Friday Dev News #146 - UI Improvement Update almost done
Hello everyone and welcome to the 146th Friday Dev News Post!
This week we finished the UI improvement update... well, almost. The thing is, we did finish it, but it's not been playtested properly since it just got done a couple hours ago. We're putting a stronger focus on stability now and so we've decided to not release it today with Friday Dev News. Also, I got sick over the last 2 days, so I wouldn't be as available for emergency bugfixing on the weekend in case anything got wrong.
But, if playtesting reveals no new bugs, we're hoping to get the UI improvement to you early next week!
Bugfixing
And then, it's finally time to turn our attention back to bugfixing once again.
We already uploaded a hotfix for a save issue in relation to pipes earlier in the week (Patch 1.10.396 on Tuesday), and in the coming week we are planning to work on the following three things:
Green grass from terraforming not getting removed by roads and buildings anymore
Train issues
Steam player Seastar's reports where he can't seem to open the game anymore
A little extra content
While the programming side is busy with fixes and UI improvements, the art side is preparing a nice little extra content drop. This will probably only get released after the majority of bugs are fixed, but I wanted to let you know there is some working going on behind the scenes. No huge new features, just a little extra content.
Thanks for your time and let us know if you have any bugs on your mind that are more important than the ones listed!
Happy playing!
Patch 1.10.396!
Hello everyone,
In this quick patch we:
Fixed an issue where some liquid tanks' pipes broke some players' saves.
Happy playing! Sepehr
Friday Dev News #145 - Building Pipette Released
Hello everyone and welcome to another Friday Update!
originally we wanted to release another UI update this week to give you more infos and make it nicer overall, but we didn't finish it completely. Since we want to put a bigger focus on not releasing unfinished stuff, we pushed it to next week instead.
However, what you get instead is pretty sweet: The building pipette!
A small feature, but highly requested. You can use it to copy any building, including even the color of pixel buildings.
The default hotkey is G, but you can change it in the settings.
I know there are still some actual bugs left - after we finish the UI improvement, we'll go back to those. Specifically I'm hoping we can finally do some fixes for old train issues investigate reports of any remaining overdelivery to habitats or any distribution center problems investigate any save loading issues that might be left
As always, feel free to repeat any issue that is particularly annoying to you. We can't change the core design of InfraSpace, but we can add tools and fixes to make the experience nicer.
Until next week, Happy playing!
Friday Dev News #144 - Update 1.7.387
Hello everyone and welcome to another Friday Fix Update!
Today we're releasing a bunch of fixes, mostly related to the issues I found when I went through all the comments and threads last week:
Improved factory UI to show bonus production that you get for completing spaceship parts
Fixed an issue where buildings requested resources even if they didn't have enough space for a full truck load
Fixed an issue where moving collection / distribution centers did not update their connected buildings visualization immediately
Fixed trucks being deleted upon re-routing to buildings with integrated roads (like distribution centers)
Flipped collection / distribution centers' integrated roads (now it's like every other building, it won't affect saves)
Fixed that deleting a pipe also deletes pipes that lie underneath
Fixed liquid tanks not updating pipe's network capacity immediately
Fixed an issue where translations didn't work for mods
Fix red dots not showing in the dashboard below for newly researched buildings while tutorial's where disabled
Fixed broken roads/rails/pipes not allowing some save's to load
Improve achievement tracking & fix population achievements
The highlight here is the new factory info view taking into account spaceship bonuses. The other things are mostly stuff that have been annoying some players here and there.
We're making progress, but we're not done yet. Don't be afraid to re-state any bugs you are experiencing, to make sure we don't forget.
The only things we can't change at this point is stuff that is deep in InfraSpace's core. Like we probably won't be able to change the traffic AI significantly or the way routes are prioritised. These kinds of changes would require us to make a new game. Instead, we will do our best to give you all the tools you need, all the tutorials you need, and all the quality of life necessary to achieve your goals within InfraSpace's game world.
Until next week, Happy playing!
Patch 1.6.380
And a quick patch coming in hot right after Friday Dev News:
Fixed an issue where distribution center would request too many resources from collection center and destroy the superfluous ones
I hope this helps! Happy playing!
Friday Dev News #143 - Update 1.6.380
Hello everyone,
reading the comments on the last Friday Dev News, I get two impressions:
For the most part, the community is happy so far with our work on bugfixes and improvements
However, there are still numerous reports left, for train stations, distribution centers, trucks, etc.
We can only get to some of them each week, but rest assured we'll keep working on it and get more and more each week until we don't get any reports anymore.
This Week's Update
Together with this post, we're releasing another update:
Added detailed descriptions for every building
Overhauled building info menu to also show the radius of effect and occupied tiles
Added three more articles to the encyclopedia (spaceship repairs, laser, research)
Mouse panning button is now configurable in the settings
Fixed a lot of typos and localization issues, especially in German
Brought back the per-district production overview
Fix rails building into each other
Fix rails intersection rings not displaying (or roads in some cases)
Fixed wrong icon on water distillery
Fixed an bug that occured when trying to build rails on top of roads
Should have fixed an issue where the game would erroneously think it's running on an integrated laptop GPU
Fixed an issue where distribution center would request too many resources from collection center and destroy the superfluous ones (note: this fix was added about 60 minutes after the post released)
The building descriptions were important because many players were confused about how InfraSpace worked, especially some of the more obscure features like districts or high tech tools.
