Plasma
If you love something, set it Free!
We have two pieces of news to share today, a good one and a bad one.
Starting with the good one, from May 30 Plasma will be free to download.
We are doing this in the hopes that as many people get to enjoy the game while it's still relevant.
So if you or anyone you know are passionate about programming and/or robotics, now is the perfect time to mess around in the fun sandbox of Plasma.
Onto the bad news, we had to make the hard decision to no longer support development of the game.
We tried our best, made plenty of mistakes on the way, but ultimately the hard truth is that Plasma has totally failed as a commercial project.
While there are things we wish we had done differently, we are still very proud of what we achieved as a small independent team.
We would like to thank all players and members of the community that made the development journey of Plasma into something special and very memorable, without you the game would have been meaningless, we are sorry to let you down with this piece of news but we hope to see you again on our next adventure!
Sincerely,
Patrick and Marco
Update 0.4.0.0
We're excited to push our first update out since resuming development.
Today we're bringing some commonly requested features and improvements, thanks to everyone who is contributing with their ideas and feedback on the forums and on our friendly Discord server.
Offset Changes
We've changed the Offset operation to now support all 3 axis and increased the maximum amount of offset available to 0.5m, this should make life easier when building intricate models.
Component Spawner Additions
Component Spawner now features two new properties:
- Lifetime: Allows you to define a time after which the spawned component will auto-destroy
- Force: Applies a force to the spawned object
Other Changes
In no particular order:
- Gamepad Interface: Added 'Enabled' property to quickly enable/disable input
- Raw Mechanic Components: Added 'Friction' property to allow for things like buttery smooth bearings or strong brakes
- Character Movement: Added ability to change volume of character movement sound
- Device Controller: Added 'Reset' Command to allow resetting a Device through Sketch (useful in Staged worlds)
As always please let us know if you find any issues or have any suggestions.
Thanks!
Development Resuming
We are excited to share the news that development on Plasma is resuming.
The team has shrunk back to its original 2 co-founders (Patrick and Marco) and we're still not exactly sure where the focus will be in the early days, what we do know is that taking a break from development was healthy for us and our families and we are now ready to put more time and effort into Plasma.
Feedback and suggestions from the community are a driving force behind the game, so if you're interested in participating please join us on Discord where we will be seeking your input to shape future work.
We appreciate everyone's interest in the game and contributions to the Workshop so far and we look forward to seeing more brilliant and crazy engineering ideas come to life in Plasma.
Sincerely,
Patrick and Marco
Development Hiatus
With great reluctance we announce today that Plasma is going on an indefinite development hiatus.
It has been an incredible 6 year journey, Plasma being the longest and most ambitious project we ever worked on.
We are very proud of what our small team has achieved, and most importantly we are extremely thankful to our community for the support, time, energy, and passion that so many of you dedicated to the game. The community shared over 2300 Devices and 140 Worlds on the Workshop, amazing!
The past year has been a wild ride for us. We released our reveal trailer almost exactly a year ago, and we were blown away by the reception, with half a million views! And we were stoked to see the demo of Plasma being one of the most played demos of the Steam Next Fest we participated in.
This wild ride however, and the 6 years of immense dedication, have been very taxing on us. On our personal lives and energy but particularly on our budget. The sad reality is that the game is simply not financially viable with way more money going out compared to what’s coming in.
So what happens now?
As of now we stop working on any new content, features, or bug fixes for Plasma, with the possible exception of a minor update to tie any loose ends.
We will also exit Early Access and halve the price of the game. We hope this will give more people the opportunity to enjoy the game in its current form.
Beyond that, we don’t know exactly what the future holds for Plasma. We hope that Plasma will eventually find a larger audience, and if that were to happen it is possible that we would resume work on the game in some form. Other options are also being considered to keep the project going - from open-sourcing the game to finding a publisher or selling development rights to someone else who will continue work on it.
We want to thank our community, all of our engineers, for playing, building, sharing and engaging with us. Your creativity and skills have blown us all away, every week since the demo days with all of the devices and worlds that were shared on the workshop. We hope you will continue to be as creative and hone your engineering skills in Plasma!
Thank you all!
Marco, Patrick, Javier, Joi, Michele, Merlo, Joe
Questions & Answers
Why is this happening?
When we first started full-time development on Plasma, in September 2017, we had anticipated a 2-3 year development cycle and had budgeted accordingly, with the firm intent of self-funding and self-publishing.
We are now 6 years into full-time development and have spent over $750k (USD), all self-funded by revenue generated by our previous games.
As of writing, Plasma has sold 11,288 units (with a refund rate of 14.8%) for a rough revenue of $86k - that means we are currently sitting on a loss of over $650k.
Our monthly expenses to keep development going are $11k, but for the month of July 2023 we sold 728 units for a revenue of $6300 - so each month we operate we keep losing money.
As you can see from the numbers above, it has become totally unsustainable for us to keep development going from a financial standpoint, and it has been like this for a while.
