How To…

Overview

Intended as a sort of one stop shop for everything you’ll need to know in order to play the game the following sections should guide you from basic controls to designing, creating and flying your own ship.Please leave a comment so that I may aim to improve its content.

Starting A Game

From the main menu there are 5 options; Play Interstellar Rift, Interstellar Rift ship editor (the Ship Designer), Options menu, Credits screen and Quit Interstellar Rift. These are pretty self explanatory so I won’t go into them (too much).

The button you are looking for when reading this section is the the top Play Interstellar Rift button, the icon with the spaceship wooshing through space. The next window allows you to either start / continue a local game, join a server or create a server of your own. I won’t go into multiplayer (not much of a multiplayer), so click the Solo Game button and give your galaxy a name. Note however that for now the term Galaxy is to be taken lightly; you’re kind of stuck in this section of space and it is more about your savegame than the supposed Galaxy you’ll be playing in (for now). In any case, it is a good start for new comers to learn the basics and get settled.

Whenever you want to load your world you can select it from the list to the right and click Load Galaxy at the bottom. The bucket with the x next to it allows you to delete the Galaxy.

Controls

Once the Galaxy is created you are spawned inside the long range transporter of your small space station. You can use your mouse to look around and WASD to move (WASD is mapped exactly like the arrow keys on your keyboard, where W is up and A is left).

Things that can help you move around are consoles like these. This particular one is the console that operates the transporter I just spawned in, and I won’t use it just yet, but it is interesting to know that you can left click your mouse on the bottom panel and control it like that, and the console above it as well. In this case, for this machine, the bottom console allows you to pick a target to transport to, and the top console allows you to select which transporter pad you’d like to end up on.

The more important reason for showing this first is that you can select this same station as your destination and use the top console to look around and get an idea (map) of the facility. The top console also reacts to mouse input as long as you aim your mouse at it; you can click it, you can use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out; your cursor is pretty much your hand when interfacing with these consoles.

Pressing Tab will open your omni tool. This tool allows you to interface with devices; Give them a charge when there is no generator to power them (of fuel to power the generator that is supposed to power them), change access depending on user groups (secure sections in multiplayer for instance) and analyze the ship / station your on, its generated / used power and life-support statistics.

In a Solo Game the most important ones are the Ships Stats and Device Manager. The Ships Stats screen is pretty self explanatory. The Device Manager allows you to interface your omni tool with another device (in this case the transporter console). This is important because this allows you to connect to it and transfer power from your tool to the object you are aiming at, something you may need to do after you have created your first ship (without power, doors won’t open, life-support will be offline, etc). It functions on everything (and probably more) you can interact with without the tool, including doors, lockers, machines, computers, but it gives a lot more options and fine-tuning abilities.

There is nothing much we can do at the moment with the omni tool at this object, so you can return to the tools main menu using the home shaped icons at the top left of the interface (or use Backspace) or press Tab again to lower your wrist-mounted omni tool. Also note that pressing Escape will show your omni tool with game options instead of interface options, allowing you to quit the game or change game settings.

This is a storage locker. These allow you to store items you find, ores you mine and minerals you have refined (more on that later). This is also a key component in ship construction, as the ship building device uses this inventory to look for the required resources needed to construct a ship.

Again, using the omni tool, you can interface, check ship (or in this case station) statistics, etc. But there is no point since there is nothing else we can do here; We don’t have any items to store and it starts off empty.

— FACT CHECK — Not sure if this is a Galaxy wide storage locker; Is its content the same regardless of what locker you open or is it locker specific?

So let’s continue exploring, opening doors using the E key, jumping around using Spacebar and running using the Shift key. You might find a hole in the wall with a small door at the end. These are ejection hatches and allow you to dispose of items by simply ejecting them into space (something that doesn’t make sense, because whatever you were thinking of ejecting could probably be recycled, not to mention it would have an impact on the stations position…in real life).

When you find something that looks like an elevator, you can use it using the panel next to the platform. The control inside the elevator doesn’t seem to work (for now). Unfortunately there’s not much you can do on this station, apart from admiring its beauty (and wondering why there are so many chairs when the designers of your suit didn’t think you would sit wearing it), so when you’re done exploring, head back to any one teleporter (there is the big long range one you spawned in, and there are 2 smaller short range teleporters behind it).

At the console, select the Mining Station and select a destination. If you are trying to teleport using a short range teleporter, chances are you will not see Mining Station in the destination list; That means it out of range for that teleporter, try the long range.

