Rocket Science News

Fixed several issues found by @Gigantoherceg and @joshwells17gh. One of the bugs was very serious and some players could lose their progress because of it. Sorry about that.

[h2]Release notes v0.15.3[/h2]

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• game did not save the player's progress when certain conditions were met;
  
• engines explode on launch on some laptop configurations;
  
• improved planet generation perfomance when rocket is on the launchpad and player quickly turns the camera;
  
• missing localizations string and typos in some places.
  

Fixed some issues found by @Gigantoherceg, @Pietrus1745 and @olafoertelt,

[h2]Release notes v0.15.1[/h2]

[h3]Features:[/h3]

• staff cell will be marked if worker is not yet assigned to any building;
  

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• reworked main menu a bit;
  

[h3]Known issues:[/h3]

• game stuck when pressing "Continue" button in the Main Menu after all saves were deleted;
  
• wrong description for "Turn on lights" contract;
  
• missing param in the description for "Put spacecraft into geostationary orbit" contract;
  
• improved base tutoril step where you turn on engines after time warp, so engines will explode less frequently;
  
• wrong parameter for "Leave Earth's SOI" contract.
  

First of all I want to say some words about recent events. The war that Russian government started in February is a catastrophe, a disgrace and a crime against humanity. Hundreds of innocent people have already died in this war and I see no end of this horror. I had friends from Ukraine and my grandmother was also from there. I know what is happening there and share the pain and grief of Ukrainian people. I'm practically depressed because there's no way It can be stopped by ordinary people right now. But it should be stopped at any cost.

On the other side the people of Russia have no future anymore. The Iron Curtain is almost here. Most foreign companies are leaving the country. All financial transactions with the west have virtually stopped. It is worth noting that the whole IT sector and game development cannot exist without a global market. So my profession is destroyed. The government ignores the voices of the opposition and people, who are against this war. It constantly arrests protesters and passes dozens of repressive laws. Today you can get up to three years in prison for the slogan "Stop the war" or Or if you call the events taking place a "war". And up to 15 years in prison if you will repost any video containing any information about it. Unfortunately, more that 50% of Russians are under heavy propaganda. They don’t know and don’t want to know what is happening, thus supporting this terrible “special operation”. Lastly there is a pretty high chance that Internet access here will be completely banned here in the coming months. It's all so crazy that I feel like it's just a nightmare and I need to wake up. But I should point out that none of these compare to the horrors of war.

So, how will this affect the development of the game? I am pretty sure that the February payment from Steam was the last one, seeing how events are unfolding. Because of this I will need to start looking for a job with the possibility of moving to another country. However I will continue to work on the game part-time to the best of my ability.

This is all I want to say, now let’s talk about changes.

[h2]New features and changes[/h2]

I’ve renamed the game. Initially it was named after a Russian meme and it was a part of the game's marketing strategy and story. But it isn't funny anymore, especially after recent events, and it will only work against the game in the coming years. Also, the Russian space program will certainly come to an end in the near future. There will be no story about it anymore. So I decided to return the original name of the game — “Rocket Science''. The theme of the game will remain the same, but I will revise the concept of the story I had originally planned to make. I hope this will not upset players who have already purchased the game.

As for the update itself, I’ve added several things.

[h3]Contracts[/h3]
Remember you had a non-interactive list of goals in the control center? Now it was replaced with a list of interactive contracts. You can accept up to three contracts and perform them in any order. The goals in this list are almost the same as before, but I will start reworking them and adding a new one in the following updates.

This is a really good starting point and a bit more content, than before

The contracts you've accepted will be displayed at the top of the screen

Note: accepted contracts and statistics collection will be paused if you start a tutorial at the same time.

[h3]Extended tutorial[/h3]
I’ve added a section with extended training. You can perform interactive tutorials from it at any time. There is only one new tutorial right now. It requires a huge amount of work to add them, but it is very important for new players, who have never played KSP or similar games. So I will try to add at least one new tutorial each new update.



