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And it's the cockpit mode for the next update. February 17, 2015The vote is closed and the results are in! Rodina customers in the Bossypants[/url] Tier have spoken and they have spoken thusly:Robot Babies: 41Cockpit Mode / Windows: 69Moons: 29Bugs / Optimizations: 4The Bossypants vote is binding, so that means that my next milestone, which I am already hard at work on, will be Cockpit Mode! My plan is: you will be able to actually sit in the pilots chair, and when you activate the pilot station a Holoscreen will come down to show you a first-person view to the outside. You’ll also be able to place these Holoscreens around your ship to act as virtual windows!You may remember that I also asked from input from ALL Rodina customers, via youtube, email, Reddit[/url] twitter[/url] and Steam[/url] They responded as follows:Robot Babies: 14.5Cockpit Mode / Windows: 17Moons: 13.5Bugs / Optimizations: 5So, really the breakdown was pretty similar! What I’m getting from this vote is that, while Cockpit mode was the winner, the other options are pretty popular as well so I intend to keep them around for the next vote at least! The only option that wasn’t popular was Bugs and Optimizations but I will always have that option because the game will ALWAYS need them! :DThank you to everyone who participated- I hope that it was fun getting to decide what’s next for Rodina! I’ve really enjoyed getting your feedback and look forward to doing it again soon! Also their has been a small house keeping update to the game. Rodina 1.1.5 is now available! This release is a maintenance release without any new gameplay features. However, it does have the following:* A new interior renderer intended to improve framerate for some users* A new document parser which dramatically cleans up errors in the ingame documents* A completely rewritten keyboard input tech to fix some isolated issuesAlso, a test feature! I did some experimentation with procedural robot voices. Try them out by pressing F9, F10, or F11 while playing!

Update from the blog. https://elliptic-games.com/?p=848[/url] I’ve updated the Dev Build on[/url] Steam with some exciting new changes!As you know, the current milestone is Cockpit Mode, which involves, among other things, a viewscreen. This update contains the technical features necessary to make this work: Holoscreen Windows!Now you can see the entire Universe from inside your ship![/url] try it out, switch to the Dev Branch in Steam, enter the ship editor, and place a few Holoscreen Entities in your ship layout. They will act as windows.A few notes:* I had to disable MSAA anti-aliasing for technical reasons (I can explain below). You’ll see jaggies, but I will fix this before releasing the milestone.* Please don’t worry that you can see your ship from inside itself. I’ll work it out before release.* The Holoscreen models are ugly and temporary.Enjoy!Technical Notes* The windows are implemented as portals using the stencil buffer. They are an exciting feature which eventually could be used not just for cockpit mode, but also for mirrors and (one day) wormholes / portals.* Internally, I had to refactor the “geometry collection” render stage, to allow for greater control over what is rendering when (“First, render the portal, then render the whole exterior, then the whole interior”, etc). The new system is awesome- much cleaner, more powerful, and easy to read than what I had before.* The game uses a logarithmic depth buffer for the extreme distant depth precision needed at planetary scales. Since this is implemented in the pixel shaders, it doesn’t work great with MSAA. It left artifacts on the interior tile pieces, and so I used to turn off the log depth buffer every time the layer went inside. (You may have noticed that there were lines in the wall that disappeared when you closed the airlock- that’s why!) With the way the portals work, it’s better if everything is a unified system, so after hemming and hawing I’ve disabled MSAA. I will implement FXAA, which will hopefully play nice with the log depth buffer, before the next release. Never realized there was a dev build on Steam although I think I will wait until he updates the main game.

Oh yes https://elliptic-games.com/?p=860[/url] Last night I stayed up late and finished all of the major changes necessary to finally do this:[/url] in first person is a go! And it’s pretty great You guys are gonna love it!Now to make it so you can actually sit in that pilot’s chair! Going to be one sweet update.

From the blog https://elliptic-games.com/?p=866[/url] [/url] mode is now available on the beta branch on[/url] Steam! To try it out:* Switch to the beta (or dev) branch* Either start a new game, or load the new default interior so that you get some Holoscreens in your cockpit. You can also add Holoscreens, or the new Holoscreen tileset, if you want to keep your current interior.* Sit in the Pilot’s Chair by just walking into it* While flying the ship, press “F” (for “Activate”) to bring up the pilot menu, and choose “Toggle 1st/3rd Person”Now you’re flying in 1st person mode!Warning!Cockpit mode is for Rodina experts only. You think atmospheric entry and combat were hard before? Now they are even tougher!Also:This is build 1.1.6 and it comes with some caveats: this particular build is not going to come out of beta! There are a few reasons for this:* Cockpit mode introduces some pretty big performance issues. It may not be playable on your machine!* MSAA anti-aliasing is still turned offI’m going to be out of town for a little over a week, but after I get back I’ll fix any bugs you guys find, and start on an optimization pass and put anti-aliasing back in, before fully releasing this build! Nice but am still waiting for it to make it into the main branch.

