04 Sep 2026Developer post

Monthly updates - August

I said at the end of last month's update that by the end of the month, we should be back to normal. I was wrong! Although, Dan is very happily creating again! :D Dan found that while he was putting the galaxy back together, it would be easier to get the volumetric areas designed

I said at the end of last month's update that by the end of the month, we should be back to normal. I was wrong! Although, Dan is very happily creating again! :D

Dan found that while he was putting the galaxy back together, it would be easier to get the volumetric areas designed before locking in the finished build. If you've seen the videos already, you know how awesome the first iterations of stars and gas giants are looking! He has now also created volumetric rings but that will all be in next months update.

Update 13/08/2026

As most of you know I'm currently going through a bit of a rebasing with the project, migrating our two Galaxy/System Gen systems into a unified Genesis system for creating the whole galaxy. The improvements this has already brought are too many to mention, but here are the headlines ( I know a lot of you had issues with some of these things) ;

Generation speed is now practically instant.
The per-ly CPU hammering/hitching is gone. 300ly/h is no longer the speed limit. We can support any flight speed.
Galactic view distances for large/bright objects are now upwards of 2,000ly (The old system was 150ly).
Every star visible to the naked eye from Earth is now in the data, and all the constellations are present.
In total we now have over 21 million real world stars in Genesis
(Not yet in) The Genesis data includes hundreds of known HII regions, Planetary Nebulae, Open Clusters, Globular Clusters and Dwarf Galaxies.
(Not yet in) The entire NASA confirmed-exoplanet catalogue is also in the data.
Stars can now cast light and show VFX beyond their 1ly cube, making for more realistic stellar neighbourhoods.
Star systems can now have multiple light-casting stars.
Star systems are now born and grow 100% organically using all the latest peer-reviewed science.
Atmospheric chemicals are now properly modelled.
Ocean chemicals are now properly modelled.
Tectonics and subsurface oceans are now properly modelled, including gas giant tidal forces on moons.
Abiogenesis and the organic growth of life is now properly modelled up to surface mammals stage.

And the best thing is, you can try it out for yourself here;

https://starshipsimulator.co.uk/files/genesis_demo_v2.zip

The controls are WASD to move around, Mousewheel to change the flight speed, H to toggle the on-screen hud, and Esc to quit. I'm going to release a few versions of this before the next dev build, because I want to get Genesis polished and at-parity with our existing galaxy visuals before I go all-in with tying it up to the sensors and ship flight system. You'll notice planets lack surface textures, atmospheres and rings. The nebulae all look the same, and black holes are not there yet. I'm working hard to get all of that ported over to the new system at the moment.

Important note:

Turn off Steam when you try this version of Genesis, because it will mess with your Starsim Cloud Saves! I'll stop it doing that for V3. And on the subject of saves, as of this being released in the next full dev build I will be resetting the website data and everyone's save files. It's a whole new galaxy, so none of the existing saves will be relevant. You'll keep your ship and crew, it will just reset the save back to Sol with no scanning data. Have fun! And remember, this is a WIP so expect weirdness. Or turn off cloud saves while you play with it.

21/08/26 Update

I'm still working my way through the new Genesis system components at the moment, and as I add each piece I'm also doing a quality pass on it as well. To that end, I've built a core volumetric shader that's going to drive every volumetric object in the game. That's going to be Stars, Atmospheres, Clouds, Gas Giants, Rings, Black Holes and Nebulae. One shader to rule them all. The volumetric star is now pretty much done, and I'm currently polishing the volumetric atmosphere/clouds. Next up will probably be Gas Giants, because they're largely just an extension of the new Atmosphere/Cloud system. The star is fully volumetric all the way to its core, so we should be able to do similar for gas giants with multiple cloud decks. Once all these individual pieces are polished I'll add them to Genesis properly, and then put out a new test build for everyone to try it out.

Have fun with the Genesis build but remember not to overwrite any save games with it.

There will be another update for that build very soon. Dan is currently putting the Genesis build back together with the rest of the game, so a new main dev build should be out very soon too.

August Youtube Streams:

Watch on YouTube

Original post

06 Aug 2026Developer post

Monthly Updates - July

Hello! It may seem like the fixing of the corrupted file is taking forever but we've now actually managed to shoot ahead almost four patches! So time-wise, this has been beneficial. Everything is almost finalised, Dan just needs to put it all back together, get back to the normal

Hello!

It may seem like the fixing of the corrupted file is taking forever but we've now actually managed to shoot ahead almost four patches! So time-wise, this has been beneficial. Everything is almost finalised, Dan just needs to put it all back together, get back to the normal dev build cadence, and then we can get the rest of the patch finished up to go out to the demo ( we're soooooo late with this, I know :) ).

This has put us back for early access but we'll look closer at that once we've finished this, and got it out.

11/07/2026

Bumping up our patch version number because soooo much is going into this patch. Essentially most of 228 and 229 will be in this update, so we might actually jump straight to 0.229.0.0 when this is done.

Game State Fix

• Removed a lot of old redundant code so that we're starting with a lean, required-objects-only version of Game State.

• Started porting the Ship's Computer functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Ship State functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Nav Target functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Command Target functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Exploration Data functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Sensors Data functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Alert Condition functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Ship Customisation functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Ship Breadcrumb Trail functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Mission Time functionality over to the new Ship's Computer system.

• Started porting the Galaxy Gen functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Brig/Mute functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Error Messages functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Multiplayer Chat functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Prop Location Saving functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Multiplayer Widget Button Press functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Multiplayer Widget Text Update functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the NPC Point Of Interest Tracking functionality into its own isolated modular system.

• Started porting the Dirty Floor Panel Tracking functionality into its own isolated modular system.

New Ship's Computer

In order to track per-ship data, including valve states, tank fill, reactor power, etc etc, I'm building a new "Vessel" C++ class with an associated Ship Registry Subsystem. This new class contains everything that needs to be replicated for the ship in multiplayer, and will also be responsible for spawning and managing the Physics Actor and Visible Proxy Actor for each vessel in the game (starships and shuttles alike). The input/output functionality of this class is built around a Cisco/Bash style CLI as its back-end, so adding a CLI to ship UI's is now trivial. The UI buttons in the game now fire CLI commands to the vessel class in the background instead of using their own per-button functions.

• Created the new Ship Registry Subsystem. Any game system can now send input/output requests to any vessel via its Ship ID.

• Created the new Vessel class, with replicated arrays for all hardware classes (Pips, Valves, Tanks, Cables, Reactors, etc).

• Created a new "Ship Hardware" component that can be added to any actor to have it auto-register with its ship's Vessel registry.

New Galaxy Gen (Genesis) System

Our old Galaxy-gen and System-gen systems were two separate classes, tied directly to Game State as a blueprint component. I am now combining these into a single C++ system called Genesis. Genesis will focus on generating an astrophysically correct Milky Way galaxy and its surrounding Dwarf Galaxies. It already includes 21 million real world stars, including all stars that are visible to the naked eye from Earth, and the 862 stars required to draw the known constellations are isolated in their own cell to ensure accurate constellation rendering.

• Ported the old Galaxy-gen system to C++

• Replaced the old "27 Sectors" approach to per-class stellar cells that are scaled based on apparent magnitude. This greatly increases the visibility of large/bright stars (O, B, WR), while reducing the visibility (and generation cost) of small/feint stars like M and LTY classes.

• Built a new system for collating real world data from various catalogues like HYG and Gaia;

O Class: 3,357

B Class: 58,093

A Class: 324,345

F Class: 951,215

G Class: 1,598,614

K Class: 4,058,175

M Class: 12,567,403

L Class: 1,943

T Class: 911

Y Class: 49

White Dwarf: 197,692

Giant Star: 1,279,966

Wolf-Rayet: 59

Constellation Stars: 862

HII Regions: 8,399

Exoplanets: 6,316

Open Clusters: 1,867

Globular Clusters: 145

Dark Nebulae: 1,790

Planetary Nebulae: 405

Supernova Remnants: 295

Reflection Nebulae: 158

Dwarf Galaxies: 101

• Built a new system for generating galactic structure mathematically rather than relying on a heightmap texture. Yes, this does mean galaxies can now be seed driven, and yes this does also mean we can now have as many unique galaxies as we want in the game. Wormholes anyone?

• Built a new noise generator which mimics the galactic cloud structure as seen in the James Webb infrared galaxy pictures.

• Refined per-class galactic plane height fading based on analysing the real world stellar data.

12/07/26

Upgraded the SteamCore plugin to SteamCore Pro. This gives us greater access to the Steam API for things like achievements and workshop support.

I've used a database of known HII star forming regions to optimise our Milky Way physical structure. We're now generating logarithmic arcs from accurate root locations and it's about as close as we're going to get to the true galactic structure. In all honesty this is probably now more accurate than some 1-2 decade old papers on our galactic structure. Yellow dots are real HII regions, blue dots are procedural ones.

30/07/26

The Game State issue is now fixed permanently, and I've also removed the root cause. We had two circular dependencies that were causing fatal exceptions on engine load, and this is what was causing the crashing. It wasn't actually a physical corruption in the end, it was a race condition that exploded everything when the old system-gen was removed from Game State. Or, when we tried making a macro which cast to Game State. We're now using soft references as much as possible to stop that from happening again.

Only two things need to be polished now. The new unified Genesis galaxy-gen system, and the Ship Registry/Vessel system. Both of these are big systems, but they bring most (if not all) of the features that we were planning to implement over the next few patches. I'll do a full write-up on each system once they're done.

Genesis

The galaxy is now considerably more scientifically accurate. The whole formation process from end-to-end is now fully simulated, including galactic metallicity regions, circumstellar disk formation/composition, disk evaporation, planetesimal formation, pebble accretion, orbit clearing, planetary collisions, moon formation (including collision events), gas accretion, planetary migration, and kuiper belts.

O Class stars for example evaporate their circumstellar disks very quickly, stunting planetary formation, while M Class stars have much longer lived inner disks, resulting in rocky worlds crowding their inner regions. Each class of star now forms class-accurate systems. The net result of this is that gas giants are far more rare around lower mass stars, while A Class stars for example have a penchant for forming many Ice Giants.

We also have multi-star systems now, which was actually an interesting solution to a too-many-gas-giants problem. We were capping gas giants at 13x Jupiter's mass, but once we removed that cap we found systems created brown dwarf companions more frequently, and gas giant distribution fell to match the peer-reviewed numbers.

And of course we now have real constellations, as you can see from Orion in the attached screenshot.

Ship Registry/Vessel

Any flyable vessel in the game (starship, shuttle, transport, fighter, etc) now has a dedicated Vessel actor, which holds all of the replicated data for that craft. Not only that, but it also serves as the ship's computer and command processor. This centralised input/output class allows any UI panel to send or receive any data, it just needs a matching ShipID.

Because we've built this with a CLI handler doing all the I/O work, it means we are now also able to add a CLI to any UI screen for proper linux style bash commands. Think hacking gameplay, and the ability to control vessels remotely.

This Vessel actor also has our PID controller built into it, driving RCS thrusters and Autopilot functionality. That means we're pretty much ready to implement sublight flight into the game, with the first sublight features being wormholes and space-based life forms.

What am I working on right now?

Right now I'm merging our existing planets/stars/black holes/etc into the Genesis system, adding planetary rings, and making sure multi-star systems work smoothly with multiple light sources.

I'm also updating all the Magellan's hardware to be compatible with the new Vessel system, so that we can read/control it from the relevant UI panels. Mostly this is just a case of dropping a component onto each actor, but they still need to be configured.

With the crashing all fixed and the two new systems approaching a finished state, we can start looking towards a new dev build. A long time in the making!

We have Giant stars in the game now - here's Betelgeuse.

Planetary Data Output - All of this will be used in game.

Overly bright because of a lighting bug, but here's a moon with a subsurface ocean and single-celled life

July YouTube Development Streams.

We stopped most streaming while we were getting this big issue sorted out but as with the rest of it, it'll all go back to normal as soon as the patch is out :)

View game page View game page

I have every confidence that as of next months update, we'll all be back to normal, and Dan will be very happy to be creating again!

Claire :)

Original post

05 Jul 2026Developer post

Monthly Updates - June

Hey all! It's been a very difficult month. We had some major corrupted files within Unreal engine, which were found when creating the new re-fueling systems. If we'd have needed, we could have rolled back to last months update but luckily, that's not been needed at all. The corru

Hey all!

It's been a very difficult month. We had some major corrupted files within Unreal engine, which were found when creating the new re-fueling systems. If we'd have needed, we could have rolled back to last months update but luckily, that's not been needed at all. The corrupted files (Game State) have been found and deleted. The issue right now is that Dan needs to recreate them, and he's doing this in C++ rather than revert back to blueprints. This in itself should also help with a few bugs that we've had, so it's a win-win. Although, that's taking up lots of time over the past couple of weeks, and into July but we're getting there!

Dan explain a bit of this in the last stream (starts at 4:12):

View game page

At the beginning of June, Dan was creating the new NPC logic for the refuelling systems, this means that the NPC Captain will order to refuel, and the sensors NPC will now be able to choose a gas giant to go to. The last bit was about to be completed when the file got corrupted, so he'll get back to this soon.

We've been working on our first Shuttle design on streams lately, so we thought it would also be a good time to also start building a proper PID flight controller for both in-space and atmospheric flight-

While in space the flight model is fully newtonian, and the flight controller translates control inputs to RCS thruster firings. It does this based on thruster direction, so we can arbitrarily place thrusters around a vessel and the flight controller will handle the control mapping. It also has some autopilot functionality built in already, and is able to use the RCS thrusters autonomously to keep the vessel on target.

In-atmosphere, the Shuttle uses 4 landing thrusters in a manner very similar to a quadcopter. The handling feels a bit like flying a drone, with the addition of some main engines to provide horizontal thrust. The PID controller always tries to maintain a stable hover, so if you flip the shuttle upside down and take your hands off of the controls, it will use the landing thrusters to flip itself over and zero out its vertical velocity.

Everything is using real physics and real thrusters, so damage to a single thruster can immediately be felt in the handling. This also means every vessel will feel unique, because its handling profile is driven by its centre of mass and location of individual thrusters.

Our goal with the flight model is for it to feel meaningful and grounded in real physics, while also being approachable for non flight simmers.

To that end we'll have some flight assist modes that smooth off some of the sharper edges. We'll share more on this when the system is more fleshed out!

June YouTube Development Streams.

View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page

Hopefully all should be back to normal in July, see you then!

Original post

02 Jun 2026Developer post

Monthly Updates - May

June already ːsteamfacepalmː Time flies when you're having fun! Internal Development Build 0.227.0.20 New / Changes You can now refuel the ship from the bridge! We don't have volumetric gas giants yet, so for now, you simply need to be within 1.25-1.75 of a gas giant's radius to

June already ːsteamfacepalmː

Time flies when you're having fun!

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.20

New / Changes

You can now refuel the ship from the bridge! We don't have volumetric gas giants yet, so for now, you simply need to be within 1.25-1.75 of a gas giant's radius to be in effective fuel scooping range. Ice giants are the best fuel sources, with effectiveness falling off on classes I through V.

Added a temporary /refuel command to the chat box to save anyone who forgets to watch the fuel tanks. It'll set the tanks to 10%.
Added a temporary (ish) flashing light above the Engineering console if any tank drops below 10% fuel.

The F1 bug reporting tool has been updated, and now also lists all open bug tickets in-game. More functionality on that will be coming.

