May devlog: Updates since EA, and a look at what we are working on
Dear Martians, we hope you are doing well! Welcome to our first devlog since the release of Terraformers into Early Access!
On April 21st, the moment was finally there. At 19:00 CET we pressed the button that we were looking forward to pressing for over 3 years. It was a very exciting moment, as this is the first game we released as a studio. We were overwhelmed with all the responses and constructive feedback we’ve received, and would like to take a moment to thank you all for that. It will help us to develop this game further into the best version we can make it.
Patches since the launch into Early Access
With all the engaging feedback you gave us on the initial release, we identified some elements where we could quickly make improvements and we’ve already done 4 patches with bug fixes, difficulty changes and quality of life improvements. To have a good overview of all of the bug fixes and improvements we’ve done, please have a look at our patch notes on steam. The most significant changes though, were tweaks to the difficulty of the game:
We’ve lowered the frequency of expectation rises of your population, and therefore the difficulty of the game. We’ve had reports that the first scenarios of the game were too difficult for new players, and we want to offer everyone the freedom to learn the strategies of the game at their own pace.
We’ve lowered the amount of damage that you’ll receive in a game, as that also contributed to the high difficulty.
Even though we lowered the difficulty, we found it important that the game is still challenging for the players who are veterans of the strategy genre. Therefore we’ve added 4 extra difficulty levels, making sure there is an appropriate challenge for everybody.
What’s coming in the first major Early Access update
We have now shifted our focus towards work on future updates, following our roadmap and specific improvements requested by the players. The features that are planned for the first major Early access update are:
Technologies Technologies are the aspect of the update that will have the most impact on the gameplay. They are proposed like projects, but only cost science. A technology provides a global benefit that will allow you to specialize your strategy further. Some examples of benefits that technologies can give:
Artificial intelligence: New robots provide +1 support income
Enhanced Photosynthesis: Newly planted trees produce double the oxygen and gas.
Megastructure Construction: When constructing a building that costs at least 40 resources, gain 5 random resources back.
Example of upcoming technology project.
Marsyclopedia We will also add the first iteration of a “Marsyclopedia” to the main menu. Here, you will find all projects, lifeforms, leaders and locations that you’ve encountered at least once in the game. You can read up on them here and have a good overview, which can help you get a better understanding of the different potential strategies in the game.
Design conceprt of the Marsyclopedia screen.
Custom Mode This might be our most requested feature since the launch, so we’ve decided to include it in the first major update as well. In custom mode, you’ll be able to set up the game to exactly how you want it by defining the victory condition, expectation rise frequency and severity of damage you’ll receive during the game. You can even choose not to select a victory condition and fully remove expectation rises and damage, allowing you to play a stress-free endless sandbox version of the game. Some mechanics might not hold up in very long runs, but it will be part of the Early Access journey to discover and address that together.
Custom mode screen, you can set it to be “endless”.
More improvements for future EA updates
We’ve also listened to your feedback, and two much requested improvements are better information on where you can spread lifeforms, and a way to easily see a summary of all your cities and climate zones in a single place, without needing to go over the planet to view them one by one. They are planned for more distant early access updates, but we can already share our first concepts on them.
Lifeform information improvements When having a lifeform selected, the different climate zones will have a green or red color, depending on whether the lifeform can survive there or not. This will allow you to see at a glance where you can spread the lifeform, and prevents you from needing to check each climate zone’s parameters individually. We will also work on improving other aspects of the lifeform spreading, as not all players understand how it works exactly.
Design concept for improved lifeform spreading UI.
Summary screens We are also working on summary screens. Opening this screen will allow you to have a good overview of all your specializations, space projects, technologies, cities and climate zones. In this way you can easily check which climate zones have lifeforms and which do not, or which city is currently suffering from damaged buildings.
Early work in progress design concept for an “overview” screen.
We hope to have given you a good insight into what is coming to Terraformers in the first update, and a little bit beyond that if we don’t manage to include everything directly.
We would like to thank everybody for playing Terraformers, and we are excited to be on this Early Access journey to Mars with all of you.
Terraf Team
Quality of Life patch - v0.7.112
Here comes a new patch (v0.7.112) bringing a lot of bug fix, better clarity of some gameplay concepts and some balance to the game. Hope you'll like it!
Fixes:
Trade arrows no longer appear on top of other ui elements (project details popup for example).
Victory screen does not let tooltips from the planet appear anymore.
UI elements on the planet are hidden when not looking at the planet.
Fixed the setting popup so that it correctly appears over everything.
Solved a bug where dikes did not correctly display the wave icon leading to unforeseen flooding.
Fixed an issue with the “orbital ring” which didn’t account for itself.
