Hello Everyone,

This is a small maintenance update.

Changes:

• When you click on the Planetbase 2 announcement image, the game now opens its Steam Store page in the Steam Overlay instead of the web browser.
  
• Updating the game to Unity 2022.3.60 (which is the latest stable version). This fixes a few compatibility issues.

Martiño.

Hello Everyone,

We can now announce that we've started work on Planetbase 2. You can wishlist it if you are interested. We will be publishing a devlog with regular updates on X and Bluesky.

It's now been more than 10 years since we've started working on Planetbase. It was our first title, and at the time only had the resources to develop the game for about 1 year, so we came up with a minimal design and we implemented it as quickly as we could.

The game was a massive success for us, allowed us to fund our studio, and make a living out of creating games, which was incredible. We thank you all for that!

Now the time has come to go back to our origins and revisit the Planetbase idea. We now have the time and resources to expand a concept that we always thought had a lot more potential.


We've started work on this about 6 months ago, and we are still very much working out the exact design for the game, but these are the core ideas are focusing on:

In Planetbase, the planets were inspired by real worlds of the solar system, but we stopped short of calling them by their names.
Now we want to add a more realistic twist (if you can call the colonization of the Solar System realistic) and allow the player to colonize real worlds.
We are initially working on Mars, but other worlds worlds we have in mind are The Moon, Europa or Titan.

In Planetbase you could acquire some techs, but now we are adding a proper tech tree like in Dawn of Man. Where it makes sense you will be able to research new technologies, and if we are talking about things that couldn't be researched in an off planet-colony you will be able to buy the right patents to use them.

Off world colonization won't be possible without using vehicles. We are working on adding rovers, mining vehicles or propellant tankers. These will be instrumental to increase the efficiency of your base.



We want to expand on the simple ideas we had in Planetbase for resource gathering and manufacturing, allowing the player to mine in-situ resources and go in more detail about what would be required to create a self sustaining off-world manufacturing industry.

The power/water mechanics in PB1 were pretty simple, we now want to add more complex power and water mechanics. Things like actively mining and melting ice to produce water, building an maintain nuclear reactors, survey the planet surface searching for the right area to place a geothermal plant and more....

This is an idea we always had in mind, we really need to think through how the player will be able to control this from the gameplay point of view, but we want to enable construction of separate bases and power grids.

All the RTS style features like multi-selection and direct commands from Dawn of Man will be making a comeback.

This time around we've decided to announce the game much earlier, instead of working in the dark for years in order to gather feedback and engage with the community. We will be publishing a devlog with regular updates on X and Bluesky.

Thank you everyone for joining us in this amazing journey!
Martiño.

Hello all,

Finally, after releasing our new game, we have some time in our hands and are able to release this new update for Planetbase .

Planetbase was initially developed in 2015, using Unity 5, this update brings is up to date to Unity 2022.3, which is the latest stable. This brings a ton of compatibility and graphics upgrades.
This was an arduous task, as the old graphics pipeline no longer exists, so we had to redo some of the graphics code and update the assets.

• Game now uses Unity 2022.3, which is the latest stable (up from 5.0.4).
  This provides improved compatibility for modern systems, people with dual screen setups and more.
  
• The game now uses Physically Based Rendering, this is a better lighting model compared to the old Blinn-Phong system that 1.3.8 used. Terrains and structures look glossier and nicer, more in line with how Dawn of Man looks.

• Now using the Deferred rendering instead of Legacy Deferred.
  Legacy Deferred renderer is no longe available, this changes the appearence of the game slightly, but we've tweaked the materials in the game to match the original renderer as much as possible.
  
  
• Terrain, structures and objects now use PBR lighting.
  They look nicer and have better specular reflections.
  
  
• Increased detail draw distance and terrain LOD quality across the board.
  Terrain now looks better and you see more objects at a distance.
  
  
• Redone all flares using ProFlares.
  Old school Unity flares don't work properly anymore, so had to recreate them. This includes the Suns in title screen and game as well as Landing Pad flares.
  Results are not identical, but new flares look arguably better.
  
  
• Reworked fog.
  Old school fog doesn't work anymore. This now uses a fullscreen effect, results are virtually identical to before for terrain, and better for Buildings and Characters, as they pick the proper horizon color.
  
  
• Fixed issue with icons when playing at 4K resolutions.
  Icons now upscale properly in resolutions higher than 1920x1080.
  
