Happy Star Wars Day everyone! All of us at Fate of the Galaxy want to share an update for May the Fourth. A highlight list includes the following:
- Updated FotG to fully remove the need to use text-based command line flags to set any options, now all options most players will use can be set in-game! This includes being able to set joysticks in-game and without requiring a game restart, which is a big QoL feature that allows players to more easily tune their own custom controls iteratively and quickly. As another example, we updated game resolution to work from any selectable resolution option, all the way down to 640x480 (previously the lower resolutions had UI overlap and other breaking issues). Finally, players can also now set graphics options such as shadows, AA, and more in-game through the options menu (though the advanced graphics options do require a game restart to take effect).
- Updated custom pilot options to now be pilot-specific and work across updates to FotG, so this way you can make several different pilots if you or others are playing on the same computer and account, and these custom changes will also track with your individual pilot flight statistics. To help new players we also cleaned and tuned the ‘Help Tips’ that are shown to new players when the game starts. Finally, related to pilot options, we updated saving and discarding options to work consistently. Before, pressing escape would save some options while discarding others. The now consistent behavior is the result of FSO updates.
- Updated FotG to work more seamlessly with VR. Now, all players have to do is click the ‘Play in VR’ button and the game will auto-set everything needed and easily launch in VR mode. Players will also have the option to tune their VR resolution in-game if they want to customize their screens further.
- Updated the HUD screen configuration with multiple new FSO cleanups and enhancements, including the ability to have the HUD Configuration reflect exactly what will be seen on the HUD, instead of the old FSO way of just using hard coded image files, which is very useful for players who like to customize their HUDs.
- Updated the N-1 model with many quality-of-life enhancements and improvements, including making the ship exterior more detailed for both the model and the texture, which enhances the immersion, especially in pirate/smuggler campaigns where the N-1 is prominently used by the player.
- Updated the first 3 interconnected campaigns with additional cleanup and polish, all in an effort to reach our public released goals.
- Updated Project Alderaan with many fixes, polish, and cleanup updates.
- Updated and fixed many other components with cleanup and fixes, which are too long to list here!
Community Connections
As always, we want to highlight all the terrific work completed by the FSO devs, too. They have continued adding code cleanup, bug fixes, optimizations, and multiple other updates that FotG uses. Just to name a few, MJN has refined and continues to improve the HUD rendering code and HUD configuration screens, Lafiel has integrated many fixes and enhancements to various FSO systems, and Goober has added multiple enhancements and cleanup with FRED, AI code, and more. In addition, ShivianSPS, Cyborg, and taylor have released a great QoL updated to KnossosNET, which FotG will be releasing on. As always, there’s many other devs adding great fixes, features, and other enhancements, too.
Moving Forward
Finally, thank you all for your sustained enthusiasm and support! We are getting extremely close to releasing FotG publicly--one of the largest remaining milestones is having FSO release 25.0 stable (which is ideally not far away). We simply can’t wait to share the game with you all once those milestones are completed. In the meantime, here is a new screenshot. May the Force be with you!
