Fixes, features, and known bugs
- DOS NICE's GOES gives a memory complaint after pulling up the cartography list, even after closing it. In the windows version, opening the cartography list eats some RAM every time, but we haven't been able to figure out why. It looks like it's happening inside fopen and/or fread.
- In R9, the sky on planets sometimes changes to a seemingly random or patterned mix of greys. This was seen again in R9a or R9b, but hasn't been seen or reported since then. However it seemed to be extremely rare in R9a/b. This *might* be fixed in R9d and newer.
- Polygon clipping problem: If you get close to a polygon with more polygons behind it, at certain angles, part or all of that polygon can become invisible, allowing you to see the polygons behind it. This is most noticeable with trees, but it occasionally happens with land too.
This is a problem in vanilla Noctis too, IIRC.
- Missing poly in mammal model: There is actually one missing polygon in the mammal model (hopper/charger/etc), but it's in the neck and usually isn't noticeable. It only became noticeable when we were testing Critter 0s with their heads rotated so they aren't staring at the sky - but it was too noticeable then (since the back neck polys were stretched), so the C0s all still stare at the sky for now.
- Windows version only: Some (rarer) tree colors are a different color in the windows version than in the DOS version. For instance, on one planet most of the trees were dark green, and there were a few rarer light green ones. In the windows version, the dark green ones were still dark green, but the light green one was blue instead.
- Windows version only: Cheshire Critter Syndrome: Some critters' visibility cycles - You can only see the half that's above the horizon, but then the rest starts to appear, until it's all visible. Then it vanishes entirely for a few seconds before reappearing again.
- Windows version only: Frozen Invisible Critters: When you're facing in certain directions, critters are invisible, do not move, and the vertical hopper-finder line isn't drawn for them. (The hopper-finder box is drawn). This is not due to the too-far-away distance check. This doesn't seem to be happening with spinning critters. Critters that are standing still have this problem, as do moving critters. The angles at which each critter is invisible seem to be different for each critter, e.g. one vanishes when you're facing between SW and SE, and another between NE and NW. But it always seems to be either NE-NW or SW-SE.
- Windows version only: Bugs in or related to line drawing. Critter brackets may be drawn twice, and the vertical line looks thicker than in the DOS version.
This list of fixed bugs usually doesn't include bugs which were introduced and then fixed in Noctis IV CE itself - it usually only includes bugs which were in the original Noctis IV. However, the "known bugs" section does include bugs (if any are known) in Noctis IV CE.
- Previously, pressing 'set local target' made the screen shake if there were no planets in the system. NICE does not shake the screen or prompt for a planet if none exist; Instead, it responds with "NO PLANETS".
- When you 'set local target', if you typed in a number above 127, it would wrap around to become a number -128 to 127. If this number was below 0, then NIV would accept the target, though it would be a *nonexistant* target, and NIV would think it is +NAN LY distant. If it DIDN'T crash, and you then tried to fly to the planet, you would wind up in a pocket universe without stars, with no way to return to the galaxy. Planet numbers above 127 now correctly return "NOT EXTANT" in NICE. Furthermore, if you have gotten yourself trapped in a pocket universe, you should now be able to get OUT of it, by setting your target to parsis (or any system, if you use the nearby-system-finder tool), and engaging the vimana drive. If you're in +NAN LY land, if you engage vimana to a +NAN distant target, NIV will move you directly to the coordinates you specified (Actually, it will put you near them and will use vimana to go the rest of the way).
- You could travel beyond the galactic boundary by setting target to parsis; However, you would still be unable to target any systems, which means you were likely to run out of fuel if you fly too far (I did :P). Now you can't fly there anymore (it works the same as when you target an outofrange system).
