Evochron Legacy SE version 2.0328 demo... file

Version 2.0328 includes the following improvements:

- Added ability to plot multiple sequential waypoints (see notes).
- Added new passenger transport objective - medical patient (see notes).
- Added passenger and patient transport objectives to multiplayer mode (see notes).
- Passenger and new patient transport objectives are now integrated into the contract system.
- Autopilot now aligns with jump gates via flight controls when linked to an active sequential waypoint.
- Autopilot now reduces speed as needed to recover from high levels of horizontal and/or vertical drift.
- Autopilot now waits until jump cycle completes before applying flight control inputs to reduce unnecessary fuel consumption and to provide time for sequential waypoint updates.
- Improved planetary atmospheric effects and related water shader reflection elements (including more distinction for sunrise/sunset sequences).
- Jump drive now automatically disengages main engine to no longer require manual control to minimize fuel consumption.

- Jump drive arrival distance placed about 1K further back to give more time for docking directives to be broadcasted.
- Added ability to specify multiple joined objects as well as transparency/energy effects in quest event type 4.
- Added ability to specify multiple ships in quest event types 3, 29, 30, 31, and 32 (comma delimiter).
- Cargo bay menu when tractor beam is active now has highlight buttons for mouse over and discarding.
- Distance to nearest planet (estimate to minimum surface level) added to System Information console.
- Non-target direction indicators updated to be a little more distinct from the target indicator.
- Shield arrays now sustain damage upon general impacts (level based on direction and velocity).
- Snap zoom sequences removed from cinematic view mode for a more consistent viewing distance.

- Possible solution for certain system-side configurations potentially causing the game to freeze on exit.
- Added ability to bind two-key combinations for all control options in the Key/Button Configuration menu.
- Main gunsight textures doubled in resolution for improved appearance at higher resolutions.
- Added ability to view multiplayer player/stats list while inside main station lobbies.
- Missile fuel reserves increased by about 70% and lock ranges increased to accommodate.
- Improved support for 0.1875-0.28125 ratio display resolutions (ie 5760X1080/5120X1440).
- Inventory database menu updated to better accommodate Large font size setting.
- Tiling detail texture layer added to ship and station/city module shaders.
- Line 146 in the savedata value set expanded to indicate docked location.
- Crew wage cycles and passenger delivery timers standardized to seconds.
- Payment alert notification sound added to player-to-player contracts.
- Civilian rating credit now awarded for building station modules.
- Smooth scrolling added to mouse-over of entries in maplog menu.

- Improved key and button conflict detection and indicated.

- Gunsight shield indicators now also shown in HUD mode 1.
- Most radar indicator textures doubled in resolution.
- Nebula cloud added to Deneb system.
- Minor fixes and improvements.

Notes:

You can now set multiple sequential waypoints for the ship's navigation system to follow. Two new buttons have been added to the navigation console for this system 'Add New #' will add a new waypoint at the currently selected nav point. You can then change the nav point to a new location and click on 'Add New #' again to add a second waypoint and so on. The number of the waypoint being added in the sequence is displayed in place of the '#' symbol on the button. Up to 10 waypoints can be set this way and you can optionally enable the autopilot to follow the course you plot. You can pick up a course in the middle of a waypoint set or start from the beginning. When you're ready for the autopilot to follow a course you plot, simply right click on the waypoint you want the autopilot to fly to and engage the autopilot. The ship's autopilot will use the currently selected radar range as the distance to detect when a waypoint has been reached. It will do this by calculating 1/5 of the current radar range setting. So if you have the radar set to a range of 25K, the waypoint activation distance will be 5K. This way, you can decrease the range of activation for slower and closer approaches by reducing the radar range setting. Once the autopilot reaches the selected waypoint at the specified range, it will automatically toggle to the next waypoint in sequence. Once it reaches the limit, it will hold at the last waypoint. You can swap back to previous waypoint or skip waypoints by right clicking on their icons on the nav map. You can also manually fly to a waypoint to activate each one in sequence, rather than use the autopilot. To repeat a course of sequential waypoints, simply plot the last waypoint in range of the first waypoint and the system will automatically advance back to the first waypoint and then the second when you arrive at the last waypoint.

The 'Delete #' button will remove the last sequential waypoint from the current set. The '#' will indicate which waypoint will be deleted. You can optionally right click on the button to clear all waypoints.

Plotting a waypoint to a jump gate will suspend the automated advancement to the next waypoint until you pass through the gate, preventing the system from trying to jump to the next location that may be many sectors away and allowing the jump gate to activate for its destination instead. When active, the autopilot will apply horizontal and vertical thruster inputs to align your ship with the selected jumpgate linked to a current sequential waypoint. You can assist the autopilot by applying thruster controls manually as may be needed for certain environmental conditions or approach angles.

The new sequential waypoint system operates independently from contract waypoints. So you can use this new system in conjunction with contracts or on its own. Sequential waypoints will display a number above their indicators to distinguish them from contract waypoints, if both are active on the HUD at the same time. And only the currently selected/active sequential waypoint is displayed to prevent clutter/visibility issues.

Planetary atmosphere effects have been updated, including the addition of several new shaders and changes to the water reflection system to accommodate varying color changes and horizon blending. Previously, planet background haze, reflection, and lighting effects were limited to merely dimming toward the night side of planets and during sunrise/sunset cycles. Planets can now have more pronounced sunrise and sunset phases where atmospheric coloring and lighting shifts to orange/red hues based on angles and range from the nearby star.

