Race to Mars
A few words of explanation.
What is going on with Race To Mars?
Same as usual - we're still working on it, currently harder than ever. The upcoming update should arrive soon and it will contain a lot of new stuff.
If it's going so well, what went wrong?
We were overwhelmed by RTM's success on Early Access. Riding your enthusiasm, we decided to fix pretty much every game element - visuals, music, add more hardware, more things, more great elements...
Which ate into our time very hard. What's more, we had to verify parts of our earlier assumptions. Worse still, our techadvisor fell seriously ill, having been and still being in a hospital, which dramatically decreased his working capability. Unfortunately, we lack his deep technical expertise to bring many of the elements to life. This unfortunately gave us more weeks of delays.
Unfortunately, preparations for the Apollo Update aren't going as well as we would like, too, but we definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel and today we are practically sure that we will be able to prepare it in a good state for the middle of September. We will probably be able to add a lot of things that originally weren't meant to be in it, but thanks to the extra time, we can.
Where to find optimistic news then? There's a lot and I hope that they will at least in part recompensate your disappointment over the speed of our work on the game.
First, we are now a much more stable and experienced company than we were half a year ago. We started work in a four-person squad with little experience, and now we have sometimes even 16 people working for our team - not everyone at the same time on Race To Mars of course. Currently working on the game are programmers with many years of experience with AAA productions. We have new artists available and we are still moving forward. I hope this will finally be visible in the Apollo Update. The game has never looked so good before, and I am sure you, too, will be amazed by the new GUI.
Second, the success on EA gave us contacts and chances that we never hade before. Thanks to that we are working on things that will definitely be to your liking whenever we can finally unveil them. With that however I assure you that we will not stop working until RTM is the best damn game we are capable of giving to you. This is our "founding project", which gave us everything that INTERMARUM is today - a group of great people, who love ambitious products. Even today we are working so that Race To Mars can be bought boxed, with many different language versions, in an attractive release for lovers of strategy-economic games.
Third, we know we failed in many aspects. We also have a few ideas on how to repay you for that and are analyzing which of them will be technically possible. We will definitely give our all to thank each and every one of our current fans, hoping you will give us a little more time to make RTM what we have always wanted to be.
I, like the whole team, hope that you understand what problems the project is facing, but also what opportunities await. I also hope that you are with us and I know that these words should have been said a lot earlier. I am sure that together we can make Race To Mars better than we could have ever before.
Szymon Janus
CEO, INTERMARUM
We continue our hard work on Race To Mars.
Also, we have finished the GUI for the Mission Control building, but in order to implement all of the features, we will need to prepare the whole contract system at the National Space and Air Office building.
When the new GUI for R+D is ready, we will start implementing the new GUI and new options for the Assembly building, where you will be able to construct, among other things, 18 different types of rockets!
The design team is working on the Astronaut Complex right now - the last big building that hasn't been fully designed yet.
New screen is here: https://www.facebook.com/RaceToMars
Some news regarding Race To Mars.
First we would like to apologise for the long lack of information. It absolutely does not mean we stopped working on the game, in fact - quite the opposite. Some of you have noticed we have no one in our team who is responsible only for contacting you, and the currently worked on update requires every bit of free time we have. Why? It's like this:
In the next build on which we are hard at work right now, there will be mission planning and assembly of many vehicles. This requires a HUGE amount of data to input, analyse and tweak, which makes our spreadsheets burn white hot ;) It's a lot of work which requires simultaneous cooperation from 4-5 people, especially since this is also a chance to prepare and integrate a new GUI, which we have already teased on our FB page.
In addition, other than working on game mechanics, we are implementing new GUI in the most time consuming buildings, which is handled by a new programmer in our team - Bartek. The results are great, in our opinion, and we can't wait to share them with you for you to see the new GUI.
The third element currently worked on is finalizing the visual game scene. We have new models for all of the buildings and this week we will handle implementing, final setup, plugging in to the main game mechanics and adding a few new visual addons.
We also had a short flu epidemic, which in a small team like ours unfortunately means more small delays.
