Today’s update finally extends the explorable boundaries beyond Earth and Moon. It also brings a lot of loading time and performance improvements, new Navball and several new rocket parts you've been waiting for. Let’s get started.


Implementing this one was not that easy. I needed to add a new atmospheric physics for Mars, and also develop a new visual model for it. Procedural texturing was challenging too, because you have a lot less visual references compared to Earth. I am not completely satisfied with the result, but it is good for the first iteration. As for Phobos and Deimos it turns out that they have non-spherical shapes so adding support for non-spherical shapes for the Solar system map took a while too. In the end, the red planet and its two tiny moons are waiting for brave explorers!


Elon Musk's dream


Phobos


Deimos


Night on the surface of Phobos


Navball not only includes visuals rework but also provides more information such as a fuel indicator and heading angle. Every part of navball now has a tooltip where you can also find numerical values of current throttle and fuel amount. You can also switch between stage and rocket fuel using a new button at the top of navball.



As a bonus I’ve added a new Navball mod type where you can customize its appearance. I will update the mod guide later this week, but you can already try a KSP-like navball from the workshop! (Just don’t forget to select it in the game settings after subscribing to the mod).



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2534826336


New space context menu will make your life easier! You can left click on a spacecraft or celestial body and get context-dependent options, like “Switch to” or “Focus”.



The “Set as target” option from the context menu will show ascending/descending nodes on your orbit and will add “Target” and “Anti-target” autocorrection modes to Navball.



Last but not least, the maneuver raycast handle will automatically snap to orbit nodes, so the maneuver can finally be placed exactly on periapsis or ascending node! You can hold the ALT key to switch to the old behaviour.




Rocket parts from this update include two new engines! Since every engine in the game is based on real analogue from the USSR or Russia, it requires a lot of research to create and add it to the game. That’s why all previous updates didn’t include them. But this time everything came together and you can try the most powerful single-chamber liquid fuel engine ever created in the USSR for the lunar program (sadly, it wasn't used in real flights because its development was stopped in 1970).



The second engine added to the game has the highest specific impulse in vacuum in the game (but lowest thrust). You can try to guess on which real engine it is based.




There are a lot of changes and fixes in this update too. Most important are loading times and performance improvements and a bunch of flight fixes. You can find a full changelog below. I am planning to release one more big sandbox update in the future (which will include a rocket instruments feature I talked about in the previous dev update) and then switch to spaceport building.

I hope you will enjoy this update. If you encounter any bugs or problems with it, don’t hesitate and leave it on the forums or in the official Discord channel. Thank you and see you in the next update.


Features:

• added Mars, Phobos and Deimos to the game;
  
• added atmospheric pressure models for Mars and Venus;
  
• added space context menu with contextual Switch To, Focus and Set Target options;
  
• you can set target for spacecraft, two new autocorrection modes will appear (Target and Anti-target);
  
• ascending/descending nodes for spacecraft orbits with target set;
  
• redisigned navball UI + added tons of tooltips to it;
  
• new mod type: navball, new celestial bodies were also added to the surface mod;
  
• orbit raycast is now snapping to the closest orbit node (you can hold Alt key to disable this behaviour);
  
• significanly reduced game launch time, especially on old GPUs;
  
• imroved perfomance of spacecraft gravity, engines and drag calculations (again);
  
• flight loading time reduced by 3-5 seconds; when spacecraft is in a deep space it is almost instant now;
  
• max possible planet quadtree level now equals 30 (previously was 17), this means that the same LOD could be achieved on the planets with pretty much any radius;
  
• new engine parameter "Throttle limits" (for now it was only added to engine 4)

New rocket parts:

• "Vega-072" Liquid Fuel Engine
  
• "Yuzhniy-348" Liquid Fuel Engine"
  
• "Dvutavr" Stroage Bay
  
• Storage Fairing 1.4m
  
• Adapter 4c-7s

Changes:

• focused body no longer reset when closing and opening solar system map;
  
• real planet surface now loaded instead of the fake surface in the spaceport and assembly shop;
  
• perfomance settings now affect planet surface in the spaceport and assembly shop;
  
• unified sun look on map and during the flight;
  
• Sun disk has proper size now and depends on distance to the Sun;
  
• earth atmosphere on solar system map and startup system uses proper exposure and color correction;
  
• fixed exposure is used on the solar system map until different exposure modes will be implemented (back planet side will be a bit dark becuase of that);
  
• water quads under the planet surface will no longer render (perfomance improvement);
  
• changed planet's surface triangulation, it is less stretched along one axes right now;
  
• greatly decreased amount of geometry rendered during the flight (moderate perfomance improvement);
  
• changed how rocket part impact is calculated: now it is using force, applied to part to resolve collision and not just a relative velocity;
  
• added mod type icon to mods in the mods list;
  
• for some very small sattelites with no its mass data available set a minimum mass;
  
• for some very small sattelites with SOI less than radius set minimum SOI size equals 1.75 x radius.

