Helium Rain has been updated ! Today we're bringing the long-awaited company log feature. Here is all you need to know about it.
How it works
All new transactions in your company will now be logged and saved to be displayed in two new menus : log, and accounting. The first menu, featured above, is a direct log view with a few filters. We expect it to be helpful to diagnose money-losing situations, for example.
The second menu, which we call the accounting menu, is a year-per-year overview of your company. It features a number of transaction types that are in the game and tells you where your company is profiting or not. Some of them will probably surprise you, as Helium Rain features a very complex simulation, but we've tried to keep it clear.
About existing saves
We have a policy of never breaking saves, and we've kept to it since the initial Early Access release. However, as suggested above, no transaction previous to the update will be logged. Logging will start as soon as he game is updated.
About development progress
We regularly see players wondering about the speed of upgrades. After all, we only planned for a 6-months Early Access period, and we'll be hitting the one-year mark this summer. Part of why is that we added many feature requests from the community, like modular stations or the company log feature, but sometimes we also simply work on stuff that doesn't get released.
For the past few months, we've had an ongoing effort to recreate the economy model with different rules. We want to make prices much more dynamic and realistic, and fix some issues with resources contracts. This is however a huge undertaking, and the more we work on it, the less likely to work in the game it looks - which is one case of us working for something players can't see yet.
This is how many of these these work-in-progress branches we've had for the game ! "new" and "refactor" are all about re-creating a part of the game in a better way, and these happen a lot...
Odds & ends
Completed or ignored tutorials are now separated from regular contracts in the contract menu.
We've also fixed a few issues with the game, including a blocking UI problem on some Linux devices, a trade route editing crash, and collision issues in the Farm.
That's it for today. See you soon for another update !
Eight months in Early Access
It's been eight months since Helium Rain released in Early Access ! We thought it was a good time to look back and see how it went, from our perspective, and to share our future plans for the game.
A wild ride
Helium Rain has seen thirteen updates in Early Access already. We spent the first weeks squashing bugs day and night, with 70 issues resolved during the first month. Overall, around 300 issues were entered on our issue tracker. We've managed to bring the number of known issues down to less than 10.
As a reminder, all of the source code for Helium Rain is publicly available on GitHub. This isn't very useful to most players, but we feel like it's important to have the source code available, both for curious developers and dedicated players. We also maintain a public bug tracker and roadmap so that players can follow progress on their issues or requested features.
Our initial Early Access roadmap announced a number of large features and we've been trying to live up to this promise.
We redesigned all stations in the game and added station complexes.
The separate Skirmish game mode launched early this year, along with upgraded combat.
The user interface was reworked to ensure a smoother experience and more data to players.
Linux is now a first-class citizen too, thanks to volunteer players who helped fix issues on their platform.
State of Deimos Games
We funded Deimos Games in the summmer of 2017, and we've completed accounting for our first business year. It's been a lot of work, both on technical development for the game, and on the legal & financial side of things. Under French law, company revenue is public data, and we're very committed to openness ourselves, so we decided to share our numbers with you. Here it goes !
Deimos Games will be reporting revenue of 14,000€ ($17,000). This isn't a very high number, but it's close to what we expected, and we're happy with this early result as a new company.
As you can probably calculate yourself, this amounts to around 2,000 copies sold.
We've achieved 96% positive reviews on Steam. This is heart-warming, and makes all our efforts worth it !
We're also happy to report that 14% of our lifetime sales happened on the Linux platform.
Game development is a very competitive field, with incredible games releasing every month. We're looking for happy players more than we are looking for huge sales numbers, so we're happy with the current state of things.
Update roadmap
Our current efforts are focused on a better economy model for the game. We'll show in more details what is coming to the game, but we can already show the upcoming the company log, which will make it much easier to fine-tune your company. Another new menu will provide yearly financial details to help you understand your company's budget. The irony of developing such tools while working on our own accounting isn't lost on us.
Once economy issues will be resolved, we will move on to another roadmap topic - new contracts, new story elements, new unique sectors to explore. You shouldn't expect a large scripted campaign here, but we'd love to bring a few unique missions, interesting areas and recurring content that helps with replayability. As usual, feel free to bring your ideas here !
The final topic on the roadmap is the fuel systems - an update dedicated to simulating fuel usage and engine efficiency. As of today, this is probably not going to be added to the game. We still feel like it would be a worthwile feature, but it raises a number of issues.
