Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Stardeus
Dev Update 2022-08-03: The Slow Summer
Hey Space Travelers!
I have exciting news. Stardeus will be released by a well respected publisher! I cannot disclose any details at this point, but even though the development is secure and on track, the release will have to be slightly delayed, as more time is needed to prepare for it properly.
As of the development progress, it has stalled due to me getting covid and then a long overdue vacation. I had to defragment my brain before the upcoming release, and now I feel fully refreshed with my battery back to 100%!
With the release getting close, I am going to keep the focus on stability, balance and bug fixes. Stardeus is in great shape, and the vast majority of fixed bugs are minor or triggered in rare situations.
Even though this July was the slowest month ever, there are still 60+ bug fixes, 25+ UI improvements, 30+ balance changes and 7 new features added since the last update. Check the Stardeus changelog for a full list. Let’s take a quick look at some of the new changes that I have for you.
Smooth camera motion
After looking at many Stardeus gameplay videos, I noticed that the camera motion was feeling quite rough and unpleasant. It gets even worse when players like to do many small camera adjustments. Now camera motion will be smoothed out when panning, zooming and dragging the map. After multiple iterations of the smoothing behavior, it feels natural to both the player and the viewer.
Double click to select similar
This nice QOL change lets you quickly select all objects of the same type that are visible on-screen. Most devices expose multi-select controls, allowing you to perform mass changes with one click. Running low on fuel? Focus the camera above your Matter Reactors, double-click one, then “Eject Fuel” and select the new fuel type. Another alternative is to reconfigure one Matter Reactor and use the Copy Configuration tool to reconfigure the rest, but the double click method is faster.
Floor vents
This new floor vent lets you expose any room to open space without making structural changes to the ship. Wall vents do that as well, but only if the wall is adjacent to open space. Floor vents are great for firefighting and reducing the temperature in overheated areas while giving you the freedom to design your ship in interesting ways.
Soundtrack controls and music mood
Stardeus OST currently contains 27 tracks, and more will be added! There is now a menu section dedicated to the soundtrack, where you can listen to each track, and select the ones you’d like to hear. The UI for it isn’t necessarily final, so it may see updates in the future!
Each track has a mood associated with it, and the game music will change depending on the intensity of ongoing events.
That’s it for this update, see you in the next one! I’m also back to more or less regular development streams, so catch me live on Twitch if you want to see how Stardeus is made.
Dev Update 2022-07-02: Focus on balance and stability
Hey Space Travelers!
It’s a really hot summer over here, so the pace of development is a little slower than usual, but non the less, there are 120+ bug fixes, 70+ UI improvements, 50+ balance changes, 20+ new features, 5 new OST tracks and a ton of overhauled sound effects since the last update ~6 weeks ago.
To get ready for a smooth and solid launch, I have temporarily shifted focus to stability, player experience, polish, quality of life and game balance.
Let’s take a look at some noteworthy changes.
Research Overhaul
One of the biggest set of changes was related to Research. The automatic research tree layout algorithm wasn’t doing a great job, so it was completely replaced by something much more solid. The research tree now looks better. But it’s not just about the looks. The contents of the tree were overhauled with more balanced requirements. We now also have multiple dependencies and a research queue where we can put as many items as we want - you no longer need to start a new research every time something gets unlocked.
Humans will also be able to contribute to the research - you can build Research Stations for that. This also enables running more than one research at the same time.
Hailing Merchants
It’s easy to get short on certain materials in space, and finding them on planets may not be a quick and easy task. There is a new option of dealing with resource shortages. You can use a Communicator to hail a specific type of Merchant. Once contacted, the Merchant will arrive at your location with a set of goods that may help you solve your urgent need for specific items or materials.
More / Better Charts
Charts have been overhauled as well. They are now easier to read, with better tooltips. Electricity grid charts have the most notable improvements. They pack a lot of important information that is easy to understand. You can see energy production capacity, consumption, deficit, battery reserve and battery charge level.
Inventory will also display resource charts, so you can predict how fast you will run out of fuel, or see if the soy burger production can keep up with demand.