At last, cockpit mode should be in the main branch. https://elliptic-games.com/?p=886[/url] :gaming: May 5, 2015Thanks to the help of all the beta testers, Rodina is faster and more stable than ever! This update finally allows you to control your ship in first person from the pilots chair!(Press F (or whatever your “Activate” key is) while piloting the ship in order to bring up the piloting menu, which will allow you to toggle first person mode.)It also comes with some significant optimizations, including some new options: Retro Mode, and Lighting Quality, which can drastically improve performance for those with very low-spec machines. Here are some examples of what Retro Mode looks like:[/url] [/url] not going to lie – I’m not stupid enough to do this, but there was a brief moment when I considered making Retro Mode the default way to play the game. It’s a gimmick but I like it a lot!Read on for the full patch notes: RODINA 1.1.7* New Feature: Retro Mode!* New Feature: Lighting Quality option* New Feature: EnableGodMode() script function* New Feature: FXAA Antialiasing (sorry- had to remove MSAA for now)* New Feature: Freelook button (ALT) for looking around while piloting the ship* Optimization: Added frustum culling* Optimization: Added planet horizon culling* Optimization: Move processing from pixel shader to vertex shader* Improvement: Switched back to 1 3D ship model (+1 optional physics model). No more flying vs parked versions.* Improvement: Flashlight tutorial stage* Improvement: Activate jetpack when pressing the “down” (CTRL) button while in mid-air* Improvement: Make fires slightly easier* Bugfix: Turn off portals when the ship door is open* Bugfix: Fix problem with swapping mouse buttons* Bugfix: Fix doors which can lead to the void between interior and ship* Bugfix: Fix tutorial messages fighting with the notification system* Bugfix: Fix angles wall physics* Bugfix: Fix discrepency with the entity scheduling* Bugfix: Fix broken arrow/page keys for scrolling in menusRODINA 1.1.6* New Feature: Cockpit Mode* New Feature: Holoscreen windows + tileset* New Feature: Sitting in chairs* New Feature: EGHealPlayer() script function* Improvement: Keep shader cache files loaded so we don’t need to access HDD to recompile shaders* Improvement: Poll planet height render textures form the render thread rather than generation thread* Bugfix: Fixed clicking outside of the bounds of a scrolling window

Hello! I've seen Rodina on steam, and it really looks nice. However, most of the reviews I've read are not super useful as they boil down to 'oeee pretty, oeeeh you can land on planets'. Of course that's great and immersive, but I'm wondering about gameplay. Are there already things to do to keep you busy, or is it currently limited to flying around, some combat and seeing pretty planets. I'm fully aware it's early access, and it already looks great, but I'm kind of wondering if there's already 'meat on the bones' or not  Thanks, and keep up the great work!

I'm fully aware it's early access, and it already looks great, but I'm kind of wondering if there's already 'meat on the bones' or not  Hey Waervyn - so, Rodina has SOME meat on the bones (there's space combat, fires in your ship, some interactive stuff, etc), but of course that's the biggest place where I need to expand. I would say right now the reviews are so positive because when you play, it's really easy to just wander around and imagine what the game will be like once more stuff is added to it. It really get's the imagination going. BTW- there's no need to wonder about this stuff. I have a free demo of the game for exactly this reason! Just download and see for yourself

Thanks for the reply!Sorry to ask, what is the aim you have with the game in the future?According to the description on your site it's mostly exploring and combat. While I like exploring in a sense, exploring for the sake of exploring gets old quickly (oeeeh, this planet is blue, while the other one was red!). This is exactly the reason I think No Man's Sky is going to be terribly boring after the first 2 hours. In Rodina's case, what will keep exploring fresh? Furthermore, will there be things like in depth trading (stockmarkets etc.), planet colonization or other things, or is it mostly focused at combat and exploration? Thanks again, and sorry for playing the difficult customer

This game keeps looking better and better, and Morrowind was one of my all-time favorites! I don't play Early Access games (I'm kind of an odd duck that way), but I'm eagerly awaiting Rodina's completion.

Sorry to ask, what is the aim you have with the game in the future?......Furthermore, will there be things like in depth trading (stockmarkets etc.), planet colonization or other things, or is it mostly focused at combat and exploration? Yeah! So my ambition for the game is essentially infinite, haha And since I'm just one man with limited capabilities, it's really hard to say with authority what the game will become for sure. My goal is to make "Daggerfall in Space" - a seemless RPG type game with cities, factions, with mafia bosses and used spaceship salesmen. Right now, though, the big short term goal is NPC combat- specifically boarding enemy ships and taking them over. It'll be a slow proces - I'm hoping to start with very simple NPC allies next, then incrementally add more and more features until you can blow an enemy airlock and run into their ship guns blazing. Once that's done, I can work on proper settlements, more RPG / gameworld simulation features. Who knows. Game development is an organic process, and features get thrown out / changed / added / repurposed. What I can promise to stand behind is the general vision - a gigantic, immersive, procedural, viscerally fun RPG in space!

New vote up for Rodina.  Think I will go for the robot babies one this time.

Think I will go for the robot babies one this time. Why not moons?

Why not moons? As Brenden say in the video the robot babies are the first step to introducing NPC and crew bots for the ship. Moons are just bigger asteroids.

