Hey all time for another weekly update. A number of large projects are beginning to wrap up. For starters updating the physics code is about done. We’ve completed a shallow integration of PhysX and it will be fully supported once they finish work on double precision. Originally we were going to use Bullet, which already supports double precision, however Bullet doesn’t have multi-threading and its GPU support leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately those of you with AMD cards won’t get any GPU acceleration with PhysX however its CPU implementation will still run better than any of the alternatives that we’ve tried - which are all CPU-only anyway.

Different architectural pieces of a planetary factory

The new installation and patching system is ready for internal testing by the team however there’s still some work to be done with the launcher and in our web backend for uploading and publishing new patches. The backend integration also includes the groundwork for a big website update we want to do at some point. The first phase will be the aforementioned installer/patching support. This will be followed by a page that will allow people to upgrade their pledges and then finally the entire web portal will be updated. A new profile page which shows you your purchases/pledges, account information, and how to download the game will be the central focus of the website update.

A mockup of the land base hangar bay with 2 corvettes parked inside

On the art side things are really starting to come together for our space stations, land bases, and planetary factories. There’s still a bit of design work left to be done on the land bases however the mockups for the factories and space stations are now being integrated into the game. We’ll probably have 1 more patch, which may not include these new assets, using the old installation system before we switch to the new installation system along with a major update.

Major pieces of space station architecture

Scheduling-wise we’re going to continue to work on low level infrastructure, primarily the website and game networking, for the month of June. In July we want to refocus back toward iterating heavily on gameplay as we begin a big 4 month push to get the Alpha out by the end of October. This will start with implementing additional weapons and beginning work on the game UI. For Alpha we want to have all major game systems mocked up, a working UI, and all of the cockpits close to being completed. Needless to say it’s going to be a busy summer and fall!