Blog

Follow this space for regular updates and news from our team.

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Conserving Energy - Development Log #423

Michi is knee-deep in the process of preparing the admin centers to host the new government functionality. Instead of posting a work-in-progress devlog he writes about a curious bug, where a single misplaced parenthesis caused a lot of wasted CPU cycles.
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Local Pandemics - Development Log #418

Viruses are spreading through various of the simulogics offices: Michi is out this week and Martin got hit last week. Nevertheless, work didn't grind to a standstill. An advantage of a distributed team?
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Merch Matters - Development Log #359

Last week, we finally had all the bits and pieces in place to ship the first batch of "goodie bags", the physical perk that's part of any supporter pack at Star-level or above.
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simulogics Conference 2022 - Development Log #332

The simulogics team is back from Seeheim, where the annual conference was held this year! Much was discussed such as mid-term priorities that will be shared at a later date. The event was also a social affair and a lot of fun was had at the Lufthansa Conference Hotel. It was great to see everyone in...
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Harking Back - Development Log #314

Since half of the team was working on a big announcement for AirlineSim last week, we wanted to let our PrUn players know that the AirlineSim Technology Demonstrator was unveiled and you can watch the explanation video here!
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Identify the Entity - Development Log #303

We are hiring! We are looking for a Community Manager for AirlineSim, simulogics' other expert game. Help us spread the word among your friends and family that might be interested.
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Scratching the Surface - Development Log #294

In this week's devlog Michi shares his progress and reasoning on re-implementing the planetary surface maps, Fabian has exciting news to share and Martin is working on the mobile UI.
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Rings or Bars - Development Log #293

Michi has reached a critical decision while working on the map prototype and is calling on you for help. Congratulations to Kiruna, formally XH-594b!
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Depot Demolition - Development Log #290

Fabian discusses new base management options including a complete demolition of your base, and Michi shares how we will all be coming together under a new Discord server for certain topics.
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Introducing, Hermes - Development Log #285

KI-448 has been officially named "Hermes"! Fabian talks more about a local government's role in infrastructure projects and Michi explains how data is managed in Prosperous Universe.
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Hints and Cookies - Development Log #280

Nick is still on vacation, and I hope he will be back soon, because I am pretty bad at writing these blog post summaries and coming up with smart names for the posts :D. Anyways, this time we talk about a hint system for new players and the surprisingly tricky implementation of cookie banners.
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Helpful Knowledge - Development Log #279

In this week's devlog Fabian talks about upcoming changes in infrastructure, Michi shares insight about the development of the UI tutorial and Martin grants a glimpse in the direction of the mobile version of Prosperous Universe.
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Slow Burn - Development Log #278

The first maintenance release since Early Access has been released, we had a fun Post-EA live stream and Nick started his well deserved vacation.
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Scheming and Streaming - Development Log #277

This past week was a big event for the devs who met for the first time in almost a year to discuss the future of Prosperous Universe! Mark your calendars for March 24 18:30 UTC for a Live Stream on YouTube!
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The Universe Expands - Development Log #269

The expansion of the universe is almost upon us: the formation of the fourth faction, the emergence trace resource deposits, the migration of commodity exchanges, and more ...
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2021 Has Begun - Development Log #266

Happy New Year from the PrUn team! 2021 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for Prosperous Universe and we can't wait to share it with all of you.
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Coming to You LIVE - Development Log #258

LIVE STREAM on Thursday at 16:00 UTC, details below! Meanwhile, the team plugs away on UI updates and ship building blueprints that bring us ever closer to Ignition.
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Marketing Madness - Development Log #256

With Martin and Fabian out on vacation and Michi and Manoj hard at work on previously mentioned projects, Nick is left as the sole contributor for this week's devlog.
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Performing Maintenance - Development Log #253

The work on the maintenance patch 08 has come to an end and the update has been released. Fabian provides some insights into the upcoming release and Manoj continues to work on the mobile interface design.
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Push to Repair - Development Log #252

The next maintenance release is underway, details on how ship building blueprints will translate into a ship building project, and Asteroid Day T-shirts are finally on the way. Plus, your repair button dreams have come true!
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Visions of Vessels - Development Log #249

In this week's devlog: Fabian gets spaceship fever, Nick takes up YouTube and the field of economics, Manoj hops between design projects, and Martin puts out server fires.
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Resistance is Futile - Development Log #247

Michi shares what it is like for governors to control the upkeep of planetary projects, Fabian circles back to onboarding new players as marketing gears up on Facebook and YouTube. Plus Martin is back in action!
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Warp Drive Time - Development Log #244

With Martin on vacation, the rest of the team continues to work towards finalizing Populous, integrating FTL measures into ship building, and forming a valid ad strategy for Facebook.
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Incoming Asteroid Day Giveaway - Development Log #241

