FTL: Faster Than Light
Developer:Subset Games Publisher:Subset Games Platforms:Windows,Mac OS X,Linux,iOS Released internationally: September 14, 2012 This game hashidden development-related text. This game hasunused enemies. This game hasunused graphics. This game hasunused items. This game hasunused sounds. This game hasunused text. This game has a notes page

FTL: Faster Than Light is a procedurally generated roguelike game that has you captain a starship to its doom, repeatedly.

To do: Revisional differences. The event STORM_BOARDING was re-added at some point, previously removed. Last Stand was reworked in the Advanced Edition update, this lead to events being removed, as well as text being changed (Eg. BOSS_SCOUT_RESCUE had an additional repair beacon reward) Version differences (between desktop/iPad). There are some ideas for events in comments spread throughout the event XML files. Are there any that were never implemented? There may be more unused events or partially commented-out events that were missed.

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Unused Events

General Unused Events Several completely unused events, including ghosts..? Also includes leftovers from the original demo of the game.

Test Events Events explicitly used for testing, including experimentation with integrating the names of crewmembers into events.

Partially Unused Events Otherwise-used events that have unused commented-out sections.

Internal Species and Ship Names

Some of the internal names of the species and ship classes don't match their final, in-game names.

The most notable things here are the Engi ("circle"), the Slugs ("jelly"), the Zoltan ("energy"), and the Lanius ("anaerobic"). The Lanius are also occasionally referred to as "Shrike", and, informally, "metal aliens". "The Shrike" is also the name of the Lanius Cruiser's 'B' layout. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that the Zoltan ships are still called 'Energy' in their class names in-game.

In addition to the differences in prefixes, some enemy ship classes also have differing internal names, perhaps most notably the Slug ships; the Slug Interceptor (jelly_button), the Slug Light-Cruiser (jelly_croissant), and the Slug Assault (jelly_truffle). These names were likely originally used as the actual class names, as evidenced by the unused "Truffle Wreckage" ghost ships, which use the Slug Assault layout.

Unused Achievement

They Should Really Have Spacesuits

Have 10 enemy crew die while suffocating by sector 5.

There is a commented-out achievement in achievements.xml, which was originally the Lanius Cruiser's third ship-specific achievement, and was replaced with the achievement 'Loss of Cabin Pressure'.

Unused Player Ship Layout

The Lanius Cruiser has a commented-out layout in dlcBlueprints.xml with the blueprint name PLAYER_SHIP_ANAEROBIC_3, though the actual room layout of the ship can no longer be found in the game's files. A comment above the blueprint says:

This is the original 1st version.  I replaced it with the U shaped ship with the inner ring of airlocks.  I'm keeping this in case we need another layout for now

The "U shaped ship with the inner ring of airlocks" is Layout A of the Lanius Cruiser in-game, indicating that this was originally going to be Layout A.

Unused Enemy Ships

The 'Impossible Pirate' ship from the game'soriginal demo is still present in blueprints.xml; it uses the pirate version of the Slug Assault class, with an Engi crew of 5.

Additionally, there are two 'ghost ships' in blueprints.xml (though these are commented out), GHOST_SHIP_MED and GHOST_SHIP_HARD, both with the class "Truffle Wreckage". They, like the impossible pirate, use the pirate version of the Slug Assault class (which was originally named the Truffle class). Neither of the ships have any crew, and hence would have operated similarly to automated ships. These ships were likely originally going to be used in the unused eventGHOST_SHIP, which also made use of the removed 'ghost' species.

Unseen Names and Descriptions

Weapons

Rebel Flagship Weapons

The Artillery weapons used by the Rebel Flagship have unused names and descriptions. The Boss Missile and Boss Beam also have commented-out descriptions that don't match the weapons, likely from the weapon blueprints that were duplicated and modified to create these.

Crystal Shard

The crystal shards from the 'Crystal Vengeance' augment have their own weapon blueprint (of the type 'MISSILES'; i.e. a missile launcher), complete with a placeholder description and tooltip. This weapon blueprint appears to be a slightly-modified duplicate of the 'Leto Missiles' weapon.

Commented-out Descriptions

Many of the game's weapons have unused, commented-out descriptions, obviously from an earlier version.

