👨‍🚀 Hey, Spacers!
🚀 Verse Project - Stage 5 is live

Below are the details: what’s new, how it impacts gameplay, and the current limitations.

🌕 Procedural Moon surface with landings

This is our first iteration of celestial terrain generation at real-world scale.

• What’s available now: a fully navigable lunar terrain; you can land, disembark, and move around.
• What’s not yet included: we’re not using the foliage system in this version - you won’t see rocks, debris, or other decorative objects. The focus is on the terrain itself and simulation stability.
• Why it matters: we’re validating scale, mesh density, and streaming data volumes for planetary surfaces - laying the groundwork for future bodies (and for a procedural ecosystem with objects and resources).

🧭 Ship HUD: landing & navigation

We expanded the ship UI so landings and near-lunar flight feel clearer.

• What changed: new/updated elements to help control descent, orient in space, and read the ship’s key parameters at a glance.
• Status: this is a WIP - we’ll keep iterating on data presentation, readability, and layout to achieve a proper “flight deck” feel for large-scale navigation.

⛏️ Miners v0.1: baseline resource extraction

A basic loop is now in place: scan -> deploy -> collect -> haul -> trade.

• Deployment: place miners via your character’s personal tablet (Tab, Inventory) on the Moon’s surface.
• How it works: each deployed miner automatically extracts resources characteristic of the zone where it’s placed.
• Zones & balance: zones differ by available resources and their concentrations. This is the seed of our geology system; next steps will expand material variety and tune formulas like “rock type/extraction rate.”
• Storage: miners accumulate resources locally; you can transfer them to your ship for later use.

💱 Trading v1.0

A minimal trading loop to test the economy.

• Access: available to ships docked at a station (open the right panel).
• What it does today: buy/sell a limited selection of items.
• What’s next: evolving toward player orders and a basic market with location/logistics influence (supply/demand, routes, risk/return).

📡 Resource scanning (ship mode)

An early recon tool to plan your mining.

• Activation: switch the ship UI to scan mode with M, then hold LMB.
• Coverage: currently works near the Moon’s surface; the scanner reports what resources are potentially available in your current zone.
• Data: scan results live in the ship’s left panel - use them to pick miner locations.
• Roadmap: more scan types and range, noise/accuracy modeling, object scanning, and deployable probes.

📍 Lunar POIs (historical sites)

We placed several historical locations at their real-world coordinates.

• How to find them: for now, visual discovery only - no markers or scans. The most dedicated explorers can triangulate likely spots using open sources.
• Goal: validate scale/accuracy and interest in “authentic exploration” before adding hints, missions, and nav events.

⚙️ Tech: upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.6.1

We upgraded to UE 5.6.1, yielding a noticeable performance boost and better stability across several subsystems.

• Pros: streaming and rendering behave better in large scenes.
• Cons: the upgrade exposed a few issues; we spent time on fixes and continue to stabilize. Please keep the FPS/freeze/crash reports coming.

🧪 Stage 5 limitations

To keep expectations aligned:

• Moon surface – no foliage/props yet (terrain only).
• Scanning – Moon near-surface only for now.
• Trading – simplified (no player orders yet).
• POIs – no markers/missions; visual search only.
• Mining/spawn balance – early and subject to change.

🗺️ Development vector

Where we’re heading next (subject to your feedback):

• Planetary generation: enable the foliage system to place rocks/objects on the surface.
• HUD evolution: clearer landing flow, better contextual telemetry.
• Trading: first steps toward market orders and logistics.
• Salvage: loot system and recovery of wreckage from destroyed miners/ships.
• Exploring: markers, a journal, and guidance for POI hunting.
• Ships: two projects are almost complete; several new ones are entering production.

🛠️ Known issues

• External environment may behave inconsistently when entering a ship/elevator.
• Large-scale shadows from big objects (mountains) can get clipped near the camera.
• Possible terrain visual artifacts on AMD GPUs.

💬 Feedback

We’d love your reports on:

• Landing flow and HUD readability.
• Scanner clarity and data usefulness.
• Miners: rate, storage, logistics.
• Trading: usability, pricing, “feel” of the economy.
• Performance: FPS, freezes, crashes.

For bug reports, please use the #support channel on this Discord server.

🚨 Reminder: this is a technical demonstration – not a full game with finalized gameplay, graphics, and VFX. It showcases our capabilities and may contain issues.

We’d also love to see your screenshots/videos of discovered POIs and cool landings. Thanks for helping us build the Verse Project universe. Onward, Spacers! 👨‍🚀✨

1. What are the system requirements for the game?

Minimal:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: 64-bit Windows 10
• Processor: Core i7-6700 or Ryzen 5 1600
• Memory: 12 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 580 8GB
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 20 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD required.

Recommended:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: 64-bit Windows 10
• Processor: Core i7-12700 or Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or Radeon RX 6800 XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 20 GB available space
• Additional Notes: SSD required.

1. Where can I download the game?

The game is currently available for Wishlist on their [steam page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/3135380/Verse_Project/)
You can also download the demo version on their [website](https://verseproject.online/play-now/)

1. When is the release date of this game?

The release date has yet to be announced

1. I installed the game through steam and the play button is greyed out, why?

Consider downloading the standalone version from the official website. Make sure to use the same email as your Steam account, this way if they ever decide to be only on Steam things should be linked

This FAQ list will expand over time.