- You could land on unlandable objects if you started the landing request on a landable one and changed target before landing. The landing-status is cleared when you set a new target (local targets as well as remote ones), and also when you attempt to scope for lithium, just in case there's some way to cause the bug there too. Note that NIV generally just froze or otherwise died horribly when you landed on a normally unlandable object. (Originally reported by Trad.a)
- Funky planet-duplication bugs (not recalculating planet data upon entering a new system?). It appears to be fixed for planets in separate systems. Since I haven't been able to duplicate the problem with two planets or moons in the same system, I cannot test to see if it still happens there. (Originally reported by Megagun, problem originally found by various other people, including Perry)
- In the 'Navigation instruments' menu if the local planets finder was activated, if you named the star of an undiscovered system, it counted for the "x labelled out of x" display. Thus is was possible to have, for example, nine bodies labelled out of eight. This was corrected after NIV is restarted, though. (Also the count dropped by 1 if you unlabeled the star) Labelling and unlabelling the star no longer changes the # of labelled bodies. (Reported by Perry)
- The widesnap/panorama bug, which would manifest after taking several wide snapshots with the / key, symptoms being an inability to take further screenshots, and the esc key not exiting NIV, and 3d font corruption (upon returning to the SD), and possibly additional problems. You can now take as many panoramic screenshots as you want (until it hits the hard screenshot limit - but your hard drive would fill up before you hit that limit now). Here's the cause: The widesnapping takes three separate snapshots and saves 'em like normal shots (but with different filenames), and after all three have been taken, all three are opened and read from them in order to write the final BMP. Then all three of the original files are deleted. The three BMPs' file handles were never actually being closed, so Bad Things were happening when NIV attempted to delete said files. I have no idea why the problem caused the symptoms that it did, and have no reason to try to find out now :P, but adding the _close calls for each of the files eliminated the problem entirely.
- If you took so many screenshots that you had exactly 9997 or 9998 or 9999 screenshots, and you then took a panoramic shot, it would delete screenshots 9997-9999 but wouldn't even save your panoramic shot. (More specifically, it would overwrite those with its own temporary shots, and then would fail to combine them because there was no unused # to use for saving the panoramic shot. Then it would delete its temporary shots, which had earlier overwritten your original screenshots numbered 9997-9999.) This was a theoretical bug which had not been reported, but which would have happened if someone allowed (whether accidentally or intentionally) the precise conditions to occur. The panoramic shots now use a different name for the individual temporary shots which are combined into the panoramic one later.
- Only 9999 screenshots could be taken, after that, NIV would refuse to take any more (until you deleted some). It's debatable as to whether this is a bug, but it's easily fixable, so I've fixed it! Now it will take up to 99,999,999, by omitting the 'snap' prefix in the filename. Note that back when NIV was made, it was unlikely that anyone would ever take 9999 screenshots and not prune some due to their file size, since 9999 panoramic shots would take about 1.7 gigabytes of space. Nowadays, with more and more computers having 100+ GB HDs, it does not seem so incomprehensible that anyone would let that many shots stick around. 99,999,999 panoramic shots would take up about 16.76 TERABYTES of HD space (that's 17166 GB). Of course after Four More Years HDs with that much space may be common, but that's as far as we can go without cutting into the file extension or giving NIV the ability to create files with names longer than DOS allows (or using letters in the screenshot 'numbers'). In any event, nobody will ever take that many shots... Er... Wait! Don't quote me on that! Ack! :P
- The compass did not correctly display your direction of facing. It has been corrected. You may notice I reversed the order of the directions on the compass - It's 'N W S E' now instead of 'N E S W' (I had to do that to fix the directions; otherwise even with the compass otherwise correct, you were moving east while the compass said you were going west)
- It was potentially possible for the palette to be faded back in to something less than 100% brightness. Now it will always be set to 100% brightness at the end of a fade-in.
- Fixed the jumping/gliding ability.. In regular NIV, you'll "stutter" when you'll try to glide off a planet. This is completely fixed. Now you can even jump over a cliff!!
