Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Maia
Maia 0.63: LOST IN SPACE
Maia 0.63 is ready. This update brings a lot of new features as well as an overhaul of the game's simulation and balance. I want to say thank you to everyone who gave feedback over the summer, it's helped me improve the game significantly. Here's a video of me playing the latest build and showing off some of the new features:
If treated poorly enough, colonists can now leave the base and head off to their inevitable deaths in the barren wastelands of Maia. Fulfilling food, rest, social needs and building an aesthetically pleasing base will all be important to keeping them loyal. That said, some colonists are just cowards, so don't feel too bad about them.
High Energy
The games bodily simulation of the colonists has been made more accurate with heat loss through convection, conduction and radiation in different mediums. Colonist metabolisms are finer tuned with effects from sweat, to kinetic energy losses affecting them as they go about their days. Keep your colony warm and sources of water abundant to keep them happy, efficient, and breathing.
Maian Time Slip
The day length of Maia has been made longer. This will give your colonists more time to carry out essential.. and less essential tasks, and take the pressure off growing colonies. Conversely with the slower simulation of the climate and weather, and longer nights, solar and wind generation will now be more challenging to keep online, requiring a greater focus on efficient storage and energy management.
Notable Changes since 0.62:
There are more updates, fixes and features coming soon. I recommend jumping on the development branch if you haven't already!
That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews. I'd really love some up to date Steam reviews.
Maia 0.62: Who's For Dinner?
It's update time and Maia 0.62 has been deemed fit for consumption! Here's a quick video of me showing off some of the latest features I've been working on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR-8YrmHrWY
Alien Breeding and Parenting Behaviours
More of the alien creatures can now breed and produce a flock of tiny cute murder machines. This will change how they protect their territories, react to colonists, and also feed back into the simulation of the ecosystem in new and emergent ways.
Baby creatures, and animals of all sorts, will now imprint on the first thing they see and follow and copy their new parent. So be sure to keep your livestock room doors locked unless you want your dogs to become unsuspecting parents to your hatchling chickens.
Fear
Colonists will now sometimes break down and run away from something if it terrifies them, such as an alien sneaking into the base or an out of control fire breaking out. They will go cower and cry and feel guilty about how much of a burden they are to the colony.
When trapped in rooms colonists will start getting very upset and start banging on doors to try and escape. Leaving them in the room will deeply upset them, potentially damaging their sanity causing them to harm equipment or themselves!
Fine Dining
Colonists can now sit down at the dining table for relaxing communal meals in the living area, allowing them to rest, eat and socialise simultaneously.
They can can also now deposit raw food supplies in the storage room if there is a surplus of production. These can be picked up later to build ration packs or to fill a food preparation station.
Deep Learning
Colonists can now learn skills by practising them, once a new skill is leant it will allow the colonist to perform the action better, faster or more often. They can also sit at desks to learn new expertise in theory, saving themselves the effort and bringing more exotic skill sets to your colony.
Other major changes:
Maia is now undergoing very regular changes. Sometimes several a day. Get on the development branch if you'd like to be part of this transition from Alpha to Beta. The 1.0 release for Maia is now set for August so I need all the help I can get with testing.
That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.
0.61: A Maze Of Death
Maia 0.61 is out now. Right now. This build brings many new useful features to the game and a significant amount of tweaks and fixes.
Here’s a video of me playing the latest release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZyRkEkUCME
Interface
This update brings several new user interface and management tools to the game. Room options are now available and allow for managing the stockpiling of items, new security features and even tweaking the lighting of a room. Just click a room to see the available options. Carefully managing these fine grained controls can significantly improve the efficiency of a busy base.
When placing items the UI now presents more useful information about whether an object is reachable, and visible paths are shown to illustrate how the colonists would walk to the item.
Movement orders
You can now practice your interior design skills and rearrange items in your base using the new movement order. By click-dragging on an item you will create a new move order and your colonists will push the items to their new locations. Utility robots given movement orders will use them as waypoints and if they are not too busy, go directly to the locations.
The tutorial has been significantly reworked and with more guidance and information, and provides an easier and clearer first contact with the game. Even experienced players may find it useful to give it another go.
Planning
Build priority changes for better base flow and design. Colonists are now more aware of the flow of a base and will order door builds based on the need of that specific room. They will also no longer have complete emotional breakdowns when locked in a room with no doors, so will build one if it is placed. They will also share workbenches more efficiently and the amount of duplicated builds has been reduced.
