Mysterious Space cover
Mysterious Space screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Indie, Arcade

Mysterious Space

another day, another ludum dare livestream
working on my educational puzzle game again today. if you're interested in checking it out, and asking questions (even questions about Mysterious Space are OK :P) you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28lCktkrqAc

if you're NOT interested: sorry! but at least this is the last day of Ludum Dare; I won't be bugging you with another of these announcements again :P

I'm participating in Ludum Dare, and live-streaming me coding!
I'm participating in the Ludum Dare this year! ("make a game in 2 days" challenge.) I'm making an educational game, kind of for work >_> I really want us to make educational games at work, so I'm making a proof of concept, to show the company "hey: games are a better way to teach than boring videos with quizzes" - haha

I'm ALSO live streaming me coding! which... is maybe super-boring?? but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. if you want to watch me code, and listen to me work through coding problems (C#), you can do so here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28lCktkrqAc

if you do watch, feel free to use the text chat thing to chat at me, and I'll respond :P

hello! 0.8.4 has been released!
for a full list of changes, check out the changelog on mysteriousspace.com.

summary/highlights:

  • new "subroutine" system, adding unlockable character creation options
  • armor tweaks and a new ship upgrade for people who like to ram into things
  • support for Greek and other Coptic characters (if anyone out there would like to make a Greek translation, please get in touch with me!)
  • a handful of little UI improvements and bug fixes


next month will probably be a light update as well, due to holiday adventures. I'll keep you posted!

thanks for reading, and thanks for playing! :)

some little progress this month + Mysterious Space to appear in another bundle!
first bit of news:

if you keep a close eye on Mysterious Space, you may know that I'd committed this month to working on another project.

well, you may be happy to hear that this has not worked out: I've been poking at Mysterious Space here and there, and have started to form some plans for a large change in the hunt for the Mysterious Source... though I doubt that's something I can finish this month, due to Thanksgiving and related plans.

other little work I've done so far this month is support for Greek/Coptic characters, and a new ship upgrade for those who like to ram into things.

second bit of news:

there are a lot of bundles this time of year (Christmas is sooner than some of us might like!) and Mysterious Space will be appearing in one of them. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say which, or exactly when, so I will err on the side of caution and simply say that if you've been on the fence about buying Mysterious Space, you'll soon be able to pick it up, along with several other games, for a very low price.

some of the money from this bundle will go toward chairities, but if that's your motivation, you'd do better by buying Mysterious Space directly, or even BETTER by directly contributing to the charities, non-profits, and open-source projects of your choice! (it's really not that hard to do! think about it!)

speaking of charitous causes, I know I said before that I was close to another donation with Mysterious Space profits, but I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd been failing to take into account the cut that Steam takes from Mysterious Sale profits. I've basically been spending more money on donations than Mysterious Space was making. that doesn't bother me TOO much, but it was a bit of a surprise >_> I'm not so worried about it as to wait until Mysterious Space sales make back whatever I've spent so far, but I am worried about it enough to not over-spend in the future :P haha. that being said: I'm now ACTUALLY close to another donations with Mysterious Space!

we (you - the players of Mysterious Space - and I) are about $350 toward a $500 donation to PBS. if you think PBS only does boring TV shows, you're wrong: they do AWESOME TV shows, and they also do a series of YouTube channels, including PBS Idea Channel and PBS Game/Show, which I highly recommend. they do also do NPR, which actually IS boring :P but I'm willing to live with supporting NPR, too.

anyway: I think that's all I've got this month. it was actually more than I anticipated, when I set out to write this post! and you'll be hearing more from me in a few weeks, I'm sure, if only for a super-small Mysterious Space release at the end of the month.

thanks for reading, thanks for playing, and have fun!

0.8.3 released!
full changelog is here: http://mysteriousspace.com/changelog/0-8-x/

summary of the important stuff:
* enemies now come at you in waves, rather than one-at-a-time
* in split-screen co-op, you can now use your tractor beam on a disabled friend
* added "settings" to the title menu (finally!)
* some planets now have clouds - just for fun
* added a very-incomplete Russian translation
* added partial support for Hiragana and Katakana, making a Japanese translation kinda' possible (more on this below)...

as before, if anyone would be willing to help with a Russian and/or Japanese translation of the game, I'd be willing to make an item or two from your wishlist appear in your library :) Japanese is particularly difficult right now, though, due to the lack of Kanji in Mysterious Space's font. the code also doesn't always correctly position strings containing Hiragana and/or Katakana characters... I will work on that!

also, a heads-up: I'm mainly going to be working on a different project next month - not Mysterious Space - so there won't be much Mysterious Space action during that time. however: DDRKirby(ISQ) is working on another couple songs for Mysterious Space that I'll include ASAP, and I will definitely push aside other projects in order to help any translation effort!

thanks for reading, thanks for playing Mysterious Space, and have fun! :)

clouds, tractor beams, and russian
I've been working on some FUN things - like the addition of clouds to many worlds, and the ability to tractor beam your fallen friends - but I've ALSO been working on extending the font system to support an even greater number of languages!

Here is a proof-of-concept screenshot showing some Russian (which I got by using a couple different translation tools online)

http://i.imgur.com/Oapk7kU.png

There's no way I can do a full and proper Russian translation on my own, however; if anyone would like to help out by translating the game to Russian, that would be super-awesome of you :)

And while we're on the subject of translations: French and German are a bit behind now, too :| A bit of new text has been added, and German, especially, has always been a bit behind. I'm open to other languages, as well, however Chinese/Japanese/Korean are still impossible for Mysterious Space at this time. (There's some additional coding I need to do to support these character sets.)