- There was duplication of certain sectors of planets. The planet-generation seeds have been overhauled, and this duplication should no longer happen. This also means there's more diversity in general in the land and such than in the original Noctis IV.
- Changed "BREAKING" to "BRAKING" since we aren't breaking the drive, we're braking to slow down.
- Reduced the size of companion stars, because they were too big - In an S08 I was finding companion stars with more than double the radius of the primary star! And you see star info when you look at local info on a companion star now.
- Companion stars can heat things now, and substellar objects too, and all of them in the system are taken into account when determining the temperature. Planetary substellar objects heat similarly to how S05's heat (S05's are substellar objects too). In other words, "not much." Lastly, eclipses are checked for *each* star (or substellar object) for temperature - with NEW temperature, that is. Some things aren't affected by this (for instance, the color of your drifter, which seems to be based on distance from the primary star only and whether it is eclipsed).
- Ground terrain no longer changes due to atmospheric conditions or nighttime. Ruins, however, may still change. Except on very hot planets. Note: 'Albedo', which can cause a sector to be OCEAN instead of whatever it otherwise would be, was supposed to (I think) be the albedo of the surface only. The atmosphere and surface maps are merged prior to being displayed, and the albedo was calculated from the merged map. It looked like the albedo-calculating algorithm was supposed to remove the atmosphere albedo, but the algorithm was flawed. I've reimplemented it (and simplified it too, really) by making the raw-albedo (that is, surface-only) be calculated while the surface is being drawn. Since raw albedo is only used when you're on a planet, and we already recalculate everything (including the surface and atmosphere and all that jazz) when you go down to the surface (or change sectors, etc), this works (the way Alex had this all implemented, it wouldn't have worked, because that stuff wasn't being recalculated when you went to a planet, it was using the previously calculated stuff for it).
- You can't land on a planet which has drifted far away from you now. Before, if you left drive tracking mode off, and had flown to a planet, you could wander off and come back later and the planet would be out of sight, but you could still land on it without needing to get close to it again.
- The temperature will no longer be absurdly high when you start NIV with no current.bin. It'll be slightly above 0 K, like it ought to be. The temperature was showing up super-high because of the initial values of nearstar_x, y, and z. Presumably those coordinates were so far away that things were overflowing.
- Fixed the "neck is too weak when you're jumping/using the jetpack" bug. Now, you should be able to jump WITHOUT the automatic "look down" effect...
- When you lose power, the walls will depolarize now (Since it takes power to polarize them). Also, if invisible walls are on, they become visible again.
- The Normal and Alternate Go programs now show a warning if you're using 95/98/ME, unless you've made a PIF file for the program. If I get a PIF for 95/98/ME, I can make Go set it up for you automatically.
- The message you get if you don't have enough free conventional memory is better now, and tells you to look at troubleshooting.txt. It also pauses and waits for you to press a key before exiting.
- If an attempt to run a GOES module fails, NICE tries to find out why and will try to tell you. So for example, hopefully if you don't have enough RAM it should say so now.
- Perry reported a freeze/crash bug when landing on a specific planet or changing sectors. It's fixed now. It turned out that the code for making craters on 'creased' planets got stuck in an infinite loop if the albedo of the sector (its reflectivity, or how bright it looks from orbit) was very high. This planet had high albedo in general, so the problem was common there. The albedo was so high that it was trying to make a negative number of craters, and it was set up to continue making craters until the amount left to make was 0. Since the amount to make was negative initially, it never reached 0 and just kept decreasing forever. (Actually it WOULD reach 0 if you left it alone long enough, because of integer overflow and the size of the 'number of craters' variable - That means the number would get so low that eventually it would wrap around and become positive.)
- The bobbing on the water effect you get when you're on liquid surfaces is reduced now. Now, you shouldn't need a puke-bag anymore... AND you'll be able to gently float on, let's say, Suricrasian seas!
- The terrain (visible from space) of different planets was often similar, due to the planet seed having only a tiny effect on the terrain. I gave the seed a greater effect (it affects every tile now), and added another thing to make them differ more (but not much more).