More UI overhauls coming
Besides fixing bugs, we're trying to improve the interface even more.
We have a bunch of ideas, but for a first taste, check out this research lab UI concept:
Third Map Update
Finally, while the programmers are fixing issues, our artist Lasse is creating a third map for you. Check out the progress on the vulcano map:
I wish we could be faster at fixing issues, but some things take time and we want to fix them properly. Please keep reporting any issues you may have and feel free to give even more feedback!
Thanks and happy playing!
Friday Dev News #142 - Update 1.5.377
Hello everyone,
with this Friday Dev News we also release Patch 1.5.377, fixing a couple of serious issues.
fixed an issue with resource requests, where some factories would not send out resources, even though they were full.
fixed an issue that stopped saves from loading, especially from before the update
fixed a multithreading issue that messed with distribution center deliveries
fixed multiple bugs regarding the achievements
added some new tooltips to explain the game a little better, more to come
We have some more fixes in the pipeline, especially around rail building, but we're first spending some time to properly check the fixes and will give them to our playtesters first. Last week we released an update that contained a bug that crashed the game, and we don't want this to happen again if we can avoid it.
Also, we have started talking to localization companies. So far, many of the translations have been community maintained, but some of them are not fully done and especially newer features are sometimes not fully translated. We'll spend some money to get all officially supported languages up to 100%.
Building Descriptions
Another thing we're working on besides fixes is more building descriptions. This is not just flavor text, for many buildings it also gives you information about how to use them in your gameplay, like the high tech tools or industrial robots. We tried to finish them this week, but it seems like it'll have be released next week.
We're currently running a cycle of 1. read all comments 2. prioritize them 3. focus and just work on the most important issues for 4-5 days 4. repeat
And we're anticipating to stay in this cycle for a while. So please feel free to continue giving feedback. We already have enough work to keep us busy, but when you talk about pain points, it gives us some guidance on which things to improve first.
Finally, the artists are working on another 2 maps actually. I'll share more about them when the time comes.
Happy playing!
Patch 1.4.376
Hello everyone,
just a small patch today, changing the default graphics settings. They used to be set to some mix of low and high settings where also animations were off.
Now, the default graphics settings are "high".
If you have been struggling with not seeing animation, just turn it on in your graphics settings.
Happy playing!
Patch 1.4.370 fixes Crash
Hello everyone,
it seems that in today's update a small piece of code got into the game that could make it crash. We immediately uploaded this quickfix patch to remove the issue. Please let us know if any of you are experience any more crashes.
Sorry for the mistake and thanks for your patience.
Friday Dev News #141 - Post Release & Graphics Settings
Hello everyone!
Looking Back on Release Week
One week has passed since the full version of InfraSpace was released and we have a lot of new players as well as a lot of new feedback.
To address the issues encountered, we have already released 4 patch updates and today you're getting the 5th one.
The most important things that have been fixed during the week:
added map panning with with right mouse click
factories can now store 20 blue and green science packs, up from 5 previously
fixed an issue where you couldn't load some old saves from before the 1.0 update
fixed an issue where the collection / distribution center storage would not clear after switching resources
fixed some german localization issues as well as some missing ones
fixed an issue where building pipes would lag the game or even crash it on super long pipes
fixed an issue where you couldn't lay pipes of different types on top of each other comfortably
fixed a bug where long roads would get wobbly during building
fixed a bug where collection centers would send the wrong resource to distribution centers
fixed a bug where you could get infinite resources with the distribution center
fixed a bug where you couldn't select a second spaceship part to repair
fixed a translation that was missing in the tutorials
centered the main park building on it's foundation
Fixing Clunkiness
We have been reading comments, posts, and reviews and it seems like currently most issues people are having are about "clunkiness". Maybe we didn't focus on that enough because we got used to the way InfraSpace worked and our playtesters did as well. Now that we have a lot of new players, we have a lot of new feedback.
We organized all the clunkiness feedback and made a "top 8" list of things that players want to have fixed:
Lack of information about how the game works, buildings, roads, and rails speed; encyclopedia too hidden
Too hard to find resources
No indication when a building can’t be placed in power visualization (maybe also other visualizations?)
Missing translations
Production boosts, spaceship boosts, pipe negative side not clear and not shown
Collection and distribution center have inverted roads
People complain about trains in many ways. We should probably add more info?
Show what side of the building are the entrances
Of course, there are some more things to note as well as bugs to fix. But we gotta start somewhere, so that's what we'll focus on. Next week I can already promise you that you'll get detailed descriptions for each building.
If you are having trouble with some feature in InfraSpace, please remember to consult the in-game encyclopedia! You can find it on the left side of the screen and it explains districts, distribution centers, traffic, trains, and much more!
Graphics Settings & Fixes
Today, we're releasing another update, introducing graphics settings. Also:
fixed an issue where 1/3rd of resources could vanish when a car entered a habitat on easy traffic mode
fixed a race condition in the distribution center delivery code
fixed the mac version to work on the new macOS update
more fixes in the german localization
Let us know if these changes improved your experience and also if there is anything else we're missing. Thanks for the feedback!
New Map
While our programmers are busy with all kinds of improvements and fixes, our artist Lasse has already started work on our third map. It's supposed to feature difficult terrain for those players who like the challenge:
