Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Stardeus
New Beings Progress Update #1
Last month I revealed the plan for new beings. It's time for a progress report.
I am currently still in the very beginning of this massive rewrite, and the goal is to lay out the foundations of all the new systems that will have to interact with each other for the whole thing to click.
Here are a couple of highlights of what is already in the oven:
GOAP Based AI System
GOAP (Goal Oriented Action Planning) is revolutionary AI system that allows high flexibility and realism in character decision making and environmental interactions. It was pioneered in F.E.A.R. and used in games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Fallout 3 and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
In addition to making the behaviors more emergent, I feel that this system will make the new combat truly shine. It is still a work in progress, and I yet have to port over a hundred behaviors from the old system, but so far the results are very promising and this new AI will open the possibilities of bringing the depth of the game to the next level.
Body Parts Framework
It enables having interchangeable body parts for both robotic and biological life forms. Here's an example of how it will affect the gameplay. Imagine a micro meteoroid hitting your best construction robot. Previously it would deal a fair bit of damage to the robot, the health bar would go to 0 and the robot would become useless. You would dispose of the robot via the Disassembler and get a few materials out of it. Here's what will happen with the new body parts system:
Micro meteoroid will hit a random body part of the robot. Let's say it hit the "Mobilizer" body part slot and destroys the installed "Tracks" part.
As a result, the robot cannot move anymore. It can still do work that doesn't require moving, so you can carry the robot to the construction site and it will build what it can reach.
However, you have a better idea. You order removing the "Mobilizer" part from one of your carrier drones - you take out the "MiniJet" part.
You install the "MiniJet" on the damaged robot, and it can now move again.
As you may have guessed, the "MiniJet" enables ability to fly, so the previously grounded robot can now fly around in space!
And yes, you won't have to wait for the micro meteoroid to strike the robot to replace the "Mobilizer" from "Tracks" to "MiniJet", you can do it any time.
And it's not limited to just robots. There are close to 30 body parts in a cat, and a human will have even more. Get ready for some war crimes, cross-species organ transplants, cybernetic body parts and organ trading!
Combat
I am building the foundations of new combat together with everything else right from the beginning. This will ensure that it integrates with the body parts, inventory, health and other new systems nicely.
Let's take a look at a few new combat mechanics.
Directional Cover System
Every wall and object on your ship will have a "Cover" value that it can provide. This data goes into a new directional cover map that fighters will use when taking positions in combat.
Additionally, while fighting, beings will take paths with best cover rather the shortest paths like they normally would.
This opens up a great deal of tactical depth to the combat.
Squad Behaviors
When a combat breaks out, an "Army" will be created for each faction. Then the game will automatically create one or more "Squads" for each army by taking unit proximity and type into account. Each squad will elect its "Leader" that will drive the whole squad towards reaching some objective. The "Followers" will tend to stay close to the "Leader" and will have a slightly different set of goals.
Happy New Year!
I hope the new changes sound exciting for you, I am absolutely hyped about them myself. There is still a long, long way ahead until anything playable is ready for playtesting, but the good news is that there seem to be no roadblocks ahead so far.
The only setback is that I managed to catch COVID, this is why I stream much less for the past week. But it will pass and I will catch up, I promise!
Since the next development update will come out next year, I wish you the best Holidays and Happy New Year! May all your wishes come true!
I'm happy with how the Anniversary Update was received, it felt like a big step forward in the right direction. However, Stardeus is not there yet, and the next couple of steps will have to be even bigger. Let me share a glimpse of what's going on behind the scenes.
From the very start of the project I've been focusing on the mechanical parts of Stardeus - ship building, space exploration, production chains, research, electricity. Meanwhile some very important aspects had only minor incremental changes on top of the initial prototype that was made some 3 years ago.
These three areas - Beings, Combat, and AI - are immensely important yet heavily underdeveloped, and it is finally time for a serious rewrite.
It is going to be the biggest rewrite to date, and it will have an even larger impact than the new Research system.
The bad news is that it will take considerable time, as doing this right is a complex task that will require enormous amount of work. It could be several months until a playable v0.11 release candidate becomes available, but it should be worth the wait.
While I'll be focused on this huge rewrite, v0.10 branch will still receive bug fixes and occasional balance updates, however some minor issues related to parts that will be removed or significantly changed in v0.11 will likely remain unfixed in v0.10.
Thank you for your support and patience. Your enthusiasm and valuable feedback are the driving forces behind my dedication to making Stardeus the best it can be.
Welcome to the first Anniversary Update! Stardeus has come a long way in the year since its Early Access launch. This update is the largest to date. While some features were revealed in previous posts, I'll recap the most important highlights here. All of this is also covered in the accompanying announcement video.
Brand New Research System
The old research system has been entirely replaced with a less grindy model that offers more agency and freedom of choice.
You no longer need to expend electricity to advance research. Research nodes unlock instantly on demand, upon crafting the required number of Datoids, a new research ingredient.
Memory Modules are no longer required for research, and fewer Disk Modules are needed to store research data.
The research tree has been overhauled and reorganized. It is both larger and more logically structured.
While I've attempted to provide an automatic migration for existing save files, the old and new research trees don't align perfectly. As a result, you may find some nodes unlocked out of sequence when upgrading to v0.10.
I strongly recommend starting a new playthrough, as old saves will be unbalanced. Be sure to complete the new tutorials before beginning a new game.
