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Dear Station Designers,
Last month we published Space Station Designer version 00.07.00, which brought a significant upgrade to the visuals. With less than one month to go before the game's release on November 18th, we're pushing ahead and tidying up the loose ends to ensure a smooth release. Today we're happy to share Space Station Designer version 00.08.00 with all of you. This update will be the last one before version 1.0. As always, you can find the full release notes in our public document here.
Comprehensive UI polishing pass
We went through all the game's screens and conducted a deep polishing pass, which has significantly improved the usability and overall look of the game. This pass included adjusting the layouts of the UI elements, tweaking fonts, removing backgrounds that caused legibility issues, and much more.
For example, frequently accessed screens, including 'module selection' and 'request resupply spacecraft' now feature a title, labels that clearly indicate the purpose of the buttons at the top, and better formatting of the titles.
The Global Screen has been adjusted so that it uses a tilted view instead of a top-down one, which makes the Earth and the Moon stand out more.
We have also ensured that the information is presented more clearly all across the UI. For example, the 'Contractors' dialog now takes a larger portion of the screen. This improves its legibility and should make it much more comfortable to use.
Lastly, we have created a series of additional images for the main menu, based on some station designs we made internally:
Achievements
Space Station Designer will be released in multiple online stores and, where available, it will feature support for in-game Achievements. There are more than 50 Achievements available, and the game logic to detect them is already in place. This will surely provide a nice challenge for those of us who are completionists!
Notable mention for the 'Flight Director' achievement, which is granted when you win a 'Campaign' or 'Sandbox' game with 'Medium' difficulty. The artwork will surely remind you of one of the most famous Flight Directors during the Apollo era!
Quality of Life (QoL) improvements and minor gameplay changes
In addition to the UI pass, we also made some focussed usability improvements, such as redoing the layout of the menus for selecting modules, resupply spacecraft, and astronauts for Continuous Improvement Programs (CIPs). These changes allow you to see more entries at once, which results in less clicks and easier decisions.
Closing thoughts
We hope you like all the changes brought by this final update before release. We're conducting a lot of internal testing, but if you can help us by giving the game a spin and let us know if you run into any problems, we'd really appreciate it.
As mentioned earlier, this update will be the last one before the 1.0 release, which will be released on November 18th. Obviously, the journey won't end there, and we'll be sharing more about our post-release plans soon.
See you on November 18th!
--Ignacio, Mauricio, and Nicolas (Polar Motion)
Wishlist Space Station Designer here.