Drones

Crew Blueprints

These are two dummy crew blueprints (i.e. for species), seemingly corresponding to the Anti-Personnel Drone and System Repair Drones, respectively. It's not clear whether or not these are used; there is no crew blueprint for boarding drones.

Drone Weapons

The weapons of drones are internally considered weapons (in the same way that any other weapon is). Many of these have names and descriptions.

Unobtainable Drones

The hacking drone, which cannot be obtained as a drone, has an unused title and description, as do the enemy and (unused) boss versions of the Defense Drone Mark II, and the (used) boss version of the Boarding Drone (though they are identical to those of the normal Boarding Drone).

Unused Drone Types

There are two unused drone types in blueprints.xml, both likely removed due to being too over-powered.

This unused drone type (BOSS_DEFENSE_2) appears to be a copy of an earlier version of the Defense Drone Mark II (or the duplicate of it which is used for enemies). The name of the blueprint would seem to imply that it would have been used by the Rebel Flagship; it isn't used in the final game. The above table only contains the properties that differ between the versions of the drone.

Comments in the blueprint for the used Defense Drone Mark II drone blueprints indicate that the cooldown of the drone was originally 750ms and the cost was originally 75, meaning that it is likely the only difference between the standard version and the boss version was the power requirement.

Unused Augments

To do: What are 'bp' and 'value'?

There are a number of commented-out ship augments in blueprints.xml, under various headings, a lot of which were never implemented. Furthermore, the ship-specific augment 'Titanium System Casing' was originally named 'Reinforced System Casing', and this name is still present, commented out.

The unused augment 'Reinforced Hull Plating' was modified slightly and re-used as the ship-specific 'Rock Plating' augment:

Two of the commented-out "other ideas" ('Integrated Flight Suits' and 'Missile Replication System') were implemented inFTL: Advanced Edition, with slight differences:

Unused Graphics

Trader Map Box

An unused map pointer that says "TRADER". Internally, "TRADER" generally refers to events that give the player a single trade/exchange offer, as opposed to an actual store interface. These events can't be returned to, and are not marked on the map.

Help Screen Overlays

To do: Are you sure these aren't used?

Ship Challenge

There are textures relating to a "ship challenge" stored with the hangar textures.

color_kestrel_1

This small icon is also stored with the hangar textures. There aren't corresponding ones for any other ship.

Null Resource

This texture is likely used if a texture is missing.

Weapons Subsystem

There are octagonal versions of the weapons system icon present alongside the ones which are used. Octagonal icons (as opposed to round icons) are used for subsystems.

These icons also have separate versions for the game's colorblind mode, though, unlike with the other originally-green icons, the green icons here havenot been changed to white, and, indeed, appear to be duplicates of the original two green icons.

Scrap Cursor

A version of the mouse cursor, with the scrap icon.

Unused Hack Button Icons

Unused
Used

Unused buttons for the hacking system are present. In-game, the drone icon is used, until the hacking drone is launched, at which point it switches to using the same icons as the cloaking system.

Unused Sounds

To do: More comparisons with used sounds, where appropriate.

Most of the game's sound files are prefixed with 'bp' (or forAdvanced Edition sounds, 'AESFX' or 'FTLX'), likely referring to Ben Prunty, who did the game's music, and, seemingly, much of the sound design. However, there are also quite a few sounds without a prefix, mostly in WAV format (unlike the 'bp' sounds, which are OGG files), which are seemingly older and which are mostly unused.

aliens/

bp_SFX_MantisFight.ogg

explosions/

bp_hit_hull_3.ogg

There is a hitHull3 tag in data/sounds.xml, though for some reason it just uses bp_hit_hull_2.ogg again, instead of this sound.

explosion_lofi_med2.wav

explosion_lowfi_block1.wav

explosion_lowfi_block2.wav

explosion_lowfi_long1.wav

explosion_lowfi_small1.wavandexplosion_lowfi_small1.ogg

This file has an OGG version, which seems to imply that this was replaced later than the others. There are a few other prefixless WAV sound files which have used OGG versions (not documented here).

explosion_lowfi_small2.wavandexplosion_lowfi_small2.ogg

This file also exists as both a WAV and an OGG.