New Tutorials
Instead of an integrated tutorial in the Wrecked scenario, the game now offers six standalone tutorials that cover various aspects of gameplay. Additional tutorials may be introduced to accompany new mechanics in the future.
Universe Biomes
In prior versions, the universe consisted mainly of a few types of randomly generated planets grouped into star systems and galaxies. The updated universe generation algorithm employs a flexible biome system to determine the properties of each planet, star system, and galaxy. This affects everything from the resources available on a planet to the factions you might encounter in specific galaxies. While the full potential of this new biome system is not yet realized, it lays a solid foundation for the introduction of new space-related features and mechanics in future updates.
New Starmap Navigation
The previous mechanics for switching starmap scopes were confusing and restrictive, requiring your ship to be stationary and free of incoming space objects. This has been replaced by a simpler navigation system:
To exit to a parent scope (Planet/System/Galaxy), simply fly beyond its outer ring. This action carries no restrictions, and you'll automatically evade any incoming asteroids or breach capsules.
To enter a nearby Planet/System/Galaxy, proceed as before but without any extra conditions or limitations.
This new system has one unresolved issue: you can't quickly zoom out from a planet to survey the star system or galaxy. This limitation will eventually be addressed by the introduction of a minimap.
New Mining Mechanics
Earlier versions of resource mining had limitations. The first model featured finite resources that would run out; the second made deposits infinite but progressively harder to mine, discouraging exploration.
The current, third iteration introduces resource depth in addition to mining difficulty. Standard shuttle expeditions can reach depths of up to 2km, while AutoDrill Rigs can go as deep as 10km.
Additional changes to mining mechanics include:
AutoDrill Rigs are now retrievable and reusable.
Human colonists participating in mining expeditions will incur a cost in terms of deteriorating mood and physical condition, necessitating recovery time.
Exploration is required to identify the nature of potential resource points, although radar can offer some guidance.
This mining system, like most game mechanics, remains open to future adjustments based on player feedback.
New Fire and Explosions System
Fire and explosions have been problematic before, often too random and either too difficult or too easy to manage. The previous implementation was inflexible, inefficient, and visually unappealing.
To address this, the old system was entirely removed and replaced with a more flexible, efficient one that aligns better with the rest of the game. This new system can manage a large number of burning objects while offering granular control over each flame.
Fire behavior is now more predictable, driven by a near-deterministic algorithm. For example, fire will only spread if oxygen is available, and it adheres to specific rules when doing so. New attributes, like fuel levels, add complexity and open the door for new in-game weaponry.
The same system now also manages explosions. While still a work in progress, the goal is for all fire and explosion events to be explainable and logical, eliminating arbitrary fires and explosions on well-maintained devices.
Door Permissions
After unlocking the necessary research, you'll gain the ability to configure the permissions for any door or airlock. If directing humans proves difficult, you can at least lock doors to control their movement.
Trap Floors
A set of retractable spikes can automatically trigger to impale non-flying enemies. Ideal for farming crawlers in a Cloning Pod or for areas designed to deter uninvited guests.
Game Balance Enhancements
Hundreds of minor balance changes have been made, cumulatively resulting in a more polished overall experience. These adjustments impact item production times, construction costs, the economy, and various other game aspects, all aimed at reducing grind.
New Build Menu
The previous Radial menu, while gamepad-friendly, proved cumbersome for mouse users. The new Grid menu includes a built-in search field and offers quicker navigation. It is the default option, but those preferring the Radial menu can revert to it via the "Tool Menu Type" option in the Input settings.
Unification of Crafting Devices
The earlier distinction between "processed" and "crafted" resources has been streamlined. Most "processing" devices have been converted to "crafting" devices, except for the Nutrient Extractor and Disassembler. A new rule stipulates that resources are crafted, while dead beings are processed. This simplifies the controls across all crafting devices and eliminates the confusing "Process" tool.
Batch Size Controls for Production
This feature extends beyond a simple UI update. You can now instruct crafting devices to produce multiple items simultaneously. Workers will gather the necessary resources in advance, lengthening production time but resulting in larger output batches. This minimizes interruptions in the production chain.
Notification Groups
Devices that are Idle, Unconfigured, or facing a Material Deficit will now generate a single notification per group, enhancing the readability of the event list.
Detailed Status Log
A compact panel in the bottom-right corner displays a detailed status log useful for troubleshooting specific issues. For example, if a robot repeatedly drops tasks due to inability to reach a Charge Station, this activity will be recorded in the log.
New Trade View
Though it was already shipped in v0.9, it is worth mentioning again for those who may have been away from the game. The new Trade view is a substantial improvement over the original launch version.
New Quests UI
The initial Quests UI, being cumbersome and unclear, has been replaced with a more user-friendly version. Now you can progress through multiple quests simultaneously. Completion of a quest, even if not set as active, will prompt immediate notification and reward distribution.
Improved Charts
The charts have been refined for greater readability. The electricity grid chart now also displays renewable energy output, allowing you to see if your ship operates solely on solar energy.
Aggregated Local Maneuvering Controls
The need to locate and click individual Maneuvering Controllers to navigate your ship in local space has been eliminated. The Ship Controls overlay now provides a consolidated list of your controllers, indicating their direction and operational status.