Fixes

The Caravella is now loadable for Admiral+ backers with portal accounts. Right now, it's stuck in place, but you can poke around it.
Fixed bug #02613 Bug report form too short
Fixed bug #02742 Floors aren't being cleaned
Fixed bug #01881 Feedback - Add audio in background when alt+tabbed

Starship Simulator Portal

We've now replaced Mantis with our own proprietary bug tracker, built into the portal and the game.
You can now upvote bug tickets that you think should be a priority fix.
Anyone with an account can comment on bug tickets.

Backer Notes

The new bug tracker uses your Starsim account, so if you are logged in when you report a bug, it will link that ticket to your account properly. You'll then be able to see any tickets you've raised on your dashboard, and it will glow yellow if any of your tickets have been updated.
The NPC Captain doesn't know about fuel scooping yet, so don't leave them unattended, or you'll end up stuck without fuel. For now, I'll add a temporary /refuel command to the chat box to save anyone who gets stranded.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.21

New / Changes

Added some very simple reactor controls to the Engineering station on the Magellan's bridge.

The Caravella Class is now completely flyable, and has functional NPCs on the bridge.

Upgraded Unreal Engine to version 5.7.4.
Started building the A Deck bathroom on the Magellan Class.

Not Yet Implemented

Created a more stable version of the sublight flight model with a fixed centre of mass.
Created a modular thruster component that simply takes in Max Newtons * Throttle as an input.

Optimisations

Created a new optimised light component and converted the temp lights around the ship to use it (the round ones).
Enabled stereo and foveated rendering for VR.

Fixes

Fixed the Caravella Class not loading.
Fixed bug #02752 - Open/Close Refill Valve buttons on the new bridge engineering screen have a typo
Fixed bug #02788 - Flying Camera shadows
Fixed bug #02753 - Chat Spamming
Fixed bug #02787 - Engineering Bridge NPCs are mislabelled
Fixed bug #02757 - Power

Starship Simulator Portal

Renamed the Bug Ticket Severity fields so that they're more reflective of actual game issues.
Added the ability for players to set the Severity field directly when raising a bug ticket (we'll refine as-needed).
Added automated screenshot capture/upload when raising a bug ticket (you can opt out).

Backer Notes

Upgrading engine versions always brings with it the potential for unexpected side effects, so please let me know if anything is behaving strangely.
VR is working much better now, but enabling stereo rendering has caused some side effects. Not least of which, if you have Bloom enabled, it will cause the right eye to have glitchy black areas all over it. Also, right now there are no in-game menus in VR, so once you are in-game, you will need to hit Alt+F4 to exit.
I've been testing both Wired and Air Link on my Quest 3, and they both seem to work fine. Typically, I'm seeing ~60fps on my 4090 on Medium settings.
Unreal Engine 5.7 forces us to use the AgX Tonemapper over ACES, because the OpenColorIO plugin is required by MetaHumans. Ultimately, this is a good thing; it gives us more accurate colour and better visuals, but until I tweak the post process, it's going to look a little flat.

We've been working the past two weeks on redoing the code logic systems, so there's nothing to show for that right now, unfortunately, but on stream, we've started creating the shuttle. This info will be added to the updates in time!

May's YouTube Development Streams.

View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page View game page

See you in July!

Original post

06 May 2026Developer post

Monthly Updates - April

Hello All! As Captain, you can queue up commands through the holo-display and send them directly to the helm. Sit back and watch your crew explore the galaxy on your orders, step away to your ready room while they scan systems and collect data, or even head to the lounge for a br

Hello All!

As Captain, you can queue up commands through the holo-display and send them directly to the helm. Sit back and watch your crew explore the galaxy on your orders, step away to your ready room while they scan systems and collect data, or even head to the lounge for a break - all while enjoying the stunning view of the stars through the windows.

Your ship, your command. Enjoy!

You can also sit as the Sensors Specialist or the Pilot, and accept orders from the NPC Captain. ( or another person in MP!)

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.9

New / Changes

Added the ability to cancel Shipwide, Helm and Sensor orders on the Command Console.

Hooked up the Command Console's Holo-Display buttons so that they operate the Holo-Display properly.
Updated the Radial Menu so that it gets its colour from the thing you are looking at. Blue for Sensors, Brown for Helm, etc.

Overhauled the menu options on the Sensors Radial Menu so that they are more organised.
Updated the Radial Menu so that it only shows options that are valid for the given context.
Added DLSS 4.5 support. It's disabled by default, but you can turn it on with "/console r.NGX.DLSS.Enable 1" in the chat box.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2541: Galaxy Gen box is outside front bridge window
Fixed bug 2564: Unable to dismiss Npc
Fixed bug 2565: Unable to summon NPC at command chairs
Fixed bug 2577: Chairs - Can't use the mouse scroll wheel on sensors while seated.
Fixed bug 2579: Some chat entries don't show unless the chat window is selected
Fixed bug 2580: B-deck Security is flying the ship!
Fixed bug 2585: NPC's not acknowledging orders
Fixed bug 2594: Explore current system order broken
Fixed bug 2570: System survey and Server info loop
Fixed bug 2576: If you change Sensor target en route to planet, short range scan will fail
Fixed bug 2597: Sometimes pressing "orders" in the rdial menu results in an empty menu

Internal Development Hotfix 0.227.0.10

Fixed the FTL drive not working due to a lack of power.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.11

New / Changes

Added 16 new generic NPC skills on the Sensors Station.

Added the ability to ask the Sensors NPC to "Search For Tech Signature"
Added the ability to ask the Sensors NPC to "Search For Earthlike Candidate"
Added Command Tasks to the command console.
Added "Objective Complete" alerts on the command console, with the ability to set the subject as the current command target.
Added Earth's moon in celebration of Artemis II.

Added procedural moons to ~75% of exoplanets.
Added some science-driven generation logic for determining where "Regular" moons should be generated. Non-regular will be added later.

Not Yet Implemented

New erosion-based planetary surface shader.

NPC Skill - Search for Tech Signatures
NPC Skill - Search for Earthlike Analogues

Fixes

Fixed bug 2605: Short Range Scan Stuck in Infinite Loop
Fixed bug 2600: Helm Continuously Engages and Disengages FTL Drive
Fixed bug 2604/2607: Can't cancel shipwide order on the captain's console
Fixed bug 2595: Lava lines inside the star
Fixed bug 2609: Command target visible way out of holoprojector bounds

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.12

New / Changes

Significantly improved how moons are generated, enforcing Roche Limits and Hill Spheres.
Added Roche Limit and Hill Radius data points to the holo display.
Added a "System Overview" view mode to the Holo-Display on Medium Range mode.

Created some generic planet-type textures for the new System Overview.
Tweaked and polished various aspects of the star system generation code.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2436: Galaxy - L Class Brown Dwarf - Direction light too bright
Fixed bug 2625: Habitable zone start and end visible inside star model in holomap
Fixed Terrestrial planets having a weird green tint on the surface map.

Notes

The new System Overview isn't interactive yet, but that will be coming at some point. For now, it's just there to provide a quick visual overview of the star system, whereby all objects are properly scaled relative to one another, including the star.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.13

New / Changes

Updated the "looking at nothing" Radial Menu to inherit your department colour instead of being grey.
Updated the chairs so that the radial menu will always appear if you click them with E held, even if there is no NPC.

Optimisations

Reduced the instruction count of the atmosphere shader to improve performance.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2635: Shipwide Order Fails to Update Command Console that Mission is Complete
Fixed bug 2604: Can't cancel shipwide order on the captain's console
Fixed bug 2607: explore system shipwide order wont complete on UI or cancel
Fixed bug 2554: Cable in Door
Fixed bug 2371: Modelling - Pipes going through Engineering doors
Fixed bug 2568: Radial Menu - Deadzone not scaling properly with screen resolution
Fixed bug 2634: Lack of Command Target Selection Confirmation
Fixed bug 2636: cant select systems in sensors holo display in center of bridge
Fixed bug 2643: Changing display order or alignment rotataes the objects in the system overview
Fixed bug 2640: Mouse Cursor is draging camera

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.14

New / Changes

Added a new "Breadcrumb Trail" to the holo display (GPS & Long Range), which will update every time FTL is disengaged.

Added an "Account" section to the game settings.

Built a new framework for connecting the game to the Starship Simulator online portal.
The (very early WIP) Caravella is now available for Admiral-level backers with connected portal accounts. There is a bug currently with this, which stops it from loading, but it'll be fixed this week.

Renamed "Start New Mission" to "Launch New Vessel" on the main menu. We're doubling down on the ship being the hero of the story.

Added a new Ship Configuration page to the Launch New Vessel menu sequence.

Added a new Select Character page to the Launch New Vessel menu sequence. (Not much on it yet)

Added a new Crew Roster page to the Launch New Vessel menu sequence. (Not much on it yet)
Added a new Online Fleet Registry Submission page to the Launch New Vessel menu sequence.
We now have multi-savegame support! The number of save games is limited only by your HDD space.

Each new vessel launched creates a new savegame, and if you opt-in, will also create a profile on the online portal.
Added the ability to delete save games, which also deletes the associated vessel from the online portal.
Added the first data output for the online portal. The ship will update its last known location every time FTL is disengaged.

Captain+ - Notes

The new Starship Simulator Account system is purely optional and is not required to play the game. The only caveat is that you will need an account to access in-game backer rewards such as mission patches and the Admiral Cluck plush (both of which still need to be made).
Aside from gating access to backer rewards, the main purpose of the online portal is to serve as a Fleet Registry, allowing players to share their progress with one another by way of info cards for their vessels. It will also feature some league tables with data points such as "Farthest distance from Earth" and "Number of star systems fully explored". In the future, we'll look at storing "First Discovered By" data, along with a galactic heatmap to show community exploration progress.
The new savegame system is undoubtedly going to have a few bugs, so if you notice something not loading or saving properly (that was working previously), please let me know on ⁠dev-build-bugs or via any other avenue.
The new portal can be found at https://wip.starshipsimulator.co.uk but please be aware it's still very much a work in progress. Nothing on it is final or in any way remotely finished.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.15

New / Changes

The ability to use gameplay-affecting debug commands is now gated behind staff account authorisation.
The Target and Actual speeds shown on the Helm now transition to showing LY/H above 8,766 C (1 LY/H).
The reactor draw value now shows voltage on the Helm UI, but it's going to need increasing when I do the next pass on it.
Ships will now report Distance From Earth and Total Distance Travelled on the portal page.

Fixes

Fixed the breadcrumb trail not properly setting Earth as the initial origin point on new games.
Fixed the Continue Mission menu option not working if the old legacy save is deleted.

Notes

If a debug command is used in-game (like teleporting the ship), it will flag as such on the ship's portal page and the vessel will then not be included in any league tables. Essentially, that's cheating, so we need to ensure that sort of thing gets filtered out.
The current top speed of the ship is now accurately stated as 285 LY/H. This makes the average time between stars (4ly) roughly 50 seconds. This is actually faster than the target 60 seconds between stars, which is actually 239 LY/H. I'll probably make that the baseline speed without any upgrades in the future, and have hardware upgrades slowly push the ship towards 300 LY/H.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.16

New / Changes

Your ship will now report its number of fully scanned systems to the website.

Changes made to your ship details via F3 will now sync with the website.
Added the Description field to the F3 ship customisation menu.
Updated the layout of the F3 ship customisation menu to accommodate the new fields.

You will now see other vessels on the Holo-Display if they match your ship's Org Prefix. In the future, this will be toggleable.

Optimisations

Removed the old Ship Customisation global event and replaced all instances of it with the improved Gameplay Messaging Subsystem approach.

Fixes

The Ship Customisation should now be working reliably in both single and multiplayer.

Notes

Updating your ship's Prefix & Registry will change its URL on the website, so if you have your ship profile up and try to refresh it, it will give you a 404 error. The URL will always be /fleet/Prefix_Registry.
The ability to see other ships on the Holo-Display is purely informational. You cannot interact with them, or see them physically in the world (yet).

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.17

New / Changes

Added a dev-only debug mode to the game for testing, which greatly speeds up FTL/Scans.
The Autopilot will now actively avoid flying through planets and moons.
The Autopilot will now exit FTL alongside planets, ensuring to keep them on the Port side.
The Autopilot will now always try to rotate itself to align with the star system's orbital plane.
Clamped the Autopilot arrival throttle to a minimum of 10% to prevent slow approach crawls.
Added little crowns above stars on the Long Range Holo-Display mode so you can see which systems have command actions queued.
Upped the brightness on the Long Range Holo-Display stars slightly.
Tweaked the FTL so that it ramps up a bit faster. It's now 1.05 times the current speed per tick, up from 1.025.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2699: Started orbiting a sun and saw 2 of my ship on the holo display
Fixed bug 2697: I can see myself on the holo as another ship.
Fixed bug 2685: Mission time resets on reload
Fixed bud 2315: Sensors - When Display order is to "From Ship", distances do not update.
Fixed bug 2701: When warping into a new system, the AU distance counter on the holo display goes up.
Fixed bug 2647: Galaxy - system labels flash when the ship is stationary.
Fixed bug 2471: Distance to Objects withing a system not updating on holodisplay/Sensors
Fixed bug 2159: Holo Display - planet distances don't change on bridge hologram
Fixed bug 1924: Sensors - Setting Sensors UI Display Order to Ship Does Not Update Range
Fixed bug 2706: Holo ship has a shadow

Starship Simulator Portal

Added player ship positions to the galaxy map on the website. You can display all, or filter by organisation.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.18

New / Changes

Added a bit more in the way of outgassing to stars.

Tuned the Sun Flare so that it fades out entirely as you approach a star closely.
The Long Range Holo-Display will now immediately update the display of Org ships when zooming in/out.

Not Yet Implemented

Significantly progressed the local content spawning system, which creates grids for spawning small objects throughout a star system.

Optimisations

Reduced the instruction count on the Sun Flare shader and added some better early-outs.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2709: Started a new game and the ship is shaking
Fixed bug 2714: Ship reorientates on load
Fixed bug 2718: wobbly ship on new launch
Fixed bug 2703: Ship Registration
Fixed bug 2693: Dwarf lava planets in Sol system
Fixed bug 2710: The Sol system icy bodies are lava planets
Fixed bug 2680: Character Gen Screen Bio Windows expands
Fixed bug 2673: Star hiding out in data centre.
Fixed bug 2695: The bottom engine pod marker lights need to be moved down
Fixed bug 2501: Still seeing Sun Flare behind planets
Fixed bug 2667: Sunlight shines thorugh planets
Fixed bug 2708: Sun flare size.
Fixed bug 2711: Ship stuck in 10% max mode.
Fixed bug 2698: System scan count not retroactive
Fixed bug 2717: Other player ship names visible a long way outside the holodisplay.

Starship Simulator Portal

The ship will now do a telemetry update with the website every 60 seconds while actively at FTL.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.19

New / Changes

The Bridge NPC's dialogue will now show in the chat box and in a speech bubble above their head. (Toggleable in the future)
Added a little arrow under the speech bubble.
Added the ability to spawn an NPC Captain. The captain will autonomously direct the ship to search for Earthlike worlds.
Removed the Zoom In/Out orders from the Sensors NPC because it was just clunky and awkward to use. It will be replaced with a better solution.
Improved the look and feel of the Nav and Sensor target markers.
Set the Planet and Star labels out of the bridge window to Off by default, to improve system approach visuals. Targeted objects still show labels.