- There was a buffer overflow in background() - that draws the skies on planets. It's fixed, but might be slower than the previous version. This doesn't fix what causes the overflow, it just prevents background() from writing outside the buffer. (I don't really understand how it's supposed to work, so all I could do was prevent it from writing outside the buffer. Fixing it properly isn't really possible right now)
- Fixed some more buffer overflows in the following functions: smoothterrain, felisian_srf_darkline, lssmooth.
- The GOES modules which take a 'X..Y' parameter now take 'X..' to mean 'X' and all entries after it, and just 'X' by itself means only entry X. Previously it meant X and all entries after it.
- if the local target lock is lost before the cupola separates, or if it is set to nothing (-1) when you try to start NICE, then it will leave you on the drifter. Additionally, if it is ever somehow set to -1 while you're on a planet surface it will immediately put you back in the drifter and tell you something went wrong.
- Current.bin is now saved just before you land on a planet. It was possible for it to crash after saving surface.bin, never saving current.bin (since when you hit ESC while on a planet it saves current.bin after surface.bin). That could cause problems.
- Fixed a problem which could cause you to get sent back down to the surface immediately after arriving back on the drifter.
- Fixed the scoping-speed so it's faster near the star, rather than faster farther away from it. Also, scoping was actually faster at S05s than S06s! That too has been fixed.
- Fixed a buffer underflow in digit_at.
- Fixed the scoping-speed so it's faster near the star, rather than faster farther away from it. Also, scoping was actually faster at S05s than S06s! That too has been fixed.
- Fixed the humongous temperature on roof bug, which happened when you had just started NICE. I had fixed the temperature in the env. info box earlier, but since the code was duplicated in two places, the fix only fixed env info and not the actual temp on the roof. Now it's fixed in GetOrbitingTemperature itself, which both things call.
- Fixed a buffer underflow in digit_at.
- Fixed some other problems which might cause crash/freezes.
- Crashing due to spinning around really fast has been fixed.
- Determined the exact amount of memory needed for the PV data buffer, and shrunk it to that amount (DOS version only). This saves 4704 bytes, which just might make the difference in letting some people run NICE r9* who couldn't previously run it. (Though NICE requires more memory than regular Noctis still)
- A buffer overflow related to ice has been fixed.
- [HACK] If you set your Li+ negative, you will have infinite fuel (You would have to edit current.bin to do that anyways). This is mainly so that I can fly across the galaxy to test the you-can't-go-any-further-code to attempt to fix it so it works on target-by-parsis too, since I bumped myself back to the center of the galaxy after I got stuck in +NAN LY land.
- When you fly to a parsis target, your StarDrifter will stop further away from it than before (about 3 times as far), and then it will fly either up or down until the target coordinates are lined up with your SD, so they're easy to see. Thus, if the coordinates are for a star, you should then be able to easily target that star.
- There's an additional menu now ("Extended"), with submenus. So far there's only one submenu, "Options." All additional options and values and such are saved to current.bin, and old versions of NIV can still read the new current.bin, and the modified NIV can still read old current.bin files too.
- The Options menu allows you to specify whether to have Speedup always disabled, only enabled on the roof, or always enabled. It's more effective inside the drifter.
- [Optional Fix] OPTIONAL unified temperature algorithms, which are based on attributes of the system's sun and decrease over distance w/ inverse square law. You can switch between using old and new temperature calculations in the Options menu. The NEW temperature mode is the default now.
- You can now choose whether to have the temperature in your HUD appear in Celsius, Kelvin, or Fahrenheit (from the Options menu).
- When on a planet, you may now press the 'a' key to call the drifter (it will lift off slightly and fly to you, and then land next to you). To cancel calling it, press 'z', and it will land where it is. This should be VERY useful if you lose track of your drifter. P.S. It shouldn't take more than a minute for it to arrive, no matter how far you are. If you press escape to exit while the lander is flying towards you, when you start Noctis again the lander will have landed on the ground below where it was when you exited. (Well you wouldn't want it to hover in place for hours while you're cat-napping, would you?)
