Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Strategy, IndieStardeus
Build notes: v0.6.146 (2022.12.22)
v0.6.146 (2022.12.22)
- [Feature] Biological beings will now eat raw food if cooked food is not available
- [Balance] Reorganize the Research Tree
- [Balance] Research Energy, Memory and Disk cost will be driven by equations
- [Balance] Research Energy, Memory and Disk cost will vary depending on difficulty level
- [Balance] Manufacturing Upgrades will always require a human
- [Balance] Overhaul Quest rewards
- [Balance] Give more Microchips and some Carbon Fiber in Wrecked scenario start
- [Balance] Pet Bowl will not allow certain illogical food options (i.e. Coffee Beans or Flour)
- [Balance] Raw food can now be stored in Refrigerator
- [UI/UX] Remove existing item count from Radial Menu, as it was confusing
- [UI/UX] Expose built-in CPU, Memory and Disk in Ship Computer UI
- [Bug] Fix floating apart the wreckage would lose some of protected zone parts
- [Bug] Fix pressing "Find" in inventory on a material with count 0 will not find anything (used to find an incorrect storage)
- [Bug] Fix player faction name would not refresh after exiting to main menu and starting a new game
- [Bug] Fix Winching would disconnect shorter range connectors that were connected to the longer range ones
- [Bug] Fix combat could freeze if any of the units have not analyzed their situation
- [Bug] Fix "Disconnect All" in Energy overlay graph details would not refresh the grid immediately
Build notes: v0.6.145 (2022.12.20)
- [Feature] Grounded fighters can now be carried to unreachable parts of the ship by flying squad members
- [Balance] Make sure Breach Capsule raids will never have more attackers than defenders
- [Balance] Refrigerator and Beverage Cooler will require electricity for worker to be able to haul food there
- [UI/UX] Closing any panel with X button in the Main Menu will open News
- [UI/UX] Do not show "No Research" event during the tutorial, as it may be confusing
- [Performance] Allow clock tick to be locked for up to 60 seconds to allow extremely large energy grid rebuilds
- [Tech] Improve Wrecked scenario starting area generation phase to require less retries
- [Graphics] Don't show trail particles when someone is carrying a Robot or a Drone
- [Graphics] Switched off workers will not show hover / jitter animations
- [Bug] Fix big pile hauling task would not get cancelled if there was no compatible storage
- [Bug] Fix pressing ESC to close UI during the tutorial would also prompt to end the tutorial
- [Bug] Fix material pile could get into a state with negative stack size, causing issues
- [Bug] Fix floating apart the wreckage would not move the protected zones, that could lead to destruction of protected entities and areas
Build notes: v0.6.144 (2022.12.18)
- [Tech] Improve unit to unit reachability tests during combat
- [Bug] Hotfix save would fail during combat since v0.6.143
- [Bug] Fix an edge case with pathfinding that could get a worker stuck in a complex map
Dev Update 2022-12-17: Procedural Generation and Performance improvements
It’s time for a monthly development update. Stardeus has had 19 updates since Nov 12, 2022. The stats:
- Bug fixes: 59
- Balance adjustments: 25
- UI / QoL improvements: 18
- Technical changes: 17
- Performance optimizations: 14
- New features: 8
- Graphics / rendering changes: 6
- Audio related changes: 2
There is an increase in the number of technical changes and performance optimizations - I was rewiring the internal plumbing and paving the way for the next big thing to come - derelict ships.
Performance Improvements
Some major performance improvements happened within last month. Those would be especially noticeable in large late game ships with thousands of devices and hundreds of colonists. The game runs faster at the highest 10x speed, animations are much smoother, and there are less frame drops.
I’m far from done with performance yet, there are dozens of optimizations that can be done, and I will be tackling them one by one over time.
Ship Generation Improvements
Stardeus uses procedural generation to create and destroy spaceships. This happens every time you start a new game. There was a new development iteration that overhauled the procedural generation algorithms to produce more interesting ship designs. Here’s a before and after screenshot for a Wrecked scenario generated from the same seed (13).
Before
After
In addition to more intricate design, some of the devices and items you can find in the wreckage will be different every run, making it more fun to replay it.
Here are a few more examples, this time from a “Random Ship” scenario with seed 42069:
Before:
After:
Update Frequency and Development Philosophy
I noticed some people misunderstanding the frequent small updates, so let me get this straight. I’m not releasing lots of small updates just to fix the bugs. There are invisible changes coming out in those updates, as I am “building the airplane in mid-air” using Continuous Delivery methodology.
