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Developer notes for changes in 3.00 Beta 1

UI

Target Elements

• (IMPROVEMENT) The distance value shows a one digit decimal value for objects which are > 1km away now.
  
• (BUGFIX) While in 1st-person, some mission targets incorrectly displayed a hull/shield bar (like buttons or pilot chairs) in certain cases (f.e. when they were selected)

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-350

  
  (note: the screenshot/example for the pre 3.00 Beta 1 state differs a bit as the mission target used a different color before 3.00 Beta 1)
  

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• (IMPROVEMENT) The behavior of the UI scale setting (options menu -> settings -> game settings) was adjusted to get more reasonable results on the more common display resolutions out there. This is especially notable noticeable on monitors with horizontal resolutions >1920. The following screenshots provide an overview of how the UI elements behaved before and after 3.00 Beta 5 on different resolutions.
  

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Developer notes for changes in 3.10 Beta 1

General

Crashes

• (IMPROVEMENT) Prior to 3.10 Beta 1 a certain type of UI initialization related startup issue was reported by the game as a runtime crash. As of 3.10 Beta 1 these issues are now properly checked at game start and affected players are redirected to a more specific troubleshooting page to help them resolve the problem. (see

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-297

  for details)

UI

Target Elements

• (BUGFIX) In some cases target elements could be missing in 1st-person mode and targets could be untargetable. This has been fixed now. (regression introduced in 3.00 Beta 9)
• (BUGFIX) Missions no longer try to display target elements for objects in space while the player is in 1st-person mode.
  

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• (BUGFIX) In some cases target elements could be missing in 1st-person mode and targets could be untargetable. This has been fixed now. (regression introduced in 3.10 Beta 1)
  Note that these cases differed from the cases fixed in 3.10 Beta 1. In this case the issue occurred for example when standing on a docking bay while a ship docks. That ship would have no working target elements. Technically this issue was related to the fix done to resolve the original target problem in 3.10 Beta 1.
• (BUGFIX) Certain NPCs were sometimes not reliably targetable when pointing at their bodies. In some cases just sections of the NPC were not targetable while for others it seemed as if the entire NPC could not be targeted. This has been fixed. (this was likely a 3.0 regression).
  

Developer notes for changes in 3.20 (Beta 1

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)

General

Linux

• (BUGFIX) The game failed to start on certain distributions on Linux (mostly applies to installations using the GOG version of the game) related to a missing or incompatible system version of the OpenSSL library. This has now been fixed.

Savegames

• (BUGFIX) In certain cases when loading a savegame fails, the game could crash instead of going back to the startmenu.

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-342

  
  This reportedly happened when trying to load a savegame made with certain mods and force loading it into a game not having the mod installed.

Crash Reports

• (IMPROVEMENT) Filename format of crash dump files was changed and no longer contains the 'r' in the filename before the version number.
• (BUGFIX) The game used to generate two crash dump files for each crash instead of just one file. This has been fixed now.

UI

General

• (BUGFIX) Cases where the UI seemed to appear stuck were fixed. The issue was related to situations involving an excessive amount of sounds being attempted to be played. Visible effects were for example: NPCs being stuck on the target monitor, conversations not continuing, being stuck in 1st-person facing an NPC after the conversation completed, saving the game not being possible, etc.
  In most cases the problem resolved itself after a few seconds. However, it could also cause lengthy (technically even indefinitely) delays, before normal controls worked again.

Crosshair

• (NEW FEATURE) When activating the match speed mode (default: Shift+X), a new indicator in the speed bar shows that the mode is active now and indicates the target's speed. Like the arrow showing the own player ship's targeted speed, it also changes the color (to blue) if the target is currently using boosted speed (iow: either has boost active or uses travel drive).
  
• (IMPROVEMENT) Minor tweak to the target speed element, to make it better visible on bright background (f.e. when flying towards the sun).
  

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• (BUGFIX) Boso Ta's incorrect target element offset was corrected.
  

Developer notes for changes in 3.20 (Beta 2)

General

Modding

• (BUGFIX) Using mods, the game reported an error related to the provided content.xml file failing to read the corresponding .sig-file. This has been resolved now and such errors for content.xml files will no longer be reported.

Crash Reports

• (IMPROVEMENT) Crash report handling for memory system related crashes was improved. Previously these crashes weren't identified correctly and had a chance of triggering a later crash instead. Depending on the particular scenario, it could have been quite time consuming to identify the underlying cause for these crashes. As of 3.20 Beta 2 we now better handle these crashes which helps us to resolve the remaining ones in a future version and also set up more accurate troubleshooting pages for affected players.

UI

Start Menu

• (IMPROVEMENT) Failures to bring up the start menu were previously not reported. Instead, the game ended up just showing the background scene without any menu showing up. This was changed and instead the game reports such errors now to the user with troubleshooting steps to resolve the problem with his game installation.

Developer notes for changes in 3.20 (Beta 2 Hotfix 1)

General

Crash Reports

• (IMPROVEMENT) Previously certain types of game crashes always redirected to a generic troubleshooting page (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-2

  ). As of 3.20 Beta 2 Hotfix 1, each type of crash is now redirected to its own separate (more specific) troubleshooting page. This ensures that crashes not related to the graphics engine are not (incorrectly) suggesting that running graphics engine related troubleshooting steps would resolve this particular problem.
• (BUGFIX) When certain types of crashes occur, the game did not report these and didn't open the corresponding troubleshooting page, if the game was running in fullscreen.