We hoped releasing into Early Access would have at least allowed us to operate with some safety margin, but that hasn’t happened and is unlikely to happen for quite some time - the financial risk is just too great for us as a small independent business with young families to support.
Why not just… ?
We’ve thought about a lot of solutions - publishers, investors, 6 more months, Kickstarter, open sourcing it, etc. And we honestly can’t say what will happen in the future. What can be said with certainty is that currently the game is not financially viable and our small team needs some time to recharge.
What does “Development Hiatus” actually mean?
It effectively means we’re not going to do any more development on Plasma for the time being. We don’t want to use the words “Stop” or “Quit” as we honestly don’t know what will happen to it. We hope that development will resume one happy day but for now we need to take a break and re-evaluate our priorities and work-life balance.
Will the game still be playable on Steam?
Yes, absolutely, the game will remain on Steam in its current state with a reduced price tag.
What will happen to the Discord server?
We will keep the Discord server running and some of us will still be there to chat and see what the community is doing. We will also do an update to the game to fix out the Discord links to work indefinitely. So if you are new to the community come join us at https://discord.com/invite/plasmasandbox
Engineering Challenge: Sumo Bots
We have a special themed World just for the occasion, download it from the Workshop using World ID: 2993542422
Do you like BattleBots? Do you like outsmarting your opponents and proving your worth? Well, don't just stand around, join us!
The challenge will be primarily run on our Discord server so make sure to come JOIN US THERE!
Our second Engineering challenge is live NOW and ends on Saturday, July 15, 2023, 9:00 PM CET
Once ended we'll have a LIVESTREAM on Monday, July 17, 2023, 7:00 PM CET where we pit your robots against one another in a Tournament.
Robots will be manually reviewed by us in our official Discord to avoid any shenanigans :)
We have a strict ruleset this time around, your robot must:
- Be an original device
- Be a single device no heavier than 50Kg
- Fit within the orange area/scale (you'll find it in our world)
- Not extend past the red area/scale
- Not include banned components
- Not use any stage nodes
- Be physically stable and not use glitches
- Robots must have transceiver interface component attached and working
(The scale is a 1.50x1.50x1.50 Meters cube with a 2M extension area)
On the arena, it must
- Only move on TRUE signal from transceiver CH1
- Stop moving on FALSE signal on transceiver CH1
- Not send any other signal on transceiver
- Only touch the top part of the platform
BANNED COMPONENTS:
Drone - Zero gravity - Thruster - Death ray - Plasma Cannon - Plasma Toggler - Self Destructor - Fans - Webcam & Communicator
Despawner - Component Spawner- Raw Hinge - Raw Motor - Raw Servo - Joiner
You can share your Sumo Bot, directly In-Game with the Title "Sumo" followed by the robot's name.
You can also share your creation on our Discord in the #engineering-challenge channel, which will give us the chance to review it and give you some tips on how to improve it!
LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!
Milestone 1 - Closed Loops
Hey there Engineers!
It’s already been 2 months since the Early Access release, it has been amazing to see what the community is coming up with and the creativity and ingenuity shown by creators on the Workshop. On our end we’ve been hard at work fixing bugs and closely following the community’s needs, and today we’re happy to finally reach our first milestone: Closed Loops!
One of the unique aspects of Plasma is its physics engine, which uses articulated bodies to simulate joint movement - a technology normally used in robotics simulations due to its accuracy and rigidity.
One of the downsides however is the inherent inability to form closed mechanical loops - until now! By making use of a rigid body constraint between the articulated bodies we can form closed loops, these won’t be as rigid as the rest of the Device but work very well in most scenarios.
When two Joiners belong to the same group and are overlapping, a temporary mechanical join can be formed.
When the Joiners belong to the same Device, mechanical loops become possible.
Joins can also be made between separate devices!
A Separator works a bit differently from a Joiner, it is designed to split off parts of a Device during simulation, think along the lines of a rocket shedding its boosters.
Or a drone separating from another vehicle.
Force/Torque Outputs
All mechanical components with an internal link (ex: Hinges, Motors, Extenders) now output their applied force at the last simulation step, a very useful piece of information in robotics applications and a prerequisite for self-balancing robots.
Linear and Angular Drag Fix
The kind folk over at Unity 3D (the game engine we use) fixed a bug that caused linear and angular drag values to be applied incorrectly to articulation bodies during simulation.
This update includes the fix, but we had to revert linear drag values to the default in your saved Devices so you might need to re-adjust the value if you had previously changed it.
Showcase World
We also published the world containing all the devices you see here, so you can try them out yourself. The world is called "Closed Loops Showcase" and its ID is 2988402150.
Roadmap Updated
Since we reached our first milestone, we've also updated our roadmap to show you what we have in store!
That's it for our first milestone!
We hope you'll enjoy this update and we can't wait to see what you'll come up with!
- Marco, Patrick, Jói, Javier, Michele, and Merlo
Hotfix for 0.3.1.1
- Fixed an issue that would crash the game when interacting with a Text property in several components and nodes.
- The "Despawner" component now correctly despawns devices that are very close to it.
