- Core Design Changes and Grounded Vehicles. - 16 September 2026
Although the sci-fi "idea" of hover crafts, flight and space ships is inspiring, I've come to realize many "space ship" and "hover craft" designs are simply out of place with the core original vision and for about 2 years now, working on Medusa Frontier was somewhat depressing due to struggle with visual quality, art assets and intended game experience of the original vision. Medusa Frontier core gameplay is intended to be grounded in a context of Surface Colonization,With that in mind, I am happy to announce a refreshed core art direction for Medusa Frontier. Flight based and "hover" vehicles will be removed from the game and development will continue with ground based vehicles in mind. Thankfully, development passion is being rejuvenated by re-designing my original hovercrafts and space ships as ground vehicles. These new concept vehicles are designed using AI assistance based on my o…
- Update 0.3.7.3 - 17 July 2026
Inventory UI and base building revision ------------------------------- This update features a revised start menu and inventory ui along with a few bugfixes and a major revision to fundamental base building and basic player vs object world scale proportions. This update also contains a few small texture revisions and small shader tweaks for experimental PBR and lighting workflow tests. As always, a sincere thank you goes out to all those who support Medusa Frontier as an Early Access project that was made available extremely early in the development cycle. New Inventory design------------------------ As seen below, the revised inventory window includes a fixed Info box for item descriptions. This may later be expanded for Scanning and Research mechanics to learn more about items. Revised Player and World Scale ratios.----------------------------------------- Scale and size of basic wall…
- Update 0.3.7.2 - 19 June 2026
Update 0.3.7.2--------------Bugfixing and Development. This update contains bugfixes, a few improved textures and several ships have been removed in an effort to refine the original art style and art direction.It has been almost a year since the last update and I do not want Medusa Frontier to be a neglected project. Most motivation and energy for development was sidelined by truly unexpected circumstances last year. Thankfully the medical issue hindering my focus on development has been resolved and several months have been spent recovering from a type of burnout while also learning to rebalance my obsessions and interests in graphics, engines and game development.Inspiring games along with recent game engine updates and announcements have revitalized my interest in development of Medusa Frontier and despite a long delay since the last update, features and improvements are often on my…
- Developer News & Labor Day Discount! - 1 September 2025
Greetings Prospectors! Development continues using my code base and engine. I've always been a HUGE fan of Labor Day and Labor Day discounts so Medusa Frontier will be available for 50% off this week! . Regarding , Update 0.3.7.5 Due to medical issues the monthly update will be delayed a week or two, but I am happy to be back at home and feeling well enough to look at a screen, play space games and work on Medusa Frontier. While recovering from a real life medical issue I never imagined experiencing, my thoughts sometimes drifted around unique game experiences and the potential of Medusa Frontier. While recovering IRL, my confidence was restored in original ideas that recovering HP in Medusa Frontier should simply take time. After meds and critical intervention, there is nothing else to do and it just takes time to heal. So far in Early Access development, there are not many ways to get…
- Development continues using custom engine - 2 August 2025
At the time of this post, Medusa Frontier has been in Early Access development for 3.3 years and despite a very novice Early Access Launch, slow and steady progress has improved the rendering engine or "technical" quality of the game. Although the code being used to develop Medusa Frontier is raw in many ways, the game experience and code base is not bound to third party engine licenses or code philosophy. As a solo developer that also enjoys budget friendly games, I feel current industry solutions have created an environment where gamers and developers are hungry for responsive gameplay and stylish visuals that a basic game engine with Forward rendering can provide. Although I truly enjoy many aspects of graphics programming and refining rendering performance, three years in Early Access has been far too long for supporters to wait for an improved game experience so it is time to shift…
- Update 0.3.7.0 - 1 August 2025
This update features significant optimization to texture loading and broad revisions to improve development, gameplay and visual quality. ---------------------Additions and Changes *Major Revision: A significant revision to texture loading has improved game startup speed dramatically. Texture loading is about 30x faster than previous builds since texture mipmaps are no longer generated at run time. *Major Revision: PBR materials have been simplified with a stylized roughness, metallic shader method that offers stable visual quality and color balance for development and art production. Productivity has already improved due to less time tweaking textures and materials in an Early Access phase when broad visual concepting and stable visual style are vastly more critical than refined PBR material realism. *Revision: Shader revisions for terrain and objects have improved visual quality of th…
- Update 0.3.6.2 - 1 March 2025