[h3]Statistics[/h3]
Per-save stats are available in the control center now. I am tracking the most basic things like the number of launched spacecrafts, planets that were visited by the player and speed and distance records. This will be the basis for the future achievements. If you have any proposals about stats you want to see, please leave them below.



Note, that contracts, extended training and statistics were added into the control center UI.

[h3]Instrument panels[/h3]
I’ve replaced the stats panel under Navball with separate instruments that can be hidden on a per spacecraft basis. All rockets still have all instruments for now, but they will be moved to separate rocket parts in the future update.

I am planning to add more functions to each instrument panel soon

Update includes a bunch of smaller changes and fixes as always. You can find them below. I planned to add more contracts and at least two more new tutorials in this update, but lost two weeks because of recent events. And I don't even know if I will have access to the internet next week. So, here is the update and I hope you will like it. Please report any bugs or issues if you'll find them.

Thank you and see you in the next one.

[h2]Release notes v0.15.0[/h2]
[h3]Features:[/h3]

• added two new tabs into control center UI: "contracts" and "extended training";
  
• added save stats;
  
• reworked rocket stats UI during the flight;
  
• reworked maneuver panel UI;
  
• added target panel when rocket has target;
  
• added 13 interactive contracts;
  
• added one new extended training tutorial.
  

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• game was renamed, now it called "Rocket Science";
  
• vessels and probe cores will be always on top in the spacecraft list in the control center;
  
• improved sprite resolution for some UI elements;
  
• camera will get spacecraft and its parent body in focus when selecting spacecraft in the control center;
  
• you can set spacecraft as target by clicking on it and holding ALT (previously it worked only when clicking on marker);
  
• you can interrupt any tutorial at any moment;
  
• added several more steps to the base tutorial, updated some steps to match the gane state.
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• when you open the map when inspecting any building in the spaceport, camera transition is bugged, also building UI stays on the screen;
  
• sometimes exception appeared when opening and closing ruins UI several times;
  
• sometimes navball markers are misaligned;
  
• sometimes huge drop in perfomance appears on rocket launch.
  

This small patch fixes a critical bug reported by @chrisn44 and a couple of issues, that I've found along the way.

[h2]Release notes v0.14.1[/h2]

[h3]Features:[/h3]

• "sp.warp" debug command now supports spacecraft name as a target;
  
• 2-2.5x improved rendering speed of huge rockets (100+ parts).
  

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• an exception when trying to dock two spacecrafts;
  
• docked spacecraft resets its relative orientation after game reload;
  
• when rocket is controlled from docking port and undock from another spacecraft, both spacecrafts start receiving direct RCS commands.
  

The story of this update begins after I have released v0.13.0 “Space Stations”. I decided that it is time to update the game trailer. It was made in the earliest stages of the development and the game has changed a lot since then. I made a list of tasks that need to be done to keep the trailer relevant until the full release. The first task in the list was a new launch site that was actually requested many times by players.

And I already had a new launchpad model made by one of the players almost a year ago. But I could not just place it on the planet’s surface without clipping into it. And it was almost impossible to find the right spot to fit it perfectly. Moreover, the launch site consists not only of just the launchpad. It has many things: buildings, towers, roads and support structures. So the game should have a way to modify the surface of the planet if I want to build something more complex than several cubes smashed together on it.

I encountered many pitfalls. For example, the game supports three base surface levels of detail that you can choose in the performance settings. Surface modification made for one LOD could look bad on another just because there are different numbers of vertices. Also when you move away from the surface, the game dynamically generates distance LODs using heightmaps and noise, so when the whole planet is in the camera view, it could perform nice and smooth. It is always very scary to touch this system, because it is huge and very complex. It would also be nice to support surface modifications in the mods. And it would be great to use it in the future for gameplay purposes.

