We just released a new beta on Steam that includes what you've all been waiting for: More instructions for Vizzy. Just kidding, of course. Philip and Kevin have given birth to virtual astronauts that are here to help you explore the cosmos.

Latest beta - v0.9.201.0

Note: Currently, the beta is only available on the Steam beta branch, but we plan to do a beta on mobile next week as well. Also, check out known issues at the bottom.

Load them up in your command pod and send them on their way to certain doom. They are given random names by default, but you can change that via their part properties in the designer. During flight you can EVA at any time by clicking your Command Pod and selecting EVA next to the desired astronaut.

With a brief grunt, they will emerge, ready to go. Here is one standing on the launchpad with a Mage Engine next to him/her for scale.

You can move the astronaut using WASD keys. They also have a jetpack that activates while in the air using WASD for translational control and SHIFT+WASD for rotational control.

While controlling an astronaut, you can switch between 1st and 3rd person views. While in the 1st person view you have access to a special space tether/grappling hook that can be activated via the middle mouse button. It will latch onto anything in front of you and can reel yourself in closer by scrolling your mouse wheel downwards. If you then point to something else and fire the middle mouse button a second time, you will connect those two things together instead. Philip added this mostly for testing, but he's had so much fun with it that he's decided to keep it in for all of you to try out.

The astronaut has really added a touch of humanity that was lacking in SimpleRockets 2 and we hope you will enjoy them as much as we have.

Here's the full change list:

FEATURES

• Added astronauts.
• Allow the camera to go under sea level.
• Wheels show turn direction/axis by turning while selected.
• Wheels display drive direction by spinning while selected.
• Added button to enable/disable auto-staging in the designer.

TWEAKS

• Added Select Command Pod button in part properties under Advanced Part Properties group.
• Clearing any camera offsets when taking control of another craft/astronaut.
• No-longer resizing designer platform, nor moving camera when loading crafts in the designer. This helps determine size differences between crafts.
• Can no-longer switch to a command pod that is disabled.
• Create an undo step prior to saving a flight program to the craft so the user can undo to recover their flight program as it was before it was saved.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug where clicking Retry on a downloaded sandbox would load the incorrect craft.
• Improve error logging when the client receives an invalid response from the server.
• Remove an engine from the active engine list and current stage fuel calculation when it is deactivated.
• Fixed a bug where structural panels were included in CoL calculations in the designer.
• Fixed bug where crafts would explode after going 20m below the water's surface.
• Fixed where custom cameras would not register properly when switching to a new craft.
• Fixed bug where crafts would explode after going 20m below the water's surface.

VIZZY

• Added Planet expression to access planet mass, radius, atmosphere height, solar position, child planets, crafts, and parent planet.
• Added For instruction to Vizzy.
• Added support for lists/arrays to Vizzy.
• Added expression to convert a lat/long/AGL to and from a position vector.
• Added support for vector operations: angle, clamp, cross product, dot product, distance, min, max, project, x, y, z, length, and normalize.
• Added VectorExpression to create a vector from x,y,z components.
• Added atan2 to Vizzy.
• Allow support for a dynamic number of arguments for the "join" expression in Vizzy, which makes string joining much easier.
• Added Change SOI event to Vizzy.
• Added Part Explode event to Vizzy.
• Added Part Collision event to Vizzy.
• Added dialog to add Custom Instructions and Expressions in Vizzy.
• Added "Frame Delta Time" and "Time Since Launch" to Vizzy expressions.
• Added Craft Position, Craft Planet, Heading, Pitch, Bank Angle, Angle of Attack, Side Slip, North, East, Craft Direction, Craft Right, Craft Up, Target Position, Target Velocity, Target Name, and Target Planet to Vizzy.
• Fixed an issue where events could cause very large memory usage if they were not processed fast enough. Now, events are limited to the max thread size of the process and an error message is generated in the flight program error log if this size is exceeded.
• Changed the Angle operation between vectors to indicate it returns degrees instead of radians.
• Added substring and format string operations.
• Added dock event. Note that Part IDs may change after a craft docks with another craft.
• Grouped name properties under a single "Name" block: Craft, Planet, Target, Target Planet.
• Added new block to convert a vector between craft/part local coordinates and PCI coordinates.
• Changed lat/long to be in degrees instead of radians.
• Fixed a bug where Vizzy would cast a numeric "1" to a bool false. Now it casts any non-zero numeric to true when used as a bool.
• Fixed a bug where non-numeric Vizzy global variables would always report 0 to input controllers.
• Added explode part
• Added expression to get part position.
• Added expressions to get a part's ID from its name, activated state, part type, temperature, min/max part IDs in the craft, and the ID of the part executing the flight program. Added instructions to set a part's name and activated state.
• Added Part Activated expression and Set Part Activated instruction.
• Added log message instruction.
• Added inspector panel to view Vizzy log during flight.
• Added Total Time.
• Added icons and tooltips to list items.
• Increase width of dropdowns when expanded so all items can be clearly seen.
• Changed CraftProperties AngularVelocity to a vector instead of a number.
• Enhanced text inputs in Vizzy to remember their text when replaced with an expression that is later removed.
• Fixed a bug where Vizzy incorrectly set Slider2 when it was instructed to set Slider1 (and vice-versa).
• Fixed a bug where Vizzy used the incorrect deltaTime during warp modes.
• Fixed a bug where the "Fuel All Stages" property would never report 0.
• Fixed a bug that prevented targeting crafts with Vizzy.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Vizzy from unlocking the heading with the "lock heading on none" instruction.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Rocket exhaust is not visible.