Suit refill points are now critical to surface operations. You can no longer build items far away from your base and must build a supply chain to the item so your colonists can restock their suits and rest.
Resuscitation and first aid has been added, allowing colonists to save unconscious members of the team (if they like them enough). Just ensure you pick some colonists with medical skills as improperly given resuscitation can give patients other health complications.
Other notable changes:
As you may be aware, we are rapidly approaching beta, so do send us all your bugs and issues. Be sure to get yourself on the development branch to see all the latest changes.
That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.
0.60 Love and Lava
Alpha 0.60 is here! Lava can now rain down into your base, incinerating anything in its path. Here's a video of me showing off the new features and changes to the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20AsxhlpBkU
Lava
Lava, (perhaps more accurately, magma) is now in the game! Maps with high tectonic activity will run a huge risk of lava breaches, that will pour into your colony and destroy anything in its path. Watch as your equipment and colonists die gloriously in the all consuming fire. The system is a full 3d fluid smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation so has realistically simulated viscosity, density and pressures all running in real time.
Memories.
All intelligences in the game now have a detailed long term memory, allowing them to remember their actions, moods and feelings. In their emails, colonists will now comment on what they did in a day, why they did it, how they felt about it, how important it was and even details down to what the bases conditions were like at the time. Domestic and alien creatures will use their memory to make better choices in the future, such as returning to a place they found food or warmth.
Relationships
Colonists can now make friends, build relationships, fall in love and make enemies. The relationships will change their attitudes towards each other, their moods and their behaviour in the base. New interactions, such as arguments, follwing and shoving will come about as colonists get to know each other.
Interface improvements
The game's zoom has been improved substantially to allow you to get in close to the action, and also to allow you to pull back for a wider overview of your colony.
Many small changes have been added to the user interface to improve object placement, such as wall-snapping auto-rotation of items and object-type rotation memory, to allow for consistent placement when placing several duplicate items. A small amount of latency has been reduced from the mouse movement which will also make things feel more responsive.
The new mission-day counter on the top right of the screen will give you a better feel for your base's progress as you track the passage of time.
Other notable Changes:
As you may be aware, we are rapidly approaching beta, so do send us all your bugs and issues. The estimated date for the 1.0 release of Maia is now the end of May.
That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.
0.59 Foundation Hotfix.
I hope everyone enjoyed trying out the latest update over the weekend. I've been working like a mule to smooth off a few of the rough edges.
Here's the main changes gone in over the last few days.
Tuesday:
Sweating reduced to 2 litres per hour equivalent. If a colonist has 1 litres of sweat on their body, sweating now stops.
Grass is no longer an impediment to path finding.
Utility robots and colonists can now crush grass when going over it.
More grass spawned on the world, better clumping.
Email system scrolls to newest email if the user does not have one open and is not mousing over the "scroll back" button.
Potential fix for colonists complaining about no minerals when there is a hopper available.
Removal of confusing save and load buttons on game hud
Fix for announcer seldonly causing a crash when fire is started in an unknown room.
Fix for announcer announcing fires instead of rations low.
Fix for announcer announcing power depletion instead of power low.
Removal of strange 1MW output claim on wind turbine text.
32 bit exe updated for people on ancient Windows.
Monday
Research room incorrectly labelled.
Incomplete door no longer suffers mechanical damage.
Incomplete door no longer blocks atmosphere.
AI agents now have a temperature weight (in addition to distance and need fulfilment). This weight reduces the chance of picking a task by 2.5% for every 10 degrees C away from 21 degrees Celsius.
Minerals in storage room now have a higher needs fulfilment for colonists than those in excavated areas. Minerals in the hopper now have a slightly higher needs fulfilment than those in the storage room.
Unbuilt doors can no longer be locked.
Colonist action level fixed to correctly change fatigue.
Chance of yawning increased when tired.
Fatigue fixes and balancing.
Colonist perspiration and ambient heat loss balancing. Fix for excessive sweating.
Sweat, ventilation and misc bodily water loss updated with better science.
Ventilations effect on room atmosphere now more accurately simulated, taking into better account lung capacity, CO2 toxicity and breath rate.
Potential fix for energy storage depleted complaint from Announcer.
Atmosphere generator output increased slightly.
Fix for lander lockups when there are no spots for a landing.