Settings:

• added navball selector to the game settings;
  
• added hotkey: ` - reset focus on map;
  
• added hotkey: Alt + Shift - step increase throttle;
  
• added hotkey: Alt + Ctrl - step decrease throttle;
  
• changed hotkey: from ` to Alt + ` - pause/resume time;
  
• hold ALT key to disable maneuver snapping.

Fixes:

• encounter prediction doesn't work outside of Earth's SOI;
  
• distant celestial bodies dissappear when turning on any light during the flight;
  
• rectangle connector not attaching to heptahedron socket if it already have hexdual connector attached;
  
• planet's atmosphere disappeared when switching from spacecraft orbiting the Moon to spacecraft orbiting Earth;
  
• rocket parts exploded when decoupling them in the atmosphere at the speed over 5000 m/s;
  
• reattaching rocket part with symmetry turned on not creating symmetry parts;
  
• spacecraft fly into abyss if engine is working and spacecraft changes SOI;
  
• grounded spacecraft explode when starting engines;
  
• collisions between grounded spacecraft and active not work or work incorrectly;
  
• impact node sometimes displayed when shouldn't
  
• impact node not showing after closing and opening map;
  
• orbit nodes sometimes placed incorrectly during encounter prediction;
  
• stars are too bright at night in the spaceport;
  
• predicted orbits are incorrectly scaled, if map scale was changed, when orbit was not active;
  
• camera keep high rotational damping, when changing camera mode and then switching to map and back;
  
• save panel is not showing in the surface mod constructor;
  
• Eris have no gravitational parameter;

As time went on, I realised that three-months cycle for HDYLIEM development is the best. Three months is a good chunk of time to make meaningful changes to the game. And it is not long enough so players start thinking that the game was abandoned.

The first month I always spend refactoring and improving the game's code base and implementing features that may not be that important right now, but will be very useful in the future. Why am I doing this? Because in the long run high-quality and resilient to changes code will undoubtedly win. It produces less bugs on each change and implementing new game mechanics or adding a content becomes a simple and pleasant process. Also some things are much easier to add on the earlier stages of the development because game architecture is still flexible.

Let me show you some examples.

In the current live version of the game, the planet surface in the spaceport or assembly shop is fake. I mean, there are a bunch of surface quads that I got from the flight on spaceport coordinates and saved as static meshes and then I am loading them with other buildings. I did that because 1.5 years ago planet generation and rendering was not that performant comparing to how it is working right now. There is one problem with that. Every time you launch the rocket game needs to create the whole planet. And every time you return back to the spaceport it needs to destroy the planet. It is a long process and that’s why these transitions were so long.

So I’ve changed that. Right now Earth is created when you load a spaceport for the first time. And if you go to the flight on the spacecraft that is located on the surface of the Earth or orbiting around it, nothing will be destroyed or created, because the planet is already there and ready for action. So what? There are a bunch of advantages to that:

• spaceport is located in a real place on the planet;
  
• transitions between spaceport/assembly shop and flight are much faster now;
  
• quality and performance settings affect planet surface in the spaceport/assembly too;
  
• spaceport could be located in any point on Earth;
  
• spaceport could be located on any planet in the Solar System.

The last two items from the list are not usable right now. But when I need to make a selector of the starting spaceport position or position and render a player's colony on Mars, it will be as simple as setting two coordinates for that.

While I worked on that, I decided to experiment a bit with the surface mesh triangulation. Here are some before and after screenshots:





Interestingly, that the triangles count is the same in both cases. Every even triangle just rotated 90 degrees relative to the previous one in the new triangulation algorithm

And in game result (you may click on them to compare in full resolution):




The change is subtle, but the surface no longer looks like it was stretched along one of the axes

It seems to me like such small details is an important part of what actually makes the game good.

Second month of the development cycle I usually spend on some big changes in the game that actually affect gameplay in some form. And the third month is the time for adding new rocket parts, small changes and improvements, local verification, testing and bugfixing.

The changes I made at the start of the second month were not so big but very important for the game. I decided to rework the navball UI. The current one is performing its function but is painful to look at. Here is some results of work:


How it is right now


How it will be

Navball UI moved to 3D and also has a heading angle value and a fuel amount indicator now. Also I’ve added two more rocket status indicators that are reserved for the future. Also if you hover the mouse over part of the navball it will show a tooltip describing its functionality.

The next thing I need to rework is the window that contains flight and environment stats. Like pressure, altitude etc. But I don’t want to just change this window. I want to make it so that if you want to get pressure, altitude, temperature or other values, you need to install an appropriate instrument on your rocket. Some command modules could contain some instruments already installed. For example “Vys” command module will most likely have an altimeter installed (you definitely don’t want to send a crewed spacecraft without this info). But for others command modules or probe cores it should be your decision what instruments to take on a flight. This will make rocket building a bit deeper and also will bring a bunch of new rocket parts into play. Cargo modules will become useful as well.

I have more features implemented at this moment, but I will hold on to them until the release which is planned at the end of June.