Before you click Teleport (on the top console, the ring with the arrow pointing up on the bottom) you should know that there is a 5 second delay (I think its 5 seconds) before the teleporter starts to do its thing. You should be on the platform by then. Now click and run.

Mining & Ore Processing

Now that we’re on the mining station you should first do some exploring. There are a few large machines here we’ll be using and there is a computer center we will circle back to at some point to create our first ship.

The first machine we’ll need, after you’re done exploring, is the Extractor. This machine consists of a glass room with a robotic arm, a catwalk with a console and a container pad. The console is where you select an asteroid in the vicinity that has the ores that you’re looking for, where a white number denotes the amount of iron ore, orange is copper and blue is water. We will need a lot of each, and no asteroids has all of these. Note that the left console allows you to select a target asteroid and the right console allows you to start the Extraction sequence.

Luckily there is another Extractor directly next to this one, so if we set this one to work on an asteroid containing both iron and copper, we can set the other to collect water. Watch as the machines do their thing, teleporting the asteroid into the glass chamber, cutting away the ores and depositing them inside cargo containers which are then placed on the container pad.

Pick up as many containers as you can hold and head through the door to Processors. These giant machines will take your ores in the left compartiment, process them as you tell them to through the consoles in the center (up that little stair / step), and output to the right on that conveyor belt.
So put those containers in there by stepping up to the compartiment, pressing 1 selecting the first item in your inventory and pressing E while aiming at the compartiment.

The items in your inventory will shift 1 slot to the left if an empty slot is found, so you won’t have to change slot numbers while inserting / placing containers.

Now step up to the consoles. The left console is the inventory for unprocessed ore. You can retrieve ores here without processing them. The center console allows you to select a product you want to create (it will only accept the max amount, but I suspect this is a work in progress) and start production. The right console allows you to monitor the stacking of the resulting product as it is loaded into containers (each holding 600 iron / copper or 20000 oxygen / hydrogen).

Keep an eye on the icons and colors of both the ores and the resources; Water for instance can be processed into hydrogen (fuel) or oxygen (life-support). Oxygen shares the same color with iron, as they are both white. Hydrogen shares its color with water, blue. The only differences are the icon and what they are used for.

Now that you have your resources you can stack them on container pads in a cargobay / warehouse for later use, put them on the container pads of a cargo teleporter (looks like a container pad with a big machine behind it, it allows you to teleport resource directly to / from other ships and stations) or stick them in your locker.

I suggest sticking them in your locker, because that is where the ship constructor will be looking when we start making our first ship. Even the hydrogen and oxygen. They’re not required for the construction, but they take up inventory space while you’re busy getting more resources. Keep going until you have somewhere around 9000 iron and 1100 copper (assuming the ship design further down, adjust to facilitate your own design otherwise). As for hydrogen and oxygen, 3 full containers of each should be more than enough.

Ship Construction

Did you find this computer? It is the Ship Editor Terminal and it allows you to design, construct or recycle your ship(s). First things first; You’ll need to design a ship (or use the default that came with your copy of the game, download one and import it, in which case you can ignore the following sentence), which is explained further down. You can open the designer by clicking on Design on this console, either that or the option in the main menu, but this will keep you in the game.

When you have a design and you want to realize your beauty in this virtual environment you simply click Build, select your design (note that there might be a big white arrow to the right of the console to scroll through the endless pages of designs) and click Build once more.

Now you either hit your desk in anger because you have a deficit or resources, in which case you return back to mining and refining, or put on some sunglasses and click Build like the Fonz. Naturally I’m not the Fonz and I’ll be mining some more…(screenshot taken after the fact)

Your ship is now happily floating somewhere near the mining station and can be accessed through the teleporters (assuming you did actually put a teleporter pad on the ship to teleport to).
Grab that hydrogen and oxygen from your locker and head back to the Extractor (the machine that mined those asteroids). There should be a cargo pad with a big blue arch behind it; It’s the cargo teleporter. Place the hydrogen on the cargo pads and take a look at the console either to the left of right (makes no difference which you use). First select your ship, then select the fuel tanks and beam that stuff in there. If the Teleport button does nothing, try the other console, I found some problems with this, but generally when one doesn’t work, the other will.

