itch.io

The first month with Unreal version on Itch is in! Here's how it went:

There have been a total of 1102 downloads for the Windows version and a whopping 57 for Linux. So still half a percent of Linux users, as before. What's nice to see is, that the base level of views and downloads is much higher than before. Of course, there was the 3rd Starship test flight at 14th of March, which helped keeping interest elevated. Funny though that you can't see any spike from the flight this time. Probably due to the release of the Unreal version two weeks earlier. Anyway, it's good to see some stable interest with 500-ish downloads in the initial rush and then another 500 in the following month.

There were six payments directly on Itch for a total of ~50 $. Not too great, but compared to what I get usually on Itch, it's pretty much as expected. Of course, there are also 20 Patrons and 6 kofis (monthly Ko-Fi contributors) as well as a couple of one time kofis, and a direct PayPal contribution of 3x 15 €.

Adding everything up, we get a total of 287 bucks - best month so far! In $ it could be a 300+ maybe even. I should probably start with some more serious accounting at some point :D

We also got a lot of new builders: 7 in total and with name Logge1986, Borbarad_2, Taniel and Connor Scott - welcome! If this continues, I might have to increase the builder threshold again as well!

Looking onwards, there should be a new smaller update released in April for supporters. They already know more about it. Else, follow the Twitter/Youtube to stay informed. 

Thank you all very much for the support! :)

I just noticed that there is still a (new) problem with the ship toggles as I missed to re-connect something after deleting some prints. Fully fixed version will be up in a bit.

I also noticed that it crashes when you click on credits or changelog button in main menu. But I'll fix that in a future version.

I've just uploaded a fixed version. If you could check it out and report if you find any more issues or not, that would be cool. Then I'll wait before I tweet about it.

Wasn't a big issue, just the function from a plugin not working on Linux for some reason. It gets all the engine toggle widgets, so you don't have to put them one by one in an array. That's an odd thing that there is no builtin function for this.

I've added it to https://itch.io/t/3550144/known-issues-bug-reports#post-9469718

Since it's quite a big issue, I'll post about the fix on twitter, when it's ready.

Changelog:

2024-03-11

- removed a line that logged some debug data spamming the log file

I guess I should add changelogs for patches here again. In the future also updates will have changelogs attached again to the devlog:

2024-03-09

- added first version of time dilation (there are still some issues with it, like mouse clicks not registering properly when game is very slow)

- fixed booster transport stand clamps not extending again after retracting

- fixed ship can't be spawned directly on booster, if you try to place it manually

- fixed observer jumping back to player after despawning something

- fixed attitude Z error discontinuity around zero leading to a twitch in the controller output (however, when setpoint is close to +/- 180 there still can be a bit of twitching)

- attitude Z is now displayed from -180 to 180 

- tuned some controller settings for better control during boost back with booster (this will also have some impact to controller behaviour in other circumstances)

I'll try to collect a few FAQ here. You can also ask questions here in the replies.

What's the deal with multiplayer?

For the moment it's only available to supporters on Ko-Fi or Patreon. There are a lot of things to iron out with multiplayer. So don't expect everything to work flawlessly. There is also a slightly cumbersome process to join a multiplayer session the first time. That's also a reason why the access is limited right now. I hope that when multiplayer works a bit better, I can put it on Epic Games Store and then it should work as every other game.

Can i use the Keyboard to move the Booster and Ship? 

Yes. Just read the hint in the main settings tab of the control panel which shows up by default right after you loaded in ;)

Wen Mac version?

As soon as I get a Mac, because with Unreal Engine you need a Mac yourself to make a build, which was not necessary with Unity. I can't buy one right now though, so unless I get one gifted, it won't happen anytime soon.

But can't you still play it on Mac in a virtual machine?

Probably, but I don't know much about Macs. So if anyone could help us out here with a guide, you are very welcome! If it's possible.

Wen save game feature?

