Gaia
Dev blog #14, underwater objects
As mentioned in the last blog, the underwater section is divided into 4 subsections based on depth: 100m, 400m, 700m and 1000m. Each depth level contains different kinds of stuff and you'll be unlocking each new section with new equipment you'll be decoding and crafting. The surface part of the map is now smaller in size than before, but still pretty huge. Gaia maps have an area of 64km^2 after all.
Now, there were about 150 types of unique objects that you could find in the game up until now. That includes rocks, resources and so on. These past 2 weeks, I've added 170 more objects that you can only find underwater. That includes corals, weeds, seashells, sponges, rocks and a whole new mushroom biome. It's kind of weird how this Alpha will bring more things into the game than any other Alpha + the base game combined has. And I haven't even implemented all the different types of fish and alien life yet!
Although I haven't gotten around to it, I also want to change the locations of a few items you can currently find on the surface. For example, diamonds should only spawn at the deepest level, between 700m and 1000m and not at all on the surface. The rest of the minerals can still be found on the surface, but also underwater.
That's about it for this blog. Sadly, I have no pictures for you, because I'm still working on creating those nice environments and mix everything nicely together. Plus I have no special effects yet, only a couple bubbles here and there. As I said before, this update is going to take a bit longer.
Merry Christmas everyone!
A look at Alpha 7: Underwater gameplay
Onto water gameplay. So ideally what I want is to make something like Subnautica, involving lots of exploration and awe inspiring environment. Although Gaia will never be Subnautica simply because Gaia is not focused on underwater gameplay and it has to play nice with the current mechanics in game. There is a reason why there are so few games out there that have both 'normal' gameplay and underwater gameplay: these are 2 completely different game styles, involving completely different game mechanics, goals, graphics, physics and ultimately design. Implementing underwater gameplay a la Subnautica in Gaia is going to be a challenge that will take time, but I'll be doing it anyway! I'm not promising the same level of detail, though I'm hoping to make something worthwhile.
First let's talk about topography. In the current maps in Gaia, water depth goes down to 50m and there is absolutely no way of changing the existing maps to go any lower due to technical reasons. Therefore, Alpha 7 will get rid of the current 3 maps and come up with completely new ones. Maps will have a maximum height of 2000 meters, with the ocean level at 1000 meters. That means mountains can be up to 1000 meters long, just like now, but ocean depth will be up to 1000 meters long as well. Each maps' underwater topography will be subdivided into 4 levels depth: From 0m to 300m, from 300m to 600m, from 600m to 900m and from 900m to 1000m. At each level, there will be different fauna and flora. So near the water surface you'll find innocent-looking fish and some corals and as you go deeper, you'll find some horrors of the deep. This applies to coral and minerals too. At the bottom, you might find pits of lava too.
Each level can only be reached with the help of certain equipment, like an oxygen tank and different types of underwater vehicles, like a submarine or Subnautica's Seamoth. These will of course be locked behind decryption modules.
So what will you be able to find exactly? Well near the surface you'll find normal fish such as bass and salmon with a mix of alien creatures, such as a... biomechanical whale. Gaia is all about that mix of real life wildlife mixed with alien life so it's only natural this extends to the underwater as well. As you go deeper, you'll discover less friendly creatures, but I don't want to go into the details about this yet as this blog is merely about the grand scheme of things.
Now, Gaia is a mix of procedural generated stuff with a static terrain. If you've played the game, you'll notice that the ground is always the same, but what is spawned on top of it is completely randomized. That includes rock formations, ancient ruins, all resources, animals and so on. Underwater is going to be no different. That cool plateau at depth 240m is always going to be there, but what you can find there will always depend on RNG.
What about rewards? Why go to the depths of the Earth in the first place? Well, for one, certain resources will only be available under water at certain depth levels. Therefore if you want to progress with your base building, you'll have to go exploring. For two, pure exploration and cool ancient loot. Also, you might be craving salmon, idk.
