It's been nearly four years since Helium Rain released for good, and after years of experiments, spaceships are back on the menu. Astral Shipwright is a new spacebuilding game with the same DNA as Helium Rain, and will be available in Early Access later this year.

As part of the upcoming Steam Next Fest, a very early build of the game has been made available to everyone. While it's a far cry from a completely playable game, the current demo shows the foundation of the game including the spacecraft building system, inventory and orbital maneuvers.

Read the announcement to learn more about Astral Shipwright (and join our Discord community server[discord.gg] to talk about it!)

Hello there !

After months in development, we're finally ready to release the Helium Rain mod support we initially promised during Early Access. Mod support is always a pretty great way to enhance a game's lifetime - speaking as a former mod developer.

Players shouldn't see much change today, and will have an easy process to install mods through Steamworks. Browse the workshop on Steam, subscribe to mods, and once Steam has downloaded them, the game will automatically install them !

Our only guideline for players is that game saves should be tied to mods - please don't remove mods once you've started a game, as this might cause corruption of the game save. Adding mods should always "just work", but removal is not so easy.

A small update was released today to enable installation of mods. Please tell us if anything goes wrong !

The Helium Rain Mod Kit is freely available on the Epic Games Store today[www.epicgames.com] - no purchase necessary. We're releasing our full Unreal Engine 4 editor, complete with some of the game's content - a collection of ships, stations, and other game content that you can study to create your own. Look at the instructions on our Wiki[heliumrain.gamepedia.com] !

What exactly can you do with the mod kit ?

• Add new ships or parts - weapons, engines, or other internal components
  
• Add new stations or resources
  
• Add new sectors, technologies or scannable artifacts

All of these types of content can easily be made and redistributed through Steamworks. We expect that most modders will be happy with this.

Of course, there's is also stuff that can't be done through the Mod Kit : adding new questlines or contracts, changing the UI or gameplay mechanics, or editing existing content. There is however a way to do this anyway.

Here are some legal guidelines on using the Helium Rain Mod Kit.

• Modders will be using Unreal Engine 4 and will need to comply to the UE4 EULA. If you decide to sell a Helium Rain mod, please check the legal requirements in the UE4 EULA.
  
• Our game content is provided for documentation only. Do not use our content for new game projects, or total conversion mods for Helium Rain, without our written consent.
  
• No support is promised for modders, though we'd love to see you talk about it on the community forums & the unofficial Discord .

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On top of the mod kit, we also want to state that we're okay with source code mods. This is how you can accomplish the above feats that the Mod Kit doesn't cover.

Source code mods would work by updating the game's C++ code, which is freely available on GitHub under a permissive open-source license[github.com], and redistributing compiled executable files to Helium Rain players. This gives you full power on the entire game.

Of course, source code mods are a bit less straightforward too. You won't be able to publish source code mods on Steamworks, as various source code mods would override themselves, so you will have to handle distribution yourself.

The most ambitious modders might want to create a brand new game with Helium Rain as a basis - maybe in a different universe, or different gameplay. This is also completely acceptable ! Again, however, we ask that you use none of our content in such an endeavor.

We want to thank all of you for helping us get Helium Rain where it is today. It's been almost exactly five years since the project started, and though it's been a very long time, getting to the point where new developers can get their hands on our work is awesome. Do us proud !

Hello,

We've released the 1.3.6 update to Helium Rain. This update fixes two recently reported bugs :

• Fix research points increasing too quickly with Instruments tech
  
• Fix people consuming resource during construction

Thank you for playing Helium Rain !

We've released a new hotfix for Helium Rain.

This update fixes missing textures on Linux machines running some what older GPUs. A small Windows update was also published but shouldn't provide any noticeable change.

Hello,

We've released a new update to solve a few bugs we previously didn't know about.

• Fix station scrapping not detecting all cargos
  
• Fix free money exploit on contracts
  
• Cleanup unwanted files from client

We'll have more exciting news early next year with modding support !

Thank you for playing Helium Rain, and merry Christmas !

We've released a hotfix for Helium Rain today. As for 1.3.1, this update targets a specific issue.

• Fixed notifications at the end of a complex upgrade that would cause crashes

We're also retiring the beta branch of Helium Rain today. The default branch has featured the same builds for a few months now, so this won't have any impact.

We've released the 1.3.1 hotfix to Helium Rain to account for two new issues.

• Fix failure to start on Linux devices
  
• Fix mod launcher failing to start while not logged on to Steam

We're also investigating some crash reports. We'll have more news on mod support soon too !

It's been a month since our last major update, and we've some news for you today !

We've upgraded military contracts in depth. Previously, a military contract meant only one thing - war. You would attack a faction on another faction's orders, and end up at war with the target, making this business unsustainable.

This changes with our new mercenary-type contracts, where you will be free to attack your target at no reputation loss. Some variations of military contracts have also been introduced, including a new sector attack / sector defense contract. We hope this will let you play as pirates in a financially rewarding way. Good hunting !

Unreal Engine was upgraded from 4.19 to 4.20, enhancing support for some hardware that used to not start the game.

We've also fixed a few bugs. We're always on the lookout for issues, so please report us anything weird !

Helium Rain is a small-scale project that doesn't have a large publisher's backing - we haven't invested into localization. However, dedicated player Alexander Pyrov took the problem in its own hands, and decided to localize the game in Russian. All our Russian players can now enjoy his work in the game !

While we haven't set up an easy localization tool, we'll gladly include fan-made localization in the game. Contact us if you're ready to tackle a database of 12,000 words in your own language !

Modding games has been a staple of PC gaming for decades. As it happens, I have myself learned game development by modding games. We've always developed Helium Rain with modding support in mind, and while we can't officially announce anything yet, we've made sure this new release has the technical structure required for clean mod support through Steamworks.

Here's more about how modding Helium Rain is planned to work.

• Preliminary documentation is available on our Wiki[heliumrain.gamepedia.com].
  
• A dedicated modding kit is in development, based on the Unreal Engine 4 editor.
  
• A new executable,"HeliumRainLauncher", is now installed with the game and will collect Steamworks mods you've subscribed to before starting the game. This is currently not launched by Steam, and will be enabled when the modding kit releases. Feel free to start it to make sure it doesn't crash.

We look forward to announcing mod support once we've completed our development kit !

That's it for today ! We hope you have fun with the game. As usual, thank you for supporting us with this project.

Helium Rain 1.2.1 has been released with three minor changes.

• The flying HUD will now keep a consistent scale from 1080p to 4K, to ensure it's still readable at high resolutions
  
• Joystick inputs now correctly disengage autopilot
  
• Joystick throttle now features accurate speed control

Thank you for reporting these issues !

We're still working on a number of game crashes during gameplay. We're also considering a change to military contracts, to ensure chasing down targets doesn't result in all-out war against your company.