- Mondays On Mars - 7 December 2021
Version 1.0 of Animations for Rovers and Miners This week includes the first version of animations for the Rovers and Miners! These animations play during crafting, dropping off, storage full states, and breaking down. Features Added: Animations! Crafting animation for both the Miner and Rover Dropping off animation for both the Miner and Rover Breaking down animation for both the Miner and Rover Picking up items with the Rover TBA Animations: Driving animations Idle animations Malfunction animations Building animations Repairing animations Bugs Fixed: Bug fixes this week are a bit lighter than the previous weeks due to the most hands being on our sister game, Land Rush. This will change soon however and more fixes will come to S2V shortly. Marketplace item borders have been fixed up a bit. Minor UI changes to the Marketplace number formatting. Cheers, -Max
- Mondays On Mars - 23 November 2021
More Bug Squashing and More UI Features This week includes a lot of bug fixing to the UI and some new features to the UI. There is now a range indicator when placing down objects so players can tell exactly how far away from their rocket they can place down objects and the Energy Graph now has a share Y axis button. More details about that below. Features Added: Signal Range UX when placing objects down on the map Energy Graph has a new button in the view to Share Y axis, this will change it so that both producer and consumer graphs will share the same Y axis and it’ll be simpler to compare the two. HallwayCross and Advanced Builder models added. Bugs Fixed: Tooltips will no longer spasm at all. Some log messages have been modified to be more clear. New Quest and Mission complete notifications go down at the same time. Several small UI tweaks (position changes, size changes etc.) So tha…
- Mondays On Mars - 16 November 2021
More Bug Squashing and the return of the Rover View! This week was focused on further bug fixing, changes to the tooltips and the implementation of the Rover View! Features Added: Rover View, press F5 while any rover is selected to assume control. Note, there is currently an issue with controlling rovers currently under orders, this will be fixed soon. Q and E to rotate, W and S to go back and forth. New setting: Double Tap Interval. This setting modifies the time in between actions before the game would register it as a double-tap. Tweak this to be smaller if you feel like you’re accidentally sprinting too often, or larger if you can’t get it to sprint. Bugs Fixed: Tooltips have been adjusted to be less epilepsy inducing and smaller. The mouse look function of the camera is now disabled until the game finishes placing the player camera in the right location, this should prevent some co…
- Mondays On Mars - 9 November 2021
Bug Squashing Week! This week was focused mainly on squashing bugs and smaller features. There should be no more invisible buildings in this update. This update adds in the following features and bug fixes: Features Added: Objects that are full now have a white outline. For rovers, if they have nowhere to drop off their storage they will remain outlined. Factory links are now limited to 13 per building and 50 per storage module. Several new icons for chemical resources. New building models for the following: Fluid Storage I Not yet used habitation module Rover Spa Bugs Fixed: Phobos station’s +/- buttons on marketplace items will no longer break if the player deletes all numbers from the input field. Quest progress view has been moved out of the way and won’t show Removed the redundant quest complete toaster that was being overlaid by the new quest complete pop-up Craft count behaves co…
- Mondays on Mars - 3 November 2021
HUD Update and Bug Fixes! This update scales down a lot of the UI elements, some of the UI elements may be a bit too small but we will be tweaking it over the week. The new hologram effect comes with less flickering and should be nice and blue wobbles. This update adds in the following features and bug fixes, remember that the UI scale is not final and will be tweaked. The inventory view has been planned already to be made bigger. Features Added: New screen layout and HUD scaled down New Hologram effect, flickering removed Builder Rover can now mine - just likes its cousins, the Miners and Rovers Magnet Makers Recipe now produces Magnet Makers (Shocking) New recipe to make Carbon from CO2 Rearranged which buildings offer which nuclear reactors Nuclear reactors now offer more storage, so you can hide even more nuclear waste from prying safety organizations High Pressure Tank can now be p…
- Mondays On Mars - 26 October 2021
Welcome to our Halloween Update, purchase the Halloween Workshop from Phobos Station to build some spooky decor! Along with this update come various bug fixes, new icons and new models! This update adds in the following features and bug fixes, most notably the Halloween Update. Halloween Decor on Mars! Million on Mars now features some new Halloween decorations All of the Halloween decorations are able to be crafted from the Halloween Workshop! Two candle variations A spooky crypt Gravestone Three Jack O’ Lanterns Three Pumpkins And a tomb! Features Added: Halloween Decorations, limited time for the Halloween season. A new building fabricator model Several new quests for first-time users to help learn the UI New daily quests: every day you’ll get some new quests to complete. Some of them might take a while to finish (but you’ll get better rewards), and you can keep working on them until…
- Mondays On Mars - 12 October 2021
Quests and the Quest HUD! We are excited to show you our first version of the new Quests system, bear in mind UX improvements to the Quest system and more quests will be added in the following updates. This update should help users figure out the new user flow and what to do next following landing upon the Red Planet! This update adds in the following features and bug fixes, most notably the quest system. Nuclear Reactors on Mars - designed by Dr. Robert Zubrin: Million on Mars now features 7 nuclear reactors. The numbers in the name are the kWe (kilowatt electrical energy production) Krusty 10k DUFF 100k THORium 1M CANDU 10M Zubrinak 100M Zubrinak 1G Zubrinak 10G Nuclear Reactors have their own unique model New icons for nuclear waste, nitrogen and various other buildings. Features Added: Quests system, click on the journal button that is newly added on the left in game to check them o…