Set your reminders now: Asteroid Day 2020 is tomorrow. Keep your eyes out for our post tomorrow for your chance to win a PrUn T-Shirt (there will be multiple winners)! Plus Michi details how you will know how much the governor has contributed to those all too important Population Projects and Fabian...
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Enlisting Labor – Development Log #239

This week Michi teaches us how workers are distributed among the bases and how worker reserve pools will function. Nick gears up for Asteroid Day which comes at the end of the month!
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The Personnel Touch – Development Log #238

Everyone's happy on their first day, but they might not stay that way! Fabian explains how the workforce simulation will take it easy in the beginning while you spruce up your infrastructure.
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Populous: Full Steam Ahead – Development Log #237

With the release of Populous inching ever closer, Michi details how population and workforce will be integrated while Fabian explains the effects of planetary projects on your populous. Only one more month until our new team member arrives!
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Problem Solving – Development Log #236

Due to the German holiday this past week, our discussion is a bit shorter than usual. Nevertheless, Michi has given us some great insight concerning the performance issues that were fixed and Nick delves into player psychology and more content creation.
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Locked Storage – Development Log #224

In today's development log, you can catch a glimpse at what happens when the rental fees for your storage unit are late. Also, simulogics is still looking for a UI/UX designer and a frontend web developer!
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Revamping Inventories – Development Log #222

This week, the team has been integrating the new warehouses into the planetary inventory system, which required a bigger rework than one might think. Meanwhile, the big release after Presence is already taking shape.
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Release on the horizon – Development Log #219

We're in between releases. The post-PC Gamer rush has ebbed away a bit and we're slowly setting our sights on the next named release. But before that happens, Michi is shaping the upcoming maintenance patch into a big bundle of QoL improvements and bugfixes while Fabian continues to wrap his head ar...
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Mental Image – Development Log #218

This week, the team has worked on various tasks such as managing job applications, making a mental image of the game's systems, and preparing an upcoming maintenance patch.
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Making Space – Development Log #217

This week was a very productive one, starting with a 3-day bootcamp at simulogics HQ and ending with some possible solutions to the current overflowing hub worlds.
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State of the Universe – Development Log #215

Another year has passed. With the team on holidays and the development efforts of the past week focusing primarily on the build-up of personal fat reserves, I'm taking the opportunity to take a brief look at 2019 and 2020. A "State of the Universe", so-to-speak.
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Good news everyone – Development Log #214

The end of the year brings some long awaited good news: our funding application has been accepted! With the holidays coming up next week this has been the last proper work week in December. Martin has managed to finish the analytics project just before he went on vacation and Michi tried get as many...
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Parting Ways – Development Log #210

This week, Julian has sadly announced that he will be leaving the company within the next few months. But the show must go on: Martin has been checking off administrative tasks left and right and integrated some basic analytics. Michi meanwhile has been chipping away at the upcoming governor feature...
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Maintenance – Development Log #209

This week we took a break from the development of the Expanse Release and worked on a maintenance release instead. Besides some long awaited bugfixes we changed how resource extractors work and simplified the user interface for the foreign exchange.
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Governance – Development Log #208

This week we finally received some news concerning our grant application and had to meet a tight deadline for the corresponding paper work. Meanwhile the work on the Expanse release continues.
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Affinity and Defence – Development Log #206

Julian is fighting a boss-level viral infection this week, so the duty of writing the devlog blurb has fallen to me. Michi's work on the Administration Center steadily continues and I myself have finally gotten around to some long overdue work on our analytics system.
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Looming Election Battle – Development Log #204

This week, we unveil a first look at the administration center and explain possible usage ideas for production fees. Plus, it's now easier than ever for content creators to get a PRO key and play the game on their channels.
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Behind the Curtain – Development Log #203

Since the F2P launch, new players have been coming in every day, but some of them don't stay. This week, we started working on finding out why that is and what we can do to better help newbies set up their companies and stick around. Plus, the upcoming governor system is slowly taking shape.
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Post-Prelude – Development Log #202

Friday's Prelude update has introduced a couple of new features, most of them on purpose. The big news of this week: We're bringing on a new game designer!
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Prelude – Development Log #201

After a great livestream on Monday, the team jumped right back in to prepare next week's update dubbed "Prelude", which introduces production fees and building degradation.
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Development Log #200

This issue of our development log doesn't require a title: The number is enough to convey what it will be about. Julian is still on vacation today, but Michi and I take a moment to look back on 200 weeks of development.
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The Gates Have Opened – Development Log #198

With a big release and an even bigger influx of new players, this week has been a massive milestone in Prosperous Universe's history. The team has been very busy beating the drum, making new FAQ, fixing bugs, and creating some exclusive behind the scenes content.
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Thoughts on Free-to-Play – Development Log #197

This week's issue of our development log will be slightly different from our usual ones. Obviously, everyone on the team has been super busy with the ramp-up to our free-to-play release on Friday. If you missed it, here's our release trailer once more: But instead of talking about all the tasks i...
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Landing Gear Deployed – Development Log #196

