As you may have already seen, we have been collaborating with Linx[www.simplerockets.com] to help him port his KSP mod "Parallax" into JNO[simplerockets.com]. The mod is available here[www.simplerockets.com] and it brings some jaw dropping visual enhancements to the game.

The two main areas where we have focused are the rocket engine exhausts and the procedural wings but there are more changes and improvements you can find in the Release Notes[www.simplerockets.com].

It has been more than 4 years since JNO got one of its signature features, the visual expansion of its plumes in procedural rocket engines. After this long it is easy to forget how ground-breaking that moment was, but since then the visuals lagged a bit behind and you sure let us know!

For this facelift we have decided not just to reimplement the visuals and logic behind this dynamic plumes, but also to hand you the wheel and let you choose how you want them to look with over a dozen properties to tweak the shape and color of the hottest part in your crafts.

Jundroo is well known for its love for airplanes, but we have always received complaints about how un-aerodynamic our wings look. Players have been forced to tinker with the physics of wings to hide them within fuel tanks in an unnecessarily complicated process, but that ends with 1.2.

Wings have had different physics airfoils in the game forever, that realistically model how the wing would behave, but now that also comes with a visual companion, making it easy to identify what type of airfoil the wing is using and what face is pointing up. No more flat bottom tail wings! And if you aren't happy with those, we have exposed all the parameters that define their shape in the hidden properties, so you can recreate whatever aircraft you want.

Maybe not as obvious as the previous two, but to continue with the idea of the facelift we have bumped up the visual fidelity in space by including an Ultra setting to the atmospheres, increasing by 8 times their precision and thus reducing their sawtooth artifacts, and also by accounting for the terrain slopes in the generation of the Scaled Space textures on Very High cubemap settings and above.

And to help you fly through the mountains to gasp at how amazing Parallax looks, we have also brought the Mouse Joystick feature from SimplePlanes, so you can smoothly sail the air even without a controller.

When 1.0 came out there were two clear problems with the progression of Career mode: planes going from gliders to jet engines and crew not being relevant. We took our time because we wanted to get things right, and I think you will like what the result is.

We like things being procedural, giving you as much flexibility as possible when building the wildest of creations. Who would've guessed, procedural isn't easy! The new propeller part is the result of many months of work, starting last year, and it is a game changer for both air and water vehicles.

One of the main complaints we have received since the release of 1.0 is that the game lacks some soul. We think flossing or doing weird faces would be out of character for the Droods, but we want to let you do whatever you want. So if you want to floss, you can floss, all you want!

Until now, whenever you had crew sitting in a chair in your crafts they were forced to stay in a boring and rigid pose. With 1.1 we are adding puppeteering options to the chairs, so you can have your crew interact with the controls in your craft, dance, or even make all sorts of torture machines.

After 1.0 many smaller updates came with Quality of Life improvements, and that wasn't all we had to come in that department! 1.1 comes with overhauled sounds, more accessible tutorials, context menus in Map View, resizable Info Panels and a cheat menu in flight so you will never have to open the dev console ever again.

Cheats will show up both in Sandbox and in the new game mode, Hybrid, that combines all of the missions from Career with all the fun from Sandbox, with infinite money, everything unlocked from the get go, cheats, saved launch locations... We can't wait to see all the crazy ways you can figure out how to do The Jump.

That's not all! 1.1 also brings resizable blocks and a new version of it that not only looks like a sphere but uses a sphere collider, and we also made intra-craft docks a thing, making some even wilder creations possible.

There's lots more in the update that you can find in the full Release Notes[www.simplerockets.com] and more to come in the coming weeks, including the Crew and Tourist contracts.

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In Patch 1.1.105[www.simplerockets.com] we have added some neat features for Crew Transfer, Vizzy and tests for rescue contracts.

In 1.1.106[www.simplerockets.com] new test contracts and bug fixes.

For the last month you may have noticed we have been acting a bit weird. We said we were going to go straight to 1.1 with the propellers and more contracts, but we got a bit sidetracked... Today we can finally talk about it, a collaboration with the European Space Agency!

We have been in talks with ESA to include JUICE in the game. The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer is the first European mission to visit a Gas Giant. It will launch tomorrow, April 13th, from Kourou, French Guiana, on top of an Ariane V, heading towards the moons of Jupiter after an insane chain of Gravity Assist.

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To commemorate this launch we have added a new Sandbox Challenge to the game, where you'll be in charge of getting JUICE to visit all moons of Tydos with the least possible Delta-V. In order to better support this mission we have added new properties to the solar panel arrays, such as a new hinge with a custom deployment animation to match the ones in JUICE and the ability to override through the hidden properties how many panels are in each row. Also taking the opportunity to flesh out some issues that the arrays had before.

We have put a lot of focus on improving the Map View experience, with an overhaul of the Planned Burns, Closest Approach calculations, clarity improvements and a ton of bug fixes to ensure a smooth experience when visiting other worlds.

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Thanks a lot to ESA for wanting to be a part of Juno: New Origins and bring this amazing mission to the game. All the new features are not just available for the challenge, so you will be able to enjoy the new solar panels and improved Map View in your own careers and sandboxes.

