Roadmap to November

Hello Nomads,

We took our time, didn't we? The decision-making to devise a new road-map took significantly longer than we had anticipated. Work on 7.1 update last week, feedback to the changes made in 0.7 and careful weighing of all outcomes were among the main reasons that caused the delay.

There's going to be a lot of text and very little art so bear with us. We're only about to create all of the following features, and show it to you as they come to life.

Why is it so important to hit the mix of upcoming features right

Planet Nomads has been out for only three months and its glorious community has grown with new blood. Passionate and boiling, eager to see what comes next. We enjoy interacting with you, Nomads, very much. And we've heard what you were saying. At the same time, we need more people to start exploring PLanet Nomads and find the magic that got you hooked in the first place. How to best keep our veteran Nomads who've been to places and know things excited? And how to excite people who enter the world for the first time?

We need both - a vibrant community so that we can feel feel the impact of the changes we make and new players to keep Planet Nomads going forward. It felt like two different worlds, but then we realized that all Nomads share the same planet. Making it more interesting for everyone is the right thing to do. How do we achieve that?

After thinking about it for a (long) while we realized that you, Nomads, actually want the same things as anyone else - to have more to do and more to discover. The only difference that we were constantly struggling with was finding the right balance in survival. And then it dawned on us that we can we can never achieve this with one setting for all.

Customize Your Planet and Game

We've had planet customization in mind since we developed Sandy, the procedural planet creator engine. It was so simple to change everything that we knew we wanted to give this power to you.

Now we know we can put even more power to you and let you customize difficulty as well. Here's a list of things that you'll be able to change:

• Planet size (up to 64 km in diameter)
• Water height and therefore the amount of water bodies
• Mountainousness - probably not a word, but you get the idea
• Day and night length
• Frequency of rain and snow
• Aggression of animals
• Density of animal nests on the planet
• Attribute degeneration speed
• Damage tresholds for various effects

Sensible Tech Tree

People often don't want to accept our interim solution of having to build blocks to open other blocks, because it makes no sense. They are right. The placeholder solution will be replaced by a more sensible one. And also more demanding one. New building blocks will unlock as you find their technical specifications on the planet - in the wrecks we introduced in 0.7.

Rework of Electricity

It is time for solar panels, batteries with proper behavior and generator-fuel consumption based on its load and output. And switch boards.

Bigger, More Powerful Wheels and Suspensions

This has also been long time planned. For new vehicle designs and for mobile bases behemoths.

Central Control of Active Blocks on a Single Grid

We know right? This will make so much easier and cooler. Being able to set your vehicle settings from the safety of your cockpit? And your base from a terminal. This should be good.

Update to Unity 2017 and a Third Big Round of Optimization

It's been long time coming and though it takes a lot of time to update Planet Nomads to a newer version of Unity, as we have heavily customized the engine, it will be worth it. There are new camera effects, SLI mode  there's the possibility of better performance with the use of Vulcan renderer and most of all a more powerful tools to diagnose which parts of the game are eating how much of the CPU and GPU performance, enabling us to do another in-depth round of optimization to get those FPS back up there.

Hovercrafts and Water Floaters (Buoyancy Mecanics)*

This one comes with an *, meaning it might and might not happen, because we're not sure if Pavel can create these in time. Electricity changes, bigger wheel and suspension are his priority now and completely changing the way the energy distribution and feed system works is no small task.

Introduction, Quests & Achievements

Going through the negative reviews for Planet Nomads which have very little time played, we feel we need to make the onboarding process a bit simpler, sexier and most of all better explain all the many game mechanics without resorting to a boring tutorial - mainly through making the game communicate with you the moment something happens (instead of getting bad conditions from staying in a slightly toxic rain - because while realistic, how many of you have thought "Aha! It must be from the rain." ?

Quests and Achievements will better illustrate what's possible in the game, and how to better survive in the world and better enjoy your stay. Which brings us to...

Monuments

Ah, those mysterious monuments... what are these all about? You'll see, Nomads, you'll see.

Planet Nomads Is Not Going to Be a Multiplayer Sandbox Game

It's about time we stopped contemplating and constantly discussing whether or not to start adding multiplayer. A decision had to be made and has been made. Planet Nomads is not going to have multiplayer or CO-OP game modes. Our focus is going to be 100% dedicated to making an immersive singleplayer sandbox game that's both giving a huge amount of creative freedom and plenty of things to explore and discover, as well as a sense of direction towards a higher goal. We apologize to our Kickstarter backers and preorder Nomads who backed Planet Nomads purely for the multiplayer aspect of it. Here's a more detailed explanation for our decision

0.7.2 Out Now

At the same time, we're happy to have a very nice update ready for you today, introducing a symmetrical cockpit and torque settings to the wheels among other things.

We'll update Trello tomorrow so that you can watch the progress of the above mentioned features.