The Holidays season is here, and we’re happy to announce that Interplanetary Enhanced Edition is 66% off on Steam Winter Sale! Until January 4th, you can treat yourself or your friends to a copy of the game. Mushroom Crusher Extreme, a the retro-styled arcade/action game we helped making, is also on on sale with a 50% discount—for 3,99$ / 3,99€. Happy Holidays, everyone!

The Holidays season is here, and were happy to announce that Interplanetary Enhanced Edition is 66% off on Steam Winter Sale! Until January 4th, you can treat yourself or your friends to a copy of the game. Mushroom Crusher Extreme, a the retro-styled arcade/action game we helped making, is also on on sale with a 50% discountfor 3,99$ / 3,99. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Hey Interplanetarists, Tomorrow, December 6th, we are celebrating 100 years of independence of Finland, our home country. It’s a big day, and we would love to share the celebration with you. Starting today and until December 8th, Steam is holding a special Midweek Madness, offering a selection of games created by Finnish developers. That means that you can get Interplanetary Enhanced Edition with a 66% discount. If you missed it at the Autumn Sale, here’s your second chance :) Remember to purchase through the Enhanced Edition Steam page. NOTE: If you own the original Interplanetary, you automatically own the Enhanced Edition as well. No need to buy it separately! The sale also affects Mushroom Crusher Extreme—the retro-styled arcade/action game by our friends at Mushroom Party, which we helped to develop and release. If you’re curious, go ahead and give it a try for 3,99$ / 3,99€. Happy Independence Day a.k.a. Hyvää Itsenäisyyspäivää!

Hey Interplanetarists, Tomorrow, December 6th, we are celebrating 100 years of independence of Finland, our home country. Its a big day, and we would love to share the celebration with you. Starting today and until December 8th, Steam is holding a special Midweek Madness, offering a selection of games created by Finnish developers. That means that you can get Interplanetary Enhanced Edition with a 66% discount. If you missed it at the Autumn Sale, heres your second chance :) Remember to purchase through the Enhanced Edition Steam page. NOTE: If you own the original Interplanetary, you automatically own the Enhanced Edition as well. No need to buy it separately! The sale also affects Mushroom Crusher Extremethe retro-styled arcade/action game by our friends at Mushroom Party, which we helped to develop and release. If youre curious, go ahead and give it a try for 3,99$ / 3,99. Happy Independence Day a.k.a. Hyv Itsenisyyspiv!

A few weeks back we announced our new game—Worbital. We’ve just opened a Steam group for Worbital. From now on, all the game’s development updates and news will be shared in its own hub, not to spam the Interplanetary community. So, if you’re interested in following Worbital, you are welcome in the new group! In addition to that, we have just released our first development blog article, telling about the origins of Worbital’s concept. When did we get the original idea and how did it turn into a full concept? What did the first Worbital prototype look like, and why did it make us scream in agony? Read in our blog.

A few weeks back we announced our new gameWorbital. Weve just opened a Steam group for Worbital. From now on, all the games development updates and news will be shared in its own hub, not to spam the Interplanetary community. So, if youre interested in following Worbital, you are welcome in the new group! In addition to that, we have just released our first development blog article, telling about the origins of Worbitals concept. When did we get the original idea and how did it turn into a full concept? What did the first Worbital prototype look like, and why did it make us scream in agony? Read in our blog.

Over the course of Interplanetarys development, we have received a lot of feedback and suggestions from you and implemented a bunch of them. There were some feature suggestions that seemed like fun and we liked them as much as you did, but unfortunately, they just didnt fit the concept of Interplanetary as we see it. But, all of those ideas didnt just go to waste. Say hello to Interplanetarys little cousin the action-packed planet shooter, Worbital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p07BjLTe41I Based on the craziest player feedback, Worbital is an attempt to realize gravitational interplanetary war in real-time. The game offers same artillery mayhem, but faster paced with unpredictable chain reactions and set within smaller purely two-dimensional solar systems. Exploding and shifting planets, colonization, moonsall of those are here. Worbital is Interplanetary re-imagined, a chance to relax, let go off realism and simply enjoy the blasting fun! Worbital is early in development. Gameplay details, visuals and such may still change. The screenshots and video shown are visual targets, not actual gameplay. We are aiming to release Worbital in Summer 2018, for PC and major consoles.
But what about Interplanetary? As part of the team is developing Worbital, some of us are continuing the work on updating the Enhanced Edition. There are still features and fixes that are waiting for their turn to be completed. So, keep that feedback coming! Were listening and doing our best to support the game. Meanwhile, you can check out the following links to keep up with Worbital development and news: Website: https://www.worbital.com/ Development Blog: https://worbital.tumblr.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worbital Twitter: https://twitter.com/worbitalgame

Over the course of Interplanetary’s development, we have received a lot of feedback and suggestions from you and implemented a bunch of them. There were some feature suggestions that seemed like fun and we liked them as much as you did, but unfortunately, they just didn’t fit the concept of Interplanetary as we see it. But, all of those ideas didn’t just go to waste. Say hello to Interplanetary’s little cousin – the action-packed planet shooter, Worbital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p07BjLTe41I Based on the craziest player feedback, Worbital is an attempt to realize gravitational interplanetary war in real-time. The game offers same artillery mayhem, but faster paced with unpredictable chain reactions and set within smaller purely two-dimensional solar systems. Exploding and shifting planets, colonization, moons–all of those are here. Worbital is Interplanetary re-imagined, a chance to relax, let go off realism and simply enjoy the blasting fun! Worbital is early in development. Gameplay details, visuals and such may still change. The screenshots and video shown are visual targets, not actual gameplay. We are aiming to release Worbital in Summer 2018, for PC and major consoles.
But what about Interplanetary? As part of the team is developing Worbital, some of us are continuing the work on updating the Enhanced Edition. There are still features and fixes that are waiting for their turn to be completed. So, keep that feedback coming! We’re listening and doing our best to support the game. Meanwhile, you can check out the following links to keep up with Worbital development and news: Website: https://www.worbital.com/ Development Blog: https://worbital.tumblr.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worbital Twitter: https://twitter.com/worbitalgame