It doesn't have high priority right now, but is on the list. Maybe I'll even make a Ko-Fi goal for it.

Wen booster bidet a.k.a. pancake a.k.a. steel plate a.k.a. water deluge system a.k.a. upside down shower head a.k.a. what other name did I miss?

It's on the list with features to be added. The list is roughly sorted by priority. Check the main page

Why is feature X not on the future features list?

Firstly, the list hasn't been updated in a while, but will be soon™. Secondly, I might not have thought (much) about it yet. In this case, thx for the suggestion! :)

Wen mobile version?

Right after the console version is done.

Wen console version?

No idea. Maybe when I have loads of money or I am bored and everything else is done. Currently it's not something I'm very interested in.

Wen next update?

I try to finish an update every 1 to 2 months. But sometimes it takes longer.

Well, February progress wasn't much faster either, but at least we got a mostly playable version out, even if there is still a lot missing.

There have been two new builders, one of them Chaos_Demon - welcome! 

Total contributions were 154 $

Not much more to say right now as the Unreal version has just been released here on Itch for the first time today. So it was very busy and there will be more to tell in the March report.

Thank you all very much for the support! :)

That are currently planned to be added:

- tank farm

- QDs

- propellant simulation and VFX

- lifts

- Starbase props and buildings

- maybe more that I can't think of right now

Won't be added (any time soon):

- VR

I'll add some known issues here. You can also post bug reports below. But please keep in mind that a lot of stuff is unfinished, especially with the controllers. Regarding these you don't need to report anything right now. Else, report it only if you think it's a big issue.

Known Issues as of 2024-03-21:

- FTS sound effect is not properly set up yet

- control panel ship keyboard input routing button is same as booster so when you use a keybind it triggers same function on both devices

- When attitude Z target and actual are around +/-180 there is a discontinuity leading to a slight twitch in the controller output.

- Booster: when you have all gimbal engines at full throttle and propellant mass is very low the controller might start to oscillate a bit (you can prevent it by lowering throttle).

- While there is a Gamepad section in the main menu settings, the key binds are not set up yet, so you can just walk around. Also, it might only work, if you use it via the Steam Gamepad thingy.

- The atmosphere is fake and earth is flat. If you fly far to the side it will look like you are high up, but the altitude will show the actual value. If you come a bit below zero, the actor will be destroyed.

- there are reports of the booster randomly disappearing out of nowhere in mid flight with the boom message showing up on the panel. Not sure what's happening here yet.

- trying to lift the hot stage ring is slightly bugged right now, but when you are very careful you can actually lift it on top of the booster

- LINUX: crash when clicking on credits or changelog button

There is a browser version, but it's old: http://ak85.de/ss

there is a panel on top of it

Progress on the the latest game update was super slow in January with moving a lot of stuff to C++ in Unreal Engine and figuring out how this even works and all. But it's close to getting finished, even though it won't have much new content, but I will be very happy when this is done and working! :)

Anyway, there are three new builders, one of them being CaptinD2 - thank you!

Total contributions are pretty decent again with 256 $ and there are the first monthly contributors on Ko-Fi. I might have to increase the minimum amount though. Because there is a Stripe transaction for every 3 $ amount, which has 15% fees just for Stripe only! 

There have been a few contributions on Itch again as well, most of all a 100 $ one by @steveMmattison - the biggest single contribution so far.

Thank you all very much for the support! :)

In other news, when I add these contributions to the Ko-Fi goal later, we will have reached it! I'll write more about that there and on Twitter.

A busy year comes to an end with the best month in terms of total contributions with 275 $!

Also, in December we finally got the first part of the flying stuff for Unreal engine in an acceptable state. But there is a lot more to do in this regard as the controls will also be improved along the way compared to Unity.

There are five new Builders! Also because I missed some earlier apparently. Anyway, thanks and welcome to Iwo, Kendall and the other three new Builders!

