2018 Retrospective
Happy New Year!
Before we take a look at what’s coming to Universe Sandbox this year, let’s take a look back at our achievements in 2018, by the numbers:
1
new team member: welcome, Jules, our new sound designer!
2
the # that was dropped from the logo.
That's right, now it's just Universe Sandbox. We’ll have more to say about this soon!
8
# of significant updates to Universe Sandbox.
- They Put a Car in Space, We Upgraded Our Engine | Update 20.5 | March 7, 2018
- More Super Supernovae | Update 20.6 | March 15, 2018
- This Hyperbolic Update Will Change Your Life | Update 20.7 | May 24, 2018
- 20 Earth Languages & 12 Jovian Moons | Update 21 | July 19, 2018
- Windows Mixed Reality Support | Update 21.2 | August 02, 2018
- The Extremes of Our Solar System | Update 21.3 | October 04, 2018
- The Universe Just Got Bigger: Steam Workshop Support | Update 22 | November 15, 2018
- Far Out | Update 22.1 | December 20, 2018
12
# of Universe Sandbox team members that fit into one house in Spain for a week.
21
# of new simulations.
- 2 Parker Solar Probe sims
- 2 Tesla Roadster sims
- 2 sims of Jupiter's newly discovered moons
- New Horizons Ultima Thule Encounter in 2019
- 2018 VG18: The Most Distant Object in the Solar System
- 2015 TG387: A Goblin at the Edge of the Solar System
- Voyagers 1 & 2 Start 2019 Outside the Solar System
- Ultimate Engineered System
- Solar System with No Sun
- Kepler 10
- Kepler 47 Binary System
- Alpha Centauri Triple System
- Saturn & Earth
- Retrograde Asteroid 2015 BZ509
- Interstellar Object with a Hyperbolic Trajectory
- Solar System with Betelgeuse instead of the Sun
- Conservation of Momentum lesson
- Gravitational Force lesson
This just includes the simulations that we added, though. Scroll down for a much larger number of simulations that our community has shared on Workshop!
22
# of languages now supported in Universe Sandbox.
26
# of pages of release notes for Universe Sandbox updates in 2018.
Check out What’s New.
325
# of bugs fixed.
You know what they say, fixing a bug a day keeps the QA away. Just kidding, we can’t -- and don’t want to -- stop our awesome QA, Mat, from hunting down bugs in Universe Sandbox.
Not all of these bug fixes were notable for releases, as there are many bugs that are discovered and fixed while we’re still doing behind-the-scenes work with improving Universe Sandbox. We look forward to squashing hundreds more this year!
479
Highest # of concurrent users in Universe Sandbox in 2018 (happened on the week of August 6).
This is the fifth highest of all time for us.
1,114
# of positive Steam reviews of Universe Sandbox written in 2018.
All this love for Universe Sandbox really warms our cold, spaceborne hearts.
2,420
# of simulations shared on Steam Workshop.
That means there are literally thousands of simulations featuring alien planets and systems, recently discovered exoplanets, confounding scientific phenomena, worlds from movies, books, and other video games, and of course bizarre bugs (or are they features?), created by you, the community, now shared on Steam Workshop. We look forward to seeing this treasure trove continue to grow.
7,160
# of copies of Universe Sandbox donated for charity.
This year we donated copies to StackUp for distribution to military personnel, donated proceeds to the National Center for Science Education, provided copies to schools and educational organizations, and donated copies for various fundraisers for people doing awesome things, like all the folks at CosmoQuest.
12,694
# of objects added to the Universe Sandbox database.
That’s 11,973 new Solar System objects, 387 new exoplanets, 310 new stars, 21 new moons, 2 new human-scale objects, and 1 new galaxy.
95,736
# of messages sent on Slack.
We’re a remote team, so other than some video chats and comments on GitHub, all of our conversations happen on Slack. It’s what makes our collaboration on Universe Sandbox possible!
>100,000
# of copies sold on Steam and other platforms.
Or, on average, one copy sold every five minutes -- comfortably keeping pace with last year!
4,506,463
# of views of Markiplier's two recent videos featuring Universe Sandbox.
These were the most watched Universe Sandbox videos on YouTube made this year. And this brings the total number of views of Markiplier's Universe Sandbox videos to... 35,522,196. Granted, 24 million of those views are on the so-catchy-you-really-will-regret-being-reminded-of-it Space is Cool remix, but we'll take some credit for providing a bit of inspiration and a nice backdrop for Markiplier's auto-tuned cries of love for space. Many thanks to Markiplier for helping spread the word!
Can You Blow Up a Black Hole
1000 Ways to Destroy Earth
>6,000,000
# of supernovae in Universe Sandbox.
According to our analytics, y'all have exploded more than 6 million stars. Needless to say, that's an accomplishment.
What's Next?
Our big features this year were Localization (support for other languages) and Steam Workshop. A lot of time and effort went into these features, and we think they’re a pretty big deal -- Localization opens up Universe Sandbox for the first time to people all over the world, and support for Workshop has made it super easy to check out an ever increasing catalogue of simulations made by people pushing the limits of Universe Sandbox.
But we also recognize that these features did not change any aspects of the simulation itself. And the simulation is the heart of Universe Sandbox. While we made a number of some smaller improvements and fixes related to the simulation, we unfortunately ran into continual issues with two big updates that we had hoped to get out this year -- Surface Grids / Lasers and a physics rewrite. Surface Grids will allow for more detailed surface simulation, including localized temperatures, which makes possible things like heating from lasers. The physics rewrite should greatly increase physics performance and pave the way for additional physics-related features, like megastructures.
We hope to have more news about Surface Grids soon, along with some insight into some of the obstacles we’ve faced with its development. We also continue to work on other projects like new star audio, a new tutorial system, a VR interface overhaul, new galaxies, a mobile version, and continual improvements to the overall experience.
We thank all of you for your continued support of Universe Sandbox! This year we remain committed to improving Universe Sandbox as we develop and plan new features, upgrades, and fixes for 2019 and the years to come.
- The Universe Sandbox Team
Dan, Chris, Georg, Alexander, Jenn, Jonathan, Dave, Rappo, Mat, Jacob, Erika, Jules, & Jared
Feb 11: 22.1.2 is a small patch to fix an issue that caused the new physics system (NativeComputation) to occasionally fail on launch and revert to the older, slower system (ManagedComputation).