Not Yet Implemented

Built a new "Territory Bubble" generator which uses a Signed Distance Field mesh to display a Civ's territory as a 3D bubble on the Holo-Display.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2726: Holo display - Command targets are no longer saying Command.
Fixed bug 2727: Galaxy - Cloud coverage button is broken and is making the planets white
Fixed bug 2681: SaveGame Owner Dan
Fixed bug 2734: Bread Crumb Tail
Fixed bug 2723: Breadcrumb trail remains when turning Holodisplay off
Fixed bug 2721: Duplicate of back button when returning from descendant menu of children menu in context menu..
Fixed bug 2656: Looping execution of a command on Galactic Position radial menu
Fixed bug 2713: Unable to Read Arrival Information sitting at Helm
Fixed bug 2542: Floor panel hight missmatch on bridge
Fixed bug 2567: Z fighting at the enterance to the bridge
Fixed bug 2637: Flying Camreas no longer exit though bridge winows
Fixed bug 2668: Command target icon still exists outside of holoprojector bounds

Starship Simulator Portal

The ship will now do a telemetry update with the website every 60 seconds while actively at FTL.

April's YouTube Development Streams.

1st - 30th

View game page

View game page
See you all next month!

Don't forget, if you like Discord, you can find us at https://discord.gg/eDSQvpgdUX

Claire :)

Original post

11 Apr 2026Developer post

March Update

Sorry all, busy life has me behind on updates this month! We have one update for last month because we overhauled the NPC command menu systems. It is now much smoother to give orders to your crew on the bridge, and we now have the system to add much more detailed orders and emote

Sorry all, busy life has me behind on updates this month!

We have one update for last month because we overhauled the NPC command menu systems. It is now much smoother to give orders to your crew on the bridge, and we now have the system to add much more detailed orders and emotes. We also have a new chat box system, which is much easier to use than the old one.

For anyone who missed it, our demo has now been accepted on GeForce Now. So everyone can give it a try :)

Development Build 0.227.0.8

I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to put a new build out! Hopefully, this was worth the wait, and I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on the new Radial Menu and Task Management systems.

New / Changes

Added a new radial menu to replace the NPC and Holo-Display pop-up menus.

Clicking the left mouse button while looking at objects in the world will now trigger the most relevant default action for that object.
Pressing F (Action Key) while looking at objects in the world will now bring up a context-aware radial menu.

Updated the chair prop handling system to be the same as the player character version.
Updated the Holo-Display so that clicking on objects now sets a "Command Target".

Added a "Use CMD Target" button to both the Helm and Sensors stations.
Added new "Orders" buttons to the Helm and Sensors panels that list current station-relevant orders.

Added the ability to cancel ongoing orders.
Added the ability to queue up tasks for the NPC crew.
Built a whole new multiplayer chat system from scratch.

Optimisations

Significantly improved the tracing/sensing code for how the player character knows what it is currently looking at.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2528: Polarisation on the ceiling centre window blacking out stars.
Fixed bug 2521: No Mission Clock

Notes

Default actions for objects will be designed to make the experience as slick as possible. For example, left-clicking an empty chair will have you immediately sit down, while pressing F will bring up the various NPC options. Similarly, in the future, left-clicking an apple will allow you to move it around using physics, whereas pressing F would give you options such as "Hold" or "Eat".
This build represents the beginnings of proper task/order management on the ship. Simply raise a shipwide order, and the Task Management system will create and track individual bridge station tasks as needed, which can be completed by both Players and NPC crewmembers interchangeably.

March Live Streams:

View game page View game page View game page

See you next month!

View game page

Original post

05 Mar 2026Developer post

Development Updates

Hello all! Apologies for the lack of internal development updates here; I've been told that some of you would like them back. So I'll do a summary of the previous 6 months, and then I will do monthly updates from now on :) First up is the awesome news from today: we are now avail

Hello all!

Apologies for the lack of internal development updates here; I've been told that some of you would like them back. So I'll do a summary of the previous 6 months, and then I will do monthly updates from now on :)

First up is the awesome news from today: we are now available to play on GeForce Now!

( https://play.geforcenow.com/games?game-id=12d7f403-574e-412b-8c4a-9cae8bf94d6d&lang=en_GB&asset-id=01_fb2a3eeb-3b49-4a8f-85cb-4c40153553e1). We are so happy to be able to bring the demo to Mac users :)

We've now added a lot of basic gameplay systems, such as planetary landings, probes, shuttles, dynamic star system content, and NPC logic, over the past couple of months. Most of these are not yet in-game and won't be for a while until they are polished and ready for everyone to enjoy, but we are making great progress for early access!

February

Development Build 0.227.0.5

New / Changes

Created v0.01 of the Probe system, which currently can only find pumpkins.

View game page

Updated the Probe Facility with new exit/entry airlocks and a scattering of test probe models.

Updated the player character so that it does not go to ragdoll when falling. It will do an impact roll instead.
Updated the popup when starting the game to only show when first opening the game.
Updated the science labs on C Deck with improved entrances and the WIP addition of per-lab airlocks for health and safety.

View game page

Not Yet Implemented

Improved the NPC cargo handling system, so that NPC crewmembers can now move cargo from probes and put it on shelves.
Built a new global Task Manager, which can track and manage tasks across all ship departments.
Added a new Jobs Board master component that can display tasks for any given department.
Tasks can now be raised for all 7 departments, plus the Bridge which is now its own department in terms of task management.
Starting building the code for an NPC Captain, along with the ability to manage shipwide orders in the new Task Manager system.

View game page

Added a WIP bridge layout to the Caravella.

Optimisations

Improved the startup sequence for the game, so that it's now properly gated and actively waiting for criteria to be met before proceeding. This ultimately smooths out the loading screen and character spawning experience, and reduces the chance for ship systems to start incorrectly under low FPS conditions.

Fixes

Fixed the broken patchwork meshes around the Magellan's FTL ring.
Fixed the lag that occurs immediately after the player character is spawned in.
Fixed the NPC crewmembers rolling and ragdolling when trying to navigate staircases.
Fixed bug 2469 - Multiplayer - Host controls usable by clients
Fixed F3 (Ship Customisation) being usable by clients in multiplayer.
Fixed the chairs teleporting the player above or below the chair's deck when exiting. Absolutely, positively, definitely this time.
Fixed bug 2473 - Continue Save Game in Multiplayer reset the ship back to Sol
Fixed bug 2425 - FTL power keys for + & - too sensitive
Fixed bug 2480 - FTL ring glow not fully turning off
Fixed bug 2460 - Cold start scenario bridge lighting button not highlighted
Fixed bug 2421 - Cryopod Pump Title "Pump Name"
Fixed bug 2468 - Autopilot - Throttle drops to 70-80% right before entering a star system.
Fixed the Chillers on G Deck shutting down randomly when starting a game.
Fixed the Autopilot setting the throttle to the wrong speed when trying to navigate to distant stars.

Misc

None

Notes

Given that the game is now using an entirely new process for its initial loading sequence, there may be some weirdness with some game systems. We need to go through it all and make sure everything is loading in the right order and at the appropriate time.

Development Build 0.227.0.6

New / Changes

Updated the probes so that they actually leave the ship and come back with some test cargo. Just press the launch button on the probe body.

View game page

Improved the Icy Body planet rendering so that edges perpendicular to the star's light are properly shadowed.
Updated the Holo-Display so that it can be used in any location, on any ship. This was needed for the Caravella, and also for the future Astrometry Lab and Engineering Control Room.

Not Yet Implemented

None

Optimisations

Optimised the Orrery Map on the Holo-Display so that it doesn't render anything that's beyond the zoom range, or so small that you can't see it anyway.
The autosave will no longer save the game if the ship is in the middle of engaging or disengaging the FTL, to prevent it loading in a stuck state.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2488: cold and dark tutorial stuck loading
Fixed the NPC pop-up menu on the Sensors not generating the sub-options for each sensor mode.
Fixed bug 2491: Invisible Wall in Biology Door frame
Fixed bug 2490: Pathfinding on C-deck
Fixed bug 2487: Mis-labelled Panel
Fixed bug 2467: Interaction - Holding E allows you to bypass the range check on chairs
Fixed bug 2486: Issues Joining MP sessions
Fixed bug 2468: Autopilot - Throttle drops to 70-80% right before entering a star system.
Fixed the character getting stuck with a black screen in VR mode.
Fixed bug 2505: Loading Screen Lights not being removed for clients
Fixed bug 2492: NPC can't change sensor modes
Fixed bug 2373: Sensors - NPC Command options
Fixed bug 2489: Sensors UI resets exploration data
Fixed bug 2498: No Main Reverse Engines
Fixed bug 2372: Sensors - Auto explore is going inside some rogue planets
Fixed bug 2346: Lighting - Alien virus ceiling lights have stopped flashing
Fixed bug 2213: Reactor - Reactor does not shut down when vacuum pump goes offline
Fixed bug 2496: Blank Character Information

Misc

None

Notes

Captain+ - You'll notice there is now some debug spam that appears at the top of the screen. I'll be adding a switch for this in the game settings, but for now it's on by default. We'll add a lot more of this debugging info over time, and probably have multiple categories to show/hide as well. This all helps to optimise and bugfix the game.

Development Hotfix 0.227.0.7

Optimisations

Removed an unreliable initialisation step during the game's loading sequence and replaced it with a "Save Data Loaded" check instead.

Fixes

Fixed bug 2514: MultiPlayer - Stuck in Earth orbit while at warp.

Notes

Captain+ - Clients joining multiplayer games were incorrectly triggering an Init chain of events on the server which was resetting the game back to Earth. I've now changed the loading process slightly to avoid this happening in the future, but it might have caused a knock-on effect, so keep an eye open for any other client-on-join or general loading weirdness.

We've also had quite a few questions about the Caravella ship.
The Caravella is a new medium-sized ship that is being created on stream, and on stream only. So it is created for only four hours a week, mainly for three reasons: entertainment for viewers due to the boring end of patch content, a smaller ship to create game systems on, which can then be moved over to the Magellan, and so that we have something to sell at early access to aid in game development.

https://wiki.starshipsimulator.co.uk/index.php?title=Caravella_Class

January

Development Build 0.227.0.1

New / Changes

Added placeholder UI's for the Comms, Weapons and Defence stations.
Removed audio occlusion from the bridge NPC dialogue, because some things on the bridge are incorrectly blocking the speech.

Not Yet Implemented

Did a bit more work on the 1:1 scale volumetric galaxy rendering. Still a few more things to iron out before we add it to the game.
Started building a Task Manager for NPC tasks around the ship.
Started building the Jobs Board UI's to display active/pending tasks

View game page

Optimisations

Made a new global optimisation macro for handling UI screen optimisation.
Updated the Bridge Window UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the three Helm UI's to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Sensors UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Window Controls UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Door Controls UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Holo Display mode UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Alert Panel UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Distributor UI's to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the new placeholder bridge screen UI's to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Wall Map Screen UI's to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Battery UI's to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.
Updated the Reactor UI to collapse to 1x1 pixels when not in view.

Fixes

Bypassed a "run on background thread" plugin because it was generating crashes.

Misc

Created a new beta branch called "previous _build", so that we can always compare backwards by one version for A/B testing.

Notes

All of these UI optimisations are designed to reduce the amount of VRAM the game is using in general, but most specifically on startup. This, in addition to switching entirely to Virtual Textures, is pretty much all we can do to limit the game's VRAM footprint. Our 4GB 1050ti test machine is maxing out at around 3.7GB VRAM used.
From this build onwards, we'll move to the 227 patch numbering. We've already got ~75% of 227 implemented, so when we go live on the public demo (as soon as possible), we'll release it as 0.227.1.0.

Development Build 0.227.0.2

New / Changes

Further refined the sublight flight controls on the Caravella class.
Further refined the Begin Play and Possession code for player characters and chair actors.

Not Yet Implemented

Added sublight control inputs to the Caravella's Helm station.
Created visible test RCS thrusters for the Caravella, which are tied to active Helm inputs

View game page

Improved the way electrical cables connect/communicate with one another, which we're testing out on the Caravella.
Added Health/Damage values to electrical cables and some basic time-based degradation.
Added the ability for electrical cables to generate fault tickets when they reach certain health values.

Added the ability for NPC crewmembers to assign themselves a task, and clear that task upon completion.

View game page

Added the ability for NPC crewmembers to pick up props and move them autonomously between locations.

View game page

Fixes

Fixed bug 2379 - Character Customisation - Client appears naked
Fixed bug 1855 - Ship Customisation - The settings for flooring change to default when you change tabs
Fixed bug 2353 - Ship Customisation - Ship name customisation is not saving.
Fixed the ship name not replicating to clients in multiplayer.
Fixed bug 2405 - VR - Does not get past loading screen
Fixed the Sun Flare VFX not working per-eye in VR properly.
Fixed the Sun Flare VFX rotating weirdly when you turn your head in VR.
Fixed bug 2381 - Bridge - Mission Timer isn't counting up
Fixed bug 2352 - Continuing Mission - no longer continuing
Fixed various issues with pressing escape and the F1 through F6 menus.
Escape now closes any menu, in addition to whatever key opened said menu.

Misc

Removed the 4 temporary camera view modes that we added for the streaming show.

Notes

Note #1 - I've had to make a change to how player settings are applied. Previously, they were being applied by the Settings UI itself when it was loaded in the background, but in hindsight, this was a suboptimal way of doing things. Settings are now loaded directly from disk by whatever needs them, instead of waiting for a global broadcast event, so if a setting isn't being loaded/applied somewhere, please let me know. I probably missed a couple.
Captains+ - Note #2 - I've updated the debug teleports to be vessel-specific, so you'll now need to use the "Stuck" teleport or Alt+8 to teleport back from a planet surface.
Captains+ - Note #3 - If you are testing in VR, please be sure to go into the Settings from the main menu and set your graphics to Medium to begin with. It's heavy in VR, so start low and work up. You might also want to disable "Motion Smoothing" in SteamVR to remove wobbly UI's under your fingertips. I will be adding a separate VR settings save in the next build to make this easier to manage, so you can switch from VR to First Person without needing to change the settings each time.

Development Build 0.227.0.3

New / Changes

Added a couple of base classes for a new MetaHuman based player character. I've already set it up to work in parallel with our CC4 based character, so we can now switch between the two by simply spawning one instead of the other. This is the first step in ditching the ALS animation system and moving towards something a lot more sophisticated, with support for things like variable gravity direction and floating about in zero-g.
Added a subtle red glow to the FTL ring heatsinks, which will cool down and fade over time after the FTL drive is shut down.
Added a less subtle blue glow to the FTL coils themselves, which glow more brightly as you gain speed.

Created some basic WIP storage units for the C Deck lab storage rooms.

Moved the C Deck lab storage room door from the corridor to the lab itself.
Finalised the look and feel of the two Bridge Alcoves on the Magellan Class.

Not Yet Implemented

Started building a WIP Comms panel for the Bridge, with the ability to list nearby comms signals.
Added "celestial object" radio signatures to the Comms Console.
Added a test of incoming hails from the UNSF Admiralty to the Comms Console.
Added more cabling and working battery arrays on the Caravella, with an improved approach to how we will physically represent battery arrays in the game

View game page

Optimisations

None

Fixes

Fixed the Holo-Display pop-up UI not working properly for issuing shipwide commands.
Fixed bug 2254 - Multiplayer - Holo-Display pop-up UI's not usable by clients
Fixed bug 2418 - UI - Mission timer not there
Fixed bug 2387 - Character Customisation - Can't change hair
Fixed bug 2389 - Despite selecting an Empty Ship, NPCs are automatically populated on the bridge
Fixed bug 2053 - Sensors - Got to Sag A black hole. Ran sensor,s now nothing is showing within 50LY of the black hole
Fixed bug 2087 - YouTube - YouTube player is all kinds of broken.
Fixed bug 2052 - Chairs - Mouse does not function while seated, with character customisation open
Fixed bug 2428 - Summoned NCP break bridge tutorial
Fixed bug 2343 - Character - Ejected outside the ship when leaving Helm-chair
Fixed bug 1990 - Lighting - After turning off the disco lights, they still give off the rainbow light
Fixed the FTL coil glow incorrectly lighting up the whole ship. It was waaay too bight and confusing Lumen.