Better Mod Validation
Due to the fast-paced development of Stardeus, internal APIs are subject to change, often causing workshop mods to break. The worst-case scenario involves a malfunctioning mod undermining game performance while continually logging errors. To protect the player experience, I've intensified mod validation standards.
I've tested most workshop mods to ensure that errors from incompatible mods are detected early and flagged in-game. This notifies both players and mod creators of issues.
Final Words
I could go on into more details, but this post is getting way too long, so I'll stop here. You can read the Changelog if you want to dig deeper into what happened in v0.10.
I hope you will love the new changes, and please give constructive criticism if you don't. I am always listening and will correct the issues as much as I can.
The road to version 1.0 is still a long one. Stardeus was an ambitious project from the very start, and now, after almost 4 years of development the ambition has not diminished. I am confident that I will be able to carry out the vision of Stardeus to the full extent, just give me a few more years and enough coffee!
Your support - be it through reviews, word of mouth, or tuning into my development live streams on Twitch - is invaluable.
I'm still working on the upcoming major update, extending it with a few more noteworthy features. Let's take a look!
New Tutorials
The Wrecked scenario had a built-in tutorial that didn't cover enough of the game. It was completely removed in favor of a brand new tutorial system. I've accumulated a large amount of feedback about the current tutorial, and applied a lot of it when building this new system.
There will be multiple new tutorials, each covering a single aspect of the game, and you will be able to move back and forth through the tutorial messages.
Tutorials will be optional, but highly recommended even for the seasoned players, as they will reveal certain tips and tricks that are quite difficult to figure out on your own. I've seen players with over 100 hours of play time getting surprised to find out you can hold shift to build floors in a circle.
New Universe and Starmap Mechanics
There are a few big changes in the Starmap:
Universe generation is now less random and based on Biomes to distribute resources and faction presence. You will have to leave the first star system to find Uranium and the planet closest to your ship will be guaranteed to have common resources very much needed in early game.
Star systems will have visual trajectory rings. Planets won't be moving around stars just yet, but that option is now on the table.
You can enter planets, star systems and galaxies while the ship is still moving. It was annoying to have to wait for the ship to get to full stop.
You will have to fly your ship outside the outermost ring to exit planets, star systems and galaxies. While the instant exit button was convenient, it was confusing, immersion breaking and required ugly hacks like not allowing to exit the system while an asteroid was incoming.
These changes made the previously generated universe pretty much obsolete, therefore if you will load an old save file, the universe will be regenerated from scratch. This means that all shuttle expeditions and copters will be returned, any planet terraforming progress will be lost. It's inconvenient, but necessary, and I do always recommend a fresh new run with every new major update anyway.
Improved Charts
The charts will now be much easier to read. You can also clear them and toggle the view between 0-max and min-max.
Freeze of v0.9
You may have noticed that the v0.9 version is getting almost no updates. This is because the v0.10 has diverged to a point where backporting changes to v0.9 is becoming inconvenient. I want to move fast and release the v0.10 update sooner, therefore I encourage you to switch to the `experimental` or v_0_10_rc branch in `Steam Betas` and try the upcoming updates today. Any issues reported in v0.10 release candidate are fixed with top priority. Both experimental and v_0_10_rc are currently pointing to the same build.
That's it for now, see you in the next development update that will bring the v0.10 to everyone! - spajus
Dev Update 2023-08-05: UI Rework and Upcoming Big Changes
Greetings, Space Travelers!
I'm again a little late to prepare what is supposed to be a *monthly* development update, because time flies too quickly. It has been a very busy period! For some time now, I've been managing two tasks concurrently: fixing reported bugs and implementing small enhancements to the current version, while also putting significant effort into a new major update.
I want to finish and polish the new major update sooner, so I will be focusing primarily on this for the upcoming couple of months. As a result, the frequency and size of updates will decrease. Rest assured, any critical bugs, especially ones reported in the Steam forums, will still be addressed within one day, as they usually were.
This development update is your peek into what's coming next. I'm excited about it and will share more details as the work progresses. Thanks for your understanding, your support, and your patience as I forge ahead with these improvements.
But before looking into what's coming next, let's take a glance at the ongoing UI overhaul.
UI Overhaul
Stardeus UI was designed with a developer-first philosophy, I wanted it to be easy to build and control through C# code, so both myself and the modders could create the UI by stitching little building blocks together. That meant that almost no parts of the UI were hand crafted like in many other games.
However, the developer-first UI had many flaws and usability problems. After a very useful consultation with an expert in the UI/UX field, I ended up with a plan on how to improve things. It will take a lot of time to go through it completely, but the process has already begun, and the results are wonderful. Here are some more notable changes to the UI that are already there:
Item grouping
The top-left info panel and mass selected items are now grouped into logical categories.
Split and reorganized overlay buttons
The cluster of ~30 overlay buttons was broken down into 4 logical sectors - visual overlays, information views, system controls and special group for important views like Research and Starmap.
Events cleanup
The event list used to contain too many notifications, many of them weren't important enough to take up that valuable space. Many of the notifications were removed and placed into the new Log panel.
Log Panel
This tiny box contains a detailed timestamped flow of events ranging from Asteroid impacts to Bob taking 3 physical damage from stubbing a toe on a mini heater.
Fanfare Message
When something really important happens, you don't want to miss it. That's why a large message will show up in the center of the screen when that happens. It will remain there for 10 seconds, giving you enough time to notice it.
