Changelist:

Optimized memory usage
Optimized game loading time
Fixed Mac and Linux loading issues
Fixed Windows version opengl problem
Increase the weapon pullout speed
Fixed issue where the player pauses a bit after the digging animation
Fixed bug with Adventure mode generation
Fixed issue where new game can sometimes load old terrain changes
Fixed issue with building and plant generation and deletion
Fixed multiple colony UI issues
Fixed follower inventory equipment disappearing bug
Fixed NPC getting off vehicle bug
Fixed NPC not arriving at mission location bug
Fixed issue with not being able to equip some equipment
Fixed issue with not being able to revive random NPC
Fixed issue with conflicting hotkeys in build mode
Fixed issue with follower equip with right mouse button
Changed random NPC head picture
Fixed issues with Chinese UI
Added warning when getting new items in multiplayer
Added when encountering server login issues the game will back out to the lobby
Explored world map now consistent for all players
Fixed multiplayer NPC generation bug
Fixed multiplayer colony NPC saving bug
Fixed player getting on vehicle animation bug
Fixed non player controlled vehicle shaking bug
Fixed issues with tools playing the wrong sound effect
Fixed consistency issues with tools in multiplayer
Slowed down the speed at which online currency generate
Fixed issue with closing other players’ revive UI
Fixed issue with multiplayer projectile pathing
Moved location of axe to the waist (still being tweaked)
Can now change music volume from the main menu options
Added the Puja back in (still using old animation, parts of a new behavior tree, adding animation as we go)
Added the andhera queen with all new animation and behavior
Added sword swing effect
Added underwater sword swing animations
Jumping will now spend stamina
Added NPC punching animations
Added follower UI when in battle
Hotkey H will now open the mobile pc UI
Added tooltips to Build Mode UI
When vehicles get damaged, the player will also receive some damage

This is a minor bug fixing build.

Changelist

Fixed bug where the character moves while in Creation Mode
Fixed bug with cooling time for items
Fixed turret UI display bug
Fixed the UI initial position always being at the center of screen
Fixed issue with monorail UI
Fixed issue with the world map and the esc key
Fixed some sliding animation issues with AI
Fixed character animation mixing bug
Fixed texture displaying issue in Build Mode
Fixed unlimited energy for boosters
Fixed vehicle damage bug
Fixed vehicle without rider explosion crash
Fixed wheel control not moving while driving
Fixed vehicle lights not lighting up
Fixed bug with disembarking vehicle
Fixed multiplayer bug with using things from opposing teams
Fixed multiplayer bug with guns randomly flashing
Fixed multiplayer hp bar not moving with the vehicle
Fixed multiplayer vehicle energy boost bug
Fixed multiplayer vehicle position save bug
Fixed multiplayer other vehicles shaking bug
Fixed multiplayer equipment not aligned among players
Fixed multiplayer energy not aligned among players
Fixed multiplayer client initiation bug
Fixed multiplayer aim IK bug
Fixed multiplayer new player can’t see vehicle movements when entering game
Fixed multiplayer Workshop and Online Store UI problems
Fixed multiplayer friend list UI display bug
Added pressing esc key will close the top UI window
Added a form of auto target locking when attacking, should be able to hit smaller targets better (still tweaking this)
Added NPC and follower attack behavior
Added and changed the selection in Options, added Camera Inertia and HDR selections
Added UI to when NPCs revive
Added sound effects for vehicle explosions
Added movement resistance to vehicles when in water
Added effects for Andhera attacks
Sped up the night time in Adventure
Added a new bow to the Online Store

Hey everyone, we’ve been keeping a low profile for a while as we’re crunching to fully finishing the a0.9 build (we’ve been doing overtime for about 5 months now). The bad news is, we’re still not there yet. I think we aimed a little too high with this build and somethings just didn’t pan out the way we wanted. But, we do have a working build that gives the feel of what we’re trying to achieve with the a0.9 build (especially the feel of the battle system). We’re going to call it Alpha 0.88, and it’ll stay in the Steam beta until a0.9 when it goes public. Here’s the changelist:

New face types
New hair types
New character animations
New armor types
Added dash (shift key)
New camera system
New particle effects
Added HDR
Added Glow effects
New weather system
Changed moon appearances
New water shader and underwater look
New building system that includes terrain, blocks, and inclines
New UI system
New AI system
New AI animations
New AI behavior tree
New AI sounds
New IK based player system
New IK based hit system
New houses in Adventure mode
World map now shows terrain type in Adventure mode
New physics
64bit client
New multiplayer lobby store (don’t worry, all free)
New multiplayer friend system
New programming structure for the game, allows for easier modding
New grass system
New World Editor options
New option to play custom maps
New colony buildings
New stamina/strength system
New skill system
New Main Menu
Added shotgun
Changed gun projectile pathing
Guns now reload
Gun reticles changed
New save system

We rewrote everything outside of the voxel system…some of it planned, some of it not really…I won’t say it’s a mistake to so drastically change the structure of the game mid-development, but things could have been better planned. Changing to Unity 5 also cost us a lot of time and created too many problems (mostly physics related). There are a lot of bugs in the current build, especially in story mode, not everything’s in yet. NPCs are very stupid, we haven’t done their behavior tree yet. Most of the animals aren’t in, their animations aren’t done (and some current ones need to be changed). However the rewrite will now allow us to update the game very fast, every 1-2 weeks, so we’ll be able to fix these problems fairly quickly. Sorry for the wait everyone, hope you enjoy the new changes and look forward to future development.

There are a couple of launcher problems with the Mac and Linux versions, we’ll try to fix these in the next few days. The new build is a huge download, so don’t switch to the beta build unless you’re up for it.

As we get closer to the release of A0.9, more and more systems are coming together. Here, we show you several new things going on in the game. The weather system has been updated to dramatically improve it’s efficiency and effects, rain will no longer fall through buildings and there are more ambient colors around to give a much more consistant look (it’s sped up in the vid). We’ve also updated the grass system so that grass will sway when things go through them, the wind will no longer be in set waves and instead will be random. The water shader has also been updated so that things walking through water will create waves. All of these together will make for a much richer world experience.

We’re mostly done with all the game systems that we set out to rewrite, we’re waiting for animations to come back from some of our sourcing partners as well as our own inhouse animators (we’re trying to do about 2200 new animations) to tweak these systems. Another problem we’ve encountered is that the physics in Unity 5 is very different from Unity 4, so we’re having to spend more time than we’d like on tweaking some of it (wheel, AI collision, aircraft). But overall, we’re pretty close to finishing out a0.9 (yay!).

Hey all, we’ve been moving the entire Planet Explorers project over to Unity 5.0 over the last couple of weeks. There are still some physics and shader related bugs that we’re going over, but, the overall results are pretty nice. 64bits, here we come!

Here’s a video of the new UI we’re preparing for a0.9. The new UI is faster and sleeker, it uses a more Windows-like design with a “start” button and a clear screen button. We tried to make the menus simpler in some cases, but game is what it is, so it’s not really possible to hide all the data that needs to be shown. This is still a work in progress, but we hope you like it.

On another note, Unity 5.0 just came out, we’re actively looking at porting our game over to the new version of the engine. There are lots of bugs and changes that we need to make, but we’re going over them one by one. We hope to have this done by the time a0.9 comes out in April.

We’ve just released the a0.87 build on Steam.

Changelist:

– Added the tutorial section of the Epiphany ship
– Added 4 new types of clothing
– Added several new buildings in Adventure mode
– Added new landscape features to Adventure mode
– Added the option to extend height to 512m in Adventure mode
– Tweaked town formation in Adventure mode

Of course, as always, we’ll try to fix and tweak any minor bugs in the coming days.