Misc

None

Notes

It turns out the YouTube plugin we were using relies upon a third-party site (rapidapi.com) to handle the API stuff, and the API key used by the plugin author has run out of credit. I've now signed up our own account with our own API key, so we'll see how the usage goes. It's $18.75 per month for 300,000 API requests, $56 for 900k requests, and $126 for 2.1m requests.

Development Build 0.227.0.4

New / Changes

Updated the Bridge geometry to meet current standards, and progressed the WIP alcove consoles some more.

Added the pop-up dialogue box back to the main menu in preparation for the demo update.
Added a new VR settings save, which is independent of the FPS settings save (it's automatic, you don't need to select anything). You can now switch from FPS to VR and back without needing to change the graphics options each time.

Not Yet Implemented

Began implementing the ability for the sensors NPC to autonomously scan for certain criteria, like "Tech Signatures" or "Earthlike Candidates".

View game page

Cabled up the Bridge and Holo-Display on the Caravella for live electrics.

View game page

Optimisations

Optimised the skeletal meshes in the bridge chairs as much as I can.
Created a new macro for "Get Closest Player" in multiplayer, so we can use it to optimise NPC tick rates.
Updated the NPC optimisation code on the Cat, Chicken and Crewmembers. (Claire gained around 17fps, I gained pretty much none)

Fixes

Fixed Water Worlds not generating a surface texture.
Fixed the red tutorial notifications blob on the main menu appearing when it shouldn't do.
Fixed bug 2439 - Selecting Explore This System Command Results in Sensor Station Stuck in short range scan infinite loop
Fixed bug 2426 - FTL drive stuck after power loss. Cannot travel.
Stopped the blue FTL coil glow from injecting into Lumen, because it keeps lighting up the ship when it shouldn't.
Fixed the YouTube player not sharing the URL properly in multiplayer.
Fixed the glass on the Bridge and in the VIP lounge not rendering correctly under Lumen lighting.

Misc

Removed the NPCs on D/E Decks for now because they are costing CPU time needlessly.
Removed the planetary landings test system (will be added back straight after the demo update).
Removed the shuttles test system (will be added back straight after the demo update).
Removed the System Creator option from the main menu (will be added back when it's working)

December

So, the unfortunate news is that we will be pushing the 226 (VR) update back a little due to the fact that Dan has already created so much of the 227 (NPCs) update, so we will just merge the two when ready.

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.16

Fixed the YouTube player in the Conference Room. It's now using a whole new system, which so far has been more reliable.
Fixed bug 2325 - Ship Customisation - Incorrect Floor
Fixed bug 2321 - Bridge seat names can persist when not looking at it
Fixed bug 2262 - VIP Lounge chairs will eject the player into the table at certain angles.
Fixed the server host being able to see clients highlighting objects.
Fixed the player torso not casting shadows.
Fixed clients in multiplayer getting chucked outside the ship when getting out of a chair.
Fixed the multiplayer menu starting on the wrong tab.
Added Forward/Left/Right/Aft camera views to the camera rotation, and also made it usable at any time, not just at the Helm.
Fixed chairs showing floating Hair/Boots for clients when joining an active game.
Fixed the player character being visible on the bridge ceiling when sitting in chairs.
Fixed the player character getting stuck on the bridge ceiling when quitting a game.
Fixed water worlds not generating a surface texture.
Fixed bug 2333 - Stair lighting is not showing its custom colour.
Added the first experimental version of (very basic) planetary landings.
Added galactic-location knowledge to planetary surfaces for accurate sky rendering.
Added teleport locomotion to the VR controllers (Upper button on most controllers).
Added "Nanite Tessellation On/Off" to the Graphics settings.
Fixed some of the settings defaults, and changed the default FPS cap to 60 instead of Unlimited.
Improved NPC performance.

Captains+ - The new planetary landings system will spawn planetary terrain when you are within 1,000,000km of a solid planet. A temporary portal will appear in the A Deck bathroom (on the left-hand side) when valid terrain exists. Right now it's extremely basic, but the terrain will change depending on the planet type, and the sky should be accurate to the planet's location in the galaxy. To exit the surface just hit Alt+1 to teleport back to the bridge.

Also, the Forward/Left/Right/Aft camera views are only temporary. The ability to view the external camera at any time, however, will stay.

View game page

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.17

Planetary surfaces for Terrestrial and Atmospheric Terrestrial planets now properly inherit the surface colour that's visible from orbit.
The colour of grass on atmospheric planetary surfaces is now consistently driven by a planet's seed.
Fixed collisions and foliage spawning on planetary surfaces breaking if you stray too far from where you landed.
Fixed bug 2345 - Distributer and Aggregator UI panels misalligned.
Fixed bug 2155 - Star Age isn't being calculated properly beyond the galactic disc.
Updated the Star Age calculations to properly apply increasing age as you get further above the galactic plane.
Tweaked the density of White Dwarfs in the galactic halo.
Fixed bug 2320 - Multiplayer - Loading screen light from joining players is synced in MP
Fixed clients getting a black screen when joining multiplayer games.

It's worth noting again that planetary surfaces are still very much a work in progress, and everything you see right now is purely for testing purposes. The final release-ready surface environments will be far more polished and diverse, but we won't be adding them to the demo until they are much closer to release quality.

View game page

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.18

Fixed Earth being 0.19au away from where it should have been.
Improved the default starting position around Earth for better visuals.
Fixed the shuttle and ship proxies having incorrect transform offsets. They are now perfectly aligned and work in multiplayer.
Replaced the old Magellan proxy mesh with a new one matching the new ringed hull shape.
Fixed bug 2344 - Cold and Dark Start no longer cold and dark start.
Fixed bug 1989 - Multiplayer - Can't sit in chairs.
Fixed bug 2349 - Earth broken/gone!
Built a new system for registering and displaying error messages in the game. I'll make this an optional thing in the preferences.

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.19

Fixed bug 2363 - Chairs - Can't dismiss the Engineering and Stewards NPCs
Fixed bug 2359 - Tutorial - cold start training spawns you half in the ground
Fixed bug 2319 - Multiplayer - Player is joining without their customisation
Added the first implementation of sublight thrusters, which have been installed on the Caravella for testing. We won't roll this out to the Magellan until it's polished.
View game page

Added a new system for generating content at sublight scales, like small asteroids and derelict vessels. The system isn't ready to be fully integrated yet, so it's currently disabled until we have the subflight flight fully working.
View game page
Updated the two alcoves on the bridge to include WIP geometry for the final 4 bridge stations.

Added some placeholder screens to the 4 new bridge stations.
Moved the bridge window polarisation controls to the Environmental Controls station.
Updated the chairs to always spawn with an active NPC if they are flagged for it.
Added Neutron stars to the game. They still need their proper math implemented for mass etc.

Added Rogue Planets to the game. They don't have full descriptions/data on the sensors UI yet.
Built a new system for issuing and managing shipwide objectives.
Built new systems to manage crew task generation for each of the 7 ship departments.
Added the ability to command the NPC bridge crew (via the holo display) to autonomously explore a target system. NPC's need to be seated in the Helm and Sensors stations for this to work.

Added some basic voice dialogue to the bridge NPC's for when they are performing an automated system scan.

This update adds our first implementation of shipwide objectives and the ability to assign tasks to individual crewmembers. Right now, there is just a single "explore this system" ship objective, but it's generating individual tasks via departmental task managers that are being assigned to NPC crewmembers. In the future, these will be viewable on in-game screens and on player HUD's.

Once you issue an "explore this system" command from the long-range holo display mode (make sure the display range is <20ly), the NPC crew will travel to, and short-range scan every planet in a system. This will result in the system being 100% explored while you go off and grab some drinks at the bar. Right now, you can't stop the process once it's started, but we'll add order cancellation once we have better UI coverage of what's going on.

November

Such a bug-fixing month! We're now close to the public demo VR update, so each patch is becoming increasingly bug-fix-heavy. We've also managed to sneak in some NPC for the non-VR players in the demo.

Development Build 0.226.0.11

Optimised the distance-culling values of practically every wall, floor and ceiling panel (several thousand).
Finished off the ceiling panels on Decks C through F.
Finished off the B Deck main stairwell ceiling panels.
Continued conducting A/B testing on various graphics settings to scrape out every last frame of performance.
Added a new function for automatically setting the distance culling values on lights. Lights now cull aggressively as soon as they are out of view.
Added a new function for properly culling actors with Nanite geometry based on their Max Draw Distance.
Fixed the stair lights in the VIP Lounge, turning off half way up.
Added the ability to start new games using the Caravella Class WIP ship. It will overwrite the current savegame until multiple saves are implemented, and access will need to be granted via SteamID for Admiral level backers. ( We'll let everyone know when we are ready for those!)
Fixed bug 2238 - Stair-light not working on one step on deck D
Fixed bug 2258 - Invisible wall on stairs between decks B and C
Fixed bug 2266 - stuck in elevator shaft
Fixed bug 2284/2243 - Clipped through the lift going from B Deck to F Deck
Added WIP shuttle functionality.
Improved NPC logic and expanded NPC crew to cover C Deck.
Numerous small tweaks here and there.

View game page View game page

Development Build 0.226.0.12

Fixed bug 2296 - Sitting at helm causes the Holo-Display Command Interface to appear behind you
Fixed bug 2294 - Sitting at helm causes the screen to jitter and makes navigating very difficult
Fixed bug 2293 - Clicking on Continue Mission results in being returned to the main menu.
Fixed bug 2292 - Camera Fighting at Helm Station/Nav pathing not focusing on target
Fixed bug 2304 - While at the helm, the ship is stationary in Earth vicinity, despite full FTL Engaged. Ship appears to be glitching, lurching forward.
Fixed bug 2237 - Cold start tutorial is starting on A Deck
Fixed bug 2291 - Inner ring door panels on E-Deck have no bolts
Fixed bug 2281 - Spot lights on A Deck are connected to the wrong breaker
Fixed the teleport locations for the shuttle teleporter in the A Deck bathroom, and the shuttle itself.
Added a visible background to the shuttle teleporter in the A Deck bathroom.
Fixed the proxy mesh for the Magellan not showing up when you're in the shuttle.

Captains - Just as a reminder, the shuttle exists purely as a test of multiple-ship independent location capability. The shuttle will remain in orbit around Earth, while the Magellan can travel the galaxy as normal. Every time you teleport to the shuttle, you are teleporting your character to the Sol system.

View game page

Development Build 0.226.0.13

Fixed bug 2306 - Loading Cold and Dark Tutorial Results in Fatal Error.
Fixed the torch not coming on automatically during the Cold and Dark tutorial.
Reduced the delay between each step on the loading screen.
Made the electrical system steps more granular on the loading screen.
Fixed the fade-to-black transition after the loading screen completes.

Development Build 0.226.0.14

Fixed bugs 2310/2313/2312/2311 - Start in the carpet in the conference room & cannot sit in chairs.
Fixed bug 2238 - Stair-light not working on one step on deck D
Fixed bug 2176 - Panel BP-104-R has a second label hovering a little off the wall that says BP-104-L1
Fixed bug 2289 - Panels BP-103-L are incorrect
Fixed bug 2297 - Stewards go to the C deck bathroom to print food
Fixed bug 2264 - Pumpkins on the bridge are named "PROP NAME" on mouseover.
Fixed bug 2272 - Nametag NPC cant be turned off despite it is off
Fixed bug 1934 - NPC Nametags flicker "on" briefly as the NPC walks around.
Fixed bug 2167 - Jonesy's nametag doesn't obey NPC names visibility.
Fixed bug 2115 - Typo in Scanning & Navigation tutorial.
Fixed bug 2035 - Maintenance access door blocked.
Fixed Props not showing labels when looked at.
Fixed some NPC pathing issues.

Development Build 0.226.0.15

Fixed bugs 2298/2314 - Yellow Highlights Not Alligned in Cold and Dark Tutorial
Fixed the Startup Distributor UI screen being the wrong size.
Fixed bug 2262 - Pressed F to get up from VIP lounge chair and avatar stuck.
Fixed bug 2269 - Prop Highlights - Bridge seat highlight sometimes stuck.
Updated the Prop/Chair highlighting system to be properly occluded by walls or other objects.
Added 132 NPC crew members around the ship to test their impact on performance.
Improved and optimised how NPC crewmembers process points of interest and general decision-making.
Fixed the ceiling geometry in the VIP Quarters so that it's not protruding through the roof of B Deck.
Fixed the nav mesh around B Deck so the NPC crew are able to use the doorways properly.
Added a test system for changing Watch/Shift aboard the ship. The B Deck NPCs will go on/off shift every 5 minutes.
Fixed the ship starting at Sol when continuing a saved game.
Updated the player spawning code to support brigged players in Multiplayer.

https://trello.com/b/8v5cx7Ys/starship-simulator-patch-226-vr

October

It's been a slow month due to a huge amount of testing and UI work. Performance optimisations have been checked over, and over, and over again in the past few weeks, so that we can try to give the lower-end PCs the best experience that we can!

Development Build 0.226.0.9

Overhauled the Settings UI to make it more consistent with the UNOS look and feel.
Split the Graphics Options into clearer categories.
Render Scale now goes all the way up to 200% if you want to end your GPU's life early.
Anti-aliasing now provides options for FXAA and None for anyone who hates the temporal ghosting from TAA/TSR.
Volumetric Fog now has 4 quality levels, with surprisingly substantial GPU impact.
Lighting Quality now goes from "no lights at all" (also known as potato mode) all the way up to every light casting shadows. Be aware that the "Max" setting has a massive GPU impact, because it substantially increases the number of ray tracing samples for internal lighting shadows.
Global Illumination now allows you to enable Screen Space or Lumen global illumination, in addition to None.
Star Shadow Quality now allows you to control the impact of VSM shadows cast by stars.
Added various lighting quality profiles to ship lighting and stars, to enable seamless graphics setting changes.
Added Low, Medium, High and Max graphical preset buttons to the Graphics settings.
Fixed the "save" button not being clickable on the various settings pages.
Thanks to Claire, we now have a lot more in the way of Halloween decorations around the ship.

I have been heavily profiling and refining the new graphics settings, to the point where our minimum spec PC (1050ti) is now easily achieving 40-50 fps with everything set to Low and running at 75% render scale. With ship and star lighting enabled, it's getting around 25-30fps, so we definitely still need to optimise the lighting some more for lower spec machines. By way of comparison, my 4090 is getting 100fps with everything maxed and Lumen enabled (Lighting Quality set to "High", because "Max" is unnecessarily heavy).

Next up, I'll be deep-diving the Reflections and Post Processing CVars in an effort to further extract the most performance from the engine.

Important - If you start up the game and it's a garbled mess, you'll need to navigate to the graphics options and restore the render scale to 100%. This is due to the scale being extended to 200%. I have added a bit of code to try and detect and fix legacy settings automatically, but I have no way of verifying it's working.