Fuel systems would be an interesting and realistic feature, but it's unclear how exactly they could mesh into the game without punishing players in some cases. We're aware production issues on some resources are already annoying, but at least they're not preventing gameplay. Losing access to fuel would terminate your game, something we don't consider acceptable. Workarounds for such a core issue are problematic.
The game is already very complex, including on our side as developers. We created a bit of a monster with Helium Rain: the game's depth is enjoyable, but it makes it very hard for us to create new systems or maintain existing ones. It also makes it harder for players to get into the game.
Finally, we have now spent close to four years in development on this project, so the scope of new developments is starting to get under scrutiny.
Simply put, we should have considered this feature much earlier in the game, and it wouldn't do it any good now.
We plan on exiting Early Access and releasing as a final product at the end of this summer. We don't have a specific date yet - we will release the game when we are confident it lives up to our expectations and works without bugs. In the meantime, we're very open to new ideas, if they're small in scope, relevant to the gameplay and popular in the community.
Thank you for supporting this project, and have fun with the game !
Farm update
The Farm update has been published for Helium Rain, including a new sector, graphics upgrades and many fixed issues !
New sector : the Farm
We've added a new playable sector around Nema, one that specializes in food production. The Farm features gravity rings with rotating sections for growing food in sunlight.
Graphics upgrades
While graphics are secondary to the current work on the economy and gameplay features, it's still important to keep the game looking good. The lighting has been improved, featuring back-lighting from planets to have smoother ambient lighting ; and the rings of Nema now have a much cleaner terminator.
Some other graphical tweaks include nicer hulls, some updated HUD icons, etc.
Technical changes
We're still on bug-hunting duty. No less than 11 bugs have been fixed in this version - all major bugs we were aware of have been fixed. We're still looking for information on some random crashes, but this update will also make it easier for us to track it down.
Fix crash on travel
Fix notification freeze at the end of a travel
Fix some skirmishes not counted as a win despite victory
Fix incorrect additional binding for thrust input
Fix AI stations upgrading stations beyond max level
Fix company logo covering some contract descriptions
Fix useless cargo bays in complexes
Fix cargo bay lock system
Fix complex's shipyard not always starting production
Fix random crash on opening the sector menu
Fix some cases of scrapping not going back from the menu
We're also bringing an updated Unreal Engine version that was tested on the beta channel for a month. This version should, among minor changes, fix some occurences of random game crashes. As usual, you can find the full changelog at Gamepedia.
What's next ?
Our next update will bring new economy features, including a company log with all your company's transactions. We'll also work on addressing end-game issues, and possibly performance issues on day simulation.
Have fun, and keep the feedback coming so that we can make Helium Rain ever better !
Helium Rain beta updated
Hi !
We've released an updated game build on the beta branch of Helium Rain. This new build does not affect the game itself, but brings an updated Unreal Engine version and a new release process on our side. Let's see what changed !
Linux support
We've updated our release process to ensure the game work seamlessly on more Linux distributions. Supporting Linux can be quite an involved process, because everyone is free to build his own Linux system from the ground up with unique combinations of software components.
We used to build Linux versions of Helium Rain on a regular Linux desktop, and this worked on most distributions ; but we suspect that this caused issues to a few users with uncommon systems. We moved to a new process called cross-compilation, where Linux releases are built on a Windows machine using a controlled environment provided with Unreal Engine.
On top of this environment change, the new Unreal Engine 4.19 should bring updated Linux support.
Crash reporting
We updated the game on Windows a few weeks ago with an automatic crash reporter that is now enabled across all platforms. For around 200 specific failure conditions across the entire game code, the game will upload a very small (< 1KB) crash report to our servers, before actually crashing. The reason we are doing this is twofold :
the Windows Fall Creators update broke our existing crash reporter, and crash reports from this OS version are now useless to us, in a way we can't fix ;
while manual crash reports from players are always more valuable than an automatic report, many people don't have the patience and time to register on our bug tracker and provide detailed information.
This is a fully anonymous process, as it does not upload any personal data. We're just sending a call stack - the conditions in which a crash did occur. To be clear, we do not store or report any data from your computer. The entire report is also shown to you when it's sent. Here is a full report as an example, in case you're wondering.
Feel free to discuss this with us if this is unclear. Helium Rain doesn't feature networking support outside of this, and we know people can be passionate about telemetry features.
