Juno: New Origins News

A large part of this update was just below the surface, refactoring our old code and tackling some technical debt. Nathan took a quick hiatus from mod support to perform major surgery on the game loop and it has significantly improved performance for large craft. From our testing, we've seen an FPS increase of over 30% for some crafts.

I refactored all of the fuel code so that we could support some new features to give you more control over how your crafts consume their fuel (I mean propellant...sorry, Kell). Now you can re-prioritize your fuel tanks, drain from multiple tanks at once, and even automate fuel transfer using cross feeds, which are available on any new interstage part you pull out from the part list.

Kevin revisited the fuselage parts and rebuilt their meshes to remove unnecessary complexity and improve game performance, undoubtedly contributing to the 30% FPS boost I mentioned earlier. Then he went through all of the fuselage textures with a fine tooth comb and fixed issues with alignment that had cropped up in a few bug reports. After that, he freshened up the loading screens to be more reflective of the game's current state.

William added a new, resizable gyroscope part, so now your crafts don't need to have a command pod for that. The power of the gyro is based on its size. He also incorporated four new songs from Fat Bard (the music guys).

Philip has been working on procedural landing gear, but that didn't make this update. We are hoping to get that in the next update, in a few weeks.

Here are the nitty gritty details:

• Added multi-directional RCS part.
  
• Added gyroscope part.
  
• Performance improvements. From our testing, we've seen large craft have up to a 30% increase in FPS.
  
• New loading screens.
  
• Docking ports can now be targeted, which makes docking a lot easier.
  
• Added fuel tank priority so the player can change the order in which fuel tanks are drained.
  
• Added fuel crossfeed option to side interstage part.
  
• Allow draining from multiple fuel tanks at the same time when they are set to the same priority.
  
• Added shortcut to open Performance Analyzer window in the designer. Bound to 'O' by default.
  
• Added an option to disable ambient light attenuation in the game settings.
  
• Added more music.
  

• Added button to the Part Inspector to select a part's command pod during flight.
  
• Display fuselage radius and length when resizing in the designer.
  
• Added Propellant Mass to Performance Analyzer window in the designer.
  
• The explode part button now must be clicked twice before actually exploding the part. Safety first.
  
• Slightly increased the default ambient light in space.
  
• Tweaked exhaust visuals for underexpansion and overexpansion.
  
• Added a progress bar for fuel in the fuel tank inspector window.
  
• Paint Emission Setting Now Allows 1% Increments.
  
• Added tool-tips for replication/control options on command pod's flight scene inspector panel.
  

• Fixed a bug where the center of mass of the craft would not update during flight in some circumstances.
  
• Fixed a bug with opening a craft/sandbox via file associations resulting in launching the game but not actually loading the craft/sandbox.
  
• Fixed a bug where rotating a part with the keyboard would sometimes rotate the wrong part.
  
• Fixed a bug with overlapping text on the dummy inspector window.
  
• Fixed a bug where engines would not continue throttling to last known throttle input after separating from their commmand pod.
  
• Fixed a bug where the part shape tool would not hide its grid after the player had finished dragging with the mouse.
  
• Fixed a bug where disconnected parts would show up in staging display in flight scene.
  
• Fixed the rotation direction of the planet in the main menu :D
  
• Fixed issue which can cause a craft to whip around after undocking if the current heading is locked.
  
• Fixed visual tearing on orbit lines when moving camera very rapidly in map view.
  
• Fixed bug which would occur when the current navigation target is destroyed.
  
• Improved the handling of invalid part styles, preventing them from modifying the part style list of all parts of the same type.
  

• The game occasionally hangs on exit.
  
• Cross feeds are not included in delta-v calculations or active fuel levels. I'm not sure if they ever will, but I do plan to investigate.
  
• Multi-directional RCS can malfunction if a new stage is activated while the RCS is receiving input. Quick Save and Quick Load should fix the issue if you encounter it before we fix it.
  

Starting today, our games can be used for free for education. Educators now have access to download the Windows and Mac versions of SimpleRockets 2 and SimplePlanes (DRM-free) from our website and install them on any number of classroom computers.



We've heard many great things over the years about how teachers are using our games in the classroom. They lend themselves well to teaching physics concepts and students seem to enjoy them. Fundamental concepts such as velocity, acceleration, gravity, lift, drag, etc can easily be demonstrated with an airplane or a rocket hurtling through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds and that has a way of grabbing and maintaining a student's attention. SimpleRockets 2 goes a step further and can demonstrate advanced concepts such as orbital mechanics and many other rocket science concepts.

