Category Archives: Game updates

Version 1.10 is out!

Game updates,

Hi Solar System Makers!

New features for the game have been released!

  • Now you can save games! Touch the pause icon and “Save Game”. Your system will appear in Sandbox. I decided to provide unlimited slots (well, maybe thousands or millions, who knows… just until your mobile explodes 😛 ). You can also delete saved games. First free slots will fill before, if you save after deleting.
    This is the main new feature in Make Your Solar System 1.10, and it is very useful for people who creates a beautiful or rare system and want to add more objects, but don’t want to destroy the system by mistake. Now you can save and just try again and again until building your beloved system of your dreams 🙂
  • When creating a neutron star, the supernova is not triggered anymore. It was kind of beautiful, to spam the neutron star creation with the supernova effect, but as the explosion really comes from the high-mass normal star, not the neutron star itself, it makes more sense in this way. Now it just appears when the big blue star has a big impact, as usual.
  • Fixed some achievements getting triggered in menu instead by playing. Oops.
  • Other minor fixes like text positioning or size in translations and more.

I noticed something while developing the capability to save games: the systems in Make Your Solar System are chaotic. That means that the simulation is not deterministic. I tried so hard to make it deterministic, with partial success. Usually, saved games will act in the same way. When messing with gravity, any little (super little) change in position or speed will cause a butterfly effect, and looks like the engine is not deterministic. As I fixed it partially, you usually won’t notice the difference, but in high energy systems (like close neutron stars orbiting each other, black holes or systems with several stars or impacts after loading) things could act different, sometimes.

On the other hand, this is kind of realistic! Or not? Do you think that the universe is 100% deterministic? Who knows… Didn’t you have the real choice of being here reading this?

That’s for another post, have a merry christmas! Don’t forget to enter in 2017 creating some worlds, it gives you luck for sure!

As always, thanks for reading and playing.

Update 1.0.1: spanish translation

Game updates

Hi!

I have been so busy theese weeks. Now I am working on translations, the system is implemented and tested with spanish. The last release (1.0.1) is just that: spanish translation. (it was so weird as I am a native spanish speaker, I never translated texts written by me in another language into my own language, is usually the opposite way…)

About the version numbers, in the case you are curious: the first “1” is just to say “first MYSS game” and is never going to change, probably. The second number indicates big changes and the last one, small changes without altering maps, mechanics, features… just small things, including bugfixes.

More languages will be added soon.

I am also working on saving and loading sandbox systems. 🙂 I hope you are having a good time. Don’t forget to create some planets. It’s good for your health 🙂

Bye bye, beta! Hi, release 1.0.0!

Game updates, , ,

Make Your Solar System is not beta anymore! A new big update has been released.

This version has the final “shape” of the app. The final taste. The…

Oh come on. Give us features. Now! nom-nom

Hey, ok impatient player! You have been waiting for long time. Here is the list:

  • Now the maps have previsualization. When you select a map, before touching “GO!”, you will see the system you will play with.
  • Sandbox mode has a bigger playable area, about 100 AUs (AU explanation below…).
  • Now you can play every map as Sandbox. Just previsualize the map, but don’t play it: while is in the background, select Sandbox -> Current map instead.
  • New map for Sandbox: the Solar System. With capitals. In addition to the 8 main planets, it includes Ceres, Pluto, Haumea and Makemake. Distances and orbital periods are up to scale. You will shout out of pain when you see Saturn without rings. I know… 😀 Some textures are not accurate. Axial tilts are realistic. Inclination from the ecliptic plane is not real as this is a 2D game. It was very complicated for Pluto, wich orbit intersects with Neptune (in real life Pluto is also under Neptune due to its high orbital inclination, they don’t collide). I tried to take approach of the 3:2 resonance wich also prevents a collision.
  • With the camera, coordinates and zoom are now measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Coordinates are AUs from the baricenter. For the zoom, it means the AUs contained in the width of the screen (without the left sidebar).
  • By default, even if for now is just anecdotic, the game/reality time relation will be 1 second = 1 year, as you can see in Sandbox -> our solar system -> checking the Earth orbital period. This is useful if you are curious about how much time other planets take to orbit in other systems.
  • Now time is shown in minutes and seconds, not just seconds.
  • Collisions are a little bit better. Sometimes, certain objets were not transmiting all momentum to others.
  • The main menu has been redesigned. In the upper side you will find a small descripcion of your current selected item, and the left side has the current “tab” (for example, Modes).
  • New mode: Destroyer. Here you have to destroy certain targets in the less possible time.
  • New mode: Supernova. Avoid impacts against an unstable hypergiant blue star that is about to explode. The more time you resist, the higher your rank will be!
  • Total maps (or systems) increased from 7 to 20. (The starting system in background is also playable as Sandbox!)
  • Ads. Yes, I know, we don’t like ads. But I am honest and it has to be in this list. Hopefully with some funds I will be able to continue the developing of the game. The gameplay will be the same, don’t worry, they are just in the menu, like other games do. Thank you if sometimes you click one!
  • A new Options section. In this menu you can configure several things (visuals, audio, check all leaderboards and achievements…). I suggest to try the minimalistic visual style with shorter and wider trails.
  • Seven new achievements. You can check them in Options -> Social -> Achievements.
  • Now the “forbidden” sound will be played when you achieve the maximum number of objects you can create in a map.
  • “Beta Player” achievement can’t be earn anymore.
  • Some minor and internal fixes.