Sunday
Linux lib issues fixed which were preventing the game from starting on some systems.
Small lighting system performance optimisation.
Again thanks for all the bug reports and save files.
I'll be releasing 0.60 quite soon. We haven't quite nailed down the feature list yet, but it should bring a few very anticipated things from the road map.
Keep up to date with the progress of the game on dev.maiagame.com!
Maia Alpha 0.59: Invasion!
Maia 0.59 is now live. This update brings the threat of dangerous alien creature incursions into the base. Don't panic! Your colonists are now armed and ready for them, with new patrol behaviours to hunt down and eradicate the threat. 0.59 also brings a multitude of cool new features, such as the command and control room, new UI changes, AI updates and hundreds of bug fixes.
Here's a video of me showcasing some of the new features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNe3cNYEuxk
Invasions.
The local creatures are now far more likely to breach a base that sits within their territory. They may enter to steal livestock and rations or just to mark their territory by destroying your vital equipment. Colonists are ready for them however with new side arms and patrol behaviours to locate and destroy the intruders.
Special Stuff
Not all the local wildlife is a menace. With ecological research, the nocturnal aliens can now be captured, domesticated, bred and slaughtered for high quality tasty food production.
Overseer
The new command and control room gives your colonists better command oversight of your base. It lifts the population cap and provides a map table that gives insight to the movement of colonists and threats to your base. It's thermal mode allows you to spot issues with heat distribution within your network of rooms.
Easy Reading
UI accessibility has taken a step forward with a new dyslexic mode for the game that presents a dyslexia friendly font and increases text sizes throughout the game. Dynamic drop shadows have also been added on overlay text to ease reading in high contrast scenes and many button behaviours have been tweaked to stop misclicks and other small annoyances.
T'annoy
Several base announcements have been added to provide feedback for many base systems such as power grid issues, blackouts caused by solar storms and energy storage depletion. The announcer will also warn of incoming natural disasters, base events and fire emergencies.
Basophobia
The games's pathfinding systems have been improved, which should lead to less issues with complex build orders and also see greater performance gains on low end machines.
Rough change log since 0.58:
I'll be back soon with our next update in December. Here's a rough roadmap of what to look forward to as we approach Beta and then release.
If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.
0.58 Hotfixes: November
Maia 0.59 is now deep into production, and I have decided to release some of the fixes from that milestone early.
This build focuses on improving performance and several small annoyances in the game. The CPU and cache optimisations in this release will bring a frame rate improvement of up to 20% on some previously bottlenecked systems.
Chicken wandering behaviour fixes. They will now seek out the livestock room faster and not wander out of it so much.
IMP pathfinding and framerate issues fixed when stuck in in anomalous locations.
Room update improvements and optimisations. Larger bases supported.
Fix for occasional bug where a room tile is not deletable on right click.
Fix for loads failing because the ongoing mission flag was not set and the game exiting back to menu in the blink of an eye.
Atmosphere spread in subrooms of large blue casing areas fixed and optimised.
New colonist surnames added.
Game world rendering improved and optimised.
Engine draw call optimisation.
Thanks for all the feedback and reviews on the previous build. We will be back very soon with a feature full 0.59.
You can watch as I make and check in changes to our code base on https://dev.maiagame.com/ (some spoilers if you want the 0.59 update to be a surprise)
0.58 Hotfixes: Part Deux.
Time for another hotfix build!
Today's update brings several important improvements to 0.58, and fixes several bugs that were hampering the AI and the simulation of more complex bases.
Airlocks no longer cause intermittent pathfinding blockage. Reducing the chance of issues with building outside.
Rooms no longer locked on startup allowing colonists to wander about before an initial room is placed.
Crop blight adjusted to be less predictable.
Colonists will now assign a higher priority to body-bagging up corpses.
IMPs will no longer use hoppers when not carrying enough materials.
Flywheel integrity degradation adjusted, colonists will consequently no longer spend as much time trying to fix them as a high priority task.
AI agent path verification on world changes optimised. Building, locking doors, cave ins and digging should cause less CPU spikes.
Colonist and IMP idle behaviours now checked against reachable sectors. Should reduce failed pathfinds and improve performance.
Dog pathfinding optimised.
Cat pathfinding optimised.
Several spelling mistakes fixed
Potential data corruption fixes.
32 bit exe updated.
Thanks for all the feedback on the previous builds. We will be back very soon with more updates.