Developer notes for changes in 3.20 (Beta 3)

General

Crash Reports

• (IMPROVEMENT) This version added handling to provide explicit troubleshooting steps in case the game crashes due to a lost device condition (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-275

  ).

Developer notes for changes in 3.30 (Beta 1)

General

Crash Reports

• (IMPROVEMENT) A certain type of Vulkan related error is now being detected explicitly. Affected users are redirected to the new troubleshooting page, which points out instructions on how to resolve the issue (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-479

  ).

Linux

• (IMPROVEMENT) Startup problems due to missing (or incompatible) Vulkan runtimes were previously reported with a Windows specific error message. These cases now directly point to a potentially missing/incompatible Vulkan runtime (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-82

  ).

UI

General

• (BUGFIX) Multiple minor issues related to mouse clicks were resolved. Noticeable situations which were resolved were for example mouse clicks on NPCs already selecting the dialog menu option underneath the mouse cursor with just a single click on the NPC in certain (very specific) situations.
  Technically three different issues were resolved here including cases where mouse state changes were evaluated in the next (instead of the current) frame, inconsistent mouse state evaluation if multiple UI updates were performed in a single frame, and inconsistent handling of mouse clicks on either mouse down or mouse up events.

Developer notes for changes in 3.30 (Beta 2)

UI

Target Elements

• (BUGFIX) In 3.00 Beta 1 we changed the way how mission guidance in 1st-person works. Unfortunately, a regression was introduced which resulted in mission target elements in certain cases when the player took control of a ship. This has been fixed now.

Developer notes for changes in 3.30 (Beta 3)

UI

General

• (BUGFIX) UI animations could appear laggy or as if they were animated at low FPS. This was quite noticeable with the loading circle on the loading screen or the gameover animation but affected any kind of UI animation. This was fixed now.
• (BUGFIX) The text displayed when you are in external view could fail to display the proper key to press to return to normal view in very specific cases (only possible to trigger, if the input mapping was changed by the user).

Target Monitor

• (BUGFIX) The text "Press 'F'" displayed when an interactive event is displayed on the target monitor could fail to be displayed under very specific conditions (involving the user having changed the input mapping for that action).

Developer notes for changes in 3.30 (Beta 4)

General

Crash Reports

• (BUGFIX) Memory system related errors were not correctly integrated in the crash report handling and could produce undefined behavior incl. the game terminating with exit code 0, suggesting a normal shutdown state instead of an error (regression introduced in 3.20 Beta 2 Hotfix 1).

Developer notes for fixes after 3.30

Online Features

Ventures

• (BUGFIX) Ships on exploration ventures could stop in space (regression introduced in 3.20 Beta 1). This has been fixed with a server side fix on 2020-09-15.

Developer notes for 3.30 Hotfix 1 (Beta 1)

General

Crashes

• (IMPROVEMENT) A certain type of Vulkan related error is now being detected explicitly. Affected users are redirected to the new troubleshooting page, which points out instructions on how to resolve the issue.
• (IMPROVEMENT) Cases where a mod breaks the start menu background scene are now identified explicitly and point to such an issue rather than triggering some random crash (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-469

  ,

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-510

  )
• (BUGFIX) Several crashes related to Lua memory issues have been resolved. It should also be no longer possible to run into out of memory scenarios on systems which have sufficient remaining memory available. This tackles several related reports (though these referenced issues here can also (still) be caused by completely different problems:

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-281

  ,

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-465

  ,

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-454

  )
• (BUGFIX) Graphics device detection was improved so it handles cases where a system has more than one graphics device with at least one of the devices not being able to display the game (f.e. because no monitor being connected). The graphics engine detects this case now and no longer tries to pick that device, which previously resulted in a startup error (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-483

  ).

UI

General

• (IMPROVEMENT) Lua engine was upgraded to LuaJIT 2.1 which comes with performance improvements as well as new language features (incl. some added Lua 5.2-specific features as well as some Lua 5.3 ones -

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-495

  )

Options Menu

• (BUGFIX) The options menu no longer displays graphics devices which fail to display the game. Selecting such a device would prevent the game to start the next time.

Developer notes for 3.30 Hotfix 2 (Beta 1)

General

Crashes

• (IMPROVEMENT) A certain type of Vulkan related error is now being detected explicitly. Affected users are redirected to the new troubleshooting page, which points out instructions on how to resolve the issue.
• (IMPROVEMENT) The pop up message for players running into Exitcode 205 (

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-131

  ) was improved and contains more details which help the support team to identify the underlying problem.
• (BUGIFX) The fix to prevent startup problems when multiple GPUs are installed in a system (Exitcode 215 -

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-483

  ) unfortunately caused a regression which now broke the game for other very specific environments (in most cases resulting in Exitcode 1096 -

  Jira
  server Egosoft JIRA serverId 9d4eeb41-d1c2-3d89-8ea6-0964f358c464 key X4-479

  ). This has been fixed now. Fixes a regression introduced in 3.30 Hotfix 1 Beta 1.

Developer notes for fixes after 3.30 Hotfix 2

Online Features

Ventures

• (BUGFIX) Fixed (rare) cases where claiming rewards from a ship sent onto a venture could grant different rewards after loading the save and reclaiming the venture a second time. This has been fixed with a server side fix on 2021-04-23.
• (BUGFIX) Fixed (very rare) cases of ships sent onto ventures not being retrieved in other universes. This has been fixed with a server side fix on 2021-05-14.