It is the holidays and so you know what that means! Yep, it’s time to curl up into a ball and enjoy the cold sweats of some intense mental trauma!


The drama and disasters around your base will now have a more complex effect on your colonists, with individual traumas embedding themselves in their minds. Earthquakes, cave ins, fires, alien attacks, meteor strikes, severe illness, neglect, deaths, and even intensely unpleasant social interactions can now cause long term anguish to your colonists. Their suffering will manifest in unpredictable behaviours, task aversion, distressed emails, and even as acute physical illness.




The IMP first person mode has now been greatly improved with interface changes, and more responsive way to pick things up. They also now have the ability to grab, carry and use more useful items (such as minerals).




Colonist emails are now more detailed with more descriptions of their actions in their reports, and several suggestions for the optimisation and balancing of your base. For instance they will now mention when there is a shortage of repair robots for the current base repair load.




There are many more small changes. With dozens of tweaks and balance changes made based on player feedback and further testing.

Notable changes:

• Dogs no longer become so tired that they become despondent and never respond to orders.
  
• Cats also no longer do nothing due to tiredness. (Given their interests, this is probably a bad thing)
  
• Campaign mission 2 now allows more colonists after the (spoiler!).
  
• Right click now drops tool for room placement mode.
  
• To destroy completed rooms segments you now need to click and hold the right mouse.
  
• The reloading of turrets is better handled and colonists will get around to it faster.
  
• UI warnings panel will mention if repair bots are insufficient.
  
• Microwave smelter bug where it would be stuck closed fixed.
  
• Microwave smelter progress text updates slower to be more readable.
  
• Fix for terminal computer getting stuck reporting no capacity.
  
• World gen now checks to avoid plants placed slightly in walls or unwalkable tiles.
  
• Repairing burnt planters need changed from food creation to food preparation.
  
• Priority orders can now be switched off.
  
• Font size of manifest reduced.
  
• Manifest screen now has text alignment for data after names.
  
• Condenser name loading fixed.
  
• Nerve gas research name and text fixed.
  
• Fixes for vox nocturnis's getting stuck in their nests.
  
• Door frames set for destruction no longer need to be upgraded before being destroyed.
  
• Propagators can now be disassembled.
  
• Solar flares slightly reduced on all maps.
  
• Fix for too many pop-ups caused by the pop-up limitation code doing the exact opposite of its job.
  
• Fix for crew selection pop ups shortening time to colonist choices.
  
• Fix for tutorial state remaining into next mission after completing it.
  
• Crew selection pop ups will be totally skipped if Place Room, Rotation or Rename modes are enabled.
  
• Crew selection pop ups will be postponed if user is in place entity mode until they leave that mode.
  
• Lifespan on text without VO longer.
  
• Bug stopping VO playing fixed.
  
• Level 3 typo for VO.
  
• Fix for typos in campaign mission 2.
  
• Fix for the code that was designed to push colonists out of walls pushing colonists into walls due to weird room shapes.
  
• Chickens will now idle correctly.
  
• Fix for bug that was saving the music in a low volume state if you exited the game whilst VO was playing or waiting.
  
• Console spawn command can now include number of items to spawn after the item ID.
  
• Text GUI buttons now have a border area to make them easier to click.

Thanks to the community for their detailed feedback and save files. If you want to get involved join us on the discord and keep an eye on the development site for changes going into the game.

Obviously this is a slightly more compact update than usual. I'm working on a much larger release with some much bigger changes and some very interesting features for release in the new year.

Until then, enjoy the holidays, be merry, and try not to set too many things on fire.

It's finally time to launch the game! The 0.69 update has hundreds of changes, fixes and a space shuttle's worth of new content. It's live now so give it a go!



This won't be Maia's final update, we're got a lot more coming very shortly!


The full seven mission narrative campaign is in with voiceover. The missions will take about 14 hours for the average player and test your skills in a variety of situations.




Want a dedicated builder, hydroponics worker or researcher? Construct the role allocation systems in the control room and choose from your colonists with the right skills. Remember if you don't have the skills the desk in the research room can be used by colonists to learn new expertise.




The entire soundscape of the game has been reworked. The environment sounds richer, more varied and also gives away many more useful game play cues.

The soundtrack has been extended with many more spine tingling dark 70's synth tracks.




In item build mode you can hold alt or middle click to bring up a selectable menu of items to place. This makes dealing with the longer lists much easier.

Many other small tweaks have come to the interface with smarter popups, less text, a smaller default cursor, better responsiveness and less clutter.


The colonists needs and AI have been given a balancing pass, with the notable change that fatigue is reduced on several actions. Surface operations will be more viable with longer trips and better use of suit refill points and airlocks.



Other changes:

You can see a full list of changes since the last update at the developer website.

Daily builds will continue on the dev branch so make sure you're on that if you want the latest fixes and features.

After a several month mission Maia 0.68 has touched down! Watch my video below to see a quick overview of some of the new features and fixes.

https://youtu.be/y28WgF5jozI

This is the penultimate development version of Maia. The next update, 0.69 will take the game out of the early access program. This of course won't be the last addition to the game and there are plenty of new and exciting things to come. (I'll also be sticking to my no DLC policy, all main game content updates will remain free.)



If you enjoy Maia's updates, but want to try them earlier, don't forget to set your game to use the development beta branch on Steam which will give you access to my daily builds. (Right click on the game in your library, click properties and go to the beta tab.) We also have a new Discord server to report bugs and talk about the game. Leaving a review would also help us very much as we approach release.

This update brings the all new fire fighting utility robot. This nifty little machine will dart across your base to extinguish the inevitable conflagrations of your poorly maintained colony. If you need a more hands on approach it is of course fully controllable in first person too.