A new objective has been added to the passenger transport system, requiring the safe delivery of a medical patient to a specific station. This new objective works much like the passenger transport, except that the payment is fixed and does not decay over time. So what is offered is paid in full if the player is able to deliver the patient before the timer runs out. The time offered is based on the distance required to deliver the patient. Before accepting the agreement, the player can analyze the destination and decide if they think they can make it in time. Like passenger transport, patient delivery also requires an available crew slot.

Passenger and patient transport objectives are now integrated into the main contract system for improved discovery and accessibility. This way, such objectives are much easier to find and don't require activating a separate inventory console mode to view. A description of each objective is provided along with the option to accept the agreement directly in the contract menu. Such objectives, if/when available, will be added near the end of the current contract list for the sector in the last few indexes. Unlike other local sector objectives, these objectives span multiple sectors and will generally need to be completed by travelling through system gates to reach a destination quickly. Any passenger/patient transport objectives available in the sector will be added to the end of the available contract pool for the location the player docks at (either the station or planet). Once a passenger or patient has boarded the ship, the agreement can't be cancelled like regular contracts can. The passenger or patient must be dismissed from the crew management console to terminate the agreement.

Both the original passenger transport and new patient transport objectives have been added to the multiplayer mode. To accommodate this addition, the server programs needed to be updated in order to broadcast the additional required data to clients. As a result, server operators will need to update to the new server builds (2.0408) for the new objectives to work. Older server builds will continue to work with newer client builds, but clients won't receive the data needed for the new transport objectives, so they just won't be available.

Long range passenger and patient transport objectives are considered multi-sector contracts, even though they are now displayed among other available local contracts. Multi-sector transport contracts do not impact local sector contracts, so you can accept and manage them separately. And since they involve transporting only one passenger, they aren't included among the contracts that can be shared. So other players can still link into a local contract together without impacting a player accepting a passenger transport objective and vice versa.

Civilian rating credit is now awarded for building station modules. 1 point is awarded for smaller modules, 2 for production and storage modules, 3 for city docking modules, and 5 for space station command modules.

Shaders used for ships, carriers, stations, and cities have been updated to incorporate a tiling detail texture. This helps provide a much higher detailed appearance to the surface of these objects in the game (anywhere from around 300% up to 1800% depending on type and size). This additional texture layer adds more panels and surface contours to help fill in some of the empty/blank areas of the base texture layers and applies details to the diffuse, specular, and reflective elements. Details on custom options are available in the updated customizing kit.

All locking missile types have had their fuel reserves increased by about 70%. This means that the flight time before missiles self-detonate due to running out of fuel (and hence, no longer being able to maneuver or track a target) has been extended. To accommodate this change, the locking ranges of missiles have also been increased significantly.

By request, shield arrays can now be damaged by impacts with other objects/structures in space. The severity of damage is dependent on the overall velocity and type of impact. Collisions with small/low mass objects such as debris from an exploding ship or bits of asteroid will not inflict damage while impacts with most other larger objects will, if the overall velocity is high enough. The direction of the impact will determine which array is affected and faster impacts will deplete the array level at a greater level.

This update should help resolve an older issue a few players have reported involving the game freezing upon exit. Although the root cause is still unknown, it appeared related to certain control device configurations, drivers, and/or language settings causing something to not release/unbind properly during the game's cleanup and shut down process. With the help of a player I exchanged e-mails with and sent test code to, I was able to come up with a code-side solution to work around the problem that involves a different shut down procedure for the control input system. I've only been able confirm it has solved the issue for the one user so far, but further internal tests indicate it should solve the issue for others as well. Normally, freezing is associated with external security programs interfering with the game's access to its own files or media (memory and/or disk access), so this update won't help anyone encountering such a behavior for that reason. But for those encountering a freeze upon exit due to a particular hardware/device/driver configuration, this update may solve the issue entirely for them.

The ability to bind two key combinations for controls has been added to the Key/Button Configuration menu. Much like the two button combination options for joysticks/controllers, the key option supports pressing two keys in sequence to map a single control function. There are a few limitations inherent in the key index/register system and development platform, but is overall flexible and supports a wide range of key combinations.

I'm leaving the ability to bind the alt keys in place for the time being. Just be aware that this may impact other functions associated with the alt keys (such as flight/select mode toggling and/or other alt options for other single key functions). It can also obviously include things like alt-tab which toggles apps in Windows. So you can use the alt keys to map controls to, but they may overlap with other inputs in unwanted ways. In such instances, it can be better to use a shift or control key combination to avoid such conflicts. But for many inputs, it seems the alt keys can be properly used in conjunction with other keys that don't already have a secondary function bound to them.

Since the key entry system is numlock aware, this can also cause numpad number keys inputs to be altered. For example, if you press shift-numpad 8 with numlock on, the second input register changes and won't apply the numpad 8 since holding shift changes the register. Other combinations with the numpad number keys will work fine (such as control or alt), shift just can't apply because of the effect it has on changing the key input register.

Other than these considerations, the multi-key binding system should work with just about any key combination to map two keys to one control function.

New/changed lines for the 'text.dat' file are 975, 1262, 1516 (< Passenger boarded - ), and 2890-2910.