There even has been a new Itch contribution of 5.55 $ :O - thanks to the one lone contributor! :D

Download numbers were quite decent as well and that with still no updates since April:

An Unreal version will land soon here though with the Ko-Fi goal already at 78%. I updated it already a few days ago this time.

I also started to invest in the Unreal version and bought some explosion effects from the market place for 5 bucks. It's not really much better than the Unity one and I could have re-built that one in UE, but it was quite cheap, so I could save some time there.

Now on to 2024! I have the feeling it will be even more busy. At least I'm more comfortable with Unreal Engine now :)

I'm getting around 50 KiB/s right now, central Europe, no change in last 3 hours. Tried downloading a zip directly and now trying to download the app. No difference.

Finally got the first stage of the flying update for the Unreal version done. Tons of bugs though. But one more patch and it should be good mostly.

We also saw the second test flight of Starship in November (on a side note: I always find it funny how some say it was a success and others no, it was a failure, while in reality it was just a partial success (or partial failure^^)). You can see the date of the flight clearly in the download numbers:

Unfortunately this resulted in zero contributions on Itch. At least the other channels were similar as last time. So we got a total of 175 $ via KoFi and Patreon.

KoFi is nice, but I don't get any monthly contributions there. All have been one offs so far. Haven't been a lot in total though, so let's see how it develops.

Since I have been using Patreon for one year now, let's make a comparison. Here are the total contributions for the first year of Patreon and the same time period for Itch:

Patreon: 1310 € | after fees: 1082 €

Itch:             655 $ | after fees: 555 $

On both platforms there is about 10% platform fee and the rest is payment processing, which is in the same area also around 10% for both platforms. So no clear winner there. At least, if you pay the suggested fee on Itch. You can also choose to pay zero. But that's not how to do business^^

Multiplayer development has taken its toll again, so I couldn't even finish one update this month. I'm seriously considering throwing multiplayer out of the window again. While it's a nice-to-have feature, I haven't any immediate plans to build it out and make it very useful. So it feels like quite a waste of time right now. Maybe when booster and ship catching is in, I can add a second tower and then you can make a race to fastest stack, launch, catch, de-stack or relaunch^^ Should be easy to do at least.

Anyway, in October we got a total of $156. This includes some coffees via ko-fi. But only 1 $ via Itch. I guess, it shows that there haven't been any updates here. But we are getting closer on the ko-fi goal to bring the Unreal version over here as well. It should be above 1/3 already when I update it later.

No builders this month.

Pushed out more updates for the Unreal version in September, slowly bringing it up to par to the Unity one. It's been going much slower than hoped. But at least multiplayer is working fairly decently now and I get more confident with it every time.

There has been one new builder this month Skelly and last month I was so busy, that I totally forgot to mention OV_104_Atlantis as builder and producer.

There won't be new producers for the time being as I started a ko-fi and didn't make tiers there and might remove them also from Patreon completely. One reason for this is also because I want to have everyone mentioned in-game equally next to each other, which makes it easier to set up when putting it on some wall or so.

Total contributions this month were about $200. I won't do separate listings per platform anymore though as it is not very exact anyway with the different currencies and how and when it's converted and transferred to PayPal, Payoneer or now Stripe as well.

There was no payout in September. There are still no real investments apart from a few small Patreon subscriptions.

Thank you very much for all the contributions! :)

Now let's look back at the second year:

• The tank farm has been properly integrated and thus could be used by Zack in his videos, which created a huge wave of contributions. Special thanks go out to Zack and crew here! :)
• It was followed by the transport (SPMTs) and build site update.
• The latter already showed problems with floating point precision in Unity, so I started to investigate other game engines.
• Created the Unigine demo in about a month 
• Created the Unreal Engine demo in a bit more than a month
• Moved on with Unreal and pushed several bigger and smaller updates
• Unreal version now has part of build site with Megabay crane, SPMTs, basic Mechazilla for stacking of basic booster and ship
• and everything with multiplayer!
• Started a Patreon
• Started a ko-fi page as alternative to Patreon as I was not super happy with it