New Trade UI
Old trade UI was clunky and quite confusing. This new UI will save you a lot of clicking and will make trading a much more pleasant experience.
I'm not done with the UI overhaul yet, but if you have any suggestions or feedback regarding what is happening with the UI, please share it in the comments or on Stardeus Discord - I'd love to know what you think!
Now let's move onto the main meat of this post - the sneak peek at the next major update.
Coming Soon: New Research System
The next big thing is going to be a brand new research system! It is probably the biggest change to the way the game will be played compared to previous major updates - derelict ships and complex planets.
But before I reveal how the new system works, let me explain why the current research system had to change.
Problems with the current Research System
The research system that is in the current v0.9 version has been around since the very beginning of the project. It is complex in a bad way and has a plethora of problems:
Research tree is not arranged in a logical way.
It unlocks by consuming increasingly large amounts of electricity and waiting for a progress bar to go to 100%. This doesn't feel rewarding.
Research does not use all available electricity, only Ship Computers and Research Stations with a human operator can contribute their energy to move the research progress forward. This is not obvious.
There is a slider in the Ship Computer and Research Station UI that allows changing the amount of electricity contributed to research. It was added out of necessity, but it brought more complexity and confusion.
You have to build a server farm full of disk and memory modules to be able to run research. I personally find this fun, but not everyone does.
With proper infrastructure in place, any research node can be unlocked in 1 in-game day, and parallel research could work towards unlocking multiple research nodes simultaneously. Not everyone is aware of this.
Experienced players who know the game well are able to unlock everything very quickly. This makes the progression too easy after you find the optimal strategy.
Many would get frustrated waiting for research to slowly crawl for way too long often without understanding that they could make it go much faster.
Some wouldn't even start a research because they thought that the full amount of electricity is required to run the research. And it is definitely not their fault - it is bad system design, which is my fault.
All this is about to change, because I have killed this research system with fire, and a brand new system is already in the final stages of development. It changed the game so much that I had to throw away the tutorial (a new set of better tutorials are coming) and I'm looking at several hundred broken integration tests that may require a full rewrite. This will keep me busy for a while.
How does the New Research System work?
Here are the main concepts behind the new research system:
Rather than time + electricity based, it is resource based and somewhat inspired by Factorio research with Science Packs. It gives the player an incentive to establish a resource processing pipeline and hunt for required materials.
To unlock research nodes, you have to produce special materials called "Datoids". There are about 10 types of them right now.
Datoids are crafted from mostly common materials in specialized devices called "Data Harvesters". There will be several different types of Data Harvesters, each capable of producing specific types of Datoids.
You cannot buy or sell Datoids, but in addition to crafting them, you may get some by completing quests and possibly through some story events.
One you have enough Datoids of the right type, you can unlock the research nodes instantly. This will create situations where you will go "shopping" for the available tech in the research tree, choosing which items you need the most right away.
Disk space is still required to store the research data, but the disk costs are much smaller than before. Disk modules are also pre-unlocked, making it impossible to lock yourself out of continuing the research.
Research Queue was replaced with Bookmarks. You can bookmark research nodes and when you have enough Datoids to unlock something that you have bookmarked, you will get a notification.
If you don't have any bookmarked items or none are unlockable, but you can unlock something else, you will be notified about that as well.
The research tree structure is also brand new, split into more sub-trees and much more logical. Big thanks to our community member lysixa for designing a prototype of the new research tree structure. This was exactly the push I needed to start working on the new research system.
The New Research System is available for public testing
If you're still reading, here comes the good part. You can try this new research system right now if you switch to v0_10_rc in Steam BETAS. I recommend this to experienced players only for now, because the tutorial has been removed and the new tutorials aren't ready yet. It's still rough around the edges and may be unbalanced, but if you are brave enough, you are welcome to try it out.
As much as I wish to be able to playtest it all myself with multiple play styles, time is my biggest enemy, and I really appreciate your feedback!
There is a #stardeus-new-reserach channel on Stardeus Discord, or you can use the in-game "Report a bug" button and Steam Forums to submit your feedback.
Development Streams are back!
I was working quietly for several months, but now the regular development streams are back! You are welcome to catch them on both Twitch and YouTube, drop in to say hello and I will be happy to answer any questions about Stardeus, game development, meaning of life and other topics.
That's it for this update, see you in the next one! - spajus
I would normally make a dev update post when there's more to talk about, but the following message had to be made to give everyone a heads up.
Attention! Many Mods will break next Monday, June 12th!
This update will break a lot of mods, if you want to keep playing your save with old mods working, please switch to "v0_8_x" in Steam Betas. I will keep the v0.8.x in main branch for a few more days, if you want to try the v0.9 early, switch to "experimental" branch right now.
How to change the branch
In Steam, click on Library > Games.
Find Stardeus.
Right-click and select Properties.
Go to the BETAS tab.
In the dropdown, select the branch you want to play.
In that same Properties window, go to the Local Files tab and press "Verify Integrity Of Game Files."
Your game will be updated to the new branch. If it's not "default", you will see the branch name next to the game name, i.e. "Stardeus [experimental]" or "Stardeus [v0_8_x]".
Launch the game and play it.
Electricity Rewrite
With that out of the way, let's talk about what changed. Right after releasing the Complex Planets update I shifted focus towards rewriting one of the biggest performance bottlenecks for large late game ships - the electricity system. It was an extremely difficult task, as the old electricity architecture was the backbone of the whole game. The rewrite involved changing the code and configuration of every single electrical device in the game, and it was so big that I had to bump the game version from v0.8.x to v0.9.
