As the Artemis program begins, Rocket Engineer is progressing towards a more polished version. Here’s what we’ve done during the last two weeks.

XavBell

I worked on the first version of the launch site gameplay. Mostly reworking the pipes to be able to be procedurally placed. I’ve also worked a lot on finding a way to rework the engine designer. Rocket engines are not easy to design in real life. It’s hard to find the right level of complexity we want because Rocket Engineer is not an engineering software but a game. The new way of calculating the thrust and fuel consumption rate is not yet integrated but I’ve a pretty good idea of how it’ll work. As most core features are implemented, polishing started. The first thing will be a full rework of the UI system to be easier to code and use. This will probably improve the game by a lot, to the point that we might be able to build a first playable version. The current plan is to have a modular UI as much as possible because the game calculates a lot of data: pressure, temperature, etc.. The player likely doesn't want all this data to be displayed 100% of the time. So I’ll work with ScatMan choosing what the UI could look like and then go on actual code. Rocket Engineer development speed will also significantly slow down because of studies, but the development will not stop.

Scatman

I’ve been a bit slow on adding new textures but here is what we have thus far. If I’ve said it once I’ll say it again, always have good resources.  The Fuel tanker was inspired by something I saw online. What makes this tanker more unique is the blue ring, giving a sense of form and the pillars for a sense of distance. I believe I am going to put a slight outline for all the objects in future releases. 

The earth is a bit more complicated. I want to stay way from this western centric point of view, so an accurate earth isn’t what I want. Next adding a few random towns and rocket pad I also need to add some random land masses. 

To conclude, we’re progressing toward our goal and we can’t wait to show you the final version of 0.0.4. It really will be a game changer.