Happy New Year everyone!
It might seem like progress has been painfully slow for Orion’s End, and in some ways it really has been. That’s the price of being a solo part-time dev, unfortunately.
The changes when implementing the new building system broke some old systems. So I have spent the last six weeks fixing some existing systems, and adding more to others that have been neglected for too long. Now I feel that the game is at the place where normal progress can resume. I’m really happy about that.
While I’ve been very quiet for a long time, I hope to be able to share progress much more often in 2026.
Below is an example of the work I’ve been doing since the last update:
1) Better ground textures: A small change, but I think it makes the world feel less flat.
2) Raised terrain now has ground texture that matches the normal ground. Again, a small change, but it’s a step towards the worlds looking better.
3) Better lighting for buildings: External walls can now feature lights and neon signs. This is a step towards being able to implement city planets again. Each architectural style now has 3 types: an internal, external and an external commercial/neon style.
4) Fixed the planet mini-map to display all the important features again.
5) Changes to the flight model to incorporate the Kinetic Dampeners – basically a braking system, that adjusts the speed / manoeuvrability while you are flying or in combat. This works for player and npc ships.
6) NPC Ship Combat tweaked: Using the new flight model, the combat code has been changed to make the npcs have better control of their ships. So far, it seems a lot better, but it will be improved gradually through development.
7) A new in-game manual, in the style of old PS1 games, can be accessed from the ship “library” and the titlescreen menu. It’s missing a lot of pages, and is still a work in progress.
8) Signs on shops now use the first alien language. The icon on the sign lets you know what the shop is, but the language is actually decipherable into English once you work out what each letter is. Languages will feature more in the game later on.
9) Lots of bug fixes.
10) Removed spacestations until I can convert them to the new planet system. This will be worth it though, because it will allow for customisable spacestations too.
11) Improved the ship systems customisation mechanics, with controller tips on screen to make it easier.
12) Durability to the ship components is now functional. So, now you can arrange the ships components to overclock the individual systems and get better performance (warp range, weapon strength etc) but with the cost of wear and tear on the components - which would eventually lead to them malfunctioning or breaking down. So, it’s not a long term system improvement you would make but it could allow, say, a longer warp jump if you had limited fuel.
I converted over to using Linux as my main computer and the transition was pretty smooth with development continuing pretty much as normal with only a few annoyances. However, I have had issues with the controller working on the Linux build. That may cause major issues with being able to deliver a fully working Linux build. This and some smaller frustrations in the development while on Linux has led me back to Windows for now. Until the controller issue is fixed or I can find a workaround, I will focus mostly on a Windows build.
The existing trailer is outdated now. It shows some old systems that are now improved, and others that are temporarily removed from the current build. I will update the trailer in the coming month or so hopefully, and show more gameplay footage on social media which I have neglected completely in the last six months.
I’m working my hardest to get the game to a stable and enjoyable point where I could consider Early Access, but I want to release it with enough activities to do and with enough polish that players will enjoy playing it.
Thanks for checking in. Have a great 2026, and travel safely.
Dave