The Sentient
Thanks for your patience - Unstable Branch UI Bug Fixes
So to kick things off several several UI fixes have been added to the unstable branch.
The major focus right now is going to be cleaning up several deep rooted issues and spend dedicated time on refactoring things to make them play a bit nicer. The travel map obstacles ran into a lot of issues and wasn't fun in its initial implementation so a bit of rework had to occur.
Additionally there should be major changes rolling out over time as well as a bit of streamlining in some of the processes. For instance the research menu is very confusing to many and though it was meant to be more exploratory there is a lot missing and ultimately brings the game down a bit considering it is the major focus for you the AI (player). There will be more comments on the actual code and game changes over long descriptions for a while until things are in a good place. Unstable branch is also going to get more frequent updates.
A lot of the original game ideas were put in place to challenge some ideas during development and see what works and what doesn't and actually spend time to see what could be done. This is typically different then most projects but the idea was to try some things out that often are neglected. A lot of lessons were learned along the way and corrections and fixes will be seen on future features and new projects once this is completed.
There are still a good amount of bugs as well so before we put the new features in I want to spend more time giving those systems some love. The overall goal is to get a very clear roadmap for the remaining features, clean up some long standing bugs and finish what was started.
Again thanks everyone for your patience, and you will be hearing more soon.
Update 7.3.3 Pushed to Live!
Update 7.3.3 has now been pushed to the live branch.
Major feature development is still going on behind the scenes but hopefully this should fix several issues that arose in the previous updates.
- Crew members will no longer go into a wander state where they appear to be just standing in door ways. This will cause crew members not currently assigned to a task to constantly work to fill their needs. Although this is unrealistic because not many people know their bladder is only 10% full it should help with the feel of the game. The idea previously was that the AI (the player) is the only one who knows those vital stats. That is why crew members only dealt with them when they were low and were alerted via thresholds or direct orders.
This will likely be revisited once more activities are added.
- Scheduled breaks based on percentages in the crew management window will no longer return to work immediately once the percentage is met. This was causing invalid behavior and should now be fixed whereas crew members will try to fill this stat before returning to their work tasks.
- Several fixes to the level up system were made when upgrading skills via the selected crew UI frame located in the bottom right. Additional fixes are being made but it should help with several issues there.
Thanks again and good luck out there.
AI and Travel Progress
One of the biggest points of confusion is the crew's wander AI ability. The confusion stems from the appearance of the crew appearing broken when standing in doorways.
In many sim games this is pretty common with units standing in the open, twiddling their thumbs or generally just playing idle animations. However for the Sentient this is seen as them standing in door ways or randomly walking between rooms. This causes the confusion of whether the crew is broken because they aren't using items in the room they are walking to. Part of this is due to the limited animations and other reasons to avoid blocking objects in the rooms. Investigating temporarily disabling this while a better solution is made which this should ultimately make the crew more efficient with their needs because they will be constantly working toward filling them.
As mentioned before, adding obstacles in the path while traveling is being added to help make the travel system seem more dynamic and give more things to do. The key is to avoid breaking or unbalancing the other systems so that you can't exploit the extra damage to gain absurd amounts of experience. Its also why the travel system is a direct path right now as well for game mechanic reasons. Currently working on various solutions to this to make sure it works in the game and adds to the overall fun and excitement.
Thanks for your patience and we hope to get back to doing the updates on a fairly regular pace.
Hotfix Update 7.3.2
This update also sneaks in an additional resolution setting, which should not have any effect on the next patch so there wasn't any point in shelving that change.
Since hotfixes can throw off the schedule a bit here is a preview of the next change with the sector map system, which will be adding some hazards into the travel map system. Still fleshing out the details but it should give more decisions when deciding how to pick locations along with things occuring during travel.
Hotfix Update 7.3.1
Thanks again for your patience, and will continue to monitor the current build while additional updates are being made.
Steam Update #25 - Alpha 7.3 and 1 Year Early Access
7.3 adds additional fixes to the "floating off in space" issues that have plagued the game for a while. This should hopefully fix a lot of the remaining issues but will definitely keep an eye on things. As far as the game was aware only the sprites were moving, the character position and activities were correct so it was only a graphical issue.
Also pushed the 7.1 changes and 7.2 to the main branch as well.
ALPHA V7.3 PATCH NOTES
Build Menu
- Fighter selection fixes made while in the build menu.
- Build menu should properly display the correct amount of hangar bays.
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue when loading the game several of power armor weapons were missing.
- Returning to earth will now always properly replace the armors lost.
- Fixed an issue where Battleship weapons were not always enabled during combat.
- Pressing escape while in the ship lost panel will no longer close the window and result in alt f4 needing to be pressed.
- Several adjustments have been made to address floating in space issues seen by the crew members.
Hangar
- Fixed an issue when loading the game several of power armor weapons were missing.
- Several fixes when scrambling fighters.
