Cover Image Credit: @RocketLover2333

We have been working for what feels like an eternity but is more like a year and a half on Career mode for SimpleRockets 2. We changed routes multiple times until we found something that felt like it made sense for the game. You may have already enjoyed some of the things we added as we progressed, but we had to keep a lot of stuff hidden until now, which was extremely hard! We are really proud of what we have made.

You have got to believe us when we say that we wanted this to come out more than anyone. We promised long, long ago that Career mode was coming, and we are almost there. Although we did say the 1.0 update was going to come out in 2022 we did some thorough playtesting sessions both with members of the community and friends and family who had never played before and got tons of feedback. Way too much feedback maybe? But great feedback nonetheless, so we decided to push back the release to January to get some extra time to polish some rough edges.

Thanks to all the playtesters. It's hard to express how important your help has been for us, both helping us find issues and giving us feedback on what to improve. And personally, thanks for the morale boost, seeing every one of you enjoying it so much has given me the energy to push even harder in this last stretch.

We want to get as much feedback as we can before the release in about one month to polish the game in order to have the best possible launch, and this means things will change. It is very likely contracts will change until the public release, potentially breaking your saves. We don't have a date yet for the mobile beta, but we expect it to be out in early January. This is an expectation, not a confirmation.


What a good question... we have added a lot of stuff this time, so much that I forgot some things weren't public yet and almost leaked them a couple of times. We are going to need some time to process the changelog to get it into your hands, but some of the most notable things are:

We have added a system based on a series of contracts and milestones that will allow you to unlock more and better parts in the Tech Tree to explore the Juno System, challenging you to build in a way you have never tried before. I'd like to stress that this game is not just about rockets! There are many contracts designed for cars and planes too.



A carefully crafted mixture of handmade and procedural contracts offer more hours of gameplay than we know how to count.



The new Tech Tree blends seamlessly between 2D and 3D as you interact with it.



Teased ages ago, the Juno Village is finally ready. It will be the starting point for your company in Career Mode, and another playground for sandbox, dropping you right next to the tallest mountains in Droo.



The village has many buildings and alleyways that are a lot of fun to race through while completing some of the racing contracts.



The Juno Village also has a brand new runway and lights for those who are feeling brave enough to try a landing at night.

We thought the game deserved a facelift, and it's a translucent one! We have a new UI theme that has been applied all over the place, with a totally new menu design and a revamped designer with more accessible buttons, improved info panel, and a blueprint-style platform to tease your eyes.



Have you ever been bombarded by messages of parts blowing up without knowing why? We have added a flight log that will tell you in real-time what is getting damaged, and what has been destroyed... with persistent messages, so you don't miss them if you pause the game or you have Vizzy printing things.



A lot of the parts have seen their price and mass calculations tweaked. We overhauled a ton of behind-the-scenes tools for better version control for legacy support, craft validation both in the sandbox and career mode, and better physics on wings, gyros, and wheels...

You have to believe me on this one, it has been wild. We have fixed many bugs from long ago, like wheels becoming glitchy on large crafts, but we also had to address a lot of quality-of-life improvements that were exposed when playtesting with people that had never tried the game before. We learned a lot from watching people getting stuck in some places and struggling in others, hopefully resulting in a smoother entry for new players.

To allow us to improve career mode quickly and effectively we decided to temporarily add Unity Analytics into our game during beta testing. A lot of games do that and keep it under the rug, but we know not everyone is into this, so there's an option to disable it, you will get more info when launching the game. That said, all this data is fully anonymized and helps us immensely. We are not trying to sell you anything or sell your data to anyone, we just want to see statistics on where players get stuck, what you like the most, and what you dislike.


We have many ideas in mind, but we want to prove our systems before going crazy with the contracts. Right now we only have the starting set of contracts, but that should cover a handful of hours of gameplay. Our plans include rescue missions, servicing space stations, and a short, but intriguing storyline... We will be adding contracts until the release of 1.0, and we will keep adding more in future updates.