Anyway! Here's a picture of a run-away item crate:

http://i.imgur.com/bRwW5zp.png

And here are some clouds :)

http://i.imgur.com/JROdkzS.png

It can't be captureed in a screenshot, but the clouds drift around... some planets have more-dense cloud-cover than others... and some clouds are drawn behind the player while others are drawn in front.

At some point, I'd like to add rain, thunder & lightning, and perhaps even items that can induce changes in weather, or interact with it in other ways! (A shield that gets super-charged when hit by lightning??)

Anyway, that's all further off! But for 0.8.3 - which I'll release at the end of the month - we'll at least have clouds, tractor beam fun, bare-bones Russian, and a few other little things :)

Thanks for reading, and thanks for playing Mysterious Space! :)

0.8.2.3 - spanish translation!
thanks to KRITikal, who has provided a Spanish translation for Mysterious Space!

there's also a tiny bug fix related to the Save & Quit screen, but it's only something you'll notice on some languages.

and that's it!

tiny update!

anyway: I do really want to thank KRITikal and zulmetefza for their help! despite running into some trouble, they stuck with me, and got a HUGE amount of translation done in a super-quick time! the Spanish and Turkish translations are now ahead of French, and WAY ahead of German!

none of the translations are 100% complete, though, and that's my fault: there's still some English text burried deep in the game's code that I just haven't pulled out into XML yet.

ANYWAY: I've got some actual game-play stuff planned for the near future, too, so I hope you'll look forward to that :) and hey: yeah: if you have any specific ideas for things to add to Mysterious Space, definitely talk about it! we've got forums around here, somewhere! I of course can't promise I'll implement every suggestion, but I'd love to know what you feel Mysterious Space is lacking (like achievement graphics >_> agk; true. I'll get on those!), or what it needs changing, or... whatever! let me know :)

0.8.2.2 - minor bugfix + font improvement release
another small release, this time fixing a possible crash when your ship is polymorphed, and improving the font used in-game! the font improvement makes accented capital letters look GOOD, which is awesome for the French, German, and especially Turkish translations.

save games from 0.8.2 and 0.8.2.1 will continue to work in 0.8.2.2.

full changelog is here: http://mysteriousspace.com/changelog/0-8-x/

and if you're interested in the crazy details surrounding the font changes, I've posted about it here http://mysteriousspace.com/ I tried to explain in a way that should make sense to non-programmers, as well, but... well... let me know where I've failed at that :P

aaaaaand Turkish is now an option :) Mysterious Space 0.8.2.1 released!
I'd like to thank zulmetefza again, here, for translating Mysterious Space to Turkish! he's also done translation for HyperRogue, and so was very familiar with the sorts of problems that can exist with translating; he gave me some good advice on improving translation in the game in the future.

so thanks again, zulmetefza! it was awesome working with you :)

here's the full changelog for 0.8.2.1. it's very short:

0.8.2.1
=======

(Save games from 0.8.2 ARE compatible with 0.8.2.1!)

Fixes
-----

* Fixed some typos in the English text (Thanks to zulmetefza for finding a
couple of these!)
* Fixed a typo in the 0.8.2 changelog. (Why does this always happen? :P)

Internationalization
--------------------

* zulmetefza has provided us with a Turkish language translation! Thank you! :)
* Extended font spritesheet to include the "Latin Extended-A" set, needed for
Turkish! I apologize about the appearance of some of the characters...
there's not many pixels to work with >_> (French and German translations have
already suffered here, too... I may need to just make my font taller at some
point...)

Credits
-------

* Rearranged the ABOUT/CREDITS page; made a sub-page dedicated to translators :)

Misc
----

* Console output for Mysterious Space is now logged to MysteriousSpace.log

Turkish language option will soon be available!
I've been working with zulmetefza to get a Turkish language translation of Mysterious Space, and we're just about done! I've been working to get the extra characters needed in the font, and am adding some other little features, like having the game detect the language used in Steam, and automatically using that in Mysterious Space (when available).

I've also been contacted about a Spanish translation! :)

if you're interested in translating, here is the XML file for English:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0r1pgea1xchxh0/English.xml?dl=0

if, even after seeing the amount of text involved, you are interested in translating, here are a few things to note:

1. if you're not familiar with HTML or XML, you might look at that file and not be quite sure what to translate, and what not to. here's the current Turkish XML file, for comparison: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcuvka1n471wa7k/Turkish.xml?dl=0

2. use a plain-text editor (not WordPad or Word!) Notepad++ is a good, free one.

3. %damage%, %knockback%, %ship part%, and other text between two % signs should not be translated; these will be replaced with values by the game.

4. ((A)), ((B)), ((X)), ((Y)), ((START)) are used to represent the Xbox controller buttons.

5. the hardest part to translate is probably the MADLIB_ stuff, which is used to generate a random backstory for your ship during character creation. if it proves too much trouble, consider it entirely optional :P

6. FINALLY: if you want to test your translation, place it in the following location, and Mysterious Space will load it up when you start the game:

\Documents\Mysterious Space\Languages\.xml

ex, if your Windows user name is "Ben", and you're making a "Klingon" language option:

C:\Users\Ben\Documents\Mysterious Space\Languages\Klingon.xml

(if it doesn't load, there may be an error in your XML file; you can copy/paste your XML file here: http://www.xmlvalidation.com/ to check for common errors.)



if you have any other questions, feel free to get in contact with me here on Steam, and thanks in advance! :)
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