- Mondays On Mars - 28 September 2021
Post EA1 Bug Fixes + Various Gameplay Changes Thank you for playing our first early access release and giving us your feedback! You are really accelerating our ability to rapidly improve Million on Mars. We are humbled and in this for the long-haul! Monday on Tuesdays! We will be back to releasing updates on Monday soon but we wanted to get this hotfix out for you sooner rather than later. Our second update since the EA1.0 release holds more client UX fixes, some gameplay changes to allow you to process Nuclear Waste and the ability to build power poles. Features Added: Science Workshop is now buildable Nuclear waste can no longer be dropped. Nuclear waste can be processed into cash (10 nuclear waste -> 8 nuclear waste + Cash) in the Science Workshop Design Changes: Electronics factories can make LiPo batteries with the right tool that can be purchased from the marketplace. Rocket Resil…
- Mondays On Mars - 24 September 2021
Thank you for playing our first early access release and giving us your feedback! You are really accelerating our ability to rapidly improve Million on Mars. We are humbled and in this for the long-haul! Our first update since the EA1.0 release holds a lot of backend fixes and client fixes for our player-facing issues, as well as some more building effects provided by our modeller and artist. Although this is a Monday On Mars and it’s Friday, sometimes Fridays feel like Mondays. Features Added: Keep the time at day until the player creates 10 units of methane More building effects added to the Greenhouse, 3D building fabricator, Storage module, and the Sabatier reactor Bugs Fixed: Fixed an issue where a first time player would be unable to purchase items from the resupply rocket menu until they relogged Under specific circumstances moving from one plot to another could cause a crash, th…
- Mondays On Mars - 20 September 2021
A new art form! Express yourself with solar panels on Mars! The team has been focused on turning your feedback this past week. Tons of bug fixes and polish tweaks. Enhancements: When an a factory using the linked factory feature takes an inventory from a doner structure the item in movement is visually transferred in a clear animation Loads and loads of new resource icons in game Many new achievements with stunning icon art Tool requirements are now being enforced for crafting (this is an enhancement! ;) ) The Crafting View has been redesigned to make tools required clear and overall enhanced Introduction video has been cut to be a bit shorter Easter Egg Hunt: There is now a method to turn your extra regolith into cold cash. Building Kits are no longer able to be dropped directly on the ground - this prevents confusion on their use Items in the marketplace now have description tool tips…
- Mondays On Mars - 13 September 2021
Hard to take a screenshot of music and SFX! The team continues to push hard as we seek to create a candidate build for opening up Early Access. A complete overhaul of our sound effects and music systems has resulted in many more hooks in the gameplay with SFX, the music rotating properly, and nice logarithmic volume controls. Loads of bug fixing, and behind the scenes a large leveling up of our server-side horizontal scaling tech is well underway. Enhancements: Tons of new SFX hooks through the game, most fun is when you finish crafting a high value item you get paid off with a guitar lick The auto-link function for factory linking is now more picky and will not link to items without any possible inventory storage or to sim objects that are likely to wander away Speaking of factory lines, a new keyboard control (defaults to U) to toggle on and off the display of your factory lines - and…
- Mondays On Mars - 7 September 2021
What a nice horizon! And checkout the new user quests! Wow! The team is in full turbo mode, we have so many new updates for you guys! Achievements! Location view! New player quests! Energy effects! Whew! Read on my friend... Enhancements: New energy effects! Now we have eye-catching energy effects coming off the solar panels so you can see at a glance when they are powering your settlement. And at night they fold up like a flower. Achievements! We now have 50 achievements for you early settlers on Mars to explore and get solid validation for carving out a new life on Mars. New user quest line - while creating the achievements system, we made it of course data driven and leveraged to create 15 quests to introduce the new player to Million on Mars Movement controls have been substantially improved with the support of multiple simultaneous key presses so that you may now mouse-look and str…
- Mondays On Mars - 31 August 2021
Who does not like a starfish pattern of solar panels and a new Crafting Bar? Team has been cranking! We have opened up the game to a bunch more pre-alpha testers and getting crisp, actionable feedback. Enhancements: We are waiving the launch fee from Earth for the next week or so - launches are now $0 instead of $20M! If you attempt to start the game without being connected to steam we now have a friendly error pop-up New front and center crafting progress bar - based on feedback, it is a lot more clear what you are rafting and how far along it is. Based on your feedback we lowered the height of objects in the preview mode to match exactly where on the terrain they will land. The overview of goals and the help window are easier to find with a new top-level nav button Bugs Fixed: Fixed the missing fonts on M1 Macs Those darn hovering of rockets has been fixed! Double-tap W for sprint has…
- Mondays On Mars - 26 August 2021