Unfortunately this rewrite also broke all the mods that interacted with electricity in any way. However this had to be done sooner rather than later as in order to support smooth electricity grid simulation on large ships, the old architecture relied on a few hacks that had various side effects that other systems had to deal with. The new architecture is data oriented, based on the wonderful Unity Job System, and about 500x faster than the old one.
The changes shouldn't affect the gameplay much, but you may feel that the game is smoother and runs faster at 10x speed with large ships. There will be a lot of little subtle changes in the electricity system though, you will now see how much batteries consume when they charge, all reactors will share the workload evenly, some confusing features like customizing electrical device consumption and production priorities are gone, connectors now have an on/off switch, etc.
If you're interested in more technical details, subscribe to Kodo Linija on YouTube - I will be making a devlog video explaining more details behind this rewrite, showing some code, etc.
The next big rewrite will target AI behavior - task assignment and execution. This is now the single biggest bottleneck the game has (after growing your colony to hundreds of beings). Just like the electricity rewrite, this will be no small challenge, but I have to tackle it because it's aligned with the next major content update, which will be about... Oh wait, let's keep it a secret for now.
The time has finally come, this massive update is ready to be revealed! I made a video explaining all the changes, and how to prepare your existing ships for the transition. It also includes a couple of tips and tricks you will likely want to know, so take a look. It has chapters for easy navigation:
And if you prefer the good old blog post format, here are the most important changes right now. This is not going to be as complete of an overview as the video above, but enough to get the gist.
New Starmap Layer for Planets
It is now possible to enter any Planet in the Starmap in the same way you would enter a Star System or a Galaxy. Planets now have their own Starmap layer, and each planet will contain several points of interest and various resource deposits.
Flying in the Planet layer will require having Thrusters (the early games ones), since Fusion Drives are too powerful for this.
From now on you won’t have to wait for the mining expedition to randomly roam until they stumble on the resource you’re looking for, you will have full control over where you want the expedition to go.
Points of Interest
Previously expeditions could encounter various story events, but you couldn’t predict if and when the expedition would find something other than a resource deposit. Now each event will have an individual location and you will have to send a separate expedition to explore it. Mining skill will play no role in these often dangerous adventure expeditions, so you can send your humans.
Sell Derelict Ships in Space Ports
if the planet belongs to some Faction, it will have a Space Port, where you will be able to sell the Derelict Ships you towed along with you. Sections Overlay (F10) will have a "Sell" button next to all sections when you are close to a Space Port.
Space Ports are also good for trading, as they will have more inventory and more cash than the regular wandering merchants.
Distress Signals
In addition to explorable Points of Interest, we now have signals that can be responded to directly from the ship, if you have a working Communicator device.
Mining Automation
This is probably the most exciting feature of this major update. The Mining Automation research unlocks Autodrill Rigs and Cargo Copters. You will need them both to automate the resource gathering, so your crew can chill and focus on something other than striking the earth.
To begin the automation process, build a couple of Autodrill Rigs and at least one Cargo Copter.
Then use the "Deploy Resource Miner" option and the Cargo Copter will handle the rest.
After a while you can order the Cargo Copter to collect the accumulated resource from the deposit that has an Autodrill Rig installed.
If you lose a Cargo Copter, just open the Copter Missions overlay, and it will tell you what each Cargo Copter is up to, and where to find it.
Enriched Uranium and Changes to Nuclear Fuel
Nuclear Reactors will no longer be able to burn raw Uranium, you will have to produce Enriched Uranium to fuel them.
To produce Enriched Uranium, build a Centrifuge.
Matter Reactors will now be able to consume raw Uranium, but the energy efficiency will be far inferior compared to Nuclear Reactors fueled by Enriched Uranium.
Detecting Alien Life Forms
You will no longer have to guess if any of your colonists are infected with those pesky crawlers or if you have an egg lurking in some dark corner of your ship.
Research and build a Xenodetector that will scan the environment and will warn you if alien life forms are present. It will only give you an approximate location, so you will still have to do some detective work to figure out who exactly is infected.
Paint System
The Paint system will bring ship customization to the next level.
Build Auto Painters, produce Red, Green and Blue pigments, then mix them together to change the color of any floor or wall to your liking.
Signs and Labels
New Sign device will allow you to customize the name of any room, and project that name either on the device screen or directly on the floor.
And when you unlock the Labeling research node, you can add labels to any device you want.
Outer Hull View (Roof)
There is no roof in space, but you will no longer have to guess which areas are considered "enclosed" by the simulation. Capsules and Stasis Pods won't land in the middle of your cafeteria anymore. Read on to see why this is going to become extremely important.
Some Devices Must Be Outdoors
The aforementioned "roof" mechanic will require Shuttles, Quantum Barriers, Radars, Probes and some other devices to reside "outdoors". Launching a Shuttle or a Probe from an enclosed area will, let’s say, make it no longer enclosed.
Balance and Difficulty
There were multiple big changes to the starting conditions of the Wrecked scenario. It will become much more challenging and resource constrained than it used to be. I highly recommend starting a brand new run and trying it out.
You won't be able to expand too quickly, there will be material shortages and you will have to come up with creative strategies to survive and expand in a manageable way.
