Oh my! It’s been so long since I gave people a real update. Here’s the quick intro! Progress on Rodina 1.1.0, the first major update to the game, is going well, although I was hoping to have it released by now. The delay is due to standard reasons like feature creep (which I will outline below), along with some personal events which have been a distraction. Unfortunately, due to some changes and running around in my day-to-day life, I haven’t gotten much work done over the past 2 1/2 weeks.
Nevertheless, progress continues. I’m hoping you guys will be really pleased with what the next update contains, although there won’t be as much new content as I would like, as I’ve decided to also spend quite a bit of time on bugfixes and improvements. Here’s what to expect:
- Ship Fires
You guys know about this already, but this will be the main new gameplay addition. When your ship is damaged heavily and takes a hit, it will occasionally start a fire somewhere in your ships interior. You have to get to a fire extinguisher and kill the fire before it consumes the whole ship, including you! - Improved Ship Crashing
This feature isn’t finished yet, but I’m hoping to improve the way the game handles NPC ships crashing on the planet surface. Right now it can cause weird behavior, and huge slowdowns. In the future, they will be handled a bit more intentionally. - Improved Mouse Handling
I added some features which make mouse control MUCH smoother. It might be hard to notice the difference, but it’s there. Also, I fixed a bevy of mouse-related bugs which should clear up many of the problems various people have reported with sluggish controls, etc. - Improved Streaming
As per my last post about Youtube streaming, I’ve added some fixes which will hopefully make the video creation process a bit easier. Fewer crashes and a smoother experience (I hope!!!) - Improved Atmospheric Reentry
In addition to fixing some bugs with atmospheric entry which improve the experience, I’m also toying with the idea of adding an option to adjust the “push” of the atmosphere, and initializing the default to a setting which will make it quite a bit easier. Feedback welcome on this point :) - Improved Savegame Management
I’ve added backups to the savegame system, in case you overwrite something or a save gets corrupted. Also, the loading menu now sorts savegames by date rather than name. Finally, I’m hoping to add an Autosave feature. - Editor Undo/Redo
A very useful new feature which will hopefully give people some confidence to create new ship interiors. - New Game Modes
I’m splitting “Exploration” mode into two separate modes- a “Freeform” mode which allows full freedom of exploration with no story elements, and a “Peaceful” mode which is similar to Freeform, but with no enemy ships. - Improved Actor Management
The game requires better functions for updating actors, and for spreading out updates over time, and for ensuring that actors are being handled correctly. This is all interior stuff you won’t see, but the hope is that I can improve performance and remove some cases where the game might start to stutter over time. - Pre-work on an auto-updater
I don’t have time to complete the auto-updater for this release, but I do want to prepare the road for it. So I may have some features which are related to downloading files / checking for updates on the server. Nothing major, but it’ll be a good intermediary step towards making sure you guys don’t need to download full Rodina installers anymore.
And of course, there are a bunch of bugs that will be fixed in the new update as well, including this one, this one, and this one.
I hope to have this update out within a few more weeks.
Finally- be aware that this update will be the first update that constitutes a NEW GAME VERSION. So if you’ve bought the game at the Appetizer tier, that means that you won’t be able to run the new game outside of demo mode! To upgrade, all you need to do is donate some more money once the new version comes out (as little as $2) to refresh your membership. Of course, everyone who purchased at the Buffet level or above will be able to play this and all future updates!
I hope you guys are as excited about these changes as I am! I’m sorry there won’t be as much meat in this update as I’d like, but I’m eager to get the game on even more solid footing, at which point it’s back into lots more new features and content!