Yeah as you've heard it. Right now we want to keep this to ourselves, because we may be tweaking things here and there, but after the release of 1.0 you will get a chance to create your own career modes, with custom contracts, tech trees, milestones, races, landmarks, customers... you name it. We think that what defines this game is customizability. One of the features where we have spent the most time is in the creation of custom careers, we have an XML-based system that will allow you to do pretty much anything, including spawning crafts too, for example, making a racing-focused career, dogfighting, a replica of the real world career mode... in the planetary system of your choice.

It isn't in the game yet, but we are porting the propeller part from SimplePlanes because we think it is a key part of the career progression. It is the only new part we are adding, but we have enhanced docking ports and wheels to be a lot more procedural too.

In order to have up-to-date stock crafts using the newest parts and features we could just patch the existing ones, but in order to let everyone enjoy the game even if they don't excel at building, we have teamed with some of the best builders in the community to bring you a new suite of stock crafts. There's some really cool stuff coming.

As you may have seen in my previous post we are in the process of updating all of our loading screens with the help of the community! So far we have received almost 100 submissions and they are all looking really good. If you want a chance at contributing to the SR2 leaving a mark in one of the most hated scenes in every game now it's your chance!

As we mentioned before, changing the UI of the game is not the only facelift we think it deserves. We are exploring options for a new logo and a new image that better represents what the game has become. We will most likely be quiet on this front until the day of release.

Finally, what everyone reading this post wanted (I hope). If you are on PC or Mac and you own SimpleRockets 2 on Steam all you have to do is go to the beta branch selector and select the 'career' branch. Select it, download it and you are in! Remember that this is a beta, you need to back up your stuff and your career saves may have to be restarted as we fix and tweak things.

We just rolled out a smallish update to squash some pesky bugs introduced in the huge Last Dab update.

• Show list of crew members for selected craft in the in Active Crafts list.
  
• Added support for setting the lock direction through vizzy on crafts that are loaded but not under the player's control
  
• Substantially increased the strength of the night vision camera effect

• Fixed a bug where the cargo bay doors would not open correctly on start if their disabled rotation was set via XML.
  
• Fixed a bug where stationary, non-player crafts could fall through the surface of Brigo when approached by the player's craft.
  
• Update state of astronauts to deceased when their craft is removed from the Active Crafts list.
  
• Fixed a bug where the craft could experience orbit glitches when using a cargo bay with no base.
  
• Updated the new rocket craft to no longer have legacy parachutes and have its Drood unassigned
  
• Corrected a typo in the price calculation of the RTG, setting them to more realistic but still cheaper than real costs
  
• Fixed an issue causing generators and RTGs to generate 1000 times as much power as they should
  
• Fixed an error in the initialization of the slider text for the slant
  
• Fixed a bug where the command disc gyro would not correctly initialize its gyro power and utilization on startup.
  
• Improved error message when validating command disc without a battery fuel source.
  
• Fixed bug with not being able to launch a craft in Planet Studio.

6 years. It's easy to forget how long that is. What was your age in 2016? What were you doing? It's been almost six and a half years since development for SR2 started, almost 5 since the birth of this website, and 4 since the closed beta.

It's been a long ride, and the game has evolved a lot, looking back at the first open beta version it's hard to recognize the game. And here we are, on our last dab, the last update before 1.0, finally. Half a year ago I explained we wanted to polish the game for it to be ready to leave early access, and through 0.9.900, 0.9.910, and now 0.9.920 I feel comfortable saying we have done it.

We have tried many things for the career mode (trust me when I say many), and we have found something that seems to fit the scale of the game and how it plays well, not forgetting what makes SR2 special, and making the game more entertaining to play. It isn't Star Citizen but we are really proud of it, and we can't wait to start showing you more in the coming months. Now, to what brought us here: 0.9.920.

