That's it, the game is out in Early Access!
It was a long journey from a simple rocket arcade to full-featured space simulator. But I want to share current state of the game before telling you about last 20 days from the last update.
The following features are available in the game now.
- Persistent sandbox mode that retains your launches.
- 51-step tutorial that will teach you all the basics of the game.
- Assembly shop with 25 rocket parts in it, 10 of which have additional configuration.
- Slot-based rocket construction system, which is easy to learn, but hard to master.
- Flights with realistic physics, aerodynamics simulation and orbital mechanics.
- Earth in real scale to explore. This one is generating using NASA elevation maps, so it is possible to find a place where you actually live in the game.
The game is generally stable. It still rarely crashes, but I haven't found a way to consistently reproduce this bug. So it would be great, if you could help me with it.
What is currently missing, but will be added in the next updates:
- Flight planning mode with time rewind. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it good and stable enough in time, so I disabled it.
- Saving presets of connected rocket parts.
- Bulk operations and symmetry tools in the Assembly shop.
- The Moon. This one is technically in the game, but it is unreachable without planner.
As for the last 20 days it was really hard. Most of the time I've spent making tutorial and fixing tons and tons of bugs. I literally fixed more than 70 bugs during that time. But this wouldn't have been possible without intensive playtesting. Thanks @gmhs, @irony, @icxon and @forsist for bug reports and feedback.
Here is also some interesting stats about the game development:
- I started to track development time in January 17, 2019. Since then I've spent 2280 hours making this game. And five more months before that.
- The project size is 41Gb without Earth and Moon elevations maps which add 15 Gb more.
- I've made 1736 commits into game repository.
And this is only the beginning of a long journey to creating great game. Thank you for being with me all this time and see you in the next update.