- IF you have NEW temperature enabled: When you land on a planet, if the temperature at that point of the world is above 1000 Kelvin, special world-generation code takes over. Conceptually, that temperature is high enough to begin to affect the planet's crust, and to make it glow. At these temperatures all water has been boiled off - anything liquid is molten rock/metal/quartz/etc. At ~1000K the surface begins to fuse to glasslike substances, at ~3000K the glass and other things liquefy, and more durable stuff is spat up through the now-liquid surface to form islands of solid stuff. At ~5000K the surface is almost entirely molten liquid rock/metal/etc. For quartz planets, the molecular bonds of quartz may be broken at this temperature, liberating the oxygen and resulting in a sea of molten silicon, or maybe the bonds aren't broken and it's a sea of liquid quartz. I don't really know. This most definitely changes world-generation of those planets, in fact this largely overrides it. Sorry, the liquid doesn't make waves when you move (but the regular waves still exist and look WICKED COOL, if I do say so myself). P.S. The surface color changes from its natural color to a different one. What color it changes to depends on its temperature. (It's a blend of the original color and the new one, and even totally dark surfaces will glow now, since they're hot enough to emit light, though at low temperatures the light may just barely project red, more of it being infrared, and thus it will appear darker)
- The distance from the star is now shown on the environmental info box. Useful! By the way, one dyam is NOT one quarter of Felysia's orbit (which is what the manual says) -- Felysia is actually 2.18 dyams away from Bal (15,260,000,000 meters).
- Star surface temperatures are now calculated differently if you're using the new temperature model. The old model calculated surface temperature by dividing mass by (0.38e-4 * star_radius), and then applying a scaling factor for S06s only. The new surface temperature is (starMass * class_surfacetemp_mult[starClass]) + class_surfacetemp_add[starClass]. class_surfacetemp_mult and _add hold numbers which were calculated to bring surface temperatures into a desired range for each stellar class.
- Whee! Flying lander! There's a flying lander option which is on by default (If you turn it off, the lander acts like it used to). If it's on: When the lander lands and when you get in the lander, it will act normally. But while it is flying up or down, you may press 'a' to tell it to hover, 'z' to tell it to land, or 'q' to tell it to go back to the stardrifter. The number keys will give it a speed, and it will then fly in the direction you face. It might continue flying when you drop the speed to 0, and it might crash into hills or mountains if you fly towards them - the lander's flying software needs improvements. :P
- Sector transitions. Sectors are square now, and if you walk, run, fly, or hop to an edge, you will transition into the adjacent sector in the direction you were travelling. The lander will follow you if you're on foot. You can also fly to new sectors in the lander. And you can cross the north and south poles to get to the opposite side of the world (If you go north from 0.1 you'll end up in 180.1, and you'll be facing south, etc).
- The remote target box lists the radius of the star (in centidyams) in addition to the other information listed.
- The external environment box lists the distance to the (primary) sun from your current position in dyams in addition to the other information listed.
- The temperatures and distance in the external environment box, and the radius and mass in the remote target box are right-justified and will use xEy notation when necessary, so they don't get so big that they overwrite other text, screwing it up.
- You can now jump while you're on a planet! (needs little fix. hit J on a planet)
- The ability to look 90 degrees up and down while on the SD.
- The ability to look more up and down on planets. It's not 90 degrees, but it's a lot more than you were able to before.
- Added these shortcuts:
R - Set remote target
V - Vimana
L - set local target / approach local target / remove local target
Q - remote target data
W - local target data
E - environment data
I - internal light
S - scope for lithium
H - emergency call (help request)
- Added option that sets the antialiasing on/off. (TAB, or the Antialias option in the EXTENDED menu.)
