Archive for February, 2022

Universe Sandbox 2021 Retrospective

Feb 17th

Posted by Brent Shapiro-Albert in Development

2 comments

With a new year comes many exciting new developments for Universe Sandbox! We’re already hard at work on some of our planned features for 2022, but we wanted to celebrate and reflect on all that we accomplished in the past year.

2

New team members

Brent was introduced in our 2021 Roadmap and was hired as our new Science Writer & Community Advocate in March 2021. Brent has a Ph.D. in Physics and has been writing about all of the awesome science and simulations that Universe Sandbox can do (including writing this post – Hi again, everybody 🙂 ).

In October 2021, Pavel was brought on as a Physics Engineer to work on all things collisions with Erika, Chris, and Anders. Pavel has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics and did his graduate research on impact simulations, using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics and N-body simulations, mostly focusing on the formation of asteroid families. He’s been hard at work improving our collision system, and we’re excited to have him on the team.

8

Significant updates to Universe Sandbox

These encompass over 56 new additions and over 219 bug fixes and improvements! We also started adding screenshots and gifs to show off the new features in each update this year.

10

New guides and fly-by simulations added to Universe Sandbox in 2021

We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about all the new features we added in the last year. We’re planning to add even more guides and spacecraft simulations this coming year.

120

Tweets over the course of 2021

All of our tweets combined had a total of 361,300 views. Follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Universe Sandbox.

648

Highest number of concurrent users in Universe Sandbox in 2021

This is the all-time high for the number of concurrent users and occurred on December 24, 2021! The second-highest number is 646 from the end of December 2020.

2,183

Code commits, or changes, made to the Universe Sandbox project in 2021

The most in one week were 102 commits made the week of April 25. This is about the same number of commits as we made in 2019.

2,246

Positive Steam reviews in 2021

Being Overwhelming Positive, recent and all time, has really overwhelmed us in the best way. Thank you all for your support and kindness over the last few years. We couldn’t do this without you.

6,082

Discord users in our server at the end of 2021

We’re already up to over 6600 since the start of 2022! Join us on Discord.

10,828

Shared items in the Universe Sandbox Steam Workshop

While slightly less than in 2019, this is truly an impressive number of creations from the community. Keep up the good work, we can’t wait to see what you all make next!

35,963

Times the Planetscaping tool was used since it was released at the end of December 2021

We’re so glad you’ve all been enjoying shaping planets to your whims.

46,929

In-game feedback reports we received this year

We appreciate you sharing your feedback with us as we work to make Universe Sandbox the best that it can be.

97,345

Messages sent on Slack (the instant messaging platform we use to communicate)

While Slack has become more popular for remote work over the last 2 years, Giant Army has been remote since its founding in 2011. We have 13 team members across 3 continents and 5 time zones, so messaging on Slack is how we get most of our work done.

158,908

Times the Galactic Empire Superlaser was used in 2021

We’re sure that none of you had malicious intent when using this laser. It was for science right? Right?

240,181

Random Rocky Planets were created in Universe Sandbox in 2021

We’re glad that you’ve enjoyed using these planets as a base for making your own habitable planets or causing epic celestial destruction.

399,650

Times our 13 blog posts from 2021 were read on Steam

The most-read post was our patch notes from Planetscaping | Update 29 with 45,933 reads.

4,878,285

Times Universe Sandbox was opened in 2021

That’s roughly once every 6.5 seconds!

6,921,033

New simulations were created in Universe Sandbox this past year

You all create so many amazing things it’s no wonder that there’s a new simulation created every 4.5 seconds.

8,990,138

Views on the top 4 most viewed YouTube videos about Universe Sandbox this year

We’re humbled that GrayStillPlays is still making these videos after all this time.

8,994,616,623

Seconds played in Universe Sandbox among all of you in 2021

That’s 285 collective years! We know you have a choice when it comes to where to spend your free time and we’d like to thank you for spending it in Universe Sandbox.

What’s Next?

There’s so much we want to do in 2022, from finishing up some features we’ve been working on for a while, like rigid body physics and improving our Planetscaping tools, to new features like constellations and multiple materials. And that’s just beginning to scratch the surface.

