Update v0.10.1 "Welcome to Workshop"

This update brings you one of the main pillars of a good space simulator: mod support. At this stage the game will support two kinds of mods: Surface Objects and Localization. Rocket parts, rocket sharing, configurable celestial bodies and other types will come later.

Mod creation and configuration process is available in-game so there is no need to run any external applications (apart from models and textures authoring software).

I’ve created a rather detailed guide about mods with examples and lots of screenshots, so if you have never created mods but always wanted to, it’s your chance to dive right into it.

The most natural thing you can do with mods is to let other players play them. Steam Workshop integration provides an ability to share your mods with the community and download new hand-made mods for yourself. Just click ‘+ Subscribe’ and the mod you liked will be available in the game.

Only one mod is published right now, but expect more in the near future.

Solar System Map

Apart from mods there are other changes. A lot of improvements have been made to the Solar system map. First of all, 166 new celestial bodies were added to the solar system map of which 6 are dwarf planets and other are missing moons of planets.

Map gives you a lot more information now and supports not only orbit nodes, but spacecrafts, celestial bodies and surface objects.

Up to 8 grouped tooltips will be shown If more than 1 object with tooltip is under the cursor.

And last but not least, the Milky Way was finally added to the map!

Other Improvements

Some systems received a substantial redesign of internal code. I’ve described it partially in the previous post. But I want to bring your attention to several key changes.

First of all, rockets can finally physically interact with the previously launched spacecrafts that have landed or reached orbit. You can try to guess which currently missing important rocket part this change was made for to support it in the future. ;)

Secondly, the surface objects mod configuration scene helped me to identify and fix a bunch of bugs that couldn’t be fixed without it. For example, exploding rockets in the air in the certain areas of Earth and Moon, or huge surface artefacts in some places.

Artefacts like this are no longer exists

The final technical tool that was added is the save migration system. It will not only help you to avoid broken saves on each game release, but could be also used to migrate old mods to the new game version.

That’s all for you today. If you have any questions or comments, please put them below. Goodbye and happy holidays!

Release notes v0.10.1

Features:

• added mods support for surface objects and localization;
• added Steam Workshop support;
• added 166 new celestial bodies to the solar system map (6 dwarf planets and moons of giant planets);
• Solar system map improvements:
  • added tooltips for all celestial bodies and spacecrafts with name and useful info;
  • added marks and tooltips for surface objects;
  • several tooltip items will be shown if there is more than one object under the mouse pointer;
  • tooltips are colored the same way as the orbit node under it now;
• added Milky Way;
• improved autocorrection PID controller: it works much more precisely and equally well on rockets of any mass and shape;
• implemented save migration system: no more broken saves on small data format changes!
• added support for ultrawide aspect ratios like 21:9;
• added Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese fonts to the game.

Changes:

• added predicted impact coordinates to the tooltip for impact node;
• remaining rocket parts from previous stage will be moved to the new one during the staging;
• rocket no longer moved into Physics simulation, when you rotate it using direct controls in space;
• added two more save slots;
• increased size of assembly shop;
• changed assembly shop architecture a bit;
• improved performance for rockets with a lot of parts;
• improved performance of noise functions, used during planet generation;
• reduced aliasing on UI icons and small UI elements;
• unify font sizes in most game interfaces;
• applied kerning to fonts;
• improved dropdown visuals;
• added smooth transition when exiting to main menu;
• marker size settings affect all markers on the solar system map now.

Fixes:

• game stuck when selecting any far planet and then the Sun on the Solar system map;
• huge artefacts on planet surface in areas where fields transition to hills and hills transition to mountains;
• game stuck on spacecraft launch, when previous spacecraft stayed on the launchpad and was manually removed from control center;
• sometimes second launchpad appeared in totally wrong orientation when launching the rocket;
• building and rocket parts outlines sometimes stop working, when you are in the spaceport and at least one rocket is landed on Moon;
• solar system map not properly updated, when time is paused and you have selected another celestial body or spacecraft;
• atmosphere sometimes not switch off, when selecting another planet without atmosphere;
• rocket incorrectly decouples, when the parent rocket is in space and was rotated after the engines are off;
• rocket incorrectly positioned after rotation on 180 degrees in space and turning engines on;
• bad performance in assembly shop for old GPUs;
• rotational period for planets with sync rotation is incorrect;
• height sampling is incorrect in certain areas of the planet, that can lead to rocket explosion in the air or fall through the surface;
• orientation of most planets and moons except Earth is incorrect;
• light leaks on certain sun angles in the assembly shop;
• exception in the console, if one of the rocket parts was destroyed during the flight at the distance around 1000 km from the launch pad;
• parachute sometimes breaks when deployed on low altitude, even if the speed was acceptable;
• missing localization of force and duration units in the engine module window.