- Moved the internal light to the middle of the SD, on the ground.
- Added an "about" and help page (list of keys): Press F1. That page is different on planets than it is on the drifter.
- Added Lightscaling, a little effect that changes the way you're able to see stuff.. (Hit L) on SD).
- Added Advanced Lightscaling, a little effect that also changes the way you're able to see stuff. (Hit shift + L on SD).
- Added two new speed rates. "9" was speed 90. The new ones are "," (250) and "." (500). Only really works on fairly flat planets, though...
- Added "gravity boots", which make you almost instantanuously land on the planet (hit L when on a planet).
- Added X-enabling, a little method of letting Noctis communicate with Windows applications. The first ever application using this, is an IRC client, which you can operate through Noctis! :)
- Added Infrared view, De-atmospherizing view (also known as Antifog), and Ultracolour view (Infrared: hit I, Antifog: hit F, Ultracolour: hit U.. Of course while on a planet! (Press F1 for the keys-list if you forget))
- Added hud and menus while on the roof! Hit backslash (\) while you're standing on the roof, and therewego! A hud on the roof! (Including the menus/options list, the ability to use shortcut keys, and the # keys for selecting menus and menu options, and right-clicking for selecting targets)
- Added type of planet to the Local Target Data screen.
- Added Earthquakes to planets.
- Added the ability to take a screenshot, and move 5 degrees to the left (useful for taking rotating animated gifs). Hit F12.
- Added.. *drum roll* JETPACK!!!! Weee! Use it by pressing the SPACE key (Or hold it down)! To land, just hit (or hold) the L key.. Surface only of course (oh, really?).
- New versions of Go!: "Normal Go!.exe" and "Alternate Go!.exe" The old Go! is included as well (named "Old GO!.exe") in case you have any problems with the others (Check troubleshooting.txt if you do). These also set up memory settings properly for Noctis (even if they were broken before), by making a PIF file for them (There's a base.pif file which you can modify if you want). And on 2k and XP, they free up even more conventional memory for Noctis with a custom autoexec.nt and config.nt. (This is all automatically done by Go!, you don't have to do anything other than run one of the Go! programs) NOTE: "Old Go!" does NOT do any of those things.
- Multiple builds: Though the full noctis.exe is still available ("Normal Go!" runs it), and is recommended unless you're having trouble running it, Noctis has also been split into multiple builds with specific features hardcoded into each, to reduce conventional memory usage for anyone having trouble getting enough conventional memory to run Noctis. If you use "Alternate Go!", that will run the appropriate build. It is also able to restart itself when you change an option which requires a restart (Technically, any option that requires changing which Noctis build is being used). Go remains open while Noctis is running now, though it doesn't do anything until Noctis exits.
- Additional surface information If you press F2, you get some additional information: Your height above surface level, your height above sea level, and the surface height. Also, it says what kind of terrain the sector is (ICY, OCEAN, PLAINS, etc). If you land on a non-felisian planet and forget what type it is, the F2 page will remind you (since those have only the one terrain type).
- On planets, M now takes a snapshot and N takes a wide snapshot. (* and / still work of course) These're listed in the F1 keys-list along with the other keys.
- Brackets around animals with the 'h' (highlight) key and hiding trees, rocks, etc with the 'd' (debris) key.
(By Bensel)
- Earthquakes on certain planet types, which shake your view and can push you around (and down slopes, etc).
- The local planets finder report (In menu 2->6) now also tells you the number of companion stars, if there are any in the system. (In previous versions of Noctis, they were counted as planets)
- You can see sunrises and sunsets, and see the sun move now. And weather can change while you're playing. This is an option that can be turned off (extended->more options->Moving Sun or 5->7->9). The appropriate things are recalculated every 20-83 seconds, and on some computers that could cause a noticable slowdown, so you might want to have the option turned off unless you're going out to look for a sunrise or something :P. Note: The colors transition during sunrise/sunset, but the sky seems to change instantly, and the sun vanishes instantly too. I'm going to take a shot at improving those later.