This exploration aspect brings me to the last point in this blog, which is raids. Currently, raids are hardcoded to appear at specific time intervals depending on difficulty and your chosen story teller. This makes it so that going exploring is a risky, stressful and unintelligent decision because your base will come under attack frequently. Alpha 7 will bring some changes to raids mechanics, pathfinding for underwater creatures, new controls for vehicles to move in water, reworked oxygen mechanic and a lot more. I could keep going on but you get the point.
I wasn't kidding when I said making underwater gameplay is almost like making a new game so I'm not sure how long this Alpha will take. Maybe it will be done in January? February? March? We'll see.
Until next time!
Alpha 6 is out now!
Patch notes:
* Equipment
- Bolt action rifle
- Shotgun
- Automatic rifle
- Sniper rifle
- Anti armor rifle
- Cyclops clothing set
- Explorer clothing set
- Ailmer clothing set
Check out the dev blogs #11 and #12 for more info on the weapons and clothes above!
Other changes:
* Weevils, barghests and bears now have a chance to drop weevile hides, barghest hides and bear hides respectively in addition to their meat. This means that it is now possible certain things can drop more than just one type of loot.
* Ball tuber is a new resource that can be found in dense areas of new alien flora scattered around the map. This flora is best viewed at night when it glows.
* Binding items is now a thing. When you bind an item for the keys 1 to 5, you can quickly access that item with the specified key or scroll through the list with your mouse wheel. Only weapons can be binded for now. To bind an item, have it in your own inventory, hover over it then press one of the keys 1 through 5.
* Your character now has an armor stat, as well as a speed stat. The speed stat was always there and was always (negatively) influenced by certain needs going down too low, but it wasn't visible. Now you can see it in the PDA. The new equipment positively affects this stat, as well as armor. An armor value of 10 is the default value and your character receives 100% of the damage at the default armor value. The more armor you have, the less damage you receive. Having maxed out armor will reduce incoming damage by almost a factor of 2.
* You can check in your PDA the values of armor, speed and equipment worn in the 'Character' tab.
* Everything is now harvestable without a multi tool, though that takes 5 times longer. Note that there's no animation for this yet. That will come a bit later.
* There's a new equipment assembler in game. None of the equipment requires any decryption, though this might change later.
That's about it. If you'd like to know more about the new weapons and armor coming in the game, make sure you check out those dev blogs! As always, if you run into any issues, please don't hesitate to post them somewhere so they can be fixed asap.
Warning: Alpha 6 changes are not compatible with games from other alphas! If you wish to stay on Alpha 5, go onto the beta branch and choose Alpha 5. Then you'll still be able to play on that version if you wish.
Alpha 7 will finally bring... underwater gameplay! A ton more info coming on that soon.
Dev blogs #12, Outfits
So, today's blog is all about outfits. Up until now, the character would start with a dark scifi jumpsuit. From now on, you'll be able to actually equip items in 4 new different types of categories: helm, outfit, gloves and boots.
These clothes will provide you with 2 new scalable benefits: armor and walking speed. You'll be able to see these stats in your character tab in the PDA. Armor decreases the amount of damage you receive while walking speed... increases your walking speed. The hermes boots and gloves have been combined into 2 items (instead of 4): hermes boots and hermes gloves and they still provide the ability to fly.
Now, there are 5 total clothing sets coming in the game, in addition to the current 2.
First we have the 'Cyclops' set for male and female characters respectively. This set is the most advanced one you can craft and it packs quite the stats. Wearing the full set provides +80 armor and +12.5% walking speed.
Next, the unisex 'Explorer' set. This is meant to be a mid game clothing set. It provides +35 armor and 7.5% walk speed.
Finally we have the 'Ailmer' set. Designed for early gameplay, this set is better than the basic clothing you start with right off the bat. It can be crafted with the most basic materials and provides a total of +20 armor and 5% walk speed.
As you can see in the last image, the female character is wearing the helm from the 'Cyclops' set. So clothes can be combined across different sets. If you want, you can wear a Cyclops outfit and Cyclops helm with a Hermes boots and Hermes gloves. Not all sets have items in all 4 different categories. For example, there is no helm in the Ailmer set and no outfit and helm in the Hermes set.
