Exogate Initiative
0.8.5 update hotfix 3
Fixed: Gaters should now properly use the recreation room
Fixed: Gaters will store loots from missions properly when coming back even if they are hungry or tired
Fixed: It’s not possible to sell and object that is not builded yet anymore
0.8.5 update hotfix 2
Autumn Sale and Steam Awards at the Exogate Initiative
It’s that time of year when the leaves fall off the trees, or regrow, depending on where you are on the planet - or indeed which exoplanet you’re standing on, which might not even have any trees at all! Which means it’s the Steam Autumn Sale, with Exogate Initiative continuing to enjoy its hefty 25% discount - our biggest sale yet!
And what better time to step through the Exogate than right now, after we’ve just launched our biggest content update yet: Alien Gaters!
Check out yesterday’s launch post for the full list of new features, but in short:
- You can now recruit alien gaters to live and work in the base and go on missions
- You can revisit planets to explore them further and gather more resources
- New unlocks in the tech tree, and quality of life improvements for the UI and star map
So what are you waiting for? Consider yourself cleared to proceed through the Exogate.
An alien gater, reporting for duty!Steam Awards
It’s also awards season at the Initiative, and it’s not just about gaters vying for the XO’s attention. If you’ve enjoyed your time with Exogate Initiative in Early Access so far, then please consider voting for us in the Steam Awards. For a tiny developer like us, this kind of recognition can make a huge difference. Follow this link to vote, and see if any of the categories align with your experience.
For small developers like us, votes for awards, along with reviews and social engagement, can be game changers
Thank you for your support, and we’ll see you again soon through the Exogate!
Safe travels,
Maxime MILLET
Creative Director, Xeno Bits
Update 0.8.5 Launch: Alien Gaters
We’re pleased to announce that as of right now, patch 0.8.5 is live on Steam! Update your game and check out the following new content:
- Alien gaters: Meet 3 new alien races, and recruit their members to work in the base and go on missions.
- New Operations room: A new room to unlock, which allows scientific expeditions to return to previously-visited worlds, so you can fully explore them and bring back more resources.
- More new features!: Exonium Generators, Builder Bot Upgrades, improved mission UI and star map navigation.
To celebrate, we’ve put the game on sale for 25% discount! That’s our biggest sale yet. So if you’re still itching to explore the universe, now is a great time to step through the Exogate.
See the end of this post for the full change log details.
Reporting for Duty From Across the Universe
Three new alien races can now be encountered on the star map, and recruited to work for the Initiative. Each race has their own unique appearances, personal names, backstory, events, and gameplay traits!
You’ll recruit them into the existing gater classes, meaning they can work in the base and go on missions, just like human gaters! Unlock them by exploring the star map and making first contact, just as you would with other intelligent races - except during one of the events, you’ll have the chance to recruit a member of their race into the Initiative. They will return through the Exogate with the team, and begin their new life in the base!
It doesn’t stop there, however. Once you’ve established relations with their race and claimed a presence on their world, you can recruit even more of them!
Revisiting Planets
We’ve heard your call about returning to previously-visited worlds, and now you can with the new Operations room! After first exploring a planet, you’ll be notified of its scientific potential. Claim the world, build an Expedition Mapper in the Operations room, then lock it onto the planet you’d like to revisit - now you can send a scientific expedition to collect valuable resources!
Return to planets to collect science resources, and broadcast job offers to alien gaters - all in a day’s work in the new Operations room
Operations is where you can also recruit more alien gaters: build an Alien Gater Recruitment Console, which lets you broadcast job offers to alien worlds you’ve claimed a presence on. This ensures members of that race will apply during your next recruitment campaign!
And There’s More!
Other significant new additions in this update are:
Exonium Generators
New to the Power Plant tech tree, these are by far the most powerful generators in the game! They run on Exonium, so if you’re short on power, and you’ve an abundance of this refined material sitting in storage, this could be for you.
Builder Bot Upgrades
New upgrade paths in the Builders tech tree allow you to upgrade builder bot movement and repair speeds, and increase the total number you can have in the base. This is in addition to the previously introduced Bedrock Laser Drill, giving you more options to customize your builders.
