Hello everyone,

This update is about living on a planet that behaves like a planet. Skies that were supposed to look different but often vanished are visible again and fully reworked. Trees, rocks, buildings and roads sit on the real ground. Stargate travel actually completes. Costs match what the game shows you.

Atmospheres you can actually see

Planets already had their own skies. In practice they were often invisible from space (the sky used the blue channel as its transparency, so anything that was not blue faded out), and the horizon could go black or muddy, with a yellow-green band that did not belong to ice or desert worlds.

Every planet type’s sky has been reworked — habitable, rock, ice, desert, volcanic — so the color, the horizon, and the thin limb from space match the world you are on.
Tall things no longer poke through the sky when you look from orbit: buildings, trees, stargates. The atmosphere sits a little higher, and the oversized environment props (trees, rocks, and the stargate portal) have been scaled down to fit the world.

Trees, rocks and grass on the ground

Decorations were not using the same height as the terrain you walk on, so forests could float far above the surface, sit in the ocean, or grow through a town. Harvesting also disagreed between what you saw and what the server knew.

Trees, rocks and grass now sit on the same ground you walk on, including when the planet loads more detail around you.
They stay out of the water and out of cities. Trees and rocks you can chop or mine keep their harvested state when the mesh refines.
They are smaller, in line with buildings and the atmosphere, instead of towering over everything.

Building on the curve

The previous update already stopped confirmed roads from jumping. This one is about laying a city around a sphere.

Each slab follows the slope under it and stays flush with its neighbors, instead of staying “upright” in universe space.
The gap between tiles follows the planet’s curve, so long roads no longer open joints. Turning a road keeps it on the surface. You pay for every tile you place.
A building goes down if a road is actually next to it — previously the preview could look fine and nothing would spawn. The red “too far from a road” warning tints the ghost, not the finished piece.
Walls and floors share the same placement rules. The mouse wheel rotates the piece the same way on Mac and PC.

Stargates — travel that finishes

Using a gate to another planet on the same sector (or after a sector change) was unreliable: the vortex could wait forever, drop you somewhere random, leave the destination world unloaded, or leave the building menu stuck on your screen. Opening the list of gates also hammered the server.

When the vortex ends, you arrive next to the exit gate, on a planet that is actually loaded. A loading screen covers the wait after a sector change. You are not thrown to a random point while the exit is found.
The gate menu is lighter and keeps your destination coordinates when the panel refreshes. Travel closes the building UI so you are not stuck placing something on the other side.
The portal itself is smaller, in line with the rest of the scaled-down environment.

What things actually cost

After the resource list was cleaned up, many buildings, units and researches were still charging the old materials — gunpowder on turrets, gold on units, oil or research points on fiber, and so on. The name on the tooltip and what you lose in stock are the same now.

You start with Wheat, Hay, Water, Food, Wood and Stone. Research points come from laboratories, not from those starters.
Turrets upkeep Wood and Cut Stone. Medieval fiber and its bonuses cost Hay or Wax.
Hunters produce fish. Modern mines use the current minerals. Units and ship parts no longer take a leftover gold wage.

Walking, driving, and arriving on a planet

Units and animals walk around the sphere instead of fighting it (including the run-in-place on animals and aliens). They are not spun around while they are already moving.
Vehicles keep a stable heading on the ground and in space, and bank in 3D instead of sliding like a 2D sprite.
The planet keeps loading detail as you walk around it. Spawn waits until the ground is really there before putting you on it.
Destroying a building removes it instead of leaving a burning wreck on the plot.

Thanks for playing NEO! Stay tuned for more updates.

Nalem

Full changelog

Atmospheres

Skies per planet type already existed. From space they often vanished because transparency used the blue channel; the horizon could go black when thickness did not match the shader, with a yellow-green band on ice and similar worlds.
Visual rework of habitable, rock, ice, desert and volcanic skies: horizon color, overall grade, limb from space, and thickness kept in the range the sky shader can actually draw.
Atmosphere envelope raised so tall surface objects (buildings, trees, stargates) no longer stick out of the halo from orbit.

Environment

Trees, rocks and grass were spawned at full prefab size, often at the wrong height (including far above the surface when the planet used compute terrain), in water, and through towns. Harvest tools did not match what you saw.
They now sit on the same terrain mesh you walk on, skip water and cities, stay harvested across detail reloads, and are scaled down to fit buildings and the sky.
Client decorations (grass, clouds) reload with planet detail without wiping choppable trees and rocks.

City building

Follow-up to the previous road-preview fix: each tile uses the local slope, geodesic spacing on the sphere, shared wall/floor mesh, yaw that does not flatten the surface tilt, cost per tile.
A building is accepted when a road is in the placement search, matching the preview. The “too far from a road” tint applies to the ghost only. Mouse-wheel rotation is the same on Mac and PC.

Stargates

Local travel reworked: destination resolved once (no per-tick server flood), wait for the exit after a sector change, loading UI, teleport next to the gate on a loaded planet, no random throw while waiting.
Gate list: two batched reads instead of one request per nearby system. Coordinates survive the menu refresh. Building UI closes before travel.
Portal visual scale reduced to match the environment.

Resources and research

Tooltips and actual costs aligned: turrets Wood/Cut Stone, fiber Hay/Wax, hunters fish, modern mines current minerals, no leftover gold wage on units and ship parts.
Starters are Wheat, Hay, Water, Food, Wood, Stone. Research points unlock with a laboratory.
Production does not tick until you have finished spawning into the sector.

Movement, spawn, buildings

Ground and space movement no longer uses the old path grid against the sphere. Units are not reoriented mid-move. Vehicles keep local heading and 3D bank.
Planet detail refreshes while walking around the globe. Spawn waits for a fully loaded planet. Destroyed buildings despawn instead of remaining as fire-only wrecks.
Mac compute terrain generation no longer breaks the ground mesh.