New AI behaviours have been bestowed on the animals, robots and alien creatures in the game, adding many new avenues for emergent game-play. Chickens now can be startled and will flock dynamically to avoid perceived danger. But don't worry, they'll also now nest on many items in the game, providing plenty of annoyance to your colonists and plethora of new and exciting fire hazards.



Colonists are more aware of the actions you take and will sometimes mention if they think you followed their advice and will also comment on what they think of new equipment. They'll also produce more detailed emails and discuss new topics such as the weather, storms and climate and how it's affecting the base and it's inhabitants.

The alien creatures of the planet have had many of their territorial behaviours improved and will now migrate independently in herds on and off the mission area. The changes will also see them attacking your bases in a smarter ways, leading to more dramatic incursions.



Your IMP robots are now more fragile and can be seriously damaged by earthquakes and have their circuits scrambled by solar events. You'll also want to keep them happy as they can now take action against your poor management, hijack your email system and organise a labour movement. Listen carefully and you'll hear IMP robot's new voice-over lines. They'll comment on the awful state of your base, provide snide but perhaps useful observations of your colonists and go on endlessly about how depressed the doors are making them.

The base announcer now has twice as many lines detailing equipment state and supplies, and several new call outs for the colonists. Several of the announcements note ongoing progress in the base that will save you from watching every unboiled kettle.



The new rename tool allows you to set a callsign for any item, room, animal, plant, colonist or robot in the game. The new name will appear in the quick selection menus and emails to help you better manage your base.

The mouse over information on unbuilt objects now states any recent attempts to build an item and if those are still ongoing or if the colonist has given up and why. The base manifest has had another pass too with a new layout with more information and an easier to read format.

But that's not all. There are a lot of changes to the game.

• Meteors can now break up and hit your outdoor equipment.
• Fresh meteors produce more research data when sampled.
• Colonists body bagging corpses now pick up food and building materials from the dead.
• Colonist food preparation need increased when there is little food.
• Colonists looking for somewhere to shiver (show hypothermia) will tend towards warmer places.
• Colonists no longer wait for an escort if there is a turret within 30 metres of the destination.
• Colonist choice of airlock when suiting up fixed on complex multi entrance bases.
• Fix for colonists getting stuck in a panic cycle when patrolling towards creatures.
• Change for colonist power generation needs balancing due to bug calculating current wattage.
• Earthquakes now need to be a little stronger to hurt colonists.
• Placement of objects that colonist need to get on and off now requires more space to stop players boxing colonists in accidentally.
• Research generated from sleeping reduced.
• Colonists will no longer come up with new research data if they already have 64mb of data on them.
• Wait added to dog movement to make them more likely to follow move orders.
• New research perk: HUMAN BODY LANGUAGE AI ANALYSIS. To allow utility bots to move faster down corridors.
• Biosythesised Antibiotics research perk hooked up.
• Ablative armour research fixed.
• Creature lure research added for sight and scent lures.
• Flywheels, turrets, wind turbines and solar stills, degrade slightly slower depending on conditions.
• IMP first person labels updated.
• IMP mineral drops now limited.
• IMP method for finding storage space now requires a larger clear area.
• IMPs no longer use incomplete body storage.
• IMP first person now uses camera movement key bindings.
• Minerals complaint email now takes into account contents of the hopper.
• Minerals in hopper now tracked (Manifest screen now includes hopper Minerals.)
• More information added to the colonist identity structure.
• Power report emails now include a maximum theoretical output.
• Wait between colonist popups choice increased.
• Fix for missing electricity graph label on wall screens.
• In game crew selection added.
• More colonist misc inventory items.
• Turret range increased up to 20m.
• All first person text now has shadows for easier reading
• Email for when megacephalalgia and other creatures destroy surface equipment.
• Creature lure scent added for Megacephs.
• Synapsid creature eating code clean up.
• Synapsid creature now more susceptible to lures.
• Fix for molerat contaminating livestock with millions of exterior plants.
• Protobird will now ignore items that are on fire when invading your base.
• Sounds for colonist pistol bullets hitting metal or meat added.
• Rewrite of code dealing with reactions to invading creatures for more dramatic attacks.
• Creature wander position generation bug fix.
• Nitrate boost mode added to crop planters.
• Portable solar array's now close when clicked.
• Solar energy generation now more impacted by settled ground snow on panels.
• Countdown for power and colonist report emails now written to and loaded from save file.
• World generation cleaned up.
• Chickens panic when near fire.
• Chickens send a new transmission when dead.
• Creatures placement changed to ensure better placement.
• Plant sample container now requires a click to transmit collected data to the terminal computer.
• Placement of various items tweaked on world generation.
• Create colonist landing issue fixed with ignoring airlock pos.
• Dining table now tracks how many meals have been eaten.
• Message system brownout warning fixed.
• Infotips cleaned up for many items.
• Super capacitors, Fusion and Fission reactors now need associated research to build.
• Fix for megacephs incorrectly performing actions when they had not reached their target.
• Removed error from megaceph for distant attacks on wind turbines.
• Circuit breaker room detection fixed.
• UI focus fixed with several pop ups.
• Fission reactor shutdown on low fuel and damage.
• Fission reactor output reduced to that of a experimental system.
• Fusion reactor interaction points moved out.
• Subtle vector screen flickering effect added to UI borders.
• Utility robot movement fixed so it's no longer backwards.
• Power requirement for scanner added.
• Agent path to targets optimised.
• Corrections in warning emails.
• Materials hopper resized.
• Research tape pick up bug fixed.
• Email for when the game can not find a lander location.
• More famous (British) author names added to generation list (Kickstarter names coming soon!).
• Fix for ascii rendering error on text glitch effect.
• Fix for unbuildable aesthetic plant pots due to no propagator.
• Lava code cleaned up and optimised for different system types.
• IMP invisibility fix and NAN glitch.
• Large sections of game and engine code cleaned, modernised and made more portable.
• Save compatibility lock set to new 0.68 save implementation.
• Load times have been greatly improved with several save optimisations.
• Mission saving expanded.
• Check to see if building facility is valid before making build order.
• Async thread waits on load to ensure no data corruption.
• Sound options menu added with slider interfaces.
• Objective tracker no longer culls objectives that are waiting on a countdown timer to launch an event.
• SN1572 mission start made easier.
• Potential crash to AI player fixed.
• Escape can now be pressed to go back from a menu.
• Text input in the console and in game improved.
• Escape can now quit out colonist selection screen.
• So many spelling corrections.
• Tutorial line switched from double click to middle click to prioritise builds.
• Tutorial now ticks off keypresses and scrolling faster.
• Change so game does not force a screen native resolution when saving a windowed screen state.
• Fix for crash caused by pathfinding cache corruption.
• Updated to a new Microsoft compiler to fix the random crash bug plaguing the game caused by their broken Async implementation.
• SDL update to 2.0.8
• [There were a few more but I'm going to max the character limit on this post!]