Booboo section; Assuming you forgot to fuel before teleporting over yourself, as I did
When you first arrive on your new ship there is no power; The generators don’t have fuel and as such nothing seems to function. You can’t even teleport back. But no worries, remember the omni tool on your wrist there?

Head up to the door to engineering and pull up your omni tool (Tab, remember?). Open the Device Manager and it should tell you ‘Click to Select [DOORNAME]’; Do as it says. The next screen will tell you that the power is low and give you the options to go back, access it, deactivate it or connect GRIP (the omni tool) to device (under the green power indicator of your suit at the far right of the interface). You want to connect your GRIP to the device (you may not know this, but you really want to). This will change the Low Power statement to Operational. Your GRIP will remain connected to this door until you either teleport out or connect it to a different object (note that elevators are a terrible idea to put between a teleporter and engineering, as you can not power them, again, probably work in progress).

End of Booboo section
(Left in because it teaches you how to solve these situations)

Welcome to engineering. First thing you should look for is a cylindrical container; its a fuel pod and you can fill it with hydrogen. This is where generators get their fuel from. The generators kick in automatically and you should now have power (you can check by disconnecting your omni tool from the door and see if it still functions).

Next up is getting life-support online. Walk up to the life-support system, drop an oxygen container on the left pad and click the oxygen button on the console. This will load the oxygen container and start basic life-support. You can, at a later time, add carbon to the right side, which will filter the carbon out of the air, giving you more time without having to resupply; right now it just functions as an oxygen tank which is connected to the airvents around the ship.

Right now your ship is alive and well, you are powered up, life-support is purring like a kitten and…ehrm…the teleporter doesn’t function? Yes it does actually, the ship is just too far from any viable destination or there isn’t enough power to teleport you all the way over there (The actual problem, as I found out later, was that the teleporter was in the same power group as the life-support system, which means it only got 59 power, where at least 500 was needed). You can do 3 things to solve this; Either connect your GRIP omni tool and use it as additional power source, wait for the on-board batteries to charge (assuming you have any) or jump in the cockpit and fly closer to either station. Guess what the next section is about…

Flight Controls

Nope, it’s not about 1001 things to do with potatoes, but nice try. Lets jump in the cockpit seat and have a look around. Hold the right mouse button to look around, or hold the left mouse button to move the ship in free flight (Pressing Tab at this point will lock / unlock free flight so you won’t strain your index finger). You can, as always, use the cursor to interact with the consoles in front of you (clicking involves pressing the left mousebutton, which WILL move your ship, assuming you have thrusters installed, expecting a solution in a later version).

The console on your left tells you everything about your navigational equipment; Engines and thrusters. This console functions much the same as your GRIP omni tool; it is the same readout basically, allowing you to deactivate thrusters and engines or assign user groups to them.

The console on your right are your assisted flight controls. The buttons at the top are from left to right freeflight (hotkey is Tab as forementioned), hud markers (toggles icons for asteroids, stations etc. on / off), 3rd person / chasecam (fly the ship while observing from behind. White button at the bottom returns to cockpit view) and the all-mighty leave-the-seat button (you can also press Escape).

W and S will fire your primary engines (no retro engines required to go backwards), while Q, E, A, D, R and F are roll left, roll right, strafe left, strafe right, climb and descent respectively. Note that you can also use the Arrow keys (and, again, holding the left mouse button) to rotate your ship, and the Backspace key to go back in the components menu on the left screen.

Ship Design

The Ship Designer allows you to design not only ships, but stations as well, but to be fair, the only main difference is that one has engines where the other does not (generally speaking).

First let’s start with the interface. The bar across the top will inform you of the resource cost for constructing this vessel (it does not include the cost of running it) on the left side and a very helpfull Help button on the right. Open the Help and get familiar with the controls.

At the bottom, from left to right, are your Group dialog, Menu button (hotkey is Escape), Camera controls and Connection tool (hotkey is F4), Elevation control (hotkeys are PageUp & PageDown), main editing modes (Room, Props & Exterior, hotkeys F1, F2 & F3 respectively), Catagory menu, and Component menu. And there is a coloring tool to the far right of the screen, which determines the color scheme new objects will be using. To repaint exising ones, click a scheme, followed by the button you clicked to open it, and click any and all objects you want to repaint.

The first thing you’ll want to do is create a room. The Group dialog allows you to rename the currently selected room to indicate what it is used for. You can also create another room in this dialog and rename it as shown.

