Rocket Science News

Here is a small patch with a bunch of fixed bugs that was mostly found by the community. Also this patch brings a pretty big change in rotation steps of big hexagon-like sockets that can be found mostly on fuel tanks. Initially those sockets supported only 60 degrees turns to follow the hexagon sockets restrictions. After receiving some feedback and thinking about it for a while I decided to remove this restriction and allow rotation on those sockets with a 10 degrees step. Despite being not very “socket accurate” It should not break anything and will greatly increase customizability of all rockets. I hope you will enjoy this change.

[h2]v0.20.8 release notes[/h2]

[h3]Part changes:[/h3]
🔸 rotation step for hexagon, heptahedron, star and heptahedron range sockets increased from 6 to 36 steps;

[h3]Changes:[/h3]
🔸 updated to latest Unity patch version, increasing the game stability;
🔸 removed CRC check on asset bundles, that can randomly prevent the game from starting up;
🔸 removed some shader duplication wich should improve performance;
🔸 update game input module to a version that fully supports current Unity Engine.

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
🔸 spacecraft item lose status line when spacecraft name is too long;
🔸 newely created rocket could failed to save, if rocket with the same id did not load properly;
🔸 game crashes on quit from flight or spaceport;
🔸 black squares appears on windows in the assembly shop;
🔸 orbit stats panel breaks when changing SOI from Earth to Moon;
🔸 flipped socket for nano reaction wheel;
🔸 visible tiling on skycrane material;
🔸 crash on skycrane detach when spacecraft is on the ground;
🔸 crash when adjusting manever using mouse wheel, when editing values in input fields at the same time.

This was a very hard beta cycle. Unity 2022.3 kept raining bugs, different problems and unexpected changes that constantly broke the game in different places. I couldn’t hope that those issues would be solved on the engine side in time, because even getting a reply from Unity staff is almost impossible nowadays, so I needed to find workarounds to them. Should I mention that most of the issues that I reported in August are still not fixed?

Anyway, I think this update is ready to come out. I’ve described most of its features in the previous post, so let’s talk about the new parts that were not part of the beta and will be available in this release.

[h2]New engines and fuel tanks[/h2]
I’ve added two new engines this time. The process of adding them is pretty hard, because every single engine in the game is based on the parameters of the real ones and I spend a lot of the time on research of existing technology. These ones have a much higher ISP and are best suited for second and third stages of rockets. They have their own drawbacks and should not become the only and obvious choice during rocket assembly (at least I hope so).

"Electron-0210" Liquid Fuel Engine

"Aragna-6410" Liquid Fuel Engine

The only catch, that they should use a hydrogen-oxygen fuel pair. While the game was designed around different fuel pairs, some game systems are still not fully reworked to support that. For example, stage dV calculation, fuel level indicators, maneuver dv calculations is expecting a single UDMH/N2O4 pair. Also there are no warnings during rocket construction that will indicate that current engines are missing fuel. So, to simplify things, I decided to not add a new fuel pair for now, but I will definitely do it in the next update with the necessary improvements and reworks.

FT "Piston"

FT "Bublik"

[h2]New decoupler, fairings and adapter[/h2]
5 m diameter is getting more love now. New Apollo-style decoupler for that radius will make your rockets look much cooler and more convenient for use. Note that it actually consists of two separate parts, like payload fairings.

"Rumble" Decoupler Adapter

"Rumble" Decoupler

I’ve also added another 5 m payload fairing set that should be easier to use for placing rovers inside.

Payload Enclosed Base GO-5

Payload Enclosed Section GO-5 1.4m

Payload Enclosed Cap GO-5

And the first 2.4 to 5 m adapter will provide you more choice while designing your rocket of dreams.

Adapter 1.2-5

[h2]New solar panels[/h2]
There are two new solar panels that are not only compatible with each other, but can be perfectly tiled on a hexagonal connection.

"Gektoplast-A" Solar Panel

"Gektoplast-M" Solar Panel

They are also very light and could be used on a spacecraft, where each kilogram counts

Combinatorial examples

[h2]Parts for skycrane[/h2]
I released rovers in the previous update, but the game lacked some important parts to build fully functional skycrane. Using the next two parts combined with the rover payload fairing, you should be able to finally do it now.

V-1 Sky Crane Base

Nano Reaction Wheel

Putting those parts into good use

There are a lot of changes made to the game during this five month cycle, so I expect that not all bugs were hunted down. So if you encounter something strange, please report it to our discord or on the steam forums and I will try to fix it as soon as possible.