I strive to always have a working game build, even while working on big changes, and have that build up and running on Steam for everyone to play. This means that I can deliver bug fixes, QoL, balance changes and small features every few days instead of once or twice a month, while still working on the big things. It also makes the feedback loop much tighter.
If you don’t like frequent updates, there is an “old_version” branch you can switch to in betas - that is not updated as frequently.
That’s it for now, time to put my head down and get back to work. Have wonderful holidays, and see you in the next update in 2023!
The full changelog: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog
Search for “v0.6.125 (2022.11.12)” and scroll up to read through what exactly was done since the last update.
Follow the Development
- Official Website: https://stardeusgame.com
- Join Stardeus Discord
- /r/stardeus on Reddit
- @StardeusGame on Twitter
- @dev_spajus on Twitter
- dev_spajus on Twitch (live development streams)
Add Stardeus to Wishlist
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380910/Stardeus/
Build notes: v0.6.143 (2022.12.16)
v0.6.143 (2022.12.16)
- [Feature] Generate starting ship loot dynamically
- [Feature] Improve procedural ship destruction phase
- [Balance] Tractor Beam research will now be Tier 4 (was 3)
- [UI/UX] When multiple objects are on top of each other in Starmap, hovering the context menu entry for the object will bring it forward
- [Tech] Make "translations reload" console command functional again
- [Bug] Fix grounded robot could be spawned on the outer edge of the ship thus unable to go anywhere
Patch notes: v0.6.142 (2022.12.14)
- [Feature] Generate more interesting ship designs in all scenarios
- [Balance] Split Furniture research into more subacategories
- [UI/UX] Reduce the number of clock speed options
- [UI/UX] Prompt to quit tutorial when pressing ESC
- [Bug] Fix winching would not move Emergency Siren particles
- [Bug] Fix winching would move some particles incompletely
- [Bug] Fix colonizing a planet could fail if there were no wallet contents (i.e. in sandbox mode)
- [Bug] Fix console command history would not get restored in the expected order when pressing up / down arrows
Patch notes: v0.6.141 (2022.12.09)
- [Bug] Fix object drift speed in space too slow after motion rework
- [Bug] Fix Stasis Pods wouldn't lift off the ship since motion rework
- [Bug] Fix Breach Capsules would get stuck when detaching since motion rework
- [Bug] Fix switching clock speed between 10x and 1x would change the entity speed with a delay
Patch notes: v0.6.140 (2022.12.08)
- [Balance] Jukebox will require less skill than Treadmill
- [UI/UX] Move Lit Glass Floor to the right category in the Build Menu
- [UI/UX] Add 3 modes for viewing electricity grid overlay (Auto, Connectors Only and All)
- [Graphics] Fix damage cracks size would depend on map size
- [Graphics] Fix name texts would jitter when beings are moving around
- [Graphics] Fix being sprites could start jittering when they were going diagonally
- [Graphics] Make Weapons stick to the being body instead of moving on their own
- [Graphics] Improve drone hover and robot body animations
- [Performance] Improve performance with extreme amount of beings and objects
- [Performance] Improve inventory system performance with excessive amount of materials in the map
- [Audio] Change Sentry select sound
- [Audio] Change Cleaning Bot select sound
- [Bug] Fix Breach Capsules, Storage Capsules and Stasis Pods would spin forever if they missed the landing spot
- [Bug] Fix Capsules and Pods could miss the ship during Defragmentation sequence
Patch notes: v0.6.139 (2022.12.07)
- [Tech] Make it easier to attach a debugger for modders
- [Bug] Fix a memory leak and inconsistency when electricity grid would keep attempting to include removed connectors into the grid
- [Bug] Fix electricity grid rebuilds could get stuck in a loop when removing connectors from a huge grid (thousands of devices)
- [Bug] Fix electricity grid overlay would not refresh connection visuals when devices were deconstructed
Patch notes: v0.6.138 (2022.12.06)
Oh, and sorry for the spinning capsules, last update had a LOT of technical changes, that issue slipped unnoticed.
v0.6.138 (2022.12.06)
- [Balance] Disallow flying when part of the ship is in the no build zone
- [UI/UX] Allow tools to operate closer to map bounds
- [Bug] Fix Storage Capsule and Stasis Pod would not land properly since v0.6.137
- [Bug] Fix winching sections of the ship could crush thrusters into walls
- [Bug] Fix clicking on the tile would sometimes select an object (plant, pile) nearby instead of the tile