Unending Galaxy [Beta 5] Released ! news

The final beta version of Unending Galaxy has just been released. Beta 4 was supposed to be the last, but recent breakthroughs in the game’ stability and performances require one last large scale beta test before the 1.0 release. As usual, if you bought the game at itch.io, your key should work perfectly fine. It's also a good time to buy the game while it still at a 50% discount.

The major improvements are:

• 2 new factions with their own ships, weaponry and docks
• Heavily improved game stability and performances
• Build ships with custom weapon sets at your shipyards
• New damage types, better combat
• Rebalanced prices and game’s pacing
• Better user interface (so, much, better)

There’s also 160 other changes and bug fixes. However, the procedural map generation discussed a few days ago has been disabled. It’s not really ready for prime time yet, and I kinda want to keep it for the official release anyway. Don’t worry, barring any other large issue, the 1.0 is just around the corner.

The game includes 2 new factions, the Nilith Republic, and the Titan Corporation. The first one is an active faction while the second is passive but will be used in a chain of events that will be included in the 1.0 release. Both factions have their own, unique ships, docks, weapons and trading goods. The Niliths are energy experts who produce powerful shield systems, energy weapons and ships. However, they don't use the jumpdrive technology.

Also, all ships prices have been balanced, maps have been improved and take the two new factions into account. New damage types have been added and existing ones have been reviewed. EMP missiles have been added too.

The main screen has been redesigned. I removed the left menu bar and replaced it with a panel at the bottom of the screen, it also shows your health and target information. Most menus have been screen centered, they don't overlap with the order panel anymore. Pinning the fleet and bookmarks panels works properly too and the jump button has a percentage when your engine is charging.

The camera keys have been moved to [t] to center on target and [r] to reset on your ship. quick-save and quick-load have been moved to the default F5 and F9 keys.

There's many other improvements to the empire screen, the galaxy map (which is faster), and the menu system in general. As usual, refer to the changelog if need be.

There's a total of 52 bug fixes ranging from minor ship behavior issues to game crashes.

It's not a secret many players have been plagued with stability issues while others had a much better experience. The main reason why the game wasn’t stable in the first place is because it’s fully multi-threaded (able to use all your CPU power), a feat that's not easy to accomplish. But after a whole week doing nothing but debugging the matter, I finally managed to make it work properly.

It took a toll on the performances and nearly nullified the benefits of last week‘s speed improvements, but it was worth it. I’ve been looking at the same game for hours and hours trying to make it crash and it simply doesn’t want to. So if you experienced such issues before, it's likely a good time to try again.

Enjoy ! :)