Solar Lander

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• Announcements·1 Jun 2026Official

  Devlog #009: Scripting System Progress Report

  IntroductionAfter the previous devlog, I decided to take a break from developing Solar Lander to work on my other two projects. Solar Lander's development is being juggled between those other two projects. This break was about 3 months in length. And afterwards, I got back to working on Solar Lander again.Just like before the break, I was initially stuck on a specific issue pertaining to mod validation. Actually, several issues. One of which was with edge cases surrounding Json files including other Json files. Another case was with included Json files sometimes not being read when instantiating spacecraft. A third was validating Lua scripts (more on that later). And the fourth issue being how I was going to properly sandbox the Lua environment.The Mod Loading ProcessSolar Lander will start by populating a list of every mod it can find, as well as a list of dependencies for each mod. It will then validate the dependency tree, and remove any mod from the list that has a missing or circular dependency. Then it will do a partial load of all of the mods that are left. This partial load will validate all of the mod's contents (or as much as it can). This mostly involves checking all of the references in all of the Json files. Missing or circular references will result in the mod failing validation and being removed from the list (which fails all of the mods in the dependency chain). Part of this check is making sure that the Lua scripts don't have any syntax errors.Once a mod and all of its dependencies have passed validation, the mod can then be fully loaded for use within the game.Script ValidationValidating models, audio, and Json files turned out to be trivially easy compared to validating Lua scripts. In fact, beyond simply using Lua's built-in syntax validation, validating Lua scripts to the full extent that I want is pretty much impossible to do with static analysis. At least, it goes beyond my current skillset. So what I will do instead is write some functions th...
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• Announcements·1 Jan 2026Official

  Devlog #008: Craft Modding Implemented

  I took about a one-month break from game development, then returned a couple weeks ago and was able to basically knock-out the rest of what I needed to make fully-custom spacecraft entirely possible. So here is the basic process, as it currently stands, for making a fully-custom spacecraft.ModelingI used gmax to make the 2D craft models, following the original sprites as closely as possible to create some nice 2D vector graphics to replace the sprite graphics. The 2D vector graphics are essentially flat planes layered on top of each other. Then I used max2msh to export the model to an Orbiter mesh file (making sure that "Rotate 90 degrees" was turned off).Here are a couple of screenshots of the new, 2D vector graphics.3D vector graphics are theoretically supported, but I haven't made any 3D models for the game yet.For the colliders, I created a text file using the msh file as inspiration to define the collider shapes. I currently do not have a convenient way to define the shapes in a modeling program, so they have to be defined by hand.Solar Lander will not be able to read Orbiter mesh files because it's going to have its own mesh format (and file extension). So I have to convert the msh files generated by max2msh. So I made a tool to do the conversion for me. Solar Lander Model files will support 2D and 3D meshes, as well as circle, box, and polygon colliders.The tool I made will take a msh file representing the 2D model, an optional msh file representing the 3D model, and an option text file representing the colliders. If everything is in order, it will produce a model file that can be used in the game. This tool has the limitation of not being able to make a scene graph for the model. I'm not quite sure yet how I will create a general-purpose tool that can make the a scene graph. That will have to come much later in development.For 2D geometry, the Z coordinate is used to control the layering. Positive X is right, and positive Y is up. In gmax, objects with a hig...
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• Patch Notes·25 Dec 2025Official

  v0.2.15: Lateral Translation Thruster Torque Fix

  Bug Fixes: Fixed phantom torque on lateral translation thrusters.
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• Announcements·2 Nov 2025Official

  Devlog #007: A Roadmap to Release

  After taking far longer than I had intended, I finally have a good plan for ending Early Access. And it involves having 1 or 2 more updates in Early Access. If there's just one more update left within Early Access, then it's going to be the Modding Update (v0.3.x) followed by the Release (v1.0.x). If there will be two more updates within Early Access, then the first of these updates will be the Modding Update (v0.3.x) followed by the Multiplayer Update (v0.4.x) before finally getting to the Release (v1.0.x).Modding Update (v0.3.x)Currently, I'm working on the Modding Update. This update will give an official means for users to add their own content and game modes to the game, without changing the vanilla experience. And I am very close to having a solution for Solar Lander to load mods and make them playable. I will leave the details to future devlogs though. But here's what to expect if the Modding Update is the last update before release, and what to expect if the will be one more update after the Modding Update before release.Either way, here's the bare minimum of what to expect from the Modding Update, with the rest of the features I originally planned for the Modding Update being added eventually before release.Create your own spacecraft and possibly non-spacecraft physics bodies.Write your own game modes.Publish your mod to the Steam Workshop or host it elsewhere.Make mods that reference other mods.Create control profiles that can be shared through the Steam Workshop or hosted elsewhere.Add your own music to the game (I currently have no plans on adding any default music ever).Built-in level timers for stuff like speed-running.Last Update Before ReleaseIf the Modding Update is the last update before release, then it'll have multiplayer built-in. It will also have all of the features related to modding that I want to include before release, including:Write your own flight computer programs.Write your own terrain generators.Make complex scene graphs with animati...
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• Patch Notes·19 Oct 2025Official

  Unity Security Patch

  In light of recent news of a security exploit in Unity, I have rebuilt the latest version of the Physics Update (v0.2.14) with an updated version of the Unity Editor that I'm using for this project. The demo version has also been updated. Note that I am not able to apply updates to the "physics-update-playerprefs" or "pre-physics-update" branches. If you want to play on those historical branches of Solar Lander, then you should apply the patch that Unity has provided. But "physics-update" (non-playerprefs version), "beta-build", and "default" branches have been updated with a clean build of the game.
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