Seven-Zero is a major update for Absolute Infinity, bringing new content, improved art, quality of life improvements, and tons of fixes to the game. It builds on the work I started in v0.6.0.0, adding 30 new items and new character dialogue using the editor. It is also, once again, the fastest version of the game ever shipped.

Art Pass

All placeholder art for the ships has been removed and replaced with 3d models. In addition, the game’s various Starfield backgrounds have received a bit of love.

30+ New Items & New Crafting Recipes

Over thirty new items have been added to the game. In addition, old items that were previously were not craftable have had crafting recipes added to them.

Improved Navigation

The galaxy map has received some much-needed love. Attempting to plot courses to unreachable star systems no longer shows an error message, but now finds the minimum required jaunt drive to reach the system, and shows the hypothetical route. It is also now possible to zoom and pan in the galaxy map.

To make finding objects in space easier (and more visual), the sensor overlay has been merged into the navbox to create a minimap, which now lies in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

When following a plotted course, a directions card now appears telling you how far you are from your destination.

Polished Stations

You can now see the area surrounding a station while docked to it. A fade in effect has been added while docking, and you now also get more detailed information when viewing ship statistics.

The starting star base now is guaranteed to have a casino operator, making it easier to acquire the casino telemetry fragment.

80% faster physics

The physics engine now uses spatial partitioning - instead of every entity checking for collisions against every other entity in the world (very slow with lots of entities), it only checks for collisions with other entities nearby.

The implementation I ended up with was inspired by DOOM’s BLOCKMAP system. It still has some pretty obvious inefficiencies (such as rebuilding the blockmap every frame) that need to be improved, but nonetheless it massively improves performance, especially with high entity counts (such as during battles).

Full Changelog

• Added utl_goto command to console
• Added more content to the main questline
• Added the ability to zoom/pan in a galaxy map
• Added recipes to reclaim metals from other items
• Added a changelog to the main menu
• Added a new play test feedback form to the main menu
• Added base speed display to hull stats
• Added a directions widget to the HUD
• Added an objective menu to the HUD
• Added spatial partitioning to the physics engine (physics is 80% faster now)
• Added fade in when docking
• Added casino operator NPC to International Starport
• Added new earth art
• Added Wayland Support
• Added junk item Tainted Scraps
• Added junk item Atomic Waste
• Added weapons item Atomic Weapons
• Added weapons item Railgun Ammunition
• Added resource item Oxygen
• Added resource item Nitrogen
• Added resource item Tin
• Added resource item Aluminium
• Added resource item Platinum
• Added resource item Gold
• Added resource item Cobalt
• Added resource item Silicon
• Added resource item Chlorine
• Added resource item Tungsten
• Added intermediate item Patch Kits
• Added intermediate item Amyl
• Added intermediate item Silica
• Added intermediate item Batteries
• Added intermediate item Reinforced Carbon/Carbon
• Added intermediate item Textiles
• Added intermediate item Steel
• Added technology item Hydrazine
• Added technology item Antimatter Fuel
• Added technology item Coolant
• Added technology item Hypergol
• Added technology item Surface Insulation Tile
• Added technology item Lightweight Spaceframe
• Added technology item Escape Pod
• Added technology item Advanced Electronics
• Added technology item General Purpose Computer
• Added agricultural item Fertilizer
• Added medical item Antidepressents
• Added unique sounds for toggling controls on or off
• Replaced the main menu ships with a disabled ant
• Replaced art for the FI-1
• Replaced art for the Falcon
• Replaced art for the VLV Catalyst
• Replaced “insufficient jump range” message with “need at least X range”
  • The galaxy map now also shows the cheapest possible route in this scenario
• Hid items that can’t be crafted from the fabrication menu
• Changed the “Exit” button on a pause menu to say “Main Menu”
• Moved the navbox to the top right
• Moved the info panel to the top center
• Changed the tree starmap to show star sprite
• Reduced torpedo mass
• Automatically target final boss on warp-in
• Crash reports are now logged to %APPDATA%/aceius/project4/crashreport.txt
• Show the exterior view of the station when docked
• Moved sensor overlay to minimap
• Fixed completed missions causing hint popups
• Fixed the crash reporter not logging/reporting crashes
• Fixed ship not angling towards the next star system correctly
• Fixed the settings menu accepting negative numbers
• Fixed the player being able to target their own ship
• Fixed repeating fade-in/fade-out effects
• Removed unused files from the asset folder