October Catch-up

Dave here with a chunky update for you all.

Firstly, thank you again for all the support so far. It’s been wonderful watching the community coming together to help each other and we’ve been enjoying reading through suggestions for future content.

Regarding our initial plans for Star Trucker, phase 1 is progressing well. We’ve squashed plenty of bugs and worked through some initial issues in v1.0.41.0 so it’s now time to start talking about the next update and beyond…

Is It Ready Yet?

Almost! We are currently testing the next update. There’s been a substantial amount of work under the metaphorical hood to enable custom control mapping so there’s A LOT of stuff to triple-check but we’re nearly there.

Custom Control Mapping

Possibly the most requested Star Trucker feature. The work on custom input bindings has been a bit of a slog but we’re pretty happy with the first iteration of this system.

Why has it taken so long? Well, for many different reasons. Let's break it down a bit...

• LOTS of inputs across multiple control modes
  - 1st Person Driving
  - 3rd Person Driving
  - CB Radio interactions
  - Cab interior Walking
  - Cab interior Zero-G
  - Space walk Zero-G

• UI needs to dynamically update based on custom bindings
  - Game interactions
  - Control helpers
  - Tutorial prompts

• There’s a looooong list of strings to localize into our supported languages
  - Custom binding options
  - Binding pop-up prompts

• We need to make sure the game remembers your inputs
  - Save custom input bindings for both M&K and controllers
  - Ability to revert to default settings

• We wanted to make sure you could update bindings mid-game

• We wanted to do some groundwork for future controller support
  

The other thing to note is that we’ve primarily focused on custom inputs for controllers and US QWERTY keyboards. This was to make sure we could get the update out in a timely manner. In subsequent updates we hope to support alternative keyboard layouts.

Extended Controller Support

As mentioned, work also continues towards supporting a wider range of input devices.

Although HOTAS and joystick compatibility is a little way off, the upcoming patch will support the following controllers on Steam…

• PS4 DualSense Controller

• PS5 DualSense Controller

• Switch Pro Controller
  

When playing with one of these you should see the appropriate icons in-game and be able to re-assign controls via the new Custom Control Binding screen.

XP Progression & Just in Time Jobs

We've been monitoring XP progression since the last update and agree with players that XP rewards, especially later in the game, are lower than expected.

Another issue we’ve been tracking is JIT jobs causing frustration among some players. Although they were always intended to be a slightly more complex job type they are not really fulfilling their role quite as intended.

To that extent we’ve begun work on refining these jobs and rebalancing XP rewards. These changes are taking longer than expected and won't feature in the upcoming patch but should roll into the following update alongside a bunch of other cool new stuff.

Bug Squashing

We’ve also been working through various issues the community has discovered on their travels. Many of these are smaller QoL things but we’re also tackling some larger, trickier, issues.

A couple of fixes have made it into the next update, but most of these need more scrutiny and will land at a later date. As always though, we’ll be sure to list any fixes in the patch notes.

PosterSpy X Star Trucker

In non-development news we’re teaming up with PosterSpy to commission some bespoke artwork for Star Trucker!

Truck ‘n’ Treat

Lastly, spooky season wouldn’t be complete without a little trick n treating! So make sure you check back later this week for a bonus blog post and what we hope will be a fun little reveal…

Until then, laters alligators!

- Monster Dave