Making a roadmap for Rodina is tricky. The game is meant to have an open-ended, community-influenced development, and I’m no producer, so coming up with a schedule of planned features is bound to backfire one way or another!

However, now that Rodina is on Steam and things are settling down, I took the time to plan out the next year or so. Check out the new Roadmap!

Nothing is final. It’s all just meant to share what I’m thinking. I want to focus on substantial feature updates that will incrementally upgrade the game with new features until players can board enemy ships. Each update needs to get us closer to that first really big post-release milestone.

Please let me know what you think on Twitter, Reddit, and Steam!

Rodina 1.1.3 has been in beta testing on Steam for a few days now, and it’s finally stable and available for download!

This build is BLOWING THE AIRLOCK and adds a brand-new feature to Rodina: atmospheric simulation. In this system, every room on your ship, and every location out in space, has an associated atmospheric density. Opening all of the doors on your ship to and draining the atmosphere can be a quick way to extinguish a whole fire, but it might also result in explosive decompression and throw you out the airlock!

It’s not hopeless out in space, however, as you can use your new Jetpack to fly back in the ship. To activate the jetpack, simply try to hit jump while you are already in the air.

This build also contains some new options for improving performance on low-spec machines, some optimizations to improve AI performance, and it removes the Steam wrapper which was causing problems for a large handful of customers.

Also, as with the last update, those who are in the Appetizer Tier will need to donate again in order to play this update! Remember that you can either donate any amount in order to refresh your key, or donate up to the Buffet Tier in order to get a Steam key and access to all future updates!

Hi Folks! It’s been a while since the last update so I thought I’d fill you guys in on what to expect next and when.

Many of you know that this next update will be about Blowing the Airlock. This update will add atmosphere pressure simulation to the game, so you can open all the doors and the airlock of your ship to stop fires. But be careful – cause when the oxygen explosively decompresses, you might fly out the airlock too!

Lately I have been crunching to get this next update out. I have a little trip scheduled Sept 7th – 13th: I am visiting my family on the East Coast, so I wanted to finish up before I left.

Unfortunately, last night I got sick. And frankly I was pushing it already. So the update will come out the week I get back: Sept 14th – 20th. I’m a little bummed, but now I can take some vacation time to add some extra polish to this update, so it’s not all bad :)

Going Forward

This next update will include some other little surprises as well. Rodina players will find a new way to move around the world. Also, those of you who have referenced a certain scene from Wall-E will find satisfaction. And there will be some new options to improve performance for people experiencing lag when they first arrive at a planet.

Finally, this update will pave the way going forward. I’ve come up with a flexible roadmap (which I will share at some point) for how I’m going to get to the point where players can blow the airlock on an enemy ship and run in guns blazing. Improving the interior system is a big step in that process!

As always, thanks so much for your enthusiasm, patience, and general support for my game!

Thank you to all Rodina customers past and future! Thanks to Valve’s liberal policies, and the hard work of my web programmer Michael Francis, I can now offer Steam Keys to everyone in the Buffet tier ($15) or above, free of charge!

How to Redeem

Sign in to your dashboard. If you are in the Buffet Tier or above, there will be a section titled “Steam Keys”. Click there to get your key!

Now open up Steam, go to the Games menu at the top, and click “Activate a Product on Steam”. You should be downloading Rodina in no time.

What if I can’t sign in?

There is a function at the login screen for resetting your password, so do try that if necessary. Please let me know if you have any trouble with that.

Some users have been affected by a problem with registration where it was possible to register multiple users with the same information. We have fixed the problem that allowed for this but have not yet merged user accounts. If you think you might be affected by this – if you log in and don’t see your order, and can not claim a key, for instance – let me know and we’ll get you sorted out! Typically, if you are affected by this problem, we have already spoken about it.

After signing in, I am sent to the payments page! What gives?

If this happens to you, it’s likely just the site getting confused about where you want to go after logging in. If you log in and don’t see your order information, just click on “Dashboard” at the top of the screen in order to access your info.

If there’s any trouble or confusion here, just let me know.

What if I payed less than $15?

I’m afraid that I’m not going to be distributing Steam Keys to those in the Appetizer tier. Sorry about that! It’s not that I don’t appreciate your business- I just can’t allow a workaround to the $15 price on Steam. However, as always, you are welcome to top off your order in order to make it into the Buffet tier. It’s up to you!

A very exciting and pivotal day for Elliptic Games- Rodina is officially available for purchase on Steam! You can also try the demo, or download the Rodina soundtrack as a DLC!