The 0.9.900 update improved what we had, 0.9.910 made the game more challenging, and 0.9.920 aims to add some of what was missing before. It's one of the most feature-packed updates we've released. I'll try to cover the biggest features here, but if you want to see the entire list you can find them on the release post here.

• The new RTG and Generator parts give you more options when solar won’t cut it. The generator can generate electricity from fuel and the RTG can generate electricity from magic. Or maybe it uses radioactive decay. One or the other.
  
  
• Added two new crew compartments. The Crew Compartment can squeeze more Droods into a tighter space, but it’s more sensitive to atmospheric pressures and is likely to blow up if you take it into outer space. The Space Habitat is far more robust to external pressures, but you just can’t fit as many space sailors inside.
  
  
• New Sliding and Clamshell door animations for the cargo bay. The Cargo Bay has also been enhanced to support more customization for those of you who like to dig into the XML.
  
  
• Added a rounded style to the nosecone, fairing nosecone, and defaulted the heatshield to be rounded. Also added a depth curve parameter to support custom nosecone shapes for the XML wizards.
  
  
• The new Slant and Pinch sliders can achieve very interesting shapes with fuselage parts, especially with the Cargo Bay.
  
  
• Added digital night vision cameras, with an XML parameter to change their color (allowing for black and white cameras) and a parameter to hide the base of the camera
  
  
• Added a new Command Disc part capable of controlling the craft and with capacity for batteries and gyros
  
• Added a small variant of the solid motor for model rockets and separators, with a new graphite nozzle, more engine prefabs, and reordered the propulsion category
  
• Added options to hide the solar panel array cover, stretch the panels to change their aspect ratio, remove the holes between panels, change the sun tracking speed and define the fold angle the panels have when fully opened.
  
  
• Added Space Tourists and a new jetpack style for the very special astronauts Yuri and Sally.
  
  
• Added a Crew Assignment dialog so now you can hire astronauts and keep track of who you are sending to their certain doom.
  

• Remade Tauros from scratch in an attempt to make it interesting, and overhauled many stock celestial bodies
  
  
• Added new settings to generate even higher resolution planet textures for scaled space.
  
  
• Added a launch pad in the desert base, accompanied by some intricate valleys, and renamed the base "Ali"
  
  
• Added runway lights. This new structure is available in Planet Studio so you can quickly add strips of lights to your own runways.
  
  
• Added anamorphic flares and overhauled the existing sun flares to support custom colors defined in the system, also making them fade based on the distance to the star. Also, changed the stock star to a blue dwarf.
  

As you can see, it's a huge update and we hope you enjoy it while we continue working toward the final release with career mode. Thanks for playing!

New parts are probably as fun for us to create as they are for you to create with, but sometimes it makes sense to go back to the basics and re-evaluate some of the long-standing feedback that's been voiced by the community over the years. With career mode in the making, we decided it was about time to do these necessary tweaks for the game to feel as good as possible on the 1.0 release, having some time to get your feedback on all that is being added in 0.9.900.



Every time I've seen crafts break because of how the tinker panel was used I couldn't stop thinking about how that could have been prevented if there were no need for the tinker panel. In this update we are making most of the parts resizable, with price and mass changing according to the dimensions of the part, and many actual benefits from the size (larger electric motors being more powerful, larger cameras having a better zoom capability, larger ion engines and RCS having more power...

The parachutes have several new properties available in Part Properties to customize their size and behavior. There's also a new Drogue Chute in the part list that so many players have asked for.



Nathan has been busy polishing SR2 for those of you getting your new and shiny Steam Decks, with many under the hood improvements that we hope will make the game feel better on the deck, even if they aren't super noticeable for the rest of the players. One of the benefits for all of the platforms is that now, the control bindings should be way easier to config, but sadly, implementing this improvement means that all your existing bindings are going to be removed. We are really sorry for the annoyance but we want everyone to have the best experience possible.

One of the things we thought deserved some work before going full focus on Career Mode was the legs. We not only improved the ones we had, making them more stable and more procedural, but Kevin and Andrew worked on two new styles that, I think, are insanely cool.



Additionally, we thought that enough care was put into giving you excuses not to use the tinker panel again, and since we know you are not going to listen, we have enhanced it a bit, especially for those in mobile that can't enjoy the benefits of mods. We have ported the famous mod Overload made by Nicky, with better integration into the UI and some neat new features.



Lots of players want very different things, and although trying to please everyone is impossible, we have tried to bring some improvements to make everyone happy, from planet creators to Vizzy programmers, explorers and builders, role players, and those that like to see things explode. You can see this for yourself by checking the Release Notes.



Every change that comes with this update has a common goal: Career mode. We have been working hard deciding how to approach it and how we want the gameplay experience to be, trying to make it feel like it belongs in the game instead of just trying to get as close as possible to what other games have to offer already. Now that we have gotten rid of some of the most annoying rough edges we had we are going to go full focus on getting it right. We will try to make a couple more smaller updates in between for you to try some of the mechanics we want to have for the release of the game.

After far too many late nights of caffeine-infused coding and 3D modeling, we are proud to present SimplePlanes VR. Strap a VR headset to your face and grab the stick and throttle in front of you to fly. Flip switches, push buttons, crank levers, slide throttles, and so much more. Download community-made aircraft without leaving the comfort of your VR headset. SimplePlanes VR is the most feature-packed VR flight sim you'll find for the meager cost of a gourmet sandwich. We hope you enjoy your flight!

SimplePlanes VR is a standalone game and does not require SimplePlanes. However, if you own SimplePlanes, then purchasing SPVR will unlock VR mode in your original SimplePlanes so you can easily switch to VR mode and see how your builds are looking in VR.

• Fully immersive cockpits and virtual controls that you can reach out and grab with your hands
  
• Download and fly any number of crafts from SimplePlanes.com for free
  
• Escort a bomber, torpedo a WW2 destroyer, dogfight enemy aircraft, obliterate a convoy, and several more combat challenges are included
  
• Fly around in sandbox mode and engage neutral aircraft and ships or spawn enemy aircraft to dogfight whenever it suits your fancy
  
• Explore islands and airports to unlock secret locations
  
• Includes several air and car racecourses to compete against A.I. opponents
  
• One of the very few flight sims available for Oculus Quest, and the only one that includes helicopters and such a wide variety of aircraft!

We've got the caffeine covered. If you can help provide some positive energy then you can help keep the Jundroo machine running and churning out games and updates. Positive energy can take many forms:

1) Playing our games, of course!

2) Sharing SimplePlanes VR on social media

Thanks for playing and thanks for supporting our small indie game dev studio!

-The Jundroo Team

Even with the development of SimplePlanes VR going on we've managed to find some time to work on SimpleRockets 2, mainly polishing the game and adding some of the most wanted features that were simple enough for us to get in time.

The list of bugs fixed this time is quite large, but I think you'll especially appreciate the improvements in the aerodynamics physics, getting rid of some problems with lift forces on mirrored wings, transparency working again on the structural panels, the main launchpad supporting larger rockets without them exploding upon spawning...

On top of that, we've added some quality of life features, allowing cargo bay doors to have different types of doors (including none, which allows for custom fill amounts stacking two cargo bays), allowing the FoV in the camera part to be tweaked per part, and changing it in flight to zoom in and out as much as you want, and 2 more sliders.



Pedro has updated the textures in all the celestial bodies of the system, with some of them seeing a refresh in their biomes and terrain; and he also added a new, more detailed skybox, for all of you making telescopes to spot all the constellations in the sky.









A few of us will now focus 100% on SimpleRockets 2 to get the career mode update started while the rest of the team finishes SPVR. Once SPVR is finished, the rest of the team will join us to finish the career mode update. It will be an enormous update, so we want to make sure we get it right!

The full release notes are here.

The new update is now live on Steam and is rolling out to Google Play and iOS. It includes a new desert base, fuselage smoothing, several enhancements to Planet Studio, among other things.

