We know that we’ve been very hush-hush for a few months now, but it’s been for a good reason that we can now reveal to you all. Steve and Mike have been secreted away in their hidey-holes, furiously laboring away on the full campaign mode for Meeple Station!
That’s right! We’ve been sitting on this for quite some time now, but we’re jiggling with anticipation to finally be releasing our complete story mode for Meeple Station.
Along with the campaign, 1.0 will include loads of other fixes and features. We’ve revamped the combat and conflict in game, added a whole system for custom events, and more meaningful interactions with the surrounding star systems.
We don’t want to give too much away about the campaign, so we’re not going to be dropping any story spoilers in this announcement! ;P
So What's New?
New Tutorials! Believe it or not over the past two years we’ve had to re-make or completely revise the game’s tutorial at least a dozen times. However, now that we’re finally confident with the game’s major features we’ve wrapped up a long-requested comprehensive series of tutorials to guide new players through the game’s basics once and for all.
Mods have also finally gotten some long-needed TLC, now with backward compatibility for older mods and refreshed support for dealing with all of the new features and content.
Most importantly we have now introduced the Hyperdrive. Tired of your boring old home system in sandbox mode? Just up and leave, find a more interesting one! You can now build power hungry drives to move your station over to entirely new systems. We’ve been developing this behind the scenes since the Planets Update and are overjoyed to finally be able to open up the gates on this and make much more fully-realized use of the procedural star systems tech.
With Hyperdrives also comes a more interesting stellar landscape. You’ll notice a whole lot of new markers and effects around planetary bodies. Hazardous meteor storms and debris orbiting moons and planets. These help identify points of interest (and danger!) on the map. Scouts will also be able to explore wreckages to bring back new technologies or refined materials.
Speaking of destructive meteors- we’ve also changed how brutal bombers and meteors used to be. They no longer mercilessly obliterate large sections of your station in the traditional firey game-ending fashion and send your poor crew into an admittedly difficult-to-salvage and vicious death-spiral. Instead, they now destroy only the single tile they hit and instantly auto-create a repair job for your engineers to run to try to patch back up.
Speaking of running- the Meeple AI behaviors have had a lot of meaningful upgrades, such as finally having a basic sense of self-preservation, which they can now use in conjunction with the new running movement speed behavior in urgent situations, such as: suddenly being exposed to vacuum, or the bad intentions of pirates, or to avoid starving to death, or even just legging it to the bathroom for that incredibly urgent poo. The result being far higher crew survivability in general!
Next up we’ve introduced Pillboxes and rally points. This allows more meaningful and direct control of your combat units. Pillboxes act as a way to tactically place dedicated guard posts, while rally points evacuate non-combatants from a room and calls all of your available guards to rush in and secure the area.
Another interesting addition to combat is pirate invaders. We’ve worked a good bit on their AI to include morale and thievery as their main modus operandi. Once pirates board your station, they’ll look for your storage containers and grab as many resources as they can carry before legging it for the airlock. We’ve always been slightly irked that pirates in video games seem to always be there to fight to the death and that’s just not what pirates do! They’re there to rob and steal your goodies! They’re not in the business of getting slaughtered so if too many of their comrades are injured or vaporized, you may see the rest flee and return to their station, preserving their numbers to fight again another day. All in all, pirates behave much more interestingly now.
What? 1.0 Is Done?
This next patch will be our 1.0 release. We’ve had the groundwork for most of the major features and systems we’ve aimed to have in for 1.0 in your hands for long enough that we’ve been able to see all the lovely ways it can break and in what ways it can all be made better. Several months ago we decided to go quiet, just put our heads down, and dedicate a huge effort into smashing out a giant backlog of major and minor persistent bugs that have managed to darken our dev-days for all too long now- and implement new and partially-implemented features that have been on the backburner waiting for the parts they needed to be complete. All of the bug-fixing, optimization, and polishing we’ve accomplished go along-side with a crop of new features [like the events system] that were needed for the new Campaign Mode.
As far as projects go, Meeple Station has been an absolutely gigantic learning experience for me, [Stephen] both as a programmer and game developer, but also in learning to work in a team development environment when Mike came on-board mid-project around March of last year, bringing the development team to a grand total of two. There is a conception we’ve noticed amongst many of our fans and critics alike, that we’re a much larger studio than we actually are. That’s probably our fault for not addressing that sooner- but it’s just me and Mike on the development team, and Alex our producer and general industry guru- across three countries and time zones: Australia, the US, and Spain, respectively.