Surprise! The shiny new Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition is available on Steam right now! What’s New As we have announced earlier this summer, this is a massive update for Interplanetary. So massive, that, in fact, it is its own game. Essentially, this new version is a re-build of the entire game for the sake of making it more stable, as well as better sounding and looking. It’s still the same old Interplanetary deep down, but better. As we are taking Interplanetary to the new level, we are also expanding the geography of our community. In this version we are introducing localization into German language. More languages coming soon! The update also includes a bunch of new features, some of which had been much requested in the last couple of years, like Online AI Bots, Reconnect and new weapons. Find the full changelog below. How To Get the Enhanced Edition
So, how do you get a hold of a copy? If you already own the original Interplanetary, then it’s all good. The Enhanced Edition should be waiting for you in your Steam library now. Find it and get to installing. If you don’t own a copy of the original game, you can purchase the Enhanced Edition through its separate Steam page. The initial version of the game is also included in the new version and should appear in your library automatically if you purchase the Enhanced Edition. What Happens to the Original The original Interplanetary will no longer be on sale as a separate package. However, for the time being, the store page and the community hub will remain open. The Future Though the Enhanced Edition is, in a way, completing Interplanetary, it is not absolutely final as is. Rebuilding a game from scratch hasn’t been smooth sailing, as expected. While we’ve bulldozed over most old bugs, completely new issues have periodically risen. As a matter of fact, we’re already hammering away at some upcoming fixes and we’re prepared to keep working at it for as long as we can. Please bear with us through the initial roughness. For future patching, it’s essential that you give us feedback on your game experience. As usual, the community forum is the ideal place for that. The Enhanced Edition does have its own forum already, so join the new discussions and be excellent to each other! Also, you can reach us on Twitter and Facebook. Our very next feature update will see the light in just a few days and it will include localizations into several more languages: French, Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese. Happy blasting!

Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition Version 1.50.1653 - August 2nd, 2017

• Online AI Bots
• Reconnect
  • Allows disconnected players to attempt to reconnect into an online match
  • AI now replaces disconnected players
• Quick Targeting Mode
  • Allows for much faster targeting of many weapons in a row
  • Planet surface targeting can now be done faster by doing it simultaneously for all weapons with the 1st stage targeting completed
• New Buildings
  • Floating Plant
    • New Power Plant, buildable on water
  • Ion Defense
    New Defense building, with defendable weapons and probabilities adjusted for all three
  • Coilcannon
    • Basically a powered up railgun, unlockable later, while Railgun is transformed into a weaker early game weapon
  • Nuclear Missile
    • A new super weapon, which leaves deadly fallout around its hit area
  • MIRV
    • A new weapon that splits when approaching an enemy planet and the fragments home into building types determined by MIRV upgrades
• Intel System Adjustments
  • Intel View now also shows how the enemy sees you in a split-screen view
  • Enemy Tech Tree can be viewed
  • The location of once seen enemy buildings remains visible even after losing intel (optional)
  • Counterintel now works as a multiplier to building Stealth Values, instead of a flat value that needs to be surpassed with intel
  • Intel View shortcut buttons and overall intel situation now visible at the bottom of the screen in every game view
• New Tech Tree
  • Allows chaining tech research by clicking on techs while holding SHIFT
  • Clearer visuals
  • Advanced unlockable info tooltips
  • Science can now overflow from one tech to another, allowing you to, in theory, research multiple techs in one turn
  • Science is now allocated to all available techs, if no tech research is specified
• New Build Menu
  • Ability to set upgrades in Build Menu
  • Advanced building info tooltips
  • Locked building list
• Quick Build Hotkey
  • Holding SHIFT while building allows you to immediately replicate the same building
• New Weapon List
  • Ability to set upgrades in Weapon List
  • Weapon Categories
  • Weapon Sorting
• Elliptic Orbits (optional)
• Player Colored Projectiles
  • The projectiles are now colored according to the player who fires them (optional)
• Renameable Buildings and Cities
• Predicted Damage UI
  • When surface targeting, the building HP bars indicate the amount of damage the targeted attack would deal
  • Conversely, the damage caused during the previous turn is now also shown on the HP bars
• Defense Probability Mechanic Adjustments
  • The same defense building can now have different block probabilities against different weapon types
• Improved Game Balance "Moddability"
  • More robust data files for easier moddability
• New Navigation Options
  • Planets can now be clicked to re-orient the camera, or double clicked to zoom in on them
  • Additional camera behavior options
• End Turn Adjustments
  • Turn End can now be cancelled if other players have not ended their turn yet
  • Most of the UI is now usable while waiting for other players at Turn End
• Music Adjustments
  • Added a few more short tracks
  • Action music now only plays if planets fire weapons during action phase
• Action Phase Adjustments
  • Projectiles are now destroyed if too far from the planetary system
• End Game Screen Adjustments
  • Smoother transition from game to End Game Screen
  • Player stats can now be viewed from the End Game Screen
• Planet Destruction Animation
  • When a player is defeated, the planet is now consumed in fiery destruction
• City Adjustments
  • There can now be different City types with variable sizes, stealth ratings, science production etc.
• City Defense Projects
  • Two projects that allow a City to double as a defense building
• New Chat Window
  • Transparency setting
  • Visual improvements
• Saving Improvements
  • Autosaving
  • Steam Cloud Support
• Targeting Line Adjustments
  • Graphical enhancements
  • Angle and velocity values shown
  • Maximum angle shown
• Ruleset UI
  • Adjusted game balance files (rulesets) can be changed through Game Setup
• Classic Balance Option
  • Classic ruleset can be selected from Game Setup, allowing players to play the original Interplanetary balance with Enhanced mechanics
• Event Log Adjustments
  • Events now have more detailed tooltips, giving more information
  • Event graphics vary by their severity
• Online Lobby Sorting Options
• Localizations
  • German
  • More coming soon...
• Graphics Overhaul
• Audio Overhaul
• New Balance Adjustments
• Minor Fixes, Improvements, Adjustments and Polish Across the Board
  