Device Wear
This is a new mechanic that may seem dull at first, but hear me out! The device wear accumulates according to use and other factors (like taking damage), and once the wear reaches 100%, the device can no longer be repaired. At that point you can only replace the device. I made sure this mechanic would not become grindy, and you wouldn’t have to keep replacing everything over and over. Devices wear very slowly on their own. But if there is a fire, or a meteor strike damages your solar panels, you can’t expect them to work as “brand new” once they get patched up, and after one more strike they won’t be repairable at all. This mechanic adds some realism to the simulation. But should you find it annoying, it can be turned off completely in game settings.
Hazard Warnings
Sometimes it was not obvious why certain items were never used by human colonists. 99% of the time the reason was that the item was in a spot where there was not enough oxygen, or it was too cold. A new system will show warning notifications for objects and devices in hazardous environments, but only if those things are meant to be used by humans. You can turn off these warnings either per each object individually, or globally in game settings.
Ordering Petting
I kept the most important feature for last! You can now order petting a pet, and see when was the last time any pet was petted, and by whom.
That’s it for now! See you in the next update, and have a great summer!
In just 4 months Stardeus will be released to Early Access! The development pace has reached terminal velocity, and this update is going to be big.
Many of those with closed alpha access have racked up dozens, or even hundreds of hours of playtime. Their feedback has led to a significant number of balance changes, QOL improvements, and new late game oriented content and features. I want to thank all of you who pushed Stardeus alpha to its limits and submitted feedback via the in-game form, or on Discord. I couldn’t ask for a better community!
Let’s take a look at what happened since the last development update ~6 weeks ago.
Human operated devices
Humans will no longer be a liability. A set of new devices along with a couple of old ones will require a human operator to be present for the device to work. This will be especially important in early game, when you will have to rely on human labor to operate the crafting stations to produce critical components required for your ship.
Improved AI and more complex human behavior
While still far from perfect, the AI is getting increasingly more refined. There are significant improvements in how your workers handle and prioritize their needs, and with a larger variety of various activities available for them, new possibilities open up more complex behaviors. For example, someone who hasn’t taken a shower for quite a while will not be able to socialize with others. Operating devices will make humans tired, so they will shift between work and rest / recreational activities.
Visual and audio polish
Gameplay will always come first, but I managed to pick a few more low hanging fruits that made Stardeus look and feel better and more immersive. It’s the little things - smoke trails on meteors, darkness in enclosed rooms if they don’t have lights installed, nanobot swarm effects for construction, deconstruction and repairs and little positional animations of beings moving when they are performing a task. Audio wasn’t left behind either. Many ambiences and in-game sounds are replaced with improved, less annoying and more interesting versions. A few new OST tracks were composed to increase the variety of background music. UI also got a subtle yet important improvement - a more readable, crispier font. All these little improvements add up to create a richer, more vivid environment.
Starmap changes and planets in the background
Starmap used to be the worst looking part of the game, sporting ugly placeholder art I made in 30 minutes two years ago. I threw the whole thing away and redid it from scratch. The objects in starmap are generated in a way that they can be put in the actual starfield behind the ship, so you will see the planet come into view when you fly close to it. The planet is rotating around its axis, and clouds are morphing in the atmosphere. This really adds to the immersion.
More interesting shipwreck generation
The ship generation algorithm was overhauled to produce better looking ships. Several sets of new floor tiles were added to achieve a bigger variety of distinct areas. Glass floors will also be placed in more aesthetically pleasing ways to form rows of windows.
Polished Steam Deck support and refined controller input
I have finally received the Steam Deck, and now I’m spending every night playing Stardeus on it! This led to a ton of improvements and polish related to Steam Deck and controller input. It touched a plethora of aspects - UI scaling, fonts, controller detection and glyphs, default input bindings, virtual keyboard input and more. I am certain that Stardeus will pass the “great on deck” verification with flying colors!
Improved Oxygen / Heat overlays
The atmosphere simulation overlays were improved to a point where it will be easier than ever to detect oxygen or heat leaks.
Codex Overlay and Operations Manual
To help new players and organize all the information about the game to be at the tips of your fingers, a Codex overlay was added. It includes a detailed Operations Manual that you can explore and learn over time to master the intricacies of running a spaceship.
