We’re making good progress on a0.8. Here are a couple of new things you can look forward to. First, players can now select an area in game to save out the voxels as iso files. So if you have this awesome house design that you want to share, now you can. This works the same way as ISOs from the Creation Editor, once you have enough materials, you can drag the house out. You will be able to turn the house when you drag it out.

The next thing I want to show you is the new Replicator setup. We’re now using a new tree system for items, so you can click any item in the tree and be able to go directly to the item’s branch. This should streamline the process and save players the time of looking up and down the list for the exact item needed to replicate.

It took a while for the stand alone version of a0.764, sorry about that. There were several bugs and we’ve been extremely busy. We’ve been upgrading some of the hardware in our studio as well as hiring more people. We’re now at 35 people, adding on a couple of QAs and multiplayer programmers. They will hopefully make our game making process faster and better, especially on the multiplayer side.

From now on, all preorders purchased on this site will also include a Steam key. To make it fair for Steam users, the price will match the Steam price. You can claim the Steam key here, this goes for new and old buyers.

Another thing is we’re going to take out multiplayer for the stand alone build version for now. The reason is that we started using the Steam Workshop for holding player ISO creations with a0.76, the backend is already done, and very stable (well, when Steam’s working). For us to match the Steam cloud system will take a while. So for now, if you want to play multiplayer, use the Steam version. We are also finding that some people are having difficulty connecting to Steam Workshop from certain territories, we’re still investigating the causes for that.

Here’s the stand alone version of a0.764 for PC. We’ll have the Linux version up later.

A0.764 PC Version Direct Link
A0.764 MAC Version Direct Link

Now a bit of a0.8 news. From the looks of it, this build will be available sometime around mid-May. Now, everyone knows that we don’t hit our targets very well, but we will try. This build will be very packed, everything from monorails to boats to block LOD to saving buildings as ISOs to giant alien walls are moving forward toward completion. We’ll start posting screens from assets for that build in the next update.

Hey everyone, you’ll note that we had the a0.76 patch out last weekend on Steam…that was a mistake, we actually only wanted to launched that into the Beta version. Ah, can’t do anything about that. Since it was out, we did get to hear what people thought of the bugs and such, so we went ahead and tried to fix some of them with the a0.761 patch. Here’s the changelist:

Alpha 0.761 Changelist

Added laser weapon items in Creation Editor
Added motorcycle items in Creation Editor
Added jet items in Creation Editor
Added new vehicle weapon types in Creation Editor
Forward inertia after character dies in a vehicle
Optimized weapon movement and aiming for vehicles
Added field of view slider for camera
Added another 10 slots for saves
Changed the way items are organized in the NPC store
Added the Ostrov Shark (giant fish)
Added the Caelum Rex (giant bird)
Always day time in Build Mode
No ai enemies in start area of Adventure Mode
Added durability to multiplayer
Added oxygen level to multiplayer
Added stamina to multiplayer
Added animal ai options to versus mode
Changed multiplayer day/night cycle so that night is shorter
Added limitations to naming conventions in multiplayer
Added parsing options in multiplayer lobby for game type, server name, room number, etc.
Started using Steam Workshop for ISO storage in multiplayer
Added ISO download failure prompt
Added map marking
Optimized multiplayer memory use and database use
Optimized procedural terrain and resource location
In Windows and Linux, players can now open the client even when the server is still running
Fixed Layerback mission problems
The climate in Adventure mode is now saved
Fixed the lag when exporting multi-barrel guns in multiplayer
Fixed multiplayer saving objects to wrong location
Fixed female character unable to climb ladders
NPCs on patrol will now stop to have a conversation with player
Fixed some plants crashing the game when gathering them
Fixed colony repair machine causing crashes
Some resources have their limit upped to 9999

We’ve now moved on to a0.8. That build’s contents are going well, I think you’ll really like some of the new things we’re adding. We’re aiming for early May release.

For stand alone users waiting for the Steam key, we’ll have that up and running in the next 2 days. I’ll also post the stand alone version tomorrow.

