Good day, Commander. Your immediate attention is needed!

Stable Orbit 1.0 “Zenith” is out today!

Green Man Gaming, my publishing partner, and I are very happy to now be handing this game over to you, the players. We hope you’ll create space stations that are amazing and weird in ways that we could not have imagined. Build the station of your dreams and find ways to survive those meteor showers and CBM failures. The mission is yours now. Best of luck, Commander!

https://youtu.be/w_GhE4Anh8E

Original post: http://blog.jimofferman.nl/2017/09/stable-orbit-achieved/

Good day, Commander. Your immediate attention is needed!

Stable Orbit 1.0 “Zenith” is out today!

Green Man Gaming, my publishing partner, and I are very happy to now be handing this game over to you, the players. We hope you’ll create space stations that are amazing and weird in ways that we could not have imagined. Build the station of your dreams and find ways to survive those meteor showers and CBM failures. The mission is yours now. Best of luck, Commander!

https://youtu.be/w_GhE4Anh8E

Original post: http://blog.jimofferman.nl/2017/09/stable-orbit-achieved/

The word is out, the news is official: Stable Orbit "1.0" launches on September 27th!

What a journey it has been! Way back in the summer of 2013, I spent a good portion of my train commutes to and from Nixxes Software putting together a little prototype called "Station", which let you connect blue spheres to white capsules that if you squinted really hard somewhat resembled the modules of space station.

Where most of my prototypes end up in a folder on a backup drive which I've lovingly named "Where game ideas go to die", I somehow kept getting drawn back to Station and kept working on it throughout 2014 and 2015. As the prototype slowly evolved to something that more closely resembled an actual game, it became the linchpin of a bigger plan: the launch of my own studio! Codalyn was founded on August 1, 2015 and exactly one year later, working at the studio became my full-time job.

Stable Orbit launched on Steam Early Access in the fall of 2016 and after a full year of extensive development, with lots and lots of great feedback from the community, the game is finally ready for it's true maiden voyage. How cool is that?

Thanks to the fine folks at Green Man Gaming, to the friends who were all okay with me not meeting them because I was too busy working on Stable Orbit, to my lovely family and, of course, most of all to all the players of Stable Orbit who helped make it the game it is today with their wonderful feedback!

Originally posted on http://blog.jimofferman.nl/2017/09/stable-orbit-launches-next-week/

Launch Trailer -
https://youtu.be/w_GhE4Anh8E

The word is out, the news is official: Stable Orbit "1.0" launches on September 27th!

What a journey it has been! Way back in the summer of 2013, I spent a good portion of my train commutes to and from Nixxes Software putting together a little prototype called "Station", which let you connect blue spheres to white capsules that if you squinted really hard somewhat resembled the modules of space station.

Where most of my prototypes end up in a folder on a backup drive which I've lovingly named "Where game ideas go to die", I somehow kept getting drawn back to Station and kept working on it throughout 2014 and 2015. As the prototype slowly evolved to something that more closely resembled an actual game, it became the linchpin of a bigger plan: the launch of my own studio! Codalyn was founded on August 1, 2015 and exactly one year later, working at the studio became my full-time job.

Stable Orbit launched on Steam Early Access in the fall of 2016 and after a full year of extensive development, with lots and lots of great feedback from the community, the game is finally ready for it's true maiden voyage. How cool is that?

Thanks to the fine folks at Green Man Gaming, to the friends who were all okay with me not meeting them because I was too busy working on Stable Orbit, to my lovely family and, of course, most of all to all the players of Stable Orbit who helped make it the game it is today with their wonderful feedback!

Originally posted on http://blog.jimofferman.nl/2017/09/stable-orbit-launches-next-week/

Launch Trailer -
https://youtu.be/w_GhE4Anh8E

Last Saturday, I sat down to work out my plan for the remainder of Stable Orbit’s development. First data point: the release date we want to hit. As an indie, even with a publisher, there is no point going up against the likes of, say, Call of Duty: WWII. That’s one race we’d never win, given that they are probably spending more on CoD-branded golf balls than the entire budget of Stable Orbit. And golf balls are hardly among the weirdest things used to promote games.

Anyway, from the release date I worked my way back: the game should be “done” this many days in advance, so it can go out to reviewers early. That means it will have to be on Steam by that date, so the publisher team has a chance to check everything out. Add in some slack. Subtract the weekends and care days. Good. Then this is the list of everything that still needs doing in the order that makes most sense doing those things in (I think – you’re never sure). Fine, fine. All in all, after a couple of hours working that Excel sheet I had it all down. Yes, it will be hard work. Yes, time is too short… as always. But it looks kind of reasonable so I am just going to do it and get this game launched! Cheery feelings all around. Hurrah!