Steam Achievements
Stardeus is going to have Steam Achievements. I have already added 30 of them, but more are coming. If you don’t like achievements, there is a setting to disable them.
Winching sections
One of the most annoying things was that you had little choice on how to rebuild the ship. You could either make bridges between broken sections, but that would make the ship unnecessarily huge. Another option was to deconstruct as much as you could. Now there is a third option - building a Winch Hook and Winch Anchor, and using them to reel in two sections together. You can also use this technique to shift things around later.
Security Controls and Quantum Barrier
There are finally some serious defenses against asteroids and meteor showers. You can build Quantum Barriers that will charge up and produce force fields. Security Controls will let you control them all in bulk.
Sentry Drone
There is a new sheriff in town. Sentry Drone will not perform any work, but it excels in combat situations.
Planet terraforming and colonization
The main objective of the Ship Computer is to find a habitable planet and settle a permanent colony for your human survivors. This objective can now be achieved by finding a terraformable planet and terraforming it using four different devices - Atmosphere, Biosphere, Oceans and Terrain Generators. Once the planet is fully terraformed, you can settle your colonists and see the end game credit screen. You can continue playing afterwards.
Mind Control
There is finally a way to change job priorities and give direct orders to your human colonists. You will have to research and build the Beta Wave Transceiver that will allow influencing the minds of friendly biological beings. It has to charge up to reach 100% synchronization level and is energy intensive, so there will be more efficient options for colonist mind control in future (i.e. brain implants).
Scanning planets with Probes
You can now build and launch single-use Probes to scan remote planets, so you will know where to go to find that precious Uranium.
Tons of other changes
In addition to the big things mentioned above, there are hundreds of smaller improvements, balance adjustments, bug fixes, polish, and new content additions. You can find the full list in the public changelog on the website or in #stardeus-updates channel on Stardeus Discord.
It’s been longer than usual since the last development update, but the lab was as busy as usual. Let’s take a quick look at the biggest additions.
Release Date and a new Trailer
Stardeus now has an official Early Access release date (September 15th, 2022), and a new cinematic trailer with a voiceover. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:
[previewyoutube="v7XMVMsiDHY;full"]
Weapons and Combat
This was something many of you have been asking for, and finally, the first iterations of the tactical combat system are in place. It’s a bit rough around the edges at this point, but there is a fairly solid foundation for creating more in-depth combat simulations. Your enemies won’t just try to kill everyone. They will also steal your valuables, sabotage your infrastructure, and even steal your shuttles when they have to.
Breach Capsule Raids
One of the ways to get into combat is to get boarded by raiders in a Breach Capsule. It will fly towards your ship from below, and attach itself to your hull with the help of a sharp spike.
Raiders will take some time (depending on the type of your floors) to drill through, and then all hell will break loose.
After the raid is over, the capsule will detach itself and float away, either carrying the raiders and their loot, or empty.
Carrier Drones
To unburden your construction bots from doing menial hauling tasks, a new type of worker was introduced. Carrier Drones are blazing fast, but they are limited to hauling materials only.
Attachments
Your colonists are going to form attachments to other beings and things. Someone sleeping in a bed will claim the bed as their own. People will create friendships, pets will bond with those who cuddle them. Someone who drinks a lot of coffee will become addicted. All this is driven by the new attachment system.
Aesthetics
New Aesthetics overlay will show how pretty or ugly things are. Colonists will react to their environment, they will be unhappy if all they see is dirt, dead bodies and industrial machinery.
Every single object contributes to overall aesthetics of the area, including colonists themselves and each piece of clothing they’re wearing.
New types of materials
There are a bunch of new resources that you will have to produce in your space factory. Harvest Crude Oil from planets, use the Refinery to turn it into Petroleum, produce Rubber and Plastic, craft Transistors, Copper Wire, Optical Fiber and Gears. Everything will have its use.
Emblems and custom floor tiles
Want to put a custom logo or a picture of your cat in the middle of your ship? We got you covered. Place some images in a custom folder, build an Emblem, and configure it to use one of your custom images.
There is also a special type of floor tile, where you can load your own textures in the same way.
More vibrant HDR colors
All in-game light sources are now HDR enabled, and will look more rich and lively.