With these new clothes come new looting mechanics as well. From now on, certain NPC's *may* drop more than one type of item. For example, bears will now have a chance of dropping bear fur, which is an ingredient to craft clothes in the Ailmer set. Everything is now lootable with your bear hands (see what I did there?) in case you lose all of your multi tools and the ability to craft more. However, it will take 5 times as long to harvest anything without a multi tool. It's worth nothing that any item that is equipped cannot be lost. But if you have extra unequipped items or clothes in your inventory, they may be lost on death.
That's about it for today's blog! Hope you guys enjoyed the read. I'm hoping to go live with Alpha 6 sometime in early, maybe mid December.
A quick note before you leave: If you've purchased the game already and haven't left a review, please do! Now's the perfect time with this whole game of the year award thing going on! You can earn XP and badges if you participate and nominate games. Here's the link to the Steam announcement if you want to read more about it.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/3605623508392801946
Dev blog #11, Weapons
The rifle that's currently in game will be removed. Instead, we'll introduce 6 new weapons:
1. Pistol. When you land, you'll start off with a pistol and a bit of ammo for it. It deals low damage, has a normal fire rate and a low zoom in distance.
2. Bolt action rifle. This rifle replaces the current rifle in the game. It has higher damage output and slightly lesser fire rate than a pistol.
3. Shotgun. Designed for close combat, the shotgun will come in handy when dealing with large numbers of critters that get close to you early game, especially rompos. It deals the same amount of damage per bullet as the bolt action rifle, but it fires multiple bullets, is inaccurate and doesn't have much of a zoom in effect.
4. Automatic rifle. All around gun, can be used in any situation. You'll be able to pray and spray by holding down the left mouse button. Medium stats across the board.
5. Sniper rifle. High damage, high zoom in effect, low fire rate. You could use this to pick up targets from afar.
Normal zoom of a gun:
Sniper zoom:
6. Anti armor rifle. This weapon deals extra damage to armored targets such as space pirates, ships or weevils. It is also fully automatic.
As you can see from some of the pictures, some new UI changes are coming as well. You'll now be able to bind certain items so you can easily scroll between them using hotkeys or the mouse scroll wheel. The icons in the screenshot are a work in progress.
Weapons, including the multi tool, will have to be crafted at the new equipment assembler. This means that there will be a chance of losing them on death, so be careful about that. Because of this, you'll be able to harvest certain things with your bare hands in case you lose all of your multi tools. There will also be a multi tool in the emergency supplies crate on start.
Of course with all these new weapons comes new ammo. For simplicity's sake, we'll only introduce 3 new ammo types instead of 6 so that ammo management doesn't become such a big chore.
In other news, I opened a studio called Eternal Stardust Studio. It sounds more professional than a single person's name. I think. I also want to release more games in the future so if you want to be notified any time a new game comes out, follow my dev studio group. The official gaia website will migrate under the studio website, where you'll be able to find other games as well. I started working on a 'They Are Billions' prototype in my free time, so I think that's going to be my next game.
That's about it for today's blog. Next one will go into more detail about clothing!
Dev blog #10, Alpha 6 goals
Alpha 6 is going to be all about equipment. There will be different types of weapons and apparel. You'll be able to harvest animal fur or skin where it makes sense and make apparel at an assembler which you'll then be able to wear. No more black, namesless jumpsuit! Making advanced apparel will require sophisticated crafting materials, so you'll also see some other type of harvestable resources being introduced in the game.
You'll also be able to craft different types of weapons. You'll most likely not start off with a rifle anymore, but with a simple pistol-like gun. These new weapons would be used for different purposes. For example, a pistol is nice for close combat against lightly armored targets like rompos or chickens, but you'd need a scoped rifle if you want to take something off from afar. There will also be special anti-ship and anti-energy weapons. You'll find that it's advantageous to switch weapons during combat according to the situation, which should become a little more dynamic. With new weapons will also come new types of ammo.