A lot has happened over the past two years, my family is two new children larger, three if you include Mike, (which I affectionately do) houses have been moved and stresses hath accumulated. When I first jumped into Meeple Station I had plenty of ideas and the grandest of ambitions. As time went on it became more evident that Meeple Station would either become an eternity project like our own personal favourite ‘Dwarf Fortress’ (God bless’ em), or it would need to have a foreseeable end point. So a year ago we roadmapped everything we wanted to reasonably have in for release, set to it, and still managed to take six months longer than we’d projected. Even though this development has been a really tough one that has strained at our purse-strings, we were determined to persevere through aggressive application of sweat equity to not to be one of those now-all-to-common EA projects that cuts and runs before it’s finished just because the going got tough. Having integrity is a big thing for us, even when it hurts- especially when it hurts.
This does not mean we’re going to stop giving love to our little Meepley game! We will still be maintaining the game and issuing bug fixes, will still be listening to our community, and will still be throwing in a few new things here and there as time goes on. But this -is- our final push toward getting Meeple Station in a fully finished and playable state for 1.0 release. We’ve worked our butts off for the past two years and put our blood, sweat, and tears into making a game that we hope with all our heart will bring you all some joy from start to finish.
All of that said, we’ll be taking these last few weeks to test the ever-loving heck out of it and make sure nothing untoward falls out. We’re aiming at March 30th for our Meeple Station 1.0 drop, so stay on the look out!
New Year Bug Fixer upper!
We're back from the holiday break with a small catch bug fixing patch! Thanks to everyone who gave us time to report any issues. This week we're just fixing the bugs that came out of the woodwork over the past month. Next we will have some new features coming in!
And here are the main ones!
• fixed trade ships from not showing up • transit trade ships now save and load properly • fixed default blueprint layouts breaking pathfinding • fixed large vents from being too amazing that your engineers die from wonderment • fixed fuel processors from tricking you into giving it the wrong utility • fixed pirates flying and walking backwards • guards now go outside to attack pirates • fixed being able to toggle out of the starting scene by pressing Y • fixed cross dimensional player ships arriving from other save files • fixed negative refinery requests • lowered injury risk when mining • fixed a bug trying to restart the setup scene • fixed 4K and similar resolutions from crashing on startup
Always feel free to drop by our discord community if you'd like to dialogue with us a bit more. We're back in full force, working off our holiday layer of blubber.
Pre-Christmas Patch!
First up we've completely revised the Research Menu with a fresh coat of paint. You'll now find roughly 30 new techs to research and a much simpler UI to navigate it.
As part of the research you'll notice a new tech for comms relays. This enables you to communicate with your neighbouring factions. This includes pirates! (And if you can get on their good side they will even begin trading with you).
Along with many other fixes and features we've added, you'll now be able to send raiding parties to steal resources from other factions, but they can also do the same to you! So try not to punch above your weight!
Not only that, you can now send out mining ships fitted with a crew of miners and a pilot to remotely mine and gather resources from other locations in your 'Star System' (Yeah I learned my lesson, I know they're not called solar systems). This will especially come in handy for those of you who have strip mined your local asteroids to dust.
Not to mention we've brought back the infamous pirate incursions and bombers. After months of re-balancing and new features we've finally implemented them back in their full force, watch out! Anti-ship turrets and shield generators will have a very serious role now in the later game.
As always, we're super appreciative of everyone helping out and giving us feedback through our discord community, and welcome everyone to stop by and say hi!
for those of you who are curious here are the patch notes on the title screen :)
• the tutorial actually tutorialises again • can now send scout ships to salvage and explore nearby bodies • can now send mining ships to gather resources from other places • can now send raiding parties to steal resources and murder • pirates are now an actual faction and can be appeased and traded with • faction colors are now more random • fixed a loading issue when saving a game with crew aboard a ship • re-introduced pirate raids/incursions/bombers • factions can now raid you if you upset them • pirates will also lose morale and run away when losing a fight • can now dismantle unwanted ships • meeple sleep cycle is slightly longer • completely revised and changed the research menu • added comms relays to communicate with factions • fixed lime, purple and tinted glass tiles from not allowing turrets and ejectors to be built • fixed lagging issues when using the trade menu • outside asteroids will no longer block docking lane ways • removed the hierarchy (Officers are now gone! Oh noes!) • greatly improved loading times • performance improvements (especially for larger stations) • autosaves are now written asynchronously and wont hang gameplay • fuel utility lines now cost steel • fuel processor no longer requires advanced power • changed multiple recipes • changed spritesheet for fuel processors • hull tiles now add to room value • every system now spawns with at least one source of monazite and ilmenite • can now manually autosave with CTRL + S (even with autosaving disabled in options) • mining is now more hazardous for meeple (muahahaha!) • meeple can now run when it's urgent (like when they really really need to use the bathroom or get shot at)
Factions and Ship Update!
We're back with another large patch. This time around we've added in factions and reigned in the entire trading system. We've added some new ship models to construct and even made them color customisable.
This patch is quite large and you'll be able to see a long list of changes on the title screen. We've addressed dozens of large bugs and possibly a hundred or more smaller ones, added some new items and balanced some gameplay. But on top of that we've been gearing up for some more lore and story based content to liven things up.
You'll notice a few new stations floating around your solar system, these are faction stations. They'll grow, accumulate resources, renown and population. As you grow, so will they.
Previously trade ships would just magically appear out of nowhere with bountiful cargo. However, now traders will be coming from specific factions and supply and demand will have a real effect on the market. An interesting feature with trading now is that if you continually supply one faction with more resources you'll see them growing faster and producing higher end products. On the other side, if you continually buy them out of stock and only sell one item, they'll increase their demand for other resources and lower their demand of what you keep selling.
This is just the first aspect of how factions will be working. In the next patch we will be introducing a comms antenna and a means to dialog with factions. We're also aiming to revamp pirates and add in a lot more unique events in the near future!
But that's not all! We're working now on adding in new solar systems and expanding the function of ships. Some of the planned features include sending out scouting vessels, mining convoys, raiding parties and possibly trade ships of your own. You can build the ships, might as well use em!
Want a hot pink trade vessel? Be our guest!
But we're also aiming to add more unique events and dialogs. Pirates making demands, strange anomalies, disgruntled faction traders, whatever our imaginations can come up with. But most importantly a means to deliver our final and main campaign that we've been holding off on.
Lastly, quite a few people have been asking why this patch has taken roughly two months to come out? Why the delay? Well if you take a little look at the last item on the change log you'll see one of the developers (myself) had a baby! Basically the last 6 weeks have had more challenges than debugging code! believe me!
But thank you all for patiently waiting for this patch! You'll be seeing more patches more frequently from here on. As always, feel free to stop by our discord and chat with us, we're very active on our community server! :)
Hydroponics, vents and Medicine!
This week we've introduced a set of hydroponic bays, changed how airflow and ventilation works and also added medicine production.
First thing you'll notice is that oxygen wont be working quite the same as it was before. Life support now creates and stores oxygen in tanks then vents disperse oxygen into different areas in your station.
That means a new utility system for ventilation, oxygen tanks, vents, and a few new door types. There are now two types of doors, ones that block airflow and ones that don't. This can help you setup rooms and quarters, for example, that don't all need their own vent.
Up next we have hydroponics. You can now grow vegetables AND fruit, as well as medicinal plants that can be manufactured into medical supplies, to treat wounded meeple (Sorry, they ain't free anymore).
Save files are NOT broken this patch, however, you will need to make it a top priority to setup vents and probably replace some of your bulkhead doors with regular doors when you first load your station. Oxygen does last a little while, so you should have enough time (hopefully) good luck!
As always, feel free to join our discord community, we're always happy to answer questions and hear feedback!
Medic bays!
This week we've worked on and fixed some existing issues with doctors. We've introduced medical beds and you can now setup medical wards to house your injured meeple, making it easier for your doctors to treat patients (instead of chasing them around the station)
You'll also notice meeple who are injured will seek out medical beds. But so long as you don't have a homicidal guard on the loose, hopefully your wards will stay relatively empty.
We've also done a fair bit of balancing to the meeple creation process, especially considering the difficulty. We're planning on putting in more traits and expanding on the health system shortly.
Amongst other bug fixes and such, we're laying down sound groundwork for another large patch. We'll be expanding on the ship management system and factions soon.
This will bring about a fair bit of change to the balance of the game and growing your station!
Hey everyone! Thanks for all the bug reports and saying Hi on our discord community! This week we're just rolling in some light content and bug fixes in preparation for our next major patch.