Name in the game templates
Some Kickstarter backer rewards included naming your Colonist, Robot, Planet and Galaxy. The custom name templates are now implemented. If you backed the project at an eligible reward tier, you can fill out a google form to provide your custom names (form is linked in Kickstarter email update).
In addition to this, there were countless bug fixes, balance changes, QOL and UI improvements, and various minor additions. Full list of changes can be found on the website: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog/
If you have any topics you would like me to discuss, let me know in the comments.
See you there! Spajus
Dev Update 2022-01-29: Trade with Factions, upcoming NEXT FEST
Greetings, Space Travelers!
It’s been over a month since the last update, and we’ve been busy! Let’s take a look at what has changed since the last development update.
Factions and Trade
Some of the planets in the universe are now controlled by several different factions. You will be able to see what faction controls the planet, and also initiate a trade with that planet when your ship is nearby. Later there will be more ways to interact with factions, including some not so peaceful options.
More survivors in the shipwreck
When starting a new game in the “Wrecked ship” scenario, there will be an area with a couple of survivors that have the necessary devices and resources to last a week or two. This makes the beginning of the game more exciting and gives you extra incentive to research human survival technology sooner.
Advanced space travel options: FTL Drive and Void Ripper
To travel vast distances across galaxies, you will have to research and build advanced technology, like FTL Drive or Void Ripper. You are probably familiar with FTL (Faster Than Light) drives already, but Void Ripper needs a short introduction. When you are near a black hole (every galaxy has one in the middle), Void Ripper can charge up and let you warp through the black hole. The catch is that you don’t know where you will emerge, and you are not guaranteed to return to the same place when you try to go back.
Build fully functional ships that look good
You can now put the engines wherever you want, they don’t have to face all directions anymore, and their facing is purely cosmetic. This was done to allow you to build beautiful ships that don’t look like a flying pizza. In addition, the mechanic required to have functional engines in all directions was often tedious and annoying, rather than fun, so it got removed.
Closable electric vents
To have more control over the atmosphere, you can now plug all vents into your electricity grid, and open / close them at will. This makes it much easier in early game, when you have to restore hull integrity on the broken parts of the ship. You had to deconstruct or wall off all the vents before, now you don’t have to.
Emergency control for unplugged devices through robots
As you are the Ship Computer, you cannot control anything that is not connected to your electricity / data grid. Until now. Your robots and drones will be able to reach any disconnected device and provide a temporary data link and a small amount of electricity so you can configure the device. This is extremely useful when your electricity grid gets split into multiple subgrids, and you cannot change some settings that require immediate attention. It can also be used to force open an unpowered door or airlock, letting your workers access the unpowered areas of your ship without breaking down the structure.
Automatic electricity grid management
Some players found the micro management of the electricity grid a little frustrating, especially in late game, when you have thousands of devices connected into a big network. To alleviate this menial work, you can now research Auto Connect Upgrade and install it on your Ship Computer. With this upgrade installed, newly built or repaired devices will get linked to the closest available connector automatically. This upgrade is optional, so it’s up to you if you want to micro manage the grid.
More detailed and fully moddable UI
The tech behind Stardeus UI hasn't improved much since over a year ago, and it was lacking modding support. It was overhauled to add more details and consistency, and made moddable, so you can replace colors and images in the same way you tweak any other game content - through JSON files.
Hotbar
Not everyone liked the new Radial Menu, so now there is also a Hotbar, where you will keep your most used tools and blueprints for quick access.
Damaged devices will still work
Light damage will not disconnect or impede device operations. This was a pain point whenever there was a fire or some other disaster. Now the device has to take significant damage to lose function.
Steam Workshop support
You can now upload and download mods from Steam Workshop directly in-game. It even works in the demo! Talking about the demo, it will become available very soon for the Steam NEXT festival!
Try Stardeus Demo in Steam NEXT FEST!
Don’t miss the Stardeus Demo in Steam NEXT FEST next month! The demo will be up a couple of weeks before the fest.
That’s all for now, see you in the next update! Full list of changes for the curious ones: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog/
There is also a Stardeus Alpha access lottery running in Stardeus Discord #lottery channel - you can win alpha access. Assign yourself a "Stardeus Playtest Queue" role in #get-a-role channel to get notified when lottery starts and ends. While the demo is up, I will be running it a little more frequently than usual, so there's is a high chance of winning!
