Until next time.



- Bench

Bet you weren't expecting a Dev Blog today! We're back with some more exciting news, because who doesn't love hearing about the latest features to be added into StarMade.Features is always the big thing, it's why our suggestions thread on StarMade Dock is massive, it's what players can be most vocal about, and what gets us most excited. We listen to your suggestions and work them into our plans for StarMade where they meld well, and sometimes suggestions don't always meld well with our vision for where the game is going and so they have to be rejected. Features change, they evolve as we integrate ideas with other ideas, it's a constant ongoing process. SO we have only ever really announced features as they're added into the game, because by that stage they're definitely going into the game and we're pretty sure how they're going to work.However we're getting to a point where we have a council now to work with the community on the suggestions, our team here at Schine has grown bigger, and so we thought we'd give you, the community, a bit more of a clearer picture as to what's on the cards for us feature wise in the not too distant future. We'd let you see some of what's planned, what in development, and what to expect in the next release. So we've created for you all a public StarMade roadmap , where you can see all the features that are in the works for the next few builds. This should alleviate some of the questions as to what's next for StarMade, and reduce the number of duplicate suggestions we get for features we're already planning. Be aware most planned features listed don't have an extensive description as typically the documentation covering their final forms happens very close to their release, so we'll more likely update the details about them in news posts rather than purely on the public roadmap.We'll also be expanding the roadmap to include some of the most common suggestions we or the council have received, so that half our suggestion forum isn't filled with the exact same suggestion when we've said we're already aware of it.Now this isn't all the planned features for the game, our full assortments of design and development documents feature over 70 features for the game either being discussed, already planned out to some degree, or in the process of being developed for implementation. To give you an idea just how much is planned, the entire rail system was just 1 feature in that list of over 70. Some we'll share on the public roadmap as we go forward and they get more definite, some we'll keep for a surprise. Needless to say there's a lot planned for the game, and here's just a taste of what's in store.If you've been playing the latest dev build you will have noticed the beginnings of the HP and Armor systems. These are very much in their infancy when it comes to implementation so don't expect to see much in those dev builds just yet with regards to them. You will hear more about them as time goes on.A few small but awesome features are being added in in the next release. We finally have multiple hotbars that you can scroll through. A much sought after feature after the logic ship remote block was dropped in, enabling all kinds of logic control while in flight mode. We also have a shift from the center-of-mass for a ship being at its ship core, to now being located actually at the center-of-mass, meaning a lot more realistic rotations.Our in-game chat is getting a bunch of moderation tools after some requests from community members. While we're still refining exactly what features it will come with, the plan is to enable the ability to moderate chat channels by being able to allow only certain people to be able to message in them, say if there was a server-wide news channel. Also the ability to ignore or mute other players will be added, as well as a language filter for those who wish to implement that.Finally if you missed the news of the badges update on the forums, you can find out all about it here Thanks for playing StarMade.