Fixed an issue with the points not adding up in the Per Aspera Ad Astra scenario due to the free space project.
Fixed the bug with the loot system (spawning 1 science loot too much in some occasions).
Fixed that not-owned buildings with actions (like spread life) had their actions getting recharged
Fixed the specialization “trade boost” which was not working.
Fixed the specialization “climate variety” which only gave 1 support instead of 5.
Fixed bugs related to the special slots where they would not provide their bonus in certain cases.
Fixed a bug where modular appartements would display the wrong bonus before placing it.
Fixed a bug where a slot in a city with no rocks would say “blocked by rocks”.
Fixed Dejah Robinson “alternative space materials” skill which could happen in cases where you have almost completed the space project.
Fixed an “out of range” bug in the scenario screen.
Moving a city will now properly destroy all the buildings in the previous location.
Fixed a bug with relocating of lifeform spreader buildings.
Fixed a bug where you could zoom out very far from the planet.
Fixed a bug where trade-routes from mines were not accounted for points.
Fixed a bug where buildings providing climate zone bonuses would still work on a not-owned location.
Fixed a bug with missing characters in Polish language.
Updated a typo in the roadmap.
Lots of localisation fixes in different languages.
Other small fixes and polish.
Improvements:
Better hand card spacing to accommodate for a high number of cards.
Added a scrollbar to the card draw popup in case of a high number of propositions.
Added a join discord button in the main menu.
Added a tip from the leader to better explain the comfort of living.
Auto-close trade panel when right-clicking or clicking somewhere else.
Added a “clear all trade routes” button.
Changed the rising expectation artwork.
Made lifeform selection more clear (pulsating and hovering tweaks).
Removed scaling options which would make the UI not usable in the settings option.
Made climate zone terraforming parameter icons bigger so they are more readable.
Improved the dike widget and button to be more prominent.
Added feedback popup in main menu.
Made that spreader buildings will show the lifeform icon of the type they can spread.
Added 2 new difficulty levels and lowered the difficulty in the other scenarios, to accommodate for a smoother learning curve.
Changes:
HQ can only be replaced by Skyscrapers now.
Expectation Rise and Mars Quake events will not happen one after the other anymore
Lowered expectation rise event frequency.
Lowered how often you’ll receive damage.
v0.7.106 fix
v0.7.106 reverts a bug which deleted the player progression in version v0.7.105. We are sorry for all those affected. This recent change make the progression faster so hopefully you'll be back on track in no time!
Patch v0.7.105: bug fix, new difficulty levels and other polish
v0.7.105: bug fix, new difficulty levels and other polish
Bugfix: After destroying a project that provided a trade route you could sometimes end your turn with more trade routes assigned than you have. Now the turn can’t be ended in that state and an explanatory tooltip has been added.
Improved loading performance. The game startup time is 60% shorter than before in our tests! We’ll continue working on improving that.
Fixed a few errors related to founding of cities.
Fixed an incorrect selection of a city background layer when a crater location is terraformed and at max population level.
Corrected the lighting color in terraformed cities.
Fixed a bug where removing a project that provides a trade route didn’t force the player to unassign lost routes.
Added more difficulty levels for all scenarios
Added that each scenario trophy provide 1 player rank (ranks will grow faster)
Added that you do not require to have completed all previous difficulty levels to player the later difficulties (so tied with the faster rank growth it will be faster to access the harder difficulties)
Hid a tooltips which was showing when relocating a city HQ
Fixed a lot of language keys not localizing properly
Fixed that text would not refresh properly when changing language in the settings
Localized all leader names
Fixed some bugs related to music where a track would loop indefinitely
Improved the music system pacing
Added smoke effect to buildings which didn’t have it yet
Prevented that the HQ can be destroyed in a city
Made the Supply Station and Expansion Hub not possible to relocate
Lots of other small polish
New patch is live! 0.7.101
Hey all. A new small patch is live! V0.7.101
- Difficulty lowered (fewer expectation rise events and damage). Difficulty scaling between scenario's increased, so the final ones should still be a challenge! - The Roadmap has been added to the main menu - Returning to the main menu after winning/losing a game will now open up the scenario screen (some players were not aware there was more)
Roadmap update
V0.7.101
We added the roadmap to the main menu screen to help communicate on upcomming features.
When finishing a game you will be brought directly to the scenario screen in the main menu.
Small difficulty balance
v0.7.100: Bug fixes and balancing
Hey everyone, here are the patch notes for V0.7.100 which brings a lot of fixes to your bug reports as well as balancing to lower the difficulty level of the early games.
