Authors: Jonathan and Brendan

Hey folks!

We’re heads-down on improvements while we prepare our next major release, 0.991: The Universe Generation Update! The team has been hard at work behind the scenes on all things procedural, bringing you a slew of improvements and fixes that will re-map our procedural Universe!

What is the Universe Generation Update? Put simply, this release contains all the accumulated changes that affect procedural generation. It has been put together into a single package to avoid a Universe reset until there are enough changes to justify making a separate release. Now that the time has come, we’re letting you know what to expect and how to prepare.

So what is procedural generation? Procedural generation is how the Universe of SpaceEngine is populated with objects and information anywhere that there is a gap. Anything not explicitly defined in the astronomical catalogs is assigned values based on scientific formulae and special algorithms developed and curated by our development team. Any time the process is adjusted, it may influence the generation of other objects or values that depend on it. For example, back in May, we changed the galaxy IC 1101 to a black hole host. As a result, all of the generated objects in that galaxy also changed.

This update will change the foundation of our procedural generation, potentially affecting every procedural object in the Universe. That means all of your current screenshots, saved locations, custom objects, and object extremes will be of a universe that is no more. While location data carries over between branches, many will take you to empty space or no longer work after the Universe Generation Update. It is advised that you label your saved locations now to avoid confusion when the update drops.

To make sure you can go back and visit your old saved locations, we plan to make a snapshot of the 0.990.48.2075 release branch, which will remain accessible through Steam Betas.

That’s a BIG change. How are we going to handle it? Like with any other update, when the Universe Generation Update is ready, a new beta branch will open up for the community to test, explore, and find any bugs we may have missed. When beta testing ends, the default branch will update to 0.991 and be available for everyone to use. We anticipate that some addons and mods may break with this update, so ensure your installation is back to vanilla before updating or submitting bug reports.

That’s all for now! Keep your eyes peeled for more information as we get closer to release!