In numbers:

• hit 1000 followers on Twitter @StarbaseSim
• got 20 active Patrons (38 total), €127 per month
• and my first coffees on ko-fi :D

The following Itch numbers are totals (so including the first year):

• views: 26.7k
• downloads: 8.7k
• payments: 81
• gross revenue: $754

Almost 7x as much downloads and payments compared to last year with the proportion staying the same at almost one payment per 100 downloads. However, the Itch numbers are only partially comparable as there is Patreon now as well and for the last half year there were only updates on Patreon. If we get another 7x or maybe 10x even in the coming year, especially on Patreon, it would become actually sustainable. Let's hope I can survive until then! :D

Because after two years of full time game development, I'm finally broke now. As this was foreseeable, I already applied for so called "Bürgergeld" in May. It's a form of social welfare in Germany that is supposed to provide the basic means of living, supposedly without too much hassle and part of it you can also get on top of a small income. This seemed quite attractive at that point as it would allow to continue to focus full time on StarbaseSim - compared to doing part time stuff or taking on a credit and worrying about paying it back. On the other hand, I was also a little bit curious actually how the whole process works, because you hear lots of (horror) stories about it. So why not get some first hand experience? As it turns out, the wheels of bureaucracy grind very slowly...as expected. What I didn't expect was, that it is such a big hassle to provide all the documentation in the correct way. So there is still no money in sight from that direction after shuffling documents for more than 4 month. Maybe I have to do some part time stuff after all.

I'm wondering how much more payments would there have been, if it wouldn't have been free to download. The 8k number includes also patches though, so in the end it's far less unique people, who downloaded it.  So maybe just a couple of 100 people would have paid upfront? But I want to get it into as many hands as possible. So there will always be a free version. It might just be a bit older or without certain features like multiplayer. We will see, how it goes with the Epic Games Store version that will come sooner or later.

Else, the plan for next year is the same as before, follow the development of the real Starbase and Starship program, and maybe even jump ahead a little bit...like Moon or Mars base?

find more tutorials here from now on: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfR02qeoyBkYGj5jdWtiBiFObraPdlF3-

Hm, it's not the best GPU, but if you have enough free memory it should be able to run it, I think.

Make sure that no other programs are running that take away a lot of resources.

Can you send the log file as well, please?

Very busy with bringing stuff back to the Unreal version. First time I missed the first of the month for the report even!

Progress has been very slow unfortunately. I couldn't really copy paste much from the Unity version, and every time I gained a little something by it, I lost it right away when taking care of the multiplayer stuff. Sure, we have multiplayer now. It's fun and all, but I don't know, if it's been worth it.

At least a little bit of content for Twitter and Youtube fell off from the multiplayer test sessions in August, so it helped to increase the contributions a bit again. There were also two new builders, but both anonymous so far.

Contributions this month were: Itch 42 $ and Patreon 135 €.

I also made a payout again from Patreon over 127 € as it works within a day there . I needed it as I'm pretty much broke now. So there won't be any investments for some time probably or rather everything will be invested in myself to keep me going :D

I have basically two options now: Apply for social welfare and continue on a shoe string budget to be able to invest all time in this and hope it grows quickly now or get an actual job and work part time on this. I'm not really a part timer though and progress would probably come close to a stand still. So I might have to go with the first option, at least for a little bit.

Also, I applied for an Epic Mega Grant at end of May and now finally got a mail that they reviewed it, but didn't select it for a grant unfortunately. That would have been epic right now in the current situation, but I guess, my application was a bit too scuffed maybe. For example, I included a link to a test build of the Unreal version (which was pretty crappy at that time anyway), but later deleted the file when cleaning up my google drive without thinking about the application. So when they tried to open it now in August they just got a broken link. xD

Oh well, maybe I try to re-apply a bit later when the Unreal version is in a better state.