If you're playing the game for the first time I would suggest watching the 0.67 video guide, as it will help you pick up many of the things the tutorial has to skip in the name of brevity.

https://youtu.be/9zvcbDKnqsU

Remember you can read every single commit I make to the repo on https://dev.maiagame.com. If you are enjoying the huge amount of work going into the game, don't forget to update or leave a review and send me your feedback.

Maia 0.67 is here! This huge update is all about polish. Check out this quick video of me showing off the major changes:

https://youtu.be/rb7sM-HgOaA


Fine dust in a humid underground base quickly turns to sticky, sticky dirt. Colonists will inevitably traipse it all around the base, making everyone intensely miserable at the state of it all.

Thankfully there is now a floor cleaning robot ready to remove dirt and polish scuffs off the floor! Just build it and watch it methodically work its way around the base. Or maybe take it for a spin in first person?




The propagator adds a new level of depth and interaction to your hydroponics room. The systems grow seedlings in a carefully controlled environment to maximise yield from the colony’s seed stocks from earth.




The IMP robot can now pick up items (and creatures) in first person, manipulate them and carry them about. This new level of interaction gives you more control over the little things in life (such as chickens).

The repair bot has also been upgraded with new first person user interface systems to help identify items requiring repair.



The colony’s wall screens are now able to show useful base data graphed. See real time feeds of room temperature and atmosphere, grid status, storage amounts of rations, materials and minerals and even receive advanced notice of shockwaves and earthquakes using the accurately generated seismograph.




Colonist emails are now more detailed and varied and will focus on core issues in the base. They also include profile pictures for the colonists sending them to help you identify the sender and grow closer to them before they inevitably die in a fire.




Exterior rendering has been improved substantially with new detail in snow and ground water. A new volumetric effect outside will render fog, dust and smoke with realistic movement depth and shadows.




The user interface has had a lot of tweaks and improvements. The game camera is now smoothed and can also zoom into rooms and will adjust its height automatically when moving around the base.

Placing rooms is now easier with new icons for each room type. Many of the UI modes are more responsive or have been tweaked for clarity. More text has shadowing, and mouse over info tips have been clarified and shortened to make them easier to skim.



 

• AI player added. Type "aiPlayer" in the console to activate a basic self-playing base AI that can construct rooms, items and manage basic functions.
• Tutorial reworked for new items and to give the player more time to digest information.
• Cassiopeia mission lengthened, made easier.
• Colonist stockpiling needs tweaked.
• Other misc colonist AI needs balancing.
• Colonists will no longer interrupt social interactions between others.
• Colonists are less (intentionally) suicidal.
• Breakdown rates for many items tweaked.
• IMPs are less grumpy and won't smash everything now.
• Ground overlay info no longer comes up if emails are open.
• Game meta-progress now saved.
• Finished mission names now shown in blue.
• Fix for flywheel sound when locked.
• Click interactions added for more objects.
• Building geothermal power equipment underground no longer requires airlock proximity.
• Tape drive infotip added.
• Tape drive power use increased, disks spin down during blackout.
• Atmosphere generator, smelter and nanoprinter infotips update slower.
• Megacephalagia creature attacks on wind turbines are now more dramatic with extra animation and pfx.
• Vox Nocturnis creature territorial need increased.
• Game will now push new players to try a tutorial.
• Wait added to dogs and robots when clicked on to give player more time to give a move order.
• Dogs place a higher priority on patrol orders given by a player.
• Chicken breath amount slightly randomised.
• Colonist diseases added to save files.
• Shader generation info now goes into log.
• Shader fix for MSAA not showing lines in IMP first person vision.
• Fix for IMP vision masking out text due to sky mask.
• Removal of log terminal on Windows builds.
• Text renderer bugs fixed.
• First person mode labels now have shadows for easier reading.
• Width fix for border for colonist names on selection panel.
• Numerous shader optimisations.
• Fix for potential crash caused by colonist memories.
• More code modernisation to C++14 standards.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repository on the development site.

0.68 is already in the works and will again be focused on improving the AI, more management and feedback from the games systems, rounding off some of the sharper edges.

Please let me know if you find any big bugs or issues. If you appreciate the effort going into the game, don't forget to leave a Steam review!

Maia 0.66 is here! This build brings hundreds of changes focusing on balancing, emergent behaviours, performance and the user interface.

Here's a short video of me showing off a small handful of the new features:

https://youtu.be/M2zi-qsPgBs


Your I.M.P robots now have a growing sense of person, and with that of course, comes existential dread. Keep your robots occupied with work or they will start getting depressed, misbehaving, annoying your colonists or even smashing up valuable equipment.