Development Build 0.226.0.10

Improved the White Dwarf system code so that planets do not generate within the radius of the star's Red Giant phase of life. We're not modelling inward migration yet, so generally White Dwarf systems won't have planets closer than 1-2 AU of the star.
Improved the Radius to Mass determination code for White Dwarfs, so that it properly takes electron degeneracy pressure into account and uses the Nauenberg zero-temperature mass–radius relation.
Improved the Kelvin to Age determination code for cooling White Dwarfs, which is now modelled using a power law matched to real-world observations.
Continued updating the D/E/F Deck ceiling panels.
Significantly changed the layout of the VIP Quarters on B Deck.
Added two missing doorframes behind the main stairwell on F Deck.
Fixed the player character being a ghost in potato lighting mode.
Progressed the VIP Quarters interior, including some new fire effects.
Fixed the missing textures for the spline Pipes & Railings around Engineering.
Tweaked the tonemapper that was causing Niagara flames to turn pink. The game's colours should generally be more accurate and slightly more vibrant now.

September

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.5

• Optimised most of the materials used around the ship for a reduction in shader complexity. This should result in some per-pixel performance gains.

• Converted all textures used by the game to Virtual Textures, reducing VRAM usage, especially with the 8K planet textures.

• Implemented some texture optimisations on UI screens around the ship, with the wall maps and battery UI's currently using the new technique. They will "pop in" when you approach them for now (until I tweak it), but their VRAM usage when out of range is now effectively zero. When all UI screens have been updated, this should cut our total VRAM footprint by over 75%, from 4GB to <1GB.

• Built a whole new shader for Planetary Nebulae, which can now be found around White Dwarfs with temperatures in excess of 10,000K. They grow larger and dimmer depending on the age of the White Dwarf that created them.

• Added 6 colour palette profiles to the procedural nebulae.

• Moved the Planetary Nebula spawning code to the galaxy-gen itself, which means they are now multi-lightyear-sized objects that can be seen from up to 150ly away.

Right now, there are waaaay too many White Dwarfs with nebulae around them, so that will be refined and tuned as we polish this patch.

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.6

• Designed a new, more angular ceiling panel for the corridor ceilings around F/G Decks.

• Prepared all of the ceiling light actors on the ship for optimisation/feature-level settings.

• Added White Dwarfs to the filter dropdown on the Long Range sensors. • Added support for White Dwarf surface maps on the Short Range sensors.

• Fixed Open Clusters breaking player/ship collisions when you enter the nebula.

• Created a new Open Cluster nebula actor, which now has feature parity with the Planetary Nebula equivalent.

• Created a couple of new ceiling panels for the main stairwell planters.

• Optimised all of the lights on the ship for better performance.

• Made numerous small optimisations across the board.

Internal Development Builds 0.226.0.7

• Greatly simplified the ceiling lights optimisation. It now only uses current-deck checks rather than constantly looping player-distance checks.

• Fixed the autopilot approach distance for White Dwarf stars. It will no longer continue into them.

• Added a new LED Grow Light for the VIP Quarters planters.

• Added new LED Grow Spotlights for the main stairwell area, which arbitrarily articulate and have dynamic spline-based cables.

• Added a selection of new ceiling panels around the B Deck corridor and the main stairwell area.

• Fixed some flipped panels and some lighting issues.

I've still got a few more ceiling panels to sort out, but this week I'll mostly be focusing on updating the Settings menu to support all the new quality switches, which means Lumen will become a simple on/off toggle in the graphics options on the default build.

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.8

• Added partial controller navigation support to the Main Menu and its subpages.

• Added partial keyboard navigation support to the Main Menu and its subpages.

• Added partial controller navigation support to the Settings Menu.

• Added partial keyboard navigation support to the Settings Menu.

• Improved how the game menus track the current page.

• Added some quality of life improvements to controller/keyboard menu navigation.

• Replaced the corrupted images on the ship selection screen with simple faded question marks.

• Fixed multiplayer not working properly in UE 5.6.

• Added a Witches Hat to the character customisation in time for Halloween. More hats will be added over time. Now that we have that functionality, we'll also add backer-specific uniform hats at some point, in addition to the uniform patches.

• Added the ability to turn shipwide lighting shadows on/off now that we have MegaLights enabled.

• Fixed a number of lighting panels across D/E decks that were failing lighting optimisation checks.

August

The past year has been incredibly long but productive, with significant milestones achieved. We currently stream twice weekly on YouTube and share weekly updates across our social media platforms. However, we’ve heard from some of you who prefer updates solely through Kickstarter. While we were advised against frequent Kickstarter updates to avoid email overload, we’ve decided to strike a balance by posting monthly updates here. This way, we keep everyone informed without overwhelming your inboxes.
We also have a Trello running for patch 226 ( and other patches if you want to look ahead, check 'switch boards'):

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.1 - Not for sufferers of megalophobia

Fixed a bug that causes characters to jump over and over with certain USB devices plugged in.
Rebuilt the Main Menu so that it's fully 3D instead of being a 2D overlay.
Updated the game's logo on the Main Menu so that the text and graphic are separate objects. This makes it easier to change the blue flair text, -and offsets the graphic backwards slightly to give it some 3D in VR.
Updated a number of materials used in and around the UI so that everything plays nicely in VR,
Added the ability to launch the game in VR (only works as far as the Main Menu right now). You will need to specifically choose to launch the game in VR on Steam using the launch options; otherwise, it will default to First Person without an HMD.

This build marks our first dev build of the 226 patch cycle, which will cover VR being added to the game. We're re-numbering the Bridge NPC update to 227 accordingly. This doesn't mean the order or timescales for anything are changing, it's just a change in patch numbers, so we (well, I) don't get confused.

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.2

Converted the Magellan Class loading screen to be a proper 3D environment instead of a slideshow of images.
Updated the Loading Screen text widget to be a 3D object instead of a 2D overlay.
Started using Epic's new Gameplay Message Subsystem for managing global events instead of a third-party plugin (another plugin deleted, yay!).
Completely overhauled the loading sequence for the Magellan Class, with improved code and a more realistic sequence of events for the ship construction.
Upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.6.
Improved the fade-to-black which transitions the player from the Main Menu to the Loading Screen.
Improved galactic sector generation times, reducing it from ~30ms to only ~3-5ms per sector.
Optimised the lighting. It now uses extended mesh bounds to decide light visibility instead of invisible spheres (which break Lumen).
Updated all of the lights in the game to support Lumen and MegaLights properly, with a view to enabling those features soon.
Fixed a corrupt blueprint that was preventing the ship from receiving inputs.
Fixed some issues with the player character that were preventing VR compatibility.
Added a VR character with full-body IK.
Added widget interaction to the right VR hand. The touch point is just above the index finger.
Not sure why it's straying from the bone yet.

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.3

Improved the visual appearance of the sub-menus on the Main Menu, and made them more in keeping with the UNOS aesthetic.
Added a subtle black border to the sub-menus so that they are more visible against bright planets in the background.
Removed the fade effect when you open/close menus, because we're using a masked UI material now rather than a Transparent one.
Added subtle background gradients to the Main Menu and its sub-menus, driven by a lightweight noise function.
Shortened the initial fade-in from 10 seconds down to 1 second when you first open the game.
Added proper VR hand controllers to the Main Menu, along with the required interaction logic.
Added some detection logic to swap the VR controller meshes based on the VR headset brand.
Updated the Valve Index controller mesh so that its little green light is an actual light.
Added a visible blue laser pointer to the VR controllers on the Main Menu.
Added UI interaction capabilities to both VR hands in-game. You can now use either index finger to press UI buttons.
Tweaked the index finger UI interaction to make scrolling with sliders easier.
Added the ability to pick up props in VR.
Updated the interaction system so that props adhere to the hand rotation in VR, while adhering to the camera yaw in First Person.
Updated the material used for lighting panels in-game so that lights have a prismatic diffuser texture on them.
Updated the ceiling panels by the entrance to the Magellan's VIP Lounge. (Experimenting with a slightly new design)
Added some basic XBOX controller support for First Person. You can do the basics, like run, jump and press UI screens.

Internal Development Build 0.226.0.4

Modelled 7 new ceiling panels for use around the C/D/E Deck corridors.
Fixed a number of flipped materials on various panels around the ship.
Fixed bug 2176 - Wall panel labels.
Added White Dwarfs to the galaxy-gen and system-gen systems.
Added planetary nebulae to the younger (based on Kelvin temp) White Dwarfs.
Tweaked the nebula shader so that it hue-shifts its base colour depending on volume texture density. Still needs more work.

We've made a huge amount of progress over the past few months, so we are very excited about the next year!
See you next month :)

Claire <3

Original post

18 Jul 2025Developer post

Tech Demo 3!

Tech Demo 3 Pre-Alpha Build 0.225.0.117 Video about this patch is available on YouTube Back in November 2023, we released Tech Demo 2 (0.224.0.29) during one of Steam’s Next Fests, and it also served as a proof of concept for our then-upcoming Kickstarter campaign. We knew we wan

Tech Demo 3

Pre-Alpha Build 0.225.0.117

Video about this patch is available on YouTube

Back in November 2023, we released Tech Demo 2 (0.224.0.29) during one of Steam’s Next Fests, and it also served as a proof of concept for our then-upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

We knew we wanted to completely change the ship design for the follow-up patch cycle (0.225.0.0), along with significantly improving the galaxy generation code, but the rabbit hole just kept getting deeper, and before we knew it, 18 months had flashed by in an instant.

So here we are in July 2025, 117 development builds later, having just completed the biggest and longest patch cycle the game will ever see. Pretty much every single aspect of the game has been refined or overhauled in some way.

This experience has definitely taught us some hard lessons around scope management and determining realistic timescales, so rest assured that future patch cycles will be laser-focused, with single-digit objectives and a much more regular cadence.

Right then, let’s take a detailed look at what this behemoth of a patch has to offer.

New Magellan Class Ship Design

Structural Layout

We were keen from the outset to create a vessel that has an immediately recognisable silhouette, distinct from anything else seen in film or on TV, while at the same time remaining somehow nostalgic and comfortably familiar. We also wanted the vessel to make practical, real-world sense, with appropriately placed physical hardware that’s based on real science and engineering principles.

It’s still very much a work in progress, but here’s what we’ve achieved for this update;

Finalised the Magellan Class outer hull profile, with a massive new FTL ring, four sublight engine pods, and an extended keel fin for housing new engineering spaces.
Doubled the spacing between decks to 100cm, increasing the available space for ship infrastructure, and thickening the overall hull shape.
Expanded the footprint of C Deck, with more lab space for science activities, and two new large stairwells that are capped with panoramic ceiling windows.
Expanded D/E Decks both Fore and Aft, adding more room for public spaces such as the “Mall” area, the Park, and a double-width corridor ring that serves as the main thoroughfare for crew foot traffic around the habitation decks.
Finalised the engineering standards for the ship’s structural framework, which is now arranged into distinct logical segments that will play an important role in future features, such as managing atmospheric pressure and fire spread. The framework segments have also been designed to support any style of interior panelling, which will help with any future interior design packs or modding activities.
All wall cavities now have visible insulation material, with 3D surfaces driven by Unreal’s new Nanite Tessellation feature.
Added visible thruster VFX on the sublight engines, including breaking thrusters which ignite when the ship is exiting FTL.

Interior Design

The massive changes to the ship’s exterior hull design naturally resulted in a lot of internal changes too. The increase in deck separation, along with the new segmented framework design, meant practically every wall panel, floor panel and staircase had to be rebuilt to fit.

We took this as an opportunity to not only increase the level of detail across the ship interior but also to implement the foundational code for a number of future features, such as visible interior damage and increasing dirt/grime over time.

The internal changes to the ship are numerous, but here are the highlights;

All new floor, wall and ceiling panels now have increased visual detail, with handrails, visible bolts, and even 3D carpet pile driven by Nanite Tessellation.
Corridor panels now have a visible numbering system, which can be used for wayfinding around the ship. The label FP-107-L for example, means F Deck, Port Quadrant, Ring 1, Panel 07, Left. This will be used in the future as part of the Engineering gameplay to locate faulty hardware.
Added a number of new lighting control panels around A/B Decks.
Built new entrance alcoves for each of the VIP Quarters on B Deck.
Built a new security desk at the top of the B Deck stairwell.
Built new yacht-style doors for the VIP Lounge entrance.
The main crew lift is now fully operational, including some basic lift logic.
The new flooring panels are now damage and dirt-aware, with the B Deck corridor panels now grunging up over time for testing purposes. Walking on them also increases their grunge level.
Added a new pool table to the VIP Lounge. The balls and queues can be picked up, but it’s not playable yet.
Added a chessboard to the VIP Lounge. Press the little “reset” button on the board to spawn new chess pieces. You can now play chess with friends in multiplayer!
Added MIDI input support for the lounge piano.
Updated all of the corridor wall maps to reflect the new interior layout of the ship.
You can press “i” to toggle the interior wall/floor panels on and off. This is a temporary feature to allow inspection of the wall framework/cavities, and will be removed once panels can be damaged or removed individually.
Added a working YouTube video player to the conference room. Simply paste a video URL into the UI screen on the wall and it will automatically start playing. Please be aware, however, that not all videos will play, and it cannot play active live streams. This is just a proof of concept.
Added a new chair design for the Bridge. They’re still a work in progress, but already much better than the old model.
Built a whole new Bridge ceiling, which now sports a large circular window and visible holo emitters.
Added some very early WIP organic 3D printers to the Galley Kitchen’s storage room on B Deck. These will be greatly expanded upon in the future.
Scattered some construction props around the ship to help sell the idea that the ship is currently under active construction.
The props used for the Seasonal Overlays now disappear from storage when active and return when the overlay is turned off.

Galaxy Overhaul

The plan for patch cycle 225 was to optimise the galaxy-gen for better performance, along with adding more astrophysics concepts for an even more accurate galactic space. We also wanted to expand upon the number of star classes being generated.

Here’s what we managed to achieve;

Greatly optimised the galaxy generation codebase, with improved sorting techniques and a better overall data structure. The small hitch experienced every 1LY while at FTL has been all but removed.
Greatly improved how galactic sectors are generated, with gaps in real-world data backfilled with procedural generation.
There are now 18,172,753 genuinely unique real-world locations from the Gaia catalogue in our stellar database, within 2000ly of Sol. At the ship's top speed of 300ly/h, it will take nearly 7 hours of constant flight to reach the edge of the real stars zone from Earth.
Rebased the galactic coordinate system so that 0,0,0 is now the true centre of the galaxy, where you'll also find Sag A*.
Replaced the old 2D Sag A* model with an all-new hand-crafted volumetric version.
Increased the range in which various star classes are rendered.
Implemented a new vector-driven seed system that gives us 2^256 unique seeds, which means every cubic lightyear of space has its own unique seed.
Increased the scale of the real-time starfield so that stars/nebulae don't move about when you rotate the external ship camera.
Optimised the nebulae shader a bit. Nebulae should now appear less bright and a bit more realistic.
Created a new isolated data container for galactic sectors to store high-level data. This means we can gather things like stellar populations without actually generating the star system data, which is much more performant.
Added the first data generation for spawning FTL capable civilisations across the whole galaxy.
Added alien empires, which in their initial form, consist of a central home system surrounded by a number of occupied systems.
Updated the number of systems controlled by a race so that it's driven by their tech level.
Built a new system for generating procedural alien race names. This will be improved to support consistent-sounding themes.
Updated the Galaxy Gen system so that it runs locally on client machines rather than being server-side only, improving network performance.
Added procedural L, T and Y class stars to the galaxy. Right now, the population numbers are static. I need to research their real-world distribution more.
There is now a "stars_custom.db" SQLite database in the game's Content folder, which is used to store all the data needed to generate full custom star systems, including custom planets. You can edit the SQLite file manually if you want to create customised star systems. The data structure is a bit ambiguous, so have a look at how Sol and Lacaille 9352 are structured as a guide.