Finally, I want to give a shout out also to all the smaller contributors on Itch and Patreon, that I don't write individually to. Even though it's not too many people yet, I have to draw a line somewhere or it will get too much for me. If you are one of them, just know that I see every contribution with your name or email and everything is highly appreciated, thank you! :)

Thx! That's strange though, it seems to crash right away for some reason. 

Did you also reset / delete the registry settings?

1. open registry editor by typing "regedit" into the Windows search bar
2. in the editor go to this address: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Ashtorak\StarbaseSim (you can copy paste it into the address bar)
3. delete the StarbaseSim folder to reset all settings to default at game start (it will recreate the folder)

This screen shot was from another issue where I showed where the key binds are stored:

Maybe something in the registry settings changed somehow after resetting key binds as they are saved there by Unity.

I'll make a new pot here for the moment and add 23 € to it from July 2023. Maybe I put it into Ukraine stuff again anyway.

+13 from August

+17 from October

+18 from November

Unreal Engine multiplayer test version is mostly finished and available for Patrons. It's a bit rough still, but getting better every day. I hope I can put out some Twitter and Youtube content again now to attract some people. Else the contributions won't pick up it seems. At least we can welcome two new builders via Patreon: Luna de Wit and the other one is still Anonymous

The builder names will be added soon in the UE version.

Contributions this month were: Itch 5.55 $ and Patreon 78 €.

I also payed out a total of about 230 bucks, so 23 € will go to the charity pot.

There were no investments as I was occupied with the basic Unreal Engine stuff.

Unreal Engine test version is finally finished and available for Patrons. I guess, since there haven't been any public updates anymore and it's summer in NA/EU, contributions are also down. Unfortunately down to zero on Itch. Even though there were several hundreds of downloads. All free loaders! :D

Patreon is also down a little to 65 €.

Tip: If you have problems running VR and getting glitches even with a powerful machine, make sure to have the game window as small as possible and maybe reduce graphics settings as well.

Unreal Engine test version is almost done. This was a tough one. But the possibilities that are opening up now are endless...

Anyway, since there was no update again and in general not much activity on social media and such from my side at least, there were only four contributions in total on Itch, but at least one builder, welcome

Starman 42 !

Total contributions were $37 via Itch and €98 via Patreon.

Thank you all very much! :)

Started looking into Unreal Engine as well as they also have large world stuff now. Pretty cool, but it has some oddities. 

Unfortunately this means again no big game updates in April as well and hence not a whole lot of contributions. Just the first Starship integrated flight test could alleviate the numbers a bit.  Not much though, in the end it resulted in similar levels as the Zack video earlier this month. The download numbers were increased around the 20th also due to two small patches during that time. 

There was only one new builder who remains anonymous for the time being. I am wondering, if I should increase the recommended contribution amount again. Seems not many even realize that there is something like this. So that if they put down the larger amount they also get a little surprise sometimes :D

Total contributions were $95 via Itch and only €6 via Patreon since billing was paused for most of the month.

Thank you all very much! :)

You are in the start menu and have no cursor? That's very odd.

Could you search for the file "Settings.ini" and add the following line to it, then you boot directly into the game:

SkipStartMenu = True

and see if you can move around there and if ESC works there. If not, I have no idea. Haven't encountered that issue before.

There is also the option to have a local log file: Make a shortcut of the exe (via right click context menu entry), then right click on the shortcut and open its properties. In the target setting field add <-logFile log.txt> at the end without the brackets. Now when you start it via the short cut it should create the file now in the same folder.

hm, I didn't get any reports about start up crashes for the latest version from others.

If you could send me the log file, maybe I can find something there. See the readme.txt  next to the .exe for info about the log file.

Can you tell me what is the name of your processor and graphics chip, if there is a dedicated one?

I assume you are on the latest StarbaseSim version and it still happens?

+30 from March make a total of round about 60 bucks which I donated to this charity. I hope that the war will be over soon. But even after it's over, stuff like this will still be needed. First I was thinking about putting it into one of the electricity generator funds, but these  might not be needed that much anymore.