  [ 2017-08-02 16:36:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Surprise! The shiny new Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition is available on Steam right now! Whats New As we have announced earlier this summer, this is a massive update for Interplanetary. So massive, that, in fact, it is its own game. Essentially, this new version is a re-build of the entire game for the sake of making it more stable, as well as better sounding and looking. Its still the same old Interplanetary deep down, but better. As we are taking Interplanetary to the new level, we are also expanding the geography of our community. In this version we are introducing localization into German language. More languages coming soon! The update also includes a bunch of new features, some of which had been much requested in the last couple of years, like Online AI Bots, Reconnect and new weapons. Find the full changelog below. How To Get the Enhanced Edition
So, how do you get a hold of a copy? If you already own the original Interplanetary, then its all good. The Enhanced Edition should be waiting for you in your Steam library now. Find it and get to installing. If you dont own a copy of the original game, you can purchase the Enhanced Edition through its separate Steam page. The initial version of the game is also included in the new version and should appear in your library automatically if you purchase the Enhanced Edition. What Happens to the Original The original Interplanetary will no longer be on sale as a separate package. However, for the time being, the store page and the community hub will remain open. The Future Though the Enhanced Edition is, in a way, completing Interplanetary, it is not absolutely final as is. Rebuilding a game from scratch hasnt been smooth sailing, as expected. While weve bulldozed over most old bugs, completely new issues have periodically risen. As a matter of fact, were already hammering away at some upcoming fixes and were prepared to keep working at it for as long as we can. Please bear with us through the initial roughness. For future patching, its essential that you give us feedback on your game experience. As usual, the community forum is the ideal place for that. The Enhanced Edition does have its own forum already, so join the new discussions and be excellent to each other! Also, you can reach us on Twitter and Facebook. Our very next feature update will see the light in just a few days and it will include localizations into several more languages: French, Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese. Happy blasting!

Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition Version 1.50.1653 - August 2nd, 2017

• Online AI Bots
• Reconnect
  • Allows disconnected players to attempt to reconnect into an online match
  • AI now replaces disconnected players
• Quick Targeting Mode
  • Allows for much faster targeting of many weapons in a row
  • Planet surface targeting can now be done faster by doing it simultaneously for all weapons with the 1st stage targeting completed
• New Buildings
  • Floating Plant
    • New Power Plant, buildable on water
  • Ion Defense
    New Defense building, with defendable weapons and probabilities adjusted for all three
  • Coilcannon
    • Basically a powered up railgun, unlockable later, while Railgun is transformed into a weaker early game weapon
  • Nuclear Missile
    • A new super weapon, which leaves deadly fallout around its hit area
  • MIRV
    • A new weapon that splits when approaching an enemy planet and the fragments home into building types determined by MIRV upgrades
• Intel System Adjustments
  • Intel View now also shows how the enemy sees you in a split-screen view
  • Enemy Tech Tree can be viewed
  • The location of once seen enemy buildings remains visible even after losing intel (optional)
  • Counterintel now works as a multiplier to building Stealth Values, instead of a flat value that needs to be surpassed with intel
  • Intel View shortcut buttons and overall intel situation now visible at the bottom of the screen in every game view
• New Tech Tree
  • Allows chaining tech research by clicking on techs while holding SHIFT
  • Clearer visuals
  • Advanced unlockable info tooltips
  • Science can now overflow from one tech to another, allowing you to, in theory, research multiple techs in one turn
  • Science is now allocated to all available techs, if no tech research is specified
• New Build Menu
  • Ability to set upgrades in Build Menu
  • Advanced building info tooltips
  • Locked building list
• Quick Build Hotkey
  • Holding SHIFT while building allows you to immediately replicate the same building
• New Weapon List
  • Ability to set upgrades in Weapon List
  • Weapon Categories
  • Weapon Sorting
• Elliptic Orbits (optional)
• Player Colored Projectiles
  • The projectiles are now colored according to the player who fires them (optional)
• Renameable Buildings and Cities
• Predicted Damage UI
  • When surface targeting, the building HP bars indicate the amount of damage the targeted attack would deal
  • Conversely, the damage caused during the previous turn is now also shown on the HP bars
• Defense Probability Mechanic Adjustments
  • The same defense building can now have different block probabilities against different weapon types
• Improved Game Balance "Moddability"
  • More robust data files for easier moddability
• New Navigation Options
  • Planets can now be clicked to re-orient the camera, or double clicked to zoom in on them
  • Additional camera behavior options
• End Turn Adjustments
  • Turn End can now be cancelled if other players have not ended their turn yet
  • Most of the UI is now usable while waiting for other players at Turn End
• Music Adjustments
  • Added a few more short tracks
  • Action music now only plays if planets fire weapons during action phase
• Action Phase Adjustments
  • Projectiles are now destroyed if too far from the planetary system
• End Game Screen Adjustments
  • Smoother transition from game to End Game Screen
  • Player stats can now be viewed from the End Game Screen
• Planet Destruction Animation
  • When a player is defeated, the planet is now consumed in fiery destruction
• City Adjustments
  • There can now be different City types with variable sizes, stealth ratings, science production etc.
• City Defense Projects
  • Two projects that allow a City to double as a defense building
• New Chat Window
  • Transparency setting
  • Visual improvements
• Saving Improvements
  • Autosaving
  • Steam Cloud Support
• Targeting Line Adjustments
  • Graphical enhancements
  • Angle and velocity values shown
  • Maximum angle shown
• Ruleset UI
  • Adjusted game balance files (rulesets) can be changed through Game Setup
• Classic Balance Option
  • Classic ruleset can be selected from Game Setup, allowing players to play the original Interplanetary balance with Enhanced mechanics
• Event Log Adjustments
  • Events now have more detailed tooltips, giving more information
  • Event graphics vary by their severity
• Online Lobby Sorting Options
• Localizations
  • German
  • More coming soon...
• Graphics Overhaul
• Audio Overhaul
• New Balance Adjustments
• Minor Fixes, Improvements, Adjustments and Polish Across the Board
  