 

With the new middle-click menu you can set which colonists are allowed to use a certain item. This functionality has many potential uses uses, from assigning ownership to a bed, to optimising entire rooms by having a select team of skilled users for the equipment. In the later game it can even be used to segregate off entire sections of the base. Of course the colonists, being human, might not always follow the rules forced upon them.

 



 

Colonist mouse-overs have been improved with ECG readouts now hinting at what exciting life threatening issues they may have and a brief inventory list of what the colonist is carrying around with them.

 




Chicken AI is improved with new physical and personality traits. Some may be more susceptible to fire and sparks, some able to breath in a low atmosphere environment, some social, some anxious. As the chickens breed these traits will be passed down and potentially strengthened. Of course for this selection to happen chickens have to die a lot more, so they do.

 



 

0.66 brings many optimisations and performance gains for many system configurations as well as improved visuals with a new ambient occlusion algorithm and lighting systems.



Many aspects of item placement and path-finding have been improved. Placement holograms are improved with smoother transitions between warning states and clearer information when there is an issue. Interaction points are brighter and higher resolution to better indicate how to face an object.



 

• Mouse over info for different terrain types.
• New research tech added for Cognitive millimetre wave networks.
• In the colonist panel on the bottom left. If a colonist needs attention the colour of their name will be yellow. If they are unconscious it will now be red.
• Colonists will no longer write long boring emails about people they don't know yet.
• Colonists will no longer write emails about dogs that they confused for humans.
• When an email is being drawn, left clicking will now immediately draw all the text on screen.
• Colonists will now place less importance on going to the toilet
• Harvest early option added to hydroponics.
• Added delay to colonists pulling out glowsticks or putting them away as they got really indecisive if your power supply was varying and it was migraine inducing.
• IMP robots will now pick up materials left outside and bring them to storage.
• Extra bullet proofing of email code.
• Rain storms will now occasionally have some thunder. The distance of the thunder will indicate incoming storms.
• Room ambience changed to only play one room tone at a time.
• Room ambience will fade out faster (and is now more audible).
• Hurricanes tweaked for bigger impact.
• Solar events more sporadic.
• Toilet door animations fixed.
• Mineral mining is now deterministic from world seeds.
• Creature wandering behaviours now leave an 8m safe zone around map edges.
• Utility robots, protobirds and chickens using an item will quit out early if object is destroyed during use.
• Larger solar panels are prioritised over portable ones when building.
• Object placement errors and warnings are now less likely to get stuck on an incorrect warning state.
• Fix for colonists carrying hologram glowsticks.
• Colonist glow sticks less bright, more attenuation.
• Fix for base randomisation and generation issues.
• Colonists less likely to put raw food packets into storage room.
• Tutorial world seed changed, for a easier layout.
• Noise class now carries its own random generator for better world generation results.
• Colonist food preparation needs reduced.
• Building material stockpile need reduced.
• Aesthetic item need made more fuzzy.
• Entertainment need made more fuzzy.
• Needs for top level building facilities reduced.
• Need for data input balanced.
• Colonists will sleep for longer.
• Colonists will place items on the top shelf in storage and work down.
• Fixes for colonists duplicating work because they didn't realise someone already went out the airlock to do it.
• Room storage shelf picking for colonists more spread out through a room.
• Fix for one frame delay on weapon carrying animations.
• Fix for toilet door animation problems.
• Get next meaningful item in action sequence now returns a handle to the entity.
• Super capacitor and flywheel build importance reduced below that of power generators.
• Room parameters initialised on startup to prevent lockdowns.
• Utility robot will now properly aim at target when it's welding to prevent zapping people by accident.
• Lights added to individual utility robot sparks.
• Worklight food creation (when placed in hydroponics) need increased.
• Chicken egg creation time doubled.
• Fix for broken mining order colonist choice where colonists placed the dig markers and doors somewhere really stupid.
• Psychologist light modification choice now only changes settable lights. Chance that all lights are randomised.
• Increase in IV drip build importance.
• If there are 2 chickens they try to avoid asphyxiation.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Nanoprinter interaction point moved back slightly.
• Fix for crash if colonist tries to store something on a room shelf that you delete as they are placing.
• Fix for specular issue when MSAA was enabled.
• Doors now spark when damaged.
• Sparks can now cause items such as beds and chickens to ignite.
• Individual sparks can now emit light (Added to doors and worklights).
• Worklight sparks randomised.
• Worklight flicker brightness reduced.
• ECG RR interval readout fixed.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Solar array infotip spaces added.
• Colonists waiting in the airlock will perform idle animations such as yawning and looking around.
• AI agents will avoid idling in awkward corners of rooms.
• Suited colonists will now perform a repair animation.
• Airlock waits are reduced in length and by potential distance to cut down time wasted.
• Anything living now gets a short wait command if the door they are near gets locked.
• Additional text for colonists reporting on meals.
• Tutorial seed changed.
• Shadow added to text in emails.
• Airlock loading issue fixed.
• Door flipped lighting issue fixed.
• Potential fix for colonists getting too scared of dead alien bodies to do anything else.
• Insect lighting optimisations. Number of insects reduced.
• Mission timer changes.
• Removal of 8xMSAA option (Too many drivers die when this is enabled due to the huge VRAM cost).
• Optimisation to deferred lighting tile passes.
• Game random functions fixed to be conistant over different platforms.
• Lights are no longer culled if camera is inside them.
• When placing items the prev and next key text is now based on the key bind.
• Menu now locked at 60fps.
• Fix for uninitialised tutorial marker flag giving the player an easy base in missions.
• Behind the scenes UI changes for new colonists item assignment system.
• Utility bot no longer suffers from a glitch where its short ranged signalling system defers jobs to other bots that turn out to be itself.
• Interaction points (the blue person holograms) when placing items now cover a 1m circle. This makes it harder to place stuff too close to walls and get colonists stuck.
• The bounds of an item being placed are now tested against the room pathfinding grid, rather than just the items center. This means things are less likely to erroneously intersect walls.
• The pathfinding mesh map around all wall types has been refined to sit tighter to walls and is consistent in all directions. This should fix issues with some wall items being unreachable.
• Fix for key binding settings order mistake for different placement modes.
• Dormant insects stop creating light.
• Fix for insects floating upwards whilst resting.
• When a colonist placing an item there will be some sounds now.
• Fix for lack of grass on polar maps.
• Fix for too much grass causing crashes on some small high flora map generations.
• Workshop fires caused by unskilled colonists using the smelter have been reduced by half.
• Flywheels now specify their energy storage is in KW seconds.
• Flywheel and super capacitor storage increased a bit.
• Airlock priority increased
• Airlock interaction points are now on the outside until built. (making it easier to do room intersects)
• Tutorial tweaked for clarity.
• Colonist AI code cleanup.
• Sections added to the tutorial for the colonist and warning panels.
• Border added around room options panel
• Room options panel alignment issues fixed.
• Light brightness options added to more rooms
• Plants starting to get blight have higher priority for harvest.
• Blight emails now point out you may need less planters.
• Bulkhead door placement stickyness fixed.
• Fusion reactor degradation fixed.
• Repair robots can now fix fusion reactors.
• Repair jobs advertised by equipment to utility bots earlier. Colonists later.
• Utility bots have fuzzy preferences as to what sort of work they want to do.
• Check when starting a path find that the first node is within the world.
• People fighting fires in space suits will return to airlock if the fire goes out and cools down enough to prevent autoignition
• Event email spam on loading fixed.
• Engine compression added for more texture types.
• Crash fix for bases with no airlock.
• Fix for uninitialised research data issue.
• Sound latency reduced.
• Colour bleeding optimised.
• Bilateral blurs tweaked.
• Fix for lighting bug on skinned objects caused by transformations effecting vertex normals.
• A lot of small tech changes behind the scenes.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site.