Star System Generation

We’re constantly improving how star systems are generated within the game, with ever more astrophysics and gradually increasing detail over time. We really went to town on this for patch cycle 225, with star systems now being considerably more realistic.

The new system approaches planet-gen far more organically, utilising a Core Mass Accretion model. The actual improvements are far too numerous to list here, but here are the highlights;

Improved the star system overall data structure.
Greatly optimised the star system generation code.
Stars now report their mass fractions, metallicity, gravity, Roche limit, hill radius and escape velocity.
Implemented Tidal Truncation Radius for stars, which will form the outer limit of Oort Clouds and the extent to which a star can affect the FTL drive.
Added 80 stellar sub-classes to the star data generation, from O0V (50,000+K) down to Y9 (250K).
The proto-planetary disk size is now properly calculated.
Proto-planetary disk lifetime/evaporation is now properly calculated.
Proto-planetary disk mass fractions (Hydrogen / Helium / Metals) are now implemented.
All star systems now spawn "Kuiper Belts" once a proto-planetary disk has been exhausted of mass, otherwise known as a scattered disk of icy dwarf bodies.
Added a Dust Sublimation line to star system generation, so that no planets form where the equilibrium temperature exceeds 2000 Kelvin.
Rocky planetary cores now use up the actual "metals" mass available in the proto-planetary disk, which properly limits the total mass of rocky cores in the system.
Whether or not a terrestrial planet has an atmosphere is now decided based on whether or not it can hold on to gaseous nitrogen.
Gas Giant determination now depends on a body's ability to hold on to Molecular Hydrogen, which is properly calculated from the initial rocky body's escape velocity and its equilibrium temperature.
Gas Giant Envelopes now use up the Hydrogen/Helium mass available in the proto-planetary disk, which properly constrains the size of Gas Giants in the system.
Added atmospheric chemicals to Gas Giants.
Set Planetary Ring chance to 75% for Gas Giants, 1% for Terrestrials, and 0.1% for Dwarf Planets. In the future this will be driven by moons getting too close to a planet..
Added a rare chance for a secondary ring at an acute angle on ringed planets, to simulate a recent collision event.
Increased the required equilibrium temperature for Lava Planets to 1200 Kelvin, up from 874 Kelvin.
Improved the visual appearance of Lava Planets.
Added Nanite Tesselation to planetary surfaces, giving them very basic 3D terrain when viewed from orbit.
Black Holes now have a proper stellar mass range, with correspondingly small radii
Added planets to Black Holes. The huge Roche Limits generally mean you won't find anything other than icy bodies and ice giants.

Sol System Improvements

Added the Haumea, Makemake, Eris and Sedna Kuiper Belt objects.
Updated Saturn’s ring to use a NASA texture instead of a procedural one.
Created a new complete Pluto surface map using generative AI to backfill the areas of missing real-world data.

New Sensors System

We’ve completely overhauled the Sensors gameplay for this update, with greatly expanded functionality across all 4 sensor modes, and a new save system for tracking exploration progress across the galaxy.

Celestial objects now have “Knowledge Levels”. These correspond to the Long (1), Medium (2) and Short (3) Range sensors, with each knowledge level unlocking more detailed information. A short-range scan of every celestial object within a star system is required for that system to be considered 100% explored.

Procedural alien civilisations have now started appearing all over the galaxy, with various physical and societal attributes. These civilisations appear as Tech Signatures when conducting a Long Range survey, and details of their society can be uncovered when conducting a Short Range scan of their planet. They only exist as text descriptions for now, but eventually they will have a physical presence in the galaxy.

The Sensors updates have been numerous;

General Updates

Completely overhauled the visual appearance of the Sensors UI, bringing it in line with the ship-wide “UNOS” operating system.
Improved the Sensors network replication considerably.
Created a new sensors “state file” that is now broadcast to other game systems in order to drive updates and ensure sensor data consistency.
The hard-coded Display Range buttons have been replaced with more granular controls on all sensor modes, so you now have much finer control over what data is displayed. This also means you can now zoom in properly on tiny star systems.
The target listings are now a nested tree, so planets will appear under stars when expanded, and moons will appear under planets, etc. This gives us more UI space for a much expanded Target Information page.

Data Display

Added new "Tech Signature" and “Life Signature” flags on the Long, Medium and Short Range target listings. Tech Signatures require Knowledge Level 1, and Life Signatures require Knowledge Level 3.
Added a 3-tier graphical indicator to the target listing on the Long, Medium and Short Range sensors, which reflects the 3 knowledge levels.
Added "Tenuous Exosphere" as a new atmosphere type for non-atmospheric planets, as no planet is truly non-atmospheric.
Added 70 unique spectral analysis graphics for stars scanned to Knowledge Level 1.
Added Roche Limit, Scattered Disk, Hill Radius and Tidal Truncation Limit values to the star Orbital Characteristics data.
Added Age, Mass, Density, Radius, Volume, Gravity and Escape Velocity values to the star Physical Characteristics data.
Added Temperature, Mass Fractions (Hydrogen, Helium, Metals), and Metallicity values to the star Photosphere data.
Added Roche Limit, Hill Radius, Semi-Major Axis, Semi-Minor Axis, Apoapsis, Periapsis, Distance, Eccentricity, Inclination, Orbital Period and Orbital Velocity values to planet Orbital Characteristics data.
Added Age, Mass, Density, Radius, Volume, Gravity, Escape Velocity and Equilibrium Temperature values to planet Physical Characteristics data.
Added Atmosphere Scale, Average Temperature and Gas Giant Mass Fractions (Hydrogen/Helium/Other) to planet Atmosphere data.
Added Species Name, Physiology, Government, Religion, Tech Level, Aggression and Xenophobia values to planet Civilisation data.

GPS Mode

Added sector information to the GPS mode, which provides information about a given sector of space, such as its galactic region type and known stellar populations based on data from Earth-based observations.
Added the ability to target a manually specified sector of space on the GPS mode, which allows you to obtain a high-level overview of that location. This can be used for seeking out specialty sectors such as Open or Globular Clusters.
Added a 2D map of the galaxy to the GPS mode, which can be zoomed in and out based on either the ship or a target location.

Long Range

Added the ability to turn "auto refresh" on/off on the Long Range sensors, which prevents the target list from refreshing while you are at FTL.
Added a "Percentage Explored" indicator to the target listing on the Long Range sensors.
Added a splash of colour to the target listing on the Long Range sensors, using the star's Kelvin colour temperature.
Added the ability to align the Long Range sensors to a target star system, revealing basic information about any planets that exist there within a range of 2,000ly.
Added the ability to survey star systems within 2,000ly on the Long Range sensors, unlocking Knowledge Level 1 for all celestial objects.
Added a progress screen to the Long Range Survey process.
Planets on the Long Range sensors are now listed as "Unknown Planet" until a survey has been performed. Unlocking Knowledge Level 1 will further distinguish between Terrestrial planets and Gas Giants.

Medium Range

Added the ability to perform a Medium Range survey while within a star system, unlocking Knowledge Level 2 for all celestial objects. Knowledge Level 2 further distinguishes between planet types, be they Lava or Earthlike worlds for example.
Added the ability to list the Medium Range sensors by distance "To Parent" or "To Ship".
Added a button to toggle the Temperature Regions on/off on the Holo Display.

Short Range

Added a new "Surface Map" function on the Short Range sensors. This will display a 2D map of a planet or a star’s surface.
Added the ability to toggle clouds on or off on the Short Range planet view.
Added the ability to toggle the day/night terminator on the Short Range planet view.
Added the ability to toggle tech signatures on or off on the Short Range planet view.
The Short Range sensors will now automatically show targets within range.
The Short Range sensors will now update the distance to the ship in real time.

Holo Display

We’ve updated the Holo Display on the Bridge to be a lot more interactive, with improved visuals and the ability to target celestial objects directly. Our ultimate vision for the Holo Display is for it to be a one stop shop for all command actions, and this update takes us a big step in that direction.

Added the ability to click the Holo Display to target objects, either directly or while holding down the E key.
Added a new Planetary Surface view on the Holo Display, which renders a full 3D planet when that mode is selected on the Short Range sensors.
Added Nanite Tessellation to the planets on the Holo Display, giving them limited 3D terrain.
Improved the display of a star’s temperature regions, with new labels and dotted lines to mark region boundaries.
Updated the Holo Display to support all of the new data being generated by the Sensors.
Updated the Holo Display so that it cycles through the targets being scanned when conducting surveys on the Long and Medium Range sensors.
The Long, Medium and Short Range sensor modes will now all display an Orrery Map when relevant.
Added 3D lines to the Nav and Sensor target indicators on the Long and Medium Range holo display modes.
Replaced the "Manual Sector" indicator on the GPS mode with an accurately scaled red cube on the Holo Display, highlighting the exact size of one cubic sector relative to the galactic map.
Optimised various aspects of the Holo Display rendering.
Tweaked the relative brightness of stars on the Holo Display to better accentuate the hotter stars.
Stars and Planets will now scale appropriately when zooming in and out of an Orrery Map, with celestial objects now being rendered as wireframe spheres.
The Holo Display now has physical Holo Projectors on the Bridge ceiling, which have visible light shafts when volumetric fog is enabled.

NPCs

Our long term goal is to enable complete single player freedom aboard any vessel by having an NPC crew manage any role not filled by the player. To that end, we’ve got a head start on implementing basic NPC control on the Bridge.

Added the ability to spawn basic NPC crewmembers in any Bridge chair.
Added randomised appearances to spawnable Bridge NPCs.
Added the ability to issue basic commands to the Sensors and Helm Bridge NPCs, either by clicking on them directly, or by holding down E. You will need to select targets on the Holo Display before asking an NPC to act upon them.
Added a new RM-84 floor cleaning droid that automatically takes care of the dirty flooring on B Deck. This is actually a test of NPC task automation.
Added a ship’s cat. He starts off in the VIP Lounge, but he’s free to roam everywhere on the ship, so expect him to go where he pleases, just like any adventurous feline.

Character System

Our character system is still very much a work in progress, but we’ve made some quality of life improvements that should make for smoother gameplay.

Added "Headbob" as an option under Gameplay Settings. It is now off by default, and is no longer connected to the "C" camera cycle.
Added "Camera Zoom Amount" to the Accessibility Options, which controls how much the camera zooms when you hold the right mousebutton. Hopefully this will help players who have difficulty reading the small text on UI screens.
The mouse speed now scales with zoom level, so it will slow down when zoomed in.
Added 23 new crosshair variations to the Controls Settings, as requested by players who have difficulty discerning the default small white dot.
You can now hold “E” to unlock the mouse at any time, which makes interacting with UI screens much less of a headache.
Added a smooth camera transition lasting 0.5 seconds when you enter/exit chairs.
You can now select practically any country on Earth for your uniform's country flag, from a list of 248 available options.

Main Menu

We wanted our main menu to be dynamic, so it’s always changing and never exactly the same every time you open the game. To that end, it will now randomly generate planet flybys, and we’ll continue to expand on this over time.

The main menu background will now generate a completely random procedural planet every 12 seconds. You should never see the same planet twice.
You can press “H” to hide the main menu text, turning it into a cool random planets screensaver.
The loading screen for the Magellan Class vessel now shows the ship being constructed deck by deck, and we’ll do the same for all ships in the future.
Updated the Magellan Class graphic and ship stats when starting a new game.

Engine / Graphics

We’re always keen to take advantage of the latest tech when it becomes available, and Unreal Engine is definitely the gift that keeps on giving.

Upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.5.4.
Enabled Cloud Saves on Steam.
Implemented an AgX Tonemapping solution for a more realistic colour response.
We’re now leveraging Nanite Tessellation to create true 3D surfaces on many materials, from carpets to weld lines, and even on planets from orbit.
Planetary rings will now cast shadows on planets and other objects.
Planetary rings now have an improved "dust" effect that doesn’t visibly tile.
Reduced the planetary atmosphere GPU overhead considerably.
Implemented a number of new shaders for handling triplanar projection on both moving and non-moving geometry. The new shaders are approximately 66% more memory efficient, utilising only a single texture sample instead of three.
Improved the way ceilings are lit in the game, reducing shader complexity and reducing GPU cost.
Improved the prop loading and saving system.
Improved the physics response on props of various sizes, making them far less likely to penetrate walls or fall through floors.

Tutorial System

We’ve made a few quality of life improvements to the tutorial system, along with creating a whole new tutorial for the new Sensors gameplay.

Added a dynamic 3D hologram breadcrumb trail for guiding players to objectives, which replaces the old waypoints system.
Added Forward/Back indicators to the tutorial text box, so you can skip back and forth through the tutorial as desired.
Added a new Scanning & Navigation tutorial to cover the new sensors gameplay, with all new voice dialogue and a lot more detail.

Backer Perks

We love our backers, so we’re making every effort to give back wherever we can. With that in mind, here’s what we’ve achieved so far;

Created an online database for managing the game’s credits, so that we can update them at any point without needing a new game build.
The game credits now list the names of 5,447 backers! We're still missing about 1,000 people, so if your name isn’t listed, please get in touch.
Created an online database for managing backer systems, again so that we can update them at any point without needing a new game build. The long-term goal here is to create a web interface where backers can manage their own systems.
There are now 84 backer systems in the game, about a quarter of which are hosting alien civilisations.
Our Captain level and above backers have had access to 117 development builds over the past 18 months.

Fixes

We’ve fixed over 100 player-reported bugs, in addition to many more that were discovered and fixed during the development process.

Fixed bug 1384 - Multiplayer games are not allowing joins immediately.,

Fixed bug 1217 - LINUX BLINDING LIGHTS,

Fixed bug 1382 - Visible FTL effect not rendering if you disengage and re-engage FTL too quickly.,

Fixed bug 1298 - Mouse cursor vanishes in menus when a controller is plugged in.,

Fixed bug 1433 - YouTube player is broken.,

Fixed bug 459 - System Map labels don't appear until you click the system map button.,

Fixed bug 1469 - Funny physics glitch in passageway on D deck.,

Fixed bug 1465 - Planets that are off-screen are not updating on a Long Range scan.,

Fixed bug 1435 - Changing the Filter dropdown on the Long Range sensors isn't refreshing the list of targets.,

Fixed bug 1165 - Mission Timer not showing up for clients in multiplayer.,

Fixed bug 1138 - Holding tab to view online players blocks character movement.,

Fixed bug 1270 - Able to sit in chairs whilst ragdolled.,

Fixed bug 1017 - ETA value incorrect when lower than 10% FTL power. Removed the 30km/s lower limit.,

Fixed bug 1566 - Last name can be removed by putting spaces in the first name box.,

Fixed bug 1618 - Flooring customizations not available in areas with new flooring.,

Fixed bug 1475 - B-deck despawing too early,

Fixed bug 1641 - Panels behind Deck signage in stairwell missing collision,

Fixed bug 965 - FOV reset when sitting in chairs.,

Fixed bug 1343 - A Mug can push a chair, when you are on it, making you go at incredible speeds.,

Fixed bug 987 - Door stays open if unpowered and re-powered while locked.,

Fixed bug 1119 - Character customisation resets when sitting in chairs.,

Fixed bug 1047 - Character customisation resets when exiting drone camera.,

Fixed bug 1419 - After using the flying camera, your character appearance/clothing changes and you need to change it back again.,

Fixed bug 1225 - Nav Target Name Error after targeting Earth then clearing Nav Target,

Fixed bug 1386 - Holding E while entering a Chair causes the cursor to stay on the screen,

Fixed bug 1654 - Physics block exit from habitation compartment, entry was OK,

Fixed bug 1437 - Zoom does not reset when standing up and sitting back in chair,

Fixed bug 1431 - Ship customisation resets when you save and press F3 again.,

Fixed bug 1689 - G deck snap guide visible when lights are off,

Fixed bug 1688 - Lounge tables have no prop collisions,

Fixed bug 1561 - Text flickers in multiplayer,

Fixed bug 1626 - Can't press H in the server menu,

Fixed bug 1592 - External View - Camera can be zoomed in to the shuttle bay,

Fixed bug 1627 - lower back engine comnes out of place,

Fixed bug 1648 - G class star in list filtered to only M class (inhabited systems ignoring the filter),

Fixed bug 1674 - Star proxy ball sometimes visible when approaching a star system.,

Fixed bug 1671 - Nav Missmatch (Sensors/Helm/Target show different distances to target object),

Fixed bug 1678 - Star systems on manually selected sectors are showing as 0ly away.,

Fixed bug 1687 - tab sometimes dosnt open and instead opens chat and sometimes enter just changes the game from full screen to tab,

Fixed bug 1138 - Interrupts walking / running when pressing TAB,

Fixed bug 1518 - Sol surface maps not showing,

Fixed bug 1697 - Bridge lighting panel is powered by wrong breaker.,

Fixed bug 1681 - Everyone is Claire! (Sitting in a chair sets your character to the server host),

Fixed bug 1385 - Youtube player can't be seen by the client,

Fixed bug 1709 - Can not enter maintenance tunnels on Deck G,

Fixed bug 1705 - Full System Scan Exploitable with Sensor Switching,

Fixed bug 1732 - Loading screen getting stuck on "Generating Galaxy".