With new apparel will also come some new character development. Your character will be prone to becoming cold, or hot, so you'll have to dress according to the temperature. Astral will help guide you through this whole process. Alpha 7 will most likely be about water gameplay, so that will come with additional equipment such as oxygen tanks or fins.
Next dev blog will contain art and specific info about all the new items being introduced into the game. Until then, I'll be working on adjusting the UI to accept the new changes, adapt the looting system to be able to harvest more than one item type per body and so on while at the same time think about the design of the new apparel and its place in the game.
I don't have a release date for Alpha 6 yet since I haven't even started, but I'm hoping to get it out before Christmas.
That's all for now. Happy gaming guys!
Alpha 5
Seasons
Each map will now transition between the 4 different seasons depending on the latitude of the map. This also brings a few new mechanics into game.
Aprimark (Spring)
In Aprimark, trees will start growing their leaves back and grass will once again regrow as the snow covering the map slowly thaws out.
Junely (Summer)
On maps closer to the equator, Junely can be a real pain. Temperatures will rise above 30*C (86F). Your mind will start playing tricks on you.
Octosept (Fall)
In early Octosept, tree foliage will slowly start transitioning from green to an assortment of yellow, red and orange colors. Temperatures will start dropping, so you better start collecting your crops. You might even see some snow on maps closer to the planet's North.
Jacember (Winter)
In Jacember, temperatures can drop to below -30*C(-22F) depending on the map. Most trees will lose their leaves, grass will die out and most veggies, including your own crops, will disappear. Snow will accumulate over the map based on how much of it is falling from the sky and won't go away until temperatures start rising above freezing temperature. That means you could have some long, hard winters on Northern maps.
Z level building support
The sky's the limit. You can now build as many floors as you want. In order to build a second floor, you need your flooring set, ceilings with pillar support, then flooring on top of the ceilings and a staircase to connect everything and voila. With this comes a mechanic that prevents the player from destroying structures which depend on others, so as to avoid floating structures.
General improvements
World map
You can now choose the map you wish to play in a more visual way. Previously you'd just pick from a drop down menu. Now you have a whole new planet to choose from. This new menu brings out some more information, such as average temperatures in a given season. You can also pick your starting season and your landing spot.
Firestation
You can now defend against wild fires by building the fire station. The fire station comes with 4 drones which will automatically put out fires within a certain range of itself.
Adjusted fire mechanics
Consequently, fires can now spread over much larger distances than before. Fires used to spread on a 3 by 3 grid square, which translated to around 30m^2 area. Now, it can spread over a 24 by 24 grid square from the spawn point (the fire tornado), which means a total area of around 250m^2! If you weren't using defensive walls to defend yourself against fires before, well you better do now OR at least get some fire stations going.
World lighting
Adjusted world lighting to be more realistic. This also means the world got darker, especially at night. Take a look at the before/after pics below:
Veggies
All veggie seeds now have a new stat showing the needed minimum temperature for them to survive and grow. If the temperature outside is lower than this stat, the veggie will start withering away and you'll lose your crop.
Furniture merchant
There is now a new merchant in town who buys and sells furniture, A.K.A. almost any type of prefab.
Revamped trading mechanics
Item prices are now dictated by a formula that's based on the price of the item's most basic components. The more an item is complex in manufacturing, the more it will cost. This means that you can now buy raw materials, turn them into manufactured ones and sell those for a profit.
Anomaly
The anomaly event now lasts forever or until dealt with.
Beacons
The rover and mech now have a beacon attached to them so that you can easily locate them if you get lost.
Compass
Speaking of getting lost, there is now a compass in game to help you orient yourself.
Tutorial improvements
The tutorial is now enabled by default. After 2 hours of gameplay, it will automatically turn itself off when you want to start a new game or when you yourself turn it off.
Disaster events such as raids and fire tornadoes are turned off while doing the tutorial and are re-enabled once you complete it. At the step where it tells you to kill an animal, some people used to choose to kill King scorpions and other high level predators and therefore die in the process. Now, almost every step has a visual indicator. For the killing step for example, a cow will spawn behind you along with a visual indicator. Everyone should be able to deal with a cow.