Let’s start with a 3×3 engineering room. This will be a small vessel for demonstration purposes, so we don’t need a lot of high power machines like cargo transporters, shields, etc. Just select the room in the Group dialog you want to edit, and left click where you want a section to be added. Right clicking a section will remove it and everything inside and seal attached sections with a bulkhead automatically.

With the room in place we can now add wall panelling, floor and ceiling tiles and lights that are embedded in the ceiling (note that even though the wall panels and such may have lights, they don’t actually emit a whole lot, so you will need to add a dedicated light to light the room and see what you are doing).

All these items can be found in the Catagory panel while in Room editing mode (F1, remember?). Clicking a Catagory will update the Component panel with the available components of that catagory, with a neat preview of how it’ll look. As before, left click to add, right click to remove. Since these are Room components, they will snap into place depending where you point the cursor. Also bear in mind that removing a component may result in the removal of the room section, so be sure you are prepared to deal with that. F5 (quicksave) and F9 (quickload) may be handy for this, but you’ll need to have saved using Escape – Save at least once to give it a filename. You can also just replace it with a different panel / tile by selecting the desired and left clicking where you messed up.

While we are here working on Engineering, why not put in a door to the front of the ship. Note that there is a blue arrow denoting the front. And what good is a ship without life-support; add a floor grate from the Life-Support catagory. We’ll hook that up later, but we’ll need one eventually. Ceiling tiles are a bit tricky since they don’t show in the designer, but I did place a ceiling Light in the center of the room, just so you know. Also note that there is a Ceiling tile and a Light; There is a reason for that…

Note that when you added the door, the Designer automatically added a new room which now also appears in the Group panel. This allows you to just go and expand that room. Also note that the doors in the Room mode catagories only connect 2 rooms.

In order to just be in the ship (and assuming our suits power is out) we’ll need life support. We’ll also need a generator to power it, a battery for backup power, and I like to add a cargo ‘seat’ to put additional fuel, oxygen and carbon on (resource required to run the machines). The generator also needs hydrogen, which is stored in tanks, and I’d like to keep life-support seperate from the rest of the system (more on that later when Connecting stuff), so let’s put in a second generator. I like symmetry (to some extent) so I put another fuel tank in there for good measure. All these components can be found in either the Room mode Systems / Life-Support catagories or the Props mode Systems catagory.

Leaving engineering for what it is (at the moment, almost done), lets expand the other room and label it Cargobay. This is going to be a small ship, so we won’t need a crew quarters and all that. After installing the panelling as we did before, the first thing we actually NEED is a transporter pad. Without one we can’t actually board our ship. A short range one will suffice; It requires less power, but its range is limited. We really only need it to (dis)embark.

Another important part is the cockpit (Rooms mode, Cockpit category); note that I put 1 room section between the actual room and where the cockpit object is placed. This will make sense when working on the exterior, and I suggest you take note of this when adding windows as well.

An airvent in the floor, some cargo seats in the front, some lights in the ceiling and some billboards for atmosphere (could have been wallpanels with flowers in front of them, doesn’t really matter) and we’re set.

Moving on to designing the exterior. The first thing you’ll want to add are thrusters and engines. Where engines allow you to fly forward and backward, thrusters allow you to rotate around and perform more delicate manouvers.

This is also a good time to play around with the various components available to make your ship more presentable. I’m lazy and terrible at this particular stage, so I’ll leave this to you; You should be comfortable with the control by now and know where to find what you are looking for.

When done, let’s talk about Connecting up all those neat systems into a working whole. By default all systems aboard are linked to a Default group, so this isn’t exactly required, but part of the Designer, can have a major impact on how your ship handles and therefor pretty important.

When selecting a group everything that is selected (shows as the actual object instead of a yellow outline) becomes part of that group. Here you can only (de)select objects, so no worries in messing up the design. There are 2 subgroups, power and life-support. These allow you to seperate the function of components by either their power needs or their ability to control the atmosphere. This in turn allows you to seperate the life-support system from say navigational systems (a group you would put engines, thrusters, the cockpit, etc in for example).

This really is just a matter of selecting a group of objects and adding them to a group. A(n oxygen) generator will not supply power to components in another group, so this will allow you to limit the strain on your resources.

Yes I know, looks terrible, but it serves its function as a movable object with life-support and a transporter. For this thing to become actually usefull for anything other than hauling people and very limited amount of cargo you could add more rooms, more machines, like the cargo transporter (nifty stuff), mining equipment, etc. Go nuts, check out the components in the various categories spread over the 4 editing modes and get inspired.