  [ 2017-08-02 16:36:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks. We’ve just put out a small patch, containing some minor fixes.

Interplanetary Version 1.1.6430 / 05.07.2017

• Rearranged Technologies for visual clarity
• Cloning Initiative project adjusted
• Small under-the-hood improvement regarding Action Phase simulation

Hey, folks. Weve just put out a small patch, containing some minor fixes.

Interplanetary Version 1.1.6430 / 05.07.2017

• Rearranged Technologies for visual clarity
• Cloning Initiative project adjusted
• Small under-the-hood improvement regarding Action Phase simulation

Kept you waiting, huh? Well, we’re finally back in action, and there’s a lot of catching up to do! With the help of Team17 and Advanced Interactive Gaming, we’ve had a chance to get back to Interplanetary and devise a cunning plan to finally add the fixes and features we’ve been promising... Let’s not ignore the gas giant in the room any longer: we’re happy to announce the upcoming Interplanetary Enhanced Edition update! There’s also a small new patch out right now, just to thank you all for your patience. Interplanetary Enhanced Edition Interplanetary Enhanced Edition is a sizeable update with a load of improvements and various new features. At this point we are not entirely sure if the Enhanced Edition will be a normal update or appear in your library as a new product, but it will be free for everyone who has already purchased Interplanetary. The main goal of the update is to add the features we’ve been promising since forever, including Online AI Bots and Reconnect, as well as to make the game much more stable. As we explained in our previous posts, we had a lot of issues with the very architecture of the game’s code, making it near impossible to add these features and fix the lingering networking bugs. So, how are we managing to do all that with this update? By completely re-doing the whole game, of course!
For Enhanced Edition, we undertook a huge effort to actually rebuild Interplanetary from the ground up. It’s been surreal being able to have a second go at it, redoing the same game, but better. For you, it will be a hefty update, but for us, it’s actually a whole new game project. Development has been much faster this time around, but it’s definitely not a quick task by any means. It will still be the same old Interplanetary in essence, but prettier and more user-friendly with new features, big and small. Here are some of the things we’ve been working on:

• Online AI Bots
• Reconnect
• Elliptic Orbits
• Quick Targeting Mode
• Tech Tree Graphical Overhaul
• New Intel Mechanics
• The Ability to Select Building Upgrades On the Build List
• New Buildings
• Rebalance
• Localizations
• Planetary System Navigation Enhancements
• Improved Visuals
• New and Redone Sound Effects
• Overall UI Polish
• Overall Re-Implementation of Systems, Eliminating Old Bugs
• And more...

• Navigation Enhancements
  • Added the ability to pan the camera by holding Middle Mouse Button
• New Planet and Visuals
  • New Player Planet: Breach
  • Enabled Starfield Background Randomization
• 2nd Stage Targeting Polish and Fixes
  • Defense ranges automatically visible when targeting inside their area-of-effect
  • Made planet-clicking easier on Missile targeting by increasing the click area and adding a highlight
  • Canceling 2nd Stage Targeting now takes you right back to Targeting View
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Intel View of the wrong player to be shown when canceling 2nd Stage Targeting
• Defense Polish and Fixes
  • Defense range visuals can be toggled on and off (B)
  • Fixed bugs that sometimes caused defenses to not activate when they should have
• Build Menu Polish and Fixes
  • Improved Build Menu highlights
  • Allowed tooltips on greyed out buttons
• Miscellaneous
  • End Turn button cosmetic adjustments
  • Removed analytics
• Balance Adjustments

• Interplanetary Enhanced Edition update is free for all owners of Interplanetary and comes out this Summer
• A smaller patch for the current version is out now

Kept you waiting, huh? Well, were finally back in action, and theres a lot of catching up to do! With the help of Team17 and Advanced Interactive Gaming, weve had a chance to get back to Interplanetary and devise a cunning plan to finally add the fixes and features weve been promising... Lets not ignore the gas giant in the room any longer: were happy to announce the upcoming Interplanetary Enhanced Edition update! Theres also a small new patch out right now, just to thank you all for your patience. Interplanetary Enhanced Edition Interplanetary Enhanced Edition is a sizeable update with a load of improvements and various new features. At this point we are not entirely sure if the Enhanced Edition will be a normal update or appear in your library as a new product, but it will be free for everyone who has already purchased Interplanetary. The main goal of the update is to add the features weve been promising since forever, including Online AI Bots and Reconnect, as well as to make the game much more stable. As we explained in our previous posts, we had a lot of issues with the very architecture of the games code, making it near impossible to add these features and fix the lingering networking bugs. So, how are we managing to do all that with this update? By completely re-doing the whole game, of course!
For Enhanced Edition, we undertook a huge effort to actually rebuild Interplanetary from the ground up. Its been surreal being able to have a second go at it, redoing the same game, but better. For you, it will be a hefty update, but for us, its actually a whole new game project. Development has been much faster this time around, but its definitely not a quick task by any means. It will still be the same old Interplanetary in essence, but prettier and more user-friendly with new features, big and small. Here are some of the things weve been working on:

