Cosmoteer "unstable" release candidate 0.14.14 RC1 is now available for testing! This is a small update that adds an "Aim Assist" to Direct Control Mode. And by popular demand, starting with this update, Cosmoteer can now be downloaded and updated (for free) via Steam and adds support for Steam Cloud for saved games and ships.
How to download via Steam: Go to Cosmoteer's Steam page and then click the "Download Demo" button on the right. Note that even though it's called a "Demo", it is not limited in any way; it is the same full game that you can download from the Cosmoteer website, only with some small tweaks to support Steam Cloud and disable the built-in auto-updater in favor of Steam's updater. It should otherwise be 100% compatible with the standalone version with the same gameplay features, mod support, and multiplayer cross-compatibility.
(Note that there are multiple "BETAS" branches that you can select from. "Default" will get you only stable updates once the 0.14.14 stable update is released. "unstable" will opt you in to these unstable release candidate updates.)
(Also note that it is very likely that the "demo" will be removed prior to launching the paid game on Steam.)
Download 0.14.14_rc1 Standalone
(If you're wondering where the big crew update is, that's going to have to wait a while longer. It's both a big update that needs a lot of dev time, and I've also been super busy with more business-related things and haven't had much time to work on the game itself.)
Changelog:
- Steam Support:
- Cosmoteer can now be downloaded and updated via Steam. To download on Steam, go to the store page and click the "Download Demo" button on the right.
- Even though it's called a "Demo", it has all the features of the same full game that you can download from the Cosmoteer website.
- When downloading via Steam, the built-in auto-updater is disabled in favor of using Steam to provide updates.
- Steam cloud is supported for saved games and ships. Unless disabled via Steam settings, your named saved games and ships will be backed up to the Steam Cloud and synced between computers. Quick-Saves, Auto-Saves, and Lost Ships will NOT be backed up to the Steam Cloud. There is a maximum of 10GB total for both saved games and ships. The saved game and ship library windows will display how much Steam Cloud storage is being used.
- Direct Control Mode:
- In Direct Control mode, the ship nearest the mouse cursor will now have a dotted circle around it. If the circle is red, this indicates that it is an enemy ship and missiles will home toward it. If the circle is gray, this indicates that it is a friendly ship and your weapons won't damage it by default. In either case, the ship can be explicitly targeted by pressing the Alt key, which will enable missile homing and friendly-fire for the targeted ship and will prevent another ship from getting a dotted circle until Alt is pressed again to untarget. When a ship has been targeted, the picture-in-picture will display it when it is out of view.
- Added an "Aim Assist" feature to Direct Control Mode that will automatically aim your weapons at the enemy ship and part closest to the mouse cursor and "lead" the target's position using the standard target location prediction. The dotted circle indicates which ship your weapons will aim at, and you can press Alt to force your weapons to aim at a ship even if that ship isn't the one closest to your cursor. Aim Assist is on by default but can be disabled in the gameplay settings.
- Multiplayer:
- It is no longer possible to go into debt to repair ships in multiplayer Domination games, which was never intended.
- User Interface:
- Added an option to reverse the sort order of the multiplayer game list.
- Clicking the "Check For Update" button will now display a message if no updates are available.
- Tutorials:
- Split the Direct Control Mode tutorial into two parts and updated them to mention auto-aim and pressing Alt to lock target.
- Tutorials are no longer shown in multiplayer Creative Mode.
- Bug Fixes:
- Crash when disconnected from the server while joining a game.
- Crash in some cases when saving a ship that has been removed by another player. In those caess, the ship will still be saved but will have a square black thumbnail.
- Desyncs in multiplayer Creative Mode when one player is modifying a ship's parts or blueprints at the same time that another player is modifying its paint.
- Severe framerate lag after performing a ship edit that modifies many parts at once, such as deleting all parts on a ship.
- Non-host players in a multiplayer game would appear as "Unnamed Player" in the lobby even if they had a name.
- Hovering the mouse cursor over a non-host player's ship icon in the lobby would display "Unnamed Game" even if the game they were in had a name.
- Changing your name while in the pre-game setup screen wouldn't change it in the list of players in the lobby.
- It was impossible to add or remove crew on ships with illegal designs.
- It was impossible to individually repair crew quarters and bunks if the ship had any killed crew and even after repairing would still not have the capacity to add any crew.
- Recentering a ship's blueprints didn't do anything if the ship had no physically-existing parts.
- Ion Beam Prisms with locked rotation weren't being considered when calculating a ship's ideal attack distance and rotation.
- Playing as "All Players" when loading some older Creative Mode save files would show the fog of war.