In short, we are working on a game build that will let you do a lot more in the game that was available until now. We also know that we shouldn't neglect communication with you, but we hope you understand our reasons - we are focused on working on the game, with little to no time left for the forums. We hope you will forgive our missteps and count on your continued support.
We also invite you to follow our FB page - we post more smaller updates there, even today we will show you some of the new buildings that will be available in the game.
Current Progress
In the next build you will be able to mount 16 types of satellites, 18 types of rockets and to plan simple missions (new fresh GUI style for that as well). New GUI will also appear on main screen.
Our designers are also working on Tracking Station. Mission Control takes care of choosing launchers and payload, planning steps for your missions, choosing dates and assigning astronauts.
A Tracking Station you will be able to observer your mission after the launch and see which phases of your missions are finished and what was their outcome: if there was a malfunction, how did it influence equipment’s reliability and if the mission could be continued.
Next step will be to design Astronaut Complex.
New GUI - Teaser.
http://www.racetomars.pl/gui-redesign.jpg
Small update (save & load problems)
Currently we’re working on planning the missions and contracts – the parts of the game, which will be the most crucial for developing your new space company. Also we’re adding new equipment that you will be able to mount and we’re ‘renovating’ Assembly building to make it more clear to use.
The next step in development will be Tracking Station, which will allow, of course, to track your missions in space. At the same time part of our team is working on new GUI – the main design is almost finished, so in a few weeks we will start implementing it.
New build - 0.4.701
Here is the list of changes for version 0.4.701 released today on Steam:
- New 3D model: Airfield
- New 3D model: Launch Facilities
- Changes in technology tree – it’s a complete baseline tree, which enables you to research technologies in all Programs (we might develop it in the future)
- new descriptions for some technologies
- Researches have building requirements now (you need to build building of the program to research specific technologies)
- New system of presenting rocket launch
- Countdown during launch
- New water system
- New lightning system
- Fixes in language files
- Small changes in Assembly Building (for example you can choose your own name for the satellite)
- Other small fixes
It may seem like we’re working awfully lot on visual aspects of the game, but we’re actually spending most of our time on designing Mission Control. This is all connected with signing contracts and building equipment, so we cannot implement those features one by one – we have to deliver it all at once. Please, be patient :)
Some news about our progress.
Right now 3D artists are working on Launch Facility and Airfield models. Our design team is working on new contracts and missions. Programmers have been working lately on improvements for water and shadows, as well as on features inside programs’ buildings. Our initial concept for new GUI is almost finished. We are also improving News system and adding Spaceplanes technologies.
We hope to release an update and show you some of this new features in a couple of days.
Race To Mars Update #1.1
Race To Mars Update #1
We added more content in tutorial: Assembly Building, Research+Development, Administration and University. We unlocked next building, that is National Space and Air Office. Not all options are finished, but among others you can buy slot in the rocket to launch your satellite (previously that was placed at the Market, where now you can buy components). Most of all at NSaAO you can sign contracts with other companies. For now they are not very diverse, but you can earn your first money It’s important to check what kind of reliability is required for the contract, before assembling the satellite.
There is no contract for launching a satellite (just production), but you can do it on your own initiative and the game will still award you. We want to explain all that here, because unfortunately NSaAO still lacks the tutorial. If you have more questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
We also added Warehouse at Assembly building, research descriptions at R+D, first achievements, new technologies, new background music and news messages. And, of course, we fixed a lot of bugs
In the next build you can expect more technologies, contracts, missing parts of tutorial and small fixes.
The DRM free version of the build will be send out tomorrow.
Have fun and let us know how you like it!
Fixed:
English version proofread and corrected
Dollar sign placed on the correct side
New images of buildings at Administration -> Building Management
Changes in assembly of equipment
Small fixes in GUI
Fixed loans and deposits
Optimization
Assigning engineers at R+D by "press and hold" on the arrow
A few mistakes in random events
Fixed water effects
Audio system
Fixed lists at University
English version of University
Buying rocket slots will be available at NSAaO
Showing the number of turns left to finish research
Flying helicopters
Added:
Contracts at NSAaO
Warehouse
Component Production
Descriptions at R+D
Achievements
Buying components at the Market
New messages
Reliability and its development
New research
New background music
Volume control settings
More content for the tutorial