[b]Happy New Year![/b] We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2024, but before we get into that let's take stock of what we managed to achieve in 2023 - our third full year of development. We pushed a total of [b]231[/b] builds to Steam, of which [b]18[/b] were release builds. That's an average of [b]1.5[/b] release-quality builds per month, which is about 12% less than last year, so I'm going to make an effort to improve that in 2024. We also went live with our second fully public tech demo, which has been downloaded a whopping [b]42,202[/b] times. By contrast, the first tech demo only had 3,529 downloads. Much to my astonishment, for the second year running we made it into the top 10 for "Best Upcoming Indie" on IndieDB's yearly round of voting. Out of 13,000 upcoming titles, we came [b]7th[/b], and that was completely organic without any advertising. My heartfelt thanks go out to anyone who voted for us, it's just amazing, thank you. [url=https://www.indiedb.com/games/starship-simulator/features/players-choice-best-upcoming-indie-2023]Read about that here[/url] Ok, so what about the game itself? In addition to hundreds of small fixes and improvements, here are a few headline additions: [b]ENGINEERING[/b] • Engineering underwent a massive overhaul, with a new layout and a whole new design language. • The electrical system received a significant update, with better performance and full multiplayer support. • Over 100 electrical distribution boxes and over 400 individual cables were added to the ship. • The Cryo Room was added to Engineering, with a full interior and various functional devices. • A whole new system was built for simulating piped fluids, with over 30 individual pipes added to the ship. • The FTL system was connected to the reactor, so reactor output now has an impact on FTL speed. [b]TUTORIAL SYSTEM[/b] • A whole new system for in-game tutorials was built from scratch. • The Scanning & Navigation tutorial was added, with 12 minutes of voice dialogue. • The Engineering Cold Start tutorial was added, with 7 minutes of voice dialogue. [b]GALAXY[/b] • Volumetric Black Holes were aded to the game. • Planetary Rings were added to the game, with 3 different types of rings. • Earthlike worlds were improved with the addition of city lights, glaciation and more colour variation. • More variation was added to Lava worlds, with lava coverage tied directly to planet temperature. • Added the ability to filter the sensors output, making it easier to find specific types of object. [b]MULTIPLAYER[/b] • Added password protection to multiplayer games. • Added the ability to hold tab to see a list of player crew members. • Added a new Host Controls menu, where you can kick, mute or send players to the brig. [b]UNOS UI SYSTEM[/b] • The "UNOS" UI's in the game were updated to function more like a true operating system. • Added over 30 new UI screens to the ship, across many different devices. • UI customisation was improved, with greater flexibility and additional UI elements. [b]PROPS SYSTEM[/b] • Built a new system for achieving object permanence. Props will now remain where you left them. • Added dynamic collision and interaction audio to props. • Improved the way props are handled when picked up • Added multiplayer support to props. • Improved prop physics and collision handling. As always I wish I could have gotten more done in a year, but alas, as a solo developer I do need to sleep sometimes :D Looking forward into 2024 the first thing we're looking to achieve is finishing our new game trailer, followed immediately by launching our [b]Kickstarter[/b] campaign. With any luck that will be in February, so watch this space for updates. After that we're going to focus 100% on Early Access, and if the stars align (and I give up sleeping) we might see that launching towards the very end of the year. I'd like to again say a huge thankyou to everyone who's supported us so far, and I wish you all a very happy new year! <3 Here's a little bonus WIP of the ship as it is at the moment! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40608420/77b20b91aaf85f270fa2ac280f7fbdfc3f506d88.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40608420/75a7407d83baa82e0cf747d563a86b51d07a55df.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40608420/04eb351d23ce38e5466c5aee5b8df98cd1269183.png[/img]