Hey, Starscanners!

Is Starscanners a thing? Starscanners isn’t a thing, is it? ANYWAY!

This week I’m pushing out a small maintenance release that includes an engine version bump to Godot 3.4.3-stable. It’s fancy! It also includes some much needed TLC – bug fixes, a code refactor, and a fullscreen mode. Most of this will probably just be smooth sailing for everyone, but it’s all part of paving the way for a few bigger pieces coming up.

On the horizon are some of the stuff on my GitHub project, like a deep dive into ANOMALIES, a meaningful CARGO system, wandering ENCOUNTERS, and MISSIONS. I’m so excited about those! They look like really fun challenges to build.

I’m also trying to get Starscan ready for the Steam Deck. What’s really missing right now is strong gamepad support and because of how we’re building our UI, it’s a bit of a challenge. That’s also going to be fun to do!

Lastly, if you haven’t already, take a second to join The Voltur Nest Discord! That’s where I post stuff like this, but it’s much more conversational. I’d love to see you drop in!

Here’s what’s in this update:

• Fullscreen Toggle - toggle the view between windowed and fullscreen by pressing F11. You can also started in windowed or fullscreen from the command line with –windowed=0|1, respectively.
• Dynamic Resolutions - Fullscreen mode will switch to whatever your native screen resolution is, not just 1280x720.
• Scene and Game Flow Refactoring - Separated the System View and the Planetary Map to make the code simpler, fixing a number of bugs and making it easier to resize the screen.
• Planet Orbit Paths - A small fix to use the correct RNG seed when building the planet orbit paths and positions. The bug made it a pain to keep track of which planet you visited because they kept changing location.

As always, your feedback and support has helped me make this game better and I’m eternally grateful for that.

May Sol be forever at your back,

-Voltur