If you want a more relaxed experience, visit the Modifiers and change the Difficulty and the Resource Multiplier to give yourself a smoother start. Or play the Leaving Earth scenario, which gives you a jump start with plenty of resources for creative freedom while still telling you a story.
I understand that these balance and difficulty changes will be frustrating for some players, though the changes are not final, I am constantly testing the game myself and I will listen to all your feedback and try to find a good compromise for everyone, either by adjusting the balance or by adding new game modifiers that will let you tweak some parameters to your liking.
If you run into a bad balance situation and can't find a way out of it, please use "Report a Bug" button in the bottom right and discuss the issue in the Steam Forums.
A branch called v0_7_x in Steam Betas contains the last version before this update.
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There are many more changes, some of them are covered in the devlog video, and you can find even more by scavenging through the Stardeus Changelog here: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog
A new major update is underway, and I will try to not spoil it for you, but some noteworthy changes were shipped already. The update is going to be quite technical, if you don’t like that, skip the walls of text to get to the second half.
Room / Section detection rewrite
After releasing the major update, I decided to regroup and do an iteration of technical changes. Cleaning up the technical debt that inevitably accumulates over time is very important for a long term project like this one. Some systems that were created early proved to be not as efficient or flexible as they could have been. One of these systems was the Room / Section detection. It worked well with smaller ships, but some of you like them jaw-droppingly big, and every time floors or walls would change on a huge ship, all the rooms and sections had to be reevaluated. Depending on the CPU load, this could take up to 1 second, which is forever in computing terms.
A full rewrite made the room change detection so fast that I don’t even have to run it in the background across multiple frames anymore. You may notice a significantly faster ship generation when starting a new game, this is thanks to this rewrite. The performance boost is also noticeable when you have a large amount of ongoing construction that makes the rooms / sections to constantly reevaluate.
Pathfinding rewrite
After getting my hands dirty with Room / Section rewrite, I decided to take a stab at the most annoying system I had - pathfinding. The system was rewritten from scratch to get a whopping performance increase of up to 1000x for most pathfinding queries. Previously some more complex path requests could take as much as 500ms to get executed in a background thread, which would stall the workers as they were waiting for a pathfinding result. This was especially noticeable at 10x speed with a large number of workers. Now pathfinding runs so fast that it is virtually immediate. This also significantly reduced the overall CPU consumption and gave more breathing room for other CPU intensive tasks.
Additionally, this rewrite forced me to go through tons of code and change it to adapt to the new, more strict API. Due to the extreme speed-up and the additional validations, I’ve found and fixed numerous race conditions and edge cases that may have caused some weird situations that could lead to undefined behaviors.
If you had any issues with performance before, now is the time to reevaluate the experience.
Lights system rewrite
This is the last large rewrite I did before the next major update, I promise!
Light rendering was something I wasn’t happy about. It involved two different cameras and two sprites per light source, and often looked weird when there were multiple light sources close to each other, and there was not enough control over how lights were blending with each other. The old light system also had an upfront performance cost, where a small number of lights would be as expensive as a large number of lights, which made the game run a few FPS slower on lower-end hardware.
The new light system eliminates the cameras and sprites, and instead uses a small data structure for each light source, which makes it faster and more lightweight for small amounts of lights, yet still robust and powerful enough to drive thousands of real-time colorful light sources with two-color pulse and dynamic positioning. My tests show a 20% performance increase with high-end GPU at extreme number of lights (5000+).
In addition to this, the light sources have received a “range” slider, where you can adjust the range of any configurable light source. The electricity cost will reflect the light range.
And the Video settings panel has a bunch of new controls for the new lights system, including the overall light intensity and some performance related settings which should remain on “Auto” unless you want to mess around to get a few extra FPS.
Landing Zones
Stasis Pods and Storage Capsules used to drop anywhere on the ship, even if the area was fully enclosed and oxygenated. That was immersion breaking, and now this behavior had an overhaul. Since recently, Stasis Pods and Storage Capsules will only target unenclosed areas. Make sure you have at least 100 tiles of what is now considered a “Landing Zone”, or the incoming pods will ram your outer ship walls due to lack of space for proper landing. No more landing through the roof though!
Real-time nebulas for everyone
I love the beautiful real-time nebulas that float when you fly, but unfortunately they were so taxing on the GPU that I kept them off by default, hidden behind a video setting with “unoptimized” in the label. Well, not anymore! I have reworked the visual effect that produces realtime nebulas and removed the most expensive processing that gave only slight visual improvement. Now simple real-time nebulas are the new default, and for a good reason - read on.
Ship rotation
Since I’ve been focusing on increasing player immersion, I finally did a thing that was suggested by a few of you before. When you pick a destination in the starmap, the ship will have to rotate and align itself with the target before flying. The rotation will be visible in the game view, and it will look glorious with real-time nebulas! This also adds a new mechanic - when you have to escape incoming asteroids, you will likely have to pick a place that is aligned with your current rotation, or you will lose precious time reorienting your ship.
While for now no changes are needed for the engine configuration, I will consider adding dedicated thrusters that will be required for rotating the ship.
The little things
There’s a ton of other smaller changes that shipped since the Derelict Ships update, here’s a few of my favorites:
Two new plants you can grow: Poppy and Cornflower. The products you can harvest from these plants will be used for something special that will be added in the next major update!