• Online AI Bots
• Reconnect
• Elliptic Orbits
• Quick Targeting Mode
• Tech Tree Graphical Overhaul
• New Intel Mechanics
• The Ability to Select Building Upgrades On the Build List
• New Buildings
• Rebalance
• Localizations
• Planetary System Navigation Enhancements
• Improved Visuals
• New and Redone Sound Effects
• Overall UI Polish
• Overall Re-Implementation of Systems, Eliminating Old Bugs
• And more...

• Navigation Enhancements
  • Added the ability to pan the camera by holding Middle Mouse Button
• New Planet and Visuals
  • New Player Planet: Breach
  • Enabled Starfield Background Randomization
• 2nd Stage Targeting Polish and Fixes
  • Defense ranges automatically visible when targeting inside their area-of-effect
  • Made planet-clicking easier on Missile targeting by increasing the click area and adding a highlight
  • Canceling 2nd Stage Targeting now takes you right back to Targeting View
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Intel View of the wrong player to be shown when canceling 2nd Stage Targeting
• Defense Polish and Fixes
  • Defense range visuals can be toggled on and off (B)
  • Fixed bugs that sometimes caused defenses to not activate when they should have
• Build Menu Polish and Fixes
  • Improved Build Menu highlights
  • Allowed tooltips on greyed out buttons
• Miscellaneous
  • End Turn button cosmetic adjustments
  • Removed analytics
• Balance Adjustments

• Interplanetary Enhanced Edition update is free for all owners of Interplanetary and comes out this Summer
• A smaller patch for the current version is out now

Ho ho ho! The jolliest holiday greetings from Team Jolly Roger! Hope you've been well, our dear Interplanetarists, and everyone else interested in our misadventures in game development! It's been a while since we've been actively putting out status updates, blog posts and such. But now, right before we set out for a quick Christmas holiday, would be the perfect time to quickly go through what's going on over here and write about our general thoughts on the passing year. Interplanetary Musings and Thoughts for the Future
May 12th 2015, we released our first big PC game, Interplanetary, on Steam after a year of open development on Early Access. It was a roller-coaster of fun and horror, as these things tend to be! In the end, everything went much better than expected, a lot of which is thanks to the enthusiastic and warm reception of the game. You guys are the best! That said, not all the features we planned made it to Interplanetary. As most developers nowadays, we didn't simply throw the game out there and were done with it, but had great plans of supporting Interplanetary by fixing things, adding things, balancing things... Maybe even a bit too great, it turned out. Some bumps on road to release caused a lot of trouble with our subsequent support of the game. Shortly, we discovered some difficult online networking problems affecting some of the players around the launch time. You can read more about it in our July status update. We had to push back the bigger, funner features on the list and concentrate fully on critical fixes. We even put on hold some of our regular events, such as Whack-a-Dev's, until it was certain that no player would lose progress over a networking hitch. But, as it turned out, fixing the networking problem would require diving deep into the roots of the game, re-writing the code extensively; and the schedule was tight. With all the patches and trouble, we blew through the time we wished to spend on more interesting things. Eventually, most of the team needed to move on to different work-for-hire-projects, thus, having to leave Interplanetary support to the background, which was quite disappointing for all of us. Now, although we're heavily occupied by other work and can't give you any sort of sensible timeline yet, we are looking forward to continuing to support Interplanetary once we are able. We do eavesdrop on the community all the time and are very grateful to the players, who are still sending us excellent feedback! tl;dr Things didn't always go as planned and we ran out of time. Now we're really busy with other work. We want to update Interplanetary, but don't know when it's possible. Hopefully soon! Of course, it wasn't all pain and disappointment. After all, Interplanetary was our first significant project and, as tough as it was at times, it let us learn a great deal of things. Not to mention the confidence we found in the friendly reactions from the critics (even got to appear in printed press!) and eager participation of the community - great morale booster!
Speaking of morale boosters, even though enthusiastic players are the best prize any game developer could ever ask for, getting an actual award also feels pretty great. And that's how it felt to win Nordic Game Indie Sensation Award last May in Malm, Sweden! Unexpected and absolutely overwhelming, such recognition from peers, only days after the release gave us the strength to go on and the public attention to get Interplanetary noticed by new audiences.
Aside from the Nordic Game Conference, we got to tour inside Finland and all across Europe, showing off Interplanetary and meeting some of you guys! Among the events we got to attend in 2015 are: Paris Game Connection, Slush in Helsinki and Unite Europe in Amsterdam. Pretty out there, huh? To round up: Patches released: 6 Events attended: 11 Coffee packs consumed: Countless. Yeah, quite a busy year! It's been mostly behind the scenes, out of the public eye, working on secret projects and such. Makes for a kind of a boring retrospective when we can't talk much about the things we're been working on, but we hope we've been nicely transparent and answered some questions. Thank You For Your Patience! And now it's time for us to take a little Christmas break. We'll be back in business early next year. Enjoy your respective holidays, everyone! Take it easy, play lots of games and we'll see you again soon! May the Blast be with you!

