GRAKKON ▶ Play
TRANSMISSION 010 JULY 2, 2026

Tune-Up

MARQUEE

▶ The HUD got rebuilt from the ground up.

The free-floating card pile is gone. Your vitals now live on needle dials — hull green, shield violet, energy cyan — anchored in a left spine that hides when you don't need it. Mission, Radio, Hold, and Board all collapse into that same spine instead of scattering across the screen.

The radar changed shape too: no more boxy frame, just a borderless glowing scope with the starfield reading straight through it. And when a field crests, a herald flashes for two seconds, holds for ten, then fades — no more always-on status card eating your screen.

REF · #387 · #388 · #389 · #391 · #392 · #393

NEW

  • Talk to the welcoming committee directly. Type @ in chat and the NPCs you can reach show up in a dropdown — tab or enter to address one by handle. It's a real DM, not a broadcast, and they answer back.

     · #151 #152 #153 #154 #156

IMPROVEMENTS

  • Cash-out finally lands. Selling scrap at a pawn-shop now shows the tractor-beam pulling cargo in, a credit-deposit flash on your HUD, and an acknowledgment from the operator — plus a live at-risk readout on your hold so you know what you're carrying before you cash it.

     · #148

  • Ship Editor resizes like it should. Fixed the layout breaking at small and non-default window sizes — no more clipped stat panels or section headers overlapping your highlighted part.

     · #74 #75 #98 #115

  • Under the hood — the usual stability and polish passes that don't need their own line.

FIXES

  • Credits match everywhere now. The HUD and the Ship Editor used to read two different snapshots of your balance — sell scrap and the editor could still show the old number. Both read the same source now.

     · #208

  • Shots go where your nose points. Firing while rotating used to send the projectile out at one angle, then visibly kink onto a different trajectory a moment later. Root-caused to a stale heading in the reconciliation path and fixed server-side, favoring the shooter.

     · #275 #276 #283 #284 #285

  • Reconnect ghosts squashed. A dropped connection could leave a frozen duplicate of your own ship on screen, or freeze your thrust until you refreshed. Both fixed, along with a defense-in-depth cleanup that evicts stale entities on reconnect.

     · #159 #160 #161

  • Projectiles stopped snapping backward. Your own shots would fly forward, then visibly teleport back to their spawn point and re-fly the distance — a networking artifact, not a second shot. Fixed.

     · #164

  • Backgrounding the tab doesn't queue a sound bomb anymore. Alt-tab away and come back, and sounds used to burst all at once — sometimes hard enough to hang the tab. Audio now pauses while you're away instead of stacking up.

     · #223

  • Reloads pick up the latest build. A caching gap meant a normal refresh after a deploy could leave you on stale client code — only a hard refresh fixed it. Now any reload gets you current.

     · #165

  • Certification bug fixed. A second pilot on the same account flow couldn't get certified — caught from a player report and fixed.

     · #383

PILOT'S NOTE

Nineteen tickets carried the HUD rebuild alone; call this the housekeeping patch that also happens to touch almost everything you look at in flight. Seventy-plus tickets went into this window — here’s what you’ll actually notice.

The marquee is the in-flight HUD, rebuilt to a new visual lock end to end: a hideable left spine hosts your vitals as needle dials, with Mission, Radio, Hold, and Board collapsing into the same column instead of floating free around the screen (#387–#393). The radar got the same treatment — the old bordered box is gone, replaced by a borderless glowing scope that lets the starfield read straight through it, and crest heralds now flash, hold, and fade on a fixed timer instead of parking a status card on your screen permanently.

One feature rides along: you can now address the welcoming committee directly. Type @ in chat, pick a handle from the dropdown, and you’re in a real DM instead of shouting into the open channel (#151–#156).

Two improvements: cash-out at a pawn-shop finally has weight — a tractor-beam pull, a credit flash, an acknowledgment from whoever’s running the post, and a live at-risk readout on your hold the whole time (#148). The Ship Editor stopped breaking at small window sizes (#74, #75, #98, #115).

The rest is the bug-squash roundup. Credits now read from one source of truth across the HUD and the Ship Editor (#208). Firing mid-rotation no longer kinks your shot onto the wrong line (#275, #276, #283–#285). A batch of post-deploy “ghost” bugs — frozen duplicate ships, thrust that locked up until refresh, projectiles that snapped backward mid-flight — got run down and fixed (#159–#161, #164). Backgrounding the tab no longer queues up a sound-spam burst for when you return (#223), a normal page reload now actually picks up the latest deploy (#165), and a certification bug that blocked a second pilot on one report got fixed (#383).

— Ray