Improved Mission UI
An improved missions-in-progress HUD, notifying you not only of which teams are on which planets, but also the type of mission they are on and its current status, as well as providing shortcuts to quickly control each mission, and view its destination on the star map.
Got an excess of Exonium? Then get ready to fuel up the most powerful generators in the base!
What’s Next
In case you missed it, we recently shared our Early Access roadmap progress. With the Alien Gaters patch now out, we’ve updated the roadmap so you know what to expect and when, as we continue towards our 1.0 launch:
We hope you enjoy the new content in the game! We’d love to hear your thoughts, whether that’s through a Steam review, a thread on the Steam forums, or getting in touch directly via the in-game feedback tool and bug reporter.
We’ll see you again soon through the Exogate!
Safe travels,
Maxime MILLET
Creative Director, Xeno Bits
Changelog 0.8.5
Please note that previous saves are still fully compatible, but due to a lot of balancing changes you will have a better experience by starting a new game.
New
- Alien gaters! Meet 3 new alien races with their own narrated events, which allow you to recruit one of their race to work for the Initiative.
- Operations room! Contains the new Expedition Mapper, which lets science teams return to visited worlds to explore them further and gather more resources. Also houses the Alien Gater Recruitment Console, which lets you recruit more alien gaters from a specific race, once you’ve claimed a presence on their world.
- Science expeditions! Each destination now has a “scientific potential,” which is only revealed after your first visit, and shows the quantity of science resources that can be gathered there. Use the new Expedition Mapper to send scientific teams back to visited worlds, to gather bio samples, specimens, and other items of interest.
- Builder bot upgrades! New to the tech tree, unlock multi-stage upgrades for builder bot movement speed, repair speed, and maximum number in the base.
- Exonium generator! The most powerful generator in the game by some margin, and powered by your exonium reserves, which dutiful engineers will automatically replenish.
- New mission tracking interface, which makes it much easier to see the current status of all your missions, with seamless integration with the star map for ease of navigation and control. For example, missions can now be held and resumed with a few clicks on the UI, without having to cancel and restart from the star map.
- You can now use spaces in team names!
- Keyboard shortcuts 1-5 for the main UI bar
- Builders do not consume base energy anymore but there number is now limited
- You can’t have more than 50 gaters in the base
- You can now see gater attributes as a tooltip during mission events
- New VFX when Sqarb bodies disappear
- New checkbox to auto-assign appropriate equipment to gaters when setting up a mission
Changes
- Gaters will no longer interrupt a mission launch if they are hungry or sleepy
- You can’t select an invalid team for a mission anymore
- Improved balancing for power generation and power requirements
- Bio samples and specimens looted during mission events will now grant higher quality patent theories
- Legendary patent theories can now only be developed from bio samples and specimens looted during mission events
- Money gained from selling materials is now displayed on the monthly budget summary
- Star map procedural generation was entirely reworked for better balance on new save games
- Improved notification visibility on main UI bar when a recruitment campaign is over
- Improved Sqarbs targeting systems
- Notification log during mission events will reset back to the top when a new entry is added
- New notifications when a team assigned to a destination is not valid anymore
- Improved team and gaters sorting based on context in pickers
- You can now use the arrow keys to scroll in the event editor
- Improved influence gain balancing - you will now gain more from missions and claimed intelligent beings worlds, and less from the number of claimed sectors
- Increased influence cost of sectors far from Earth
- Recruitment campaign sorting order has been inverted so it’s easier to view; expired campaigns are now also automatically removed after some time
- Exploration reward icon for unusual destinations is now an XP icon, to be more self-explanatory
Monthly trending and slumping classes are now also shown on the class selection for new recruitment campaigns - Reworked threats and equipment section of the star map destination detail panel
- Reworked vacant/engaged lights on specimen containment to be consistent with bio sample containment
- Improved the visibility of the Sqarbs’ homeworld on the star map
- Improved balancing of wear and tear for power generators
Fixes
- Lots of improvements for sound management - there should be no more stutter, and sound spatialization should also be improved
- Fixed a bug when building a room inside another room - the object/furniture selection was sometimes incorrect for the selected room
- Loading a game where a gater had been injured during a mission was not displaying the injury on the mission results screen
- Foundry and material storage objects are no longer still animated while the game is paused
- Fixed a bug where gaters sometimes got stuck in the ICU
- Fixed some bugs where builders were not doing maintenance properly
- Using the delete key to remove objects was not properly refunding money
- Builders would sometimes freeze while refilling meal dispensers
- Fixed a bug where gaters could sometimes claim multiple lockers
- Fixed a bug where food stock was sometimes not delivered to meal dispensers
- Gaters were sleeping in the wrong direction on canopy beds
- Fixed a bug where you could not purchase an object if you had exactly the cost amount of money left
Alien Gaters Arrive on Monday!