Ho ho ho! The jolliest holiday greetings from Team Jolly Roger! Hope you've been well, our dear Interplanetarists, and everyone else interested in our misadventures in game development! It's been a while since we've been actively putting out status updates, blog posts and such. But now, right before we set out for a quick Christmas holiday, would be the perfect time to quickly go through what's going on over here and write about our general thoughts on the passing year. Interplanetary Musings and Thoughts for the Future
May 12th 2015, we released our first big PC game, Interplanetary, on Steam after a year of open development on Early Access. It was a roller-coaster of fun and horror, as these things tend to be! In the end, everything went much better than expected, a lot of which is thanks to the enthusiastic and warm reception of the game. You guys are the best! That said, not all the features we planned made it to Interplanetary. As most developers nowadays, we didn't simply throw the game out there and were done with it, but had great plans of supporting Interplanetary by fixing things, adding things, balancing things... Maybe even a bit too great, it turned out. Some bumps on road to release caused a lot of trouble with our subsequent support of the game. Shortly, we discovered some difficult online networking problems affecting some of the players around the launch time. You can read more about it in our July status update. We had to push back the bigger, funner features on the list and concentrate fully on critical fixes. We even put on hold some of our regular events, such as Whack-a-Dev's, until it was certain that no player would lose progress over a networking hitch. But, as it turned out, fixing the networking problem would require diving deep into the roots of the game, re-writing the code extensively; and the schedule was tight. With all the patches and trouble, we blew through the time we wished to spend on more interesting things. Eventually, most of the team needed to move on to different work-for-hire-projects, thus, having to leave Interplanetary support to the background, which was quite disappointing for all of us. Now, although we're heavily occupied by other work and can't give you any sort of sensible timeline yet, we are looking forward to continuing to support Interplanetary once we are able. We do eavesdrop on the community all the time and are very grateful to the players, who are still sending us excellent feedback! tl;dr Things didn't always go as planned and we ran out of time. Now we're really busy with other work. We want to update Interplanetary, but don't know when it's possible. Hopefully soon! Of course, it wasn't all pain and disappointment. After all, Interplanetary was our first significant project and, as tough as it was at times, it let us learn a great deal of things. Not to mention the confidence we found in the friendly reactions from the critics (even got to appear in printed press!) and eager participation of the community - great morale booster!
Speaking of morale boosters, even though enthusiastic players are the best prize any game developer could ever ask for, getting an actual award also feels pretty great. And that's how it felt to win Nordic Game Indie Sensation Award last May in Malmö, Sweden! Unexpected and absolutely overwhelming, such recognition from peers, only days after the release gave us the strength to go on and the public attention to get Interplanetary noticed by new audiences.
Aside from the Nordic Game Conference, we got to tour inside Finland and all across Europe, showing off Interplanetary and meeting some of you guys! Among the events we got to attend in 2015 are:  Paris Game Connection, Slush in Helsinki and Unite Europe in Amsterdam. Pretty out there, huh?  To round up: Patches released: 6 Events attended: 11 Coffee packs consumed: Countless. Yeah, quite a busy year! It's been mostly behind the scenes, out of the public eye, working on secret projects and such. Makes for a kind of a boring retrospective when we can't talk much about the things we're been working on, but we hope we've been nicely transparent and answered some questions. Thank You For Your Patience! And now it's time for us to take a little Christmas break. We'll be back in business early next year. Enjoy your respective holidays, everyone! Take it easy, play lots of games and we'll see you again soon! May the Blast be with you!

Greets, Interplanetarists! We've just put out a new Interplanetary patch, including some fixes and balance tweaks. Interplanetary Version 1.0.6383 Changelog

• Fixed the occasional UI breakdown caused by opening and closing Codex
• Railgun fragment amount reduced from 4 to 3

Greets, Interplanetarists! We've just put out a new Interplanetary patch, including some fixes and balance tweaks. Interplanetary Version 1.0.6383 Changelog

• Fixed the occasional UI breakdown caused by opening and closing Codex
• Railgun fragment amount reduced from 4 to 3

Hey, folks! Another patch coming your way, this time primarily fixing the AIs tendency to sometimes get lost in thought during long matches. Interplanetary Version 1.0.6355 Changelog

• AI Fixes
  • Fixed the AI getting stuck during long games
  • Increased AI building speed
• General performance improvements

Hey, folks! Another patch coming your way, this time primarily fixing the AIs tendency to sometimes get lost in thought during long matches. Interplanetary Version 1.0.6355 Changelog

• AI Fixes
  • Fixed the AI getting stuck during long games
  • Increased AI building speed
• General performance improvements

It's on now! Look for Interplanetary matches named "Whack-a-Dev", or something simlar, to face off against us! The devs playing today are:

• Chibitus[dev]
• Jeo[dev]
• Graah![dev]
• Reddie[dev]
• SmallFry[dev]

It's been some time since the last one! In honor of the Humble Weekly Bundle, let's have a little Whack-a-Dev! Whack-a-Dev is a special time when the developers host matches of Interplanetary and get their butts kicked by the players! Each time one of us is defeated we post an Interplanetary Steam Key on our Twitter! Join the fight this Saturday, starting at 5pm GMT, 10AM PDT! Matches hosted by Team Jolly Roger are usually titled "Whack-a-Dev"-something, so look out for those! Blast you soon.

