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Traders of Known Space Beta Change Log

View the beta documentation

• Version 9 released on 4/23/2016
1. Map is now divided into four quadrants, two each for the Solarian Federation and the Interstellar Union.
2. Added a wander method for ships to make it easier to displace them with hazards.
3. Changed some of the ways hazards handle sounds and whether or not the hazard has been avoided.
4. Added business reputation and street reputation for use in future mechanics.
5. Random mission strings are in.
6. Reputation consequences for dealing with patrol.
7. If a ship's fuel is exhausted in combat, the ship now is destroyed.
8. Added first pass at black market and ability to trade with it.
9. Fixed announcements and fiddled with variables to make stock market more accurate.
• Version 8, released on 2/18/2016
1. Implemented a chance to avoid hazards based on ship's deflectors and engines.
2. A hazard damage multiplier is in. As the game progresses, hazards get more deadly.
3. Expanded the map to 20 by 20 squares, added 30 planets and 30 hazards. Planets are now divided between Solarian Federation and Interstellar Union planets, but this currently does not do much in the game.
4. Added financial service menu. This includes a stock market, the ability to buy insurance, take out loans, deposit and withdraw from a bank, and buy war bonds.
5. Ticks now active every 6-24 moves.
6. Added a number of random strings to activities such as bribery, negotiate, evasion, run for it, combat of various sorts, etc.
7. You can now name your ship.
8. Added ten new static hazards.
9. New cargo manifest hot key O added. This innumerates exactly what cargo you are carrying.
10. Fixed bugs with the bribery script.
11. Fixed bugs in the upgrade menu that were causing issues with cargo and fuel capacity.
12. Major, extreme, and totally radical upgrades to the voice over script that involved multiple fixes. There's a lot of new code here and there may be issues.
13. A lot of behind the scenes infrastructure changes that prepare for future additions to the game.
• Version 7, released on 1/16/2016:
  1. the year end sound is listed in the learn sounds menu
  2. When you arrow onto a planet that has the merchant in planet locations menu the clunk plays that is heard when arrowing onto the merchant while in map mode
  3. removed the original music code and replaced it with a new version of the environment sound that I originally built for Yellowbonnet and have since updated to work fine with tks for both the below new rumble sound change and the tks music.
  4. We have an environment sound, a deep rumble noise that should sound a little like our idea of a ship engine. This is currently heard while in map mode or any subset of that, status menu, planet menu, tactical situation and so on. It stops when opening the main menu by pressing escape when in map mode. You can adjust the volume of this with f9 and f10. You can turn this sound all the way off so that it is completely silent.
  5. With the new music code mentioned above, testers should notice the music tracks fade differently than before. The music is properly paused in the learn sounds menu etc. The music is jjust another instance of the above mentioned environment sound object, so it has a lot of complicated for me anyway code that is being handily reused to do both.
  6. When reading the career span in status menu, also announce the months in addition to the year.
  7. All planets have properties on them that can affect how much each specific planet has of a particular thing, fuel, repairs, upgrades and products can all be affected by these bonuses to cause certain planets like earth to be particularly well stocked and more affordable and so on.
  8. Slowed down how often ticks occur, they now last between 3 and 12 moves.
  9. The costs of all products, upgrades, repairs and refuels are adjusted based on the total number of all products in the game. If the number of products tends to be low, this will cause products to become a little more expensive as though shortages are driving up the prices
  10. Stock market code added. Each time a tick happens a stock market report is generated. This report can be accessed from the planet or status menu. It is possible to use the data provided here to be a little more affective in your trading.
  11. A tick marker sound is played at the beginning of each tick. This will help be aware of when a new stock market report is available.
  
  
  
• Version 6, released on 1/11/2016:
  1. Properly refer to the start game item in main menu as a sub menu
  2. updated the left right scroller code to base on better code built for Interceptor
  3. Improved voiceover script brought in from another game
  4. Added in the improved high score keeper that was built for Interceptor
  5. deleted a lot of duplicated common code and modified TKS to use scripts located centrally to all our games
  6. TKS now supports the keyboard hooking setting as seen in yb and Interceptor
  7. Like the previous item, added the SAPI settings as seen in Interceptor
  8. switched the menu generation to new code we built for Interceptor
  9. left or right control works to stop ongoing speech!
  10. pressing m to hear the long description of an item like a planet or a statick hazard now reads it using SAPI inside the game instead of opening a webpage. Also applies in the buy and sell goods menus.
  11. Music files are streamed from disk instead of loaded into memory before playing. Speeds up game load time.
  12. Added a guidedog dll, should properly interface with guidedog now. Logging gd client in will allow TKS to save and restore settings from your gd account. However since TKS is a free game, the game is always activated even if you close GD client, and your settings are saved to disk. To help facilitate playing without GD client, TKS does not report most errors that occur with guidedog to the player, it just ignores issues and keeps on working as best it can without the extra functionality. Note that if you load and save settings to a game on one computer without gd logged in, then later log into gd client while tks is not running and afterwards start the game, tks will pull the settings from your gd account (if any), and overwrite any settings you made while TKS was running without GD previously. If you start TKS and change settings, then go log into GD account then close tks, the settings should save to GD account. For now and possibly for ever, launching tks will also launch gd client, but closing gd client instead of logging it in won't cause any problems just the settings you change in tks will only save locally.
  13. bring in a bunch of speech files from other games that had improved versions of them
  14. A sound is played when a new year is starting