This update features revised terrain shaders, improved ambient lighting, prototype art assets, and bug fixing. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Revision: Ice Brine can be gathered from terrain heights 50 or higher. *Revision: Barrel mesh asset switched to Robot test mesh. *Revision: Camp Generators relocated to concrete structure. *Revision: Objects now have PBR like GGX specular. *Revision: Objects have improved ambience & daytime wrap light. *Revision: Terrain Ambient lighting increased slightly during night. *Revision: Terrain Lava has slight glow and now visible at night. *Revision: Terrain scale ratio reset as 1:2 height to world units. *Revision: Terrain shadow layer disabled. *Revision: Terrain no longer uses a splatmap for blending. *Revision: Map exploration is limited to 50 units from map edge. -------------------- Bug fix & Configuration: ---…
- Update 0.3.6.0 Ancient Structure Reveal - 17 February 2025
Thank you for your support during Early Access Development. This update contains a prototype temple that is one of many planned mysterious structures or locations intended for inspiring open world visuals and emergent gameplay opportunity beyond simple exploration and linear story development. Please note! The ancient structure in this update is a prototype point of interest and is very much a work in progress without collision or refined gameplay. A variety of game mechanics and core story elements are being considered for development, but the only thing written in stone at this time is that mysterious or ancient structures do and will exist in some form in Medusa Frontier. In addition to the large structure reveal, this update features revised terrain scale, improved object shaders, revised basic build pieces and more. --------------------- Additions and Changes ---------------------…
- Update 0.3.5.8 - 12 February 2025
This update contains revisions and bugfixing. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Added: FPS timer displayed during gameloop. *Bugfix: revised frame timer start and 16ms wait. *Revision: Activated Per Frame timer sync. 60FPS *Revision: Texture data now loads after starting new game or continue. *Revision: Shader fix for Terrain lighting re-enabled after troubleshooting. *Revision: Shader Error log is now active. Shader compile errors should display. *Known Issue: Terrain rendering errors on Nvidia GPU's are being examined. *Known Issue: RenderGoblinGames Logo blinks during startup. *Known Issue: Baked blob shadows on terrain remain after resources are harvested
- Update 0.3.5.6 - 10 February 2025
This small update contains a bugfix for object rendering. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Bugfix: Revised Draw Calls for improved stability. *Changes: Frame Timers are disabled for troubleshooting. *Changes: Disabled Screen space picking method to improve stability. *Changes: Start Menu background resized to 1k image for slightly faster loading. *Known Issues: Game crashing, terrain rendering errors or compatibility issues have been reported on Laptops using Nvidia 2000 series GPU's. The issue is being examined.
- Update 0.3.5.5 - 9 February 2025
This update contains a significant revision to core game rendering and shader organization. Game objects are now being split into three categories and code paths inside the core game engine. As such, Characters, Objects, and Vehicles will be managed in isolated code paths to improve organization and rendering quality of the respective game object types. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Core Engine: Moderate Shader Revision and re-organization. *Core Engine: Added Actor manager and shader. *Core Engine: Added Object manager and shader. *Core Engine: Added Vehicle manager and shader. *Known Issues: Game crashing, terrain rendering errors or compatibility issues have been reported on Laptops using Nvidia 2000 series GPU's. The issue is being examined.
- Update 0.3.5.4 - 6 February 2025
This update features increased view distance, improved Night Cycle Lighting, Shader revisions, and a few engine code revisions to improve texture loading and terrain rendering compatibility. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Change: Increased View Distance to 750 Units. *Change: Increased playable terrain area to 2km squared. *Change: Low terrain Lava vents have been reduced. *Change: Revised Object Shaders for day / night cycle lighting balance. *Internal Revision: Reduced the default terrain chunk buffer size for cleaner implementation. *Internal Revision: Terrain vertex texture data changed from GL_R16f to GL_R32F to improve GPU compatibility. *Internal Revision: Terrain rendering methods revised for compatibility and cleaner codebase implementation. *Internal Revision: 12ms frame limiter is currently active. 60hz Gameplay with Vsync is recommended. *…
- Update 0.3.5.3 - 24 January 2025
Game Startup, Compatibility, & Rendering Update ------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Change: Removed 1 pixel border around Game Window. *Change: Game Window Type is now WS_POPUP removing the 1 pixel border. *Change: OpenGL Game Window now initializes as OpenGL 4.6 context. *Bugfix: Screenshot image sizes should now match Game Window resolution. *Bugfix: Screenshots & game window had a 1 pixel border causing minor issue in screen capture *Bugfix: Display capture of the Game Window is now more compatible with streaming software. *Bugfix: Disabled lingering GL command that attempted to enable Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing. *Bugfix: First time players with fresh install attempting to Continue may have produced severe errors during script loading and save game loading. *Changes: Game Window has improved compatibility with OBS Capture Specific Window *Change: Removed…
- Bugfix & Shader Configuration. - 23 January 2025
Hotfix and Configuration Update ------------------- This update contains shader revisions for compatibility and troubleshooting. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Bugfix: Shader re-configuration set to GL 4.5 compatibility. *Bugfix: Disabled lingering GL command to enable Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing. *Change: Removed three redundant disable and enable commands in the Core Rendering Loop *Known Issues: Game crashing, rendering errors or compatibility issues have been reported on Laptops using Nvidia 2000 series GPU's. The issue is being examined.