I hope you will have fun with the version 1.0.0. I did not mention it before, but althought you can play this game in old devices (like Samsung Galaxy S II, let’s say) I recommend at least something with the power of a Google Nexus 4, and a screen with at least 4.5′.

MakeYourSolarSystem-release.PNG
The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter… Our planet was being tracked, so as you can see, as it is “under” the Sun, its Y coordinate is -1 AU.

I will be checking that everything is ok, so if you find a bug, don’t doubt and send it to makeyoursolarsystem@gmail.com. Sometimes we think that “other will do it, he probably already knows”, but that is only true for games with millions and millions of players, like a triple A or… Minecraft (wich I love) 😛

The email is also available for suggestions or any comment you want, as always.

makeyoursolarsystem-crash-of-titans-fail
Trying to avoid these two titans from colliding against the big blue star, by firing a fast red dwarf against them… too late.

I will continue adding features if I have the time. So expect more updates!

makeyoursolarsystem-triad-minimalistic
The classic Time Attack -> Triad map, with minimalistic style and just one second of orbital trail. With zero seconds you won’t have trail, wich is very interesting as there is not reference when a tracked planet orbits a star: it looks like the star is orbiting the planet.

Thanks for reading and thanks so much for playing! 🙂

Beta 1.13 has been released!

Game updates

Hi players!

I sent a new update of Make Your Solar System to the Play Store so in a few hours your game should get the new stuff!

I am currently working on adding more maps to time attack mode. Next I will add other modes and hopefully start with missions.

I’m receving some requests about adding more info about the planets, like mass, radious, temperature and so. Well, this game does not pretend to be a super-simulator like Universe Sandbox (wich is great!), but more an ability game. Anyway I pretend to increase information and realism as long as the gameplay improves or stays the same so that info will probably be added in the future in camera mode.

Another example of realism I will improve: it doesn’t make any sense to have a mercurial-mass object with a jovian (aka “similar to Jupiter”) aspect. I will change that. I also expect to add a visual habitable zone (where water can be liquid) around stars. But is not super-easy. Think on this: you mark those zones as red, green and blue (too hot, just ok, and too cold) rings around a star. That’s easy with one star, but what happens with more than one, constantly moving? I need to do some strange (and crazy 😉 ) color blending in real time and honestly, no idea about how to do it. I will try anyway.

I don’t mind about your pains. Just give me the info about the update. Delicious bits of info about the update…

Ok, ok. Those were stories for another release, so here you have the changes for the current one!

  • More maps for time attack mode, from 2 to 6.
    • Tiny Time Attack: a planet with 3 moons. Very small playable area.
    • Twin Time Attack: a double system of blue giant stars.
    • Triad Time Attack: a triple system of red dwarfs dancing in interesting orbits.
    • Quad Time Attack: a quadruple system of yellow stars.
      Make Your Solar System quadruple yellow stars system
  • Now you can easily share your beautiful creations with your friends. Pause the game and tap on “SHARE”. (Requires new file read/write permissions).
    • New achievement: share 5 amazing creations with the world!
  • Now you can easily share your score with your friends. In the game over / leaderboard menu, tap on “SHARE”. It is similar to the previous screenshot sharing but emphasizing the score instead of the system.
  • This is not really in-game, but as you will see on the default sharing messages, I am trying to use the #MakeYourSolarSystem tag as a way to access all the stuff related with the game, so you will search for it on Twitter (or other social tool with hashtags) and you will see lots of creations and comments from other people 🙂
  • Fixed a rare bug when several objects impacted at same time, there was a chance of one of them not actually impacting and being stick to the bigger.
  • “Beta Player” achievement is earned just by playing the game, not necessarily a time attack mode.
  • Leaderboard is now scrolled automagically so your position and record is visible without the need of scrolling.
  • Fixed a bug: pausing the game during camera mode and pressing a menu button overlapping an object was causing the camera to center in that object after resuming.

If you detect any bug please notify to makeyoursolarsystem@gmail.com describing the problem.

As always, thanks for reading! Enjoy the new features.

Make Your Solar System beta 1.12

Beta 1.12 is out!

Game updates

Hi players! Beta 1.12 has been released. Changes:

  • Very fast small objects now always collide.
  • Objects with same mass will not (should not!) both dissappear (it was happening sometimes), one should always survive.
  • Time, Score and Barycenter are easier to see when having white background (for example, creating lots of supernovas or a white star).
  • If there are supernovas in the moment of restarting/going to menu, they also dissappear now.
  • Non-playable area (aka deep space, where planets are lost) frontier is now visible.
  • Now is not possible to create objects out of the playable area.
  • Small objects give more points than before. Meteoroids start from 10 instead of 1 (it compensates the scoring, althought high masses are still better, of course. From ~neptunian masses the scoring remains the same).
  • More particles per impact.
  • Better handling for Google Games log in when not logged/installed.
  • In Camera mode, object selection for tracking is easier.
  • Smooth camera transition.
  • Improved background image quality.
  • Apk is a little bit lighter (the game requires less free space). It is almost impossible to reduce it more without sacrifying quality on textures/music.
  • Improved centering objects on barycenter after losing one in deep space.

Feel free to comment on Twitter @MYSSgame your thoughts about the changes! 🙂

Thanks for playing.