Astral improvements
Astral now warns you about an unfinished deal and its potential consequences. She is also involved in the game a bit more. For example, she'll talk about ancient technology when you discover it or she'll give you a warning when constructing the ship assembler.
Respawn point
For non-ironman mode games, you can now choose at which bed you wish to respawn.
Lamp
Since the world is now more realistically lit, you'll need some light sources you can place on the ground. This is where the lamp comes in.
Patch notes
This is going to be a long list, so you should get some hot chocolate first if you decide to read through all of this.
* The mech now has a few new sound effects, though it could use more.
* There is now a brightness slider in game
* Player is now forced to either choose ironman mode or reload mode instead of having ironman on by default
* The controls menu has been moved out of the options menu because some players could not find it in that huge list of 20 something options
* Reduced some prices to encourage trading
* You can now split stacks of items in your inventory by holding down shift and right clicking on them
* There is now a confirmation screen whenever you overwrite or delete a save file
* Every scrollable menu now has an invisible scroll bar that becomes visible when needed
* When dragging an item with a huge stack into the players inventory and it doesn’t have enough space for the stack, the inventory will now fill up with as much as it can fit instead of refusing to move the stack altogether
* The punishment for stealing from traders now depends on the amount of stuff stolen. That is, the more the player steals, the more raids and orbital strikes occur over a certain period of time.
* Creating and loading games should now take less time than before.
* The rover consumes 3 times less fuel than before.
* Hydrazine now has a higher stack limit, from 100 to 200
* Empty bottles have now been removed from the game, though they still appear in the test mode panel for nostalgia purposes
* Minigun turrets can now be placed on floor panels, meaning you could theoretically place them on second/third floors of your house
* It will now be much harder to clip inside your own body when resting in First person view
* When creatures flee from damage from the player's weapon the damage indicators are reversed for any hits that occur while the creature is fleeing. No longer
* Shooting AI caused dirt effects to appear instead of blood effects. No more
* Dying underwater removes the underwater special effects during the death screen. Again no more
* Dying under water makes the player fall to the ground as if there was no water resistance. No more.
* If you press Escape while in the death screen and then press it again, Amanda shows as revived for a split second. (Lazy) Fixed by preventing player from going to menu while the death screen is playing
* All sounds should now be properly handled when transitioning underwater with the help of a lowpass filter
* When the trade ship leaves, the entry point effects is now turned off
* The trade pod beacon has been slightly re-adjusted
* If you mouse click while resting, amanda gets up but only halfway, quite weird. No more
* Dying makes Amanda immune to radiation while nox event is active. No more.
* Birds used to stutter
* Ancient turrets used to be invincible
* Many bugs concerning the mech were fixed, such as animals walking under it when they want to attack, ancient guns not doing any damage to it, mech seemingly not affected by gravity when running off cliffs and others
* There was an issue with the mech shotgun and the flamethrower
* Can fly through vertical obstacles. Can also fly through ceilings or cave ceilings. No longer
* Flying into a slightly sloped obstacle automatically stops the flying action. No longer.
* Some resources, even jenu, can spawn inside trees. No longer.
* When inside the rover or mech, you can move the camera around so that the menu that should only appear when you're outside the vehicle appears. If you interact with that menu while inside the vehicle, lots of bugs happen. Fixed
* Most buildable objects now have their normal textures set to the original ones after being constructed instead of keeping the 'assembling' effect. This should help with visuals and performance
* Bumping into the rover after being built but before entering it causes it to act like a non kinematic physics object, meaning it can be tossed around like a ball.
* Cabinets sometimes refuse to be placed side by side. No more.
* Player can get melee damaged when flying above melee AI. No more
* Climbing onto a rock while underwater causes a weird bug. This was (lazy) fixed by preventing any item from spawning underwater. Will have to come back to this one when the water Alpha comes out.