Happy Holidays! Spajus
Dev Update 2021-12-10: Radial Menu, VFX, Controller Support and more
Greetings, Space Travelers!
It has been over a month since the last development update, and there are a bunch of changes and improvements that happened to Stardeus during the time.
The main areas of focus were:
UI / UX improvements
Controller support (mainly for Steam Deck)
Graphics and Visual effects
Performance with large maps
Code refactoring
Radial Menu
If you tried the demo or alpha builds, you may remember a quirky bottom menu that expanded like a tree and was notoriously difficult to navigate. That menu was removed without a trace, and replaced with a much more intuitive radial menu that can be invoked by clicking the right mouse button anywhere. It is, of course, controller friendly, which brings us to the next subject.
Controller and Steam Deck support
The addition of the Radial menu gave me a strong push to go for a complete rework of controller support. Now Stardeus has first class controller support, complete with input rebinding and button glyphs. I managed to play for hours without even thinking about reaching for a mouse, and I am certain that Stardeus will be very enjoyable on the Steam Deck!
Graphics and VFX
Since the beginning of the project, I have always put gameplay and mechanics above graphics and visual appeal. I would rather create more content and deeper mechanics than spend a significant part of the time creating animations, but don’t get me wrong, I want Stardeus to look and feel great. This is why I have recently shifted my focus to spice things up with beautiful visual effects. They are easy to create, they run on GPU, and the game doesn’t feel that static anymore. Lights will blink, broken devices will emit sparks, you will see oxygen leaks and all devices will have some particle effects when they operate, so it’s easy to tell what’s on and what’s off. I believe it’s a great way to bring the visuals alive without spending months on creating individual animations for everything.
The most noticeable change to visual effects is the new electricity grid lines. They look gorgeous, and the arch layout shows connections in a much more understandable 3D-like way.
To compare how far the game went in terms of visuals, here is how things used to look a bit over a year ago, on September 2020:
So yes, I do believe graphics are important, or it would still look this way today.
More interesting starting conditions
I’ve read through tons of your feedback that was collected from demo and alpha playtesting forms, and one of the things that were mentioned quite often was a slow and boring start. To make the early game more exciting, the main scenario will have a bunch of damaged devices and various items scattered across the wreckage. You can repair and relocate those devices to get yourself up to speed a little faster.
Performance with large maps
You might think that all the new visual effects would give performance a hit, but on the contrary, it’s the opposite! The main reason for this is that the project migrated from Unity’s built-in (a.k.a legacy) renderer to their new Universal Rendering Pipeline, which opened up a couple of very powerful tools - VFX and Shader graphs. The VFX graph is something of a technological marvel, and, for example, the new electricity grid displaying 5000 connections does not have any noticeable FPS drop. Before the VFX graph, when it was rendered with lines, displaying 5000 connections would have a significant performance penalty even on high tier GPUs. Now you can do it on a laptop with an Intel HD graphics card.
Code refactoring and reducing technical debt
With Stardeus development I am going for a long haul, and I did my best to keep everything very tight since the very beginning of the project. But inevitably, over nearly two years of development, some bad decisions were made, and the architecture had its fair share of ugly corners.
The project codebase grew to 112K+ lines (excluding external libraries), which is not small for a solo developer to handle, so I started rewriting parts that I wasn’t happy with. So far it’s going great, and I am getting more and more happy with the state of the overall project codebase. It is becoming more flexible, easier to work with, and more performant.
Since focus is now put on visuals, I am currently reworking the game’s rendering system, which was pretty slow when it had to display several thousands of sprites at the same time. Now I can tell that the refactored system will be able to render tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of objects orders of magnitude faster than before, thanks to the access to Unity’s new rendering pipeline tools and to the things I learned over the last couple of years.
Happy upcoming 2022!
This is the last development update this year, and I hope you all are having a great time, and that 2022 will be your best year ever! Last couple of years were really hard on everyone in many aspects, so let's stay strong and persevere!
And let me end with a couple of little things I added to make the game put a smile on your face:
