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· Galactic Prospectors · DEVLOG
Galactic Prospectors August Devlog: Native Linux builds, new audio for cross-platform
A real Linux build, sound rebuilt on FMOD, our own physics, slot based cargo with ship and station holds, ship factories, a spawn choice when you die, crew ships, PvP bounties, and two performance bugs that were eating most of the frame.
yellow51 · Aug 11, 2026 · 94 views
Most of what we have done since the last update does not screenshot well. Cargo that behaves like cargo, physics we own, audio that now natively builds on Linux, and a frame loop that stopped throwing away most of your CPU. Worth writing up anyway.
Linux, natively
Galactic Prospectors has a real Linux build now, not a compatibility shim, and the dedicated server does too. Both platforms compile ahead of time, so the game starts quickly and there is no runtime to install first.
Saves moved to where Linux expects them, under your local share directory. If you already had one in the old spot, the game moves it the first time you launch.
New audio stack
Sound now runs on FMOD Studio. The reason we switched is boring but useful: one audio build covers Windows and Linux instead of two toolchains, and the authoring tool runs on the same machines we write code on. About 55 events, positional mixing for weapons, engines, mining and ambience. If you do not notice anything, that is the intended result.
The physics is ours
Ship against rock collision runs on our own physics engine now, forked from Box2D and Box3D. Rocks push when you shove them, and blast waves move things that are not bolted down.
Flight itself still runs on our own movement model on purpose. That model is what multiplayer prediction is built on, and predictable flying beats a more accurate simulation that desyncs the moment two people share a world. There is a Physics section in Options if you want to poke at it.
One terminal instead of twelve windows
The interface is a single docked terminal now: cargo, refinery, assembler, reactor, ship mods, ship info, shop, stations, blueprints, factions, missions, character, map. Thirteen pages, one frame.
Scaling got fixed properly while we were in there. The old approach scaled the rendered image, which is why panels overlapped or ran off the edge at some resolutions. Now the UI lays out at a fixed logical size and that gets scaled, so everything reflows. If it fits at 1080p it fits at 4K.
Cargo, holds and stations
This is the big one. Inventory is slot based: one item type takes one slot, and every container has a real limit.
Ship factories, and putting hulls down
You can no longer conjure a blueprint hull out of thin air anywhere in space. You need a factory: either a bay on a station, or the new factory module you can install on a ship (4 ship components, 5 motors, 4 computers, 8 plate, 6 platinum). The blueprint page tells you whether you have access before you spend an hour tuning a hull.
Once it is built you can pull it out, carry it, set it down in the world as a real object, and board it later. A hull is either in your inventory or deployed in the world, never both.
Dying costs something now
Death used to quietly hand you a fresh starter ship, which meant nothing really...no true challenge or reason to not die. Now you choose: a survival pod, which is weak and carries 8 slots but gets you moving again, respawning on foot in your suit, or a cryopod if you built one. Cryopods are craftable, one per player per ship or station.
Enemies, crew and bounties
Enemies were too lethal. Base bullet damage came down from 25 to 16 (this is in floats), and every world now has an AI damage slider sitting next to accuracy, reflexes, awareness and prediction. The default sits below the midpoint on purpose, so a fresh world is friendlier than it used to be. If you liked being hunted, the slider goes back up.
You can also commission crew ships. Build a hull, spend a crew member, and it flies escort for you. They are deliberately a bit weaker than the same hull in your hands, around 85 percent health and 70 percent damage, so a fleet supports you instead of replacing you.
PvP worlds got a bounty loop, because "more kills" was never a reason to switch PvP on. A kill pays 750 credits plus whatever bounty was on the victim, and puts 500 on your own head. Do well for long enough and you become the thing everyone else is hunting. Bounties show in the scoreboard and as a WANTED tag over the ship in space.
Performance
Two bugs, both a little embarrassing, both fixed.
The first: our game loop ended with a one millisecond sleep. On Windows that sleep actually takes about 15 milliseconds unless you ask for better timer resolution, so the whole game sat near 30 frames per second no matter what hardware was under it. The engine now runs up to the frame cap, 240 by default and adjustable.
The second was worse. A world with multiplayer enabled hosts a lobby even when you are playing alone, and we were asking the network for packets every single frame with nobody connected. That was burning most of every second. It backs off to a slow poll when there are no peers. Multiplayer clients also stopped redoing work the host already did, and the profiler we wrote to find all this is staying in the build.
Accounts
Sign-in moved to a more proper service at account.vyrexinteractive.com. It is one account across the site, the forums and both of our games. If the client cannot reach it, the game keeps playing anyway. An outage on our end must never lock you out of your own save.
On the website
There is now a page about the engine everything runs on, and a health and safety page with the photosensitive seizure warning on it, plus the practical stuff about motion sickness, wrists and headphone volume. Two minutes, worth reading before a long session.
Next
Balance and feel. How the holds sit once you have been playing for a few hours, whether the spawn choices are the right three, whether the AI change went far enough or too far. If something is broken or annoying, the forums are the fastest way to get it in front of us. We read them. Playtesters, let us know! And sign up for the playtests on our Steam Store Page!