Greetings, Interplanetarists! Team Jolly Roger here, with another little patch that should greatly increase the joy of demolishing AIs. Also, we'd like to give you a quick update on Interplanetary's state, the pace of future updates and such. Let's get right on it! AI Speed Up! As some of you have pointed out, the AI can sometimes take its sweet time calculating attacks. The more AI players and the higher the difficulty, the longer it takes. To alleviate the frustration, we've made changes that should make turn processing much faster. The AIs now start their calculations already during the player's turn, which in the ideal situation can make turns lightning fast! This is something that people on our forums have suggested, and while we initially had to keep it simple, this is obviously the better way to do things.
On top of that, we have some little tweaks, but nothing massive. Interplanetary Patch 1.0.6378

• AI performance optimizations
• Minor Load Game performance optimizations
• Fixed typos on Event Log

Greetings, everyone! Here's another small patch to tide you over until the next update, which will contain some actual, interesting features! This one mostly should bring relieve to network issues some players have been having, but there are other little fixes also. Interplanetary Version 1.0.6355 Changelog

• Networking fixes
  • General network stability improved
  • Fixed issues with game getting stuck on Action Phase when players disconnect during turn processing/simulation
• Game Setup fixes
  • Fixed Planet Material amount limit, now practically limitless
  • Fixed "Accept"-button to exit the menu instead of it working like an "Apply"-button
• Event Log camera fixed to cycle through damage areas instead of each damaged building
• Fixed Intelligence View occasionally showing the wrong player's information when navigating through the Event Log
• Fixed chat overflow issues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0rm4GyVUo This is it! Interplanetary has spread its wings and left the cozy Early Access nest! It's been quite a journey. Back in 2013, when we first started active development, we were still working from school, with no idea what would be in store for us. Our first alpha testing campaign, with a homemade key code system, was really the first thing that started drawing large scale attention to the game. This is where the ride started to get wild: the founding of our own company TJR Games, our Steam Greenlight adventure, Early Access release, development, development, development!
Now, we can finally say that Interplanetary has reached the point we determined to be "1.0", in the early days of development. It's actually more, since the ideas have expanded and our stay in Early Access gave us the chance to develop the game more towards the direction the players wanted. Like we said before, we will keep supporting the game with patches and updates, as needed. There are even a couple of bigger features that we promised at various times, but which couldn't make it to the launch. Features, such as online save games, online AI bots, ranked matches, LAN game and the third superweapon, will be added in a later update. Thank you for playing! We hope you will enjoy the 1.0 version of Interplanetary and do keep sending that feedback. Just because it's finished doesn't mean we're going to leave it! Get the darn thing here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/278910/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0rm4GyVUo It's finally happening! After a year of hard work with Interplanetary on Early Access, we're getting ready to release the 1.0 on May 12th, 2015! Celebration!
Major Added Features

• Online Matchmaking
• A quick way of starting online matches with a push of a button
• Match Customization Options
• A nice amount of options to change up the rules of the game. These include the ability to choose the amount of Cities, change the size of the planets, modify the strength of gravity, disable certain weapons or gameplay elements and more.
• City Projects
• A new gameplay mechanic that allows players to assign Projects for cities. The projects generally have a set duration and give resource bonuses and other perks. The amount of population in each city determines the amount of projects the player is able to initiate.
• AI Difficulty Levels
• Four difficulty levels for the AI, including a stupid, impossible cheating AI for ultimate challenge
• Saved Games
• Matches might drag on a bit, so this should come in handy!
• Damage Area Visualizations
•  Hit area markers that show the exact area of damage dealt by the projectiles. They lend themselves to some interesting, advanced strategies.
• New Event Log
• A clearer, much less spammy event log. Also quite a bit prettier.
• New Tech Tree
• A lot of new techs have been added to house all the Building Upgrades and City Projects. Also a nice graphical update that helps visualizing the branches, paths and unlocks.
• New Building
• The Offshore Mine, an advanced resource building, buildable only on water
• New Upgrades
• A bunch of new upgrades, most of them having pros and cons to add some interesting choices and strategy paths.
• New Intel Mechanics
• Intel View UI completely redone. Players will be able to see the exact amount of Intel needed to see more of the enemy planets and also spy on their resource amounts.
• New City Growth/Science Mechanics
• The players will be able to boost their Cities' Population growth by using Projects or attaching Power Connectors to them. The amount of Population is also tied to the amount of Science generation, so the more citizens you have, the faster you will gain new Techs.
• Achievements
• 26 achievements for players to unlock. Won't be easy!
• Improved UI and Graphics 
• Lots of smaller changes

We're living exciting and busy times. As some of you may remember, we've been throwing around "The Early 2015" as the release date of Interplanetary for a long time. If our watch is correct, it IS the early 2015 already! We are now scrambling to finally get Interplanetary to version 1.0 and out of Early Access! A huge amount of progress has been made since the last public version and we're hoping to get this thing released soon. We'll announce an actual release date a bit further on, but when we say "soon", we mean in about a month or so! Scary. The reason why we haven't released a lot of patches and updates recently, is that we've been working hard on adding all the final features and fixing them in place. This means we've had to spread the game open in such a way that packing it back up into nice updates would've slowed down the development too much. We've now managed to implement pretty much all the main features that were a part of the initial plan. Being in Early Access, however, slightly expanded the scope of the game according to player feedback.
Some of the features available at release:

• Ranked Matches and Online Matchmaking
• Custom Game Setup
• Saved Games
• City Projects
• AI Difficulty Levels 
• Damage Area Visualizations
• New Event Log
• New Tech Tree
• New Upgrades
• New Intel Mechanics
• New City Growth/Science Mechanics
• Achievements 
• Improved UI and Graphical Touches

• Grey Goo, the third superweapon. Includes some pretty unusual mechanics.
• The return of LAN Game. We had to disable LAN matches during the network overhaul. There are simply more vital features to add before launch, but we haven't forgotten about this one.
• Online AI Bots. Needed to be pushed back so we could finish other features.

Happy new year, interplanetary warlords! Here's a little patch we put out in honor of 2015. Bugs have been fixed, UI has been smoothened. Go check it out and do tell us if you find anything unseemly!

