Hey, it's been a while since the September devlog, so time to update you on everything. I've been in hospital at the end of September for several days, so I did another break from the projects for about 2 weeks to gain power and focus. The update itself is currently at ~85-90% completion level. I've completed all main Moon mechanics, added all planned buildings, replaced Starship models, added Superheavy catching animations, and did some other polishing work. What's left is pretty much only bug fixing and additional missions. I will work on them this week as Adrian sends me new in-game news for new payloads. Once I add new missions, I will do some private testing and then upload an experimental build for everyone to test (if you want to help). I will let you know in an additional Steam post once it's up (and on my Discord server ofc).

Preview into Work-In-Progress Stuff

Firstly, and probably most importantly for me, we've finally replaced the old plane model. Like literally, I did it in like 1 min about 3 years ago "only for testing". It ended up being used in the game for pretty much its entire existence. The plane was currently the oldest model in the game, it was added even before EarthX was released on itch.io;

Lucas also made some new Moon buildings and they were implemented in the game this month. Here's an example of a Moon base you can build.
In October we've finally agreed with the team on how Moon will work in EarthX. Originally, about 2 years ago, we had plans to add Mars and Moon in one update. We wanted to make a much more complicated game back then. When we've worked on Mars, it turned out to be way more difficult to make and balance than we thought. rykllan spent many days creating all of the Mars buildings, while I tried to make a cool gameplay concept. It partially worked since Mars seems to be playable, maybe not "as cool" as the rest of the game, but it's good enough IMO. Then we decided to add Moon "later" in the development, and it eventually turned out to be the last EarthX update. Then, "why don't you make Moon like Mars", you would ask? Well, the answer is pretty simple and I hope you understand. If we make Moon gameplay like the Mars gameplay, what's the point of flying to Mars after you've conquered the Moon? If the gameplay design/models look and work similar on both planets, it would get repetitive even more than it's now. We want to avoid that since Mars terraformation is the endgame of EarthX and most of the players would simply stop playing after reaching Moon.
So what's our plan then? Well, we just make the Moon be a teaser of Mars. Even better, you will still be able to start sending stuff to Mars and build some buildings there before you build a base on the Moon. However, only after you build a base on the Moon and send a few people there, you will be able to unlock Crew Starship. The Moon Materials and Moon Crew will come from both Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 contracts you will get when playing the game.
We think this is the best way we can do it. If you have any suggestions, we are pretty open to hearing them, but I will probably not rewrite everything (again hehe).

Full release informations

The full release is close. The hype within our team is enormous and I'm personally pretty excited since this will be the first project that's years old I will actually finish (it's beautiful!). Let's just keep it short here. When? I want to release it on my birthday that's on 11th February, but plans might change. It will be early next year for sure! Will there be bugfix updates? Yes, as long as players find some bugs, I will try to recreate them and release a bugfix patch as soon as possible. There will be a few months period between the 0.9.0 release and the full release, so we hope to iron out most of the bugs in that time :D Cool, but what about content updates? Sorry to tell you that, but 0.9.0 will be the last content update for EarthX. We might add new missions etc. but that will be probably very rare xD The reason we're deciding that way is that we just want to move forward. EarthX's code is made mostly by a dumb teenager (hi that's me) and it's very hard to add new content or even extend the current one. We want to focus our forces and new skill on our next project - EarthX 2. (what an amazingly original name btw!) Oh no, that's sad, but can I at least have some physical items? Yes and No. Yes because we actually want to make a few interesting T-Shirt designs and No because we are lazy to do them. However, I hope I will find some time and motivation to make at least two lol Nice, but when I have an EarthX T-Shirt, I might go show it off to friends or something, can I take EartthX with me? :3 What an amazing question, the short answer is yes, we are in talks with Pineapple Works studio and they are willing to take the challenge of understanding and editing the bad teenager's code and make a Nintendo Switch port out of it. I will personally support them as much as I can :) Cool, now I have to buy Nintendo Switch... Will I have some moneys left to buy EarthX on full release? For many months I talk about increasing EarthX price to 17.99, I think that will change. I might leave EarthX below 15. The current price is 14.69 and I just might increase it to 14.99 and call it a day. It's only for the Steam version btw. I have absolutely no idea how much EarthX will cost on Nintendo Switch.

The end

Yes, this is the end. The end of all ends. This year was hard for me, and probably hard for many people as the world goes back to normal and many of you had work or exams or other responsibilities. All I can do from my position is to wish you a good life and thank you for supporting this project. Byeee and see u next time Denis

[ 2021-10-24 23:14:15 CET ] [ Original post ]