VGA Planets Nu Blog

After a lot of thinking and a long discussion amongst the players we have decided to change the default win conditions so that the focus is on capturing planets to achieve victory. This change will only affect new games going forward.

We have just released an update which includes a new "Warp Chunnel" button on Firecloud's which will help you to initiate a warp chunnel. Even more importantly if you do setup a correct warp chunnel it will be displayed as a dashed blue line on your starmap.

I would like to say a very big thank you to Jonathan Sue (aka JonnyDoH) a very talented graphic artist who volunteered his time to create a new Icon...

The VGA Planets Nu team is proud to introduce an entirely new hosting concept - Blitz Games. Blitz games are 1 on 1 games where two players try to defeat each other on a small map. This game format is designed to be completed in a few hours or a few days depending on the designated settings.

A small, but important to know, update has just been released. Your movement fuel calculations now include mass adjustments that occur when your ship is performing an alchemy mission (Neutronic Refinery and Merlin) or when your ship is building fighters or torpedos

A new feature has been released today which lets you "go back in time" to look at your previous turns. You can use this by clicking on the Time Machine link on your main dashboard.

We have frequently published that the default configuration on Nu is the original default configuration. Several players have pointed out that this...

A new scenario has also been released called "Basic Training" and the default configuration for new games starting has now been modified to include custom maps.

A new and improved Starmap has been released. It looks pretty much the same as the current Starmap, however, it can zoom up to 200%.

Special thanks to Lasse Karhu who composed the music which is used in the new homepage video. The track is entitled "Welcome to The Echo Cluster". Lasse is part of a two man team with John Chernoff who have been producing original scores for VGA Planets.

The Nu leader board has arrived. The leader board is the player ranking system here at VGA Planets Nu. At the heart of the new ranking system is the quest to become the Reigning Emperor of the Echo cluster.

Today we are introducing a new concept to the "Nu" community. It is the first step in a series of new functionality that will be released in the coming weeks to better define the war for the Echo Cluster.

A new map tool has been added which allows you to plot the minerals on planets in your empire.

Starting up all these new games has lead to a deluge of feature suggestions. We're going to keep packing them all in to the new game. In the long run we hope to have everything you can think of and a few more than that, for now expect to see a few new "play enhancing" features added each week.

Matthias Kuehl (Madinson) has begun contributing some artwork. You can see his first piece as your new dashboard background.

We are happy to announce that all functionality for VGA Planets Nu has now been added and the game is ready to be played by all. We are hereby upgrading the status of the project from Alpha to Beta and you are invited to come join in the new Beta games.

A fourth Alpha test game has been opened for joining.  If you are interested in participating in one of the first live multi-player games here on Nu you may join Rebirth 4.

The last three remaining functions have been added to the game as well as a button to transfer from Starbases to Ships. I'd like to talk for a moment about some implementation decisions we made when building the diplomacy and message system as well as jettison and ship to enemy ship cargo transfer.

A third Alpha test game has been opened for joining. Please keep in mind that the game is still in a very alpha stage, but very playable.

We are happy to say we have now posted the first full multi-player games here on Nu. As most of you know, the game is still in a very Alpha stage and we will almost certainly encounter a few bugs on the way. So the intention of these first games are to have a lot of fun, find the bugs and make history by being the first players to play here at Nu.

Long awaited Alpha Release 4 is here and it is a complete game. We're calling this release "Let Slip the Dogs of War", because that is exactly what we will be doing. The first full multi-player Alpha games will be played on this release.

A new scenario has been released called "Strike Early". This is a bit tougher scenario where you need to build an early army as soon as possible.

Announcing the first "playable" version of VGA Planets Nu: Alpha Release 3 entitled "An Empire is Born".

We've been working hard on Alpha Release 3, which is going to be a huge step up in functionality over AR2.  In the process we are moving to what will...

Here we are 8 days after Alpha Release 1 happily announcing Alpha Release 2 titled, "Build Your First Starbase". This release is a huge step up from the first release and starts to breath life into your home world.

We are very proud to announce the deployment of alpha release 1 (AR1). This release is the first major step toward the new version of VGA Planets. Our goals for this release were the development of the overall user interface framework as well as the hosting framework and data extraction from the original source data files to a more modern database format and we have achieved these goals.

The team has begun extracting data from the original file formats and publishing it here on the website.  The data is being moved to a database where...

We have decided to proceed with the project and are now opening the site up for Early Registration. With early registration you can sign up to reserve your game name and begin discussing the new version in the Forums.

As we wind down the Kickstarter fundraiser, many of you are probably asking the question, "What happens next?".  We will be posting an answer to that...

We are coming into the final three weeks of the fundraiser. We would love to see VGA Planets reborn and the community revived, if you would too then tell us by pledging a few dollars.

The first screen design concept has been created. The intention of this concept is to give everyone a first look at the the idea behind VGA Planets "Nu" and how it may appear in the final version.

We achieved our first milestone today and are one step closer to a new VGA Planets version. The project has just reached 10% funding only 4 days after starting the fundraiser.

There have been a lot of questions from the community over the past few days. I wrote some long responses in the forum at RCWorld and am reposting them here so that everyone can see them.

No official VGA Planets project could start without the first step taken by its inventor, and the hero of the community, Tim Wisseman. So, when we here at Geographical Media decided we would like to create a new web based remake of Planets v3 we knew that before even considering the project we would need to contact Tim.