First of all, I want to thank both our existing a new players who discovered us with version 3.5. It was our biggest version in the V3 series so far and we received very valuable feedback that helped us a lot. Thank you!
After getting 3.5 out and doing a week of hotfixes, we went back to version planning. The main gameplay theme for 3.6 was already decided months ago, and it's going to be station events. The current invader events are just a taste of what we want to do with this system. We want to expand the variety of these events, and not all of them will involve combat. This is a good moment for it too, with the base station systems in good working order and with a lot more content after 3.5
We also triage small features from our huge internal backlog, prioritize them and devote some weeks to them before we start with the big new gameplay implementation. Here's what we've been doing.
Individual colors for all specs
This was suggested by a player in the forums. Indeed, why have your most specialized officers share an uniform color with your graduates?
Actual gameplay for opening new star systems
The last "cheat button" is gone in 3.6. We've finally implemented the regular gameplay system to open up new systems. We wanted it to have something to do with planets, so now you'll find a new special building in one of the towns in the inhabited planets in any start system:
As the description implies, this building contains the knowledge on new star routes. But you will have to pay for it (in case the planet civilization is friendly to you) or get it by force by destroying the building. Doing so will tank your reputation with that civilization, fast. Which may not be a problem when the civilization is hostile to begin with. But watch out for neutral civilizations!
Small features
Proper naming: A lot of planet objects, and all visitors, had placeholder or boring names. There's now name generators for all civilizations and all planet objects have proper names.
Hiring cost credits: Getting officers for free was more of a development cheat. Now officers will cost credits to hire, and the more officers you have, the more expensive it will be.
Drunks: There's now a random debuff for entities that drink too much. They may have some problems walking in a straight line...
Civs start hidden: In 3.6 only Spatials and Humans will appear in the Civs screen. You will unlock new civs as you unlock their systems.
Early visitor exit: A missing but very important mechanic for station efficiency. In 3.5, when a visitor is done of their tasks and completely satisfied, will linger without doing anything until their timer runs out. This is now fixed in 3.6. They will just walk back to their shuttle after they are done. And if all the shuttle visitors come back early, the shuttle will leave and thus make the dock available again.
Wallet scaling: Visitor wallet initial balances are now proportional to your reputation with their civ. The more reputation, the wealthier their visitors.
Performance woes
We've know for awhile that game performance wasn't great with a middle sized station. Frame time starts getting too big, and GC pauses start going for too long. In 3.5 this has become more visible than ever since the more polished station gameplay has kept players playing for longer and noticing this problem.
This is rooted in the choice of scripting VM made very early in the development of the game. Initially meant to be a way to make mods, it now powers most of the gameplay, with many thousands of lines of code, running for millions of cycles on every frame. It's not a performance oriented VM and it struggles when things get complex enough (which is not much, because we want people to build huge stations).
There's some optimizations left to do, and some of them have already been done. But the game needs a tenfold solution, not a 10% incremental improvement. This means I need to migrate to a new VM.
Finding a new VM that can interpret the specific dialect of Scheme I am using is impossible. So I either need to rewrite the entire core of the game in another language, or modify an existing VM to be able to run my Scheme code.
The only VM that can realistically make the extremely dynamic nature of the Galactology Scheme source go fast is LuaJIT. And, fortunately, there's already some Lisp-like eval libraries available for Lua, along with amazing bindings builders for C++ to connect the VM with the kernel of the game.
This means a partial rewrite of the game is looming on the horizon. And I'm tempted to tackle it sooner than later, because every new feature I write, is just adding more technical debt. It is a very complex task and I will have to rewrite thousands of lines, but it's not a total rewrite. In any case, as a very optimistic estimation, this will take at least a month.
While this is going not many new gameplay features will be able to be written. The fact the new scripting system will still be able to interpret some Scheme-like source (in addition to Lua!) means I can still do some new feature work as a break from the porting tasks, and still keep that work for 3.6 in case the porting takes too long for 3.6.
I've not decided yet when to proceed. On one hand this porting needs to be done, for sure. On another hand, it's feature updates like 3.5 which sell our game for real, with little sales volume between versions or discounts. Delaying 3.6 for at least a month goes directly into our bottom line.
If the next development update takes longer than usual, you now know why :)
First of all, I want to thank both our existing a new players who discovered us with version 3.5. It was our biggest version in the V3 series so far and we received very valuable feedback that helped us a lot. Thank you!
After getting 3.5 out and doing a week of hotfixes, we went back to version planning. The main gameplay theme for 3.6 was already decided months ago, and it's going to be station events. The current invader events are just a taste of what we want to do with this system. We want to expand the variety of these events, and not all of them will involve combat. This is a good moment for it too, with the base station systems in good working order and with a lot more content after 3.5
We also triage small features from our huge internal backlog, prioritize them and devote some weeks to them before we start with the big new gameplay implementation. Here's what we've been doing.
Individual colors for all specs
This was suggested by a player in the forums. Indeed, why have your most specialized officers share an uniform color with your graduates?
Actual gameplay for opening new star systems
The last "cheat button" is gone in 3.6. We've finally implemented the regular gameplay system to open up new systems. We wanted it to have something to do with planets, so now you'll find a new special building in one of the towns in the inhabited planets in any start system:
As the description implies, this building contains the knowledge on new star routes. But you will have to pay for it (in case the planet civilization is friendly to you) or get it by force by destroying the building. Doing so will tank your reputation with that civilization, fast. Which may not be a problem when the civilization is hostile to begin with. But watch out for neutral civilizations!
Small features
Proper naming: A lot of planet objects, and all visitors, had placeholder or boring names. There's now name generators for all civilizations and all planet objects have proper names.
Hiring cost credits: Getting officers for free was more of a development cheat. Now officers will cost credits to hire, and the more officers you have, the more expensive it will be.
Drunks: There's now a random debuff for entities that drink too much. They may have some problems walking in a straight line...
Civs start hidden: In 3.6 only Spatials and Humans will appear in the Civs screen. You will unlock new civs as you unlock their systems.
Early visitor exit: A missing but very important mechanic for station efficiency. In 3.5, when a visitor is done of their tasks and completely satisfied, will linger without doing anything until their timer runs out. This is now fixed in 3.6. They will just walk back to their shuttle after they are done. And if all the shuttle visitors come back early, the shuttle will leave and thus make the dock available again.
Wallet scaling: Visitor wallet initial balances are now proportional to your reputation with their civ. The more reputation, the wealthier their visitors.
Performance woes
We've know for awhile that game performance wasn't great with a middle sized station. Frame time starts getting too big, and GC pauses start going for too long. In 3.5 this has become more visible than ever since the more polished station gameplay has kept players playing for longer and noticing this problem.
This is rooted in the choice of scripting VM made very early in the development of the game. Initially meant to be a way to make mods, it now powers most of the gameplay, with many thousands of lines of code, running for millions of cycles on every frame. It's not a performance oriented VM and it struggles when things get complex enough (which is not much, because we want people to build huge stations).
There's some optimizations left to do, and some of them have already been done. But the game needs a tenfold solution, not a 10% incremental improvement. This means I need to migrate to a new VM.
Finding a new VM that can interpret the specific dialect of Scheme I am using is impossible. So I either need to rewrite the entire core of the game in another language, or modify an existing VM to be able to run my Scheme code.
The only VM that can realistically make the extremely dynamic nature of the Galactology Scheme source go fast is LuaJIT. And, fortunately, there's already some Lisp-like eval libraries available for Lua, along with amazing bindings builders for C++ to connect the VM with the kernel of the game.
This means a partial rewrite of the game is looming on the horizon. And I'm tempted to tackle it sooner than later, because every new feature I write, is just adding more technical debt. It is a very complex task and I will have to rewrite thousands of lines, but it's not a total rewrite. In any case, as a very optimistic estimation, this will take at least a month.
While this is going not many new gameplay features will be able to be written. The fact the new scripting system will still be able to interpret some Scheme-like source (in addition to Lua!) means I can still do some new feature work as a break from the porting tasks, and still keep that work for 3.6 in case the porting takes too long for 3.6.