As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review as they drive sales which allows further investment in new content and development.

Maia 0.66 is here! This build brings hundreds of changes focusing on balancing, emergent behaviours, performance and the user interface.

Here's a short video of me showing off a small handful of the new features:

https://youtu.be/M2zi-qsPgBs


Your I.M.P robots now have a growing sense of person, and with that of course, comes existential dread. Keep your robots occupied with work or they will start getting depressed, misbehaving, annoying your colonists or even smashing up valuable equipment.



 

With the new middle-click menu you can set which colonists are allowed to use a certain item. This functionality has many potential uses uses, from assigning ownership to a bed, to optimising entire rooms by having a select team of skilled users for the equipment. In the later game it can even be used to segregate off entire sections of the base. Of course the colonists, being human, might not always follow the rules forced upon them.

 



 

Colonist mouse-overs have been improved with ECG readouts now hinting at what exciting life threatening issues they may have and a brief inventory list of what the colonist is carrying around with them.

 




Chicken AI is improved with new physical and personality traits. Some may be more susceptible to fire and sparks, some able to breath in a low atmosphere environment, some social, some anxious. As the chickens breed these traits will be passed down and potentially strengthened. Of course for this selection to happen chickens have to die a lot more, so they do.

 



 

0.66 brings many optimisations and performance gains for many system configurations as well as improved visuals with a new ambient occlusion algorithm and lighting systems.



Many aspects of item placement and path-finding have been improved. Placement holograms are improved with smoother transitions between warning states and clearer information when there is an issue. Interaction points are brighter and higher resolution to better indicate how to face an object.



 