If you want to learn more about JUICE, here are some useful links:

The Update Trailer

Watch The Launch[www.esa.int]

Learn More About JUICE[esamultimedia.esa.int]

1.0.900 Release Notes[www.simplerockets.com]
1.0.909 Release Notes[www.simplerockets.com]

This update has greatly improved the user experience in Map View. Among many things, setting up planned burns to rendezvous with other crafts and doing transfer orbits to other planets has been made a lot easier. But that's not all, there are a whole lot of other bug fixes, tweaks, and improvements as well.

• Upgraded to Unity 2021.3.19f1.
  
• Several UX enhancements to Map View, including font changes, more readable text, and many other tweaks.
  
• Planned burn tweaks, improvements, and fixes.
  
• Closest approach info updates and bug fixes.
  
• Rebalanced and fixed various aspects of the career mode, including tweaks to contracts and tutorials.
  
• UI updates for better navigation and interaction.
  
• Improved the Crew Assignment dialog.
  
• Audio adjustments for a more immersive experience.
  
• Vizzy improvements and bug fixes.
  
• Solar panel enhancements and bug fixes.
  
• Bug fixes for modding, parts, autopilot, and more.

The full release notes are here[www.simplerockets.com].

We just released version 1.0.8 on all platforms! This means that the Career Mode update is now available on iOS [apps.apple.com]and Android[play.google.com] and to celebrate we are offering a discount today on those stores! Although you may have already explored the new features on the Steam version, you can now enjoy them on-the-go with your mobile device.

[www.simplerockets.com]We've done our best to maintain solid runtime performance throughout this update. Just for fun, we decided to stress test Juno: New Origins today at the office. Here it is running a 224 part craft at 59fps on an iPhone 7 from 2016.

But that's not all – we're also offering a discount on our other popular game, SimplePlanes, on mobile today[simpleplanes.com] as well. So if you're a fan of that game or have been curious about it, now is the perfect time to try it out.

We hope you enjoy the new stuff! Thanks for playing!

Here[www.simplerockets.com] are the release notes for 1.0.8.

It has been two weeks since we launched Juno: New Origins and we have been overwhelmed by the support and excitement from so many new players. Our team has been working hard to address the feedback we have received, and we've just released update v1.0.6 that resolves several reported issues. The full release notes are here[www.simplerockets.com].

We're dedicated to improving the game and we appreciate your support and feedback! We're eager to see what the future holds and look forward to working with our amazing community to make this game the best it can be.

Thanks for playing!

We are thrilled to announce that Juno: New Origins has hit version 1.0 and has officially left Early Access on Steam! After six years of development, the game has grown from a simple rocket simulator to a comprehensive aerospace sandbox, where players can bring to life anything they can imagine - from rockets, airplanes, and cars to entire planets. Here's the launch trailer:

This update includes the highly-anticipated Career Mode update, which is our largest update yet and has been in development for over one year. In Career Mode, players can now grow their own aerospace company by completing contracts to earn money and discover a mixture of hand-crafted and procedural contracts that offer countless hours of new gameplay. Conquer milestones and explore landmarks to earn tech points and unlock new technology in the tech tree. Interactive tutorials are available to show players how to build and operate rockets, cars, and airplanes.

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our community for all of their support, suggestions, bug reports, and feedback throughout the Early Access period. Your contributions have been invaluable in shaping the game into what it is today!

We can't wait for you to experience all that Juno: New Origins has to offer! Thank you again for your support and we hope you enjoy the game!

After six years of hard work and commitment, what began as a simple rocket simulator has become a sophisticated aerospace sandbox in which you can bring to life anything you can imagine - from rockets, airplanes, and cars to entire planets. Over time, the more we added, the more SimpleRockets 2 outgrew its name. With much consideration we have decided to change the name to "Juno: New Origins" - a title that symbolizes a new start.

We are excited to launch version 1.0 later this month and this will be the game's official exit from Early Access on Steam. Version 1.0 will include the Career Mode update, which will be the largest update yet. We have been working on this update for over a year and we are extremely excited to share it with all of you. It is currently available for beta testing on Steam and if you want to try it out you can find instructions at the bottom of this post. We are working as hard as possible to get this update out on all platforms, but it is possible the mobile release will be delayed until next month.

There will be a small update rolling out very soon to change the name. Do not worry if you have already bought SimpleRockets 2, because you will automatically own Juno: New Origins. This is a name switch and you will receive this update at no cost, as well as the Career Mode update later this month. Furthermore, all your projects and sandboxes will still be where you left them the first time you launch Juno: New Origins.

Thank you for playing!

Cover Image Credit: @RocketLover2333

We have been working for what feels like an eternity but is more like a year and a half on Career mode for SimpleRockets 2. We changed routes multiple times until we found something that felt like it made sense for the game. You may have already enjoyed some of the things we added as we progressed, but we had to keep a lot of stuff hidden until now, which was extremely hard! We are really proud of what we have made.