- There're four vision modes on planets, ultravision (U key), infrared (I), oceanvision (O), and plantvision (P). They all actually just shade everything in the colors of one normal thing. There's also a defogger (F) for thick-atmo planets.
- You can adjust the brightness when you're on a planet by using ctrl-plus and ctrl-minus. ctrl-* (asterisk) resets it to the standard brightness.
- The local targets info shows the radius of the target too now. That info popup looks a little squished with all that data, so maybe we should increase the size of the info popups and spread things back out a bit more again.
- NIV now keeps track of the last known snapshot number. So now if you have lots of snapshots, taking new ones should be faster. But it won't EVER overwrite an existing snapshot. If you manage to take snapshot # 99999999, then when you try to take the next one, Noctis will check to see if there are any empty slots (e.g. if you had deleted an old snapshot), but if there aren't, then it will show a "TOO MANY SNAPSHOTS" message. Note: Normal snapshots are 64 KB and panoramic ones 180 KB, though if you have XP and have it set to compress the contents of your GALLERY folder, they'll probably (on average) take up only a third of the space that they would take up if uncompressed. (That is a rough estimate based on how much space my snapshots are taking up here) If uncompressed, 99999999 normal snapshots would take up about 5.96 terabytes of space (6103.5 gigabytes). If compressed to one-third of that size, they'd still fill up 2034.5 gigabytes...
- When you're in the stardrifter, the 'c' key toggles on and off the drifter's fancy new cloud-filter. If it's on, the drifter filters out the clouds (the whole atmosphere, really) of nearby planets and moons from the display (and the landing screen), giving you a clearer view of the surface. It is turned off automatically when you go down to a planet, and isn't saved when you exit, since it isn't considered an option. The filter has no effect on certain planet types (like the ones with no clouds, or non-consistant planets covered in dense clouds, substellar objects, etc).
- When you're in the stardrifter, the 'x' key toggles on and off the drifter's fancy new terrain-type filter for felisian planets.
- A generic work buffer is used for all critter models now, instead of one for each model. This means we can fit more models into the space that's currently available without requiring additional RAM (Since Alex allocated a dozen KB or so more RAM for it than it needed before).
- Several new critters have been added. The new models are in NCC files in the DATA folder, named Critter1.NCC, etc, so they don't give away what they are by their name. Some are rare, some are common, some are in the middle... Most have habitats they prefer. There may be several subspecies for some (or all) of the new species. Some may not have new model files, being based on existing model files. (There are more we want to add too, but aren't until the windows version is ready)
- When on a planet, the left and right arrow keys now make you slide in that direction. Tap them to change your sliding-speed a little, or hold them down to rapidly change it. If you hold down the down arrow, it'll slow down your sliding and eventually stop it.
- Mouselook can be toggled from the "More Options" submenu of the "Extended" menu. In addition to be toggleable on planet surfaces by tapping the up arrow key. If mouselook is on, moving the mouse away from you makes you look up, and moving it towards you makes you look down. This is the opposite of what happens when you hold the right mouse button with mouselook off. The reason it's the opposite is to bring it in to line with most FPSes.
- There's an optional in-system vimana drive now. The way it works is that you can use 'start vimana' while you're flying towards a target with the in-system drive. If the target is more than 20 dyams away, the vimana drive will kick on until you're within 20 dyams of the thing, then it shuts back off and the in-system drive starts warming up again.
- Raw Screenshot: Use this by either hitting "delete" or "b" (whether in space or on the surface of a planet). This actually takes a screenshot WITHOUT the parsis coordinations, and the often irritating planet/star name tags..
