Friday Dev News #78 - Volcano, Highland, and Desert Biomes
Hello everyone,
another week, another patch of biomes. The terrain overhaul in the next major update is going to bring 5 major biomes: you saw the dried river and the petrified crater in last weeks post, this week we're showing you our concepts for the volcano, the highlands, and the desert biomes.
The inactive volcano used to shape the landscape in the area. Now, its unusual soil composition nourishes some strange alien fungi. Also, the inactive caldera is a good source of valuable iridium.
The highlands are some of the most alive areas of this planet. The soil is still full of nutrients because of the proximity to the previously not-dry river and the plants here get enough sunlight compared to the ones in the dried river itself.
Most of the area in the map is taken up by the desert biome. Much of it is empty to give you enough space to build your city, but there are some rock structures strewn throughout containing the most basic mineral resources, copper and iron.
That's it for this week's Friday Dev News - we hope you enjoy the look of the new map and are looking forward to playing on it when it's released. We still need to create the procedural generation for the terrain, but on the other hand, we have not yet announced all the features we have been working on for the next update. Stay tuned...
... and happy playing!
Friday Dev News #77 - Dried River and Petrified Crater Biomes
Hello everyone!
As promised in last week's Friday Dev News, we're now showing our first 3D concepts for the new biomes. For now these are just artist test scenes and not procedurally generated. That comes later!
We tried to make the landscape look both interesting and alien, but still familiar enough that it doesn't look "off". Also, we added some slight fog effects for visual variety, but not so dense that they get in the way of gameplay or make the scene too dark.
Dried River
While the dried river contains no flowing water, it's geology makes it a lot easier to reach underground water and methane deposits. The steep rock walls protect the area from both sun and wind and gives opportunity for mushroom-like alien plants to grow on the sides.
Petrified Crater
The petrified crater is a very different biome: It seems like a large asteroid impact long ago has compressed the soil can't hold much liquid resources at all and neither man nor nature can reach through the ground very easily. Any plants that grow here risk drying out and getting petrified in seasons with a lot of sun. On the other hand, the leftover asteroid material provides for some rich aluminum deposits.
I hope you like the scenes so far, let us know what you think! The art team would be happy to hear any comments. We'll be able to show some of the other new biomes next week.
In other news, after 2 years of pandemic, I finally got covid myself. Luckily I'm already well on the road to recovery and the rest of the (remote) team has been doing a great job of continuing work on the game in the meantime, so it all turned out fine :)
See you next week and happy playing!
Friday Dev News #76 - New Planet Concepts
Hello everyone!
first of all, tiny update today:
Fixed a bug where 2 players couldn't load their saves
Added Japanese translation (thanks to the community translators!)
New Planet Concepts
That's right , in the next major update you'll be getting a complete planet overhaul to play with!
(Note: we will try to keep your old maps playable. the next major update will also take 2 months or so)
It's still a work in progress, so today I'd like to show you some of our concepts and ideas.
Our first attempts started by modifying the terrain we already had - what if we added a couple more interesting biomes? How about a volcano? An ancient dried up river?
This thought process got us to the following sketches:
Still looks familar, for sure... but also with some interesting twists.
Then we thought what if we expanded on the idea. Made the dried river an actual deep geological feature that you could even build part of your city in?
Looks pretty good for a quick sketch, but we have this featuer on our roadmap called "cargo gondolas". How about we not only use them in the river, but make an entire feature out of it where you need to traverse height to access resources?
That's nice! But we also need some big open a reas for players to build their city in - lot's of people just want space to build freely. How about a big crater?
Ok, cool, but I mentioned volancoes earlier. What about them, are they just for decoration? Or do they hold precious resources at the top that you could maybe gather with a mining outpost and transport to your main city?
Interesting, so that's a lot of new ideas, but what *could* they look like put together? Just a quick sketch?
The sketches you see here are still far from the final result, but they should give you an overview of the kinds of ideas we are working on and what might be coming to InfraSpace in the next major update.
Next week, you can look forward to seeing the first 3D scenes of the new terrain and I can tell you, you can look forward to them because they look good :D
Also, the terrain is not the only thing we're working on - but you'll have to wait a little longer for that to be revealed...
Until next week and happy playing!
Friday Dev News #75 - Pipes Fixes
Hello everyone!
Last week we saw the release of the pipes update and in the last 7 days you've already seen 3 small bugfix updates. Today, you're getting another one:
Added messages for completed spaceship parts to let you know which bonus you unlocked or which technology got boosted
Improved pipes building so they more easily merge with neighboring pipes
Improved pipes building so that unconnected pipes in the same location collide and let you know something's wrong
Improved pipes handling so you can't click on roads and buildings in pipe mode and can't click on pipes in any other mode
Fixed an issue where bonus immigrants from completing part of your spaceship would vanish instantly
Fixed an issue where methane pipes wouldn't connect to the Adamantine Drill
Fixed a bug where a save was stuck in pipe edit mode
Fixed a bug where you could keep building some spaceship parts infinitely
Fixed a bug where spaceship efficiency bonuses wouldn't be applied
What's next for InfraSpace?