The new desert base has two runways, several hangars, towers, a guard shack, and more.











The new bases have some new toys to play with as well. Now bases can support rigid bodies.

• Added new desert base.
• Added vector support to the Vizzy fUNk expression
• Added Fuselage Smoothing

New fuselage smoothing in action:

• Upgraded to Unity 2020.3.3f1
• Improved triangulation for fuselage meshes to improve lighting.
• Increased character limit of text inputs to 500.
• There is now a maximum number of encounters created, to prevent massive numbers of them from being created in certain circumstances.
• Target boxes in map-view will no longer fade out as the distance from the camera passes a certain point.
• You can now target your craft's parent planets, although no encounter prediction will be shown (since that doesn't make sense).
• Added help button to Vizzy that redirects the user to a new help section on the website.

• New base parts
  
  • Air Traffic Control Tower Basic
  • Basic Stairs
  • Concrete Sphere
  • Garage Door
  • Hangar Bunker
  • Hangar Reinforced Small
  • Hangar Reinforced Large
  • Hollow Cylinder
  • New windows
  • New Barrel PS part
  • Pallet
  • Railing parts
  • Strut Tower
  • Shipping Crate
  • Wooden Crate
• Tweaked some existing base parts to support custom colors
• Fixes to Outpost materials and fuel tank materials.
• Added Mass property to sub-structures. When positive, it will turn the sub-structure tree into a rigid body. Note:
  
  • Children with mass will not be a separate rigid body, but instead will affect the center of mass of the parent.
  • Children will use the LOD of the parent rigid body sub-structure.
  • Concave colliders are not supported and they will be automatically converted by Unity to a convex collider.
• Added Launch FX objects
  
  • Launch FX - controls child launch FX objects.
  • Launch FX Light - Lights launch particles
  • Launch FX Pad - Particle FX for a flat surface
  • Launch FX Trench - Particle FX for a flame trench.
• Added angularVelocity attribute to sub-structures.
• Moved base primitive objects to the Terrain Feature layer so the camera can clip through them in the flight scene.
• Only show Update Launch Locations button on sub-structures that actually have launch locations in them.
• Improved performance of Planet Objects flyout.
• Structures now cast shadows in Planet Studio.

We just released a small update that fixes some of the bugs that snuck in on the Planet Studio update.

Here are the changes:

• Updated the stock Juno System to version 2.2, with a redesign of Brigo, the first Droo moon
  
• You can now target your craft's parent planets, although no encounter prediction will be shown (since that doesn't make sense).
  
• There is now a maximum number of encounters created in Map View to prevent massive numbers of orbit lines from being created in certain circumstances
  
• Target boxes in map-view will no-longer fade out as the distance from the camera passes a certain point.
  
• Disabled shadows in the designer and added a quality setting to re-enable them if they are important to you.
  
• Launch locations are now added at the camera focus point (if there is one) otherwise, it's placed at the player's camera position.
  
• Structures now cast shadows in Planet Studio.
  
• Allow rotating camera view with any mouse button when there is no camera target.
  
• Fixed a bug where a camera part would never become visible again after selected in flight.
  
• When a docking port is detached, it should no-longer impart a torque that could spin the resultant crafts.
  
• When a docking port is de-activated, any in-progress docking will be aborted.
  
• When multiple docking ports are "fighting" for connections, one port will win instead of being in an infinite tug-of-war.
  
• Fixed a bug where a structure would not be placed at the correct focus point in Planet Studio when the planet was rotated.
  
• Fixes to raised launchpad and Hangar 5 UVs
  
• Added new loading screens and updated logo.
  
• Changed Droo stock image.
  
• Changed ordering of items in Add Structure dialog to be alphabetical and changed names on certain parts.
  
• Changed taxiway and road geometry to be symmetrical.
  
• Made fuel tank pipe fitting match other pipe geometry.