Results of the vote. The votes are in, and the results aren’t surprising! Anyone who followed the poll on the Steam[/url] forums saw that there was one option that was the clear favorite:Robot Babies!The final results of the Bossypants voters was:* Robot Babies: 95* Multi-Story Interiors: 25* Moons: 35That’s the main vote so it determined the winner! However we also got a huge response via other venues. The total from the non-official poll was:* Robot Babies: 66* Multi-Story Interiors: 10* Moons: 16THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who participated! We had an amazing turnout for this vote. I’m really really excite to get these little guys in the game. I really feel like, in a year or two, we’ll look back at this as an important moment for Rodina! Thanks guys!! Be interesting to see where this goes.

New update on the blog about line of sight for the NPC. https://elliptic-games.com/?p=988[/url] Work on the Robot Babies begins in earnest! Since the vote wrapped up, I’ve begun implementing basic NPC features, like Line of Sight. This is one of the game systems that figures out what the character is capable of seeing.[/url] you’d like to see progress, check out the[/url] dev branch on Steam and type “MakeRobot()” into the console to create a dummy robot character. Now every character (including the player) will get a white “vision cone” showing what you can see. The system will also show the lines of sight between the character’s eyes and the various objects in their room. Green means they can see it, red means that they can’t!The system isn’t perfect by a long stretch, but I think it should be fine for what these babies are going to need to do!

Two blogs updates in a week, nice https://elliptic-games.com/?p=993[/url] this ones about adding mods I just updated the Dev branch with an experiment that I’ve been working on: better Mod support for Rodina!The big concepts:* Rodina now creates a “Mods” folder* Players no longer need to manually copy, overwrite, or backup files to install a mod. Simply place the folder containing the mod in the “Mods” directory and run the game* Each mod can have its own Data folder, Script folder (all matching the layout for the main game). The game will automatically load these assets and, in some cases use them rather than the original game assets.I tested this with a handful of mods and some of them work perfectly as is. A few won’t work with the new system yet, but there’s nothing stopping you from installing a mod the old way.Internally, this involves big changes to the way scripts load. I’m positive that these changes will cause bugs. That’s why they remain experimental and in the dev branch for now. I welcome feedback from modders, and also any bug reports about things suddenly not working! You can find some of the mods for the game here http://www.nexusmods.com/rodina/mods/categories/?[/url] about time some made a better ship model for the game.

Seems to having some site issues at the moment, check the blog. also posted this funny video by nerd3. 

New update on the blog about the robots. August 10, 2015Hey folks! New Steam Dev Branch update to keep you up-to-date on what I’m working on!* Wandering Robots: the robots, while still majorly in-progress, now have autonomous random movement. They can wander around your ship without getting stuck on walls or doors. Try them out with the “MakeRobot()” console command.* Lots of major physics fixes related to the major refactoring from last time. Thanks to everyone for bug reports!* Enemies ship groups should no longer respawn. You can clear planets now! (this was buggy before- let me know how it goes! Look for respawning, planets having way too many enemies, etc)As usual, this update may be buggy and is only for info and testing purposes!I know it may not look like it but I’m making great progress on the robots. After this I’m just working on fun robot stuff – animation, behaviors, sound FX, etc! Very exciting!

Couple of new updates. First off one about the robots The Robot Babies are going great! Getting closer to release on these guys. Basic NPC features are mostly done and now I’m moving onto “flavor” features. Current work: Eyes![/url] goal is for the Bots to have expressive, varied eyes, so I decided to create them procedurally. Very excited to see them bring these little guys to life even more! And the second one about a new Blender exporter. Those of you who have used the Blender Exporter (from the Modding[/url] Resources page) know that it was kinda janky and needed some work. Thankfully, a volunteer stepped forward to improve it! The lovely Mark van Dijk worked with me to add some much-need features. Now you no longer need to edit the script file before installing, and you have the option to only export selected objects or to do the entire scene.This new version is for Blender version 2.74 or above.You can download the new exporter directly[/url] here. Thank you for your help Mark!! We might start seeing more ships ect for the game.

Bots are now in the dev branch of the game. [/url] guys! I’m here with what I believe will be the last Dev update for this milestone. This time I have a ton of changes, many of which are behind the scenes. Some of it has to do with the Bots though:* Randomized Bot parts – now when you call MakeRobot() from the console, the bots will be randomized! It’s not polished up yet but it’s fun to see a variety of robots pop out at once * Robots animate slightly and look around as they wander.* There are lots of optimizations related to robots as well as some with terrain generation. Performance should be better with lots of bots onscreen now, although their AI performance will degrade the more of them there are. I also added a new option, “Terrain Creation Rate”, which (when turned down) can result in smoother gameplay (with fewer hitches) at the cost of slower terrain updating. Let me know what values work best for you!* Oh, the player ship shows up on the Scanner now too.There are a ton of other changes in this update but I don’t think there’s anything else worth explaining. Don’t worry, I’ll post a full changelist when the update comes out!As always, the Dev updates might have bugs! I don’t recommend playing on the Dev branch unless you want to be helping me test! Don't they look cute, can't wait to blast them. :devil: