27 May 2019

A new release is now available on GitHub, unstable version 0.9.9. This version contains a huge amount of new content and game engine updates. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. ...

23 Sep 2017

Recently I’ve been playing with different ideas for making the ships look less flat and cartoony, and I reached the conclusion that the real problem is that all the ships were rendered with nearly-overhead illumination (30° from vertical). I originally chose that illumination angle to avoid big dark shadows, but it turns out those shadows are necessary to give the shape of the ship definition. I’ve switched over to a much sharper illumination angle of 65°, manually adding “fill lights” to keep the shadows from being completely black, and I’m quite happy with the results: ...

14 Aug 2017

A new release is now available on GitHub, stable version 0.9.8. This version focuses on fixing bugs and making small UI improvements. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. ...

20 Jul 2017

A new release is now available on GitHub, unstable version 0.9.7. This version focuses on adding new features, some of which may still have bugs in them. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. ...

04 Apr 2017

It always encourages me to read early novels by my favorite authors and discover how bad their writing was when they first started out – that they weren’t any better writers than me at first. In that same vein, here’s a gallery of some old ship sprites starting from more than three years ago, for those of you who are trying to create sprites and are not happy with how they’re turning out. ...

21 Feb 2017

A new release is now available on GitHub, stable version 0.9.6. This version focuses on bug fixes and small, safe changes to the code. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. ...

06 Feb 2017

Sociologists studying the Quarg and other alien civilizations have noted that the early development of most sentient species follows the same basic pattern, where periods of unsustainable growth alternate with periods of conflict or collapse. This expansionary phase typically ends in a crisis which, if successfully navigated, leads to a period of stability - but also to stagnation. When low-tier sentient species are in these stages of development, their models of government, systems of values, and economic stratification are remarkably similar despite differences in genetics, culture, and cognition. ...

17 Jan 2017

A new release is now available on GitHub, stable version 0.9.5. This version focuses on adding new content and experimental features. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. ...

21 Nov 2016

I’m hard at work creating an entire new alien civilization for 0.9.5, but that’s leaving me with less time for other, smaller content creation tasks. If you’re interested in getting involved in creating new content, doing one of these things would be really helpful: ...

04 Oct 2016

A new release is now available on GitHub, stable version 0.9.4. This version focuses on bug fixes and usability improvements. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. ...

13 Sep 2016

A new release is now available on GitHub, unstable version 0.9.3. This version focuses on adding new content, including minable asteroids and new Wanderer ships and missions. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA, and a Debian Linux package is also available. For more details, see the changelog. The development schedule for the next few releases will be: ...

08 Sep 2016

The risk of designing a ship in Blender is that it will come out just looking like a jumble of geometric shapes, or too boxy and tied to the grid. So for most of my recent ship designs, I’ve been drawing them freehand on paper before modeling them in Blender. In just a few minutes of sketching, I can get a sense of whether a design is going to “work” or not, which is a lot better than spending an hour on building a model and then deciding the whole design idea just doesn’t work! ...