Just a quick message to let you know that patch 0.8.5, also known as the Alien Gaters Update, is launching on Monday 20 November, some time in the morning (French time).
You can read more about what else is coming in the update in our patch preview (returning to visited planets!), but we’ll also be doing a launch post on the day to give you the full lowdown, so please look out for that.
Until then...
Safe travels,
Maxime MILLET
Creative Director, Xeno Bits
Exogate Initiative: Roadmap Progress October 2023
As we mentioned in our last patch preview about alien gaters (which you can read here if you missed it), we wanted to update you on the progress of Early Access so far, and be more specific about what new features you can expect and when.
Here is the latest look at the roadmap:
We're immensely grateful for your support, having just passed the six-month milestone since our Early Access launch.
The Story So Far
We focused the first updates after the Early Access launch on improving the game’s stability, performance and balancing, so thank you to everyone that has reported bugs and other issues. Remember, there’s the in-game feedback tool in the pause menu if you spot a bug, or just want to let us know your thoughts.
The first major content update was patch 0.8.4, which added the Event Editor and Steam Workshop integration, allowing you to create and share story events using the same tools as the dev team - including the new ability to link events together into overarching storylines. This came with a bunch of new events and storylines added to the game, along with more bug fixes, polish, and buildable objects.
Next Steps
The Alien Gaters update is progressing well towards a November release. We can’t wait to get this new content into your hands, so you can recruit alien gaters into your base - along with the ability to revisit planets via the new Operations room!
After that we’ll be working hard to add more content to the game, so that exploring the universe is even more rewarding and fulfilling.
Thanks to our early adopters our funding is secure, and our vision is becoming a reality. With this strong foundation, we're excited to confirm that Version 1.0 is still on track for a spring 2024 release!
Thank you for your continued support, and we hope you’re as excited as we are about what’s coming next through the Exogate!
Safe travels,
Maxime MILLET
Creative Director, Xeno Bits
Patch Preview: Alien Gaters Incoming!
First, we are so grateful for your support and feedback, which are precious for our indie team. Thanks to our early adopters, our funding is secure, and our vision for Exogate Initiative is becoming a reality. Things are moving along smoothly so far and the next update is still planned for November – and we think you’ll be pretty excited about what's in store!
Alien Gaters
The next patch will introduce new intelligent beings to the game, who may be eager to join the Initiative - once you’ve made progress learning more about them. Each one will feature not only a new appearance, but also unique traits and abilities!
Here’s a sneak peek at one of the 3 alien races you may soon find within your ranks: We are glad to introducing the Nuclid, energy-based life forms living inside a bipedal exoskeleton!
Brings new meaning to having a meltdown
New Room: Operations
Welcome to the new Operations room, ready to be installed in your base! Among other fixtures and fittings, here you’ll find the Expedition Mapper, which enables a scientific team to return to any exoplanet already visited; they may bring back bio samples, specimens, and any other items of interest! We know this is a much-requested feature, and we look forward to getting it into your build menu, XO!
Science teams can finally return to previously-explored worlds, to unlock their full potential
We will soon get back to you with more info regarding our roadmap (we are on track 🚀).
Your continued enthusiasm and feedback drive us forward. Here's to more discoveries and adventures beyond the Exogate!
Safe travels,
Maxime MILLET
Creative Director, Xeno Bits
0.8.4 Hotfix
- Fixed builders that were not repairing some equipments
- Fixed gaters that were not assigned to medbeds in some specific cases
Welcome to the Mission Event Editor! - 0.8.4 Changelog and Patch Notes
Thank you so much for your patience the last couple of weeks as we readied our latest patch. The team is now back in full force and we're coming to you today with a brand new, fairly major update to Exogate Initiative. Thank you to those of you who provided feedback on our beta test opt-in, as it helped refine a few bits a pieces. For those of you who took part in the beta branch, we're recommending you switch back to the release version with this patch. We plan to keep the beta branch on par with release, but we feel it's safer for your saved games to opt back into the beta if/when we drop another beta test.