Thin version of walls. Those required some special changes for the lights rendering to look good, but now you can make your colonists hear each other snore. Just think of all the steel plates you’ll save!
Plan Move tool. Since you can use precision thrusters to move your ship around in the local map, the plan had to become movable as well! You can find the plan move tool in Plan (“L”) radial menu’s second page. Also, when you’re drawing your plan, holding Ctrl + Shift + Alt will let you click and drag the plan to move it immediately.
Pets can now sleep in Armchairs! (Yes, the raider-leather ones)
Loading icon will show an animated drone holding a “Wait!” sign instead of a rotating cog. This is probably my favorite change ever.
Rooms overlay (F9) will show tooltips with contents of each room when you hover the room list.
Dust storm particles will not show up inside enclosed areas. This is a subtle little graphics change, but a very pleasant one, adding to the immersive experience.
Flying between galaxies will display FTL trails.
Pixel Art mode! Go to Settings > Video > Texture Quality and choose “Pixel Art” or “Low Budget Pixel Art” to get a nostalgic retro art style.
That’s it for now, the next update will be a major one!
The full changelog: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog Search for "v0.7.0 (2023.01.23)" and scroll up to read through what exactly has been done since the major update.
We’re happy to announce the first major Stardeus update since its launch to Early Access. Although it’s centered around Derelict Ships, there’s so much more to it that we’re going to dig into.
Existing saves will work but may feel off-balance. So if you haven't played for a while or got to the late game, it's a great time to start a brand new Wrecked scenario and experience the refreshed and rebalanced version of the gameplay.
If you want a quick (but incomplete) tour of the new features, check out this video:
Derelict Ships
Derelict ships were the most voted feature, and it was the main focus of development for the last couple of months. Here’s how it works.
Once you start a new game with the Wrecked scenario, you’ll notice a wrecked ship in the background.
Once you restore your ship to a point where it can move, you will be able to approach the derelict. A new quest will guide you through the procedure.
It will spawn in your game map once you do it. Then it’s up to you to choose what you want to do with it - reel it in and attach it to your ship, scrap it for raw materials, or just grab the valuables and abandon the rest.
You will encounter more derelicts during your adventure. Each derelict ship will be procedurally generated using one of a dozen templates, and it may or may not trigger various events.
As with almost anything in Stardeus, Derelict Ships are moddable, and new generation templates can be added through Steam Workshop.
Precision Thrusters and Local Maneuvering
You have been asking for an advanced winch, and for a way to recenter the ship on the map. Precision Thrusters will allow you to do both! It works like this:
Once you unlock Local Maneuvering in the Research Tree or perhaps scavenge a set of Precision Thrusters from a derelict ship, you will be able to plug them into a power source and let them recharge. Once the charge is full, select the thruster, go to the Engine UI, and use the controls to push the section (or the whole ship!) with high precision.
You can use this tool to attach derelict ships, recenter your ship, and even evade incoming asteroids or breach capsules. The thruster will have to recharge to be usable again.
Oh, and Precision Thruster devices also serve as conventional ship engines!
System Scanning and Starmap Improvements
Finding the required resources was a bit of a hassle before. You would fly from planet to planet with hopes of finding that precious Oil or Uranium deposit. You could use Probes, but they are single use, and not available early on when you need certain resources the most. Now once you have a Radar, you can actively scan the surroundings for specific resources of your choice!
And it gets better, when System Scanning is unlocked, you can also search for derelict ships and planets with anomalies.
Finally, Starmap will now display informational icons next to identified and visited space objects. You will no longer have to rename planets to mark them as fully harvested, that information will be available at a glance!
Ship Building
At its core, Stardeus is a base ship-building game. There were a bunch of improvements added since the launch to make this aspect more pleasant. Let’s take a look at some of it.
Auto Rebuild
Yes, now when a meteor shower harms your grand design, the destroyed parts will automatically create tasks to rebuild anything that was destroyed. You may want to adjust the rebuild task priority afterward, so as to not interfere with other tasks too much, it will be the lowest by default (1 out of 9). TIP: Hold Shift and click+drag the priority adjustment tool to set the task priority to the maximum for multiple tasks. Holding Ctrl will set it to the minimum.
Ship Preview in New Game panel
Sometimes starting with a nice ship design is all you need. You can now preview what ship you will get before starting a new game. The Wrecked scenario will deal significantly heavy damage to that ship, but it should still be recognizable.
Original Ship Design Plan
Before the starting ship gets wrecked, the game will capture a detailed ship layout plan. You can choose to rebuild your ship the way it was before it got wrecked, or scrap the plan and make one of your own.
Multi-Actions
You were asking for Factorio-style templates (blueprints). This is a big task, but here’s a “poor man’s” version of it. You can select multiple objects and then move or copy the whole selection.
Choose “Relocate” or press O to relocate the whole selection:
Choose “Build a Copy” or press B to order building a copy of the selected objects:
Abandoning Unwanted Sections
There may be situations where you will want to abandon a few sections of your wreckage or leave a crawler-infested derelict ship behind. You can do it in Sections overlay with a click of a button.