If you are an educator, just visit this page and click the Submit Request button. After we review your request, you will be given access to the downloads page where you can freely download our games for Windows and Mac.

If you are a student, help spread the word and let your teachers know!

Today's Deal: Save 20% on SimpleRockets 2!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Tuesday at 10AM Pacific Time

We just released a huge update for SimpleRockets 2 today and we're celebrating it with a 20% discount.

Pro Tip: If you already own SimplePlanes, you can get SimpleRockets 2 with an additional 15% discount if you complete the Aerospace Engineer Bundle.


Did you think we would let this aggression against rocket engines stand? No sir!



You no-longer have to be content with basic cookie-cutter rocket engine variants, you can build your own with the eight new engine types, seven new nozzles, and six new fuel types that are available which allows for hundreds of possible rocket engine configurations. They also have slider options for size, nozzle length, throat radius, and chamber pressure so really there are infinite possible configurations.



The new Performance Analyzer window in the designer will give you immediate feedback. You can see how their performance characteristics change with altitude as you tweak the rocket engine's parameters.



One of my favorite details of the new engines is how dang good the exhaust looks, and that they react realistically to changes in their design and environment. From over-tightened shock diamonds to huge bulbous clouds of supersonic gas, the exhaust really amps up the variety of the already diverse rocket engine aesthetics.


This update also brings a lot of improvements and bug fixes for building airplanes. There is now a plane/rocket building mode option available on the command pod and a new tool to help visualize and adjust your pilot's orientation/direction of travel.


A lot of issues with creating airplanes boiled down to control surfaces, airfoil directions, and their relation to the pilot. Some highlighted changes include:

• You can now visualize the airfoil direction in the designer (and show live lift values in flight).
  
• Wing control surfaces set to auto now show which axis they're assigned to instead of having to hope it has assigned them correctly.
  
• Unlike rockets, most airplanes fly best with a single axis (Roll/Pitch/Yaw) assigned to a control surface, not multiple...you now have that option.
  
• Invert just the airfoil w/o impacting the control surface direction.
  
  • Manually inverting should not frequently be necessary...adjusting the pilot orientation correctly should auto-orient airfoils properly in most cases.
• Ability to switch between Airplane/Rocket configurations for a design.
  

Before Adjusting Pilot Orientation - Control surfaces assigned incorrectly/airfoils inverted.

After - All good!


You can find the full release notes here

Version 0.7 includes a big upgrade to rocket engine customizability, major improvements for building airplanes, and a whole lot more. This is the third round of beta testing. Hopefully the last. Most of the high-level, boss bugs have been vanquished.

You can read the previous beta posts here:

• Version 0.7.0.0 link
• Version 0.7.0.1 link

• Added new nozzle called the 'Echo' that is available for the solid rocket engine type (inspired by the Space Shuttle SRBs).
  

• Added shock diamonds that show up when exhaust is over-expanded
  

• Reduced Isp of (most) rocket engines.
  
• Changed near clip plane to 1 meter in flight scene.
  
• Changed command pod's "Dock Reorients Controls" option to "Auto Config Controls"
  
• The command pod's "Auto Config Controls" option now defaults to true.
  
• Added the RcnThrottle property to the ReactionControlNozzleScript (this one's for you [user]pedro16797[/user])
  
• Tweaked starting camera angle in the designer to an angle that works well for both rockets and airplanes.
  
• Improved smoke trail drag behavior.
  
• Changed Stage Isp, Stage Delta V, and Stage Burn Time in flight view to no longer be dependent on the craft's current throttle setting.
  
• Updated stock crafts and crafts in challenges to use new rocket engines.
  
• Added tooltips to performance analysis window
  
• Added the ability to tilt the game camera with middle mouse button drag.
  

• Darken smoke trails at night.
  
• Fixed a bug where the inspector windows could be dragged on top of the dialogs in the flight scene.
  
• Fixed issue which caused a craft's throttle to be reset to zero when switching between crafts.
  
• Re-open the performance analysis window in the same place it was closed instead of always resetting back to the original location.
  

• Fixed issue causing translate gizmo to no-longer work with connected translations.
  
• Fixed a bug with the designer tutorial where the fuel tank placement hints were incorrectly positioned.
  
• Fixed a bug that made it very difficult to dock.
  
• Fixed a bug where the smoke trail would get thicker when in slow motion.
  
• Changed how efficiency is applied to engine performance so that exhaust velocity jives with Isp.