- Let's Dev Some More! - 15 August 2026
Oye, Hoppers! It's time for another "Let's Dev" video. Today we talk about new NPC interact options, including hiring NPCs to do your bidding. I also managed some significant load time improvements. watch the video to find out all you need to know.
- New Dev Video! - 2 August 2026
We just published our first 'Let's Dev' video, in which I explain what I've been up to these last five years and show off what the game looks like today. Join us, won't you?
- Fresh Dev Stream Highlights! - 11 November 2025
Every other week or so we do a live stream on our multiplayer server to show off how things are coming along. This week we invite some new players on and things get a little hectic. Check out the highlights!
- Dev Stream Incoming! - 20 September 2025
We've switched over to a dedicated server for more stability and capacity, so today we'll start letting some new people on and see how performance is. Join us at 5e/2p And find out if we melt the server or not!
- It's almost time for another multiplayer dev stream. Join us! - 6 September 2025
In half an hour, I'll be going live on twitch with more Rock Hoppers multiplayer survival gameplay. We're aiming to get some actual basebuilding done between all of the adventuring today, so don't miss it.We're going live today, September 6, at 5 Eastern, 2 Pacific on twitch
- Devs will be Live on Twitch at 2P/5E/10BST with Drop-in Survival Multiplayer! - 16 August 2025
Join us on twitch at once again at 2 Pacific / 5 Eastern / 10 BST for part two of our two player Survival playthrough with the devs. We have some new features to show off and are progressing through the early game. Might get around to some basebuilding tonight. We hope to see you all there! https://twitch.tv/statelyMC
- Watch the Devs play Rock Hoppers Live Today at 5P/2E - 2 August 2025
Join us on twitch at once again at 2 Pacific / 4 Eastern / 10 BST for the first in our weekly series of Rockhoppers streams. As we build towards releasing a demo in the not-too-distant future, I'll be talking about the current state of the game and where we're going with it while showing off survival gameplay. Join me, artist Leisa, and executive producer and lead tester Pete on my twitch channel.
- More Streams and More Highlights! - 26 July 2025
The highlights from last week's stream are up. We made it through our first incursion, thanks to a little luck and the tiny autoturret that could, and as usual, our Social Media Maven Leisa has made us look far more entertaining than we actually are. Check it out!And if that's not enough, we're doing it again. Join us today, July 26th at 2 Pacific / 5 Eastern / 10 London on twitch to see if we finally manage to make a vehicle and visit the boss we've been tasked with finding!
- Devs in Spaaaace! - 24 July 2025
We've put up a highlight reel of our recent live stream. Or maybe it's more of a blooper reel. Either way, it's six minutes of your life you'll never get back.
- Dev stream 6/19 at 2p/5e. Join us! - 19 July 2025
Come watch the devs play Rock Hoppers on twitch at https://twitch.tv/statelymc. Today we'll be continuing our single player survival world that we started last week. Don't miss it!
- Watch the Devs play Rock Hoppers! - 12 July 2025
Join us on twitch at 2 Pacific / 4 Eastern / 10 BST for the first in our weekly series of Rockhoppers streams. As we build towards releasing a demo in the not-too-distant future, I'll be talking about the current state of the game and where we're going with it while showing off survival gameplay. Join me, artist Leisa, and executive producer and lead tester Pete on my twitch channel:
- New Creator Tutorial Series! - 9 May 2024
One of Rock Hopper's greatest strengths is its extensive content creation tools. The creative editor, which allows you to create beautiful, dynamic locations, and the Story Arc editor, which lets you make branching Story Lines with full integration into the questing system, are built right into the game. Even though the game's not out yet, we have content to create, and lots of it, so I created this series of tutorials, in part to help our content creators to get started creating the vibrant and exiting worlds I want to give you with the game, but also so that you can get a taste of the tools you too will be able to use on launch day. The first five episodes cover prefab creation, from the basics all the way to modular builds and mission integration. The final three eps cover the story arc system. I hope you find them informative. And stay tuned. Things are heating up on that faraway as…
- May 2023 Development Update - 4 June 2023
Hello, Rock Hoppers. I'm here to give you all an update on what I've been working on this month. This one's gonna be pretty brief. Gestures I've added a series of player gestures for use in multiplayer. Players can now wave at each other, shrug, apologize, and cheer. I have a few more empty slots, and some ideas on how to fill them, but I don't know much of anything about animating skinned models. So far I've been able to get by with canned animations, but I think I'm gonna have to learn something new for this one. Better NPCs I starting laying the foundations for the improved characters by adding a meta-database of all NPCs. This allows NPCs to be referenced at all times, even if they aren't currently spawned. This has a whole slew of benefits. It allows me to create missions that reference multiple characters, even if those characters haven't been created yet. It allows for persistent…
