Solarex - Travel and Explore the Galaxy News

Changes in 0.41 since 0.40
--------------------------

- Ultracondensed metals can now be found on heavy planets
- Stable transuranium elements can now be found on superheavy planets
- Minor display improvements for newspaper
- Gas filtration drones are now operatable
- Fluid destillation drones are now operatable
- Resource harvesting on inhabited or owned planets is forbidden now
- Reduced jar file size

Changes in 0.40 since 0.39b
--------------------------

- Better hyperjump effect display
- Navigation panel automatically centers view on selected space bodies
- Improved some portrait backgrounds
- Galactic map shows max. jump drive range
- Redesigned galactic map panel
- Redesigned navigation map panel
- Ship speed is now always zero after hyperjump
- Ship destination is now reset after hyperjump... read more

Changes in 0.38 since 0.37
--------------------------

- Added neutron stars
- Added black holes
- Added carbon rich planets
- Added superheavy rocky planets
- Added calculations for planet orbital period and rotation period
- Added calculations for planetary fluid resources
(Mining only works for metals so far, although other gathering drones are for sale as well).
- Added good 'silicones', removed group 'chemicals'
- Added more goods descriptions
- Fixed hyperjump button
(The drive still needs no fuel, lucky you!)

Changes in v0.37 since v0.36
--------------------------

- Trade panel good descriptions display if good is prohibited to trade in this place
- New and improved portrait backgrounds
- Some display fixes for the tabular system view

Changes in v0.36 since v0.35

- New portrait backgrounds for terraneans and posionbreathers
- New trade panel
- Descriptions added for many goods
- Goods now have a mass per trade unit
- Ship cargo hold measured in kg now
- Grouped many gas goods into "Common atmospheric gases"
- Added androids, graphite, hydrocarbons and radionuclides as goods
- Set androids to be illegal in some societies
- Added exceptions to planet generation rules so that sometimes instead of a gas giant a superheavy rocky planet will be created

Changes in v0.35 since v0.34
--------------------------

- Ship location at game start set correctly.
- Ship state related bug fixes.
- New background for main display.

Solarex 0.32 got a new planet info panel, a real functional ship info panel, a big number of other but minor UI changes, and also a few functional fixes.

Changes in 0.32 since 0.31
--------------------------

- A better planet info panel.
- Ship info panel now shows real ship information.
- Ship equipment items are now actually saved with the game.
- Many minor UI improvements.
- Work on delivery quests for the bulletin board started, but they are not functional yet.
- Proper XML style saved games (I hope).... read more

Solarex 0.31 is the first version with a ship equipment shop in the space stations. Most of the equipment is not functional at the moment, but it was still an important step for the project, I think.

Changes in 0.31 since 0.30
--------------------------

- Ship equiment shops in space stations and space ports
- Payload of the ship is now shared between cargo and equipment
- XML style save games
- Hyperjumps only possible if drive range is larger than the distance.
- Radio links to space stations and space ports are now distinguished
better from being docked there.... read more

Solarex v0.30 features some nice graphical enhancements as well as a number of bug fixes.

Changes in 0.30 since 0.29
-------------------------------------

- Backdrop images for some of the game screens.
- Some bugfixes for the ship state transitions (docked, in flight ...)
- Better display of the ship state.
- Reduced flight times.
- Improved rock planet image.
- Navigation view only shows ship location if the ship is actually in the inspected stellar system.
- Unfortunately the saved games from 0.29 won't load in 0.30!

Sourceforge has nice additional features for projects. I just enabled the gallery, and uploaded two previews for the next release after 0.29 (changes are checked into the SVN already right now).

http://sourceforge.net/apps/gallery/solarex/

I've compiled some information about government and society types in Solarex:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/solarex/index.php?title=Government_and_society_types

The planetary resources page got updated and now actually explains a bit about the resources that a prospector can expect to find on planets in the game:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/solarex/index.php?title=Planetary_resources

The old content was moved the the discussion section of that wiki page.

The Solarex introduction and the race descriptions in the Wiki have been updated:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/solarex/index.php?title=Project_introduction

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/solarex/index.php?title=The_known_races

Both give more detailed background information now.

I started to put up the already existing gathering drone designs:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/solarex/index.php?title=Gathering_drones

I've started to collect information and documentation in the wiki:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/solarex/

Version 0.29 is available for download!