The last thing I want to talk about is the game modes. Right now I am working exclusively on Sandbox, because you can incrementally improve the game and release an update every three months or so. This is all good but the game was about spaceport building at the start of this project, so I am planning to release two more Sandbox updates (this and the next one) and switch to the Survival mode development. The problem with this one, is that it could only be released when it will be mostly ready with the finished and solid game loop and good progression system. It means that most of my work will be hidden until this mode will be finished. But I will still try to make a release once in three months including content and changes related to the Sandbox.

Hope you enjoyed this dev blog, see you in the next update!

P.S. Here is one more work-in-progress screenshot, just for you.

Hello everyone! it’s time for another update! This one is the biggest one in terms of fixes and changes since the game release. Let’s not waste any more time and jump right in. Note the hotkeys changes in the changelog below!


Save the group of parts into subassembly and use it later during construction of another spacecraft.


Save subassembly


Use subassembly


Use a rotation handle to rotate part groups and already attached parts following the attachment rules.


Rotation of whole rocket


Rotation of attached part


Symmetry works during rotation too


I’ve implemented a new ocean system. It includes real waves, foam and it changes color depending on depth to the sea floor. Also simple collisions were enabled for the ocean surface, so you can land spacecraft on it. It is a temporary solution until proper water physics will be implemented


Ocean before


Ocean after


Ocean in motion


Added new camera modes during the flight and on the solar system map.


No rotation involved, just switching between different camera modes


I rewrote the planet shader to improve its performance. During this process, I discovered and fixed several critical bugs. That led to significant changes in the planet's visuals on a small scale.


Before. You can see noticable tiling here


After. No noticable tiling, improved texture blending

In case of Moon too much detail appeared I would say. I will review Moon texturing another time and will decide if some changes required.




You can instantly switch between spacecrafts during the flight.


Switching between visible spacecrafts


Switching between spacecrafts using map

You can also switch between command modules if you have more than one installed.


Electricity was redesigned from ground up. Real physical units are used (Watt for power and Joules for energy) instead of some unnamed ones. All parts that use electricity now have physically correct parameters (to some extent).


Added a new type of rocket part — light. It consumes energy and produces light photons. It should improve the experience of flights and landing in the dark. Two light parts were added, with more to come in the next releases.




Nine new rocket parts await you in the assembly shop!




Changed Repeat hotkey from R to Q and cycle symmetry hotkey from X to C. Added many new hotkeys and some button tooltips are showing hotkey labels now. Saved user controls were reset to the default ones because of that.

You can find more changes in the changelog below. Since the game become bigger and bigger it is hard to check every possible test case. So some minor bugs are expected and if you encounter them, please report them on the forum or on Discord. Thanks for playing and see you in the next update which should include one famous red planet.

• new ocean system, that includes real waves and foam, also it changes color depending on depth to the sea floor;
  
• added subassembly support;
  
• added Grab and Rotate modes to assembly shop;
  
• added rotation handle that appears in the Rotate mode, when any rocket part was selected;
  
• you can rotate already attached part relative to its parent respecting socket restrictions, symmetry works for rotation too;
  
• instant switch between any spacecrafts by double clicking on it during the flight;
  
• added ability to switch between command modules on the spacecraft if there are more the one (left click on it -> toggle "control from here");
  
• added 5 camera orientation modes and ability to switch between them;
  
• added new part type — light;
  
• added real physical units for energy (Jouel) and power (Watt);
  
• implemented deep space camera rendering, any solar system object in theory can be seen from anywhere (but they are usually too small);
  
• improved planet shader visuals and speed;
  
• added shortcuts labels to most button tooltips;
  
• default planet body (with no height/texture data) will be loaded, when reaching celestial body, that was not added to the game yet (previously game just crashed);
  
• enabled simple collisions for water surface (this is a temporary solution until proper water physics will be implemented);

• Solar Panel GOST 12|12-00-1996
  
• "Tesla" Illuminating Device
  
• 2239-79 Signal Light Source
  
• Conic Fuel Block
  
• Hexagonal Prism T100
  
• Hexagonal Prism T200
  
• Structural Adapter Cube-1.2
  
• Structural Adapter 1.2-Module
  
• Modular-to-Cubic Adapter

• сompletely redesigned rocket part stats related to electricity;
  
• increased energy producing area of solar panel 1;
  
• improved shape of Small Battery;
  
• lowered center of mass of command 0;
  
• deprecated part Cubic Rack Adapter;

• launchpad zone directly under the spacecraft could destroy parts now (previously this feature was intentionally disabled);
  
• increased minimum scale on solar system map when spacecraft is current camera target;
  
• added additional time scale step equals to 7 days (may be increased in the future);
  
• implemented smooth transitions between different time scales;
  
• navball size on UI now independent from screen resolution;
  
• when placing first rocket part that has variants, selecting its variants will change already placed part instead of creating the new one;
  
• improved default orientation of rocket parts on connection to side sockets;
  
• improved socket selection during part attachment, so it tends to have a smallest angle possible between parts;
  
• added missing collision parts for different structure parts;
  
• camera will focus on the first placed part or group of parts in the Assembly shop;
  
• Rocket list changes:
  
  • edit button in rocket list was removed from list items;
    
  • double click on rocket item or click on edit button from actions panel to go into edit mode;
    
