Juno: New Origins News

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.
[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

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

New fuselage smoothing in action:



[h3]TWEAKS[/h3]

• 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.

[h3]Planet Studio[/h3]

• 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.