Fixed bug 1597 - The mouse sensitivity and inversion when controlling a drone are not same as players setting,

Fixed bug 1693 - Black screen on camera/scene change,

Fixed bug 1719 - Torch does not light up until you move forward,

Fixed bug 965 - Fov reset when using bridge stations,

Fixed bug 1278 / 1615 - Tutorial dialogue box overlaps with the escape menu.,

Fixed bug 1282 - Cannot toggle the Quick Reference when escape menu is open,

Fixed bug 1728 - Cant skip or go to older tutorial steps while sitting at navigation console,

Fixed bug 1779 - Selecting New Mission with Cold and Dark start now spawns in at Galactic coordinates 0,0,0.,

Fixed bug 1721 - Cannot sit using F key.,

Fixed bug 1758 - Stuck on generating galaxy.,

Fixed bug 1788 - Ship teleports to middle sector map.,

Added a "nudge" on the camera after exiting chairs in an effort to stop the camera rendering a black screen.,

Fixed bug 1714 - Scanning button still says Abort Scan after a scan.,

Fixed bug 1768 - 'Objects' is spelled wrong on the nav tutorial (medium range scanning),

Fixed bug 1383 - Piano Octave played does not change. Removed the key overlay that incorrectly appears, and added the ability to hit the piano keys using the mouse while E is held down. Also removed the "dong" when you hit parts of the piano that are not keys.,

Fixed bug 1749 - Nav Tutorial Stuck.,

Fixed bug 1763 - Yellow box in the wrong spot (Scanning & Navigation Tutorial),

Fixed bug 1792 - Scanning and Nav tutorial timing issues...,

Fixed bug 1781 - Life and tech signatures only on surface map (map and sensors data not in sync),

Fixed bug 1770 - Second from last text box on Nav tutorial says 'awaiting arrival' under the text,

Fixed bug 1783 - Out of body experience (Host inherits the client's camera),

Fixed bug 1801 - Life signatures button is hooked to tech signatures button.,

Added a delay to showing the character mesh when sitting in chairs to avoid a weird out of body moment.,

Fixed bug 1677 - Planet labels out of the window still say Unknown regardless of knowledge level.,

Fixed bug 1791 - Planet names are missing if you are in the same system,

Fixed bug 1757 - "Planet Name" text overlaid on star/ system name,

Fixed bug 1806 - Cannot press F to sit in chairs.,

Fixed bug 1835 - Hull Name barely visible. Also added a couple of extra names on the hull.,

Fixed bug 1838 - Zoom seems to be set to 0% by default,

Fixed bug 1827 - Stuck in Drone cam,

Fixed bug 1819 - While having medium range scanning selected, the planet closest to the ship gets blown out of proportion in the Holo-Display.,

Fixed bug 1777 - Sensors - short range targets do not update.,

Fixed bug 1481 - Lift peculiarities.,

Fixed bug 1870 - Stairs to D-deck in engineering has a small "barrier" close to the top.,

Fixed bug 1702 - Valves D-SUP-A01 / D-SUP-02. Not actually a bug, but I've added "Flow >" markers on the pipes to make things more obvious.,

Fixed bug 1871 - Railing missing on D-deck in engineering.,

Fixed bug 1704 - Planet title not fully in view.,

Fixed bug 1558 - Surface map of stellar mass black holes is presented as a planet,

Fixed bug 1711 - Long Range Scan List of systems show data for 9 items,

Fixed bug 1755 - Waypoint in Coldstart Training,

Fixed bug 1679 / 1658 - Nav/Sensor target lines are inverted and too long on the holo-display GPS mode,

Fixed bug 1807 - Backer systems are showing in the filter by type box regardless of choice,

Fixed bug 1847 - Completing a Scan when the Holo Display is off turns it back on again.,

Fixed bug 1897 - Lava planet texture is missing,

Fixed bug 1818 - Laceille 9352 Issues,

Fixed bug 1894 - B-F Elevator issues.,

Fixed bug 1912 - Sensors: Target Summary - once life discovered in a system, it shows as living on all scanned planets,

Fixed bug 1913 - Long Range Scanning: O-class star appears on K-class filter list, and not under O-class filter list,

Fixed bug 1915 - B-class stars having too large radius for short range scans without flying into them.,

Fixed bug 1875 - Lamps on Deck B,

Fixed bug 1919 - While teleporting from A deck to F deck while sitting in a chair results in getting stuck between E and F deck.,

Fixed bug 1917 - Magellan Not at Earth When Beginning New Mission,

Fixed bug 1918 - The Return of Bug 1711 (Long range sensors list is showing 0% Explored after scanning, when list is greater than 9 items.),

Fixed bug 1930 - Poor performance when selecting a manual sector on the Long Range sensors.,

Fixed bug 1676 - Star listing on sensors extremely laggy for clients in multiplayer.,

Fixed bug 1954 - GPS Sector Information Not Automatically Updating,

Fixed bug 1948 - Black screen when getting out of chairs or joining a session when there is no star nearby.,

Fixed bug 1937 - Certain K Class stars showing invalid class,

Fixed bug 1787 - Long Range Holo Display changes from Orrery to Star Map while warping,

Fixed bug 1841 - Bridge panels not online for joining clients. (Electrical system init issue),

Fixed bug 1951 - The ceiling on F deck is visibly unloaded when standing at the bottom of the cryroom stairs,

Fixed bug 1950 - On cryoroom stairs visible f deck panels unloaded,

Onwards to 226!
Thank you all.

Fleetyard ːsteamhappyː

Original post

27 Jun 2025Developer post

Bridge NPCs!

We've added NPCs to the bridge ! Currently, only the Helm and Science Sensors are functional, as other consoles remain inactive. Players can take the Captain's role, use the holo-display to select targets, direct the Science Officer to perform scans or adjust the holo-display, an

20 Jun 2025Developer post

Almost at demo update!

It's been a really, really long year with so many bug fixes and huge changes to core systems. We're extremely close to finalising the demo update, which will go out soon. We just have the video update to complete now. Due to bug fixing being no fun on stream, we've changed to 'Su

17 Jan 2025Developer post

2024 Project review

We're a couple of weeks late, but I'd like to say a belated Happy New Year to everyone! It's that time again where we take stock of what we've achieved over the past year, and then look ahead to what we have planned for 2025. In terms of progress, in 2024 we released a total of 5

We're a couple of weeks late, but I'd like to say a belated Happy New Year to everyone! It's that time again where we take stock of what we've achieved over the past year, and then look ahead to what we have planned for 2025.

In terms of progress, in 2024 we released a total of 57 development builds for our backer community to check out, with a release cadence of 1-2 new builds per week during the latter half of the year.

We also launched a new series of regular live development streams, with a total of 96 live streams in 2024. That's over 128 hours worth of live development action, with most streams averaging 3-4 hours long. If you haven't been watching, then why not join the fun every Wednesday and Sunday on YouTube:

Of course, the biggest news of the year by far was our unbelievably successful Kickstarter campaign in April, where 5,761 backers pledged a mind-blowing £402,085. After the usual fees and tax deductions, that was a £290,000 cash injection into the studio, which we're using to bring additional talent onto the project.

In other news, thanks to our other fantastic backers on Patreon and Ko-Fi, we were able to construct our brand new "Dev Shed", a dedicated studio space for development and streaming.

As for the game itself, during 2024 we focused on several core features;

GALAXY GEN

We completely overhauled the Galaxy Gen system, adding refinement and optimisation across the board. The coordinate system was re-based to place Sag A* at 0,0,0, and thanks to a new seed system with 2^256 unique vector-based seeds (a truly massive number), every cubic lightyear of space now has its own unique seed.

We also significantly increased the number of real-world stars in the game, with 18.2 million Gaia Catalogue Objects now extending out to a radius of 2,000 LY around Sol. Without wanting to blow our own trumpet too much, this makes our simulated Milky Way galaxy the largest and most accurate ever made for the consumer market, and we're only just getting started!

To help render all of that new data, we also added L, T and Y class brown dwarf stars to the game, along with over 70 new stellar sub-classes.

SYSTEM GEN

Just as with the Galaxy Gen, we completely overhauled the code for generating Star Systems within the game. In addition to numerous optimisations, we also added significantly more detail to the generation process. Here are a few highlights:

Our planet formation model now uses Core Mass Accretion when forming initial planetary cores, with iron content properly decreasing with distance from the central star.

Gas Giants are now formed using Runaway Gas Accretion, whereby the gas envelope grows exponentially when the escape velocity of the planetary core is greater than that of molecular hydrogen.

A star's Roche Limit is now properly taken into account when generating the innermost planets in a system, along with that star's Dust Sublimation Line. This ensures the orbits of the innermost planets are scientifically accurate.

Once a star's proto-planetary disk has been largely exhausted of mass, a Scattered Disk of small icy bodies is generated with increasingly eccentric and inclined orbits. This is similar to our own Kuiper Belt, which includes the likes of Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. All of which are also now in the game.

LIFE GEN

We started work on our Life Gen system, which now applies a high-level Political States to galactic sectors when they are generated. This determines if a sector consists of independent worlds, multiple factions, or even a single all-powerful empire.

Alien civilisations are now also being generated throughout the entire galaxy, with the initial groundwork complete for generating data points such as:

• Name
• Physiology
• Government
• Religion
• Tech Level
• Aggressiveness
• Xenophobia

These data points are now available on the sensors console, with long range scans identifying Tech Signatures on inhabited worlds. A short range scan of that world will then reveal all of the current data in text form.

This is of course just the starting point for the Life Gen system. Over time the amount and detail of the generated data will increase significantly, culminating in those races eventually being given physical form.

SENSORS GAMEPLAY

With greatly improved galaxy generation and alien civilisations popping up all over the place, it was important that we also overhauled the Sensors UI to manage all of this new data.

The Sensors UI now has four distinct modes, with each serving a specific purpose when uncovering more information about a target system:

• The GPS mode tracks your location in the galaxy, provides a scientific overview of your current sector of space, and lists the number of each star class located within that sector.

• The Long Range mode lists all of the star systems in range, and allows you to perform a Long Range Survey of any system within 2,000 LY to uncover basic details about its orbital bodies. Any tech signatures will also be highlighted, should they exist.

• The Medium Range mode has a maximum range of 0.5 LY. A Medium Range Survey will uncover more details about each planet in a system, such as a gas giant's specific type or whether or not a planet is an Earth Analogue. This mode will also reveal moons and other smaller objects.

• The Short Range mode has a maximum range of 3,000,000 km, and conducting a short range scan of a planet will reveal its full details, such as its surface composition and whether or not life exists there. You can even view a map of the planet's surface now.

All objects in a star system now have 3 knowledge levels, with the Short, Medium and Long range sensors being worth knowledge level 3, 2 and 1 respectively. This of course means that in order to fully explore a star system, all bodies must be scanned to knowledge level 3.

This exploration data is naturally saved as part of the save system within the game, so players can now begin the process of surveying the galaxy across multiple play sessions to seek out all of those new alien civilisations.

MAGELLAN CLASS REFIT

Our Magellan Class prototype exploration vessel underwent her most significant refit to date, with the addition of an Alcubierre Ring and a greatly expanded interior layout.

The ship received an Updated Framework Structure to support a new segmented design, which is an important change because it paves the way for modeling things like Air Pressure, Air Quality, Fire Spread, and other dynamic environmental effects.

The new framework structure also required new wall and floor panels, so we took advantage of that opportunity to increase their level of detail, in addition to adding new features such as Nanite Tesselation for per-pixel levels of surface detail.

We also added a Working Crew Lift to the main stairwell, as well as Dynamic Carpet Grime with an accompanying cleaning robot to test out our NPC task priority system.

Claire also set about doing some gardening on the ship, with our previously empty planters now filled with colourful foliage.

ACCESSIBILITY IMPROVEMENTS

We've been listening closely to your feedback, and with that in mind we've made some improvements to accessibility in the game.

The default camera mode having Headbob enabled was a point of contention for quite a few players, so we've removed it from the camera cycle entirely. Instead, Headbob is now an optional feature that you have to specifically enable in the gameplay options.

Players with significant visual impairment raised concerns about UI text being too small, or other details being difficult to see, so we've added a "Camera Zoom" slider to the accessibility options. This gives you control over how much right-click zooms the camera.

Also related to visual impairment, we've added 23 different crosshairs of various shapes and sizes to the control options.

LOOKING AHEAD INTO 2025

We're painfully overdue a public demo update, so that's very much the first thing on the agenda. We're dotting the T's and crossing the I's on that at the moment, so hopefully we'll have that released imminently.

Once Tech Demo #3 is released, we're going to focus heavily on recruitment. With Early Access planned for December this year, we've got a tremendous uphill struggle ahead of us. We know exactly who we need, we just need to find those talented individuals.

With our recruitment drive out of the way, we'll then work on a dedicated VR test build. We're keen to see how well the game plays in VR, and if all goes to plan it's going to be an extremely immersive experience.

The next patch cycle, 226, will focus on the Bridge gameplay. Specifically, the ability to issue commands to NPC or Player crewmembers. This will be achieved by either interacting with the Holo Display, or by looking over at the crewmember and bringing up a command interface.

We'll also flesh out more of the Bridge interior, with a view to getting that finished and polished if time permits. On the galaxy side of things, we'll finally be adding moons to the game!

And speaking of timescales, our new year's resolution is to keep patches small and focused. We really dropped the ball with that in 2024, so that's our biggest priority for 2025.

Ok, that's it from me. I'd like to say a huge thankyou once again to everyone that has supported us thus far, and we'll continue to work hard to make this project the best it can possibly be!

Original post

03 Jan 2025Developer post

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.66 - All about the data.

• Toned down the strength of the M Class stars out of the window, and removed the LTY class stars from view as they are far too low a magnitude to be visible. • Migrated all of the text data from the Sensors UI to the Galaxy-Gen system, so descriptive text for celestial objects i

• Toned down the strength of the M Class stars out of the window, and removed the LTY class stars from view as they are far too low a magnitude to be visible.