  • press ALT+click on rocket item to rename it;
• you can now rename spacecrafts in the Control Center, by pressing ALT+click on its name;
  
• solar system map markers are much smoother now and have slight dark outline;
  
• improved part tooltip alignment — it is now consistent between parts;
  
• updated tutorial, to reflect recent changes in hotkeys;

• added ocean quality setting into Performance category;
  
• added default camera orientation mode settings for space flight and Solar system map;
  
• added maneuver and assembly handles size settings;
  
• changed Repeat hotkey from R to Q;
  
• changed Cycle Symmetry hotkey from X to C;
  
• added Reset Symmetry hokey: Alt+C;
  
• added Cycle Camera Orientation hotkey: V;
  
• added Extend/Retract Solar Panels hotkey: P;
  
• added Turn On/Off Lights hotkey: U;
  
• added assembly modes hotkeys: G (Grab Mode), R (Rotate Mode);

• rocket part keeps glowing after destruction sometimes;
  
• on any resolution other than 1080p, spacecraft list looks wrong in the control center;
  
• failed to launch spacecraft if its name is too long;
  
• rocket can stuck in one place, if fuel was depleted and there were a lot of engines and fuel tanks in it;
  
• only first part are correctly aligned to the attachment, if you try to connect group of parts to the rocket;
  
• exception, when several connected in a row decouplers were decoupled at the same time;
  
• decoupled part sometimes gets incorrect position;
  
• rocket with bad orbit breaks the save file;
  
• when flying straight up from Earth until transitioning from elliptic to hyperbolic orbit, spacecraft appears in the center of sun and game sometimes crashes;
  
• spacecraft shadows are flickering on high orbit altitudes;
  
• when passing the Moon SOI Earth atmosphere sometimes appears in the wrong place;
  
• if you have two payload fairings attached to decoupler 0 and then move the decoupler, part group will always reset its position;
  
• exception when trying remove part using Delete when it has red outline;
  
• exception when group of parts was cloned but not placed and Undo was pressed;git;
  
• stars sometimes disappear when rocket is flying on low orbit;
  
• sun disk is missing on solar system map and in the start scene;
  
• shadows are flickering sometimes in assembly shop;
  
• orbit markers change their brightness depending of sun angle relative to camera;

• maneuver planner not correctly finding encounters, when building trajectory from Earth to the outer Planets;
  
• rotation symmetry not working for the parts, attached to the same attachment;

• solar Panels not working when spacecraft is orbiting around the Sun;
  
• two suns appear when spacecraft is orbiting around the Sun;
  
• spacecraft name is not saved when renaming it and then exiting from game;
  
• sometimes game stuck on starting flihgt;
  
• sky breaks if you are in spaceport and selecting spacecraft, orbiting another planet and then exiting from map;
  
• rocket rotating like crazy after changing SOI;
  
• maneuver panel sometimes doesn't show up after loading flight if orbit already had a maneuver;

• Updated "About" window;

• rare memory leak, when nothing changes on the solar system map;
  
• potentiial crash when rocket has a lot of solar panels and lights and they were destroyed.

Hi there, fellow rocket builders! First and foremost, today marks the 1-year anniversary of Elon’s release on Steam!

It was an incredibly difficult but productive year, and I wanted to thank everyone who supported me during this time. Thanks to you, I was able to improve the game far beyond its release state and get an incredible feedback I never hoped to achieve.

Now, obviously, I couldn't possibly leave you without a present. The next update will be released on March 26. While it's still in development, I'll tell you about what's been done and reveal some of the features that will be there.

First of all, I’ve updated the game to the latest engine version. You will never know what will break during such updates, but it seems that almost everything broke this time. And I spent a good amount of time fixing all these problems. But why was this update needed? Because the game initially was built on a new high definition renderer in Unity, which produces wonderful graphics, but had a huge limitation — you can not have more than one camera in the game (actually can, but it is so expensive, that FPS immediately dropped from 60 to 30 for the one additional camera).

This was almost a game breaking limitation. For example, at least 4 cameras are used in KSP during the flight:

• for close geometry (everything closer than 500 meters);
  
• for far geometry (from 500 meters to the horizon);
  
• for rendering scaled space (mostly other celestial bodies);
  
• for rendering kerbals inside of command modules.

Moreover, one additional camera was used for rendering of reentry effects. But I could use only one camera and it also had a limited rendering range. Luckly, the Moon was able to fit into this range, that's why it was visible from Earth. But the rest of the Solar System beyond that range (except Sun and stars — they use other rendering techniques) was invisible during the flight. Also making reentry and atmosphere friction effects were completely impossible and there were some bugs with constantly disappearing stars.

The latest engine version introduces a concept of Custom Passes. Basically, you can render a scene from any point of view with any camera properties, but without paying a cost for the entire second camera. This helped me to make a camera rendering range almost infinite, fix a bunch of bugs and prepare for adding reentry effects in the future.

The next thing I’ve switched to was an assembly shop improvement. I’ve added a highly requested feature - subassemblies. You can grab any group of parts and save it as subassembly, which can be used later during other rocket construction.