I've not decided yet when to proceed. On one hand this porting needs to be done, for sure. On another hand, it's feature updates like 3.5 which sell our game for real, with little sales volume between versions or discounts. Delaying 3.6 for at least a month goes directly into our bottom line.
If the next development update takes longer than usual, you now know why :)
A new major version of The Spatials: Galactology is now available!
The goal of version 3.5 was to flesh out many "placeholder" objects, items and game systems. It introduces 3 all-new research tech blocks, with proper progression, and dozens of new objects and products. All-new game systems like medical checklists and hotels have been added to the game to make the new content more interesting. There's now a lot more variety of options for satisfying vital needs and for building the perfect tourist trap.
The main highlights for this build are:
New, simplified combat controls
The Hospitality tech block with the new hotel system
A new Health and Hygiene tech block
New diseases with a new system for medical care
A new Commercial tech block with new commercial products with new shop objects
Fun has been divided into new vitals: fun, gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing
The new Recreation tech block has many new objects and products to serve the new fun vitals
Visitor archetypes, opinions and expectations
V3.5 is not save game compatible with v3.4 save files. But your saves are still there! If you want to keep playing them you can opt out of v3.5 by right clicking Galactology in your Steam library listing, select Properties, select Betas, then select the v3_4 branch. This will force your game installation to be v3.4 forever. When you are done make sure to go back to the default branch to keep getting updates and new features.
Simplified and enhanced manual combat controls
After finally enabling some light combat on low level planets, the flaws of the manual combat system were made evident. It was too complex, with bad UI.
It has now been removed from the game. There's no more "manual" combat mode for officers. Instead it's now possible to manually select a target for your squad or for individual officers, with the new Set Target action:
This is aided by the new target visualization, which displays the current combat target of any entity, officer or enemy:
This new system is still being tweaked, but for now it enables a much more usable walk+set target interaction, leaving the details of when and how to fire to the officer AI. And setting targets is still optional, the AI will automatically pick them up if none is set (or the set one dies).
Better squad visualization
The current squad selection will now be displayed for all officers in the squad:
The primary selection is still a rectangle, but now, when pressing Tab or manually selecting officers in the squad bar with click+shift, they will get a 4-corner reticle around them to indicate they are also part of the selection.
Additionally it has also been made much more clear that squad members are in exclusive combat mode:
Now, while in combat mode, the HP bar is always displayed, and it also gains a small combat icon.
System and research review: hospitality
A remake of the hospitality tree:
It adds new objects that will serve a new game system: hotels. The current beds will all be restricted to officers. Then new beds will be introduced: motel and hotel beds. These beds will only be usable by tourists, and they will first need to make a booking and pay for it in the check-in tables.
Players will need to make sure there are enough beds for your visitors. There's nothing worse for their opinion than overbooking!
Hotel system
A new system has been introduced in the game: hotels.
Beds are now segregated between officers and visitors. Visitors will need to purchase a booking at a reception table before they can make use of a visitor bed (which will be a motel or hotel bed, with different pricing).
The system involves the visitor entity transitioning into different states. First a visitor arrives, sleepy and wanting to book a room:
He needs to find a staffed reception desk. The old, too-specific bartender job is now the hospitality job and it covers all desk tending jobs in the station.
In the reception desk the visitor is able to purchase a booking:
And then he's able use hotel or motel rooms:
The hotel system may receive some more mechanics in the future, like better room furnishings for higher categories and prices, but for now its initial implementation is ready for testing.
New health and hygiene block
A new, fleshed out progression and mechanics for health and hygiene are now ready.
This new work introduces new game systems: the hospital/medical care system, and the diseases system. We all know and love the Gastrodisaster, but more diseases are needed to make the system interesting, with varied effects, plus a more fleshed out medical care system. The current bed care by doctors will be just one of the possible treatments. More objects and products are being introduced so treating diseases and injuries can become a multi-step process, from initial diagnose to surgery to resting.
Add new diseases
The new medical system in v3.5 finally abandons any relationship with the health vital. Health is cured by officers equipped with healing items, and it's now considered more of a combat vital.
The new medical system is instead based on curing diseases and injuries. Gastrodisaster remains in the game, and seven new diseases are being introduced:
Slowpox Entities affected by slowpox walk a lot slower than normal.
