Rocket Science News

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.
  

Tiny patch that fixes two bugs reported by players.


[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• launchpad collider is more accurate now;
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• "Zarya" engine explodes on launch (the engine manufacturer discovered a defect and deeply apologizes for this inconvinience);
  
• a lot of errors in the console and the game sometimes crashes if collision LOD was set lower than planet surface LOD.
  

A small patch following big game update v0.13.0 "Space Stations". It adds some new parts, changes three of existing ones and brings a couple of fixes and improvements. If you haven't tried an update yet, it's a good time!



[h2]Features:[/h2]

• added tooltip for all time warp buttons;
  
• added a small indicator for all probe cores for better orientation readability;
  
• construction of the launchpad continues! Workers made a little progress here;
  
• Adapter 1.2-0.5 was splited into two new parts with different set of connections;
  
• Adapter 1.2-0.35 was splited too;
  

[h2]New rocket parts:[/h2]

• Adapter Square-hexagonal;
  
• FT "Sticky" O
  

[h2]Part changes:[/h2]

• fixed effective volume for fuel tank FT "Zvezda-parallelepiped" О: it was two times capacious, than it should be;
  
• changed bottom sockets for Standard Reaction Wheel from hexagon to heptahedron;
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• improved localization loading error messages;
  
• fixed "out of view frustum" erros spamming into console while loading the first scene of the game;
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• exceptions in the console when rocket start exploding and quitting to the assembly shop at the same time;
  
• broken ascending / descending lines if two orbits have the same inclination;
  
• spacecraft is placed not in the exact center of a launchpad;
  
• "hide UI" doesn't work for the time panel in the spaceport.
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• reduced same game internal resources recreation on return to spaceport and then back to flight (should slightly improve loading speed);
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• Phobos and Deimos missing surface textures;
  
• sometimes patches of planet surface have too low detail and cracks;
  

This is the biggest update in terms of gameplay and new parts so far. I would say all previous updates were just a preparation for this one. Let’s get right into it.


Reaction control system is a set of monopropellant-fuelled small thrusters primarily intended for vessel orientation and translation in a vacuum. Players have requested implementing RCS from day one. But it was not easy because of the game's rocket construction system. You need to place rcs engines precisely near the rocket’s center of mass or symmetrically from both sides of it or spacecraft will constantly get unwanted torque. But the fixed-slot attachment system doesn’t allow that. So the only solution I found is to implement an auto balancer, which will adjust the throttle value of each RCS thruster to minimize unwanted forces and fuel consumption.

I’ve done that, but my solution is far from ideal. It is very resource-intensive and could fail to solve the current set of constraints (for example, if some thrusters on some axis are missing). Also it requeres reasonable placement of rcs thrusters across the rocket (at least two in each axis). I will definitely improve it in the future versions of the game, but right now if you have any problems with that you can always switch to simple rcs mode, which will skip the autobalance step and just fire all thrusters according to user input. Note, that if autobalancer could not solve current RCS it will automatically fallback to the simple mode which could lead to unwanted torque.

H and N to translate forwad/backward, I and K to translate up/down, J and K to left and right

For rotation use regular keys

You can turn on / off RCS by pressing the R key and switch to the simple mode using the new RCS panel near the Navball.
You can also control RCS modes separately for translation and rotation

One more thing: currently rcs is not used by the autocorrection system, this will be implemented in the next update.

And one more. RCS thrusters consume monopropellant (hydrazine). It was added as an additional fuel configuration for all small fuel tanks.


Docking ports were previously missing because it is almost impossible to dock spacecraft without RCS. Also you should be able to connect two docking ports during rocket construction from the hatch side. Which again didn’t work well with the game’s slot system. After much thought I decided to introduce a new “docking” connection type. You can attach two docking ports to each other if they both have the same radius. No connector or slots needed for that.

So the docking port not only allows to couple two spacecrafts on the orbit, but also gives an ability to transfer fuel and oxidizer through it. You can also control spacecraft from the docking port. It will still use the spacecraft's command module, but it will reorient all controls and navball relative to it.