One cool feature is that you can edit subassembly like a regular rocket, duplicate the existing or create the new one at any time.



I’ve improved default parts orientation during attachment, so its behaviour is more predictable now.


Orientation before


Orientation after


Side symmetry orientation before


Side symmetry orientation after

And I reworked an algorithm that places a first part, so it is compatible with the part variants.


If first rocket part has variants and you select another variant, part will be automatically replaced

Currently I am working on assembly shop modes. Three modes are planned: Select, Grab and Rotate with several more to come later.



The default one is a Grab mode. It is similar to how assembly shop works now. You can grab parts, move them and attach to each other in this mode. In the Rotate mode you can select any part and rotate it using hotkeys or specific rotational handle. I will also allow you to rotate already connected parts following a set of restrictions.

There are basically two restrictions to this: you can only rotate the part around the connection axis and connectors should still fit into slots after rotation.

For example, a part attached using a single connector could be rotated on any angle. In the case of hexagon connection it can be rotated with 60 degrees step.

In the last Select mode you will be able to select a single part without risk of moving or rotating it. It will be used in the future for opening part properties and for such operations, like rerooting a rocket to the selected part.

A bunch of new parts will also be added in the next update. Five of them are already done, but I will not spoil them for now. In addition to the improvements to the assembly shop, there will be new flight-related features united by one common theme. Can you guess what kind of theme it is?

Patch v0.10.2 was released. It addresses some crashes related to rocket removal and introduces some improvements and adjustments.

• hold Alt when changing deltaV of maneuver to do it in "Precision" mode with highly reduced sensitivity.

• enabled ACES tone mapping for startup scene and solar system map to improve colors in these mods;
  
• unified color and brightness of stars and milky way in map and in the flight mode.

• added maneuver Precision Mode Sensitivity to game settings.

• crash, when spacecraft is leaving SOI of Earth and it was removed from the space center;
  
• sometimes black dots appears in Earth atmosphere.

• added show root part toggle to Assembly shop UI.

• when rocket collides with the ground it explodes more precisely;
  
• better big rocket positioning in the assembly shop;
  
• imporved shadows in the assembly shop.

• game completely breaks, when decoupling part that has decouplers attached, that also decouples;
  
• rocket slightly gitters when standing on the launchpad and engines are turned on and there is at least one "Zarya" engine.

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.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2326439478
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.

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!



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!

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Quick update here. Last two months I’ve been busy improving the game's internal code and structure. The main purpose of these changes is that I want the game to support thousands of flying spacecrafts and most Celestial bodies in the Solar system. It was not possible before, and that’s why.

So, a typical rocket consists of several parts. Every rocket part may have several modules which determine what exactly the part can do. For example, every engine could have up to 4 modules:

• Engine Module (engine itself);
  
• Engine Gimbal Module (thrust vector control);
  
• Engine Generator (energy production if engine is on);
  
• Engine Effects (engine sounds and visual effects).

Previously, the simulation system executed an "Update" function of each module of each part of each rocket every frame. But a lot of rocket parts have only config-like modules without any behaviour (like engine effects) or no modules at all, so the time spent on updating such parts is wasted. And if you have more than 20-30 rockets (which I have repeatedly observed in some videos on YouTube), that time becomes considerable.

I’ve rewrote a simulation system such that it directly updates only modules with functionality. Combined with the drag calculation performance improvements introduced in the last update, it makes my initial goal reachable.

Likewise with the Solar system. To support not only 8 planets and their main satellites, I needed to unify orbit calculation (which is already crazy fast) and celestial body positioning and rendering, to not perform the same calculations several times.

There are also more underhood changes I made and some new features I implemented, but I will talk about them in the next update release. If everything goes well it is expected on December 18. If not then December 24 is the day.

Here is a small teaser specially for you.



And another one. What it can be?

Greetings.

Today’s update is the first step in making rocket construction a more enjoyable experience. I have also rewritten a lot of game internals which allowed me to implement new features that weren't possible before. Below I will focus on the most impactful changes, and the full patch notes will be at the end of the post.

Yes it’s finally here. You can build your rockets, using symmetry now! Since rocket parts can be attached to each other only using attachment points, symmetry in “How do you like it, Elon Musk?” works a bit differently than in other games.

First of all, there is a new symmetry control panel where you can change symmetry count in different ways.


You can also use X and Shift-X to do the same thing

Radial symmetry supported not only on side attachments:



but also on one attachment with several slots.



More complex cases are supported too:



Lastly, you can cycle symmetry count just before connecting the parts:



But there are some constraints to this system. If symmetry count does not match with available attachments or one of the attachments is already occupied, it will not work. Also symmetry is calculated relative to the root part. Root part is the first part of the rocket. Since there are no constraints on what part could be the first at this moment, symmetry can give you weird results, if you start building your rocket from the fin, for example.

One thing that is missing right now is the symmetric part removing. This is a bit more complicated, because I store no info about what parts were added using symmetry. So you need to set symmetry before removing and it will remove all parts that will match the symmetry count. I need to think about it and test this feature a bit more before shipping.

