Dev log 47.

It,s about the warp stations and It's nice to see devs starting let players ships have both a free jump and the option to use a jump gate net work.

Dev blog 48.

Yup update is on Steam.

Short dev blog 49.

Nice hub on the way.

Dev log 50, hub should be in this update as steam updated the game yesterday with a 96 meg update just not had any time to look at it.

short dev blog this week, two hot fixes and a vote.

Devlog 52.

 

We have also decided to change the current update schedule, for the rest of the time leading up to beta we will no longer follow a strict 2 week build schedule. We hope this change will allow us to be a bit more efficient with adding features as well as give us more flexibility to make them stable. We expect these final few updates before Beta will take longer than 2 weeks but will hopefully contain more features as well as be more stable.

Additions

-General AI improvements across the board

-Early Pilot AI has been added - Still quite early, we still have quite a bit of work to do for pathfinding flight AI. While the pilot doesn't currently collect scrap or align the ship to the targeted way point, they can be useful during ship-to-ship combat!

-Added a screen lock / unlock system for board-able ships.

-Added a ship claiming system that should work with the screen unlocking mechanic. Players should be able to board foreign ships, unlock the majority of the ship’s screens and have the captain claim it!

-New Enemy

- Enemy Crewed Intrepid-Class Starships. 30% chance to encounter them in a colonial union sector

-New Enemy - AI Crewed Stargazer-Class Starships. 30% chance to encounter them in an unclaimed sector.

-New Enemy- AI Crewed W.D. Cruiser-Class Starships. 30% chance to encounter them in a WD controlled sector.

-New Sector Commander: Captain Spriggs of the Grim Cutlass

-New Turret - Burst Railgun - Fires three shots consecutively

-New MegaTurret - CU Long Range - Fires a short continual beam of energy, dealing massive amounts of damage. The Grim Cutlass is known to have one equipped.

-Added a new area to the Bar found in the Colonial Union Hub, more details have been added as well.

-New Planet - Red Desert

-The Fire system has been overhauled, new systems are in place to make sure they behave correctly, they visually start small and dimmer and grow in size and intensity over time.

-New “Night” Variant for the Intrepid-Class, visual tweaks to Hull and interiors. The Grim Cutlass uses this new variant.

-Added an early list of the backer submitted NPC names!

-Added an early group priorities system, this works behind the scenes and actively changes how important certain events are based on whether or not a bot is already working to react. (If a bot is already running to take out a fire, the others won’t be as inclined to help since the problem is being taken care of).

-Added a simple spectating system for players while they wait to be respawned

-Added a new interior to one of the Desert Planet variations 

 Changes

-Alarms are disabled at green alert level

-Balance changes to turrets. Projectiles are generally slower and do more damage.

-Camera shake from a shield hit has been reduced

-UI changes in how your current ship and enemy ships are displayed onscreen

-Tweaked Player movement speed when holding a weapon

-Intrepid and Cruiser Classes no long start with nuclear devices, you need to earn them now!

-Nuclear devices do slightly less damage but have longer ranges to compensate 

 Fixes

-Fixed bug that caused the quantum shields to be active at the wrong times

-Fixed a few issues with viruses

-Fixed an issue regarding planet path generation

-Fixed an issue regarding a targeted component scan of a foreign ship not showing up correctly -Fixed a few collision issues in certain planet sectors

Dev Log 53.

Taking about the hub and bug fixes also say some thing about the turrets which I hope they have finally sorted out.

Been a while since I had a play around with Pulsar and it has had a few updates with a station which can be beamed over to and explored.

It's pretty big area and not all of it can be accessed at the moment although you can talk to some of the locals and theirs a trading area as well as this guy who looks like he will be handing out missions in the future.

Back on the ship I found how to add the bot to my crew although they don't appear to do much at the moment apart from stand still and looking gormless.

You can't shoot them either, I tried it and don't add a pilot bot to your crew as you can fly the ship anywhere until you dismiss him, on the other hand they have added a number of new ship system which can be fiddled around with. Also they have added ice worlds to the deserts worlds which can be beamed down to and explored where you can some times find weapons and lots of biscuits.

All in all the game is really starting to shape up and I'm looking forward to seeing whats coming although the turrets are still useless,  I still getting blasted to bits every time I go up against a drone

New Devlog.

New update and dev blog.

 

Additions

- Added a new flight option for Pilots. Precise throttle control can allow you to only use a fraction of the energy given to the engineering conduit. Because of this, Pilots can now control speed and power management without consulting the Engineer. A Pilot can move slower to avoid enemy detection, maneuver difficult obstacles or assist in reducing reactor heat by running on lower power.