  
  
  

• Version 5, released on 7/17/2014:
  1. In the planet menu, the number of the current item the planet already has is reported.
  2. new setting added allowing to choose whether the coordinate announcement only provides the new point on the axis that changed, as before, or announce both axes.
  3. Area scan results now include results located at x 0 y 0 on the map
  4. The sell goods menu item of planet menu reports how many different types of products the ship has available to sell instead of the total number of products to be more consistent with how buy goods is reported in the same menu.
  5. Planet locations menu inside the planet menu now provides relative directions such as south 2 east 6 in addition to the coordinates.
  6. Holding ctrl while pressing arrow keys now jumps immediately to the next object of any type in the direct path in that direction
  7. Holding alt and an arrow key together now scrolls in that direction continuously
  8. Num pad alternatives to the arrow keys implemented (map mode only), num pad 8 is north, 2 is south, 6 is east, 4 is west.
  9. robotic repair parts should now take only 1 unit of cargo space as intended instead of 2.
  10. Now can press the letter m to retrieve more information about the item in focus in many areas. When cursor is focused on a planet or statick hazard in map mode, when a planet or statick hazard is selected in area scan menu, when planet is focused in planet locations menu, when a product is selected in buy or sell goods menu, and when an upgrade is selected in upgrade menu. The documentation should be opened and directly placed at the portion of the documentation that covers that specific planet, hazard, product or upgrade.
  11. f1 for context sensetive help is improved drastically, provides specific help for more situations.
  12. The game should now run in spite of no internet connection present by which to check for updates.
  13. The x axis is now horrizontal, the y axis is now vertical. However, 0 0 has been left in the top left corner, so think of the y axis as if you're moving arounnd in the negative y plane, just that we don't say negative.
  14. when refueling, the planet the fuel was purchased from now loses the fuel that was put on the ship as intended. Previously, the ship gained the fuel, but the planet didn't lose any.
  15. When receiving a mayday, before the menu to choose whether to go to their aid appears, we announce, "do you wish to go to their aid?".
  16. Some new speech files, some were improvements on existing ones, some are entirely new.

  
  
  

• Version 4, released on 6/15/2014:
  1. New hot key, t, added to report how long the game has been running in real time
  2. Pressing cancel, the escape key, or typing a 0 into input edit boxes queerying for amounts should now properly register as a desire to cancel
  3. Top ten high scores are now stored and can be reviewed in the high scores sub menu found in main menu and game over menu.
  4. More consistently report sub menus as such
  5. it is now possible to move from one square to another if you have 5 fuel, but no less. If you have 5 fuel, and move to a square, all will be fine unless you try to move again with less than 5 fuel.
  6. Escape key is now supported to back out of career mode and ship configuration menus to return to the main menu. Return menu items have also been added to the bottom of these menus to do the same.
  7. New weapon sounds.
  8. New ship explosion sound.
  9. Damages now only get announced after all the damage is applied in situations where more than one point of damage is applied to either a single or multiple systems. What this means is that when the same system is damaged for more than one point of it's efficiency in a single round, it is only announced once. This applies to combat and any hazard related damage, mobile or statick.
  10. The break down hazard only consumes 5 extra fuel. Previously, it consumed 15 extra when encountered.
  11. Similarly, the cloud of dark matter hazard now only consumes 5 extra fuel instead of 10.
  12. modification to combat die rolls to affect chances to hit and initiative calculations
  13. adjustments to attack dodging when one has lots of engines
  14. Enemies can now evade during combat. If they lose their guns, they will be much more likely to try to do so
  15. Improvements to checks during evasion and other actions that could get someone shot at in order to behave properly if one does get shot at when trying to do such things and actually gets destroyed
  16. when doing nothing, negotiating, surrendering, and bribing, feedback should be better now.
  17. When the game is ending, we now hear what the score adjustments are actually for.
  18. When systems become completely destroyed during combat, we say destroyed instead of 0 of what ever the max efficiency is.
  19. When in the same round of combat the first ship blows off the second ship's gun, the second ship will now be unable to fire back in that same round, regardless of which ship is first - player or computer.
  20. The computer will never be able to fire with no gun, similar to the experience the player gets.
  21. Fuel capacity is included when announcing damages to ships
  22. We now announce what kind of ship it is when we're announcing damages to it.
  23. Gather information no longer appears on planet menu when the player doesn't have enough credits to afford it. And if the player runs out of credits in the middle of gathering more than one piece of info, info gathering comes to a hault to prevent them going negative.
  24. Fixed bug with the open help file menu item not opening the documentation when one pressed enter on it in main menu.
  25. Modified the clunk sound that is heard when encountering your ship on the map, thanks Rich.
  26. New sound that plays when encountering hazards is added.
  27. New background music added. F2 and f3 change it's volume. Thanks Michael.
  28. f5 and f6 now adjust voiceover volume anywhere in the game.