For existing customers: Steam keys are coming soon. Everyone who donates up to the Buffet tier ($15) or above will receive a Steam key. That includes those who are currently in the Appetizer tier who bump their donations up. BUT it may take a little while to get those keys out. I’ll post again once the system comes online!

Rodina will remain for sale here on the site, and I will continue to do votes and offer picture credits to those who decide to donate at the appropriate levels. I’m not 100% sure how it’s all going to fit in with Steam, but hopefully things won’t change too much.

Thank you to everyone who helped get Rodina to this point! My greatest hope is that Rodina is successful enough that I can worry less about business stuff for a while and focus 100% on development. If that happens, it’s because of all of you!

Thank you!

What an amazing time! Rodina has been Greenlit to be released on Steam! All in all it took something like 27 days to get all the way to #50. I couldn’t have done it without the support of the community!

I’m not sure how quickly I will be able to get the game on Steam. I want to focus on getting Rodina 1.1.1 out since I haven’t been giving it enough attention with all of the craziness. But I intend to get Rodina on Steam ASAP…

One thing I’ve heard asked a lot: what about people who’ve already bought the game? My intention is to allow anyone who has bought (or will buy) the game at the base price of $15 (the Buffet Tier) will get their very own Steam Key. I wouldn’t leave you guys behind!

At the same time, I also intend to always distribute a standalone version of the game here on the site, for those of you not on Steam.

Thanks again, everyone! Here’s to a new chapter in Rodina’s bright future!!!

The Rodina Greenlight campaign is going full steam ahead! Rodina is currently at #51, which will hopefully mean that I am in a good position to be Greenlit in the next batch. Keep your fingers crossed for me, and please keep spreading the word to help Rodina finish strong!

I also have a little treat that some longtime fans of Rodina might enjoy. I’m releasing the Rodina demo that I gave at OMSI (Oregon Museum and Science and Industry) in April 2013!

(The demo is best played with an XBox Controller!)

Folks may remember me posting about this event last year. It was the very first time Rodina had ever been seen in public. It was a great opportunity to crunch for a mini-release, and to watch people play the game before the actual release. At the time, many Rodina fans asked to see the demo, so now at long last you can try it out!

This demo shouldn’t be interesting to most players- I present it mostly as a relic of Rodina’s pre-release development. The OMSI Demo was 8 months before Rodina’s release date, and it was very rough. I thought it might be interesting for people to see what the game looked like back then. It’s surprising for me to go back to it and realize just how much changed in those 8 short months! 2013 was a very busy year!

PS: The Rodina 1.1.1 update is going well too! I’ll have more news about that sometime after the next Greenlight batch is announced!

Here’s the progress on the room system I’ve been making. This system splits up the map into different sections based on how they are connected. Here’s the system artificially turned into colors so it can be seen in action:

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There’s still a few bugs. As you can see, the system thinks these two rooms are one room when connected by an angle piece. I must have some error in the fill algorithm which finds the boundaries of each room:

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The system doesn’t understand the big airlock doors yet, either.

As I mentioned in a previous post, this system will be used for several ship simulation features. I think my goal for this next update is going to be the ability to blow the airlock, exposing the ship to hard vacuum and blasting out its atmosphere. That seems like a fun feature, and it will also mix well with the fire – no oxygen means no combustion!

The Reddit AMA I did this week was amazing! It just kept going and going- I answered questions pretty much all day, went to bed, then got up and started answering again.

You can check it out here on Reddit. I’d say only about 50% of the questions were advice on how to break into the games industry :P

Hey Guys! So I’ve been asked a few times about what’s next for Rodina. I realized I had to have an answer to this question :)

A little background: My plans for Rodina literally do include the kitchen sink, so it can be difficult to choose from a smorgasbord of possible features. But after thinking about this a little bit, I realized that despite my indecision my gut already knew what I was going to be working on.

While promoting the game the past few days, I’ve mostly just been cleaning up the project and reorganizing code. But just recently without much thought, I started work on a Room System, that would understand enclosed spaces and the way they connect to each other. Nothing too complicated, but also it would be pointless unless I was going to use it for other systems, like atmospherics, or an electrical grid. You know, the “Sim” stuff you guys voted on :P

SO! I’m going to do that! Now that I’m done with fires, I’m going to continue with simulation features. Rather than bounce around, chipping away at several boulders, I’ll try to focus on ship sim stuff for the next couple of months at least and see how much I can carve out. I think some focus will serve both me and the game very well.

After that, maybe start work on NPCs? It’ll be vote-time then for sure!