Today, we not only unveil the date and release notes of the upcoming Free to Play update, but we already take a peek at what's next content-wise: a number of big updates dubbed 'Expanse'!
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Recruitment – Development Log #194

This week has been mostly about one big thing: simulogics is hiring! If you are an experienced Game Systems Designer or Web Frontend Developer, you might want to check out our open positions.
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Communication Filter – Development Log #192

It seems this is a solo devlog this week! With the upcoming free-to-play release drawing closer I want to show you some of the features that have not been implemented so far. The free-to-play release is a rather technical release, so don't expect not much new game play features, but still, there are...
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Asteroid Day 2019 – Development Log #189

It's been a wild week. After releasing the Locality update on Thursday, the simulogics team spent the weekend at a hotel making plans for the next few months. And of course, it's Asteroid Day today, which means there is a new artwork in town!
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Locality Update! – Development Log #188

Next week will be big for Prosperous Universe and its players: Locality, the biggest update since launch, will go live on Thursday! Plus, both Asteroid Day and the annual team meeting will take place next weekend.
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Trust Me – Development Log #186

With parts of the team gone, it's been a rather slow week at simulogics HQ. Nonetheless, Martin managed to get back to one of the most important changes coming this month: Player Ratings!
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Cash Infusion – Development Log #185

With Michi on parental leave, Martin and Julian are keeping the ball rolling this week by applying for the new German games funding program. Everybody start crossing their fingers for good tidings later this year!
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What's in a Name? – Development Log #184

The Locality update has been pushed back a little in favor of several smaller features, fixes and balancing improvements. This week, the team continued down this path, working on the planet naming mechanic and rolling out several more bugfixes.
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Non-Routine Maintenance – Development Log #183

Many little details affect the overall quality of any game. That is why this week, we've shifted our attention to numerous smaller improvements we want to get out there before the upcoming big update.
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To New Frontiers – Development Log #182

Today, we'd like to tell you more about the Locality update and then take you beyond, both in time and space, to the following one, which will attempt to encourage setting up new colonies in yet untouched systems.
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Selling Ads – Development Log #181

This week, we're giving some insights into the differences between commodity exchange contracts and local market contracts, and the new cases the latter bring about.
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Under the Radar – Development Log #180

In this special edition of our weekly devlog, we'd like to take a moment and ponder the question of how to deal with cheating in Prosperous Universe. Let us know your thoughts!
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Awarding contracts – Development Log #179

It is one of these rare times where we all took some time off to visit friends and family over the extended weekend. Nonetheless we ran a small server update this week and Michi can show some work in progress with the local market feature.
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Towards Convergence – Development Log #178

Michi made a lot of progress on the upcoming Local Markets feature which in turn relies heavily on the Player Ratings feature. Martin was supposed to work on the latter but got distracted by improving the financial charts in the game. So we have to wait a little bit longer until the two branches con...
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Heads up – Development Log #177

At the beginning of this week, Julian finally released the Honest Trailer to the world. In the meantime, Martin has finished an important back-end adjustment, and Michi is almost ready to launch the demolition refunds program.
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Productive Destruction – Development Log #176

Hardly any feature has been requested more frequently than getting back resources for demolishing buildings, except maybe a second confirmation button for certain actions. Good news: Both are coming very soon!
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Buy Local – Development Log #175

In today's devlog, we're sharing numerous details on the upcoming local markets and the kinds of ads players will be able to post on them.
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The Numbers Game – Development Log #174

In today's devlog, you can read up on what's happened in one of the most eventful weeks Prosperous Universe has ever had and, for the first time ever, take an extended look at some of our back-end statistics!
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Hello World! – Development Log #173

An unusual week warrants an unusual devlog: If you follow this blog, our forums or any of our social media channels, it was hard for you to miss the news about the reset of Alpha 6 and the consequent launch of Alpha 7. And that's essentially what dominated the whole team's work schedule for the week...
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Space Revelations – Development Log #171

The main event of this week has clearly been the live stream on Tuesday. A whole lot of changes and updates were announced, which will take effect after the game world reset in March.
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Spring break – Development Log #170

It's Martin speaking. Spring hit Germany this week-end! Out of the blue (or rather, the grey), we have clear skies, sunny weather and crowds of people flooding parks and promenades. Those crowds include Mjeno, which is why I have the honor of writing the intro to this week's devlog!
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Refilling the tanks – Development Log #169

While Martin has been researching and implementing measures for player retention, Julian has been getting ready to draw some new attention to the game when its first reset goes down.
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Sneak a Peek – Development Log #167

An improved company set-up process and restrictions to company liquidations have been among the most requested updates to the game. Guess what we've been working on this week!
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Jump Start – Development Log #166

This week, Michi has added some great improvements to the company set-up process and Julian has worked out the new community guidelines. Martin meanwhile has temporarily turned his attention entirely to AirlineSim.
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Back on Deck – Development Log #165

With Michi back from parental leave, some new fixes are about to hit the live version and the account management system. The week has also been full of planning and plotting, as the team is slowly designing the first big balancing and feature update.
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The First Big Bang – Development Log #162

As the first small patches are being rolled out, some underlying issues have surfaced. Nonetheless, the first few hundred players seem to be enjoying themselves, as this week has been very lively both in and around the game!
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First Access this Thursday! – Development Log #160

The time has come: First Access will launch on December 13th! It will be the day that Prosperous Universe becomes acessible to everybody. The current version was already opened to testers of previous alphas on Thursday, who are busy laying the economical groundworks for the imminent launch.
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Landing Maneuvers – Development Log #159

Naturally, this log is mostly about the final preparations for our upcoming First Access release. But there is great news that we are very happy to share first: Michi's second child was born this week! This brings the amount of children born to team members during the development of Prosperous Unive...
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Assembly Line – Development Log #158

After months of working towards the next release on different fronts, the team is finally piecing it all together: game design, technical implementation, distribution methods, learning resources etc. So far, it all seems to fall into place nicely.
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Three years of development! – Development Log #156

Hey everyone, this week's log will be slightly different from our usual ones. If you're the type of person who likes a game like Prosperous Universe, you're most likely good with numbers. And in that case you'll have noticed that this is development log number "3 \* 52". Due to this significant if a...
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Decisions, decisions – Development Log #155

It's been a big week at simulogics HQ. There is now a concrete plan for the next couple of months of Prosperous Universe in terms of its different phases, tests, features, and even its monetization model. First Access starts in about a month. Find out below what that means and what comes next!
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The Tree Has Grown – Development Log #154

We've been talking about the overhaul of the material tree for quite some time now. This week, the results are in: It's now three times the size it used to be! In other news, the relocation of simulogics HQ has concluded and the teaser trailer is almost ready.
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Corporate projects – Development Log #153

While Martin is still wrapped up in moving to another city, Michi has been making major progress on the "corporate projects" feature, and Julian wrapped up two bigger tasks.
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Corporate headquarters – Development Log #152

With Martin travelling on business and preparing for the move of the simulogics HQ, the field was once again left mostly to Michi and Julian this week. Michi continued fleshing out the Corporations feature by starting to work on corporation headquarters while Julian took a deep-dive into the world o...
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Tackling the backlog – Development Log #151

Things have picked up the pace this week! Julian got his hands on a new build of the game, which he promptly showed to the public over the weekend. Martin has been involved with the material tree, and Michi is finally getting around to the long list of feature requests that have been piling up since...
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Phase 2 started! – Development Log #150

Unbelievable: we are writing devlog #150! That's quite a figure and an important milestone! Since Martin is currently enjoying his vacation and I think the honours are all his to write the 3-year-in-development celebratory speech we are going to postpone that until october when it's three full years...
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Prosperous Universe wiki! – Development Log #149

With Julian wrapping up his freelance audio project and Martin in the process of moving, it was Michi's turn to power through this week by himself, laying the foundation of the Prosperous Universe wiki.
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A CoGC in the Machine – Development Log #148

While Michi has been weaving the effects of the Chamber of Global Commerce into existing features, Martin is still finishing up the account management system, and Julian is working to increase the game's visibility on social media.
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Last man standing – Development Log #147

Things have been quiet this week, with both Michi and Julian taking some time off. At least Martin soldiered on, getting the new account management system ready for the next, (hopefully) massive test run.
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In da hub – Development Log #146

This week, we announced a new freelance team member: Alexander Zacherl is assisting us as a game designer! Michi took some well-deserved time off, Martin has been preparing the "hub" and Julian has been handling press contacts and legalese.
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Keys to success – Development Log #145

Thanks to devcom and gamescom, the game has seen record numbers in traffic and newsletter sign-ups. In the meantime, Michi's Chamber of Global Commerce is nearing completion, and Martin is setting up everything needed for key-based access to the next test. Alpha #6 is coming...
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Economic stimuli – Development Log #144

The new Prosperous Universe homepage is finally live! Michi gives a deeper insight into the Chamber of Global Commerce, Martin continues our "new office" mini series, and Julian is in Cologne for devcom and gamescom.
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Planetary projects – Development Log #143

In this week's news, our redesigned studio website is now live and Corporations are getting their own chat rooms as well as their first large-scale cooperative feature: planetary projects!
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You are corporately invited – Development Log #142

Corporation invitiations are now done, providing the fundamentals of all Corporation features to come. Michi pushed forward both the Chamber of Global Commerce and the visualization tool from last week. Julian moved into a new office, where he got busy adding Prosperous Universe to games lists throu...
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Material madness – Development Log #141

While Julian is about to set set course towards a full-blown marketing offensive, Martin is getting Corporations ready and Michi is working on the mother of all material trees.
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Scan incoming – Development Log #139

This week, Michi has been implementing the new ship information feature, Julian is redesigning the company website, and Martin has completed all that is needed for the formation of Corporations.
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Neighborly business – Development Log #137