hit1.wav

hit2.wav

hitshieldb1.wav

hitshieldb2.wav

hitshieldb3.wav

shieldsdown1.wav

This file is identical to the file 'shield_down1.wav' in the 'ship' directory (see below), a modified version of which is used in-game. The reason that this file is in the 'explosions' directory isn't apparent.

ship/

bp_door_close_1.ogg

This file is identical to 'bp_door_close.ogg' in the 'ui' directory. Neither are used.

bp_jump_ready_1.ogg

door_open1.wav

door_close1.wav

engines_power_down2.wav

engines_power_on2.wav

jump2.wav

The used (OGG) version of this sound cuts a small part of the start of the original (WAV) sound. As mentioned above, 'shield_down1.wav' is identical to 'shieldsdown1.wav' in the 'explosions' directory.

ui/

bp_alarm_1.ogg

This particular sound has a commented-out tag in sounds.xml, evidencing that it was replaced with the sound 'warning3.ogg'.

bp_alarm_2.ogg

bp_alarm_3.ogg

bp_door_close.ogg

The file 'bp_door_open.ogg' is used for both the opening and closing of doors. As mentioned above, this file is identical to 'bp_door_close_1.ogg' in the 'ship' directory.

sun_flare.wav

weapons/

ions/bp_SFX_SystemDisabled.ogg

bp_beam_1_loop.ogg

The used versions of this file and the below file are slightly longer and fade out.

bp_beam_2_loop.ogg

engine_small_launch1.wav

engine_small_launch2.wav

laser_c1.wav

laser_c2.wav

laser_c3.wav

laser_d1.wav

laser_e1.wav

laser_f1.wav

laser_heavy_b1.wav

laser_heavy_b2.wav

laser_heavy_b3.wav

laser_heavy_b4.wav

laser_heavy_b5.wav

laser_simple1.wav

laser_simple2.wav

laser_simple3.wav

laser1.wav

laser2.wav

Old Sector Names

The file sector_data.xml defines the possible sectors (and sector names). At the bottom of the file is a large comment, with sector name lists from a much earlier point in development:

 Old name lists<name>Federation Sector B53</name><name>Federation Sector C21</name><name>Former Republic of Gilead</name><name>New Colonies of Qarth</name><name>Varlian DMZ</name><name>The United Talrasi Planets</name><name>Planets of Lodor</name><name>Colonies of Marlith</name><name>The Remskar Colonies</name><name>Tasador 8</name><name>Local Trade Sector 51-A2</name><name>Local Trade Sector 21-F3</name><name>Local Trade Sector 125-S1</name><name>Local Trade Sector 42-MX</name><name>Quarantine Zone 13C</name><name>Quarantine Zone 45A</name><name>Hergarth Protectorate - Pirate Warning!</name><name>The Lawless Zone - Pirate Warning!</name><name>Freedom's End - Pirate Warning!</name><name>Parth Mining Colonies - Pirate Warning!</name><name>Rebel Forward Base Omega</name><name>Rebel Forward Base Sigma</name><name>The Liberated Front - Rebel Controlled!</name><name>Or'Arst Protectorate - Rebel Controlled!</name><name>Yarin IV - Rebel Controlled!</name><name>Kirrakthas - Mantis Prime</name><name>Perasian Nebula</name><name>Erkarth Nebula</name><name>Nebula of Teras</name><name>Yis'ver Nebula</name><name>Ceris Nebula</name><name>Persey Nebula</name><name>Uncharted Nebula 3.45</name><name>Uncharted Nebula 6.567</name><name>Uncharted Nebula 52.4.2</name><name>Uncharted Sector 42.53</name><name>Uncharted Sector 12.425.2</name><name>Uncharted Sector 51.26</name><name>Uncharted Sector 2.XM.42</name><name>Uncharted Sector Omega 42</name><name>Uncharted Sector 21.56</name><name>Vector 253.1 - Engi Home Sector</name>

Missing Kickstarter Backer Names

The file names.xml defines the lists of names that are used for crewmembers (and enemy crewmembers), including the names of those who pledged over $100 to the game's Kickstarter, and thus had their names added to the crew roster. There is, however, a comment at the top of the section of the file with the backer names, with the following:

Missing:$100Chase Cagle$500Steve Swink

These names are indeed missing from the list of possible names.

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• To do