• Mouse over info for different terrain types.
• New research tech added for Cognitive millimetre wave networks.
• In the colonist panel on the bottom left. If a colonist needs attention the colour of their name will be yellow. If they are unconscious it will now be red.
• Colonists will no longer write long boring emails about people they don't know yet.
• Colonists will no longer write emails about dogs that they confused for humans.
• When an email is being drawn, left clicking will now immediately draw all the text on screen.
• Colonists will now place less importance on going to the toilet
• Harvest early option added to hydroponics.
• Added delay to colonists pulling out glowsticks or putting them away as they got really indecisive if your power supply was varying and it was migraine inducing.
• IMP robots will now pick up materials left outside and bring them to storage.
• Extra bullet proofing of email code.
• Rain storms will now occasionally have some thunder. The distance of the thunder will indicate incoming storms.
• Room ambience changed to only play one room tone at a time.
• Room ambience will fade out faster (and is now more audible).
• Hurricanes tweaked for bigger impact.
• Solar events more sporadic.
• Toilet door animations fixed.
• Mineral mining is now deterministic from world seeds.
• Creature wandering behaviours now leave an 8m safe zone around map edges.
• Utility robots, protobirds and chickens using an item will quit out early if object is destroyed during use.
• Larger solar panels are prioritised over portable ones when building.
• Object placement errors and warnings are now less likely to get stuck on an incorrect warning state.
• Fix for colonists carrying hologram glowsticks.
• Colonist glow sticks less bright, more attenuation.
• Fix for base randomisation and generation issues.
• Colonists less likely to put raw food packets into storage room.
• Tutorial world seed changed, for a easier layout.
• Noise class now carries its own random generator for better world generation results.
• Colonist food preparation needs reduced.
• Building material stockpile need reduced.
• Aesthetic item need made more fuzzy.
• Entertainment need made more fuzzy.
• Needs for top level building facilities reduced.
• Need for data input balanced.
• Colonists will sleep for longer.
• Colonists will place items on the top shelf in storage and work down.
• Fixes for colonists duplicating work because they didn't realise someone already went out the airlock to do it.
• Room storage shelf picking for colonists more spread out through a room.
• Fix for one frame delay on weapon carrying animations.
• Fix for toilet door animation problems.
• Get next meaningful item in action sequence now returns a handle to the entity.
• Super capacitor and flywheel build importance reduced below that of power generators.
• Room parameters initialised on startup to prevent lockdowns.
• Utility robot will now properly aim at target when it's welding to prevent zapping people by accident.
• Lights added to individual utility robot sparks.
• Worklight food creation (when placed in hydroponics) need increased.
• Chicken egg creation time doubled.
• Fix for broken mining order colonist choice where colonists placed the dig markers and doors somewhere really stupid.
• Psychologist light modification choice now only changes settable lights. Chance that all lights are randomised.
• Increase in IV drip build importance.
• If there are 2 chickens they try to avoid asphyxiation.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Nanoprinter interaction point moved back slightly.
• Fix for crash if colonist tries to store something on a room shelf that you delete as they are placing.
• Fix for specular issue when MSAA was enabled.
• Doors now spark when damaged.
• Sparks can now cause items such as beds and chickens to ignite.
• Individual sparks can now emit light (Added to doors and worklights).
• Worklight sparks randomised.
• Worklight flicker brightness reduced.
• ECG RR interval readout fixed.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Solar array infotip spaces added.
• Colonists waiting in the airlock will perform idle animations such as yawning and looking around.
• AI agents will avoid idling in awkward corners of rooms.
• Suited colonists will now perform a repair animation.
• Airlock waits are reduced in length and by potential distance to cut down time wasted.
• Anything living now gets a short wait command if the door they are near gets locked.
• Additional text for colonists reporting on meals.
• Tutorial seed changed.
• Shadow added to text in emails.
• Airlock loading issue fixed.
• Door flipped lighting issue fixed.
• Potential fix for colonists getting too scared of dead alien bodies to do anything else.
• Insect lighting optimisations. Number of insects reduced.
• Mission timer changes.
• Removal of 8xMSAA option (Too many drivers die when this is enabled due to the huge VRAM cost).
• Optimisation to deferred lighting tile passes.
• Game random functions fixed to be conistant over different platforms.
• Lights are no longer culled if camera is inside them.
• When placing items the prev and next key text is now based on the key bind.
• Menu now locked at 60fps.
• Fix for uninitialised tutorial marker flag giving the player an easy base in missions.
• Behind the scenes UI changes for new colonists item assignment system.
• Utility bot no longer suffers from a glitch where its short ranged signalling system defers jobs to other bots that turn out to be itself.
• Interaction points (the blue person holograms) when placing items now cover a 1m circle. This makes it harder to place stuff too close to walls and get colonists stuck.
• The bounds of an item being placed are now tested against the room pathfinding grid, rather than just the items center. This means things are less likely to erroneously intersect walls.
• The pathfinding mesh map around all wall types has been refined to sit tighter to walls and is consistent in all directions. This should fix issues with some wall items being unreachable.
• Fix for key binding settings order mistake for different placement modes.
• Dormant insects stop creating light.
• Fix for insects floating upwards whilst resting.
• When a colonist placing an item there will be some sounds now.
• Fix for lack of grass on polar maps.
• Fix for too much grass causing crashes on some small high flora map generations.
• Workshop fires caused by unskilled colonists using the smelter have been reduced by half.
• Flywheels now specify their energy storage is in KW seconds.
• Flywheel and super capacitor storage increased a bit.
• Airlock priority increased
• Airlock interaction points are now on the outside until built. (making it easier to do room intersects)
• Tutorial tweaked for clarity.
• Colonist AI code cleanup.
• Sections added to the tutorial for the colonist and warning panels.
• Border added around room options panel
• Room options panel alignment issues fixed.
• Light brightness options added to more rooms
• Plants starting to get blight have higher priority for harvest.
• Blight emails now point out you may need less planters.
• Bulkhead door placement stickyness fixed.
• Fusion reactor degradation fixed.
• Repair robots can now fix fusion reactors.
• Repair jobs advertised by equipment to utility bots earlier. Colonists later.
• Utility bots have fuzzy preferences as to what sort of work they want to do.
• Check when starting a path find that the first node is within the world.
• People fighting fires in space suits will return to airlock if the fire goes out and cools down enough to prevent autoignition
• Event email spam on loading fixed.
• Engine compression added for more texture types.
• Crash fix for bases with no airlock.
• Fix for uninitialised research data issue.
• Sound latency reduced.
• Colour bleeding optimised.
• Bilateral blurs tweaked.
• Fix for lighting bug on skinned objects caused by transformations effecting vertex normals.
• A lot of small tech changes behind the scenes.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site.

As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review as they drive sales which allows further investment in new content and development.

It's that time of year again! For a holiday? No! What's a Holiday?! It's time for another Maia update of course.

https://youtu.be/sn2QTFseTEs


Colonists are now able to hold items whilst walking around the base allowing them to telegraph what task they are hoping to do next. A colonist with a hammer may be on their way to build some room segments, one holding a wrench on a build or repair job, rations the food station or storage, and a colonist holding a glow stick during a blackout might just be afraid of the dark.




Insects form a critical component of any food chain, and on Maia the rule holds true. The new flying insects will provide a food source for the smaller alien creatures, allowing them to broaden their diet and grow quicker. The bugs use bioluminescence for mating, so exterior base lighting might attract their attention and cause them to swarm your colonists.



The migration and breeding of the alien life has changed to reflect this new system. The balance should reduce the risk of equipment destruction or alien incursions to new bases, but increase it substantially later in the game.