- The "Color Painter" component is now allowed to paint in a staged world where the player has no permission to paint.
- The "Glass Part D" component is no longer missing the "Glass Opacity" property.
- Fixed the "Fill Rect" command on the "Shape Drawer" node.
- Fixed an artifact in the "Quarter Tube Window" component.
Minor Update - 0.3.1.1
IMPROVEMENTS
- Added the "Net Link" component: it allows you to execute web requests. You can use it to talk to REST servers and retrieve or post data. It supports text and images. We are pretty excited about this one!
- Added the "Hex Arch" and "Semi Hex Arch" components. They fit very well with the glass components we added in the previous update.
- Added the "Mini Docking Station" component. It's basically a smaller and less intrusive version of the "Docking Station" component.
- Added the "JSON Inspector" node. You can use it to query or traverse a JSON blob. The perfect companion for the "Net Link" component!
- Added the "Sound Fetcher" node. It allows you to get a sound asset by its name.
- Added the "Text Array Converter" and "Number Array Converter" nodes to easily go from Text to TextArray or NumberArray, and viceversa.
- Added the "Component Checker" node to be able to check if a specific component exists on the device.
- Added an "Autosize" property to both the "Label" and "Emissive Label" components.
- Added a button on both Device and World popups to open the Steam overlay on the selected workshop item.
- Improved the "UI Button" node. It now allows you to have a payload that is output when the button is clicked.
- Improved the "Text Manipulator" node. You can now escape and unescape URLs.
- Improved nodes documentation: thanks to the help of members of our fantastic community, here's another batch of manuals for a bunch of nodes. These will keep coming with each update. Credits: @Alinto, @Azim, @Cracer, @FliX, @Gingerbread, @Leonardo1123, @PlasmAlex, @Super_IronMan, @vvmvx, @Zarro.
FIXES
- Fixed an issue with the game restarting in Fullscreen after previously setting it to Window mode.
- Fixed an issue with the Settings window that would show the wrong display's refresh rate.
- Exiting Ghost Mode will no longer disable flying mode.
- Fixed lasers on sensors not passing through opened sliding doors.
- Sharp notes no longer sound louder than other notes.
- Favorite icon in the Node Library now behaves correctly.
- NumberArray data type now obeys the Decimal Digits property in various components and nodes.
- "Range" property of light emitting components now has a lower limit of 1 to avoid a Unity bug that would turn the light off.
- Double line spaces in nodes manuals should work correctly now.
- Fixed the "LCD" component not updating its background color correctly.
- Rotated images in the Image Importer window now scale correctly.
- A few other minor fixes.
Hotfix for 0.3.1.0
- Removed Lab Medium biome since it was crashing the game and wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Don't worry, you're not missing much, it's just a test biome we use internally.
- Fixed sharp notes volume.
- Fixed "Quarter Tube Window" model.
- Fixed "Square Screen" model.
Plasma - v0.3.1.0
IMPROVEMENTS
- Added a batch of new components called "Glass Part": these components are designed to be used on vehicles as canopies, but we know you'll find all kinds of other uses for them!
- Added a few new Basic components: "Flat Rod L Junction", "Quarter Tube", "Quarter Tube Window", "Semi Tube", "Semi Tube Window", "Semi Tube Corner" and "Ramp Corner". You should be able to create interesting devices with those tube components!
- Added the "Despawner" component: similar to the Death Ray, but smaller, quieter and doesn't have a cooldown. Designed to be used in factory-like scenarios (or when you want to silently destroy devices).
- Added the "Square Screen" component: a square version of our beloved Screen!
- Added the "Button Triangle" component: a triangular version of the Button.
- Improved the "Sphere 1/8" component: it can now be scaled in any direction.
- Improved the "Speaker" component: you can now control the octave of any sound played by the Speaker; in addition to that, we added a property to control whether the player's position should affect the sound volume.
- Improved the "Component Spawner" component: you can now control the volume of the sound played when a new component is spawned. And yes, you can set it to OFF.
- Added a new node called "Swapper": this node allows only one signal (out of two: Primary and Secondary) to pass. It's the counterpart of the "Router" node.
- Improved the "Text Manipulator" node: we added the "Join" command to join all the elements of a Text Array into a single string, and its counterpart, the "Split" command to... split a text into an array of elements.
- Improved the Tree Line overlay: now "Controller" components are shown with their own icon to easily spot them.
- Improved the Guru Meditation window: it's now possible to skip saving the current world after the game has crashed.
- Improved nodes documentation: thanks to the help of members of our fantastic community, here's the first batch of manuals for a bunch of nodes. These will keep coming with each update. Credits: @Alinto, @Azim, @Cracer, @Gingerbread, @Leonardo1123, @Super_IronMan, @vvmvx, @Zarro.
- A few other small enhancements here and there.
FIXES
- Fixed the system responsible to catch infinite loops in Sketches (it now actually catches them...).
- Fixed the search in the both the Device and World browsers for local items.
- A few other minor fixes.