Little things like this add up to a huge improvement in the overall visual feel. Wednesday I finally got real-time reflections working on the astronaut's helmet: I've been fixing bugs, of course, but also putting as many little finishing touches into the game as possible without getting bogged down in the details. I've received a lot of good feedback from testers and press. Working on getting alpha cleaned up and ready for Steam Early Access (hoping to have that up in a couple weeks), and at the same time moving ahead with beta. In any case, things are back in full swing. Guess with the holidays and travel that was to be expected. I'm amazed at what we've been able to accomplish together! Thank you for sticking with me, sending the kind words about the game, and for all your patience when I'm not always able to respond quickly to your emails. There will be even bigger things to come in 2015 (the film project isn't dead, for one thing). We're still a very small team here, but I hope you see we're working hard to keep improving the game. The best part? I'm happy to let you know that the Premier Edition will be a free upgrade to anyone who currently owns the game! And if you don't already own a copy, it's on sale right now (for a few more days) at 50% off. There will also be very significant performance improvements which should make the game more playable on laptops and slower desktops. This was a serious undertaking, but the benefit is that the update coming really is a major new release.
Part of that Xbox One work has meant moving the game to a newer version of the Unity game engine (the original version was built in Unity 3).
I know PC users have been waiting for an update for a while now, but the last few months we've had to concentrate on the Xbox build. This new version will bring the improvements and additions from the Xbox version to the PC and Mac. In the spirit of giving, I'm happy to announce we are also planning to release the Lifeless Planet Premier Edition for PC and Mac, shortly after the Xbox One release. Working alone anymore! What a concept, right? Jazon Burnell is taking the lion's share of the effort.
Project has been a serious undertaking, but the fantastically talented There's still some optimization work toĭo, but otherwise I think we have all the major issues dealt with. We're targeting February for the Xbox One release, but that may slip to March.