Something else coming in version 0.24...



(The dust suffers a bit from the video compression; it looks even better in the actual game!)

Here's what we've been working on today...



(Mind you, that's a big file, so it may take a moment or two to load.)

Cheers,
- Joe

Today we released version 0.23 of the High Frontier video game!




This one took a while, as we had to build a lot of new infrastructure, including map overlays for showing things like crime rate and fire hazard; event pointers that always point in the shortest direction of an occurrence; and animated police cruisers that fly by actually pivoting the four rotors as needed to pilot each craft!

But it's worth it, because the result is a game that's noticeably more fun to play.  Now, when in city mode, you don't just lay some paths and zones and watch your city grow.  You are instead an active participant, dispatching emergency services where needed and clearing out burned-out buildings so new ones can rise in their place.

Please give it a try, and let us know how it goes!  Version 0.24 is going to be focusing on playability — tweaking the balance, improving cosmetics and controls, and adding help where people tend to get confused.  So, if you have any suggestions, we'd sure love to hear them!

This one is taking a long time!  But, we're making steady progress.



This release is going to introduce emergencies & disaster response.  But that means we need a way to calculate (and for you to see) what areas are most susceptible to fire or crime, and while we're at it, we're calculating land values too (since those are all interrelated).  So we've developed heat-map style overlays you can turn on and off via the Statistics palette Econ tab, as shown above.

When an emergency does happen, you'll get a notification that includes an event marker.  When the emergency location is on screen, the marker points right at it; otherwise, it points in the direction of the event so you can quickly find it.  Then you can dispatch fire-fighters, police, or engineers to the scene (the dispatch call is represented by a big flashing beacon, which is that lamppost-looking thing in the screen shot below).



The police beacon shown here actually causes the nearest police cruiser to come investigate.

So, great progress!  But there is still a lot to do: the police investigation doesn't actually help in any way (no comments about that being realistic, please!); crimes don't actually happen yet unless you trigger them with a console command; and there are no fire or impact disasters yet.  Fire should be especially interesting because we will want to render flames and smoke on the affected building, and have it spread to nearby structures if you don't contain it quickly enough.

Fortunately, summer vacation's almost here, which means my workforce will increase a bit!  We're going to work really hard on polishing up High Frontier over the next few months.

Please keep playing, and let us know what features or improvements you most want to see!

Wanted a giant spinny thing

Double torus in LEO:
Solar panels and Nuclear power for redundancy
Current stats for the populated, smaller torus.
631 housing
3150 jobs
33M income
-611M funds
Yay for deficits and over-inflated housing markets!

Smaller torus:
Lighting, primarily agriculture and housing.

Larger torus:
Large mirror for lighting, saves power otherwise spent on lighting.
Will be primarily entertainment/commercial.

Also, loving the shuttle names 

   

I remember these from 1950's Sci-Fi novels.

http://inhabitat.com/glow-in-the-dark-cement-could-illuminate-dark-highways-without-electricity/

Here is a course on real spaceship design.  How to get to your colony and much of it will be useful in how to build a colony.

https://www.udemy.com/fundamentals-of-space-engineering-and-spacecraft-design/?couponCode=SPACEXP

They nailed the landing — landing a rocket ship on an ocean ship for the first time in history!






I'm really excited about this, because this could really bring the cost down dramatically... like to maybe $5M - $7M per launch.  And most of that savings comes from reusing only the first stage; if they manage to reuse the second stage as well, that's just gravy.

The frontier is opening soon!

This glass is almost as strong as steel.

http://gizmodo.com/japanese-researchers-make-glass-thats-nearly-unbreakabl-1739673940

This stuff is tuff!    

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-metallic-glass-secret-almostbut-quiteunstructured.html