[All changes discussed in this blog concern dev branch 0.7.0, which is not publicly available yet]
During the weekend, Zun completely redid the player movement code. We've had an issue for years where players would sometimes glitch into the ground. This update should fix that problem.
Another big change is the addition of a new tabbed menu next to the stockpile and science. It's the Colony Tab, and it allows you to change the name of your colony, invite other players to be co-owners (or leaders!) of your colony and to recruit large amounts of colonists.
We've had to make another major decision this week. What's the relationship between the biomes going to be? Are they all on "equal footing", with similar capabilities and opportunities? Or will it be more similar to the world of The Hunger Games, where exploited districts serve the wealthy Capitol?
Both systems have benefits and drawbacks. 'Equality' is more 'free form': players are free to choice where to build their biggest colony. The end-game (19th/20th century tech) will be available in every biome.
But we're afraid 'equal biomes' will cause the game to become repetitive and boring. Colonists in every biome will need similar amounts of happiness items, so the challenge of building a 2nd/3rd/4th colony will not be very different from the challenge of building your first colony. Trade between colonies will probably become extremely complex, because the same kind of items need to be spread to every biome (tea needs to go from the east to north/west/south/center, coffee needs to go from the south to north/west/east/center, etc.).
Distant biomes serving the center versus biomes on equal footing
So we're drawn to a different solution: inequality. Colonists in distant biomes should need less happiness items compared to the central biome. Colonies in distant biomes serve as outposts for the capital in the central biome, providing it with exotic happiness items and resources needed for modern tech. To prevent people from ignoring the central biome (with its 'expensive' colonists), end-game content is only available in the center.
We aren't 100% sure, but we mostly believe that 'the inequality option' provides players with better, more enjoyable gameplay. We did ask our Discord community to vote on the options. Here are the options and the results:
There's potentially a third option, where there's still inequality between the capital and the outposts, but where the capital can be built in any biome. It sounds good in theory, but will delay 0.7.0 even further, and it makes it more difficult to streamline the tech tree.
We haven't made any definitive decisions yet. What's your favorite? Leave a comment here or join the Discord and share your feedback there.
As usual, here are the changelogs of the dev branch. There was a new build every workday, this week!
[Disclaimer: we're talking about changes to the 0.7.0 dev branch here, which is not yet publicly available]
Last week's announcement that we removed seeds & saplings generated quite a bit of controversy. Some complained, rightfully so, that this removed the ability to plant crops and flowers as decoration. That is a feature we do not intend to remove. We'll add seeds & saplings to the merchant. They won't limit expansion anymore, they won't be needed by colonists or any core gameplay mechanics, they won't clutter the stockpile of players who've just started out, but experienced players who want to decorate their colony will still be able to use them!
The biggest change in the dev branch last week is the addition of biome dependent science. The location of the colony now determines which science is available. For example, we can now make it so that only colonies in the far east can unlock tea farmers, while sugarcane can only be unlocked in the tropics.
We've thought a lot about how to structure the tech tree in other colonies, this week. We realized we do not simply want to make it like the standard colony with some extra crops. It would be good if each colony had a relatively unique development. For example, colonists in arctic areas could require more food and happiness items. Potatoes would replace wheat as the main crop in the new world. Bamboo could be part of many recipes in the far east.
Basically, we've got to reinvent Colony Survival four times: unique foods, happiness items, recipes and tech trees in the north, east, south and west. This is not a task to approach lightly. We've been extensively pondering and discussing how to structure this exactly. We hope to be able to show you the first unique colony in an exotic biome next week!
Last week, we were at build 21. Now we're at build 27. Here's a comprehensive list of all the changes that we've made on the dev branch this week:
Playing the game during the past few weeks felt like playing a scrappy tech demo. It was fun to see the new jobs and items, but it didn't feel like a game. But this week, playing the most recent dev branch actually felt like a fun and immersive experience again!
We've made many changes to the tech tree, crafting recipes and food/happiness values. Balancing the production of happiness now feels like the fun challenge it ought to be. Recruit a bunch of colonists, and the total happiness level drops, while the amount of happiness items needed by your colonists increases: providing everyone with a piece of cake everyday requires more cake when you've got 100 colonists compared to 50 colonists. Fiddling with the sliders and checking your production chains to rebalance happiness works perfectly now.
One major change is the removal of nearly all seeds & saplings. Having to buy wheat seeds at the shop if you wanted to expand more rapidly was an interesting mechanic when the game lacked content in June 2017. But the game now contains a lot more content, and 0.7.0 adds a lot of new seeds & saplings. Barley seeds, cabbage seeds, olive saplings, and in a similar vein, chicken coops for chicken farmers and beehives for beekeepers. Instead of cluttering the stockpile with additional items and expanding unnecessary mechanics, we've decided to remove the requirement for them entirely. Colonists can just plant wheat and cabbages and all the other crops and trees now, even if they lack seeds or saplings. We believe it improves the game, but we love to have your opinion!
Another new job is the "water pump operator". 0.7.0 adds two new jobs that need to be placed next to water: the fisherman and the water gatherer. Fish isn't fundamental to your colony, but water is. Instead of forcing players to start a colony next to lakes or oceans, we decided to add a new job block that can also turn empty buckets into buckets filled with water: the water pump. It can do the same thing as a water gatherer, albeit slower.
Here's a complete list of changes to the dev branch this week:
The testers started their work exactly one week ago. We've gotten a lot of feedback, and we've implemented many tweaks and changes to improve the gameplay.
The happiness menu was messy and hard to understand. There were a bunch of sliders, and if you dragged them around, some stats on the left side of the menu would eventually change, after waiting one or two in-game days. It was not intuitive and hard to test.
There was plenty of data we liked to show in that menu, but we struggled finding a way to visualize the data without making the entire menu cluttered. Eventually, we decided that the best way to accomplish this would be by expanding the tool-tip that appears when you hover your mouse over an item. It now provides players with a lot of new information. It makes it a lot easier to make good decisions surrounding happiness.
The new data isn't only shown in the happiness menu, it's also present when you hover over happiness items in other menus. The "In Stockpile: #" line is also displayed for other items, which is useful when you're in for example the science menu and quickly want to know whether you meet all the requirements for a new unlock.
There's still a significant list of small things to fix and improve, but we might manage to complete all tasks on that list next week, and start adding new content and features again. The next thing we're planning to add is unique content in other biomes, e.g., starting a colony in the tropical biome and being able to grow coffee beans and tea leaves.
Videos
Yogscast has rediscovered Colony Survival! They've done a couple of long livestreams in the past few weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy0fbrcleVw Zun has religiously watched every one from start to finish and has found it very calming. We're glad they're enjoying the game, and hope they'll enjoy 0.7.0 once it releases!
3kliksphilip made a brilliant video detailing the technical trickery that makes CS:GO's large battle royale map possible. The video is very in-depth and it makes very clear how much work happens behind the scenes to make games possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYDaIKIoOkw It's not directly relevant to Colony Survival, but it does give a good insight in the kind of details developers have to think about.
P.S. We tripled the amount of testers today. Some people applied and were approved, but were not present in our Discord, or at least not with the username mentioned in the application. So if you've applied, make sure you are in the official Colony Survival Discord! The one with emperors and a not-so-serious channel :)
One month ago, we shared a link that you could use to apply to be a tester. The form is still open. We've had plenty of great responses, and today, we selected the first five testers! Together with mod creators, "kings" and "emperors" on Discord, they were granted access to the 0.7.0 dev branch. There's a lot of new content. New world generation, multiple colonies, co-op functionality, new jobs and new items, new mechanics like happiness, etcetera. The update is not finished yet - some mechanics still need to be added or refined. There are no unique resources in other regions yet, or quicker ways to travel there. But it's great to start receiving feedback!
We've made good progress this week. Rotatable objects, like beds, torches and certain job blocks, had a unique mesh and code for each direction. For example, one torch that faces north, one that faces east, one for south, and a fourth one for west. Certain new job blocks are also rotatable, and to improve performance and speed up adding new rotatable content, Zun rewrote how rotatable objects work. It's a lot easier to add them now.
And we used that ability a lot this week. Plenty of new items and jobs were added. We listened to last week's feedback, and decided to replace some existing job blocks as well.
Fullscreen Clockwise starting bottom left: a stove for the cook, a shop where colonists gather their happiness items, a writer's desk, the new grindstone and an updated anvil
Water gatherers and fishermen
Olive farmers
We're rapidly releasing new builds right now. On January 8, Zun started numbering builds. This afternoon, build 10, 11 and 12 were released. Lots of things are changing, and I find it both exciting and terrifying!
The current happiness menu is very bare-bones and not intuitive, and I hope we'll manage to update it next week. We've got some good ideas on how to improve it!
[Everything in this blog regards progress on 0.7.0, which has not been released yet]
Recently, we added lots of new content but nearly all of them had placeholder art. This week, a lot of that has been replaced by actual items and icons. We've also added new science to give the new jobs and recipes their appropriate place in the tech tree. Here are some screenshots of the new content!
Beekeeper: gathers honey and wax, which is necessary for cooking, items like bow strings, and happiness items like candles and wax tablets
Cabbage farmer: because your colonists need some greens in their diets
Chicken farmer: because your colonists also need meat in their diets, and your arrows need feathers
A primitive printing press: for when you're tired of writing by hand
The style of the new objects is a bit different than what you're used to, but we like how it looks and it'll cost less performance than new detailed textures for every job block. We're considering to replace some existing job blocks, like the bronze anvil and the grindstone, with physical objects like the ones above as well. How do you feel about this?
[Everything in this blog regards progress on 0.7.0, which has not been released yet]
After Christmas, Zun's birthday and New Year's Day, we've started to settle into a more regular rhythm again. We've redesigned the happiness menu. The intended outcome is a gradual increase of used happiness items. But quite a lot of happiness items are food items, and it doesn't make sense to feed your colonists 10,000+ calories per day. Obviously, being able to eat 3000 calories makes colonists happier than 2000 calories, and 2000 is better than 1000. But there's a threshold where extra calories don't make people happier.
We've been struggling with how to turn this into a sensible mechanic. At first, food had "weights". Each food item had a slider, and there was one supreme slider to rule them all, which determined how many calories colonists ate a day. The sliders per item only mattered relatively. This has been removed and replaced. You can now choose how much exactly of each item you'll feed your colonist, and there's a "display only" slider that shows how much calories your colonists receive in total.
To be able to properly test the happiness mechanics, we've added quite a lot of new content. A multitude of happiness items, each with complex and unique production chains. I've been hard at work rendering icons for the new items, and I've replaced some older ones.
Fullscreen - One of the winners of the Equilinox Contest, made by ChrisDash2004
It's the last Friday Blog of the year! Today, we'll be looking back at all of the progress and broken promises of 2018. But first, we want to start by thanking all of you! It's been over one and a half year since we released Colony Survival in Early Access, and we're getting used to being fulltime gamedevs. We're very grateful to all of you who've made this possible! Purchasing the game, telling your friends about it, giving feedback, writing Steam Reviews, translating, developing mods: all of these things were tremendously important to us. Thanks a lot!
Here's the first Friday Blog of 2018, where we detailed our plans for the year. We'll be going over the blog section by section.
This worked out 100%. A couple of weeks later, a small update added stairs to the game.
This held true as well. We did add builders & diggers, and we did skip blueprint builders.
Most of the things described above are in the current dev branch, but they're not publicly available yet. We would have loved to finish the update earlier, but sadly, did not succeed.
This is where things truly start to diverge. The multiple-colonies-feature are all fully present in the dev branch, but we ultimately decided against the burghers idea. We ran into a chicken-and-egg problem. The burghers were needed to colonize exotic regions, and you needed items from exotic regions to be able to recruit and sustain burghers. We believe the happiness feature to be more sensible and think it will deliver a more interesting challenge.
We haven't started working on these features yet, but we're still planning to add them. But instead of creating some kind of "medieval uranium", we're now planning to bring the time period of the end-game to the Victorian/industrial era. This allows us to add new, modern resources like rubber and oil, making exotic regions more useful and extending gameplay.
This is working pretty well! Here's a real map of a random terrain in the dev branch:
Currently, the world is "mirrored". You go from a cold north to a tropic center, but if you keep traveling south, you'll return to colder regions. We were planning to keep it in 0.7.0, but later decided against it. In 0.7.0, the north will be cold and the south will be hot.
Animal husbandry got cancelled/postponed, and is replaced by happiness/VAT/XP/modern machines. Running a colony together is possible in the dev branch, trade is not finished but still planned, griefer protection hasn't changed sadly.
Refactoring
Before June 2017, we had hoped that Colony Survival would be successful, but we couldn't know for sure it would happen. We prepared for a worst-case scenario. Minimal sales, finish the game as soon as possible, and transition out of Early Access within a year.
But we were lucky. Colony Survival became pretty popular. And the popularity has lasted: after more than 18 months, we've still got a decent amount of active players and steady sales. Over time, our ambitions have grown. We're planning to focus on developing new free content for Colony Survival in the next couple of years.
During the first year, we were thinking about the short term. We released a lot of small updates as soon as possible. But during the past sixth months, we've been overhauling the fundamentals of the game to make them future proof. It's difficult, it's complex and it's slow. But it's not because we've lost our commitment. To the contrary, it has grown a lot!
Thanks
We started this blog by thanking all of you, in general. Those who purchased the game, those who spread the word, those who shared feedback. We cannot possibly name all of you in this blog, and we're sorry to those we fail to mention! But here are a couple of people who have helped us tremendously:
Vobbert. When we've got to take important decisions, or need a sounding board to break a stalemate between Zun and me, we ask Vobbert, and he's always there to provide us with wise advice. He also wields the banhammer on Discord.
Pandaros. Modder supreme, probably the biggest influence on our code except for Zun, and creator of the Settlers Mod
Boneidle, one of our most dedicated builders, and who has also recently started modding
Yogscast, for making dozens and dozens of episodes about Colony Survival. They gave us plenty of good advice in their videos, and we hope to see them play Colony Survival again after some big updates!
All those people who've provided us with feedback, support and entertainment. Thanks Aljetab, Bilzander, SirDragonov, Lordis3D, Mtdeed, Pantoufleee, Semegod, Turner, Tonyy, Zeta-Prime and all the others!
We hope all of you, both named and unnamed, have enjoyed Christmas, and we wish you all a very happy new year!
I spent hours on a long and detailed Friday Blog. Half of it was about the game, and half of it was about major disruptions to large platforms. Then I accidentally deleted it like a total noob. I don't have the time to do it all over again, but it was about these subjects:
YouTube Rewind 2018 being the most disliked video ever, beating the dislikes that Justin Bieber collected over 8 years
Patreon banning people, seemingly for political reasons, and some of the most successful Patreon users (Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson) leaving the platform and vowing to create a new one
Tumblr banning adult content
Steam (70/30 split) receiving competition from Epic Games (88/12 split) and Discord (90/10 split).
Please post your insights about these subjects in the comments, so we can have a community generated blog (:
Regarding development progress, setting up multiplayer is a lot easier now. There's a new button in the main menu: "Host co-op". It's not just a shortcut to the server, it's an entirely new full menu with a separate loading screen for co-op savegames.
We've also added a bunch of test content to the game to finetune the happiness system. New jobs, new recipes, new items. Everything lacks decent art, it's very primitive, but it does allow us to get a feel for how happiness will work in practice.
Zun also spent a couple of hours automating Gephi to create a graph that shows the interdependence of all jobs and items:
Items linked to the workbench
Sorry for the short blog, the deletion was a total failure. Spent three hours on it.
Apply to be a tester and participate in the Equilinox Contest here.
This was 2018's last "normal" Friday Blog. We hope to have finished a decent amount of art for the new content by Christmas, allowing us to select the first testers. The third day of Christmas, December 27, is Zun's birthday :D And I'm planning a Colony Survival Rewind 2018 for next Friday. Hope to see you then, without accidental deletions!
Today marks the start of the Perpetual Testing Initiative! In the past, testing has been sporadic, limited and temporary. 0.7.0 is the biggest update in the history of Colony Survival, and it changes a lot. Dozens of technical systems have been refactored, and the update isn't finished yet. We'll need very thorough testing, and once we've set up a group of testers, why end that when 0.7.0 is released? If the testers are willing, they can test 0.7.1 and later updates as well. That's why we call it the Perpetual Testing Initiative, and not "0.7.0 Alpha" :)
We've made a form that you can use to apply to become a tester. Here are the qualifications we're looking for:
Has time to test the game pretty frequently and to summarize his or her experiences
Has "general gaming experience", can say some intelligent things about gaming in general
Some technical experience
Our group of testers should include a diverse range of hardware and software, for example laptops and gaming PCs, Windows & Linux, etc.
The form consists out of four pages. Page 1 is general terms of service things. Page 2 requests some personal info, like age, location and type of hardware used. The third page will probably take the most time to answer. It asks you to describe some good and some bad games, and what you like and dislike about them. The final page gives you some room to describe yourself and share info of your own choosing.
We're going to be watching the results, and we'll probably select the first batch of testers somewhere around Christmas. Don't despair if you have not been chosen! We need to know how people respond to 0.7.0 without any experience with the update, so we'll regularly need new testers to see how they react when they encounter the new features for the first time.
Testing is going to happen on Discord. "Tester" will be a new role with access to exclusive channels. That's why joining the Discord is a prerequisite to becoming a tester. You'll need to enter your Discord username in the form, and it's very important that you do this correctly. It's our only way to contact you. Discord automatically generates a four digit identification code that makes sure we contact the right person. On the desktop software, it's always visible in the bottom left. In the app, you'll need to press the three horizontal bars in the top left to open the menu where the code is visible in the bottom left as well. Please enter your full Discord name and the four digit code!
If you've read everything above, and you're willing to dive into a half finished, buggy alpha, here's the link to the Application Form! :)
Equilinox Contest
A couple of weeks ago, Equilinox was released on Steam. It's a beautiful indie game made by a very communicative developer, which is scoring an overwhelmingly positive review score (we're jealous!). The game has been in development since 2015 and he's been documenting the entire process in weekly devlog videos on his YouTube Channel.
Equilinox features hundreds of different plants and animals. They've all got their own unique preferences. It starts out simple, with some sheep and grass. To unlock new species, you need to accomplish a diverse range of tasks. Use selective breeding to evolve larger species or new colors. Provide nuts to your squirrels, let fox hunt chickens or harvest honey. Eventually, you'll be running large and complex ecosystems!
We're organizing a contest that allows you to win 1 of 10 free copies of Equilinox. Equilinox is all about providing your plants and animals with a suitable habitat. Up to this point, that has been pretty unimportant in Colony Survival. Working all day and spending their nights in a dark cave with 1000 beds crammed together is not a problem for your colonists. That won't hold true in the Equilinox Contest! To win the game, you'll actually have to display some tender loving care for your colonists. Design a world you'd actually like to live in, make a beautiful screenshot, and post it in the #submissions-only Discord channel. The ten best screenshots win a free Steam Key for Equilinox!
You need to get the "verified" role in Discord before you can submit images. Post a simple message in #introductions or #general and as long as it's not in the middle of the European night, you'll be verified pretty quickly.
Rules:
You're allowed to post only one submission. You're allowed to remove it and upload a new one when the old one is gone.
Submissions have to be uploaded before Christmas Morning, December 25, 10AM Central European Time.
You're allowed to use mods
You're not allowed to use the 0.7.0 development branch
You're allowed to use Photoshop or similar software to edit the image
An "opposite" contest is also going to be organized. ThinMatrix, the Equilinox developer, is organizing a contest to win Colony Survival keys! He'll upload a new devlog with the required information this Saturday on his Youtube Channel.
Colony Survival Progress
Last but not least, we've continued work on 0.7.0. One important new feature is "local servers". We got quite a lot of complaints about the server tool, because it required people to dig in their program files and launch external software. We've now developed a server that can be launched from the main menu! The biggest drawback is that it'll end when people quit the game, but that's not a problem if you just want to play co-op with a friend for a couple of hours.
Work on the happiness feature has continued as well. We're redesigning the entire early game to accommodate the new features. Some new jobs and items that have a high chance of being added in 0.7.0:
Beekeepers (honey/wax can be used as a cooking ingredient and for wood polish, bow strings, wax tablets and candles)
Olive trees and olive oil
Water gatherers
Fishermen
Cabbages
Chicken coops
Books
Jewelry
So, lots of things to do in this Friday Blog. Apply to the Perpetual Testing Initiative, check out Equilinox and participate in the contest, and let us know what you think about the proposed new content!