Raw research data is now represented by physical data tapes in the world, allowing colonists to stockpile and store information they have learned about the planet ready for it to be crunched into new technologies and techniques in the research lab computer systems. Just be careful to keep them dry and safe, magnetic tape is flimsy and extremely flammable.


 

As well as adding several new colonist visual models into the game this update brings new psychological differences to your colonists. The personality of a colonist can effect their motivation, moods, how they interact with others and even their susceptibility to certain mental conditions. Picking the right traits might just be a matter of life and death.




The base system will now announce many more of the incoming issues and disasters facing your colony. Many sounds have been added or tweaked in the game world and user interface to give better feedback and a more balanced soundscape.


New cache optimisations, path finding changes, C++ code modernisation and threading balance has improved CPU performance for large bases up to 40%.

• Stand alone missions extended
• Chickens set for destruction will be prioritised for eating over others.
• Chickens respond to player by ejecting feathers.
• Utility robot is now much less likely to immobilise itself in first person mode.
• Text crawl effects reinstated for new emails and messages from colonists.
• Updated (deliberate) glitching effect on infotips of objects hit by solar flare eletromotive effect.
• Clean up of solar arrays and geothermal infotip generation.
• Meteor strike lighting tweaked.
• Communications tower now repairable by robots.
• Megacephalagia initial migration randomised to prevent email spam.
• UI made more responsive.
• New item descriptions.
• Photosynthesis more accurately linked to light wavelengths.
• Work light power usage reduced according to what colour the light is.
• Colonists walking and running tweaked. Fix for stamina and stop-start running.
• Movement tweaks to reduce pauses waiting for doors.
• Colonist social needs reduced so they waste less time.
• Colonists can turn faster in suits to prevent them getting stuck walking in circles.
• Starting base has a wall screen to hint to new players they should be using them.
• Snap-to-grid key now rebindable.
• Bulkhead doors and airlocks are more effective at stopping cave ins.
• Plant blight spreading behaviour changed (If you get a lot of blight, plant less crops!)
• Fix for object selection issues when tracking or when setting colours.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site.

As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review!

It's that time of year again! For a holiday? No! What's a Holiday?! It's time for another Maia update of course.

https://youtu.be/sn2QTFseTEs


Colonists are now able to hold items whilst walking around the base allowing them to telegraph what task they are hoping to do next. A colonist with a hammer may be on their way to build some room segments, one holding a wrench on a build or repair job, rations the food station or storage, and a colonist holding a glow stick during a blackout might just be afraid of the dark.




Insects form a critical component of any food chain, and on Maia the rule holds true. The new flying insects will provide a food source for the smaller alien creatures, allowing them to broaden their diet and grow quicker. The bugs use bioluminescence for mating, so exterior base lighting might attract their attention and cause them to swarm your colonists.



The migration and breeding of the alien life has changed to reflect this new system. The balance should reduce the risk of equipment destruction or alien incursions to new bases, but increase it substantially later in the game.


Raw research data is now represented by physical data tapes in the world, allowing colonists to stockpile and store information they have learned about the planet ready for it to be crunched into new technologies and techniques in the research lab computer systems. Just be careful to keep them dry and safe, magnetic tape is flimsy and extremely flammable.


 

As well as adding several new colonist visual models into the game this update brings new psychological differences to your colonists. The personality of a colonist can effect their motivation, moods, how they interact with others and even their susceptibility to certain mental conditions. Picking the right traits might just be a matter of life and death.




The base system will now announce many more of the incoming issues and disasters facing your colony. Many sounds have been added or tweaked in the game world and user interface to give better feedback and a more balanced soundscape.


New cache optimisations, path finding changes, C++ code modernisation and threading balance has improved CPU performance for large bases up to 40%.

• Stand alone missions extended
• Chickens set for destruction will be prioritised for eating over others.
• Chickens respond to player by ejecting feathers.
• Utility robot is now much less likely to immobilise itself in first person mode.
• Text crawl effects reinstated for new emails and messages from colonists.
• Updated (deliberate) glitching effect on infotips of objects hit by solar flare eletromotive effect.
• Clean up of solar arrays and geothermal infotip generation.
• Meteor strike lighting tweaked.
• Communications tower now repairable by robots.
• Megacephalagia initial migration randomised to prevent email spam.
• UI made more responsive.
• New item descriptions.
• Photosynthesis more accurately linked to light wavelengths.
• Work light power usage reduced according to what colour the light is.
• Colonists walking and running tweaked. Fix for stamina and stop-start running.
• Movement tweaks to reduce pauses waiting for doors.
• Colonist social needs reduced so they waste less time.
• Colonists can turn faster in suits to prevent them getting stuck walking in circles.
• Starting base has a wall screen to hint to new players they should be using them.
• Snap-to-grid key now rebindable.
• Bulkhead doors and airlocks are more effective at stopping cave ins.
• Plant blight spreading behaviour changed (If you get a lot of blight, plant less crops!)
• Fix for object selection issues when tracking or when setting colours.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site.

As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review!

Maia 0.64 is here! Cats, Dogs, Hurricanes, GUI, detailed new AI and lots of optimisations and fixes. Here's a quick video showing off some of the cool new things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtiB-eOa-C4


Firstly we have the cats. Based off the pets of our Kickstarter backers, our feline friends have travelled across the cosmos to keep us company (when they feel like it), damage furniture and sleep in a lot in inconvenient places. They will, very occasionally, socialise with the colonists and boost moods around the base.





The dogs make themselves a little more useful. Defending the territory of the base, they will follow patrol routes, noting weaknesses in the bases defences as they go, iterating and improving their coverage. They will alert and then defend against alien incursion, barking and growling at any intruder. They can also be given move orders which they will (sometimes) obey and integrate into their guarding behaviour.