The next feature that this update brings is parts copying. Press Shift and click or drag any part to copy it and all connected to it parts.



I’ve also added a toggle to show the rocket center of mass, improved tools panel and fixed some bugs (especially with undo/redo).

After a bunch of refactorings the data about each part position and rotation relative to the rocket is now available in the spacecraft simulation system. This allowed me to implement several features that were not possible before.

First of all, I can correctly calculate rocket bounds now. This means that spacecrafts in most configurations will be precisely placed on the launchpad (no more floating in the air).

Secondly, since solar panels orientation is available in the simulation, their energy production depends on angle between panel and Sun. Solar panels also no longer produce energy, while the Sun is occluded by the planet.

Lastly, payload fairing and cargo modules start to actually protect the parts placed into them from the atmospheric drag! This is a huge change, because this makes a whole class of parts useful during rocket construction.

And finally, command pod or probe core can have any orientation relative to the rocket. Navball and velocity markers will be oriented relative command pod orientation and not rocket up direction, like before.

Last change is also very impactful, because you can finally put satellites into orbit, using a launch vehicle.



There are many changes here, but here are some most interesting:

• rockets in the assembly are sorted by update time now, spacecrafts in the control center are sorted by mission time (newest first);
  
• added icons for ships, probes and debris in the control center and for the Solar system map. I will add proper spacecrafts filters in the next update, so you could show and hide spacecrafts by category;
  
• added 4 new rocket parts and changed the shape or parameters of some fuel tanks and adapters.

And last thing I want to point out is the game size on disk. Previously it was around 8Gb and I managed to reduce it by 2Gb using compression for Earth and Moon heightmaps. If you don’t see the change in size after the update, try to reinstall the game (Steam sometimes doesn't remove redundant files).

Once you've downloaded the update, you may need to restart your Steam client. In the off chance the game isn't working properly for you after the update, please try verifying the game files:
- right-click on How do you like it, Elon Musk? in your Steam Library
- select 'Properties...', then select the 'Local Files' tab
- select 'Verify Integrity of Game Files...'

That's all for today, I hope you will enjoy this update.

P.S. Note: saves from the previous versions of the game doesn't compatible with current version. I will think about adding save migration tool in the next update.


Features:

• reduced build size by 2 GB by applying compression for planet heightmaps;
  
• [Assembly shop] symmetry tools are available during rocket construction;
  
• [Assembly shop] you can duplicate part or part group using hotkey;
  
• [Assembly shop] added toggle to show rocket center of mass;
  
• [Assembly shop] undo and redo now supports rocket part rotations;
  
• [Assembly shop] spacecraft will keep rotation that was set for it (after exiting an edit mode and during the flight);
  
• angular drag is now calculated and applied to rockets flying in the atmosphere;
  
• payload fairing and cargo modules start to actually protect the parts placed into them from the atmospheric drag;
  
• spacecrafts support any command pod rotation relative to the rocket and will appropriately orient navball, markers and direct controls;
  
• added icons for ships, probes and debris in the Control Center and for the Solar system map;
  
• total playtime is recorded into save slot (not counting loading time).

New parts:

• Adapter 1.2-0.35;
  
• Series S Fuel Tank;
  
• Spherical Fuel Tank;
  
• L-shaped Block.

Part changes:

• increased radius of Payload Fairing;
  
• reduced energy capcity for probe core "Sputnik-2" from 42 to 36;
  
• decreased diameter of "FT-800 Fuel Tank" from, 1.2m to 0.7m and adjusted its paramters;
  
• changed shape of Adapter 1.2-H and renamed to Adapter 0.35-0.6-H;
  
• added porthole to "Vys" Command Module;
  
• decreased length of "Adapter 0.35-0.55";
  
• changed shape of "Basic adapter" and added 3 more connection variants for it.

Settings:

• [Assembly shop] hold Shift and click or drag rocket part to duplicate part and all connected to it parts;
  
• [Assembly shop] Press Ctrl+S to save the rocket
  
• [Assembly shop] Press X to cycle through symmetry count;
  
• [Assembly shop] Press Shift+X to cycle through symmetry count backwards;

Changes:

• changed the way rocket bounds is calculated, as a result fixed floating rockets over launchpad before launch;
  
• solar panels don't produce energy, while Sun is occluded by planet;
  
• solar panels energy production depends on angle between panel and Sun;
  
• added status, occlusion and production values into solar panel control window;
  
• improved parts attachment positioning for all the parts with only one attachment during rocket assembly;
  
• [Assembly shop] rocket parts keep pivot during rotation;
  
• [Assembly shop] added undo and redo buttons on UI;
  
• [Assembly shop] added sorting by update time for rockets in the Assembly Shop (last updated goes first);
  
• [Assembly shop] changed spacecraft orientation, so the command pod porthole is turned up;
  
• mission time for spacecraft is now calculated since liftoff;
  
• [Control Center] added sorting by mission time for spacecrafts (newest spacecrafts go first);
  
• improved performance of drag calculations (5-10x speedup);
  
• decoupler no longer disappears after use;
  
• decoupler is applying force to original rocket too during activation;
  
• reduced memory consumption, when there are a lot of rockets in the Math simulation;
  
• probe cores constantly consume electric charge, they will not recieve any control commands without it;
  
• rockets without command pod or probe core (for example, debris) could not receive any commands or open part windows.