You can find full release notes down below. Another year has come to an end and I wish you good fortune in the year to come. Thanks for playing and see you in the next one.

Flying over Ceres

Flying over Vesta

[h2]v0.20.5 release notes[/h2]
[h3]Features:[/h3]
🔸 added Ceres;
🔸 added Vesta;
🔸 Mars textures rework
🔸 added scaled space filters;
🔸 added celestial bodies list into Control center;
🔸 added search functionality to tracked objects list in the Control center;
🔸 added panel for manual adjustments of the selected maneuver dV during the flight;
🔸 resources panel can display all resources, that spacecraft has;
🔸 added orbit info panel during the flight;
🔸 predicted orbits are displayed relative to target frame of reference now, when you focus camera on it;
🔸 added correct ambient light when flying over surface of the planet;
🔸 added manual brakes for wheels and the corresponding indicator to navball (use ALT+B to toggle).

[h3]New rocket parts:[/h3]
🔸 V-1 Sky Crane Base;
🔸 "Rumble" Decoupler and "Rumble" Decoupler Adapter;
🔸 "Aragna-6410" Liquid Fuel Engine;
🔸 "Electron-0210" Liquid Fuel Engine;
🔸 FT "Bublik";
🔸 FT "Piston";
🔸 "Gektoplast-A" Solar Panel;
🔸 "Gektoplast-M" Solar Panel;
🔸 Payload Enclosed Base GO-5;
🔸 Payload Enclosed Cap GO-5;
🔸 Payload Enclosed Section GO-5 1.4m;
🔸 Nano Reaction Wheel;
🔸 Adapter 1.2-5.

[h3]Part changes:[/h3]
🔸 Zarya engine geometry rework;
🔸 "Mgnovenie\" Probe Core decreased in size;
🔸 batteries slightly reduced height and mass;
🔸 simplified all engine colliders;
🔸 adjusted size of combustion chamber on some engines.

[h3]Changes:[/h3]
🔸 added safeguard, that should check if any spacecraft received a NaN position during orbit calculations and destroy that;
🔸 parachute auto cut now triggers when spacecraft touches the ground, instead of near zero speed check;
🔸 rocket command module selection will prioritize ordinal command modules if there are cockpit or rover present alongside;
🔸 riteg will calculate decay time from launch not from the time it is created in the assembly shop;
🔸 you can toggle on/off delete hotkey for tracked objects list now;
🔸 improved control center tracked objects list UI;
🔸 improved loading times, when entering spaceport or assembly shop;
🔸 game consumes on average 400 Mb less memory;
🔸 "time" debug command now supports input date in string format;
🔸 added support for DirectX12 and Vulkan API (that can be faster on some PCs), that can be enabled via command line parameters:
-force-d3d12
-force-vulkan

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
🔸 planet surface disappears if you quit to main menu from the assembly shop in blueprint mode;
🔸 exception when trying to attach something on top of engine 4;
🔸 spacecraft with wheels no longer transitions into sleep state when it is no longer moving and after steering was used once;
🔸 rocket can still receive wheel commands even when command module is destroyed;
🔸 maneuver sometimes not placed via context menu;
🔸 orbit planner sometimes predict wrong intersect nodes;
🔸 crash when setting the Sun as a target;
🔸 you can't unset target when surface object was set as a target;
🔸 riteg uses part attachment date as a decay start instead of launch day;
🔸 Circular Extended Unit has wrong orientation for radial dual attachments;
🔸 time warp not working, if spacecraft's lights are on and there is little electricity left
🔸 different typos and missing translations in assembly;

[h3]Known issues:[/h3]
🔸 navball text changes brightness depending on exposure (unity bug);
🔸 SSAO is mostly turned off during the flight because of artifacts (unity bug);

Today I am releasing part of the v0.20.0 "In Between" update into the beta branch. This will not include new rocket parts and several smaller features. They need a bit more work, so they will come in two and a half weeks with a full update release. So, let’s talk about what’s new is awaiting you in this update.

Note: this update is in public beta. This means, that you need to swith your game to beta-builds branch, to access it.

[h2]Ceres[/h2]
The first dwarf planet located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter has arrived to the game! The surface elevation is based on Dawn space probe data and the surface color was built using the newest procedural texturing technology. It is a small body only 946 km in diameter and a mass of 0.0128 of the Moon’s one with a high inclined orbit. It would be almost impossible to reach with the current set of parts, but I will not underestimate players of Rocket Science, who have already arrived on every single present body in the inner planet group with the technology made mostly for lunar flights. So we’ll see how it goes.