Since I started to look into Unigine in middle of March, I didn't actually had to invest any money this month. I already did a payout at beginning of March. So most of the money is still laying around for the moment. Only 50 bucks went to Sam for the Tower and Chopsticks from his KSP mod as he finally got a Paypal set up. I have been using his nice models for more than a year now and probably gonna use them much longer.

Anyway, there were only 2 new Builders in March:

• DoubleDiver
• Norantio

Overall, there were few contributors, but they made it up by being more generous. Thank you very much to everyone who has contributed! :)

Total contributions were $65  via Itch and €115 via Patreon. The latter was a bit lower also since I paused billing as long as the Unigine investigation is going on. I guess, this wouldn't have been necessary. But I didn't know how long it would take and what would come out of it. So it didn't feel right to me to continue billing people. But so far I am pretty confident that I can actually make the switch. In any case, the test version should be ready next week for Patrons and then I'll reactivate billing again.

I don't get notifications about ratings and this was the first relevant one in more than a year. I'll look more often now, but it's not that important. Better write here in the forum, where I usually get notifications (when I don't forget to subscribe to a topic that I haven't created...)

I think that's the first report that it works on Windows 7. Interesting. Thank you!

What is "windows 10 mainframe"?

The log file contains also information about the operating system. 

Have you tried the latest version and can you send me the log file, if it doesn't work?

Hey Martin,

I just went through the ratings for the first time. They are not very prominent on Itch at least not for me as a developer. So I didn't even realize that people actually write something there. Sorry for missing this. You wrote:

"Doesn't deserve even one star, I had a high end computer and all the game did was crash even before it loaded.  I received no help, just a reference to the things you need before you operate it which I already possessed. Developer doesn't care! Not worth anything F-."

How else do you expect me to help you, if you don't reply here anymore with anything else? I got virtually zero information from you and no follow-up. In the link, I wrote that you should send the log file. This usually helps a lot to figure out what could be the problem. Without I can't do much.

I don't even know, what system you had. Mac maybe? Because there were some general startup issues with that at the time that are fixed now.

Forgot to add the 55 € for 16 GB of RAM to the expenditures. With the Unity project getting bigger and bigger, I was regularly filling up 16 GB. Just opening one larger Blender file in addition and that's it. Now with 32 GB in total it should be good for a while. At some point I have to upgrade the whole PC as it's almost four years old already.

It's funny how people complain that four  year old hardware is a steep requirement for a new game (RTX 2060 for KSP 2). Twenty years ago you had to upgrade every two years to keep up with the hardware requirements. Granted, GPU prices are just coming down now after the Ethereum and Covid hell. I guess, I was also a little lucky getting my GPU right before it.

Finished the Build Site update, but interest in the Build Site doesn't actually seem that high or the low amount of contributions via Itch is because there was no video from Zack that mentioned me, which always had a quite an impact in the last months.

There are 4 new Builders, one is anonymous, the others are:

• @steveMmattison
• Liam Edwards
• vtomi

Thank you all very much! Contributions from Itch are $34 and from Patreon €132. Patreon went pretty well with 7 new members and a 

• new producer: Joe Wattz

We just hit 50 Builders now in February. That means I will increase the Builder threshold to $15 as mentioned in the January report.

I haven't done a payout in February, but there was enough money still on Paypal from January for my only expenditure this month which was $50 for Ryer for the new theme music. I guess, I could also add or mention at least the monthly payment for Github Copilot, wich is $10 as I am using this just for programming for StarbaseSim. It's not super useful, but it saves a little time every now and then, and it's always interesting to see what it comes up with. Other than that there are the usual $32 for the Starbase Patreons. 

Let's hope March turns out a bit better, because I want to start investing in some Asset Store stuff.

Since I got some player.logs now, it seems to be a general problem with the latest patch. There will be a new one later today that hopefully fixes it.