Reduced the difficulty of the early levels
Updated localisation (for last few remaining non localized lines)
Fixed missing lz4 library for linux
Added missing lifeform sfx
Updated to music tracks to newer versions
Made a fix where a couple leader specialization would not work at all
Added “undo” for space project activation
Fixed a leader skill (speech) which could be done to the same city multiple times
Fixed the placement of the building popup in cities for users with 4k screens
Fixed the city dikes button
Fixed undo after relocating a city
Temp fix of mines being buildable on ocean tiles
Fixed the “mine venting” skill on damaged mines
Fixed that you could still extend a city after the game end
Added a subscribe to newsletter button on the main menu
Fixed a warning with dikes on location sidebar (when there is another building present)
Fixed a bug where buildings would still produce after migrating
Early Access Roadmap
Hello everyone,
You have been thousands to get an play the game on launch day. Thank you so much to all, we hope you're having fun!
The Early Access launch is just the start, and more is on its way! Here is our Roadmap:
Early Access Out NOW!
Hello everybody,
This is it: Terraformers is now available in Early Access!
Explore the Red Planet. Develop new cities. Terraform with ambitious projects.
Once again, thank you so much for playing the prologue and supporting us! We hope you will like this game as much as we have enjoyed working on it!
If you want to follow us in this crazy adventure and share your feedback with us, join our Discord server if you haven't yet!
Have fun! -Asteroid Lab & Goblinz Publishing
April devlog: Changes between the Prologue and Early Access
Hello everybody. With the release of Early Access coming soon (21st of April), we’re putting the final touches to the game’s polish. In this devlog, I (Jasper) will outline what gameplay changes we’ve made from the Prologue to the release of Early Access, and why.
Trade interface and space projects
As shown in the previous devlog, space projects will make their appearance at the launch of Early Access. You’ll need to use your trade routes to export resources to them, and as we will have more total trade routes than in the prologue, the interface design we previously had needed an upgrade.
Now you will be able to easily edit your imports and exports however you wish, as long as there are the same amount of available import and export routes at the bottom (currently shown as 0). With this interface, you will also be able to easily export resources to your space projects to reap their benefits.The instant trade button has disappeared as it did not fit the idea of ships traveling between Earth and Mars over time and it just made the interface more cluttered with buttons.
As the panel now takes more space, you can collapse it with the new top button at the top, this will only show the arrows so you still have all the needed information on a quick look.
The old and new trade panel. The space projects are on the right in the second image.
Extracting water for oceans
In the prologue you were able to increase the ocean level over time by draining your aquifers. In the main game this option now instantly extracts the water for the ocean in one turn, depleting the aquifer and allowing you to construct a new building on it. This change gives you more accurate control as to when you want to let the ocean rise rather than the slow ocean increase which could lead to unwanted flooding of cities and locations.
The old and new water deposit options.
Founding new cities
We now have unique cities with different slot layouts, and with new special slots providing local bonuses. This introduced more choice and consideration and to avoid an overload of information, we have made the “plain city location” a specific location which has to be discovered like the crater and lavatube city locations (and thus a lot less frequent). Additionally, to help make a properly informed decision, you must now explore all locations before you can found a city somewhere.
In the image below you can see a different slot layout, a “fertile ground” slot (food producing buildings on it produce +1 food) and a “natural sight” (provides +2 support to adjacent populations).
An example of a new city layout with special slots.
Spreading life
In the prologue you could directly spread life by paying its costs. This led to a lot of checking at the end of every turn if you have enough resources to spread a lifeform that turn. And as the lifeforms are hidden behind a sub-menu, it is often forgotten.
We changed the way you spread life to be based on a recharge timer. Now, you can construct a “spreader building”, for example a bacteria spreader, on a planet location. Then this spreader building will give you an action to spread life that you can use every couple of turns (duration depending on the lifeform). The building will remind you when it can spread a new lifeform again, so you don’t need to check it yourself anymore every turn. Some leaders will now also be able to genetically modify lifeforms, lowering their requirements to be spread.
The new lifeform interaction system.
Main game goal
As mentioned in the previous devlog, the game now has a goal which is different depending on each scenario. There is no limit to the number of turns you can play but you must reach the goal before your total support reaches 0. Winning a game often takes about 60 to 70 turns. With all the new elements to consider this will usually take a few hours. Some examples of goals are: “fully terraforming the planet” or “getting a specific amount of prestige from spreading life” or “mining a specific amount of resources”... And in addition there are multiple difficulty levels per scenario. This makes replaying the game more varied and provide more interesting challenges.
The new goal bar above your current population support.
We’re very excited that the game will finally release so soon, and would like to thank everybody again for playing the Prologue and supporting us!
See you in a week with the game’s EA release! Terraf Team
