This cycle is almost entirely visual: your planets are real shaded 3D spheres now, galaxies are true spiral arms instead of a scatter of dots, and the in-game Guide got rebuilt with real screenshots for every page. The Galaxy map is also a lot more clickable — tap a star to explore a system, tap a planet to act on it, right from the map itself. A showpiece PixiJS map renderer, a rebuilt Battle Replay, real UI sound effects, and a batch of fixes round out the update.
Real 3D Planets (new)
- Your planet banner on the Overview tab now has an Orbit / Surface toggle — Orbit shows a live, slowly-turning shaded sphere matched to your planet's real type (rock, ice, gas, volcanic, ocean, or desert); Surface keeps the original ground-level scene.
- Small planet icons on the Galaxy, Empire, and system-list pages are shaded to match too, not just flat colored circles.
- Falls back automatically to the flat art on Low graphics quality, or if your browser can't run it — nothing required on your end.
- Each galaxy is now a real spiral — two curved arms, a glowing core, dust lanes — instead of systems scattered at random. Your systems ride the arm in order, so "further out" genuinely means further from the core.
- The Galaxy tab now opens straight on your active planet's own system instead of a generic default, and re-centers there when you switch planets.
- Planets on a system map are spaced out properly now too — no more overlapping names in a crowded system.
- Click the star in any system to open it up — territory status, Explore or Survey Again, and (once charted) every planet, pirate outpost, and deposit in that system as a clickable list.
- Click any planet, pirate outpost, or mining deposit right on the map to pull up the same info and action buttons the list below it has — Colonize, Attack, Mine, and so on — without scrolling down to find it.
- The Galaxy and System views now render through a whole new PixiJS-based map, with a High/Low graphics-quality toggle so lower-end devices can still run it smoothly.
- Battle Replay was rebuilt as a proper animated scene, and incoming attacks now trigger a real on-screen alert.
- Returning fleets are now colored green on the map instead of looking identical to outbound ones, and inbound hostile fleets plus claimed alliance territory show as live markers.
- Every page's in-game Guide now walks you through it step by step with real screenshots you can click to enlarge, instead of just paragraphs — the full written explanation is still there too, tucked under "More details."
- New canvas starfield background, redesigned HUD resource bar, self-hosted fonts, and real click/hover UI sound effects throughout.
- Sub-tab styling was unified across the whole app to match the Leaderboard/Inbox look.
- Sharper starfield rendering, smoother font loading, working sound effects on iOS, and clearer keyboard-focus outlines.
- Fixed a resource-boosted planet type (Rock/Ice/Gas/etc.) sometimes showing raw placeholder text instead of its actual bonus description on the Resources tab.
- Fixed a stray ship marker that could get left behind at the center of the galaxy map after clearing a plotted route.
- Pages you haven't visited yet now load on demand instead of all at once — first load should feel noticeably snappier.
— The Skye Space Team