This patch brings forward a long-teased addition to the game, plus a bunch of fixes and new bits and pieces. There's also a bit of news for you as well, so let's dive in:
First off, we brought on a new developer to help build and improve on Exogate Initiative. Their past experience includes work on Dune Spice Wars and Northgard and we're very happy to welcome them.
Secondly, we realize that we originally announced this patch for "by the end of July," and then there was another delay in August, so unfortunately it took a lot more time to put together than we expected. We're going to work to be more open and communicate changes like this better with the community in the future.
As for the patch itself, we've made some big optimization changes, which in turn changed a bunch of things. You'll experience a LOT of improvements throughout the game experience, but there's always the possibility that we missed some new issues. Should you come across anything, please report them through the in-game tool.
We'll continue working on improvements to the UX, Gaters, and team & equipment management. We also thank each and every one of you for providing feedback and ask that you continue to do so on all platforms. Your feedback will continue to help guide us, showing us where the community is most focused.
As for the next major patch, we're aiming for early November, though there will likely be smaller updates/hotfixes along the way. For this next major patch we're looking to add the following:
- Alien Gaters - Yep! You'll finally be able to recruit aliens to your squads.
- Revisiting Planets - We're working on a new room that will handle what is without a doubt the most requested feature, returning to previously visited planets.
- And of course continued balancing and UX improvements.
From all of us, thank you,
The Xeno Bits team
0.8.4- change log
New
- Mission event editor that allows you to create new events, storylines and aliens
- Mission event simulator to test your creations
- Steam Workshop integration to share your creations and/or download those created by the community
- You can find a guide to the Mission Editor here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3013337316
- 37 new narrated events, including 24 for a new event type related to environmental hazards
- Storylines support - mission events connected together that span across multiple destinations
- A new warning will be displayed on the game HUD when an invasion is about to happen
- New unlockable builders tech to dig the bedrock
- New barrack room object: Canopy bed, a deluxe bed with a locker included
- New barrack room object: Nap pod, aunit that provides fast sleep but with a mental health cost
- 5 new male-presenting gater facial hairs
- 6 new female-presenting gater hairstyles
- New visual effect when Sqarbs body dissapear
Changes
- Massive performance improvements related to AI and pathfinding
- Team management improvements: it is now possible to manage teams directly from the star map.
- More details are also displayed like the status of each gater
- Equipment management improvements: exosuits are now assigned to gaters for a specific destination only when setting up the mission
- Big improvements on Sqarbs AI
- Not all Sqarb invader bodies will drop bio samples anymore
- Made first contact objective retroactive
- It’s now possible to skip mission reports from mining teams
- Mission events will be interrupted if a team member falls unconscious
- Medics will now heal other medics as priority
- Medics will now heal the most critically-injured gaters as priority
- Improved widescreen cursor management
- Escape key can now cancel current object placement
- Equipment requirement is now directly displayed on starmap
Fixes
- Alien culture data pack could double in size with each save reload
- Medic injury severity reduction on missions was not always calculated properly
- Builders were sometimes not fixing equipment
- Gaters were sometimes not going on mission
- Issues with exosuits not loading properly
- Improved performance when doors are locked
- Fixed issues with sound and music that were stuttering after long playtimes
- Fixed issues where teams got stuck if a mission was started when an invasion was about to start
- Fixed issues with meal trays being left on tables
Next Update Launching Tomorrow (CEST)
Quick bit of news here, but tomorrow morning (French time) we'll be launching our next update. This is the one that some of you may have opted-in on to beta test, but many still have not experienced it. We appreciate your patience as we put the finishing touches on it.
We don't have an exact time yet, but look for it in the morning if you're based in Europe like us, or before you wake up if you're in North America. (Unless you're a night Gater like members of our team, in which case please get a good night sleep, you've earned it.)
We'll see you all tomorrow!