* Some resources had their physics enabled when they shouldn't
* Ancient Assembler piece #2 used to respawn for no reason
* Sink doesn’t align with wall. Fixed
* Toilet doesn’t align with wall. Fixed
* Turrets used to not be able to acquire harpies
* When jumping out of water; character could sometimes get stuck in jumping animation. Sometimes also gets stuck in other animations when doing crazy things near water and so enabled the player to literally fly around while playing the swimming animation. Although that's a pretty funny bug, it had to be patched
* The wealth of items now has a similar formula to the formula of the price of items
* Some veggie seeds used to not show all the needed information
* Hydrazine no longer requires a tech unlock
* activating Test Mode after tutorial is done and then deactivating test mode makes the tutorial panel appear. No more
Forethought
Alpha 5 was supposed to be all about patching the game out and eliminating every little bug ever reported. There weren't supposed to be any major new additions. However, it did come with something unplanned: seasons. (The truth is, I was going crazy over spending my time doing just bug fixes) Though seasons do affect some things in the game, they don't affect everything. I want seasons to affect your character, fauna, water surfaces and more. However, I can't yet implement these things because there is no clothing system in the game yet, and there is also no water gameplay yet. This stuff will be released later and everything will be linked together!
If you find any new bugs related to these new features, let me know and I'll be rolling out some hotfixes asap.
Please let me know what you think about this update and also start suggesting what the next Alpha should be about! I was thinking it would be high time to bring some equipment (weapons, clothes, gadgets) into the game for example.
Discord link: https://discord.gg/NPuashH
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/gaiaofficialgame
Dev blog #9, Multiple stories and bugs
So for the past 2 weeks, I've been working on allowing multiple stories for your base, finishing up the firefighting system and started to fix bugs.
Regarding multiple stories: You'll now be able to build a staircase. I opted to go with a staircase instead of a classic ladder to allow AI to also be able to reach higher levels. The way it should work is like this: You build your flooring, then a staircase, pillars and then your ceilings just as you'd expect. Then on top of the ceilings, you have to build some more flooring and voila, you have a new level to build on! Most, if not all, foundation structures are invincible, so as to avoid cases where a level would remain floating in the air without any pillar support. I also added a new check where the game will prevent you from manually destroying a structure that has other structures depend on it. For example, if you have an assembler built on top of a basic floor, attempting to remove the basic floor will fail and it will tell you why. You'd have to remove the assembler first and then the flooring.
I've also finished the firefighting feature. As per our last dev blog, there's a new firestation that has 4 drones on it which can extinguish fires completely automatically. Fire will now spread on a much bigger area, but at a slower speed. Instead of a 3x3 grid for fire tornadoes, we have a 10x10 grid of fire spawning. So if you see one of those spawn near your base, there's a much higher chance the fire will reach your structures than in the current alpha. However! Fire spreading will now perform a physics check so that it doesn't spread from one cell to the next on the grid if there's an object between them. For example, in the current alpha, if a fire tornado spawns right next to your defensive wall and then spawns a new grid, the grid will basically ignore the wall and the fire will spread through it on all cells and wreck any building that's on the other side of the wall and that is close enough. This won't happen anymore. So although defensive walls can provide a very effective means of protecting against fires, the firestation would still be advised. You never know if a monster will destroy one of your walls while a fire is raging nearby, or if a fire tornado randomly spawns inside your base. Note that the firestation won't work indoors and I don't have any plans to make indoors firefighting for now, especially since foundation items are invincible so fire should never be able to reach inside without player input.
Regarding bugs. So I started fixing up bugs last week and I've made quite a bit of progress. I've fixed all visual and audio bugs, as well as over half of gameplay bugs. Some days I make a lot of progress, others not so much. For example, I spent a whole Tuesday working only on 2 seemingly simple bugs: The mech flying off edges and the player getting stuck in a weird state after surfacing. So that was an extremely frustrating Tuesday. But other days I fix up around 10 bugs. Anyone with any kind of IT background knows how time consuming bug hunting can be right?
So with that being said, I think alpha 5 will be ready for public consumption in around 2 weeks. I won't be putting it on the Beta branch since I'll be testing it very in depth by myself and because I'm confident in my bug hunting skills!