  
  
  

• Version 3, released on 6/14/2014:
  1. In the planet menu we now have an option to list all planets and their locations on the map
  2. Corrected an oversight where gathering information was not costing anything, when it is actually supposed to
  3. It is now possible to send out a mayday for help when in a tactical situation with another ship as long as it is not a patrol ship
  4. Initial effort to announce damage that occurs to the ship as it happens. Needs more work
  5. In combat it is now possible to dodge the weapon fire if one's engines are good enough
  6. Successful hits with weapons in combat are now much more deadly, and the bug where some ships weren't even damaging at all is squashed
  7. Lots of new hot keys to check various pieces of information.
     • i integrity
     • r cargo
     • l ship's location
     • u cursor location - this existed already, it was moved from c
     • c cash - this replaces the previous assignment of c which was cursor location
     • e engine
     • d deflector
     • f fuel
     • g gun
     • y years that your career has spanned
  8. Deflector now helps to remove some of the damage during combat, at the expense of it's own health
  9. Human pirate ships now properly have the option to demand money when the player tries to negotiate with them
  10. hopefully fixed all scrollers to just accept the value of 1 if the player presses enter on a scrollable item that is set to 0 but of which the max available selection is only 1. Previously, nothing at all happened in certain menus, while it worked as expected in others. Note that we don't bring the edit box up for selections that only have a single item because what would be the point.
  11. new learn game sounds menu added
  12. New area scan feature, hot key s, allowing to scan the map up to 2 squares out in all directions from the ship itself
  13. It should now be impossible for mobile hazards to happen on squares with planets or statick hazards. This is a hard one to test. Report if this doesn't seem to be working right.
  14. new goHome feature added, hot key H allows for snapping the cursor position to that of the ship with this feature. When loading the status menu or the new scanArea menu this will be automatically done to help avoid confusion about information that could be irelevent otherwise.

  
  
  

• Version 2, released on 6/9/2014:
  1. We gradually adjust the cost of upgrades using the same sliding scale that works for products and fuel now.
  2. Modified the way damage is calculated during combat. Mostly when there is a successful hit, the more guns one has the more damage they will do.
  3. New setting added allowing to disable announcement of menu indexes entirely
  4. Removed unintended extra pause that occured before announcing the menu indexes in addition to the pause we got when pause before announcing menu indexes if it was on, which caused a delay to exist, though shorter, if it was off.
  5. The game now has 4 career modes, short, standard and long careers, which span 15 years, 25 years and 50 years respectively. The 4th option is unlimited. When playing in unlimited mode, an option to retire appears in the planet menu once two years have passed. The mode is chosen after one presses start game in the main menu. The menu to choose which type of ship you will start with now appears after you choose which career mode you will play.
  6. The game now keeps score.
  7. Instead of showing the status menu when the game is ended, we now present the game over menu.
  8. Ability to copy final game statistics to clipboard for safe keeping or sharing with others is added, in the game over menu
  9. When surrendering to a patrol vessel, the message spoken is no longer spelled
  10. When the scroller has been set, we no longer announce when it is reset as you move away from the item that was scrolled on
  11. It is now possible to select the amount you desire to offer as a bribe using the scroller. previously, the scroller existed for bribery, but scrolling to an amount and then pressing enter would just bring up the edit box asking for the desired amount as though you didn't scroll.
  12. When scrolling to select how many items the player desires to purchase or sell, in all applicable situations we now announce the total cost of the number of items currently selected
  13. In every situation where a scroller is available, we now announce left right scroller to help be aware that it is available.
  14. Patrol ships better handle when the player chooses to do nothing or negotiate
  15. We now store the bits of information retrieved by the gather information option in planet menu. The information can be reviewed in the stored information menu which is available when information is stored in it from the planet menu and the status menu.
  16. Fixed a couple of breakages with gather information where on occasion not all the information was actually retrieved
  17. When gathering information, fixed an issue where the game would spell broker, and incorrectly at that
  18. No longer can exit the tactical menu with the escape key. That was only available to ease early testing
  19. Every applicable menu now contains a return option allowing you to return to where ever you were when the menu opened. This duplicates the escape key. At present, the one menu that doesn't which comes to mind is the tactical menu, for the same reason escape doesn't work.
  20. When hitting the large debris field statick hazard, if it wasn't already visible the player will receive some salvage money.
  21. Combat system has been rebuilt to hopefully make it a bit more interesting. It contains more options, namely all out attack, run for it, and jam sensors, in addition to the previous fight capability which is unchanged.
  22. Slight modification to the chances of being hit when trying to evade and failing
  23. Fighting options do not appear anymore in the tactical menu when the player's ship currently has no guns.

  
  
  

• Version 1, released on 6/6/2014:
  1. Initial Beta Release