[h2]Vesta[/h2]
The first fully made asteroid is now in the game too! It is the second biggest body in the asteroid belt with the mean diameter of 525 km. While it is a pretty big object and its shape is close to a gravitationally relaxed oblate spheroid, the large concavity and protrusion at the southern pole combined with the small mass placed it into the asteroid category instead of dwarf planet one.



[h2]Mars textures rework[/h2]
I’ve mentioned this one in the previous dev update. Not only did it get a new procedural selection of colors, but twice as many materials using some new ones. Here is an orbit view of the planet.



[h2]Control center UI changes[/h2]
I’ve added a new Celestial Bodies list there. It only contains major bodies in the Solar system for now, but I'll add more as time goes on. Spacecrafts list was reworked and can hold more elements and it is harder to accidentally remove your spacecraft now (you should specifically toggle on hotkey removing or use a delete button for that). I’ve also added search functionality to both lists.



[h2]Map filters[/h2]
You can filter your map in the Control Center and during the flight now. You can finally turn off all debris and don’t see it anymore (but the game will still simulate it, there is no way around this).

The filter also applies to the spacecraft and bodies lists in the Control Center

[h2]Flight panels improvements[/h2]
One of the frequent requests was to display rocket orbit data. I’ve added an orbit instrument, where you can see the orbit's periapsis, apoapsis, inclination and eccentricity. Note, that orbit data is available for all spacecrafts, but when the instrument parts system will be implemented, it will be tied to a specific instrument you will need to attach to the rocket.

Please let me know if you need more orbit data and I will add a toggle for that

You can also display all the resources that the rocket has by simple toggle now.


[h2]Other features[/h2]
Two most requested features are in the game: Fast Load button and orbit planner improvements. You no longer need to ALT+F4 the game, if you made a mistake. You can load the last game autosave at any moment during the flight or in the space center.

Due to legacy code limitations, the game will load spaceport by default, but I am planning to make it load directly the flight if you pressed the button during the flight

If you will get an encounter and then will switch to a body in which SOI spacecraft will get to, you will be able to see an orbit relative to this body frame of reference

[h2]Engine update[/h2]
I’ve described this in the previous dev update too. It was a very long and painful process and there are so many changes in the code, most of those are invisible. I’m expecting plenty of bugs and crashes in this update. On the other hand, some systems should start working smoother and faster. There are a bunch of bugs fixed as well, and more to come. Anyway, please let me know if you find anything not working as expected and I will be glad to fix it.

That’s all for today and I am waiting for your feedback.

After v0.19.6 release I took two weeks off to prepare for another big task – the transition to the new 2022.3 version of Unity. This particular one has to be one of the most challenging in the entirety of the game's existence. As I mentioned in previous dev updates, I’ve started building Rocket Science using a lot of newest experimental Unity packages such as HDRP, DOTS, Addressables, Burst, etc. They were under active development, which led to constant API and breaking changes, bugs and other early access stuff that you are familiar with. On the other hand they provided a set of tools that basically allowed me to make this game on Unity as performant as it is.

As time went by some of these packages reached version 1.0 and finally became “stable”. But DOTS ones, using which I built planet generation, orbits and maneuver planner, remained “experimental” until Unity 2022.3. So I definitely wanted to transition to that version of editor and finally get rid of this warning panel and start working on fully stable and supported version of the engine:



The only catch was that DOTS API changed a lot between last version and 1.0 so I wasn’t even able to open Unity Editor until I will apply hundreds of changes into the game's code to implement the new API. It took me more than a month to do all this stuff, but at that moment I thought that it was worth it. Because the code became much cleaner, a lot of dirty hacks and workarounds were removed and some functions and structures became unnecessary because they were already implemented in the newest Unity. Moreover I revisited the architecture of planet generation and made it consume almost 400Mb less memory, which will become very useful when I start to add props and details on the planet’s surface. Also thanks to some changes I made, loading times between spaceport or assembly to flight transition reduced a lot.

But when I fixed the last compiler errors and finally launched the game I was shocked by the amount of bugs this version introduced. Here are only some of the most notable ones.

Navball for some reason lost almost all the color


Ambient lightning disappears during transition between scenes, and sometimes completely


All UI icons render with artifacts


All directional light shadows are broken

And the cherry on top: the game build immediately crashed on start.

This was very unexpected. I haven't seen so many bugs since Unity 2019.3 using which Rocket Science was initially released (and because of that I lost almost 20% of sales in refunds). But I simply couldn’t go back, because I’ve spent so much time on this transition already, so I started searching for workarounds and posting all these bugs to Unity at the same time.