So whats coming up next in our big patch?
We'll tell you later.. ;)
New Crew Configuration!
This week we've added a feature to be able to customise your starting crew when creating a new station. You can now balance advantageous traits or disadvantageous ones in order to add or sacrifice skills and attributes elsewhere.
Customising your Meeple has been a highly requested feature and we're glad to bring it into the game. It adds a lot of depth and a good amount of experimentation with your crew.
As we were testing we frequently got carried away trying out different skills and attributes and mixing them up with unique traits. For example, we found being able to add both the Chatterbox and Influential trait to an officer turned them into an abundant source of happiness as they flittered about the station talking everyone's ears off, much to their liking. But making sure they weren't extreme in any given attribute, so every crew member could find common ground and get along with them.
We're curious to see what other trait combinations might have strong benefits, or perhaps extreme pitfalls. Ever see an astrophobic Miner? Or a violent Guard? well if you haven't... now you can! (Even though you may not want to).
Along with this feature we've been flushing out as many bugs as we can and trying to focus on the overall polish of the game, after many large patches in the past few months we felt it was due, and will be focusing on bug fixes more intently the next week, before getting to work on our next major patch.
As always, feel free to stop by our discord community and say Hi! We love taking feedback and actively respond to any bugs or issues you might find!
Huge UI Overhaul
Our long awaited UI overhaul patch is here! This one took a bit longer to wrap up, however we're glad we did. Things are beginning to feel a lot cleaner than they were before.
But this isn't JUST a UI update, we've been taking a lot of feedback and re-designing a lot of older menus and panels to make the game more ergonomic and intuitive in general, to improve the overall quality and ease of playing, as well as preparing for our next batch of planned features.
Here's a little screenshot of our new dynamic title screen, mmmmmm.
So whats coming next?
One of the large differences with the new UI is the Meeple panel. You can now view a lot more about each meeple and a lot easier. A long requested feature has been the ability for meeple to be more customisable, choosing your starting crew and having them improve and gain experience in the jobs you assign them. These are all in the works and coming soon in the future!
However, something we're actively working on for our next major patch is the addition of entities and other factions. We're adding on to the player ship construction mechanic and focusing on making interactions with traders more meaningful. (Yes, and pirates! They'll be coming back in full force, for those who have already witnessed the full force of pirate bombers and swarming invasions, you'll know what we're talking about)
We're currently working on a variety of ships for the player to create, as well as the ability to customise and color them.
Over the next few weeks our priority will be on fine tuning any UI we've missed and adding in factions, new ships and hopefully more which in turn will limit the infinite-super-monopoly stations some of you have been creating with our magically appearing cargo bustling trade ships.
All of this will be wrapped up in a bundle of new features.
Stay tuned! we're very excited about what's coming next! As always, feel free to drop into our discord server and have a chat, say hi, or ask questions.
O-Mega Patch! Our biggest patch yet!
This patch brings in some enormous changes, I'm not even sure where to begin!
We've been working hard to bring some of the core aspects too some of our major features.
O-Mega Patch!? Whats all this nonsense about!
This patch we've introduced a completely new map system, reformatted save files (but haven't broken them *phew*), added ship construction and a bunch of little bits and pieces you may notice. These are all the first step towards the much larger scope of the game we've been wanting to get at for quite some time.
You'll now find a new feature with docking gantries, you'll be able to construct your own ships! Why? well you can now send crew and resources to other stations, YOUR stations in fact, we've reformatted save files and opened up the map to allow you to build and maintain multiple stations at once!
We still have a lot more features that we'd like to introduce, and these large patch changes are just the beginning. We are working every day at fleshing out these features and expanding on them as much as we can.
How are we going to flesh out these features?
Well, firstly, we'll eventually open up the entire galaxy, as you're currently limited to your own solar system. Second, we're going to overhaul the ship management system, as it's our hope that you'll end up with dozens of stations and a large network of ships, customised of course to your liking, and managed more effortlessly through an intuitive UI.
Third, we have a complete UI overhaul coming in the next few weeks, as well as some overdue changes to how traders will work, introducing factions and persistent entities into your little meeple world.
All this and more! we hope you can enjoy what we've been cooking up over the past few weeks and stick around as we expand on it even further!
As always, feel free to join us on our discord server, we're active daily and love getting user feedback! https://discord.gg/5bdnpsN