Dev blog #7 Winter is coming.
Hello, welcome to this week's dev blog! As per the last blog, I've managed to implement dynamic seasonal changes. In the current version of the game, you can see the current in game date in your PDA on the bottom left side. That has been replaced by the current season's name. Each season lasts 5 days, which should equate to about an hour and 40 minutes of gameplay time if you choose not to sleep in a bed. However, I might have to change these numbers later on so this is not final!
There are now seasonal objects, which are so far limited to trees but could be extended to other type of flora. Tree leaves will now change their color based on the season slowly. Trees are also just simple objects now, which means that they don't necessarily have to be static unmovable objects anymore, opening up the possibility of tree chopping and other cool stuff related to wood.
I've also redesigned the main menu section where you start a new game. Basically now there are 3 steps you need to go through before you start a new game. First when you press on 'New Game', you'll be prompted with a small screen where you choose the difficulty, story teller and enter the save file name. Players will also be forced to choose whether to enable ironman or not before proceeding to a new screen. Why? Because there have been quite a few reports of people not knowing what ironman is and then complain that they can't save on a new file. I don't blame them, the previous 'new game' screen was filled with a dozen options and not everyone has the time of hovering over every option to tell them what it means.
Once ironman mode has been confirmed, you'll be able to press on a 'Next' button where the character selection screen will appear. You can then customize your character if you want and press 'Next' again. This last screen will look something like this (Note it's still very much a work in progress):
That's right, you can now choose where you want to land on the planet. The current 3 maps we have in game are now painted on a hexagon tiled planet which can be decorated. For example, I decorated with little mountains. Each map is at a specific latitude, which means that temperatures will vary greatly from -34.6*C in Winter to 30*C in Summer for the northern most map on the planet. You could also go closer to the equator, where temperatures range from 15*C in Winter to 40*C in summer, which means it will never snow but at least the growing period will be all year. Later on when we'll have different biomes, they will be painted on the map with different colors but for now we'll have to be happy with just 3 land masses of green hexagons on an otherwise blue planet.
I still have a bit of work to do on this screen, such as using another background picture and decorating the planet a little bit more.
Now, why am I doing this whole UI redesign? Well, lots of people have had trouble navigating the UI. A good example is the ironman stuff I just talked about. I've also received reports from people not knowing that you can customize controls or that they can't find the button, so I'll be moving the 'Controls' button on the left side panel instead of hidden among dozens of other options in the 'Options' panel. Also this week, someone left a negative review in an asian language saying that there is no tutorial in game (I used google translate) even though the button for the tutorial is just above the 'Start' button... So the tutorial will now be enabled by default for every new install of the game. Don't worry, it will be turned off by default after you've played at least 2 games! And this only applies to new players that download the game after Alpha 5.
The alpha 5 update will be quite huge. I've went through every negative review, every suggestion and bug report on the Steam forums, Discord and my own website since the release of the game a few months ago and noted down everything in a todo list for alpha 5. There's also been a new negative review this week from someone who played 45 hours and said it's buggy and incomplete. While yes it's incomplete since it's in Early Access and I can't do anything about that... What I can do is to make the game bug free. I will not release Alpha 5 until I squish every single bug I've received or that I've found myself. There have been simply too many grievances and frustrations over bugs so they need to go!
Okay that's about it, happy gaming guys!
Dev blog #6 Winter is coming?
Hey guys, welcome to dev blog numero 6. Weekly blogs are back! The main attraction of this blog is the new seasonal changes but before we get onto that, let's talk about some of the smaller stuff.
So, this is what we have planned for Alpha 5. What has been accomplished so far?
* Well, we have sound effects for the mech and the anomaly event now lasts forever or until it has been dealt with. As we implement more and more stuff related to beacons, there will come a day when you'll be able to customize them just like in Subnautica, by being able to change colors, having different types of beacons that can be turned off/on and so on but for now at this early stage, we don't need that kind of complicated system.