- Enlarged the forests. They are now WAY higher, and should generally look better now. Note that this is quite planet-specific: on some planets, forests may look ugly (like at Vericalya), but on some others, they might look superb (Felysia, for example).. Also note, that the probability of having a "giant" tree in forests is higher now.. Almost every forest should have a "bigger than normal" tree in it now.. This is actually a side-effect of my modifications to the size of the trees, but you don't have to know that, do you?
- Added a hail effect. Hail should occur when it's cold and it should be raining... Hail doesn't really look that uber nice, though.. But meh.. At least it looks different from rain...
- Optional 3d hopper brackets now. The option is in the Extended->Visual Options menu.
- A lot of the keys you can press on the surface will show a message now when they're pressed.
- Degrassifying with the 'g' key (requested by McWgogs).
- The compass now has a medium-sized dot for NW/NE/SW/SE (smaller than the ones for N/E/S/W, larger than the other dots).
- The HUD lights now brighten/darken (depending on your HUD brightness) when you use the jetpack or the GOES screen is updated.
- Starmap3!
- You can feed ST, PAR, WHERE, etc, the name of *any* named system or planet (or moon or companion star) anywhere in the galaxy.
- If you give ST the name of a planet/moon in another system, it will tell you what system it is in.
- ST, PAR, WHERE, etc, find their targets instantly.
- Although the GOES modules have been updated to use starmap3, you can still use the old modules. Just add OLD to the end of the module's name, e.g. STOLD, PAROLD, etc.
- Sync-Starmap (SyncStarmap.exe), which makes inbox/outbox stuff really easy to do. As of 9.25b, SyncStarmap also now updates starmap2.bin (which is read by NoctisMapper) when run.
Added moviemaking feature. For more info, read the manual (moviemaking.html) in the docs folder.
Changed "X refreshed!"-notice lights from blinking to flashing. They were a bit unnoticable earlier, but since they actually flash now instead of blink, you can actually notice them...
Debris (rocks) are back in now, but I don't know if they work like they should. Please pay attention to them a bit more to see if there are any glitches that weren't in earlier.
Temporarily fixed the landing pod buggy colours on WNice. It's a messyhack, but still...
Added a feature which allows you to hide and show the vertical podlocator beam. Hit "v" to turn it on/off. Defaults to on (ofcourse).
- Added PortableGOES, the GOES that goes with you (pun intended), which can be opened by hitting F5. Okay, it's still not really a portable GOES system yet, since you can't access GUIDE modules (cat, st, etc.) other than cast (which doesn't output anything to the PGoes console), but you can now chat while on planet surfaces using HacIRC (which has been updated to work with most servers, too!) and the Xnice Say and Action commands. Note that all non-guide modules work perfectly, and guide modules will probably be able to get ran through PGoes in the next NICE release..
- The Moviemaking feature will now replace "PPS" with "FPS" on the bottom statusbar on your screen. Note that it displays the average FPS for the duration of your movie, not the current FPS rate. This is useful for when you're going to compile the movies into an .avi file. Note that you currently don't have any choice whether to display FPS or not. This will probably be adressed in the next NICE release.
- Added a Sector Heightmap viewer, which can be acessed by hitting F10. This basically displays a heightmap (black-white) of the current sector, and your position (and the position of the lander) within the current sector. There are a few buttons displayed on the right side of the screen, which allow you to modify the map's colours a bit (brightness/contrast). The coordinates of your current position are also displayed there in FSU (Felysian Surface Units, the same you see in the Advanced Statistics (F2) display) and the Surface Coordinates (the numbers you see on your compass). Note that this feature was originally intended to be a debug feature, but eventually grew into a more versatile thing. Eventually, we might add more advanced Terrain recon tools to it (such as a beacon placer, surface measurement between beacons, and surface comments), but that's for later... :)
- Added 'new to noctis' dialog. It's kind of cheesy and lame, and basically tells you to read the documents in the docs folder if you're new to noctis/NICE.. But it's still there. If anyone has better text for it, please send it to any of us (Megagun or Shadowlord) via a PM on AnywhereBB.