Fixes:

• reaction wheels not working if the spacecraft was decoupled from other spacecraft;
  
• rocket sometimes fall through Earth surface after collision on high speed;
  
• a lot of issues, when using "Undo" and "Redo" in the Assembly shop;
  
• exception thrown, if the rocket on the launchpad was removed through Control Center, and the next one was launched;
  
• some elliptic orbits flicker, when time lapse is enabled;
  
• rocket constantly move between Physics and Math world, if it landed and one of the rocket parts was destroyed at the same time;
  
• spacecraft icon sometimes is not shown on the map;
  
• rockets from previous save appear in the new save, if save slot was not cleared before starting new game;
  
• sometimes game freezes, when trying to launch spacecraft with a lot of parts.

So the update is finally here. I couldn’t even imagine that it would take so long, but I am far more satisfied with the current state of the game, than with the original release. So let's talk about new features and changes that this update brings.

New celestial body to explore and new challenges to overcome. While first stable orbit around and first impact into no-Moon were already achieved by Admiral Andre in February, landing, let alone returning to Earth after that, is like playing in the hardmode with enabled Iron Man right now. That’s because there are not enough rocket parts and tools to precisely configure your spacecraft for such mission. Also you have no way save during the flight and to revert the game to the last save point. It is an interesting experience, but it always feels bad, if you lost your spacecraft during landing, because of some unfortunate bug. So I will add the ability to save current flight and revert it to that save point in one of the following updates. More parts and better tools are in the roadmap too.




Orbits have a solid foundation right now. I am pretty happy with the current performance and quality of this system. Maneuver Planner is based on that foundation, and despite its a bit rough state, it is great and must-have addition to the game. There are plenty of features that are missing right now, for example, ascending and descending nodes, closest approach nodes, target system, etc... But this will be relatively easy to add in the future. By the way, you can use Maneuver Planner directly in the Control Center without going into flight mode. Pausing the game (~ by default) will help with that.



Spacecrafts no longer explode 10 meters above the ground. Part animation, like extending solar panels, will change physics shape and part parameters. Rocket parts could explode on collision with each other during the flight, if impact force will exceed the impact tolerance of the part.



The game is calculating up to three drag force vectors per rocket part and applying it to the actual physics shape, instead of only one combined vector, applied to the part’s center of mass. As a result, rockets with a small number of parts will be more affected by aerodynamics, than before.


In the previous version of the game command module would recive no torque at all

Not much here, but I fixed two critical bugs during rocket construction. Also I improved attachments raycasting, so it will be a bit easier to attach parts to the rocket.

Parachute and landing struts were a new challenge to implement, because they have internal state and animation, they should react to the world around and be aware of the main spacecraft state too. But despite all problems, they are in the game now. Another important addition is the new probe core, which is much lighter than “Vys” command module, but has no builtin reaction wheels and very little electric charge. This probe core also introduces a new rectangle socket, which will perfectly combine with some other existing connectors. Last but not least, the dry mass of all fuel tanks was reduced by around 15%. It should help you to put more payload into an orbit.



11 new tracks were added into the game along with new ingame music system that would track your spacecraft state position and will change tracks depending on that. These tracks were also added into “How do you like it, Elon Musk? Soundtrack”, so all owners of this package will automatically receive them for free.


A bunch of rockets were destroyed during development of this update

There are a lot of other changes, fixes and improvements (as well as new bugs =/). You can see the full changelog below. But I want to talk about what's next. The weakest part of the game right now is the rocket construction. As I said earlier, it has a lot of missing tools and quality of life features. It also requires rewriting some parts of the whole assembly system, to make things like symmetry and saving subassemblies possible. This will be my top priority goal and I will focus on it the next month or two. Before that I will probably release small update, that will add analytics into the game, so I could see, which rocket parts are popular, and which have never been used

That’s all for today. Thank you all for your support, feedback and reviews! This update wouldn’t be possible without that. See you in the next one.

P.S. If you have any problems with this update, try to verify integrity of game files first. Sometimes Steam doesn’t download a file or two for some reason. Also this update is compatible with old save files, but rocket part changes will not affect already constructed rockets. So if you have problems there, try to start the new game.

• added support for interplanetary flight;
  
• added the Moon;
  
• implemented maneuver planner and encounters prediction;
  
• added 11 new tracks and improved playlist selection during flight;
  
• improved aerodynamics for rockets with small number of parts;
  
• added proper support for parabolic and hyperbolic orbits;
  
• game is now supporting up to 500 orbits rendering at the same time without dropping fps on the average PC;
  
• new orbit nodes: impact, encounter, escape;
  
• approach time to orbit nodes and maneuvers is showing now, when hovering mouse over them;
  
• added proper environment shadows during flight;
  
• new 16-bit temperature map for Earth, it will make planet texturing more smooth and reduce noisiness,
  
• new high quality color and normal maps for Moon on the Solar System map;
  
• added automatic camera exposure control and adjusted values during flight and on the Solar System map;
  
• added sun flares;
  
• updated main menu scene;
  
• animated rocket parts not only change visual appearance, but affect physics shape and rocket parameters;
  
• new autostabilization mode: maneuver;
  
• new socket types: rectangle, dualhex.

