I would like to see some other styles or designs in the ships appeareances. I noticed you changed the ship design by the status screen on the cockpit, could you show us the 3d model of the ship?
Hi all, Super Starship 2 is now live on the App Store. Very interested in hearing any/all feedback. By the way this is a free update to Super Starship 1, not a new app. Les
Could you start a new thread for it? I would do it myself but I can’t find a link for the game in the App Store.
Don’t think there is a Super Starship 2 - it’s just the name of the update, so a new thread might be confusing. Lot of interesting stuff included anyway. Low planetary orbits look great. Finding one of the new beacons through low altitude flying took about 15 minutes due to speed restriction. So the next beacon I tried moving away from the planet surface then approaching from high altitude. That took a fraction of the time so is obviously the way to go. Earning funds from captured space stations sounds good. Just need to find one that’s not already occupied.
Upgrading your ship speed makes a big difference. And yes going higher in altitude means your ship goes faster so you get to the beacons in a much shorter time. Definitely the way to go. The planets are huge and even though your ship is going very fast (1500km/s and 4x time scale) at the surface it can take a long time to reach a beacon if it's million of kilometers away. Now that you can earn more funds faster compared to V1 (beacons, missions, starbases) you can upgrade ship speed quicker so you definitely should focus on doing that before upgrading fuel capacity. Yes it would be confusing if a new thread was started. Instead I updated my post above to indicate it's an update to V1 and not a new product per squarezero's recommendation. Les
Hey Les, the game is great, but I've had it crash several times while approaching a planet surface. I'm on an iPhone 12 with latest iOS. The device has 3GB RAM, so if should be okay with that.
Thanks for reporting this. If you haven’t tried this already please close all other apps on your device that might be running in the background. I’ll try to figure out ways to reduce memory usage. The planet terrain requires a lot of ram. In its current state the game peaks out at about 2.2gb of ram when you’re at a planet surface. Les
Mmm... I was swapping between WhatsApp and the game, so maybe it's what you say. My suggestion (aside from not swapping between apps, lol) is that you render less planet surface until we get very near to it. Kinda having several detail levels according to the distance we're from them.
Thanks and yes that is exactly what it is doing. As you start approaching the planet surface it starts rendering more and more surface detail but if you're in orbit it is just rendering bump map detail. When the terrain details start rendering, that is when the memory needs are highest. I'll see what I can do about maybe clamping the detail level at a certain point so it stops refining it as you get closer. Perhaps that'll reduce the memory usage. Les
@VirtualBoyFreak I found settings that will greatly improve performance on lower end (non-iPad) devices. It should fix the crashes on your iPhone 12. I'll push it either tonight or tomorrow night in the V2.2 update. The update will detect the GPU type and adjust the detail settings on the terrain to compensate, which means if you're running on a M1 or higher you'll get the highest (desktop class) detail settings, A14 and A15 will get medium detail and anything lower than that will get low detail. Les
Sounds great to me. Will let you know how it performs. BTW, on a side note, how/where do I refuel? I only see my fuel go down...
You can refuel at any starbase. Find a star system with a starbase (shows up in green text) then dock with the starbase and you'll have options to refuel. You can refuel even if you don't have enough credits, you'll just go into debt. You can also use the STAR SEARCH and choose "NEAREST STARBASE" and it'll guide you to the nearest one using onscreen arrows and HUD marker icons. Les
Installed the latest update. Didn't crash, only a bit of hiccup at certain points when approaching planets. I'll keep you updated if this changes. Already refueled, ty. I've noticed that you can click as many times as you want the refuel button even after having refueled, which makes you spend the amount of credits over and over. Can you make the button deactivate when fuel in the ship is at 100%? That would help a lot to avoid accidental clicks.