No spoilers - but we have a freaking movie for you! But this has been a very good Tuesday. We are opening up the number of alpha testers with this build! With the full server authoritative elephant being integrated last week, we did further play testing and bug fixing and knocked out a bunch more bugs and small enhancements, and we would now like more feedback! Huge: I don’t want to leave any spoilers, but pssst! We have over 5 minutes of sweet space opera that sets the stage for our world… checkout the movie icon in the lower left, and all new players will be offered this when they first settle on Mars! Enhancements: Game Tips! Now in the lower right hand corner we have a new game tips widget and will be adding more tips and triggering them on in-game actions to help accelerate your growing settlement. Locations Widget in the upper right has had a minor make-over, no more having to tra…
- Mondays On Mars - 19 August 2021
Sometimes a Wednesday, feels like a Monday on Mars We have been crunching through a bunch of polish facing tasks, tons of UI leveling-up, keybindings and settings saved. Behind the Scenes We lead with Behind the Scenes this week. We just finished a virtual eating of an Elephant (virtual! We absolutely love Elephants and would never eat one) - we just completed moving all of our game logic from being in the client to being fully on the server. This is a huge task, it amounts to unfolding logic that was previously handled locally on each client in a stateful game loop, to now being handled on the server as stateless asynchronous transactions. This enables so many goodies for all of us: first of all, now allows us to use the full toolset of modern cloud-based horizontal scaling tech so we can fulfill our namesake - (a) Million (people playing) on Mars. Second it allows us to fully express…
- Mondays On Mars - 9 August 2021
Lots of polish tasks like this get starting menu We have been crunching through a bunch of polish facing tasks, tons of UI leveling-up, keybindings and settings saved. Enhancements: All new settings and key bindings features. Tons of settings are now exposed and are saved between play sessions and more than 30 key bindings can be set and reset as you please. Camera field of view added as a setting by popular request Energy production graphs have cool widgets to show you system by system what is creating and consuming energy Starting money has been tuned and Ad Astra Unlimited now pays you a dip of new money every new Sol on Mars as well as for time played New loading screen - woot! New First Time User Experience pop-up Mouse wheel to rotate an item when in placement mode Player names have been added to the rockets Out of materials text fades a little slower We now differentiate SimObjec…
- Mondays On Mars - 2 August 2021
New “monochrome” UI 90% in place now We have nearly completed our transition over to our “monochrome” UI view, we call this monochrome even though there are colors, but the idea is to use colors in user interface elements to be reserved for interactive elements. Enhancements: Biggest feature of all time! You can now drop just one of a stackable if you hold *either* shift key… All new main menu login screen Feel the buzz of energy graphs! Whole new energy graph display so that you can understand and go deep on your energy production, consumption and overall battery storage. Added your current latitude and longitude on mars to the main display Added your settlement’s current cash balance to the main display New Kilo-class Thorium Salt Reactor added to the game - 10 kW of energy 24x7! The log will now fade out after 10 seconds of inactivity Bugs Fixed: Fixed a bug where items with prices l…
- Mondays On Mars - 26 July 2021
Huge step up for the pathfinding - development view Huge week of productivity here for the team, so much to update you with this week. The highlight of the week is a shift to a new pathfinding tech - A* Pathfinding Pro by Aron Granburg. The screenshot above is a development only view with the Unity Gizmos turned on showing a rover doing a long path around a hill that would be found in West Ladon Valles around 23 S, 29W in the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle (MC-19). What attracted us to integrated A* Pathfinding is that it is happy to create grids dynamically across terrain tiles and is not hung up on the boundary between terrain tiles. We are looking forward to deeply leveraging this into a number of new features and behaviors. Enhancements: All new pathfinding tech is in place, a lot of benefits - many bugs fixed, better rover behaviors, and even about 1000 lines of code have been prune…
- Monday on Mars - 19 July 2021
Leveling up the terrain again! Changes: Stackable's can now be stacked into each other up to their stack limit Based on player feedback, we removed the radar widget in the upper right corner Re-arranged the left-hand navigation buttons and divided them into two cohorts - going forward the left-hand side is about “menu-like” options that take the player up and out of the game, and the right hand side “deeper” into the core settlement crafting game Chat window is now wider, location and time have been moved around Added more options to the settings screen Bugs Fixed: Fixed a bug affecting brand new players failing to connect properly on first connection Fixed some edge cases in moving around partial stacks of stackable items Fixed the spawn height for new players Fixed an item duplication bug that occurred when moving stacks into partially full containers Night on Mars was way too dark, f…
- Mondays On Mars - 12 July 2021
Leveling up the terrain again! The team had a bit of time off around for the past week, but we still have some updates for you! Above you can see the new terrain tech with the first pass of intentional texturing and object scattering from our art team. It feels even better close up - cannot wait for you to play! Features Added: Feedback system - we created an in-game feedback dialog where you can send to the team a screenshot and some text and let us know about a bug, some UX confusion, or something you would like to see in the game and it will send it directly to the dev team. All new settings and options UX - a complete overhaul of the player settings and the key bindings for the game make it easier to customize the game and keep your settings and even discover a bunch of commands you didn't know we made for you :) Achievements are now toasting in-game, we now have achievements toasti…