We did plan to get this update out sooner, but we fell into the trap of "let's just add this one last thing." Before we knew it, Kevin and Pedro had completely redesigned the Droo Space Center with a new raised launch pad, sixteen hangars, new runways, taxiways, a vehicle assembly building, dock, and a bunch of other new stuff. Planet Studio has been retooled to allow building up structures using a hierarchy of sub-structures so now you can customize and build your own bases on your planets. It's completely changed the feel of the game. I no longer have a compelling desire to blast off and leave Droo. Now I kinda want to hang out close to the ground and check out all of the nooks and crannies, of which there are plenty now.



Here are the highlights from the update:

• Planet Studio for Windows/Mac
  
• Added 20 new celestial bodies:
  
  • Completely redesigned Droo, Cylero, Luna, Tydos, Urados, and Juno
    
  • Added two new planets: Vulco and Sergeaa
    
  • Added eleven new moons
    
  • Added one new comet
• Added new runways, buildings, and launchpad.
  
• Added new gauge part.
  
• Added new launch steam visual effects.
  
• Added Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.
  
• Atmospheres now render in the main menu, map-view, and planet studio.
  
• Allow targeting launch sites during flight

Pedro has been insanely busy in Planet Studio working on new planets. He's completely redesigned the existing five planets and then added two additional planets, eleven new moons, and a controversially named comet. Pedro has an extraordinary eye for detail and the new planets really show it. They are packed full of details and it will breathe new life into your explorations.

Here's a before/after comparison of the original five stock planets.



The two new planets, Vulco and Sergeaa. Vulco is a tidally locked ball of very dark rock completely melted in the face pointing at Juno. The danger of the hot lava and its pitch black dark side makes this planet a very mysterious place to explore.

The second planet, Sergeaa, has a very rough surface that goes from huge volcanoes to gigantic lava lakes. It's covered in very dense green clouds, with an atmosphere so dense that traveling across its surface won't be a trivial task.



Our tilted gas giant isn't alone anymore in his journey through space:

Jastrus is a small ice moon sitting inside the last gap in Urados' rings.

Boreas is a much bigger ice moon covered in craters and very long cracks that run from pole to pole.

Taurus is a rocky moon with a very thick atmosphere. Its rough surface is home to some really large methane lakes.

Hypatchion is a very old ice and rock moon, and although the looks may point at it, it's not pumice, it's just covered in thousands of craters.



Check out the SRC Discord server and you can find more sneak peeks under the #updates channel. Or, just grab the new update and see them firsthand.

The full release notes are here.

We are still working hard on Planet Studio. It's taking every ounce of our souls to get this thing ready for player consumption, but we are getting closer and we hope to release it in early December. After that, we will focus on the Career Mode as we work toward leaving early access on Steam next year.

Planet Studio has been a behemoth project and it should be since it sets out to allow the player to build things like small rocky asteroids, terrestrial planets with oceans and an atmosphere, gas giants with rings, suns, and anything in between. Nathan has been developing this terrain generation system for nearly four years and it is truly incredible what it is capable of doing, not to mention that is insanely optimized and can even run well on mobile devices!

We have had trouble really using the terrain generation system to its fullest until Pedro came along. He has been blowing our minds with his creativity in finding ways to model realistic terrain features. Fortunately for players, they can easily leverage Nathan and Pedro's hard work by selecting from a set of templates, or any planet from the community, as a starting point for their planet and then adjusting basic settings and randomizing values to alter the planet's terrain.



However, creating truly unique planets will require some knowledge of how to use the built-in noise functions, which can be quite complicated. Fortunately, there will be many planets available that can be used as a reference.



Now that the planet templates are nearly finished, Pedro will start from scratch to rebuild and expand the stock planetary system. He will be maintaining the general feel of the existing planets but will be giving them more interesting features and make them more visually appealing. While we continue finishing this project up, we thought you might be interested in seeing some sneak peeks of a few of the new planet templates that Pedro has been working on.