Since in version 0.8 we implemented first version of aerodynamic mode, many people became very confused about this.
Here is a few main complaints:
1. Developers decided to make the game casual.
2. Developers now have two games, so development time now will 2 times slower
3. Developers decided to focus on aerodynamic mode instead of orbital mode, so "say bye to realism", orbital mode is abandoned, "I bought the game for orbital mode", "fraud" etc. Sometimes it is a reason for negative reviews.
So we should say
ALL OF THESE STATEMENTS IS ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT
Lets explain it in more details.
First of all, we understand why you are confused. Because you never saw such revolutionary and unique approach anywhere.
The only place where you saw approach which MAY SEEMS SIMILAR (But NOT the same), it is many games from AAA developers, which are often makes its games more and more casual, by deleting features, in order to make development cheaper and obtain more sales.
But this is not the same what we are doing. It can be similar by the first glance, but it is illusion.
We will never use such approach. For us, development of casual games is inacceptable.
We are like to develop complex and hardcore games with deep mechanics. Development of casual games absolutely is not interested for us.
What we are doing, it is revolutionary and unique approach for development. Currently it will be hard to explain, since this approach will show its full power only after some time of development, but in a nutshell: "Single flexible core - various game rules".
Basically, we want to ask a simple question.
Are we deleted orbital mode from the game?
The answer is no. And we don’t plan to do it.
So why you are thinking that we are abandoned orbital mode and going to create a casual game?
You may think that since we are focused on aerodynamic mode, the orbital mode now will be developed extremely slowly.
But it is an another illusion.
Actually, since aerodynamic mode was implemented, development of orbital mode now significantly faster than before!
We created a simplified graph in order to show what we mean.
Look:
Hard to believe? But this is true.
It first glance you may think "If developers now have 2 tasks instead of one, it means that each task now have only 50% development speed instead of 100%"
But this statement is not relevant if we are talking about development using our new approach.
There is several factors which makes it possible.
First, as we told above, a "single flexible core".
You see, implementation of aerodynamic mode took very little efforts. Approximately 5% from the all development time, or even lower.
All what we need to do it is just enable friction and change world generator a bit. That's it.
With the few small steps, we created basically another game which provides even more gameplay experience
Think about it, if we can spend only a 5% of development time and as result, achieve almost 100% of new gameplay experience, it will be very unwise to not do it.
Also there is another example:
Some other game developers may create another game based on their previous game with very few changes, but the game will be sold on full price tag as a different game.
Instead of such approach, we just added "another game" for free (even not a FREE DLC), just a regular update which adds more content into the base game.
If you don't like aerodynamic mode - just ignore it. The speed of development of orbital mode is the same as before (and even faster) so nothing to worry about.
But actually we recommend to check both modes, because each mode have its advantages and interesting gameplay aspects.
You may say "But you already developing aerodynamic mode for a two months, and orbital mode is abandoned" - and this statement will be incorrect
In the last few updates only a few small changes related specific to aerodynamic mode.
Majority of changes it is huge improvements of core mechanics, optimization and bug fixes which is related to both modes.
Even if we will have 10 various game modes, these changes will be automatically applied to all game modes at once.
"Single flexible core", remember?
But how it is possible that development of orbital mode now even faster than before?
It is because orbital world where everything in constant motion, it is very inconvenient environment for development.
It is hard to explain such specific technical aspects of game development, but in a nutshell "If entire world of the game is moving - it is very bad".
Actually Celestial Command it is basically the only game where entire world of the game is moving. It is completely violates standards of game development, what generates a lot of technical problems (most of them more or less solved during long and complex development), but still, testing of features and fixing of bugs could be very hard in orbital mode.
So we decided to implement aerodynamic mode and use it as a platforms for tests and fixes! And since there is single core, such fixed applied to both modes.
The result turned out extremely good! During a few months we made more improvements than during the year. And we continue to add even more fixes with each update, which are now quite often.
So, as you can see, everything is much more complex that it seems at first glance. We even didn't described all benefits from such approach, but the text already turned out too big.
Anyway, later you will notice how much quality of the game was improved since version 0.8.