I did it. I put a lot of work into this tool and it looks like this:

You can try to guess what gameplay feature I will use it for

Surface mods now support surface modification, you need to switch to the tab and you will see the tool's settings.



One thing I should mention: it is very rough and very experimental. For example, you need a powerful GPU to make this tool work properly. Also while it supports all three base surface LODs you need to set the highest in the performance settings to get the best results. If there will be a demand for this tool, I will put more work into it, but this functionality was sufficient to prepare the surface for the new launch site.

I’ve spent some time researching how the game’s reference — Vostochny cosmodrome actually looks. There is not very much information about it on the Internet, but I found maps, panoramas, photos and even a 360° video on Youtube about it. It was enough to build a better launch site than the game had before.

It is still under construction. More to come in the future

I also placed a control center and assembly shop on the surface.

No more launchpads in the middle of nowhere I guess

Then I switched to the spaceport itself. As I mentioned in the previous updates, I will be devoting more and more time to developing the spaceport building part of the game. I’ve uncommented the old spaceport building code from the pre Early Access times and was pleased to know that it is still working! It is rough and needs a lot of improvement, but it is a good basis. While I can’t release the spaceport building until the whole survival mode will be ready, I decided to add more props and buildings into the spaceport to make it look nicer.

Still no functionality exposed, but now you have more workers under your control to illuminate every single building

The last thing I want to tell you about is that I always wanted the game to react to real world events. But there were much more important tasks in the early stages of development. But this year I finally managed to find some time to make it.

Meet the Winter Holidays event in the “How do you like it, Elon Musk?”! It will last from December 24 to January 14 and brings a bit of holiday spirit into the game.



Ah and one more thing: I totally reworked key bindings window and split them into categories and subcategories for better readability:



And the video settings was finally extended and improved:



I hope you will enjoy this small update and see you in the next one. Happy holidays, friends!




[h2]Features:[/h2]

• added Winter Holidays event which will last from December 24 to January 14;
  
• launch site was completely reworked it is closer to reality and has more buildings and structures;
  
• reworked space center above the ground, it now exactly match launch site structures;
  
• added more buildings into space center;
  
• surface objects mods now support surface height painting;
  
• added simple wasd controls to move camera when working with surface mods;
  
• all default fixed bodies will be loaded when creating or editing amy surface object mod;
  
• tutorial improvements: added fallback steps when player failed to follow instructions (he had one job!);
  
• improved control settings window and categorised input actions for better readability;
  
• added support for exclusive fullscreen mode;
  
• separated display resolution from refresh rate settings;
  
• added a bunch of new quality settings which will help to solve some of performance problems on older GPUs;
  

[h2]Part changes:[/h2]

• landing strut was moved 10 cm lower relative to the connection;
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• camera is respecting surface object collisions now and tries to avoid it;
  
• controls settings window now fully supports localization;
  
• added space (and also hotkey) for the one more time scale on the time panel (will be implemented in the future);
  
• profile picture moved to the time panel;
  
• planet will be generated 2 times faster on CPUs with 6+ cores;
  
• camera speed in the spaceport no longer depends on game's FPS;
  
• increased camera movement bounds in the space center;
  
• shore lines will always have slightly higher LOD for better quality now;
  
• reduced RAM and video memory consumption in the spaceport;
  
• the game will fallback to English instead of Russian when localization files are invalid or some locale keys are missing;
  
• significantly improved quality of save game and mod previews;
  
• added "enter assembly shop" and "back to spaceport" buttons when viewing the rocket list in the spaceport.
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• game stuck on loading very rarely;
  
• control center UI is completely missing;
  
• light leaks from control center into small storage;
  
• light leaks appear at morning and evening in the space center;
  
• staff levels are broken on staff panel in the control center or storage;
  
• stars are jittering in the main menu;
  
• sometimes shadows are too dark in the surface mods;
  
• [assembly] part variants ordering of categories sometimes changes.