And then, I got sick.



What a great start!

Now, after four days of lying in bed feeling utterly miserable, I am back on my feet. First order of business: rewrite that plan, since a couple of days of work just got lopped off. We are, however, most definitely entering the homestretch of Stable Orbit’s development. A couple of months from now, this game will be all done and dusted. Excitingly, very soon, you will be able to follow along with how the development goes because the public “developer branch” will soon launch on Steam!

Beware, the builds on the developer branch are going to be much rougher than what you may have gotten used to since Vector. For starters, my usual process of working towards a “code complete” version (with placeholder art) first and then an “art complete” version second will now be applied to the remainder of the game. Once the developer branch launches, you’ll get to play with the new “Airlock” module… but it will look like an ugly white box. Only once all the code is locked down, will I move on to the art. Creating the art for Stable Orbit is a nicely defined process – writing the code far less so.

That said, if you are up it, I’d love for you to come and play in the developer branch and help me test out the latest and greatest features. Check the development roadmap for an overview of what is still coming to Stable Orbit. The branch will go online in the next week or so – provided that Murphy doesn’t throw another spanner in the works. More soon!

Incidentally, Stable Orbit is currently on sale: save 33% until the end of the week!


--
Originally posted on my blog.

Last Saturday, I sat down to work out my plan for the remainder of Stable Orbit’s development. First data point: the release date we want to hit. As an indie, even with a publisher, there is no point going up against the likes of, say, Call of Duty: WWII. That’s one race we’d never win, given that they are probably spending more on CoD-branded golf balls than the entire budget of Stable Orbit. And golf balls are hardly among the weirdest things used to promote games.

Anyway, from the release date I worked my way back: the game should be “done” this many days in advance, so it can go out to reviewers early. That means it will have to be on Steam by that date, so the publisher team has a chance to check everything out. Add in some slack. Subtract the weekends and care days. Good. Then this is the list of everything that still needs doing in the order that makes most sense doing those things in (I think – you’re never sure). Fine, fine. All in all, after a couple of hours working that Excel sheet I had it all down. Yes, it will be hard work. Yes, time is too short… as always. But it looks kind of reasonable so I am just going to do it and get this game launched! Cheery feelings all around. Hurrah!



And then, I got sick.



What a great start!

Now, after four days of lying in bed feeling utterly miserable, I am back on my feet. First order of business: rewrite that plan, since a couple of days of work just got lopped off. We are, however, most definitely entering the homestretch of Stable Orbit’s development. A couple of months from now, this game will be all done and dusted. Excitingly, very soon, you will be able to follow along with how the development goes because the public “developer branch” will soon launch on Steam!

Beware, the builds on the developer branch are going to be much rougher than what you may have gotten used to since Vector. For starters, my usual process of working towards a “code complete” version (with placeholder art) first and then an “art complete” version second will now be applied to the remainder of the game. Once the developer branch launches, you’ll get to play with the new “Airlock” module… but it will look like an ugly white box. Only once all the code is locked down, will I move on to the art. Creating the art for Stable Orbit is a nicely defined process – writing the code far less so.

That said, if you are up it, I’d love for you to come and play in the developer branch and help me test out the latest and greatest features. Check the development roadmap for an overview of what is still coming to Stable Orbit. The branch will go online in the next week or so – provided that Murphy doesn’t throw another spanner in the works. More soon!

Incidentally, Stable Orbit is currently on sale: save 33% until the end of the week!


--
Originally posted on my blog.

Game development is a quirky beast. You plan to do X, Y and Z, but then none of those things happen and in the end you have a game that is simultaneously nothing like you imagined and exactly what you meant to make. Sense it makes not.

It so happens that I’ve run into a couple of snags with Blackout, the next major update to Stable Orbit. Part of it is the new features not coming together quite as quickly as I would have liked and then the other part is that, with each new feature added, the burden of testing and debugging builds increases exponentially as each and every feature in Stable Orbit interacts all the others – sometimes in surprising and not quite intentional ways.

After struggling with and, quite frankly, failing to deliver the release candidate for Blackout in time for it to be released at the timeslot that my publisher, Green Man Gaming, and I had lined up for it, I’ve had to take my breath for a moment and think really hard about the best way to deliver on all the features we’ve promised will be in Stable Orbit 1.0 later this year.

The plan I’ve come up with is to not do a full release of Blackout and the subsequent Umbilical. Skipping those releases frees up valuable time and allows me to reshuffle the remaining work into an order that makes most sense development wise. All in service, of course, of making Stable Orbit 1.0 the best possible game I can make.