Crash on travel / skipping days
We're currently facing a outbreak of crashes that we fail to explain, and we'd love to solve this issue. We hope that this updated build will at least make it easier for us to track down the issue, though it is unlikely to fix it directly.
How to use the beta
The Helium Rain beta is always compatible with your game save, and can be switched to or from whenever you want. Some pitfalls always...
This is a channel for work-in-progress builds that may be updated on a different schedule than the main branch (more often, with less testing).
We can't promise that this version is as stable as the main branch - some features could be broken, performance could be bad, hardware could be unsupported, etc.
To enable the beta channel, right-click the game in Steam, go to the Properties menu and the Beta tab. Select the "Beta - Helium Rain Beta" entry and confirm the change.
Thank you for playing Helium Rain, and please tell us of any issue !
Battle update
We've released a new feature update to Helium Rain. Most changes will focus on combat, with a few additional corrective measures, and better Linux support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDdDcimaqk
New capital ship gameplay
Flying a capital ship is now more enjoyable, with a seamless turret control mode that blends the existing fighter controls, and the free targeting turrets offer. The goal of these changes is to make capital ships more attractive as player ships.
This changes come will some tweaks to existing ships. The most heavily updated ship is the Dragon corvette, a ship that now features higher coverage for turrets, and a redesigned hull. Take a look at how we work with ships here ! We also upgraded the Anubis cruiser to ensure most turrets could fire directly ahead.
Skirmish game mode
This update adds the new Skirmish gameplay. You can now launch a quick battle from the main menu, without playing for hours to build powerful ships. We expect that you will enjoy using this game mode to experiment with ships, try new weapons and get familiar with the combat.
Combat updates
We've made many changes to combat. Here are some highlights !
Diplomatic penalties on station capture have been drastically reduced, to prevent large-scale war after just a few captures.
Turrets and AI ships now target missiles and meteorites, making missiles much less of a critical threat, and more of a way to harass ships.
All combat sounds have been reviewed and upgraded.
AI companies will generate more efficient combat fleets.
The game's balance has been reviewed to make heavy ships less overpowered against smaller craft.
Many bugs related to AI ships, missiles and flak shells have been fixed.
Better Linux support
We've been working on getting Helium Rain to use the latest Unreal Engine version. Perks of this release include Vulkan support, and a new audio pipeline.
If you were experiencing lighting issues with AMD hardware, you should add the -vulkan option to launch parameters in Steam. This will enable the experimental Vulkan renderer, which should be somewhat slower, but more reliable.
Your distribution should feature PulseAudio as an audio backend. Some other audio backends might work.
We are aware of issues that prevent clicking on some buttons. Please provide us with additional bug reports, should you observe such issues.
And more !
As usual, here is the full changelog. Among the other changes, some stations have been visually upgraded, to keep a consistent quality level across the game. We also added Steam trading cards.
Upcoming updates will turn back to the game's economy, add more information to menus, and keep ensuring the long-term gameplay is stable. We are also preparing work on the game's story.
Thank you for keeping up with Helium Rain, and feel free to tell us what you think !
Helium Rain beta updated
Hello !
We've updated the beta branch for Helium Rain. The new version brings a new Unreal Engine version, primarily meant for better Linux support, with a new audio pipeline and better support for older distributions. No major changes are expected on Windows.
While we expect this beta release to work exactly like the general release, please be warned that this version is less tested and could have issues on you system. Game saves are compatible to and from the general release. We'll welcome feedback from our most daring users !
Here is what we are currently working on.
The next gameplay updates will focus on economy management, and the brand new Skirmish gameplay. We're currently targeting January 2018 for the next update.
We plan to continue working on the game with a story update next spring.
Early Access to Helium Rain will turn into a full public release on Steam in 2018.
As usual, we'd like to thank you for your continued feedback and support. Enjoy the game !
Helium Rain patch released
We've released a new update with minor interface improvements, and a number of corrective measures, mostly UI issues with the recent modular stations.
Add an option to list spacecrafts as fleets in lists
Add pause button on trade routes
Add clean black bars to the story pages
Sort resource slots by input/output status
Reduce cockpit blur
Fix crash on fast forward with high numbers of stations
Fix crash in the trade route menu
Fix docking at complexes with large ships
Fix complexes not listed in the trade menu
Fix fleets not ordered in a sane way
Fix spacecraft hotkeys not ignored while typing
Fix display issues on the orbital map
Fix Pendulum quest not taking resources
Fix fleet tutorial sometimes stuck
Fix cracks in RCS audio
As usual, thank you for keeping the feedback coming.