- April 2023 Development Update - 2 May 2023
Welcome, Rock Hoppers, to the 1st of May edition of our devlog. I've been working on adding some core and core-adjacent functionality and I've started a concerted effort to optimize the multiplayer experience. Steam Workshop Integration We were always planning on implementing the Steam Workshop, but to be honest, I didn't expect it to happen before early access. I decided it would be a good use of my time after realizing I had dozens of prefabs and maps with dubious names scattered all over several development machines. So now, players can upload their prefabs, including complexes with multiple elements, and entire maps to the workshop right from the menu. When you want to release a complex, which can consist of any number of prefabs, all you have to do is publish the root prefab. The game will find all connected prefabs (corridors, rooms, and adjacent structures, for example) into a si…
- March 2023 Development Update - 1 April 2023
Welcome back, Rock Hoppers! I'm here to fill you in on what we've been up to over the last month. I think I mentioned last month that I was going to start working on the NPC overhaul. That did not happen. Instead, I spent much of the month fixing bugs. It ain't glamorous, and it doesn't write up quite as well for blog posts, but we're far enough along in the development cycle that I can longer put paying off tech debt and making the multiplayer in particular more robust. That does not mean to say I haven't been busy - besides a dozen new debug builds, I have added a few features and visible improvements. For starters, there's a new vehicle recovery bay. One of the issues we constantly ran into during testing is that, when you die, your vehicle remains wherever you parked it last. That could be right around the corner from your respawn location, but let's be honest; nine times out of ten…
- February 2023 Development Update - 28 February 2023
Hello again, Rock Hoppers! I've been busy this month and I can't wait to tell you all what I've been working on. Damage Textures I implemented a set of damage overlay textures into the triplanar shaders we use for pretty much everything in game. These textures visualize block damage for the players without having to resort to using the repair tool. There are separate textures for concrete, plastic, metal, and flooring. Restore Missions When a neutral or friendly location suffers damage, its residents may ask you to repair it. Repair missions involve placing repair blocks in highlighted locations. Once you turn the mission in, the location is restored to its original condition. Doing restore missions helps you gain the trust of the faction you're working for, and from a gameplay perspective, involves the player in the consequences of the background simulation. Ice Field and Vehicle Missi…
- January 2023 Development Update - 1 February 2023
Welcome, Rock Hoppers! I feel like it's long past time that I started providing regular updates on the game's progress, so here we are. It's been about six months since we went live with our Steam page, and four months since we opted out of Next Fest, because it turns out (who knew?) that making games is hard. Mind you, four months ago, we had a kind-of-playable shell of a game, with basic implementations of the core features. Now, we have a much more refined experience, and we're this close to being feature complete. Multiplayer and performance Our latest test build has fully functional multiplayer, with dedicated (headless) servers, as well as drop-in multiplayer over Steam. We've made massive performance improvements, with load times down to under two minutes for all but the largest builds. We do still have a way to go with in-game performance. We're pretty heavily CPU bound, but on…
- Watch the devs play Rock Hoppers on Twitch! - 1 December 2022
If you want to keep up on what we've been working on, Pete has taken to streaming twice a week on Twitch. He's been playing the single-player game, as well as showing off the POI editor and answering your questions. Join us live on Twitch Wednesdays and Saturdays at 6 PM Pacific / 9 Eastern, or tune in to a previous broadcast any time!
- Public Playtest Ending - 19 September 2022
Hello, Rock Hoppers! Over the next few days, we're going to be winding down the current round of playtesting and moving to a series of more focused tests. For now, that means we're going to be closing down the current steam playtest and archiving the associated discord channels. If you're involved in ongoing technical testing, you'll receive further information in the next few days. A big thank you to everybody who took the time to participate in our playtest up until now. Your feedback has helped us make Rock Hoppers a better game. Please check in with us here or on Discord for information about new playtest opportunities in the not too distant future.
- The Devs Play Rock Hoppers - Episode Two - 4 September 2022
In episode two of our Devs Play series, we show off the skill tree and we start making our upgraded weapons and armor. We kill some sneks, stomp some sproaches, and maybe get wiped. Tune in to find out!