You can watch as I make and check in changes to our code base on https://dev.maiagame.com/
If you want more help getting into the game. Check out the useful guides on the community portal, including this getting started guide:
Thanks for everyone who took the time to try the latest build and leave their feedback on the forums and and in reviews. I've fixed several of the pressing issues in the latest two hotfixes.
Yesturday's changes:
Every item in the game now has a very simple description of what it does in general terms when placing it.
Basic food production added to the tutorial.
Basic explanation of the heat mechanics added to the tutorial
Colonist requests can now be answered with a y/n key press. Those are rebindable in the menu options.
Build priority added to the tutorial. (Double click on items to set them higher!)
Caveins and structural weaknesses no longer persist between level changes. This may also prevent a crash.
Colonists will now be less likely to over run when approaching an object. Stopping them getting stuck in and behind things.
Today's changes:
Dracaena plant selection fixed and readded to the game.
More rooms given the selection of three aesthetic plants.
Aesthetic plants no longer spread blight.
Aesthetic plants no longer show Kj of energy stored in them like food plants.
Colonists will no longer join a team meeting if they are already going to an action with a high need.
Sounds added for loading and saving and for successful and failed loads.
Greyed out buttons now capture input so elements behind them can not be clicked on.
When an email is open no left or right clicks will be accepted apart from to the email manager buttons.
Emails can be dismissed with a right click.
No input is accepted for a fraction of a moment after closing an email to prevent misclicks that might cause dig orders etc to be placed.
Hud no longer updates when the player is in first person, stopping it grabbing input or applying the screen darkening effect.
Chickens no longer self destruct after being on fire if there are two or less remaining.
Building materials no longer placeable in workshop or storage room to reduce player confusion (Colonists will automatically move surplus materials from the smelter to the shelves).
The colonists will no longer present the player with any choices in the first few minutes of game play.
Again, thanks for the feedback, I will continue to fix the larger issues in the game and be back with more updates and patches in the future.
You can watch as I make and check in changes to our code base on https://dev.maiagame.com/
If you want more help getting into the game. Check out the useful guides on the community portal, including this getting started guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=779670720
Maia Update 0.58: The Songs of Distant Earth
Maia 0.58 has arrived. This update brings new AI systems, multiple base support, deepened simulation, procedural colonist written music and sci-fi and hundreds upon hundreds of bug fixes. Here's a video of me playing the latest build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pqq1bqldI4
Emergent-cy
Colonists are now able to use their skill sets and experience to plan tasks and directly consult players on the running of the colony. From complex base management and room planning, to scientific excursions to the surface, torching failing crops and even presenting their mood-reflecting avant-garde electronic music or their desperately clichéd (procedural) science fiction writing. These emergent choices add a little extra challenge, depth and flavour to the game.
Expansionism
Multiple airlocks and even rudimentary multiple bases are now supported, allowing for much more ambitious building projects and paving the way for colonising the game's massive maps. Colonists will now take much greater care to manage their suit usage, planning their journeys around efficiency and safety.
Thinking Machines
Robot batteries now run down and will need to be replenished at a robot recharge station. A robot on low power will become sluggish and throw more fussy tantrums, upsetting the colonists. The IMP AI has had a major rewrite to re-prioritise their efforts around digging and materials collection. Their new detailed mouse over info-tips presenting a clearer picture of their robotic planning process.
Feed the rot. Rot the feed.
Crops are now susceptible to fungal blights, which spread based on temperature and maturity of the plants. These diseases can transfer to nearby hydroponic planters and wipe out plants of the same species. Growing varied crops and carefully considering placement of the growers, lights and heating adds new depth and challenge to food production.
Neighbors (become good friends?)
The creatures in the world will now migrate around the map to expand their territories and seek out new food sources. If the animal's new territory includes your base you will receive a warning email, giving you more time to consider defences.
Precipitation solution
Food and Water systems have been tweaked in many ways to reduce issues around dehydration and starvation. These range from the new condenser unit that can provide an efficient water source in any room, to new colonist crop anticipation priorities, down to small planning tweaks in the storage room reducing the chance of essential items being buried in mineral ore by a careless robot.
Notable changes include:
I hope you enjoy this update, please let me know what you think over on the Maia forums or on Twitter. You can watch my development on dev.maiagame.com
Maia 0.59 will be out at the start of November, with Maia 0.60, our first Beta build out on December 13.