During Martin's last week of parental leave, Michi diversified the possibilities for player interactions, Julian engaged with the community via Skype and in person, and Mac made a new piece of concept art in honor of Asteroid Day 2018.
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Enhanced cartography – Development Log #136

Martin is taking some time off to adjust to the new life situation, Julian is getting the overhauled texts and homepages ready, and Michi's focus has shifted from space stations to orbiting space ships and improved maps.
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Baby steps – Development Log #135

While Julian is getting the PR material ready for the next, bigger alpha test, Michi is working hard on an ever more versatile flight model. Today's biggest news, even though not game-related, comes from Martin, who has become a father on Thursday!
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Space stations – Development Log #134

This week, Michi can finally go into detail about an exciting new and important feature: space stations! Meanwhile, Martin got busy with the backend for upcoming tests and Julian dove into the world of clans and guilds.
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Teaser week – Development Log #133

With a lot going on outside of game development, this week was mostly about planning some upcoming milestones. Here's a couple teasers of what's to come!
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Admin tools to the rescue – Development Log #132

The first admin tools have been included into the ongoing test, marking the biggest update to the current alpha yet. In the meantime, a storm is brewing at the publicity front and Michi is stretching his legs in the countryside.
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Distress beacon detected! – Development Log #131

Michi can finally show the fruit of his labor on the advanced Flight Control, Martin has been busy creating tools for helping stranded players, and Julian has started to stalk a new kind of prey: influencers!
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Messages in Flight – Development Log #130

Excuse the bad play on words in the title, but our communications guy took a few days off this week, so that's gotta do! While Michi wrapped up one flight-related topic and got started on the next one, Martin continued his merry preparations for the upcoming GDPR.
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Boarding procedures – Development Log #127

After the flight model, the material tree is in for a material overhaul (haha), and so is the game's entire look. Besides preparing all this, the team has been getting ready to travel north.
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Extended space flight – Development Log #126

This week, you can catch a first glance at what exactly the Corporations will be. In similarly exciting news, Michi has been fleshing out the flight system, and Julian is getting everything ready for our first exhibition of 2018!
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Slow burn – Development Log #125

With Easter getting in the way of work, it's been a short week for the team. Martin spent his time working for AirlineSim, so he'll be taking a timeout from devlogging just this week. Here's what Michi and Julian have been up to:
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Corporate design – Development Log #124

With Michi still locked in the engine room, Julian was able to confirm some exhibition events, and Martin finally started working on a whole new feature, arguably the single most important addition to the core gameplay: Corporations.
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Team meeting time! – Development Log #123

In a rare case of sociability, the simulogics team left their respective caves to get together IRL this weekend. Michi has an upcoming overhaul of the location system to report, while Martin is about to roll out the customizable notification feature to the alpha test. Julian meanwhile has found his ...
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Alpha #5 now live! – Development Log #121

On Wednesday, we finally launched our fifth Alpha test. It's going to run for at least four weeks and you can still join by signing up in this forum thread. Julian crunched away to get the tutorials ready before launch, and Martin and Michi met in person to discuss the "post-reset" era.
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Factions and fictions – Development Log #120

The next alpha test is scheduled to start next week and we can't wait to see how it goes. It will feature tons of improvements, re-balancing and new features we've been working on for months. Plus, we've been cooking up an extensive tutorial series to help new players get into the game and bring our...
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March test preparations – Development Log #119

This week, Michi got into the nuts and bolts of the Expert system while Martin was busy preventing us from breaking European law. Julian has finished up last week's list and started preparing learning resources for the next play test, which is just around the corner.
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Dev'ing at the speed of light – development log #117

While Michi and Martin (!) continued working on the technical side of things, Julian has mainly been writing down ideas and planning tasks for the coming months. Martin spent most of his time implementing alerts, i.e. notifications a player receives outside the game when something noteworthy happene...
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New Team Member! – Development Log #116

This week, we've welcomed a new member to our team: Julian will be in charge of our PR and Community Management. The three of us spent two days planning and plotting at our headquarters, which was exhausting but also fun and productive. This week, Julian will be hogging the spotlight, but updates fr...
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Development Log Week 115

This week has all been about solving technical issues. Martin tried to persuade our age-old email server to continue sending emails after it stopped suddenly and without prior notice. Michi is still working on the space flight feature and moved code to the server to prevent issues in the future.
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Development Log Week 114

While Martin's current workload doesn't allow for much PU development, Michi keeps on improving the flight model of spaceships in the game - despite some roadblocks!
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Development Log Week 113

The year is still young, but we're almost back to 100% capacity: While Martin struggled with his post-vacation backlog of admin tasks, Michi was busy upgrading our faster-than-light flight model.
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Development Log Week 112

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you had relaxing Holidays and start with some fresh energy into the new year! We certainly did and do :) In this week's devlog Martin talks about the start of our new payment system and Michi tries to catch up with the events on the test server.
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Development Log Week 111

So that’s that: 2017 is a wrap! We hope you had fun holidays with family and friends and are ready for the new year with all that it may bring. Michi and myself took some time off as well, so naturally not much happened that would be worth writing about in this nicely numbered devlog 111. Hence, it’...
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Development Log Week 110

Christmas is around the corner. But before we took some time off to celebrate with friends and family, there were final tasks to complete, including the launch of alpha test round #4.
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Development Log Week 109

First of all, in case you missed it: We are looking to expand out team with a PR & Community manager. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in or you know of someone who could be, check out the ad! With that out of the way, back to the development log!
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Development Log Week 108

If we had to name one defining thing that makes Prosperous Universe what it is, the thing that determines game feel, pacing and a player's progression in the game world, we'd have to say this was the Material Tree. And with most core features of the Early Access release candidate being in the game, ...
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Development Log Week 107

Just like that it's December and the new year is approaching quickly. While Michi continues adding depth to the base building feature, Martin is hard at work to make sure our new payment systems are ready before January.
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Development Log Week 106

Our third alpha test has started and is focusing on space flight and trading between two colonies. Meanwhile Martin has started implementing the new payment system, a critical subsystem for the early access milestone.
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Development Log Week 105

While Michi is knee-deep in preparations for the next round of closed alpha tests, Martin got started on the rather boring topic of real-world payment systems needed for a commercial launch of the game.
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Development Log Week 104

We continue to follow our testing schedule and just like that, our second closed alpha test has already officially passed. Meanwhile, we are at work implementing feedback and preparing for the next round of testing while also ramping up for the actual release of the game.
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Development Log Week 103

The whole team has been on vacation for the better part of the week, so from a development perspective it was a slow week. Nonetheless the second alpha test is in full swing and runs smoothly.
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Development Log Week 102

This week, among many other things, Martin added starting profiles and Michi reduced the amount of materials that can be bought from NPCs. The reason: We want to make the second round of our closed alpha test way slower than the previous one, forcing players to trade! As always, find all the details...
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Development Log Week 101

Reflecting on the outcome of the first alpha test we decided to squeeze in some changes in our (already pretty full) schedule before going on as planned. The changes mostly concern how fast and big bases can be built.
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Development Log Week 100

100! It's hard to believe, but Michi and I have been working on this project for about 100 weeks now and we've written a development log in each one of them. I'm not sure which one of the two is the bigger achievement, but we're proud either way. The timing couldn't be any better for such a mileston...
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Development Log Week 99

What a week! For the first time in almost two years of development, other people than ourselves started playing Prosperous Universe! We were prepared so see everything blow up in a spectacular ball of fire, but to our surprise, we saw relatively few technical issues. That said, this is our very firs...
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Development Log Week 98

There's excitement in the air: After almost two years of development, the first closed alpha tests are about to commence. Consequently, a lot of our time this week was spent on preparing said tests and we can't wait to finally open the gates to Prosperous Universe!
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Development Log Week 97

With the closed alpha tests coming closer every day, our work revolves more and more around getting the game ready for its first contact with actual players and ramping up our marketing and communication efforts. Oh, and we also have our first development video ready for your enjoyment!
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Development Log Week 96

This week Martin enjoyed the second half of his vacation and managed to stay away from work rather well. In the meantime I resumed my work on the material editor.
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Development Log Week 95

This was a very quiet week. Literally. Both Michi and myself were on vacation this week so there isn't too much progress to report on. But I couldn't help but experiment with something that has been bothering me for a while now: Tile contexts!
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Development Log Week 94

Michi is on vacation throughout week 94 and 95, so it's Martin speaking! This week, I finally completed the chat feature's improved integration into the tiling UI. It took quite a bit longer than originally planned, but I think it turned out quite nicely. Because of this, I'll just plaster this week...
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Development Log Week 93

Before leaving for two well-earned weeks of vacation, Michi continued getting our data pipeline into shape. Meanwhile, Martin worked away on the revamp of the chat feature.
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Development Log Week 92

Work on the game continues more or less as usual and we're making steady progress on the way to first limited Alpha tests. But a lot of tasks remain to be finished until then, both in terms of development and on the business-side of things.
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Development Log Week 91

These week, Michi gives you a comprehensive tour of our largest custom development tool: The World & Material Editor. Meanwhile, Martin reports about the true problems in implementing transponder codes for the ships in PU.
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Development Log Week 88

A lost week comes to an end: I was confined to bed on doctor's orders and therefore couldn't get any work done on PU or anything else. Hence, this development log will be very different from our usual ones.
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Development Log Week 87

While there are plenty of bigger features still on our list to be finished before a first release, this week was all about small-scale improvements and work on infrastructure.
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Development Log Week 85

Another week comes to an end. This one was clearly dominated by Asteroid Day for which our very own Mac once again prepared a great asteroid-themed artwork. You can find it on our blog or on the forums in case you missed it. But that's not all that happened this week!
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Development Log Week 83