• Frontal Parachute is working now! (kinda of)
  
• "Feather" Landing Strut;
  
• Standard Reaction Wheel;
  
• Payload Fairing 3x7;
  
• Micro Decoupler with 3+2 variants
  
• two more variants of "Seeker" Decoupler.

• "Vys" Command Module:
  
  • reduced max torque from 20 kN to 18 kN;
    
  • reduced consumed power from 0.53 to 0.48;
    
  • increased mass from 740 kg to 850 kg;
    
  • reduced electric charge amoun from 135 to 120;
• Small Reaction Wheel: increased max torque from 4.5kN to 6kN and consumed power from 0.1 to 0.14;
  
• reduced dry mass of all fuel tanks by ~15%;
  
• changed visual appearance of Adapter 1.2-0.55 C-4 to make the compartibility with "Clicker" Longitudinal Decoupler more obviuos;
  
• added single socket on top of the "Sputnik-2" Probe Core;
  
• "Energia-C8.95" Liquid Fuel Engine increased thrust and fuel consumption a bit (impulse didn't change).

• added orbit markers size configuration;
  
• added scroll sensitivity for manever planner handle;
  
• new hotkey G - to toggle landing gear;
  
• press "Delete" while on map view to remove selected maneuver node.

• changed collision detection method, it will no longer produce phantom colissions, but sometimes may miss collision on fast moving objects;
  
• rocket parts could explode on collision with each other;
  
• improved attachment search while assembling the rocket;
  
• spacecrafts with applied torque will continue infinitely rotate in space (if auto stabilization is turned off);
  
• rocket consumes correct amount of electric charge when it is in Math simulation;
  
• spacecrafts position is checking against planet heightmap in Math simulation;
  
• increased max possible angular speed of all bodies;
  
• orbit markers and text have the same size no matter how far they are from the camera;
  
• antialiasing is now applied to orbits;
  
• improved orbit colors and rendering;
  
• only section of orbit is generated and rendered in some cases (like when part of the orbit is bellow the surface);
  
• improved perfomance in spaceport;
  
• sun is more yellowish now in the map view;
  
• autocorrection in Math simulation is more precise;
  
• last activated stage in flight will be saved with spacecraft;
  
• reordering action groups shift folowing groups instead of swap;
  
• spaceport authorities have finally continued construction of launchpad!

• rockets explode in air far from ground;
  
• stage activation breaks after some rocket stages was destroyed by impact;
  
• rocket can not be crashed onto launchpad (fixed for most of launchpad, except the exact start point to avoid rocket exploding on engine start);
  
• seams on planet, visible from certain distance and light angles;
  
• higher level of detail of planet surface sometimes doesn't load;
  
• when rocket flying on hyperbolic orbit, it is going into abyss after some time;
  
• game freezes when entering atmoshpere with huge time warp multipler;
  
• decoupled rocket part moves strangly to the sides sometimes;
  
• rocket fall through the surface of planet and continue flying sometimes;
  
• different artefacts on planet in flight mode on very high orbit;
  
• incorrect normals in map view on all planets;
  
• grid-like artefacts on oceans on Earth in the map view;
  
• ocean flickers a bit when rocket is falling down;
  
• rocket shadows not changing, when changing rockets in assembly shop;
  
• various light leaks in spaceport;
  
• broken shadows in spaceport during the summer;
  
• vcam popping on when changing view from spaceport to map;
  
• you can attach three "Raduga-52" engines to one fuel tank;
  
• different issues with action groups moving and updating;
  
• wrong spacecraft velocity after you reached speed of 5km/sec in the atmosphere;
  
• spacecraft flying sideways relative the ground under some conditions (again);
  
• Assembly Shop completely broken, when deleting rocket part using Delete key and not detaching it from the rocket before that;
  
• sometimes parts do not detach from the rocket in the Assembly Shop;
  
• part slots / connectors incorrectly highlighting in Assembly Shop or flight;
  
• orbit node text sometimes clipped by the planet.

• incorrect rocket palcement on the launchpad during launch;
  
• part of the rocket explode below the surface, if the command module was destroyed.

• Fixed crash during roclet construction
  
• Fixed buildings not highlighting when hovering over them

I know it's been a while, but after a lot of work, research and experiments I am almost ready to release the next big update of "How do you like it, Elon Musk"? I needed to setup a release date for this update, so I wasn't be tempted to delay it again. It will include the Moon, support for interplanetary flight, Maneuver Planner, over 50 changes and fixes, and new parts, including the most requested one — the parachute! And it will arrive on Steam on August 25, 2020!

Stay tuned and see you soon.


This is the first iteration and there is a lot to improve, but it is finally working.