Interplanetary Version 0.7.5470_EAC_7.2 / 16.1.2015

• AI can now only build one superweapon of each kind, as intended
• Missiles and Lasers do not fire anymore if targeting is not properly finished
• Upgrade related turn processing bug fixed.
• City health bars now update properly on city icons and population bar
• Hotseat victory conditions fixed
• Intelligence View no longer cycles through dead planets
• Building health bars now change color according to the damage level
• Added scaling indicators to health bars
• Codex updated
• Minor AI fixes
• Online Lobby UI fixes

Happy holidays everyone! We're off on a short holiday break, so we thought to put out a little patch to tide you over until we get back to business. It's mostly bug fixes, but the major thing is that the AI should be acting much more human now. So long, insane aiming skills! I already linked this, but here's that tribute to the AI and its targeting prowess: https://imgur.com/a/PH3nN

Interplanetary Version 0.7.5435_EAC_7.1 / 19.12.2014

• Shot difficulty now affects AI accuracy, which has also been generally lowered
• Weapon damage to cities increased
• Player turn status markers re-implemented
• Victory screen bug fixes
• Event log performance issues fixed
• Action phase simulation accuracy increased (less zigzag movements for shots and the
• chance of appearing to go through the planets is minimized)
• Timeout for AI calculations added, fixing AI getting lost in thought
• Missile bug fixed
• AI turn message spam fixed

Sorry to keep you waiting, but here it is finally! Single Player AI, fixed networking, new UI, music, the works! Hope it was worth the wait. Remember, the AI is still young and inexperienced and as this update is quite sizeable, there may be some unexpected issues with it. Do contact us for anything and we'll get to fixin'. Oh, there's also an option to now send us anonymous user statistics while playing the game. This helps us a lot at developing the game further and squishing bugs. The information includes bug reports, hardware and gameplay data, such as session length and the most popular weapons. The info is not personally identifiable.

Interplanetary Version 0.7.5394_EAC_7

• Simple Single Player mode with early AI bots added.
• Networking overhauled.
  • All previous online connectivity issues should be fixed!
  • Mobile broadband connections (and all other kinds of obscure things) now supported.
  • LAN multiplayer temporarily disabled due to new network structure.
  • Player turn status markers temporarily disabled. Will be back soon.
• UI overhauled.
  • Menu UI graphics redone.
  • Menus streamlined.
  • Main Menu background modified.
• Planet selection added.
• Player avatars added.
• Fixed the turn-processing freezing Laser bug (again!) Should be gone now.
• Laser animation changed to a nicer one.
• Optional game analytics added.
• Loading screens added.
• New music added.
• Minor sound tweaks.

This Thursday. Get ready!

We're starting our Saturday whacking programme right now! Join any of us for a match or two of Interplanetary! The devs in-game tonight are:

• Jeo[Dev]
• Graah![Dev]
• kingofcomsos[Dev]
• Aether[Dev]
• WickerDude[Dev]

Greetings, Interplanetarists! It feels like today's a great day for a new Interplanetary patch, don't you think? Today on the menu: balance tweaks and network and structure graphics fixes. Finally, no more game crashes while turn-processing and building graphics are once again tied to intel! Check the full change log: Interplanetary Version 0.6.4981_EAC_6.6

• Fixed online games crashing at turn processing due to Laser weirdness
• City and Building graphics are now visible only if the player has enough intel
• Camera now centers on the player planet when entering Targeting View
• Material production upgrades changed to consume Planet Material
• Cities now get destroyed when population reaches 0, as opposed to 1/6 of maximum
• Sun gravity increased
• Laser effects made slightly more visible
• Defense building Visibility increased
• Railgun Visibility slightly decreased
• Missile Population damage increased
• Laser Population damage increased
• Defense Energy consumption increased
• Upgradeable Intel amount for Data Security Hub decreased
• Upgradeable Counterintel amount for Telescope Array decreased

Whack-a-Dev VIII is happening right now! The developers in game tonight are:

• LizardLord [dev]
• Aether [dev]
• kingofcosmos [dev]
• Nettle [dev]
• IgorDB [dev]
• Jeo [dev] As usual, every time you defeat one of us, we give out free Interplanetary Steam keys on our Twitter and Vkontakte pages. Tonight's event stream, for the very first time is happening on our very own Twitch channel. Come watch and join the discussion in the chat! Happy blasting!
  
  [ 2014-09-20 18:14:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are happy to announce the triumphant return of Whack-a-Dev this Saturday, September 20th! Join us at 6pm GMT/11am PDT to rejoice in the fine tradition of Saturday whacking. We missed you so much and this Saturday we want to be closer than ever, thus, we will be hosting the Whack-a-Dev stream in our very own, shiny and new, Twitch channel. Some of us will be playing a match and streaming it online, and anyone of you, if quick enough, can joing the game to play with us. "Whack-a-Dev" Day is a special day, when Team Jolly Roger hosts games of Interplanetary and invites players to beat the living snot out of them!

• Whack the devs!
  • Now's your chance to prove your superiority! Beat the devs at their own game and become a folk hero!
• Steam Key giveaways!
  • We'll be posting Interplanetary Steam Keys to Twitter and Vkontakte every time someone manages to beat one of us!
• Streaming!
  • Watch our very own whacking stream on Twitch

Whack-a-Dev VII is taking off! The devs in game tonight are:

• Graah![dev]
• Pike Cickle[dev]
• Jeo[dev]
• Aether[dev]
• Lizard Lord[dev]
• Ig0rDB [dev] If you want to try out the Interlanetary AI, look for Mitorah! Every time you manage to defeat one of us, we'll post Inteprlanetary Steam keys to our Twitter and Vkontakte. Catch them all! The main hub for socializing and matchmaking is our Steam Community Chat. Jolly Whack-a-Dev to you all!
  
  [ 2014-08-23 18:08:20 CET ] [ Original post ]