Giving Explore the Universe some Breathing Room
Published January 10 2026
By Elliot Telford
A Quick Update for Explorers 🚀
It’s been a long 3 weeks since Christmas! Wow, how the time flies by. Every day, I put about 12 hours into the game, Explore the Universe 2175 on average, so its been quite the grind! I am glad I set myself a deadline of Christmas even though I didn’t meet it, because it has helped me to cut the scope quite a lot!
It’s really easy to just start world-building when you are using AI. Its pretty fun to create stuff through automatons… to iterate, improve a little, come back, same thing. Gets a bit better every time.
Delays are fine if they improve the quality of the product.
For me, life—and creative work—isn’t about being on time. It’s about getting it right. If its not right, who cares about the timing.
Why the Delay Was Necessary (and Healthy)
When you build with AI-assisted workflows, it’s incredibly easy to fall into endless world-building loops. Iteration is fun. Automatons generate, refine, and polish. Things get a little better every pass. But at some point, engineering reality taps you on the shoulder.
A few days before Christmas, I made a big call: the stars needed to be real.
Fixing a long-standing bug between the procedural galaxy generator and the world manager unlocked proper planetary motion—but also exposed massive performance issues in the gravity system. Solving that has been the core focus ever since.
The good news?
👉 Stars now have gravity in ETU.
The better news? We’re almost through the worst of the performance bottlenecks. Which is why the DEMO is starting Tuesday.
Awesome things need their own Space-time
ETU isn’t a funded AAA production. There’s no publisher safety net here. This is something built from nothing—organically, system by system.
Giving the game more space to grow wasn’t a setback. It was the only honest move.
Why I’m Making This Game at All
At the end of the day, I love games. Rugby, warcraft, ETU, its all about playing.
I grew up playing Blizzard’s games, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, I even played Overwatch for a couple months. But I love the idea of a power fantasy, or just living in an alternate reality. Its pretty fun to kill monsters with friends, especially with friends that you have gotten to know because you are at similar ability levels.
At the beginning of 2024 I had to go get a new job because one of my landscaping clients decided not to pay for work that I had finished. It gave me feelings of complete powerlessness and uselessness. So I decided to up the ante on my education and start learning how to develop software and write code; which has always been an interest and a kind of hobby (I consider this website to be a hobby).
But in 2024, I chose Python as my primary language.
From Python to Black Holes, Stars and Planets 🌌
Learning Python meant learning:
- The math behind programming
- IDEs and development environments
- Scientific computation (Conda, NumPy, visualization tools)
So I got into python and started learning about the math behind programming, Integrated Development Environments, and setting up my macbrook PRO for development. At first it was a slog for sure, but definitely interesting! Using the guidance of AI models (Chat GPT) for learning the more abstract and less intuitive aspects of programming an environment was definitely interesting at first!
I started with learning all about the various Python libraries for scientific computation, especially Conda and the Graphical abilities of Python.
With the help of AI models like ChatGPT, I was able to grasp abstract concepts faster and apply them immediately. That opened the door to deeper research into:
- Astrophysics
- Black holes & accretion disks
- Particle dynamics
- Determinism, collisions, meshes, and rendering
It’s been a wild two-year arc—and I’m ready to step fully back into the online world.
My three favorite projects from that time period are:
1. the S2 Star Orbit Project (must be downloaded and run in Python on your machine)
2. The Uranus Real Time Environment Project (live on github, just click through)
3. Tracking the Sun’s Trajectory around Sagitarius A (made from orbital NASA data)
What I’m Building Now
Over the past year, I’ve launched (or am actively building) a suite of public-facing projects:
Telford Landscaping Website – A New Landscaping Website
Telford Projects – my new simulation portfolio website
ExploretheUniverse2175.com – the game website, could turn into kind of a social media site.
the E.T. Music – A Home for the E.T. and all of the music that I make
Obviously Looming in the background here is Explore the Universe 2175.
Closed Alpha, Demo, and the New Release Date
Here’s the plan:
- Closed Alpha begins Tuesday
- Apply by signing up at exploretheuniverse2175.com
- Alpha will likely be limited to ~100 players to ensure high-quality feedback
- Alpha phase: a couple of months
The new target release date is September 30 (9/30).
This gives the project room to breathe and allows marketing to scale steadily throughout the year—with the right players.
If you want to be part of shaping ETU early, this is your window.
Under the Hood: ETU’s ECS & Performance
ETU is designed as a space-combat-focused RTS, and performance is perhaps the most important aspect of play in a realistic physics environment.
The game is so awesome!
Right now:
- ~50 active units per scene
- Each unit may have 10+ projectiles in motion
- Fully dynamic physics and gravity systems
- Emergent Storyline
- Open world with over 5,000 Celestial Objects
I’m releasing the closed Alpha version on Tuesday to people that sign-up, so make sure you sign-up for the Demo and apply for Alpha Testing at exploretheuniverse2175.com if you want to be a tester. I am thinking about limiting the alpha to 100 players, just to make sure I get good feedback signaling. Not sure how long that phase will last, probably just a couple of months. The new release date for the game is 9/30… which will give me a bit of room to breathe and scale up the marketing during the course of the year… also, it will give me time to find the players that really want this game to be successful; I think there will be a lot!
So these are part of my multifaceted plan to enter into 2026 with the AI workforce. I’d really like to get a job at an AI lab, I’ve been using their products like crazy. I’m really loving codex, its so powerful.
The ECS system in Explore the Universe 2175
Explore the Universe 2175 is incredibly fast. Everything leans into a space combat RTS, and lately I have been delaying the game to polish it. We are sitting at about 12 FPS, but there is a massive about of dynamic entities in my scenes. Like 50 units, each with upwards of 10 projectiles in motion at one time. Its quite a bit of stuff, but with proper layering and my hand dandy RUST trade-off (yeah I’m working with cargo and RUST now) and the ECS systems are going to make the physics incredibly fast. Cutting edge, if I do say so myself.
What Happens Next
This moment feels… like a dream.
On Tuesday, Explore the Universe 2175 becomes real. The last two years of learning culminates.
That’s exciting. And a little scary. But that’s how you know it matters.
- Demo drops Tuesday
- exploretheuniverse2175.com may be briefly offline for database work
- Regular updates coming next week
If you haven’t already:
👉 Wishlist ETU on Steam
👉 Sign up for the Demo
👉 Apply for Alpha testing
This will be a high-quality game.
The only real question left is: how far will it go?
Thanks for being here—and for your patience. 🌌