* We also added a new 'Furniture' merchant, where you can sell/buy any type of building except the main and ancient assemblers. Speaking of trade, almost all items can now be traded. All manufactured items have their prices based on their most basic components instead of an arbitrary number. So if a copper ore costs 50 onyx, then a copper bar made of 2 copper ore will have a base price of 100 plus a little extra to account for labor. This little extra keeps growing the more complicated a manufactured item is so it will always be in your best interest to sell finished goods if you want to make the most profit.
* Rovers and mechs have a beacon attached to them.
* Stack splitting is now possible by holding 'Shift' and right clicking on a stack of items. That will halve your stack into 2 inventory slots.
* It will now rain (and snow) much more often than before, where it could sometimes take 15 days before a single rain drop occurred. Now it should happen every few days.
* Map creation times have been reduced from ~2:40 minutes to 2 minutes. Further improvements to this and map loading times are planned.
* The rover uses less hydrazine than before.
* Added a 'Brightness' (or gamma) slider in the options menu. This slider appears only in game, not in the start menu due to the fact that it won't affect the brightness of UI, therefore making it pointless to put it in the start menu.
* Added a latitude slider when creating a new game. Latitude is basically how North or South of the planet you are on. The farther you are from the equator, the more temperatures will drop, the more night day cycles and weather vary and so on.
That's about it for the quality of life stuff. There have also been 2 bug fixes. Now, is Winter really coming?
This was not originally planned for Alpha 5, but we thought 'eh why not, can't just push an update without some big change'. So we came up with this: seasons. There will be 4 seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. Up until now, weather didn't really affect anything in the game. With Alpha 5, weather will affect world visuals such as snowy landscape, differently colored trees and it will also affect temperature, which will in turn affect a whole bunch of things.
Temperature levels have been static at around 23*C in the current version of the game. No longer! Depending on the weather, time of day and of year, the temperature will fluctuate. If you jack the latitude slider all the way to the North pole, temperatures will hover around -30*C to -40*C but if you put it at 0 (at the equator), temperatures will hover around 30*C meaning that you'll never experience winter. For a balanced experience of having the proper 4 seasons that Europeans and Americans are used to, the slider is by default left at 45, which corresponds roughly to central Europe and northern USA.
So what does temperature affect? Well, for now nothing except fire spread. With Alpha 5, temperature will affect the wildlife and flora. Certain animals and monsters won't appear when it's too cold or too hot for example. It will also affect crops. Certain crops won't grow if it's too cold or if it's snowy. Your foodstuffs will also degrade over time if they're left out in the open or stored in a normal container starting with Alpha 5. To preserve your food, you'll need to store it in a fridge or in places where the temperature is less than 0*C very much like in Rimworld. Later on, temperature will also affect your own character, but we'll need to have the Alpha dedicated to character equipment out before we do that.
Most biomes will have these 4 seasonal changes, which we think is pretty cool. You don't see that very often in games.
There are of course some challenges to this whole system being implemented. First, we need to adapt trees at runtime to correspond to the current season. While this sounds easy, it's not. Not with Unity's default tree system. So a big overhaul of how trees are used in the game is required. That was going to happen at some point anyway, since later on you'll be able to chop and grow trees.
Second, we need to adapt the current time cycle. As of now, we have a realistic system to represent time, such as 12 months, the correct number of days per month and so on. What we need is to reduce the year from 12 months to 4 months so we can have a meaningful gameplay experience. So we won't have a traditional date in the game anymore, more like just 4 seasons and each season will have around 10 days. This is actually very hard to simulate. The current realistic system we have uses some deep math to simulate the position of the sun, moon and galaxy based on longitude, latitude, day and month of the year and so on of the Earth. Adapting these computations to reduce the year to just January, April, July and October while maintaining all the other features somewhat realistic might not be possible (if we were to skip from January to April at the end of January, the celestial objects will also teleport, which will change the lighting of the scene as well). So we'll have to see what kind of coding magic we can come up with to make a smooth transition between the 4 seasons possible.
Any questions, let us know. Until next time!