New Objects
Adding more types of devices, materials and species wasn’t the main focus, so it’s not much, but it’s honest work. This screenshot contains most of the items that were added within the last 3 months:
Quantum Ship Computer - more powerful, and 3x3 for perfect symmetry
Freezer - large version of the Refrigerator
Small and Large Pantry - for storing raw ingredients
Rubber Tree - for producing natural rubber
Caoutchouc - natural rubber
Leather - don’t ask where it comes from
Leather Sofa and Armchair - for putting that Leather to use
Orbotron - a powerful drone from the Virus faction
System Scanner - an advanced version of the Radar
Floor Vent - don’t open it when someone is walking above
Auto Pilot Upgrade - because humans can’t be trusted
Memory Compression Upgrade - for having less Memory Modules
Jukebox - for your colonists to dance (and leave their Starcreds) at
Reinforced Vent and Wall Socket - for more resilience and consistent looks
In addition to everything above, there were hundreds of small changes, QoL, UI, balance improvements, and bug fixes.
This is it! Keep an eye out for the new feature voting round, as it will be the time to recast your votes on the refreshed version of the roadmap!
The full changelog: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog Search for v0.6.103 (2022.10.11) and scroll up to read through what exactly has been done since the game was released to Early Access. It will be a long scroll.
It has been a very busy few months on Stardeus, with a number of new features, bug fixing, and quality of life improvements for the game. There’s much more to come, with a cool new surprise winging its way to the game in the early parts of the new year, but since we are approaching the end of 2022 this felt like a good time to recap everything that has been added and updated since the start of November 1st.
In total, Stardeus has had:
55 Balance tweaks
138 bug fixes
23 new features added
8 graphical tweaks
21 big performance improvements
22 engine, console, and back-end tech improvements
70 UI/UX improvements and additions
…and a handful of miscellaneous changes to translation checking, audio, and back-end functionality
This, obviously, is made possible by the Discord and Steam community giving feedback and bug reports for the game and helping to shape the direction of where we go and what we do next.
If you wish to read through the patch notes in detail, head to https://stardeusgame.com/changelog/ to view them on the website. If reading patch notes is a lot of information all at once, here are some of the stand-out features from the last two months!
New Features
Added Memory Compression research branch and Memory Compression Upgrade module
Workers will now be able to replace and repair floors under large objects without relocating them
Added Jukebox device and Entertainment research branch, and recreational activity Use Jukebox
A new Experimental Features option in Settings > Gameplay is now available
Ship Computer
Replace Ship Computer’s internal heat/cooldown procedure with fragmentation/defragmentation
Having multiple Ship Computers reduces time spent in defrag
Added multi-select actions for installing and uninstalling upgrades
Some objects will have a chance to explode when on fire
Ship generation update to create more interesting ships in all scenarios
Ship loot generated dynamically
Improve procedural ship destruction phase of ship generation process
Grounded fighters can now be carried to unreachable parts of the ship by flying crew members
Biological beings will now eat raw meat if cooked food is unavailable
Unlocking Economy research will show Merchant price markup in the tooltip when hovering over the merchant’s name in the Trade interface
Added Freezer research node and device for storing food and raw ingredients
Added Ship Computer Research that will unlock Ship Computer and allow having 2 of them
Self Replication Research will increase Ship Computer cap to 4
Added High Availability/Quantum Cloud Research that will increase the Ship Computer cap to 16/24 respectively
Added icons and info in the Starmap next to identified and visited space object
UI/UX
Show a pop-up when Merchant ship offers trade
Lists that have pagination can now be scrolled with mouse wheel
Added extended controls for managing wanted amount in crafting device UI
More detailed info in “Device Idle” notifications
Added shortcuts to Codex > Blueprints, and Codex > Materials UIs
Advanced Modifiery Keys and new controls
Selecting one or more Connectors and shift + clicking any electrical device will attempt to create (or break) a connection between the device and selected connector(s)
Selecting one or more electrical devices and shift + clicking a connector will attempt to create (or break) a connection between selected devices and the connector
Selecting one or more Teleporters and shift + clicking another teleporter will link the selected teleporter(s) to the clicked one
Holding Shift and clicking beings will add new beings to group selection
Holding Ctrl and clicking tiles will add new tiles to the group selection
Holding Alt and clicking objects (piles) will add new objects to the group selection
Ctrl + clicking “Select” in Merchant Trade UI will add 100% of the item
Shift + clicking “Select” in Merchant Trade UI will add 50% of the item
Alt + clicking “Select” in Merchant Trade UI will add x1 of the item
Ctrl + clicking arrows in the Research Queue will move the item to topmost / bottommost position
Improved the Quick Search UI - Scroll wheel and arrow keys will work, and tooltips will appear
Added diagnostics for unreachable positions into the Walking Difficulty overlay
Notify players about mods failing to save their data
Building a copy of a device will also copy its rotation
Added 3 modes for viewing electricity grid overlay (Auto, Connectors Only, and All)
Streamlined and optimized multiple UI elements to reduce confusion or misunderstanding
Added more information to alerts and task failures to provide better context
These are the biggest changes that will impact your interaction with the game since November 1st that has been added to the game. Of course, as listed above, there have been over 300 different lines of patch notes during November and December so there is plenty of other changes, bug fixes, performance tweaks, and balance changes that have been made to the game. If you want to go through all of them, they’re listed all in one place at https://stardeusgame.com/changelog/
Now, with the end of the year almost upon us, we on the Stardeus team (Tomas & Paradox Arc) want to wish you a happy new year! In the new year, there will be plenty to talk about and show off what else Tomas has been building, so watch this space!
