Hey Guys.

For a few weeks now, I've been organizing Development Team meetings with the hopes of getting our level of organization a bit higher. I've been taking notes of each of these meetings, and have decided that I will give you a rundown of the stuff that affects you every week. These will be in the form of notes that I took, so they may not always make sense. I'll try to clear them up while I "censor" them. At the start of every uni, I will also post goals for that uni in terms of content and code, and will update you on how we're doing in those terms. I will also post a new test client every week at the same time for you guys to download and go play with what you read here. So without further ado, our first Dev Meeting Sub Notes for you guys.

• Rebalance Progress
  
  • Finishing up guns (2 more days)
  • Longer range for mags since pulses got tracking and lasers got more tracking
    
    • Will better distinguish mags from other weapons
    • Pulse=power, Mag=range
    • About 25% more range for mags
    • Necessary since range augs do not stack anymore
  • Improvements to impact code
    
    • Added impacts to all physical weapons
    • Made the code use correct physics formulas
    • Conservation of Momentum formulas (the faster the shot, the more knockback)
    • Code is on test
  • Hull Rebalance Nearly finished (should be today)
    
    • About 1 hour of work left to be done
    • Updated the balance formulas, using a steeper power curve
      
      • hulls are harder to get
      • old hull stats did not fit into new power curve without drastic changes
      • using the square of the current power curve
      • ex. tech 19-20 is a 10% improvement rather then a 3% improvement
      • This makes changes more subtle, usually positive improvements, like extra hull or speed, or an extra aug slot
      • Hulls are finally pegged down to a formula
  • Shields and Torps are last of the rebalance (once hulls and pulses are finalized)
  
  
• Universe reset on Saturday February 28th. (THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
  
  • Rebalance finished on Monday, February 16th.
    
    • Testing for 12 days til 28th.
  • Feature freeze on Monday, February 23rd. (No more big code changes)
    
    • Testing for 5 days til 28th.

• Added mission locks to AI Bases, similar to warps
• Rewrote some missions to be less wordy
• Extended point hints (tutorial) so they can be used with events as well as timers
• Changed the starting location for new players so they have everything in sight in first gal
• Tutorial background art needs to be more solid, less transparent
  
  • Don't have the original photoshop files
  • Pip will help with the art
• Feedback needed on tutorial
  
  • Have playerbase help testing *HINT HINT*

• DB Conversion project
  
  • Done extracting all info to do a save
  • A lot of changes will be required in code, but a lot of improvements will come out of it
    
    • Better logging, functionality, simplicity in DB, etc.
  • XML was save every x-time, DB will be constantly save
    
    • Things in DB-Idle will be saved according to a param, like every 1/5/10/100 frames.
    • Things like scooping and inventory changes will be immediately saved.
  • DB Testing:
    
    • 11K writes/sec on random tables
      
    • After overhead is hit, 30% decrease in writes
  • Innodb are slower at backups
    
    • Will need a low priority replication server to do backups
• Server status
  
  • Server is running well after a week
  • Very little lag, only some players notice a little
• Other features added:
  
  • Slaves don't trigger ambush spawners
  • Added a tag that equips things on slaves when you equip the same item on your ship
  • Started working on new fighters since **** has left

• Player updates
  
  • Will post goals for each uni in terms of new code and content
  • Will post slimmed down meeting notes every week to catalog our progress
  • Will post a new Test Client every week for everyone to download to try out the new stuff

• New drones are coming along to supplement rebalance

Bugs found while testing with this client should be posted in this thread.
http://www.starsonata.com/StarSonata_TestClient.exe

Thanks for the help and support,
pip

On my dread I have to choose between the liberty shield cap and the monkey field gen I can't use both like before. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but just passing it on.

Just one thing i would like to know.. If the drone changes are going on, what will be the req. for the drone controllers? Something was said about a large quantity of Augs per controller, i would just like to know what that quantity is and what tech of augs so that i might be ahead of the game a bit. Not now of course, since i posted this, but some people don't read the forums

is that already in, and how can you test it? i'd love to help :p

you are a GOD! you earn bonus cookies for this. though if need be you can make it two weeks between updates if stuff slows down, as long as the updates are regular its all cool.

the new test client crashes for me after the character login.

he is Jesus, Sicuro is John the Baptist,a nd Jeff_L is God.

I don't think this is intentional.



Are you connecting to test server? Mine seems to work ok.

Test is not working, it puts me in a gal with only roid and bg graphics working with invisible dg warps and no warps out of the gal.

You did this with the new test client linked above? I was on this morning with one other (non-admin) person and he wasn't complaining about anything.

Suggestion:
maybe a ring of drones around the starting gal with a high rof 0 damage kinetic weapon to keep noobs from wondering off?

Transparency and Project management ftw.

I installed the trest client to the SS folder, but whenever i try to run it, it says that it isn't a valid win32 thingy, and cancels.

What am i doing wrong?

Test works just fine for me. Download the client from that link, put it in your SS folder. Double click it, change liberty.starsonata.com to test.starsonata.com

Test client won't install due to missing RakNet.dll cba to found out what this is and why it doesnt work.