- Shader and Configuration Update - 23 January 2025
This update contains shader revisions for compatibility and troubleshooting. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Bugfix: Shader Revisions to improve compatibility and stability. *Known Issues: Game crashing, rendering errors or compatibility issues have been reported on Laptops using Nvidia 2000 series GPU's. The issue is being examined.
- Update 0.3.5.1 - 23 January 2025
This update contains bugfixes, shader revisions and item configuration adjustments. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Added: New Intro Screen Background. *Bugfix: Shader Revisions to improve compatibility and stability. *Bugfix: Removed an incorrect termination triangle from terrain chunk mesh data. Padding and incorrect termination of the terrain chunk triangle buffer may have caused rendering or performance glitches some devices. *Known Issues: Game crashing, rendering errors or compatibility issues have been reported on Laptops using Nvidia 2000 series GPU's. The issues are being examined and shader revisions in this update should improve compatibility. ------------------------ Frame timers & Vsync. ------------------------ Basic Per Frame Timer code has been disabled for revision. During game engine start, VSYNC is enabled by default. Medusa Frontier…
- Alpha Update 0.3.5.0 - 19 January 2025
Early Access Update 0.3.5.0 This update contains new assets, significant texture pack revisions, game world starting changes, new assets, rendering optimizations and bugfixes to improve core rendering and game experience. Warning. Save Files from previous builds will not be fully compatible with this. Players are advised to start a new game for consistency. --------------------- Additions and Changes --------------------- *Added: New Ship: The Finch. Alliance: Drop Pod / Drone *Added: New Ship: The Robin. Alliance: Multi-Role Scout *Added: New Ship: The Raven. Alliance: Long Range Scout *Added: New Ship: Medusa R35. Colonial: Multi-Role Dropship *Added: New Ship: Reaper R35. Mercenary: Enforcer Gun Ship *Revision: Shader default lighting adjusted. *Revision: Shader & Texture Pack reconfiguration. *Revision: Health, Battery, & Hydro set to 50 on respawn. previously 35. *Revision: Several…
- Update 0.3.3.4 - 1 June 2024
Summer Splash Texture Update. -------------------------------- This update contains a revision to core game textures and removes normal maps so that art production and visual style experiments can remain organized during development. The new game scenario now has a working Camp Generator at location 300,400 along with a few ships and a collection of barrels used for texture testing. Fans and Settlers of Medusa Frontier can find randomly textured barrels this summer as part of the Summer Texture Splash tradition. There are no extra game features or mechanics for the Summer Texture Splash other than the random barrels used for testing and art production.
- Update 0.3.3.2 - 16 May 2024
This weeks update changes terrain scale to previous setting used in early alpha tests. The revised terrain scale is rendered in the game world 2X larger than the terrain data. This provides a very practical data density and increases the playable world space without drastic change to visual quality. Unfortunately, the terrain revision in this update impacts saved data and players are advised to create a new game. The 2x terrain scale offers a fantastic baseline for continued development and improves performance with a consistent visual quality that works well for the intended game experience on most modern graphics hardware. This patch also revises players gravity or downward velocity when standing on a platform or terrain. The new resting velocity provides enough force to allow smooth walking down hills without subtle falling skips and jitters experienced in previous builds. This resti…
- What to expect from update 0.3.3.2 - 12 May 2024
The recent day and night cycle revision was a needed boon for visual quality and the ever elusive immersive game experience that inspires confidence and value of every feature in Medusa Frontier. After careful consideration, I realized a 2x terrain scale makes better use of limited development resources and strikes a balance that is ideal for the intended game experience and target graphics performance. Using a 2x terrain scale increases explorable game world and surface area by 4x and creates a nice balance of intended visuals, improved open world gameplay, good graphics performance and a better overall immersive experience as players explore the game environment. To be blunt, 2x terrain scale also makes the most of limited game engine features while securing a better open world game experience and exploration scenarios involving large travel distances.
