in the new update made by Cael.



"The main three changes are the addition of shuttles (large overmap_vehicles used for transport), coding in the Halo airlock sprites, adding a properly done cruise mode for overmap_vehicles to allow better long distance travel. I also did a ton of refactoring and moving around so nearly every aspect of overmap code got touched somewhere. Due to the large and messy amount of work many of the commits are NOT 100% atomic (although I made a good stab at it) so don't do any partial reverts. I split up the commits as atomically as I can to try and demonstrate the scope of changes.
Shuttles are multitile transport vehicles with a mapped out internal layout, so mappers can now design cool looking shuttles for us to use. In this PR the maximum dimensions are 27x27 turfs but I'm going to request shuttle layouts be no larger than 15x15 (including outer hull) for mostly gameplay reasons. Shuttle bounding boxes are either square or rectangular, so design your shuttles accordingly to avoid invisible walls. I'll eventually post a guide on the forums for mappers to design shuttles as there are a few other caveats and tricks (including some specific turfs and machinery that need to be used).
Known bugs:

• There's something not working with the margins around virtual areas so in some instances (such as oversized shuttles or when two adjacent areas are both in use simultaneously) it's possible to see from one to the other. This will look terribly horribly wrong, but it's purely a visual glitch and nothing to worry about. This will mainly manifest in the form of unexpected space or transit turfs.
  
  
• If an overmap vehicle's first movement is to the WEST it will "wobble" until it changes direction once. An almost identical effect happens to the overmapobj for vehicles when you start cruising NORTH.
  
  
• Entering into cruise mode when facing SOUTH or EAST will result in space transit turfs travelling the opposite direction (NORTH and WEST respectively). I could get icon/Flip() or matrix transforms to do what I wanted correctly so I just left it. This is a purely visual bug although it will look pretty funny when you see it.
  
  
• Big fighters on the overmap. Got no idea what's causing it but it's still there.
  
  
• Shuttles are extremely complex. I did a lot of thorough testing and I think I covered all the use cases, but if something goes wrong it will go spectacularly wrong." - Cael_Aislinnn