Since I do wish to keep the early access community involved, I will soon release a work-in-progress version of the latest Stable Orbit on a Steam beta branch. That branch will be updated semi-regularly, so that those of you who are willing can still follow along with the development as it happens and – of course – provide me with some much needed feedback on how I’m doing! Beware that this beta branch will not constitute a full release and thus may be a bit less stable than you’ve come to expect.

I’m sorry to disappoint some of you by this change of plans, but it is what I believe is best for the game… and that’s what it is all about!

Originally posted on my blog

Game development is a quirky beast. You plan to do X, Y and Z, but then none of those things happen and in the end you have a game that is simultaneously nothing like you imagined and exactly what you meant to make. Sense it makes not.

It so happens that I’ve run into a couple of snags with Blackout, the next major update to Stable Orbit. Part of it is the new features not coming together quite as quickly as I would have liked and then the other part is that, with each new feature added, the burden of testing and debugging builds increases exponentially as each and every feature in Stable Orbit interacts all the others – sometimes in surprising and not quite intentional ways.

After struggling with and, quite frankly, failing to deliver the release candidate for Blackout in time for it to be released at the timeslot that my publisher, Green Man Gaming, and I had lined up for it, I’ve had to take my breath for a moment and think really hard about the best way to deliver on all the features we’ve promised will be in Stable Orbit 1.0 later this year.

The plan I’ve come up with is to not do a full release of Blackout and the subsequent Umbilical. Skipping those releases frees up valuable time and allows me to reshuffle the remaining work into an order that makes most sense development wise. All in service, of course, of making Stable Orbit 1.0 the best possible game I can make.

Since I do wish to keep the early access community involved, I will soon release a work-in-progress version of the latest Stable Orbit on a Steam beta branch. That branch will be updated semi-regularly, so that those of you who are willing can still follow along with the development as it happens and – of course – provide me with some much needed feedback on how I’m doing! Beware that this beta branch will not constitute a full release and thus may be a bit less stable than you’ve come to expect.

I’m sorry to disappoint some of you by this change of plans, but it is what I believe is best for the game… and that’s what it is all about!

Originally posted on my blog

Another Stable Orbit update glimmers on the horizon, Blackout. This update is named after one of the myriad of problems your station may encounter once the update goes live: a communications blackout due space weather. While Blackout is still a few weeks from release, I'd like to take this moment to tell you about what is coming up.

The first major new gameplay system that Blackout introduces are events, calamities and disasters. Events are benign or even celebratory occurrences like, say,  a party thrown for the 100th astronaut to board your station. Calamities add small problems to your mix of worries and include incidents like power failures, shuttles not launches due to bad weather conditions and the aforementioned communications blackout. Finally, there are disasters, which are rare events with a massive impact on the continued operation of the station. Ironically, since this is space we're talking about, even big disasters have their causes in the smallest of things. Your shuttle pods may become grounded for months at the time after a fueling incident (thanks reality) caused an explosion on the launch pad. Alternatively, you may loose an entire section of your station due to a CBM failure.

Additionally, Blackout introduces orbit controls. Up to now, your station in Stable Orbit "magically" maintained a perfect orbit around the earth - but that's not how space stations really work. With Blackout, your station will be in constant and steady decline and, like the real ISS, will require regular thruster boosts to maintain its orbit. By default, the station boosters will fire automatically at the appropriate times and all you'll have to worry about is the placement thrusters around your station (incorrect thruster placement will impair your stations ability to control and stabilize its orbit). You can also disable the automatic boosting if you wish to attempt to maintain a stable orbit all by yourself.

While the orbit map doesn't really affect gameplay, I believe it is nonetheless going to be a fun addition to the game. Most obviously, the map will show you where on (or should I say 'above'?) earth your station is and where it is headed. The fun part is you can click on a spot on the map to cause the station to use the maneuvering thrusters to alter its course until it flies over the spot you just clicked on. Orbital tourists, rejoice!

The final new addition that Blackout brings is not actually new at all and has technically been in the game since the very beginning: the ability to rewind time. I've actually demonstrated how the feature works at Gamescom last year, but I was not very happy with how you, the player, got to control the feature and therefore felt that part of the user interface needed a major rethink. Now, with Blackout, I believe that I've finally got this part right and ready for you to play around with.My hope is (and always has been) that having the time rewind feature will allow even the most casual players to enjoy the "full" experience, disasters and all, since they can always go back and try a different strategy even if some major event causes a complete breakdown of their station. Of course, for the hardcore fans who want nothing of this sort, there will be the option to turn the time rewind mechanism off entirely.

I hope you are all excited for the changes coming with Blackout. I am working in full overdrive mode to get everything finished and polished as soon as possible. You can look forward to having Blackout in your hands in a couple of weeks!

Original post: http://blog.jimofferman.nl/2017/06/prepare-for-blackout-next-stable-orbit-update/