GP2 v59: "Space Quest" (Patreon)

Yet again, I am trying something new with the distribution on this version.  Now I've decided to simply release the full game (the way I used to), but also a patch alongside it.  If you don't have the game, just download the full "Grrl Power 2 v59" zip and its components (1gb multipart archives), and unzip it wherever you want the game to be.  If you already have a working copy of the game, you only need the "Grrl Power 2 v59 Patch", which you can then install over your existing copy, overwriting the folders as laid out in the archive.

This simplifies things somewhat for all of us and continues to ensure that the latest version will be a quick (relatively) download for existing patrons.  The v59 Patch is already in the silver folder, and other versions have been moved up accordingly.  The full v59 archive is going to take roughly a day to upload on my crappy upstream.

As far as what's actually in this version:

This one was primarily focused on further testing and fixing issues, mainly directed at Space content.  Many things such as hazard protection failures, hostile environment survival, in-system travel between Earth and Mars, and planet generation have been fixed.  Currently it is still only possible to travel between Earth and Mars, and do things on and in orbit of both planets.  No other planets are functional yet.  

You can visit Mars Colony and talk to NPC's there as well as trade.  You can fly around Mars in the aerocar, land in various places, and mine for resources, although I'd really like to get more testing done on that stuff since those features are still too new and still undergoing fundamental updates so I can't guarantee it actually works.

Existing stuff in Earth Orbit has been cleaned up a bit.  The D-Ring activity seems pretty stable now, so that's a way to make money in space.  ISS is still a little too performance-heavy for my taste but it is functional.  I'll be looking into ways to speed that up in the future.

There are now two mission boards.  The old mission board is Capital City Classifieds.  That's where you will go for the missions that occur around the city.  The new mission board is the Earthforce Bounty Board, and that deals with space missions.  That feature has not been tested, and you won't be able to complete planetary missions that occur anywhere but Mars.  So it's probably best to avoid using that part right now.  You will be able to choose between the two boards whenever you access the mission postings via Internet, or the new bounty board on the ISS.

A new QoL change has gone into effect: Text speed.  I finally managed to figure out how to turn off the slow text display that RMVX uses.  Now all text should display instantly.  If you're used to the old system, take care that you don't accidentally skip text pages if you don't want to.

I also removed all of the quick-start characters.  This is mainly because those saves were so old and outdated that they could actually create issues for new players rather than making things easier on them.  It came down to a decision of whether to spend the time to rebuild all of the quickstarts or just continue fixing the broken parts of the game and decided to go with fixing the game.  So for now you'll need to create your own characters.  I may bring back quickstarts in the future, but it will be in a limited fashion.  I will likely only use my test characters with that system, since I tend to update them during the process of testing anyway.