This is going to be a short one: As discussed last time, I'm working on an editor for our material tree right now. Just like the problem it is intended to solve, the tool itself is rather complex and consequently will take a while to finish.
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Development Log Week 82

While I spent a big part of the week traveling and in meetings concerning an unrelated project, I still got around to deal with tools and tooling for Prosperous Universe.
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Development Log Week 81

We did it! It only took us 81 weeks but we have finally managed to complete our internal Alpha milestone. With the final bits of the Foreign Exchange feature falling into place this week, the game is now feature-complete in the sense that every core gameplay feature that we want to be in the first r...
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Development Log Week 80

With Thursday being a public holiday in Germany, I have been away on a micro-vacation, traveling all the way from the South of the country into the North and back again. Nevertheless, a few small things went on around Prosperous Universe despite the short week!
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Development Log Week 79

There is this weird effect that work progresses considerably faster when a deadline is looming on the horizon. As was the case this week with our demo at the Games/Bavaria Vernissage.
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Development Log Week 78

There are weeks when all the things happen simultaneously and we make good progress and there are weeks when not much happens. This week is one of the not-so-much-progress ones, but Martin still managed to work on the foreign exchange transactions.
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Development Log Week 77

Yes, there are development news this week, but they all somewhat pale into insignificance beside the events happening in one of our team member's private life!
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Development Log Week 76

Once again, Michi spent a week at simulogics HQ so we were able to work in the same place. As you might have guessed, we were mostly busy with getting our new website out of the door, but we also addressed some other issues, including the current elephant in the room: How to design the material tree...
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Development Log Week 75

A picture says more than a thousand words, so without much ado, enjoy our development log number 75, including a first (animated) peek at the ship editor and a brief insight into currency pairs.
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Development Log Week 74

A short work week and external deadlines make for a pretty boring development log. But those are the realities of indie game development…the money to pay the bills has to come from somewhere and even the most ambitious game developer needs a break every now and then. So Happy Easter everyone and see...
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Development Log Week 73

We mostly wrapped up work on our account management systems and are back at gameplay systems again. While Michi is already knee-deep in work on a huge new feature - ship construction - Martin is just getting started on another one - Foreign Exchange.
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Development Log Week 72

Sometimes technical problems appear out of thin air and keep you awake at night. We still managed to get quite some work done: the community forum software is set up, the world editor got a facelift and we started a new feature!
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Development Log Week 71

We can't wait to get started on the things we laid out last week. But before we can do that, we need to close some other remaining issues and generally rid our to-do list of tedious maintenance tasks and necessary polish for generally-done-but not-quite-finished features. Don't let procrastination w...
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Development Log Week 70

For our 70th week of development, Michi and I met up at simulogics HQ again to spend a total of 5 days planning and scheming!
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Development Log Week 68

When switching to a new user interface one should always make sure that every aspect of the game has been migrated, or else you'll end up writing a devlog about how you adapted an age-old system to the new design.
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Development Log Week 67

Sorry for releasing this issue of our development log so late, but we were busy polishing Prosperous Universe until the last minute. Not saying we're crunching...just maybe working a tad more than usual. We really want to get that Alpha done, though!
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Development Log Week 66

Account management systems and usability improvements probably aren't the most exciting things to read about on our dev-log. But the fact that this is exactly what we've been dealing with this week can only mean one thing: We're making good progress on our way towards a version of Prosperous Univers...
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Development Log Week 65

The first internal alpha milestone is coming up in a few weeks, so it's time to wrap up the important tasks and add at least a bit of polish.
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Development Log Week 64

After six days of meeting, reading, talking and experimenting our simulogics ops meeting is over and the quietness of our offices feels eerie.
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Development Log Week 63

Hey guys, sorry for the late and very short dev-log this week. We're having an extensive 6 day meeting to discuss and set up the technical operations of Prosperous Universe. Fortunately, we are accompanied by our long-time admin Sven who's already responsible for running all the servers over at Airl...
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Development Log Week 62

The development of Prosperous Universe gained momentum this week: We worked on very technical things like the servers' cluster setup and monitoring as well as user interfaces and gameplay relevant topics. Feels good, let's keep it up!
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Development Log Week 61

The theme of this week's development log could be "dynamic" because both Martin and Michi have been working on things that quite literally make the interface come alive. Our maps now support visualizations of live data on ship traffic and the commodity exchanges, featuring real-time price updates an...
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Development Log Week 60

It seems like the team has made a few New Year's resolutions. At least that would explain the frequent mentioning of automated tests in this issue of our development log...
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Development Log Week 59

We're spending a few days of quality time with friends and family over the holidays and we hope you're doing the same. That doesn't mean we didn't get some work done the week before, though. While Martin continued to complete the population aspects of the game, Michi worked on fancy visualizations f...
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Development Log Week 58