- Pilots will now run to their armor when on the hangar bay.
- Mechanics should no longer continue to fix power armor that recently launched while they were moving to fix it.
Tutorial
- Added a message to unpause game when giving instructions a that was leading to confusion.
UI
- Added loading screen to main menu when loading levels.
- Several highlighting issues have been fixed when mousing over buttons.
Unstable Branch Updated to 7.2
Alpha 7.2 fixes many UI issues that crept up however there are still a few remaining just due to the overall size and scope of the game. Doing a major engine upgrade introduces a lot of bugs but also helps smooth things over in the long run so hope to showcase some of those new features soon.
The gameplay improvement with this latest update gives the commander the ability to level up while in the command chair if he is instructing other members of the crew to do their work. The commander will get a percentage of experience based on their leadership skills assuming crew members are leveling up at the same time.
This ultimately will make the commander a very strong unit in the game allowing you to level him up and take over at specific work stations to really push things when you need them.
Working toward pushing out a big update by the end of the month with more features but working toward ensuring it is polished and ready to go. Thanks all for your patience!
ALPHA V7.2 PATCH NOTES
Gameplay
- Updated level loading system.
- Crew member sitting in the commander chair will now gain experience when other crew members are working in the command deck and gaining experience.
Overall
- Various bug fixes.
Performance
- Additional memory Improvements
UI
- Several fixes to missing or incorrectly sized labels
Unstable Branch Updated to 7.1
The unstable branch has been updated with more polish to the Alpha 7 build along with a great variety of performance improvements and fixes for several memory leaks throughout the game.
Whereas before there was an emphasis to avoid progress loss, the focus at the moment is to take the time to be thorough and ensure the current state of the game was being optimized. There is still a bit of work to go but overall the game should be much more stable for longer periods of play.
This build also upgraded the engine of the game so there are several UI and graphical issues in the unstable branch. This mainly consists of text not properly sized to the buttons in some cases or images slightly offset etc, but it all should be working.
This should be wrapping up shortly and will then move immediately back to feature development, and content!
ALPHA V7.1 PATCH NOTES
Engine Upgrade
- Upgraded Unity Engine to 5.5. We will likely stick with this version in order to finalize and complete the remainder of the game and avoid time sinks.
Performance
- Massive performance improvements geared primarily at garbage collection and memory leaks.
- Various bug fixes.
Steam Update #24! Alpha 7!
The overall feel of the game should be that you as the AI are constantly gaining knowledge from the idea of space travel and learning from human mistakes. Up to this point you only were able to improve via research points. This was only the beginning of the system however, as Alpha 7 adds an Earth upgrade system.
This system is meant to be a purely passive bonus system that provides rewards based on your own actions. Perform more actions and gain knowledge via bonuses that you can use with new ships and new recruits via this training.
The UI for this system will of course be cleaned up with the future UI pass that should help streamline things and get all the systems on the same page.
As stated in the previous update, due to the holidays most of the work will go more into the planning phase for the new year. However, if any major bugs arise they will be worked on and patches will be released in the meantime.
ALPHA V7 PATCH NOTES
EARTH UPGRADES
- Added the button for the earth upgrade system. Usuable only when at Earth.
- Earth upgrade system now keeps track of:
- Damage Performed to enemy ships
- Damage Performed to player ship
- Ship supplies obtained
- Research points obtained
- Flight Crew Experience
- Mechanics Experience
- Pilot Experience
- Provides bonuses when certain thresholds have been hit to continuously make ships and crew more powerful over time.
- Damage Performed to enemy ships
SAVE
- Additional save game fixes for dead crew members.
UI
- Crew Management Window
- Can now be sorted by attributes, and needs
- Can now be sorted by attributes, and needs
- Added buttons
- Rearranged and reduced skills that are not relevant for specific unit types.
- Fixed several settings navigation issues.
- Sharpened the image in crew management window
- Should be able to upgrade the new store energy, and repair armor skills.
Unstable Branch Updated.
The new build contains several of the systems being built out but not quite ready for consumption. Instead of forking code and wasting a lot of time some of the viability of these changes can be found on this build.
For instance, you should now notice a new icon when near Earth as the ark leveling system comes online. This system will track your overall actions over each playthrough and provide bonuses from purely exploring and experimenting.
One example of this is crew members will now not only level themselves up but their teachings will go into a pool of knowledge which will provide experience levels and new crew members that join will have higher levels based on this knowledge. In other words, as the grew gains experience this will be combined which has its own leveling system. This should greatly aid with the gap that is caused when getting very far out into space and basically losing one of your greatest commodities, that of your crew.
New skills have been added to the mechanic to truly focus on their vast abilities. A new skill has been added for fixing the power armor systems as well as a new skill for storing weapon and shield energy in the engine room. Also skills that are not necessary for a class has been removed to reduce confusion.
Although this is a massive change this build also fixes several navigation issues and button presses that were causing issue with the game settings menu.