We just got back from GDC, so first thing first, here are the a0.752 builds:

PC Mediafire Direct Download
MAC Mediafire Direct Download
LINUX Mediafire Direct Download

Next, due to GDC, we were really slow in replying to emails this week. We have a backlog of about 500 emails that we’ll try to get through in a few days. So if you emailed us and didn’t get a reply, please be patient and we’ll get to you. Sorry about that.

We’re looking at the problem, might be because the server ran out of disk space. We will try to get it up asap.

And here are the builds for PC and Linux, we’re still hitting the bug with OSX 10.9.1+ with Mac, so we’re still looking into it, hopefully we can get it solved early next week and put up a build.

PC Mediafire Direct Download

Linux Mediafire Direct Download

Torrents to come.

Changelist:

Fixed I/so transferring failure bug in multiplayer(this one causes people to not being able to join game)
Fixed not showing resources above the head when gathering resources in multiplayer
Fixed not showing player kill data in versus mode
Fixed doors opening twice in multiplayer
Fixed AI fighting AI showing up at the top in multiplayer
Fixed player ui interface bug in multiplayer
Now friendly players show up as blue dots on the map, bosses as big red dots
Now weather is synced with every player on a server
Fixed a camera bug regarding ai
Fixed getting on a car and still in shooting position
Fixed most item bugs in multiplayer
Changed battle music to only when fighting bosses

The next major update will be a0.8, which should be ~late April. For a0.8, we want to include saving building structures as ISOs and making them share-able; adding in building block LOD to save on memory; adding in ai attacks on camps and colonies; DOTA like tree structure for item replication; missions in adventure mode; character select in multiplayer; new story missions; and more.

Finally, we will have a booth in the corner (since we signed up so late) at GDC Play at GDC in San Fran next week, so if any of you are going, drop by and say hi!

Hey everyone, it’s been a few days since Planet Explorers has been released on Steam, and it’s been so hectic ever since (we have gotten over 700 emails now in just 3 days, plus lots and lots of bugs). We haven’t forgotten about the none-Steam version owners, we will release the a0.751 build here within the next day or so.

The online multiplayer bug found in a0.75 where you can’t see the servers listed in the lobby has been fixed. A new build will be released tomorrow along with all the other platform builds.

Steam has approved us for release on March 11th, at 12pm PST. Yay!

We’ll will start emailing out Steam keys to all people who bought the game before Steam starting on Wednesday. It’ll probably take a few days to complete that task.

While we’re still waiting for Steam to approve of our build and release it on Steam, here’s the A0.75 PC build. We’ll release the other two platform builds next week.

Direct Download from Mediafire

Torrent

If you’re looking for the optimum performance, the first things you can tweak are grass distance and amount, changing these to normal or lower will give you at least 10fps. Next would be water reflection, turn that off will give you another 10fps. Finally, tweaking the shadow distance will also give you large performance gains.

For memory reduction, turn down the amount of grass, trees, and terrain.

Changelist:

Water physics
Follow camera mode (F2)
New water shader
New animal species
New boss type
New attacks for the giant robot boss type
Optimized ai memory and cpu usage
AI behavior changes
New collisions for ai (no more single capsule collision)
Able to run over and damage ai with vehicle
Crashing on glider causes damage
Optimized adventure mode terrain generation
New types of terrain environment generation in adventure mode
Multiple biomes in a single seed in adventure mode
Water level randomized in adventure mode
New npc animations
New native alien animations and attacks
New story segments and missions
New npc characters
NPC no longer collide with player
Edits to some NPC looks
New type of armor set
Rainforest biome
NPCs can plant, care for, and harvest crops in colony
New textures for building blocks
New texture layout for building blocks
New glass block type
New shapes in Creation Editor
Custom decals in Creation Editor
Custom items in Creation Editor
Inclines in Creation Editor
Server will now autosave
Able to dig continuously in multiplayer
Able to export all objects from the Creation Editor to multiplayer
Steam launcher integration
Simplified Chinese localization
Bug fixes
Tutorial updated
Scuba mask

Planet Explorers has been submitted for Steam approval. Now we just sit back and wait. We’ll put out the a0.75 version here on Saturday. For now, it’s time to hit the sack.