Evochron Legacy is a freeform space flight simulation that focuses on 'lone-wolf' survival gameplay and pilot controlled spacecraft management. The environment setting is a vast seamless style universe where you can perform many activities including buying, trading, spying, racing, escorting, delivering, emergency responding, mining, exploring, weapon/equipment crafting, cleaning solar panels, clearing paths through asteroid fields, recruiting, protecting, hiring crew members, fuel harvesting, building stations/cities, and designing/selling ships. Some objectives are part of the game's contract system with established parameters and pay levels while others are available for you to set up on your own terms through your choices of where to go, what to do, and how to do it.
Demo installer for Evochron Legacy SE version 2.0488...
Version 2.0488 includes the following improvements:
- New strike objectives added for ALC/FDN combat regions (see notes).
- AVL indicator calculations updated to provide a more immediate and accurate value.
- Contract count minimums increased by +2 in ALC/FDN disputed regions and Vonari war zones.
- Cinematic view mode revised to provide custom camera position and rotation viewpoints (see notes).
- Unique ship icons added to the shield status indicators for both the ship status and target displays.
- Countermeasure effect revised to launch two separate bursts per CM unit with wider field of coverage.
- Lightning effects enhanced to provide improved random placement and illumination on terrain and objects.
- Sharp edge of atmosphere shell replaced with a softer blended effect for a more gradient layered appearance.
- Performance improvements related to terrain shader texture sampling and optimized weapon impact collision checks.
- Displayed nav map icon range increased to include the outer rim of sector in 9X, 17X, and 33X zoom modes.
- Nav marker no longer strictly locked to waypoints for certain planet-side objectives, now fully adjustable.
- Fog system updated for improved color and range effects, particularly in rain and snow weather conditions.
- Customizing options added for tractor and repair beam lighting color and range (see customizing kit).
- By request, nav map asteroid icons made slightly larger and placement/visibility corrections made.
- Option to disable internal animation sequences for custom individual GIF images added (see notes).
- Gunsight weapon mode and IDS indicators revised to reduce vertical size and display larger text.
- Cargo bay scanning groups (up to 5 and up to 10) added to no data notice on target MFD display.
- Scanning mode toggle timer indicators added to target MFD display when no data is available.
- Nebula and gas giant cloud structures updated to prevent visibility through console shadow.
- Dedicated alert notice added for message log when city modules are destroyed.
- Rotational thruster precision increased in non-IDS flight modes.
- Minor improvements and fixes.
Notes:
New Strike Objectives
Two new strike objectives have been added to the contract pool for disputed and fully ALC/FDN hostile regions. One requires destroying a weapon depot on the surface of a nearby planet. The objective can be accepted while at a station in the same sector, so it does not require first descending to the surface and docking at a city. Once accepted, the nav marker will be placed at the destination for reference, then the player can adjust as needed for a safe jump point near the planet's atmosphere before descending for the attack. The depots may be difficult to hit due to terrain masking and can be under water, so attack runs can require high angle approaches to attack from above to be effective. The other objective requires destroying a weapon depot in open space. In both scenarios, the depots will typically be defended by a limited number of enemy ships. The depots are fairly durable and require quite a number of hits to destroy, so multiple passes and/or destroying defenders first may be required. Depots are also beam cannon resistant, so either particle cannons or missiles will generally be required to inflict significant damage.
Cinematic View Mode Revision
The cinematic view mode now supports custom placement and rotation. This way, the player can set the camera viewpoint where they want it and keep it locked as though placed on a stand attached to their ship. This provides a wide array of available perspectives with full 360 degree view support and placement anywhere around the player's ship. The new cinematic mode supports all of the key, button, and mouse controls for view direction as well as the panning controls for placement. To change the camera's rotation after activating the cinematic mode, the default Insert, Home, Page Up, and End keys can be used. If HAT view control is enabled, that input can also be used. The 'Mouse Look' mode can also be enabled to change the view rotation angles (default Alt-F10 for inversed Y direction control). To move the camera's position, simply use the panning controls such as the default Alt-Insert/Home/Page Up/End combination or any dedicated keys or buttons you may have mapped to those inputs. New lines in 'text.dat' for the new objectives are 3070-3074, 3080-3084, and 3088.
Unique Ship Icons on Status Displays
The global ship symbol on the shield indicators of the ship and target status displays has been replaced in favor of a unique image icon. For civilian ships, the game will assemble the icon from the required image pieces and include the frame, engine, and wing system in the final icon displayed on the indicator. All other ship types without such configuration options will simply display their frame type on the icon. This now provides a quick visual reference for the player's ship as well as the ship being tracked, rather than just a generic symbol as before. 70 new images have been added for the new icons and they can also be customized (see kit for details: Starwraith.com )
Internal Animation Mode Option
The custom GIF animation image option that was recently introduced has been expanded to include support for individual images applied to the HUD alert, MDTS lock, missile lock, incoming missile, and incoming gunfire indicators. A second line option has been added to the 'animationimagemode.txt' file option that enables or disabled this alternate mode. When disabled (value of 0 in line two), then the default internal animation system will apply that uses the 10 image files for each indicator. When enabled (value of 1 in line two), then only the first image file is loaded for each animation sequence to support applying a custom GIF image file with its own animation frames. Details are available in the customizing kit here: ( Starwraith.com scroll to the bottom of the image filename list)
Finishing Touches
As mentioned early last year, I've been working toward implementing some of the last remaining feature requests and development goals as the game has been reaching a more finalized state. I am loosely targeting the 20th anniversary of the start of Evochron development as the series completion point with Legacy (and as I may begin to plan for starting a possible new future project). To that end, I am drafting notes on finishing touches that may be applied to the game over the course of the next few months. If there are small improvements or changes you would like to see applied to the game, please send me such feedback/requests via e-mail ( starwraith.com > contact with something like 'Evochron Legacy finishing touches' in the subject line). I'll eventually compile a list and will plan on devoting time to implementing some of the most popular ones for a planned final update. Smaller changes/additions that are low bug risk, relevant to the game's intended focus/design, and benefit the game as a whole within those parameters will likely be given priority. For reference, details on the game's intended design related to feature considerations are available at the links below.