The docking process is surprisingly satisfying

Resource transfer is as simple as that


Another very important feature needed for docking. You need to predict intersection with target spacecraft orbit and also target position to be able to intercept it. Maneuver planner allows that and produces two new orbit nodes for that: intersection node and target position at intersection node.

None, one or two intersections could be found for any two orbits

So, when these two nodes are combined during maneuver planning, you will be able to intercept target spacecraft.

Notice how separation becomes much lower after both nodes was brought closer to each other


All nearby spacecrafts will be marked for you. You can hover over the mark to get the spacecraft’s name and distance to it. You can change marking range in the game settings and turn it on and off by pressing F4. You can also set spacecraft as target by holding ALT and clicking on this mark. And switch to it by double clicking (same as on solar system map).

Default range is 200m - 50km


Autocorrection system now accounts for forces produced from TVC, RCS and reaction wheels at the same time and produces more correct control action. It also works in the predictive mode now and tries to proactively predict the future rocket orientation and apply needed forces accounting for this knowledge. This should make autocorrection more stable especially during the physics time warp.


This update introduces 18 new parts. That's almost as much as it was during the first game release! Let’s look at them.

New command module and probe core

Two RCS thrusters

Two RCS mount points

Two docking ports

Two new decouplers. The first one also splits in two halfs during decouple (for payload fairings)

Two new fuel tanks

Four new structure parts

And one adapter and battery

The one thing I didn't have time to do again is to make a new tutorial. Game changed a lot since the initial release and many new features were added during all updates. I think the next update will be almost exclusively devoted to the new tutorial. And also probably to the part’s window system during the flight. But this is the story for another time.

As always there are a lot more in this update, like new heat emission effect for all rocket engines, new docking camera mode, more sounds for spacecraft and ui and tons of fixes and improvements as always. The game becomes bigger and more complex with each update. And it is almost impossible to test everything solo now. So you can expect a bunch of new bugs that I did not find during local verification. Just report them to me and they will be fixed ASAP. You can find full release notes below. I am waiting for your feedback and will see you soon.


[h2]Features:[/h2]

• added RCS and rcs control panel for navball;
  
• added docking port: it not only allow to dock two spacecrafts, but also can transfer fuel and oxidizer between them;
  
• new connection type: docking port;
  
• added intersection and position at intersection nodes to the maneuver planner;
  
• added "Target" navball mode and manual switch between navball modes;
  
• spacecraft markers are now shown within a radius of 50 km around current spacecraft during the flight (F4 to toggle);
  
• implemented RCS autobalancer: it will try to select such rcs throttle values, so spacecraft can be moved or rotated without unwanted forces, even if rcs engines were placed not optimally;
  
• added new fuel type — monopropellant (Hydrazine) used by RCS;
  
• autocorrection now works in the predictive mode, that should improve rocket stability, especially during time warp;
  
• autocorrection from tvc, rcs and reaction wheels now work coherently with each other;
  
• added new camera mode: docking;
  
• added new part category "Control" where rcs and reaction wheels are placed;
  
• rocket plume will change its shpe depending on atmospheric pressure;
  
• added heat emission effect to all engines;
  
• added more sounds to navball and flight UI;
  

[h2]New rocket parts:[/h2]

• "Druzhba" Command Module;
  {*] "Grezy" Probe Core;
  
• "Ruby" embedded RCS;
  
• "Citrine" external RCS;
  
• "Fenek" Docking Port;
  
• "Navarin" Docking Port;
  
• "Ochrea" Radial Decoupler;
  
• "Hornet" Decoupler;
  
• FT «Zvezda-tzilindr»;
  
• FT «Zvezda-parallelepiped»;
  
• Circular Connector Block;
  
• Circular Crisscross Block;
  
• RCS Mounting Block;
  
• RCS Mounting Point;
  
• Hexagonal adapter;
  
• "Azimuth" Station Branching Module;
  
• "Axis" Station Branching Module;
  
• Medium Battery;
  

[h2]Part changes:[/h2]

• "Siphon" Radial Decoupler visual rework;
  
• Micro Decoupler now have smaller size and also received visual rework;
  
• reduced length and mass for Adapter 0.35-0.6-H by 25%;
  