Economy patch
We've released a bug-fixing patch for Helium Rain. It aims at squashing a few annoying economy issues with upgrades, complex stations, as well as some stability improvements.
Fixed ships stuck waiting on a station that doesn't trade
Fixed cargo bay locked by incorrect resources when upgrading stations
Fixed complex shipyard not offering production options on slot 8
Fixed aspect ratio of trade route menu
[tentative] Fixed crashes in the trade route menu
Keep giving us feedback on the game !
Modular stations update
A new update has just been released to Helium Rain ! We've been hard at work for two months to bring this large update to station management, as well as a better UI and a new engine version.
This is a very large update that has more risk than usual. Consider doing a copy of your previous game save before running the game. Read up on http://dev.helium-rain.com to find your game save folder.
Modular stations
We've added a new type of station, the Complex. You can build up to 14 stations upon a complex, all of them sharing the same cargo hold. No freighters are needed to trade resources between the different complex elements !
Almost all stations, with the exception of Telescopes, can be built at complexes. Some stations have restrictions on where they can be built. We still expect you to love complexes, as they will make it easier to become self-reliant !
As part of the changes, we've completely reworked the pricing model for stations. Building stations in multiple sectors will now be much cheaper, with a per-sector station limit and flat pricing. We've also added a way to scrap stations to get their component resources back.
Better UI
The UI has been reworked to feature much more elements on screen, with a 15% higher density. As a result, most menus can now display more data, more actions, and more information. The most visible change is to the orbital map, which now features different display modes to locate your stations and fleets.
Some of the menus will have future updates to add even more data. In particular, we want to add more economy information, such as which stations and trade routes are generating or losing money.
Less bugs, new engine
This update brings Unreal Engine 4.17 to you. Linux users who own AMD GPUs will have an easier time making the game run, even if we're still aware of a "persistent night" graphics bug. We're aware the Linux version still has issues with AMD hardware and will release another engine update on the beta channel soon.
We've also fixed a few painful bugs, and done some quality-of-life changes. Take a look at the full changelog here !
As this version has very large changes, it's possible that some bugs went through our QA phase. Please tell us if we broke anything ! We'll do our best to fix issues as soon as possible.
Thank you for playing Helium Rain !
Update roadmap
Let's talk about where Helium Rain is going !
It's been three weeks since the game came out, and we're now to the point where most game-breaking issues are solved - we know some bugs are still there, but it's no longer an urgent situation. We've looked at every suggestion on the forums, discussed what was more important, and we can now share a roadmap for future updates !
Modular stations
Our first update will be a player-suggested one : modular stations.
We're working on a second station update, after the big graphical changes two weeks ago. Now we want to add a new station-building option : instead of creating separate stations, companies will have the option to build station hubs, a shipyard-size stations that acts as a large docking pad and support station. This station will feature a unique perk : stations can be built on it, in a branching structure, removing the need for ships to transport resources between factories.
Along with this huge feature, we'll rework the pricing model of stations, allow companies to scrap them just like ships, and add a few more UI elements.
Updated economy
The next item will be less visible, but will change the game a lot. We're aware the economy right now is very rigid, with little pricing variation and a number of issues with how companies react to resources. While the changes there are not fully decided, the overall plan is to make the economy much more liberal.
Along with economy change, we'll try to add much more information in the menus to make the game less obscure.
Fuel management
This one was planned before we launched. We still plan on adding a fuel usage model, which would reward careful piloting, make engine upgrades more useful, and generally improve the immersion.
The fuel update will come with an updated orbital map, new engines, possibly a new ship !
Story and contracts
These updates will be quite large, and as a result, the story has lost some priority. We haven't heard anyone asking about it, so we don't feel like the story is very important for players. It will come after the large features that we feel the game really need.
Skirmish mode
Last but not least : another player suggestion, the skirmish mode, will come to Helium Rain. It will be separate from your regular game save, will offer tools to configure a battle and start fighting right away, without endangering your precious ships !
Keep telling us your ideas
This is a rough outline - we'll keep updating you with how the planning changes. The general idea is that we want the core game to be perfect before we start adding elements that don't impact the everyday experience.
While we may not reply to everything on the forums, rest assured that we do read everything. We're focused on improving the game and keep doing Early Access right.
Thank you for your feedback, and keep telling us what you'd like us to do next !
