If you've been following along the past few months, you know that the road to Alpha 19 has been filled with obstacles and unexpected twists and turns.
The good news is that it looks like we've rounded the last bend, and there’s just a bit more to go. Alpha 19 is coming soon.
It's taken us longer than we had hoped, but our continuing progress on it means that it's also becoming even more awesome than we had hoped.
Our biggest new physics features are the new tidal forces, which include Roche limit and tidal heating, and the new fragmentation and particle system. These big changes brought a lot of issues with them, but they've also made simulations much more dynamic, exciting, and realistic.
And while half of the team has been busy working through these big new features, the other half has been fixing and improving other areas of Universe Sandbox ².
We have a list of bug fixes over a page long that will make their way into Alpha 19. Some of these are small edge-case bugs, and others have been longstanding issues that we've finally had the time to address, like fixing the editing and locking for mass, radius, and density.
What else is coming? - New budget system for better fragment & particle performance
- New explosion effects
- New music tracks
- Improved volatile simulation allowing the disintegration of whole planets
- Improved selection tools (selectable particles, supernovas, & more)
- New historical sims
- A few new & improved models for human-sized objects
- New supernova visuals & simulation effects
- And much more...
See our
What's New for a full list of what's already been added and fixed in the preview versions of Alpha 19.
Want to try a preview version of Alpha 19?1. Right-click on the game title in your Steam Library
2. Click on ‘Properties’
3. Select the ‘Betas’ tab
4. Set the dropdown menu to 'alpha19preview'
5. Close the Properties window
6. Steam will now update Universe Sandbox ² to the preview version
7. Once updated, launch Universe Sandbox ²