-Added a new off-screen indicator system for Pilots and crewmembers manning turrets. It’’s fairly straightforward, but we think it really helps players gain a better understanding of where ships are in the current sector.

-Added a first-person piloting mode that enables Pilots to fly the ship from the bridge

-Added the ability to customize your appearance. This can be done is the esc menu.

-Added support for both male and female player visuals

-New camera mode for Piloting: Hybrid - a few have suggested a mix between orbit and fixed camera, this camera mode should now be in a fixed position and only move when changing the position of the camera via mouse. It can take some time to get used to.

-Added an early look at the Community Designed HUB: Cornelia Station! The station is still in an early state and many interiors are not yet built. We’ve incorporated a lot of the feedback we’ve gotten from the layout voting process and hope to get even more when you all get a chance to explore it!

- Added a new 3D navigation system for Pilot AI. It’s still pretty early but with this we decided to add back those asteroids we had earlier! The Pilot AI doesn’t yet hunt for scrap or align the ship to a sector but it can still be useful for combat if you can’t find a human Pilot.

Changes

-Tweaked art assets for all bridges, they should better support first person piloting, (better windows and position).

-Piloting screen actually has some settings right now, players can choose between “Binary” and “Precise” throttle control, binary has either 100% throttle or 0%, this is exactly how the previous system works.

-New piloting stations now have a status screen so the Pilot can quickly gauge info while piloting in first-person

-Changes to piloting controls. Combines throttle and inertia dampening settings to give the Pilot a more unified control scheme. This also improves the piloting experience when using a flight stick and/or throttle controllers.

-Sector lighting and fog will now better match sector color

-Main turret damage amount tweaked and now deals armor-piercing damage

-Player animations have been overhauled

-Reduced exterior scale dramatically, due to the games camera system it should not be noticeable at all (if we did everything correctly). This change should help with object jitteriness at far distances.

-Crew and enemy crew bots will now randomly assign their appearance, this system will likely be improved in the future to get better results.

-New save file format: now saves faction reputation information

-Flashlights are now brighter

-Updated some of the ship thruster and light visuals, they also will change based on how much throttle is being used.

-Tweaked warp visuals

-Default input bindings no longer include joystick/gamepad settings. More work on this will be coming soon!

Fixes

-Warp drive program pricing has been fixed. It incorrectly increased the price based on max charge levels.

-Players should no longer get stuck in that certain shed that was reported!

-Turret auto aim fixes to prevent turret clipping into the ship when they don’t have a target

-Bloom postprocess effect has been fixed

-Can only swap hull components to prevent ship self destruction when hull is removed -Some fixes to help prevent alarm sound from playing when it shouldn’t

-Ship door sounds should now play properly (can’t hear other ship doors opening/closing)

-Main turret tooltip should now show correct damage and scale with level

-Fixed bug that could cause enemy turrets to not properly lock onto targets if manned by bot

-Fixed an issue that could cause non-host inventories to not sync correctly, this may have caused a number of issues in regards to completing mission objectives.

-Fixed an issue that could cause a player to be invisible if you joined while they were on a planet

-Fixed issue that could cause the jetpack sound effect to continue playing endlessly if the player dies while using the jetpack

-Some changes that should prevent the game over condition from occurring when it shouldn’t

-Fixed issue that could cause heat generation when attempting to fire a heavy pistol while sprinting when the gun didn’t actually fire

-Beam-type weapons should no longer cause friendly fire in certain circumstances

Known Issues

-Nuke screen still has some issues

-Shops will sometimes not correctly sync their inventory to clients if the player joined while in range of a shop

-Some issues have been seen with crew bot networking

-Audio will sometimes cut out

-Bandits will sometimes not spawn / fall through the level on certain planets

-Mission completion doesn’t take the mission items on clients

Thanks for your time!

Best,

The Leafy Games Team

This project is getting better and better, it's in a really hot phase now.

I really like the first-person pilot (you activate it with the K-key), so you can directly pilot from the ship. I still have to figure out all the keys for piloting, I know there is a auto and manual mode.

😎 Nice, nice, nice,

XenonS

Reading forums and by googling, I notice that most people who would be interested in this game and others who have already bought it simply don't know what to do with it in its current alpha-beta state. Maybe the devs are not going to read this, but here my suggestions anyway:

The current Manual (posted on the site) is good once the game is reasonably finished, but for now it doesn't tell much as for playing the game in Single Player (with bots as the crew).

Not everyone is going to play online with 4 other buds as the crew, but will focus on Single Player. Apparently a lot of guys need pointers for doing that or will get away uninterested, that's no good.