In this week's devlog we explain how the planet's populations work, why you will be able to mine liquid oxygen and a bit about the visualizations of the main map.
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Development Log Week 57

It lives! In a game about production, transport and trade, things have actually been produced this week! Meanwhile, yet another part of our planet generation code fell into place.
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Development Log Week 56

The unofficial title of this issue could be "Generating star systems with science". Because that's essentially what Michi did this week and he'll tell you all about it below.
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Development Log Week 55

While Michi went on to tackle the minutiae of world, star and planet generation, Martin reactivated crucial systems to get the overall simulation back to work.
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Development Log Week 53

What better way is there to get over Trump becoming the president of the world's most powerful nation than to lock ourselves into a dark room and work on a game for 5 days straight? Exactly...there isn't one! So that's what we did this week.
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Development Log Week 52

This is development log number 52. Which means we've been releasing these posts every single week for a whole year now.
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Development Log Week 50

Since Martin is on vacation, I continued my work on the client side. That way I can focus on the UI and probably won't have any problems with the new server code he wrote.
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Development Log Week 49

Martin prepares for two weeks of well earned vacation and Michi is cleaning up last weeks refactorings.
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Development Log Week 48

A short but productive week has passed. And that’s about all I can think of that’s noteworthy enough for the introduction this week. Find the details below as every Sunday :)
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Development Log Week 47

Sometimes, a seemingly small change leads you down a rabbit hole of large changes all over the place.
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Development Log Week 46

What does the cockpit of your spaceship in Star Citizen have to do with a browser-based business simulation game like Prosperous Universe? Find out in this week's unusually lengthy development log!
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Development Log Week 45

There aren't too many big news this week, besides maybe that the long lifespan of persistent online games can be both a blessing and curse.
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Development Log Week 44

This is going to be a short one...Michi took a week off of work, so all there is to talk about this time is Martin's progress.
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Development Log Week 43

We start to see the light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel of UI redesign work: With the basic UI stuff mostly done and in place, everyone’s turning their attention towards more tangible parts of the game again.
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Development Log Week 42

There we are...week number 42. You would expect that we'd found the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, but nothing of that sort happened. Instead, we continued right where we left off the week before and churned through more UI-related tasks.
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Development Log Week 41

Remember the big pile of UI-related tasks that we mentioned in last week's blog post? Well, it is still there :). I managed to port the whole chat system and some minor other things, but that is just a little fraction of what is left to do. Unfortunately Martin sp
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Development Log Week 40

After a fun week of UI brainstorming we now have to tackle the resulting pile of work. This isn't too interesting for either you or us but once finished we might actually be able to show preliminary screenshots of the game for the first time.
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Development Log Week 39

This week has been a bit different from our previous ones so our dev-log will be slightly different as well.
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Development Log Week 38

We have almost reached the point at which we can properly deploy Prosperous Universe, but not quite yet :)
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Development Log Week 37

This week was all about the technical groundwork to get the server running on a dedicated machine and validating input from the client. Let us know if you want to know more technical details in our dev logs or if you're just interested in the game itself :)
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Development Log Week 36

While developing the chat system old memories of long gone or not used anymore chat systems and clients arise, some good, some bad, some ugly :) ICQ, IRC, Skype, MSN, Usenet
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Development Log Week 35

While Michi is working on the chat system Martin enjoys a week-long caffeine-high induced by his new coffee machine! Oh, and Juno reached Jupiter! Congratulations!
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Development Log Week 34

Asteroid Day was this week and Mac has prepared an amazing piece of concept art matching the theme. If you missed it, check it out here. Besides that it's been a relatively slow week. But as usual, find all the details below!
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Development Log Week 33

Ironically, in the week of the Brexit decision, our work continued to revolve around bringing people together (Michi's work on the chat system) and dealing with economics (Martin's population simulation code). We also received some external help this week to get our UI design process back on track a...
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Development Log Week 32

Neither birthdays, bad weather or the Euro 2016 soccer championship can distract us from Prosperous Universe. The showdevelopment must go on!
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Development Log Week 31

While Martin dug deeper into the simulation aspects of Prosperous Universe, Michi started work on another integral
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Development Log Week 30

And just like that, we've spent 30 weeks working on Prosperous Universe. Time really does fly! This is what we've been up to this week:
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Development Log Week 26

We presented Prosperous Universe to the public for the first time on Friday at the Games Bavaria Vernissage in Munich. So the better part of the week was spent fixing UI bugs, tweaking gameplay elements and doing everything possible to make the game look good :). The vernissage is a small event with...
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Development Log Week 15

Another week that was mostly spent writing our grant application. On Tuesday we were on the Cassandra Day in Munich. We managed to get at least some work on the world generator done and did some brainstorming on the simulation aspects of the game.
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Development Log Week 14

This week we were mostly working on writing a grant application for prototypes offered by the FFF Bavaria. On Friday we went to Bamberg for the AirlineSim team meeting.
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