• deprecated C-2 and S-2 connection variants for "Seeker" Decoupler (it was replaced by "Hornet" Decoupler);
  
• added hydrazine configuration for fuel tanks FT-800 Fuel Tank, Series S Fuel Tank, FT «Zvezda-sfera»;
  
• reduced time between staging parachute and actual parachute spawning;
  
• parachute spwaner's mass is now reduced by the mass of parachute on deploy;
  
• increased power consumption for all reaction wheels;
  
• slightly increased mass for "Osnovanie" Probe Core
  

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• rocket landed on any surface object (except directly on launch area) will no longer disappear after exiting to spaceport;
  
• rocket part animations now properly animate physics (no more exploding landing legs on low framerate);
  
• [Assembly] reset button now also resets rocket name if it was changed;
  
• pressing Q will also repeat last placed subassembly;
  
• improved connection search performance in the assembly shop;
  
• changed order of part categories in the assembly shop;
  
• updated all icons for part categories in the assembly shop;
  
• added decouple sound for all decouplers;
  
• moved space context menu to UI, so it will no longer be hidden by planets on solar system map;
  
• orbit tooltip will update its position, if hovered node is moving;
  
• orbit raycast will be hided if mouse is hovered over spacecraft, press ALT, to show it anyway
  
• maneuver handle will change its color depending on selected maneuver;
  
• when active command module is destroyed it try to transfer control to other command module if it exists;
  

[h2]Settings:[/h2]

• added RCS translation keys: H and N to translate forwad/backward, I and K to translate up/down, J and K to left and right
  
• added toggle RCS R
• added toggle targeting F4
• added min and max distance setting for celestial target
  
• ALT+click on spacecraft's marker during the flight or on solar system map to set it as a target;
  

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

• gimbal controls work incorrectly, when command module is rotated relative to rocket;
  
• when flying up to other spacecraft in the space it may suddenly warp at huge distance;
  
• parts sometimes acquire wrong parameters after another part of similar type was destroyed on rocket;
  
• connection section in rocket part tooltip is showing even if there are no connections available;
  
• [assembly] rocket name not saved if it was changed but save button not pressed:
  
• symmetry doesn't work for some cases: heptahedron connector + heptahedron socket and hexdual connector + rectangle socket;
  
• some parts have noticeable gaps on edges, especially colored in orange;
  
• some text is not localized in the assembly shop;
  
• rocket controls not reset, when control buttons were pressed and switching to another spacecraft during the flight;
  
• the lit status of solar panels doesn't change if autocorrection is disabled and the rocket is rotating.
  
• some inconsistencies in part materials;
  
• sometime predicted orbits looks broken;
  
• game stuck when trying to create subassembly from cloned part;
  
• sometimes batteries are not charging;
  
• sometimes decoupled parts disappear after main spacecraft crashes onto surface;
  

[h2]Known issues:[/h2]

• resource separation is broken for crafts with decouplers that was saved as subassembly (including first command module) and then loaded (found today, will be fixed soon);
  

Hello folks!

Today I've released a small patch that adds a "Save" button during the flight. This should help to make reproducible saves when the game rarely crashes during that time. If you encounter this kind of problem just hit this button right before the moment the game usually crashes. And if crash occurs, just send the contents of %USERPROFILE%/AppData/LocalLow/unbeGames/HDYLIEM/ folder at [email protected]. This will help me reproduce the problem and fix it ASAP.

This patch also adds several quality of life improvements, you can read about them in the patch notes below.

Thank you!

[h2]Release notes v0.12.6[/h2]

Features:

• added Save button to the main menu during the flight;
  
• added Drag Sensitivity setting for maneuver planner;
  
• added numeric values for all settings sliders;
  

Changes:

• added unique burn sounds for "Vega-072" and "Yuzhniy-348" Liquid Fuel engines;
  
• improved "Seeker Decoupler" physics collider;
  

Fixes:

• fixed tutorial failed if it was interrupted during rocket launch and later continued.
  

[h3]18.08.2021[/h3]
Fixes:

• fixed loading issue of huge rockets in the assembly shop.