#15 - Demo v0.6.6

Hello!

This is everything I've been up to over the past two weeks. Adding more interaction to the game, gearing up to create the full length of the game so I'll have an end-to-end that I can start refining, and of course working through improvements and feedback from people. So here are the major changes, minor changes, and bug fixes I've done for v0.6.6!

If you like what you see here, you can wishlist Deep Space Exploitation on Steam!

Scrap Processor Jobs
As a bit of variety and also story, I've added scrap processing jobs where you can collect items of scrap and feed them to a scrap processor which will then process them into a higher value cube. This is meant to be a bit of fun interaction but also provides a bit of opportunity for the game's story, as well as helping to enrich the game with more mission types and interactions.
This is also linked to an upgrade for the player ship, which is available in the demo but hidden as a little secret...

Destruction Code Update
I've updated the code used for creating asteroid destructions so that now it can take arbitrary shapes as input (Up until now it was only circles). This was necessary now so that I could allow any shaped item to be attached to an asteroid and then be dislodged when hit and leave only a hole of its own shape.
This also prepares things very well for shaped charges and other things that will leave a non-circular impact on asteroids.
I've also improved destruction so that there are no false pieces of asteroids left over. By which I mean pieces of asteroids that are drawn but don't actually have any physical presence backing them up. This happened quite a lot when using the gatling gun repeatedly on one area of an asteroid.

Tutorial Rework
I've had the massive fortune of being able to watch a few streamers and youtubers play the game recently, and I noticed that the tutorial definitely needed improving. The main problem was that it was too easy to miss the sections explaining the Scanner, since you could blow right through them without even reading.
I've reworked things now so that you have to go through the scanner explanation first before your mining gun activates, since what I saw before was as soon as the mining gun would activate people would just keep blasting and they would accidently complete the scanner tutorial steps.

Level Editor Updates
I've updated the makeshift level editor I use so that items can be chosen and placed much more easily and starting destructions can also be added.
This is a super makeshift, solo-dev, style level editor that uses a bunch of confusing hotkeys and outputs code to a text file that I just copy/paste into the class for the level. Which is all fine because it's only me who's going to be using it :)

I uploaded a little video of it here:

Maximised Windows
Another thing I saw when watching streamers play was an annoying issue where if you try to maximise the game window (not fullscreen) on 1920x1080 the game's integer scaling will kick in and force the game resolution to the integer below, effectively making the game appear rendered much smaller in the middle of the window.
This was happening because the title bar takes up some pixels and actually makes the window height about 1051, which the integer scaling doesn't like.
This went unnoticed forever because both of my monitors are 1920x1200, so it's my fault for not testing natively with the most resolution!
The simple fix was to give a little vertical tolerance to the integer scaling, so you can lose some pixels off the top and bottom of the screen before it will kick in and change the actual resolution.

Updates and Tweaks

• Default tool hotkeys now use backtick for Activator Tool, then correct number keys for tools
• SFX and UI volumes default to 75%
• Tutorial tells you that you can rebind controls
• Increased physical size of player ship cargo hold, so picking up certain items is easier now
•  Volume selectors and Debt Repayment amount selectors now change in higher increments when holding down buttons but still move in single increments when tapping.
• Market now shows tool ammo amounts and cost before buying
• Debug overlay (via backtick) is no longer available in release builds
• Any item can now be attached to an asteroid
• Changed confusing "TL_..." style statuses back to "TOOL_..."
• Improved checks for entities stuck inside other entities, should now kick in faster on actual instances and less altogether on false positives
• Added check for unsold resources in cargo before starting a job. A popup will show asking if you want to continue
• Improved physics particle performance drastically in worst case scenarios
• When buying an item in the market you are now prompted over whether you want to place it in your cargo or storage
• Loans will now cover any negative credits you have, plus 100
• Some items will now appear in the market earlier
• Storage slot count reduced to make it more important to buy the upgrade
• Debt repayment page starts with the amount selector selected
• Re-ordered the terminal pages so that Inventory is before any other page where you can spend credits, so you can go straight to selling your resources and then go to spend the credits instead of going up and down

Fixes

• Can no longer rotate asteroids with (invisible) mouse-over and scroll
• Laser reflections are now limited in number, this fixes a crash where the laser start is stuck inside an object and reflects infinitely
• Unused extraction ship bays are now "filled in", this stops the player glitching into them and getting stuck if they're positioned on the edge of the map when the extraction ship enters
• Fix for laser sight line effect being accumulating over a number of days
• Tools no longer stay active if held down when extracting
• Late extraction fines are now actually applied (time below zero was not making its way to the debrief page!)
• Property damage fines weren't being reset when you restarted a job