Naikari 0.8.0

We’re finally, after a long delay, pushing another update to Naikari, and this update comes with a small name change! You may notice that instead of “Imperial Storm”, the game’s subtitle is now “Eye of Chaös”. We’re happy enough with this new subtitle that we’ve also decided to use the subtitle more openly when talking about the game.

Initially, we set a goal at the start of this month to push out this overdue update before the end of Pride Month. We just barely succeeded in that goal, but in the process, we ended up including a lot more improvements than we expected to, which is definitely a positive! Here are some of the changes we think are particularly noteworthy in this release:

• Added black market dealers to the bars of black market planets, enabling acquisition of pretty much anything, including a couple outfits and ships that are normally unobtainable.
• Improved several NPC portraits.
• Updated the new game experience to make it a bit smoother.
• Added improvements to parts of the game’s interface, including more widespread availability of keybindings for buttons.
• Improved the sound engine; there’s no more playing a single sound dozens of times on top of each other, and the way sound is played is also much more headphone-friendly now.
• Improved several missions in various small ways.
• Fixed several bugs.

Of course, that list is not exhaustive. See below for the full changelog, as usual. We hope you enjoy this release! Please let us know what you think in the comments.

Changelog

• Improved generic NPC messages.
• Dvaered Vigilance is now slower than the standard Vigilance.
• Increased the number of generic NPCs that spawn to 4–14.
• Added black market dealers to black market planets; they sell you a randomly chosen high rarity outfit.
• There are now three different variants of the Za’lek Test Engine: small, medium, and large.
• Sound engine now avoids playing the same sound multiple times at once.
• Positional audio is more accurate to what you see on the screen and more headphone-friendly.
• Hopefully fixed an uncommon but not entirely rare crash on Linux release builds.
• Removed ammo stealing from the boarding window, since ammo stealing has never really been useful. You can now only steal credits, fuel, and cargo from boarded ships.
• Added a “Steal All” button to the boarding window which attempts to steal everything that can be stolen.
• Added an IJKL layout option as one of the defaults.
• Added hotkeys to several dialog boxes.
• Removed a nebula background which had sharp edges.
• Improved several NPC portraits.
• Made use of the old-fashioned diaeresis in English text.
• Fixed a bug where dialog boxes could cause the game to register unpressed keys as pressed.
• Slightly modified introductory missions’ appearance times to improve the new user experience and in particular to avoid overloading new players early on.
• Standard ES cargo missions are now more common than long-distance, and long-distance ES cargo missions now require 5% Empire reputation.
• Bar NPCs will now sometimes give you a small amount of cargo when you approach them.
• Fixed a bug which could cause the Hyperspace key to incorrectly perform an escape jump if you had performed an escape jump recently.
• The special revered class of Siriusites is now referred to as the “Touchèd”, rather than the “Touched” (indicating that the “E” is pronounced, as in “learnèd” and “blessèd”).
• Bribing a pilot now bribes their followers as well, most notably affecting launched escorts (which previously couldn’t be bribed).
• Added measures taken after bribing a pilot to ensure the fight doesn’t resume due to stray shots in most circumstances.
• Changed the subtitle from “Imperial Storm” to “Eye of Chaös”.
• Improved handling of conflicting keybinds; previously, only one of a pair of conflicting keybinds would register, and which one it was wasn’t deliberately designed in any way (for example, the “hail” key would always jam the “autohail” key). Now, most conflicting keybinds will cause both actions to happen, and where it doesn’t, which action is taken is more deliberate (for example, the “autohail” key now takes precedence over the “hail” key).
• Environmental damage (such as the nebula) can no longer “kill-steal” from the player.
• Fixed an issue where using the Load button while landed could cause loss of data (as it didn’t save before loading).
• The game now auto-saves normally on planets with no refuel service. (It previously did not do so as a measure to protect against getting stranded, but this is no longer needed in Naikari.)
• Nerfed the Photon Dagger’s damage, making it equal to the Banshee Rocket.
• Removed the time limit from the Shadow Run mission.
• Improved the Shark mission’s handling of the OSD and markers.
• Fixed a bug which caused escort kills to never count for the player like they were supposed to.