Space Station Designer News

Happy Thursday! A few days ago we shared with you a development update of Space Station Designer. Today, we're making version 0.4.20 available!



Version 0.4.20 features a variety of features and improvements, such as:

• A first version of a launch minigame for all resupply spacecraft, where unexpected things will happen and you'll be required to make a decision on whether to push your luck and go ahead with the launch or abort it.
  
• The possibility to skip the time to the following week.
  
• Several performance improvements.
  
• We've integrated an analytics system, which will allow us to understand better how players are engaging with the game. You can always opt-out of this system, but we'd encourage you to leave it on, as this information is super important to us in order to guide our development efforts.
  
• Tons of minor improvements to the UX, the texts, and cosmetics issues in the UI.
  

In case you missed it, we've also published an online game manual, which you can find here. The manual contains the material available via the in-game interactive tutorials, along with some extra nuggets of information that will help you gain a better understanding of the core mechanics behind the game.



Are you interested in trying the game but don't have access to the playtest version yet? Click the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the new update.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio and Mauricio (Polar Motion)

Happy Sunday! It's been a while since our last public update in our Steam product page, but we continue making good progress in the development of Space Station Designer.

We've implemented a first version of a launch minigame for all resupply spacecraft, where unexpected things will happen and you'll be required to make a decision on whether to push your luck and go ahead with the launch or abort it. You can find below two examples from the Union resupply spacecraft (based on the Soyuz) and the Space Shuttle:





We've also added back a feature that used to be part of the first versions of the game: the possibility to skip the timer and jump straight to the next week. Adding this feature back took us a few days of development, as the recent inclusion of random events introduced some edge cases that needed to be handled:



We've also added back random events, which will definitely increase the challenge of the campaign mode!



On top of all these features, we've been fixing various issues all across the game and implementing performance improvements. This also includes the integration of an analytics services, so that we can better understand how players are interacting with Space Station Designer and fix any usability issues.

We've also been working on an online game manual, which you can find here. The manual contains the material available via the in-game interactive tutorials, along with some extra nuggets of information that will help you gain a better understanding of the core mechanics behind the game.



Remember that the game is already available for playtesting by clicking the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



There's no ETA for the next update, but we're aiming to make this available as soon as possible.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio and Mauricio (Polar Motion)

Season's Greetings! We have been a bit quiet since our last update in October. Despite the lack of posts, we have been hard at work fixing various bugs, improving the user experience, and optimizing performance. We have also been working on the implementation of a launch minigame for resupply spacecraft (you can find a WIP screenshot that we've posted two days ago here)

Before 2021 comes to an end, we wanted to thank you for being with us during this past year and providing invaluable feedback for 'Space Station Designer'. This has been a great year for us, and with the addition of various features such as modding support, interactive tutorials, and the Earth facilities, the game is really starting to shape.

As always, please let us know if you have any feedback, and remember that you can sign up for the Playtest of 'Space Station Designer' by clicking the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Merry Christmas and Happy New Year =)

Best wishes,

--Ignacio and Mauricio (Polar Motion)

Space Station Designer 0.4.0 is now available via Steam Playtest!

This update adds modding support via the cross-platform modding service mod.io. You can find Space Station Designer's page in mod.io at https://spacestationdesigner.mod.io/. We allow both the creation of new space station modules, resupply spacecraft, and astronauts, along with the replacement of existing ones.



If you're interested in making mods, we've written a comprehensive guide which you can find here. The guide comes with seven sample mods, and provides extensive documentation so that you can use as a starting point for your own creations. The samples include new modules such as 'Skylab', a realistic replacement for the 'Space Shuttle', and a realistic version of the 'Apollo' spacecraft.



As always, we're very interested in your feedback, so if you have any comments about modding support (both about consumption and production of them), please open a thread in the Steam forums and let us know so that we can look into them.



Have a great Sunday and see your next time!

--Polar Motion (Ignacio & Mauricio)

Happy Sunday! Our last public development update of 'Space Station Designer' here on Steam was in mid-July. That was nearly three months ago, so another one is well overdue.

As mentioned during our last development update, the Playtest version of Space Station Designer was well received, and the most frequent piece of feedback that we got was that the game needed more tutorials in order to explain the core mechanics. We got down to work immediately on this and, in August 17th, we released 24 interactive tutorial as part of the 0.3.6 update.

With the new 'Tutorials' mode out of the way, we went back to the implementation of modding support via mod.io, which is something that we started to experiment with in early 2020 and we think it's going to open lots of interesting opportunities.

Modding in Space Station Designer allows you to:

• Add new astronauts and/or replace the names and portraits of existing ones.
  
• Add new space station modules or replace existing ones.
  
• Add new resupply spacecraft or replace existing ones.
  

For modules and resupply spacecraft, we even allow you to define your own shaders and materials. This means that, among other things, you can replace the existing modules with a new set of them featuring a different art style.

For example, here's how the space shuttle looks by default in the sandbox mode:



And this is how the space shuttle looks in one of the sample mods that we'll be providing:



Modding is conducted by using the Unity Editor and downloading a custom package featuring several examples. We're also currently writing a modding guide, which we expect to finish in the upcoming days.



The modding package features seven examples that you can use as a starting point for your own creations:



and yes, that includes Apollo and Skylab :)



We hope you're as excited as we are about all these new features, which hopefully we'll be able to make available for all of you in the upcoming days.

Let us know if you have any feedback, and remember that you can sign up for the Playtest of 'Space Station Designer' by clicking the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Have a great Sunday!