Linux, natively
Galactic Prospectors has a real Linux build now, not a compatibility shim, and the dedicated server does too. Both platforms compile ahead of time, so the game starts quickly and there is no runtime to install first.
Saves moved to where Linux expects them, under your local share directory. If you already had one in the old spot, the game moves it the first time you launch.
New audio stack
Sound now runs on FMOD Studio. The reason we switched is boring but useful: one audio build covers Windows and Linux instead of two toolchains, and the authoring tool runs on the same machines we write code on. About 55 events, positional mixing for weapons, engines, mining and ambience. If you do not notice anything, that is the intended result.
The physics is ours
Ship against rock collision runs on our own physics engine now, forked from Box2D and Box3D. Rocks push when you shove them, and blast waves move things that are not bolted down.
Flight itself still runs on our own movement model on purpose. That model is what multiplayer prediction is built on, and predictable flying beats a more accurate simulation that desyncs the moment two people share a world. There is a Physics section in Options if you want to poke at it.
One terminal instead of twelve windows
The interface is a single docked terminal now: cargo, refinery, assembler, reactor, ship mods, ship info, shop, stations, blueprints, factions, missions, character, map. Thirteen pages, one frame.
Scaling got fixed properly while we were in there. The old approach scaled the rendered image, which is why panels overlapped or ran off the edge at some resolutions. Now the UI lays out at a fixed logical size and that gets scaled, so everything reflows. If it fits at 1080p it fits at 4K.
Cargo, holds and stations
This is the big one. Inventory is slot based: one item type takes one slot, and every container has a real limit.
- Your suit holds 8 slots. Every hull has its own hold (shuttle 30, fighter 22, battleship 60) and switching ships switches the cargo with it.
- Blueprint hulls have a cargo slot count you can raise in the editor. The price climbs faster than linearly, so a dedicated hauler is a real decision rather than a free upgrade.
- Built stations get their storage from the cargo parts you put on them. A cargo pod is 12 slots, a silo is 24.
- Prefab stations still exist for people who would rather not build, and hold 48, 96 or 192 slots by size.
- Both kinds now show up in one Stations list with locate, hold and manage on every row.
Ship factories, and putting hulls down
You can no longer conjure a blueprint hull out of thin air anywhere in space. You need a factory: either a bay on a station, or the new factory module you can install on a ship (4 ship components, 5 motors, 4 computers, 8 plate, 6 platinum). The blueprint page tells you whether you have access before you spend an hour tuning a hull.
Once it is built you can pull it out, carry it, set it down in the world as a real object, and board it later. A hull is either in your inventory or deployed in the world, never both.
Dying costs something now
Death used to quietly hand you a fresh starter ship, which meant nothing really...no true challenge or reason to not die. Now you choose: a survival pod, which is weak and carries 8 slots but gets you moving again, respawning on foot in your suit, or a cryopod if you built one. Cryopods are craftable, one per player per ship or station.
Enemies, crew and bounties
Enemies were too lethal. Base bullet damage came down from 25 to 16 (this is in floats), and every world now has an AI damage slider sitting next to accuracy, reflexes, awareness and prediction. The default sits below the midpoint on purpose, so a fresh world is friendlier than it used to be. If you liked being hunted, the slider goes back up.
You can also commission crew ships. Build a hull, spend a crew member, and it flies escort for you. They are deliberately a bit weaker than the same hull in your hands, around 85 percent health and 70 percent damage, so a fleet supports you instead of replacing you.
PvP worlds got a bounty loop, because "more kills" was never a reason to switch PvP on. A kill pays 750 credits plus whatever bounty was on the victim, and puts 500 on your own head. Do well for long enough and you become the thing everyone else is hunting. Bounties show in the scoreboard and as a WANTED tag over the ship in space.
Performance
Two bugs, both a little embarrassing, both fixed.
The first: our game loop ended with a one millisecond sleep. On Windows that sleep actually takes about 15 milliseconds unless you ask for better timer resolution, so the whole game sat near 30 frames per second no matter what hardware was under it. The engine now runs up to the frame cap, 240 by default and adjustable.
The second was worse. A world with multiplayer enabled hosts a lobby even when you are playing alone, and we were asking the network for packets every single frame with nobody connected. That was burning most of every second. It backs off to a slow poll when there are no peers. Multiplayer clients also stopped redoing work the host already did, and the profiler we wrote to find all this is staying in the build.
Accounts
Sign-in moved to a more proper service at account.vyrexinteractive.com. It is one account across the site, the forums and both of our games. If the client cannot reach it, the game keeps playing anyway. An outage on our end must never lock you out of your own save.
On the website
There is now a page about the engine everything runs on, and a health and safety page with the photosensitive seizure warning on it, plus the practical stuff about motion sickness, wrists and headphone volume. Two minutes, worth reading before a long session.
Next
Balance and feel. How the holds sit once you have been playing for a few hours, whether the spawn choices are the right three, whether the AI change went far enough or too far. If something is broken or annoying, the forums are the fastest way to get it in front of us. We read them. Playtesters, let us know! And sign up for the playtests on our Steam Store Page!
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