Even before the latest update release, some of us have already been working on and preparing for the next update after pipes. You'll find out the details next week - one hint: it's going to involve the planet.
Until then, happy playing!
Patch 10.2.216 fixes Pipe Connections, Save Loading, Rebalances Pipe Efficiency
Hello everyone,
I just uploaded Patch 10.2.216 with a handful more fixes:
Methane Pipes now connect to Yellow Science Pack Factories and High Tech Workshops
Fixed an issue where a player could not load their save
Fixed an issue where players were unable to delete saves in game
Rebalanced pipeline operation efficiency impact: From now on, only producers of liquid / gas resources connected to a pipe system pay the operation costs of 33%. Consumers operate at full efficiency
Happy playing!
Patch 10.1.214 fixes Methane Spawn, Round Trips
Hello everyone!
The Pipe Update seems to have been received quite well, but a number of bugs have been reported. I've taken some time to provide you with a quick Sunday evening hotfix update for the possibly game breaking issues I've seen:
Fixed a bug where loading maps from previous versions would generate methane once, but then skip the methane generation on subsequent loads. Now you should always have methane patches in your saves.
Fixed a bug with the new round trip cars feature, where they would generate infinite cars and not drive back to the proper source.
I'm making a list of all the other bugs and will deal with them in the coming week during normal working hours. I want to thank everyone for the concise reports, any saves you send to me for reproduction (daniel@dionicsoftware.com) and for your patience.
Happy playing!
Friday Dev News #73 - Pipes Update coming next week
Hello everyone,
we aimed to finish the Pipes and Spaceship Update in May, but it looks like we'd be cutting it too close and are going to push it back to next Friday, June 3rd.
The reason is that we probably *could* have rushed to finish it this week barely, but then there'd be a big risk we'd be releasing a buggy mess. So, I think taking one more week to finish it properly is worth it in this case. I hope you can bear the wait!
Additional Info
Since I got some questions about the update, I wanted to give you some gameplay relevant info:
First, there will be 3 resources you can transport by pipe:
Oxygen
Water
Methane
Second, pipe transport is not free. It might seem like an easy solution to build out a pipe system and skip all of the traffic, but the more buildings are connected to a pipe system, the more costly it's operation. Each connected factory needs to keep up pressure in the system and pays for that effort with a 33% efficiency cost.
You can decide whether it's worth it to eliminate the extra traffic or go for faster production instead. The benefits of this tradeoff might change depending on the size and layout of your city and if you already have problems with traffic or not.
Methane buildings
And finally, I always like closing out an update with a couple of screenshots, so here you can see the new methane power plant for electricity generation as well as the methane fermentation plant that gets methane from organic waste:
Happy playing and until next week!
Friday Dev News #72
Hello everyone!
This week, we worked on 3 main components:
1. General Pipe Programming
A lot of this is general work to get the gameplay working, like getting resources into and out of the pipes, but there is one thing I can show you with a screenshot:
You can use different pipes for different resources. Pictures you can see the water supply for the habitats and some methane drills on another pipe system.
2. Art for the Next Update
One of the new buildings is going to be the methane power plant, which Andreas is working on right now:
Also, as a small extra tidbit, check out our simple, but effective water animation :D
3. Experiments
Now that we are more people on the team, we can do a little parallel development. Lasse and Adriana have started experimenting with some stuff for the update AFTER the pipes update. That way we already now what to do exactly after the next release is done. I know you're curious already, but we'll start posting about these once the pipe update is out.
Finally, we're working to finish the update in May - it's going to be exciting.
Happy playing!
Friday Dev News #71 - Pipe Connections
Hello everyone!
It’s been a while, but we’re making steady progress on the pipes update and will be releasing it in 2 weeks from now!
Check out the way buildings automatically connect to your underground pipe system:
Buildings always choose the closest pipe to connect to, so you can precisely select which building is connected to which pipe system.
Meanwhile, Andreas has finalized another batch of production buildings:
You can see the yellow methane driller on the top right and the big pumping station on the left right next to it.
Finally, you will also be able to ferment Methane from organic waste - the fermentation plant is probably our most chemistry-looking building yet:
I hope you can stomach the next 2 weeks until the pipes update comes out - happy playing!
Friday Dev News #67 - Spaceship Construction Facility
Hello everyone,
it's time to take another look on our progress on the next update, specifically: Buildings!
Spaceship Construction Facility
In the last Friday Dev News post, we introduced Antares, your large mothership. After a failed warp jump, your ship got damaged and now you're stranded in unexplored space with a damaged ship.
In order to repair your mothership Antares, you'll need to gather specialized resources and construct large repair modules to send up to your ship. You can accomplish this in the new ship construction facility.
Most of the actual construction happens underground, but when a big module is ready, the rocket bay opens and the ship module is sent up into orbit with the help of a smaller transport spaceplane:
New Mini Train Station
Our usual train stations take up a lot of space, so we created a new miniature version to fit into more narrow spaces:
New Colleagues
All the hiring effort is paying off and two new colleagues are going to join us within the next month: Ben is an experienced software engineer helping full time with the programming of InfraSpace and Adriana is a talented 2D artist who will be helping part time with defining the style of the game through concept art.
That's it for this week, so as always, happy playing!
