Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Stardeus
Features Round-Up: November & December
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!
This build has a massive impact on game balance. I will likely be shuffling the new Research Tree in upcoming updates after more testing.
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)
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)
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
Hey Space Travelers!
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.
I'll start calling these posts "Build notes", since "Patch" implies that something was wrong, while these are regular daily builds.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
