The main portion of 0.6 is now done, all that's left now is to start making finishing touches and fixing bugs.
Because of cicumstances related to the rest of the team being really busy with education at the moment, Maceno Bay isn't going to be updated for 0.6 (we're looking at it being finished for 0.7). Ishtar Citadel will also be staying the same for a bit, there needs to be some more time for planning to really figure out what we want to do with it.
Release Date
To mention this first, like before the current target release date is for christmas. It's not 100% certain that it will be for christmas, but we're working hard to try and get everything done before then.
New Menu
0.6 is going to be bringing a new shiny interface. Text has been scaled down and there's a bit more going on. It's no longer just text on a plain background, it now has various graphical elements.
Track Selection
The track selection menu now has 3d previews!
Fast Navigation
The menus now have a new fast navigation feature, this can be toggled on and off to prevent any conflicts with possible key bindings. The idea is that each button is tied to a number key so you can quickly get through the menu with just a few key presses. After a while you should get used to certain patterns and be able to very quickly get into the game without much effort at all.
This new interface design carries across to all menus in the game.
Campaign Grids
Campaign grids as mentioned in an earlier progress report are going to be the way you unlock new ships. These will also provide you with set goals to complete, once you complete most of the campaign events you'll then get to play the Barracuda challenge where you can then unlock Barracuda.
The background graphics are still a work in progress, but this is roughly what the grids will look like.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer will be available in the stable branch starting with the release of 0.6. Likelyhood is that it will still be a bit buggy, multiplayer is planned to have more attention later down the line. We don't really have the resources to do huge amounts of testing ourselves, even with a bunch of people on our discord server helping break it as much as possible it's a bit fiddly to try and get right.
We're excited to get this version out to people, a lot has changed the past few months and we can't wait to get it out for you to try!