We’re also planning a big push on mobile development and hoping to start console development this year. Keep an eye out for our 2022 Roadmap which we hope to share soon.

And Most Importantly…

Thank you. We wouldn’t be able to do this without all of your support and help. You all do amazing things with Universe Sandbox that we never could have imagined and that makes us so excited for its future. So whether you’ve been playing Universe Sandbox for 6 minutes or 6 years, thank you. We can’t wait to see how much Universe Sandbox is in another 6 years because of all of you.

The Universe Sandbox Team
Dan, Chris, Georg, Jonathan, Rappo, Mat, Jacob, Erika, Brendan, Anders, Brent, and Pavel

Hiring a Spacecraft Physics Engineer

Feb 11th

Posted by Brent Shapiro-Albert in Jobs

1 comment

This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone who applied.

If this still sounds like an ideal job for you, please reach out. We are always looking for more help from the right candidates.

Universe Sandbox is a space and gravity simulator masquerading as a video game with over 950,000 unit sales and an overwhelmingly positive 95% rating on Steam.

Giant Army is looking for a physics developer to join our team. You will work with our physics developer, team scientists, and other developers to add the necessary physics and simulation code to bring realistic, sandbox-style spacecraft to Universe Sandbox.

This is a full-time, remote position.

Join us. We’re making something incredible that’s unlike anything else.

Your Role

  • Develop and extend the rigid body physics simulation within our existing custom physics engine
  • Build upon the rigid body simulation and innovate with spacecraft features such as:
    • Thrusters
    • Data-driven historical simulations (Cassini, Voyager, etc.)
    • Modular spacecraft parts
    • Destruction of spacecraft from heating, lasers, and collisions (both from other spacecraft and asteroids/planets/moons)
    • Integration with our planned megastructures/tethers feature
    • Soft-body deformation of objects

Qualifications

  • Strong C# & Unity experience (DOTS knowledge a bonus)
  • Experience with physics engine development
  • Familiar with version control (we use GitHub), task-management systems (we use GitHub+ZenHub), unit tests, code reviews, and so forth
  • Self-driven; comfortable working collaboratively and remotely
  • Appreciation for, and focus on, realism and detail
  • Passion for science, astronomy, spacecraft, and real-time interactive simulations
  • Love of fantastical what-if scenarios: what-if.xkcd.com (note citation #6 on 148)
  • Enjoys video games; experience with physics games a plus

Benefits

  • This is a full-time, remote position working with a 100% remote team
  • You will have a great deal of autonomy over your working hours
  • Health coverage for all American employees
  • We also offer optional 4 day work weeks (8-hour days)

Company Overview

Giant Army is a profitable company wholly owned by Universe Sandbox’s original creator. Our headquarters are in Seattle, Washington, USA, with team members across the United States, Germany, Denmark, and Australia.

Team members enjoy a flexible, collaborative environment that values work-life balance. We are independently published and release updates on our own (relaxed) schedule.

Giant Army provides generous paid time off, new hardware/software reimbursements, and other benefits.

We pursue features that get us excited about science. We strive to create an accessible experience that can’t be found anywhere else.

As a fully remote team since 2011, we rely on Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets, Meet), Slack, Groove, GitHub, ZenHub, Unity, and WordPress.

We believe science and video games are for everyone, regardless of identity, and we’re committed to making an inclusive workplace. We encourage anyone who shares our passion for space to apply.

Product Overview

Universe Sandbox is a physics-based space simulator that allows you to create, destroy, and interact on an unimaginable scale. Experiment with gravity, climate, and collisions to reveal the beauty of our universe and the fragility of our planet.

It’s more than a game; it’s a way of experiencing and learning about reality in a way that’s never been done before.

Universe Sandbox is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and VR with mobile in development and future platforms planned. We’ve sold over 950,000 copies and have an “Overwhelming Positive” rating on Steam with 95% positive user reviews.

If we don’t have an active job opening that fits your skill set, but working on Universe Sandbox is your dream job, send us an email telling us why and we’ll at least send you back a reply.

How to Apply

This position has been filled. Thank you to everyone who applied.

If this still sounds like an ideal job for you, please reach out. We are always looking for more help from the right candidates.