As I understand, a single player must play all the roles of the crew alone or using bots, but  some bots do plain nothing at the moment. It would be nice to make a sticky post in the game site forum explaining *basic* stuff (not repeating the story in the manual), but simple things like: How to play in Single Player mode, how do you fly the ship, do you need the bots and do you have to send them away if you want to do things by yourself (which you must at the moment) ? Also important is to update such a post frequently as things are added to the game.

Despite of the manual, all this is not clear for most people I think, and they won't scrutinize all the forum pages or devlogs to find out. Or maybe add some new playing guides in the release notes instead of only telling what has been fixed etc. ?

XenonS

Remember that the game is being made as a muiltplayer game where each person has a station on the bridge, the bots and any single player part of the game are not a priority for them at the moment, but I'm sure they will get around to doing it some point.

Thanks Pinback,

I haved mailed them the above on their site, but I was wrong about the manual: it gets updated pretty fast indeed. They plan to improve the bots, but yes it's mainly a Multiplayer game.

Even in the current beta, going as single player through the game is a load of fun, especially the FPS part which already includes enemies to combat, ship boardings and some missions. As a novum: your ship can be boarded too 🙂

Greets,

XenonS

The one thing I find really annoying is the turrets and I wish they would sort them, (unless it been sorted out as I not looked at the current build).

Well, in the last builds they have worked on the turrets, they said they are moving smoother now. What's strange is that in devlog 56 I see them switch from 1st person piloting directly to the turrets, but which keyboard command do they use? I have to physically move in the weapon's room every time I want to use them, so I also have to assign a pilot bot.

I assume that's because both devs are multiplaying (one as weapon officer, the other one as captain/pilot).

XenonS

What I find annoying is that the turrets are only placed on the top of the ship with nothing on the bottom so the whole ship has to rotate to keep an enemy in sight.

Probably done to give the player playing the pilot some thing to do in combat.

Are many playing this? Is it easy to get a group together in the alpha?

Are many playing this? Is it easy to get a group together in the alpha?

Don't know as I only play around with it in it's off line mode.

New update.

 

Pre Beta 3 should be out now! This update ended up being an interesting one, we got to add two things we’ve been excited about for a while: the ExoSuit and the Hand Held Scanner! We’ve also made some progress regarding connection issues and crashes. We added region support which should hopefully strengthen people's connections if they aren’t based in the US. This is something we can’t fully test alone, so we’d love any feedback!

For those who’ve been watching this project for a while, you may remember a super early scanner from one of the earlier devlogs. The new scanner has been redesigned as a larger, two-handed device to increase readability. It can currently detect your fellow crewmembers, enemies or hazards, items and components, NPCs, and interior/exterior locations. You can read more about the scanner under the “Scientist” section of the manual on our website!

The ExoSuit is pretty straightforward, you need to put on the suit to explore certain environments that would otherwise be fatal to your crew! We’d like to do more with it in the future (e.g more helmet information and feedback, more types of environmental hazards, potentially leaks). You can read more about the suit under the “Introduction” section of the manual on our website.

Additions

-Server regions have now been added, people can connect to servers in the US, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Australia. This should hopefully help people close to those regions get better ping. The menu should popup by default on first bootup. You can change your region in the Multiplayer Settings while in the main menu. You will only be able to see / join games in your selected region.

-Pawn Planet cameras have been overhauled. This should allow us to greatly increase the draw distance.

-Added the ExoSuit: A protective enclosure surrounding the player that protects them from hazardous environments. The suit is designed to be the all-in-one solution for encountering almost every type of foreseeable hazardous environment.

-Added the Hand-Held Scanner: An equipable item that allows the player to gain a better understanding of their surroundings. It can identify a number of different things from enemy life forms to useful items!

-New Planet - Frozen Wasteland

-New Planet - Low Oxygen Environment

-New Planet - High Temperature Environment

-New Planet - Acidic Atmosphere

-Added two new missions

-Added a new creature type

-Lifeform targeted scan now has functionality

-All 4 sensor types now have detection / signature levels. Only one signal needs to be detected for objects / ships to be detected.

-Added planet scans. They are still pretty early, but they can be useful for determining how dangerous an environment is.

-Added new functionality to the teleporters, they can now teleport into planet interiors.

Full change log here http://forums.pulsarthegame.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1741

Dev log 58 and the big new is that the game is now in Beta.

Dev log 59 and lot of things going on with Pulsar, move to early access, new ship,new controls.

Devlog 60 Station interiors.

Devlog 61.

Dev log 62.

Will be downloading it at the weekend., sound like it may be a big update.

is it possible to play solo with the bots, yeah i know its a multiplayer thing but sometimes instancing etc is a bit iffy