• Migrated all of the text data from the Sensors UI to the Galaxy-Gen system, so descriptive text for celestial objects is immediately available to any game system.

• Migrated the data handling code for all of the stellar text fields on the Sensors UI to a self-contained macro for easy re-use.

• Overhauled how knowledge levels work for celestial objects, so that it's now stored on a per-object basis instead of having generic booleans for the entire star system.

• Fixed knowledge level 3 (short range) scans not registering properly on the Sensors UI.

• Added a lot more data points to the stellar sensor output.

• Added a Dust Sublimation line to star system generation, so that no planets form where the equilibrium temperature exceeds 2000 Kelvin.

• Increased the required equilibrium temperature for lava worlds to 1200 Kelvin, up from 874 Kelvin.

• Began implementing Tidal Truncation Radius for stars, which will form the outer limit of Oort Clouds and the extent to which a star can affect the FTL drive.

• Added plants to all of the planters on B Deck (Thanks @Clairimus Prime !)

We're that much closer to the public demo update now, with the following action points remaining:

• Create a Planets version of the stellar data points macro.

• Implement the macro data points on the Medium and Short range sensor modes.

• Create a new tutorial for the new sensors UI.

• Model a number of new wall/floor/ceiling panels, mostly around Engineering.

• Polish some more of the ship's framework.

• Clear off some bugs and do a general quality pass.

Note from Claire - We hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas, we certainly did! All five of our children were here for Christmas, which was chaotically amazing <3
Unfortunately, Dan had a two day stay in hospital with a pesky kidney stone but all seems okay now, so well done to him for getting through the Christmas stress, horrible pain ( I'm not sure which was worse for him :D), and all of this update :)

Original post

21 Nov 2024Developer post

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.58 - Mmm, that new flooring smell.

• D/E/F/G Decks, Ring 0 - Re-modelled all 3 versions of the stairs in the reactor room so that they fit the new deck heights. • D/E/F/G Decks, Ring 0 - Added new spline-driven railings to the new stairs. • F/G Decks, Ring 1 - Designed and modelled 4 new rubber floor panels. (They

13 Nov 2024Developer post

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.57 - Mash the F1 key and report everthing!

• F Deck, Ring 1, Aft - Updated framework walls. • F Deck, Ring 2, Aft - Updated framework walls. • F Deck, Ring 2, Port, Forward, Starboard - Updated framework walls. • Enabled Cloud Saves on Steam for all game branches, including the current public Demo. • Fixed and re-enabled

09 Nov 2024Developer post

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.56 - Back to the construction yard.

• Fixed several player collision issues around the main crew lift area. • Prepped F Deck for its new framework pieces by removing the existing (incorrectly sized) floor and wall panels. • F Deck, Ring 1, Aft - New framework walls. • F Deck, Ring 1, Port, Forward, Starboard - New

05 Nov 2024Developer post

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.55 - AVA appears to be from Bristol.

• Fixed some items on the holo display not layering properly with the glass panels around the bridge. • Renamed the "Display Order" category box to "Sensors UI" on the Medium Range sensors, and added a new toggle button for Display Order. • Renamed the "Display Alignment" categor

• Fixed some items on the holo display not layering properly with the glass panels around the bridge.

• Renamed the "Display Order" category box to "Sensors UI" on the Medium Range sensors, and added a new toggle button for Display Order.

• Renamed the "Display Alignment" category box to "Holo Display" on the Medium Range sensors, and added a new toggle button for Display Alignment.

• Added a button to toggle the Temperature Regions on/off on the Medium Range sensors.

• Created a new material for rendering the temperature regions on a 2D plane. This will be for a future "flat" mode on the Orrery Map.

• Renamed the range category boxes (again) to "Sensor Range" in the hope that it causes the least amount of confusion.

• Fixed a math error on the Medium sensor range, and increased the display range to 30,000AU to match the hardware limit. It also now shows as LY over 0.1 LY.

• Added a visual effect to the dotted sensor target line when an active scan is taking place.

• Updated the sensor target label to say "SCANNING" when an active scan is taking place.

• Added a progress bar to the Long Range sensors when conducting a survey.

• Updated the Holo Display so that it cycles through the objects being scanned when conducting a Long Range survey.

• Updated the Holo Display so that it cycles through the objects being scanned when conducting a Medium Range survey.

• Greatly improved how visibility is managed for the space labels visible from the bridge windows.

• Updated the Long Range detail mode to have the star targeted by default.

• Added some AVA voice lines for the Long Range survey.

• Started replacing the WIP greybox geometry around D/E decks with proper framework pieces.

• Replaced the old Ring 0 framework geometry on F Deck with the new properly segmented version.

There seem to be some collision issues with the geometry around C/D Decks where the lift runs, preventing the use of the lift. I'll be fixing that today and putting out a new build in a few hours, along with a few other small tweaks.

Original post

31 Oct 2024Developer post

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.54 - Scan everything!

• Renamed the "Display Zoom" titles back to "Display Range" on all 4 sensor modes. • Capped the sorted sector data to 50ly, which has all but completely fixed the per-lightyear hitching. • Improved the Short Range data overlay buttons so that they have clear ON/OFF states. • Adde

29 Oct 2024Developer post

Internal patch 0.225.0.52/53

It's been a crazily busy week with us all being away for birthdays, so apologies for the double update. Development Build 0.225.0.52 - New surface scan overlays • Added the ability to list the Medium Range sensors by distance "To Parent" or "To Ship". • Updated the distance displ

It's been a crazily busy week with us all being away for birthdays, so apologies for the double update.

Development Build 0.225.0.52 - New surface scan overlays

• Added the ability to list the Medium Range sensors by distance "To Parent" or "To Ship".
• Updated the distance display on the Long and Medium range sensors to show KM if the distance is <0.1 AU.
• Implemented range awareness on the Long Range sensors, so the survey button will say now "Out of Range" if the target is over 2,000ly away.
• The Long Range sensors will now only show planets around a star up to the maximum 2,000ly range.
• They will soon estimate the number of planets instead, based on unaccounted mass.
• Added the knowledge level requirements to the Medium Range sensors.
• Added the ability to toggle clouds on or off on the Short Range planet view.
• Added the ability to toggle the day/night terminator on the Short Range planet view.
• Added the ability to show tech signatures on the Short Range planet view.

Barring some bug fixing and the addition of a few simple features to fill the blank space on the UI, that's the Medium Range sensors finished now. There's a bit more work to do on the Short Range sensors still, but with the addition of the new data layers it's starting to look more feature complete.

It's also worth noting that only the Sol planets and the rocky procedural worlds work with the new data overlays right now. Each type of planet needs some custom material work done to make them compatible, so I'll be doing that between now and Sunday's stream.

Internal Development Build 0.225.0.53 - Follow the orange dotted road

• Added 3D lines to the Nav and Sensor targets on the Long and Medium Range holo display modes.

• Created a new marquee material to make the 3D lines animated.

• Added distance display text to the new 3D lines.

• Fixed the Holo Display targets remaining visible beyond the edge of the display.

• Fixed the mini ship on the Holo Display being incorrectly visible in distant systems.• Gave the mini ship a glowing texture to make it more visually obvious.

• Fixed the Nav and Sensor targets not having target circles on the bridge window display.

• Fixed the Sensor target not rendering at all on the bridge window display.

• Optimised a few aspects of the Holo Display rendering.

With builders and birthdays taking up the latter half of last week I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted, but we're still making headway!

Original post

21 Oct 2024Developer post

Back to Regular Updates

Hello all! It's been a while since updating via our store page :D We moved to update the dev diaries via the Steam forums after being asked to do it there instead, but it seems that people are missing them that way. So I'll now be posting them the old way and the new way :D For y

Hello all! It's been a while since updating via our store page :D We moved to update the dev diaries via the Steam forums after being asked to do it there instead, but it seems that people are missing them that way. So I'll now be posting them the old way and the new way :D

For your reference, the forums are here, they contain the updates, discussions, roadmap, role-play groups, support, and content creators/Dan's streams. Be sure to subscribe to them!

What can I say about this year so far...well, I'm tired for starters! :D

We had an amazing Kickstarter campaign, and we love you all for it!
We far surpassed our goal of £65k by a staggering £402,085 ( taking home £362,657.61 after fees), with an amazing 5761 backers!
Everyone who backed Captain and above will have received their development build keys by email, and they are designing and creating the game alongside Fleetyard as I type. We also have quite a few Commanders upgrading their pledges and new backers via our Ko-Fi shop <3 Every penny goes towards creating Starship Simulator!

So, on to the update for this year:

We've been working hard on patch 0.225.1.0, which will serve as the next public demo update. This update will focuses on three main areas:

1 - Magellan Class Overhaul. Our Magellan Class vessel has been subject to a number of tweaks and alterations over the past couple of years, but we've now settled on her final form. Our plan for patch 0.225.1.0 is to have the new hull shape roughly implemented, with most of the new interior framework completed. Here's how she's looking right now;

2 - Planetary Scanning & Sensors UI Overhaul.
The new sensors interface has been designed around gradually revealing more information about a star system over distance. There are four modes;

The GPS mode shows you where your ship is in relation to the galaxy, and allows you to select any given sector to see an overview of which type of stars can be found there.

The Long Range mode displays star systems within a radius of your current location, and upon selecting one, it will display an Orrery Map of that system. The type of planets found in the system will be listed as "Unknown" until you perform a long range survey, at which point more details will be revealed.

Similarly, the Medium Range sensors will also generate an Orrery Map when within 30,000 AU of a star system, and upon conducting a Medium Range Survey a greater amount of information will be uncovered, such as the type of atmosphere around each planet, and the presence of any moons.

The Short Range mode has a range of 2,000,000km, and this is used to conduct the most detailed scans. The output of this mode will reveal planetary surface details, such as topological maps and the presence of any life.

The new sensors UI clearly displays the current knowledge level for any given star system, allowing the player to explore each system in greater depth over time.

With patch 0.225.1.0 you will start finding life across the whole of the galaxy, at first in the form of text descriptions, but over time that life will be physicalised. If you've been watching our developer Dan's Streams you'll have seen that we now have basic procedural political states implemented and working, and new UI's.

3 - Real World Data Expansion. In the current demo, there are several thousand real-world stars in the game, but with patch 0.225.1.0 we're increasing that to 18.2 million stars from the Gaia DR3 catalogue, covering a radius of 2000ly around Sol.

In addition to having a massive number of real-world stars in our galaxy, we're also referencing the latest papers to create an incredibly realistic galactic structure as well, using the Maser astrometry data;

If you'd like to know more on this, I'd recommend checking out this paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/8/8/390

Without wanting to toot our own horn too much, this does make our galaxy the most accurate and realistic Milky Way available in any game, ever! :D

Recruitment

We are actively recruiting for a number of roles on the team, specifically:

A concept artist specialising in starship and general sci-fi vehicle design.
A 3D modeller with experience building sci-vehicles.
A 3D modeller with experience building characters/organics.
A LAMP web developer to build our online platform.
An Unreal Engine shader artist, with a specific focus on volumetric effects.
An Unreal Engine C++/Blueprint generalist, with experience building character systems.
An experienced Unreal Engine C++ coder.
With this team in place we'll be in a good position to deliver the level of quality we're aiming for. if you or someone you know is interested in working for the team, then please get in touch so we can discuss further. Please be aware however, due to international tax/laws we are only able to take on full-time staff in the UK. Any non-UK applicants will be contract based only.

Where to next?

Once patch 0.225.1.0 is polished and released, the very next thing we'll be doing is putting out a VR test build using that same version of the game. Once that is released we'll shift focus onto patch 0.226.1.0, which will focus on controller support, bridge NPCs, moons, a new bridge look, controller support, keybinds, and generally having the ship collide and interact with much smaller objects such as asteroids.

As always, we're continually blown away by the support we receive from our amazing community, and we honestly couldn't love you more. Be sure to join us on Discord if you want daily progress updates, and remember to subscribe to our YouTube so that you don't miss our bi-weekly developer streams! (Wednesdays & Sundays at 8pm BST)

Watch on YouTube

Original post

28 Feb 2024Developer post

Progress Report

With February almost over and March just around the corner, we thought it would be a good time to write a bit of a progress report to let you know where we're at with everything. We've got three main things going on right now - Preparing for our Kickstarter launch, remodelling th

With February almost over and March just around the corner, we thought it would be a good time to write a bit of a progress report to let you know where we're at with everything.

We've got three main things going on right now - Preparing for our Kickstarter launch, remodelling the Magellan Class exterior, and significantly overhauling/expanding the Sensors UI to prepare for our Planetary Scanning update.

Preparing the Kickstarter campaign page has actually been quite time consuming, but now that it's done and the pre-launch page is live, we really need your help!

For the greatest chance at success we need to hit 1000 followers on the pre-launch page, so if you could please share the link far and wide, we'll definitely owe you a beer in the ship's VIP lounge.

The ship remodelling is coming along nicely, with the main framework elements now clearly defined and being put into place. The C Deck layout has been finalised, and will now include feature staircases on the Port and Starboard sides, each boasting panoramic windows in the ceiling. We'll have lots of images to share once that's a bit further along, but rest assured it's going to look pretty epic.

The final D and E deck layouts are also now largely cemented, with only a small area around the shuttle bay still needing a bit more work. That's where we'll be building the brig and a small firing range for the Tactical team, along with the internal security office and associated rooms.

All of the new areas will be included in the next demo update, mostly without wall panels or lighting, but at least with finished and polished framework.

Speaking of the next demo update, the plan is to get the new Sensors UI finished and polished first, along with adding the new Planetary Scanning mode. This will include the beginnings of life calculations in the galaxy, so when scanning habitable worlds you will start to see descriptions of any life/civilisations that might exist there.

If you want a sneak peak of the new UI under construction, then check out Dan's latest dev stream on YouTube:

Watch on YouTube

Dan is now aiming to do dev streams on a weekly basis, so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you don't miss any.

Ok, I think that's about everything for now. We're still working hard on the game every single day, and we're looking forward to releasing the next update as soon as it's ready! :)

Original post

Updates & announcements

Update 13/08/2026

Important note:

21/08/26 Update

New Volumetric Stars:

Volumetric clouds:

Storms:

Volumetric Gas Giants:

August Youtube Streams:

11/07/2026

Game State Fix

New Ship's Computer

New Galaxy Gen (Genesis) System

12/07/26

30/07/26

Genesis

Ship Registry/Vessel

What am I working on right now?

July YouTube Development Streams.

June YouTube Development Streams.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.20

New / Changes

Fixes

Starship Simulator Portal

Backer Notes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.21

New / Changes

Not Yet Implemented

Optimisations

Fixes

Starship Simulator Portal

Backer Notes

May's YouTube Development Streams.

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.9

New / Changes

Fixes

Internal Development Hotfix 0.227.0.10

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.11

New / Changes

Not Yet Implemented

Fixes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.12

New / Changes

Fixes

Notes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.13

New / Changes

Optimisations

Fixes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.14

New / Changes

Captain+ - Notes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.15

New / Changes

Fixes

Notes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.16

New / Changes

Optimisations

Fixes

Notes

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.17

New / Changes

Fixes

Starship Simulator Portal

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.18

New / Changes

Not Yet Implemented

Optimisations

Fixes

Starship Simulator Portal

Internal Development Build 0.227.0.19

New / Changes

Not Yet Implemented

Fixes

Starship Simulator Portal

April's YouTube Development Streams.

Development Build 0.227.0.8

New / Changes

Optimisations