I found acceptable solutions to almost all of these bugs except the broken directional light shadows one. And Unity is always very slow on processing posted issues: it can easily take them a half of a year to fix and backport them to the stable version from the current tech stream. So I began a deeper investigation and debugging and found out that shadows break when any object in the scene is located further than 1e8 meters from the origin, even if it is not in a current camera view. For comparison, the Moon is around 3e8 meters away. And the only workaround was to disable any object that exceeds this distance. Which means no distant rendering (or even planet rendering from high altitudes) which was not acceptable for the game at all.

So I started poking Unity Technologies at forums trying to drive their attention to this bug. And the silence was an answer. Two more months have passed and I finally got the response: they just closed this bug with a resolution “By Design”. They said that Unity has never supported far away objects and don’t have any plans to support it in the future. Which was simply not true. How Rocket Science is working then?

I was very demotivated by this and combined with the news about the new engine pricing model (basically 2.5% revenue share from sales in addition to current monthly payments for the editor). So further development on Unity didn't look very attractive. But I pulled myself together and spent the weekend debugging and deconstructing that shadow bug piece by piece. Surprisingly I found a source of this problem in the engine's code and an acceptable solution for it. At the same time this bug was reopened by some responsible employee from UT and then fixed later (but it will still take at least three months to propagate this fix into the current version of Unity).

This is all great, but I lost so much time that I could have used for gameplay development while doing work that Unity Technologies should do. I'm tired of the fact that most new engine’s features don’t support and don’t even consider space simulators as a type of product that could be built with it. For example they released great cloud and ocean systems, but both of them can only be used on a flat surface. It is also very inconvenient to wait a half of a year until some critical bugs will be fixed and get to the users, because your game release could be completely blocked by this. Moreover this sudden change in pricing model undermines the company's credibility.

But migrating Rocket Science to another existing engine is not an option either. For example, Unreal Engine don’t support C#, Godot doesn’t support Data-Oriented design, Unigine is not that popular and it can be hard to find guides, tutorials and answers to questions about it. So I decided to continue development of Rocket Science on Unity for now, but spend some small portion of time making my own game engine specifically for space simulators. Since I know what I need and 80% of existing game code is engine independent already, it will be possible to migrate it when the time comes. But I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, because it's a huge task, with a lot of unknowns and research I would need to do. But in the long run it will allow me to do a lot of stuff that is not possible on Unity right now.

Back from Unity mess to the game itself. Here is a quick overview of some features that are currently in development for v0.20.0

[h2]Martian system materials rework[/h2]

I wanted to do it, since the new procedural material system was introduced in March 2022 but don’t have time to. This is basically the last celestial bodies that work on the old one.

Old Mars


New Mars. You can see that surface color become much more realistic


Old Mars


New Mars. A lot more surface detail has appeared that is more consistent with the planet’s topography

[h2]Orbit planning improvements[/h2]
If you will get an encounter and then will switch to a body in which SOI spacecraft will get to, you will be able to see an orbit relative to this body frame of reference.

You can even change a maneuver while staying in the target body reference frame and see, how orbit will change

[h2]Solar system map filters[/h2]
Sometimes it can be hard to plan a flight trajectory because a lot of objects could clutter your view. So I am working on a set of filters that would help you to deal with this problem and clean up your map,

Work in progress, could change before the update

[h2]Processing feedback[/h2]
Last three months I received a lot of feedback from the players, who spend around 1000 hours in Rocket Science. There are different requests there: from simple UI improvements to bugs that crash the game when encountered. I need to process most of it before the release of the update.

As always, more stuff is coming including traditional bugfixing, QoL improvements and more rocket parts. But I will cover all of that next time. That’s all for today, thanks for your support and feedback! See you soon.

A small post launch patch that improves the game stability a bit and brings some QoL features.

[h2]v0.19.8 release notes[/h2]

[h3]Features:[/h3]
🔸 updated Unity to the latest 2021.3 patch version, which will improve stability and performance a bit;
🔸 added separate icons for planes and rovers to the map;
🔸 improved wheels controls and responsiveness;
🔸 added front indicators for "Mgnovenie" Probe Core and "SOHO" Probe Core;
🔸 added a tooltip to the rocket name on time panel telling you how to edit it.

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
🔸when new rocket was saved and immediately after that was renamed, the name doesn't change in the assembly UI;
🔸 when rocket was renamed and changes were reset right after that, the changed name not reverted back.