It's not all work, they will also distract colonists for tummy rubs, boosting moods and fulfilling the social needs of the lonely. Whether the dogs make friends with the cats or not is up to the cats, and so is a rare and unpredictable occurrence.




The alien creature AI is now more dynamic, with all species now having social structures and breeding patterns. They now suffer from fear and panic and so can be forced out the base using your dogs to herd them, rather than using the weak and unpredictable colonists.


Hurricanes can now make landfall and threaten your bases. These catastrophic events will build up over time, tearing apart equipment on the surface and shutting down wind and solar generation. They will also leave a lasting effect on the weather simulation, leaving drastic pressure changes that will take weeks to normalise. On the bright side you'll generate a lot of wind power before the turbines go into lock down and/or explode.

]


There are many changes to the UI, but a key one is the new finder panels opened by clicking the colonist, warning and robot buttons on the left hand side. These provide an easier way to find a specific colonist, robot or problem with the base. The warning panel now focuses on many of the smaller issues that a base may face, allowing you to isolate and fix smaller issues before everyone dies in an embarrassing manner.

Autosaves are now in game, so you will always have a base to go back to when you "accidentally" murder everyone in your charge by locking them in a room with no doors and a hundred angry chickens.





The lighting engine has had some major rewrites and optimisations. This will allow for more extravagant base designs at higher and smoother frame rates. Remember, your choice of lighting will have a noticeable impact on the moods of your colonists.

Many shaders and effects have been tweaked or in some cases rewritten, leading to more natural lighting and more aesthetically pleasing visuals.


The dogs aren't the only woofers you'll be hearing in 0.64! We've implemented many new sounds and reworked some of the existing ones to add more feedback from the game and realistic detail in the soundscape.


Other Tweaks:

• Over-ripe crops will suffer less blight progression.
• Airlock cycles and new door models.
• Wall heaters now turn off at 26 rather than 30 degrees.
• Several late game food generation issues addressed
• New font tweaks for better shadows and easier reading.
• Text button active areas better fitted to buttons.
• Several texture compression artifacts fixed.
• Screenspace raytraced reflections corrected.
• Creature territory systems optimised
• Events and dangers generation balanced and tweaked for longer games.
• Thousands of small optimisations and code modernisations.
• More temporary names in the colonist generator (Kickstarter names list coming soon!)

That's all for now. I will be back soon with more updates, content, fixes and softly spoken update videos. Get yourself on the Steam development branch to get them as they go live. All feedback is appreciated!

Maia 0.64 is here! Cats, Dogs, Hurricanes, GUI, detailed new AI and lots of optimisations and fixes. Here's a quick video showing off some of the cool new things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtiB-eOa-C4


Firstly we have the cats. Based off the pets of our Kickstarter backers, our feline friends have travelled across the cosmos to keep us company (when they feel like it), damage furniture and sleep in a lot in inconvenient places. They will, very occasionally, socialise with the colonists and boost moods around the base.





The dogs make themselves a little more useful. Defending the territory of the base, they will follow patrol routes, noting weaknesses in the bases defences as they go, iterating and improving their coverage. They will alert and then defend against alien incursion, barking and growling at any intruder. They can also be given move orders which they will (sometimes) obey and integrate into their guarding behaviour.

It's not all work, they will also distract colonists for tummy rubs, boosting moods and fulfilling the social needs of the lonely. Whether the dogs make friends with the cats or not is up to the cats, and so is a rare and unpredictable occurrence.




The alien creature AI is now more dynamic, with all species now having social structures and breeding patterns. They now suffer from fear and panic and so can be forced out the base using your dogs to herd them, rather than using the weak and unpredictable colonists.


Hurricanes can now make landfall and threaten your bases. These catastrophic events will build up over time, tearing apart equipment on the surface and shutting down wind and solar generation. They will also leave a lasting effect on the weather simulation, leaving drastic pressure changes that will take weeks to normalise. On the bright side you'll generate a lot of wind power before the turbines go into lock down and/or explode.

]


There are many changes to the UI, but a key one is the new finder panels opened by clicking the colonist, warning and robot buttons on the left hand side. These provide an easier way to find a specific colonist, robot or problem with the base. The warning panel now focuses on many of the smaller issues that a base may face, allowing you to isolate and fix smaller issues before everyone dies in an embarrassing manner.

Autosaves are now in game, so you will always have a base to go back to when you "accidentally" murder everyone in your charge by locking them in a room with no doors and a hundred angry chickens.





The lighting engine has had some major rewrites and optimisations. This will allow for more extravagant base designs at higher and smoother frame rates. Remember, your choice of lighting will have a noticeable impact on the moods of your colonists.

Many shaders and effects have been tweaked or in some cases rewritten, leading to more natural lighting and more aesthetically pleasing visuals.


The dogs aren't the only woofers you'll be hearing in 0.64! We've implemented many new sounds and reworked some of the existing ones to add more feedback from the game and realistic detail in the soundscape.


Other Tweaks:

• Over-ripe crops will suffer less blight progression.
• Airlock cycles and new door models.
• Wall heaters now turn off at 26 rather than 30 degrees.
• Several late game food generation issues addressed
• New font tweaks for better shadows and easier reading.
• Text button active areas better fitted to buttons.
• Several texture compression artifacts fixed.
• Screenspace raytraced reflections corrected.
• Creature territory systems optimised
• Events and dangers generation balanced and tweaked for longer games.
• Thousands of small optimisations and code modernisations.
• More temporary names in the colonist generator (Kickstarter names list coming soon!)

That's all for now. I will be back soon with more updates, content, fixes and softly spoken update videos. Get yourself on the Steam development branch to get them as they go live. All feedback is appreciated!