Wow version 2 is a big upgrade from 1. I’ve been dabbling with this for the last few weeks. It heavily reminds of Stellar Horizon which is a great game with a similar idea of exploring a massive universe and discovering diverse planets, although it did have trading mechanics and other stuff. It transformed over time with constant updates with new mechanics and features and I see the same path for this game. So much potential and this is already evolving for the better. I have some comments and questions. I realize a game like this relies on textual huds and information, a tiny bump in font size would help my geriatric thirties self. Hard to spot bases once the marker goes away. Might just be the unfortunate reality of playing on a phone. I came across some black hole but I couldn’t interact with it? Also this green square with points, credits etc kept going. Had to restart. Link to captures. How do I interpret the the ship hologram with the yellow and green line? It can be difficult for me to find a star or base when using the map. I now try to roll my ship to a plane where turning left from a point of reference makes my ship turn left on the map so I can navigate it better. Glad I read Asp’s post about collecting beacons flying out for the higher timescale then dive back into it straight on. It was rough collecting them along the surface. Then again I only got the first speed upgrade. I find flying around so much better with a controller. Would be cool to have more buttons mapped like star guide. Looking around with the joystick is pretty sensitive, could we get a slider? Unfortunately, since version 2 and even the 2.2 update, my iPhone XS gets barbecued, even just sitting still in space. I have to play plugged into a power source and always do a respring before playing. Of course there’s lots of frame drops and low frame rates during different parts which makes sense. It always crashes after playing for a bit. When it does, it’s after I hit explore on a star, so I’m always crossing my fingers when I hit that button. Due to my older phone, I don’t think there’s much you can do about this. Would be awesome to see the detail on the surfaces with a better device. The mmo idea seems intriguing. Since the universe is so vast I doubt I’ll bump into someone though. Is there going to be iap? I don’t see any and it was free when I got it. You deserve remuneration for this ambitious game.
I have the same issue with iPad heating after the update. I guess it’s understandable with so much extra detail. Also looking forward to further developments. Left and right viewports would be useful for tracking beacons. My space name is Ganj1n: All TA readers are welcome to call at my service stations for fuel or engine tune-up. Top prices paid for minerals and planetary data.
Wow, what a fantastic read. Thanks Decript for this very long post. I'll see what I can do about bumping up the font size. I do think it needs this. Usually when I play the game on my phone I have to put on my reading glasses. It's hard to find a good size that fits in confined spaces in the cockpit though. The black hole is the galactic center of the universe. You can't interact with it, it is just a marker. Interesting to hear about the green box never ending. What were you doing at the time? Were you in a planetary system or cruising the universe? I'll see if I can replicate that or find something in the code that would cause that. Thanks for reporting. The ship hologram show the up and forward vectors. If the ship up vector is pointing up then you're not inverted. It's hard to tell if you're inverted when flying around so I added the up/forward vectors to help with that. When not inverted then swiping left should turn the ship left, etc. Yes, @Asp had the right idea for collecting beacons. Flying high to get to them faster and diving down. When you upgrade your ship speed you can travel much faster on the planet surface and even when orbiting planets, so that should be the first thing you upgrade. I'll do some Game Controller tuning. What controller are you using? I was using an Xbox One controller to test with. I'll improve this some more in a future update. Yes, unfortunately with the planet terrain detail it'll heat up your phone real good as the GPU is doing a lot of work. Not sure what I can do about this but I'll explore and see what I can find. The solar system and planets need a lot of RAM which is why when you explore a solar system, it's more likely to crash. Your phone should have plenty of RAM though, 4GB I believe. I wonder if it's overheating. Your device should have the planet detail at the lowest setting. The detail setting determines how many triangles are rendered and at the low setting a planet surface is pushing under 2 million triangles and at the highest setting (for iPad Pro for example) the triangle count is over 6 million. I can actually go lower which might run better on your device. Currently there are 3 settings, "low", "med", "high", so maybe I'll add 2 more, "very low" and "very high". The MMO is experimental at the moment. If there are players online then you'll see hud icons for them so you can find them easily. Without that it would be almost impossible to randomly encounter another player. It is also completely optional so probably not a lot of people have discovered the feature yet. I downloaded Stellar Horizon. Interesting game. After reading the description I thought to myself "why did I make Super Starship?" but after playing it I realized our games are quite different. Really appreciate the feedback, will help make Super Starship better. Les
Asp, you just gave me an idea. Might be really cool to allow you to set the prices of your starbases. Also to be able to show a list of starbases and their current price offerings. Let me think about this for a bit... Les