We are already cheaper than the out-of-the-box small ship provided by the mining consortium, hell yeah!

Control Reference

Player context:
W – Walk / Run forward
A – Step left
S – Step back
D – Step right
Spacebar – Jump
Tab – Show / Hide GRIP Omni Tool
1 – 0 – Inventory slots 1 – 0
Escape – Game menu
Mouse – Look around / Aim cursor
Left Mouse Button – Select / toggle console option
E – Add / Remove / Combine cargo container
Backspace – Return to previous menu on console / GRIP Omni Tool
F3 – Free camera
F8 – Server administration

Flight context:
W – Fire engines – Forward
S – Fire engines – Backward
A – Fire thrusters – Move left
D – Fire thrusters – Move right
Q – Fire thrusters – Roll left
E – Fire thrusters – Roll right
R – Fire thrusters – Move up
F – Fire thrusters – Move down
Tab – Toggle free flight (control flight by just moving the mouse)
Backspace – Left console (Flight Components) – Return to previous menu
Arrow Up – Fire thrusters – Pitch down
Arrow Down – Fire thrusters – Pitch up
Arrow Left – Fire thrusters – Yaw left
Arrow Right – Fire thrusters – Yaw right
Mouse – Cursor / Fire thrusters – Pitch / Yaw
Left Mouse Button – Select / toggle console options
Left Mouse Button Hold – Free flight
Right Mouse Button Hold – Look around

Editor context:
W – Pan camera forward
A – Pan camera backward
S – Pan camera left
D – Pan camera right
Arrow Up – Rotate object forward
Arrow Down – Rotate object backward
Arrow Left – Rotate object left
Arrow Right – Rotate object right
Tab
F1 – Room mode
F2 – Props mode
F3 – Exterior mode
F4 – Connection mode
F5 – Quick save
F9 – Quick load
Mouse – Move cursor
Middle Mouse Button – Rotate camera
Left Mouse Button – Select option / component / interface item / Add item to ship
Right Mouse Button – Deselect option / component / interface item / Remove item from ship
PageUp – Go up 1 level
PageDown – Go down 1 level

Hint & Tips

Playing

• Cargo Teleporters teleports the cargo on its pad to other cargopads. So a receiving teleporter is optional but not required.
• Cargo Teleporters only teleport the cargo that still fits on the target pad, meaning that anything that doesn’t fit remains on the teleporters pad.
• Cargo Teleporters can teleport hydrogen directly into fuel tanks.
• You can fully fill a cargo pad with 8 containers by aiming at the base of the pad instead of where you want the container to be placed.
• You can fill up a partially filled container on a cargo pad with a stack you have in your inventory.
• All containers you retrieve from the locker are full except for the last one (unless you manage to feed it exactly that amount).
• Engines keep running even when there is nobody at the helm station.
• When looking around while in the pilot seat, you will want to stand up and sit down again to know which way is exactly forward.
• To control the consoles in the pilot seat with the mouse it’s often better to first aim the camera to its center, so to minimize inherent adjustments to you trajectory when clicking.
• When flying a ship over long distances, holding the left mouse button to fly gives you more accuracy than free flight (Tab) or the arrow keys.
• Be sure to always pack enough fuel for those distant asteroid fields.
• Don’t be fooled by power readouts, your equipment IS draining the fuel supply.
• Deconstructing / Recycling ships is done at the same kind of computer it was created on.
• Deconstructing / Recycling ships that still have cargo / fuel will result in that cargo / fuel to be recycled as well (from what I can tell, with 100% efficiency).

Designing

• There is both a raised cargo pad and a normal one. Place a raised over a normal one to double the storage capacity without having to add an entirely new floor.
• Walkways without railings are a good way to access raised cargo pads.
• Add an Extractor to turn your ship into a mining vessel.
• Switch between interior and exterior often to make sure your windows, turrets and cockpits are properly placed.
• Work from front to back or back to front so you can sculpt the exterior around the interior.
• A lot of thrusters may turn your ship into an uncontrollable mess; 2 thrusters per direction is more than enough for a small ship.
• Remember that you don’t need thrusters at the front and back; Your primary engines can handle that.
• It is a good idea to place a cargo pad in your engineering section for emergency resources.
• Batteries can store excess power when in flight and be drained when teleporting cargo or performing other operations.