You have got to believe us when we say that we wanted this to come out more than anyone. We promised long, long ago that Career mode was coming, and we are almost there. Although we did say the 1.0 update was going to come out in 2022 we did some thorough playtesting sessions both with members of the community and friends and family who had never played before and got tons of feedback. Way too much feedback maybe? But great feedback nonetheless, so we decided to push back the release to January to get some extra time to polish some rough edges.

Thanks to all the playtesters. It's hard to express how important your help has been for us, both helping us find issues and giving us feedback on what to improve. And personally, thanks for the morale boost, seeing every one of you enjoying it so much has given me the energy to push even harder in this last stretch.

We want to get as much feedback as we can before the release in about one month to polish the game in order to have the best possible launch, and this means things will change. It is very likely contracts will change until the public release, potentially breaking your saves. We don't have a date yet for the mobile beta, but we expect it to be out in early January. This is an expectation, not a confirmation.


What a good question... we have added a lot of stuff this time, so much that I forgot some things weren't public yet and almost leaked them a couple of times. We are going to need some time to process the changelog to get it into your hands, but some of the most notable things are:

We have added a system based on a series of contracts and milestones that will allow you to unlock more and better parts in the Tech Tree to explore the Juno System, challenging you to build in a way you have never tried before. I'd like to stress that this game is not just about rockets! There are many contracts designed for cars and planes too.

A carefully crafted mixture of handmade and procedural contracts offer more hours of gameplay than we know how to count.

The new Tech Tree blends seamlessly between 2D and 3D as you interact with it.

Teased ages ago, the Juno Village is finally ready. It will be the starting point for your company in Career Mode, and another playground for sandbox, dropping you right next to the tallest mountains in Droo.

The village has many buildings and alleyways that are a lot of fun to race through while completing some of the racing contracts.

The Juno Village also has a brand new runway and lights for those who are feeling brave enough to try a landing at night.

We thought the game deserved a facelift, and it's a translucent one! We have a new UI theme that has been applied all over the place, with a totally new menu design and a revamped designer with more accessible buttons, improved info panel, and a blueprint-style platform to tease your eyes.

Have you ever been bombarded by messages of parts blowing up without knowing why? We have added a flight log that will tell you in real-time what is getting damaged, and what has been destroyed... with persistent messages, so you don't miss them if you pause the game or you have Vizzy printing things.

A lot of the parts have seen their price and mass calculations tweaked. We overhauled a ton of behind-the-scenes tools for better version control for legacy support, craft validation both in the sandbox and career mode, and better physics on wings, gyros, and wheels...

You have to believe me on this one, it has been wild. We have fixed many bugs from long ago, like wheels becoming glitchy on large crafts, but we also had to address a lot of quality-of-life improvements that were exposed when playtesting with people that had never tried the game before. We learned a lot from watching people getting stuck in some places and struggling in others, hopefully resulting in a smoother entry for new players.

To allow us to improve career mode quickly and effectively we decided to temporarily add Unity Analytics into our game during beta testing. A lot of games do that and keep it under the rug, but we know not everyone is into this, so there's an option to disable it, you will get more info when launching the game. That said, all this data is fully anonymized and helps us immensely. We are not trying to sell you anything or sell your data to anyone, we just want to see statistics on where players get stuck, what you like the most, and what you dislike.


We have many ideas in mind, but we want to prove our systems before going crazy with the contracts. Right now we only have the starting set of contracts, but that should cover a handful of hours of gameplay. Our plans include rescue missions, servicing space stations, and a short, but intriguing storyline... We will be adding contracts until the release of 1.0, and we will keep adding more in future updates.

Yeah as you've heard it. Right now we want to keep this to ourselves, because we may be tweaking things here and there, but after the release of 1.0 you will get a chance to create your own career modes, with custom contracts, tech trees, milestones, races, landmarks, customers... you name it. We think that what defines this game is customizability. One of the features where we have spent the most time is in the creation of custom careers, we have an XML-based system that will allow you to do pretty much anything, including spawning crafts too, for example, making a racing-focused career, dogfighting, a replica of the real world career mode... in the planetary system of your choice.

It isn't in the game yet, but we are porting the propeller part from SimplePlanes because we think it is a key part of the career progression. It is the only new part we are adding, but we have enhanced docking ports and wheels to be a lot more procedural too.

In order to have up-to-date stock crafts using the newest parts and features we could just patch the existing ones, but in order to let everyone enjoy the game even if they don't excel at building, we have teamed with some of the best builders in the community to bring you a new suite of stock crafts. There's some really cool stuff coming.

As you may have seen in my previous post[www.simplerockets.com] we are in the process of updating all of our loading screens with the help of the community! So far we have received almost 100 submissions and they are all looking really good. If you want a chance at contributing to the SR2 leaving a mark in one of the most hated scenes in every game now it's your chance!

As we mentioned before, changing the UI of the game is not the only facelift we think it deserves. We are exploring options for a new logo and a new image that better represents what the game has become. We will most likely be quiet on this front until the day of release.

Finally, what everyone reading this post wanted (I hope). If you are on PC or Mac and you own SimpleRockets 2 on Steam all you have to do is go to the beta branch selector and select the 'career' branch. Select it, download it and you are in! Remember that this is a beta, you need to back up your stuff and your career saves may have to be restarted as we fix and tweak things.