  
• Tweaked lights and environment parameters in all planets.
  This is to make sure the planets retain the same vibe as before, as the new lighting system produces different results.
  
  
• Increased shadow distance and quality overall.
  Shadow maps now use higher res textures and render further.
  
  
• Removed support for GUI Layout.
  This saves per frame memory allocations.
  
  
• Removed specific shaders for Low quality setting.
  It now uses the same shaders as the rest of the quality settings.
  
  
• The game now detects high end systems and defaults quality to "High"
  
  
• Updated to latest SteamWorks API.
  
  
• Tweaks to loading screens.

Let us know what you think. Do you light the new lighting? This is update solve or cause any issues for you?

Thank you everyone for your support, and for making this possible!

Martiño.

This is a maintenance update.

- Announcement panel on title screen has been redesigned and can now be toggled on or off.
- Better error message for rare crash on Mac when saves folder itself can not be read.

Hello Everyone,

This is a small maintenance update that adds a couple of new features and fixes.

We've ported this from Dawn of Man. This is an in-game tool that allows you to upload workshop items, instead of having to use the old batch file.
This simplifies the process, as it features a graphical interface instead of having to modify a text file, and automatically tags your item as Translation, Challenge or Campaign, which makes it immediately visible using the filters in the workshop.
There is a small guide on how to use it here although it should be quite self explanatory.

• You can now pin the game to the taskbar and launch it from there, and it will work properly. Before this would have disabled steam features.
  
• Better handling of some cases when games can't saved, instead of crashing the game will show a toast with an error message.
  
• Fixed a couple of rare crashes.

We want to thank everyone that downloaded and played our little game! This was the project that allowed us to start our studio and continue making games, we hope you all enjoyed it!

Martiño.

The new Planetbase Challenge Editor, created by _provector, a fan of the game, allows you to create Planetbase challenges using a fully visual UI, with no XML knowledge required.

[url=
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/discussions/18446744073709551615/1660068911654157428/?appid=403190]Check it out here[/url]

This is a maintenance update, that fixes a couple of issues:

- If at startup, the game can not load the settings or profile files, it will display a more helpful error message.

- Fixed issue that sometimes could make the game crash if it couldn't save the game.

Small maintenance update:


1.3.5
- Now temp save files have unique names to prevent rare sharing violation crashes.

1.3.4
- Fixed crash saving games introduced in 1.3.3

1.3.3
- Fixed text in tutorial, that indicated that main menu was at the top of the screen, when in fact it has moved to the bottom in the latest version.
- Fixed typo in Cabin tooltip.
- Temp files for profile, settings and savegames, are now created in the same folder as the final file to reduce the likelihood of corruption.
- If the game can not load settings or profile files, a more helpful error message is displayed.

1.3.2b
- Game no longer writes log.txt file, as it was being blocked by anti virus software
- Game now uses a temp file in user folder to store in progress savegames, to avoid them being blocked by anti virus

1.3.2
- Printed message when game can not write log.txt file

1.3.1
- Fixed rare crash while downloading the Dawn of Man announcement image
- Preventing broken challenges from crashing the challenges screen
- Fixed various glitches when changing resolution on Mac

The Dawn of Man + Planetbase bundle will get you a 10% discount on both Madruga Works' titles.

This is a "complete the set bundle" so if you own one of the two games, you can still get the other one at a discount.

Hello everyone,

We've been playing with the UI layout quite a bit in Dawn of Man and wanted to move some of those changes over to Planetbase.

Additionally, we wanted to address some other common requests, like production limits for each bot type, easier access to alerts and clearer display of resources.

Mac computers are deprecating 32 bit apps soon, and we also wanted to address that.


* Bioplastic, Metal and Semiconductor resource counts now reflect the free amounts by default (not the total amounts).

* New improved UI layout

• Main menu is now at the center bottom of the screen
  
• General panel and resources panel are now always visible
  
• Context menu is displayed on top of selection panel
  
• Removed build menu, build external and build internal are now top level menus
  
• Moved tutorial instructions to the upper part of the screen

* Added production limits for the different types of bots

* Streamlined charts window

• Only important charts are shown by default
  
• There is a "more" button that shows all charts

* Added keyboard shortcuts for alert modes

* MAC build is now 64 bit, as 32 bit apps are going to be deprecated soon

* Fixed a bug that could make the game display a black screen on Windows at startup


Any feedback let us know!