There are a lot of things that still need work in the Planet Explorers alpha, but I think going into a0.9, we all knew that we needed to upgrade the combat system dramatically. We started with the animation and went from there. Pretty much all the key animations have been changed, now the player character will have different animations for hit, run, dash, different weapon types (staff, crossbow, dual wield, etc.), and much more. We’ve also included IK and ragdoll animations to give variety to all the different animation sets. We tried to make it so that the player isn’t fighting with the controls. One thing we’re making optional is the ability to attack where the player clicks.

On the AI side, we rewrote/modified the entire behavior tree, plus lots of new animations as well. We want the AI to feel smarter, to be able to dodge swords and bullets, to engage the player more naturally instead of always facing the player and throwing different attacks at a percentage rate as before. We also added in IK hit detection so that each hit from the player generates a visual response from the body of the AI.

Finally, we wanted the combat to have more oomph. Players getting hit by large attacks will fly a long way. Players getting hit with a smaller attack will show reaction from the part of the body that’s been hit. We’re still in the progress of modifying the camera and the UI so that they show a corresponding reaction with each hit, we’ll show off these as they come online. With all of that added together, we hope the combat will become a more satisfying experience for everyone.

We’ve been working really hard over the last month to finish up all the components of a0.9. We’re getting there, but there are still lots to do. Many players have asked for an exact date for a0.9, based on our current standing, we’re looking at sometimes in March. As to why we went from the original December date to now, it’s because we’ve decided to rewrite the items code as well so that the game can become easily moddable on all fronts. We like to joke around the studio about it, but a0.9 really is turning out to be PE 2.0 as far as programming’s concerned: every system except for voxel generation has been tweaked or rewritten. The bad part is that it’s taking up a ton of time and the results won’t be seen regularly like in games such as Kerbal or Space Engineers (they had more flexible and better programming structure from the start to allow for faster updates). We do sincerely apologize for that as it is a demonstration of our lack of experience when it comes to setting up the structure for this type of game (though in our defense, there weren’t a lot of smooth voxel games around as a blueprint). But we’ve learned a lot and we’ll make sure there won’t be a repeat of that for any of our future games.

Due to the late release of a0.9, we will be releasing an a0.87 version in February. A0.87 will again be mostly an asset update, with new cloth types, biomes, locations, procedural updates, and such. Now, as I said before, we have done a ton of work for a0.9, and we’ll be showing off the new stuff bit by bit as they come online. Today we’ll show you some of our progress on the Story Editor:

For people familiar with editors, this will feel right at home. You can pretty much do anything within the bounds of the game with the story editor, if someone wants to mod the editor itself for more, well, be our guest. We will have a decent documentation when this fully rolls out. Next are a few screens of the procedural Adventure mode:

We did some optimization and we’re able to allow 512m height on the terrain now. All of a sudden, the mountains look much better. We also tweaked the cave systems and added more procedural code. We’ll be working on this up to the release of the game.

On a final note, we’ll be crossing the 200,000 copies sold on Steam mark any day now. We’d like to thank you all for your support and we’ll make sure this game ends up deserving of such support.

We’ve just released the a0.86 build of Planet Explorers on Steam. For this build, we’ve included the World Editor. The current World Editor is fairly rudimentary, but you can see the direction we’re going with it. The current game won’t be able read the output maps from the editor until a0.9 though. We’ll try to release a tutorial/documentation as soon as possible. For now, the World Editor is Windows only. Also included in this release are story bug fixes for a0.85 and the block LOD.

Looking forward, we have a0.9 coming up as well as Unity 5.0. We’re not sure if a0.9 will be using Unity 5.0 or not, it depends on when that comes out. We do know that there should be some significant improvements to lighting, physics, and optimization once we make the switch.

As always, the stand alone version of a0.86 will be up once we’ve straightened out most of the immediate bugs in the release.