Narcolepsy Narcoleptic entities fall asleep from time to time, interrupting their work.
Dizzylapse Dizzylapsed entities feel sudden dizziness from time to time, interrupting their work.
Argyria Even in the 55th century people keep ingesting things that they shouldn't.
Gigantism A huge hassle.
World enlargement It all depends on your frame of reference.
Mutosis A terrible disease, it will require your best equipment and research to cure.
Treatment checklist
When an entity is afflicted by a disease, it gains a checklist of all the objects it needs to use to be cured:
There's a variety of new medical objects. One was already in game (the hospital bed), and a new one has been introduced, the doctor desk. Entities will need to visit a doctor desk as the first step of their treatment, but it must be staffed by one of your officers to be usable.
Visualize entity anchors while constructing objects
The object build tool has gained a new trick, it will now show the required positions for interacting with the object:
I hope this will reduce some confusion when building certain objects.
Commercial goods
The commercial system is exclusive to visitors and 3.5 will enhance it with more product varieties and qualities.
This is now a big and varied tech block. For now the corresponding entity system remains very similar (a random shopping list of 5 unlocked items) but it may require some further refinement in the future to make it more interesting, like per-civ affinities.
Recreation
The recreation system has grown out of the old fun vital and associated systems. in 3.5, instead of a single fun vital, four more have been added: gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing.
This will give more variety to both the visitors and to the needs of your officers, which will become more extensive as they become more experienced, like in V2.
A dozen new objects have been added to this tech block alone, and they include new interaction modes, like objects with multiple user.
Visitor archetypes, opinions and expectations
Visitors to your station are now asigned a subset of vitals and systems, which match the technologies you have unlocked. The more technologies you unlock, the more varied your visitor demands will be.
This change also introduces the expectations and opinion system. The higher a visitor civ reputation with you is, the higher their expectations will be. This in turn will influence their opinion on the services and products they are using, making a good or bad opinion have a bigger or lower impact in your reputation.
RIP Cheat-O-Matic
Our favorite development aid, AKA cheat, has been eliminated. The cheat-o-matic is no more! All the placeholder item recipes it supported have been re-done and assigned to new and existing factories. Although the recipe ingredients themselves are not final (a raw resource review will be done as part of the final game balance), the quantities, duration, difficulty and unlock order are looking good.
Technical development notes
- remove planet storage limit
- display current target for selected entity, like it is done for walk target
add actual target icon
- remove per-squad-member aggressor action in the bar
- add "set forced target" action
- fix: manual target is lost even while alive
- fix: manual target for healing is a bad idea, the AI is much better, ignore it
- add right click action for setting target too
- restore walk button on toolbar
- remove auto/manual control from aggressor panel
- change the border in the squad buttons to line or corners, to reflect its selection status
- idea: while 2 or more squad members are selected do not display normal right panel
- put active item icon and cooldown display on top of squad selector button
display only while in cooldown
- when in combat mode
officers in squad always display hp bar
display small swords icon next to hp bar
- to any fear-capable entity, add the ability to stop walking when an enemy is sighted
with prio between combat mode busy and aggressor SM busy
just a one-time stop action, not a busy state
this makes the AI less suicidal, and healers don't go so much into a melee
- add some scrolling icons when interrupted due to enemies or when starting combat
- when setting a target, if the entity is not compatible (healer -> enemy), do a nearby walk
with the previous system it will stop because of enemy sighting, but still accompany their fighter friends
- fix: don't waste teleporter cooldown when the target is nonwalkable
- fix: restore melee-simple
- fix: if a factory breaks while an item stack is busy with it, the stack remains busy
patch the existing missing busy catcher to also use the item busy ID
if it's the job sm ID, and the subj busy ID is NOT job SM ID, then remove busy
make the job sm set the proper IDs on busy stacks
- fix: repair can pick an unwalkable position for work area
- replace use of dots as checkmarks with a proper checkmark
in the job matrix
in the filter for storage area
- dont display item categories in storage area filter
- factory recipe selector should be a picker list
in manual order: combo list
in filter for global production: checklist
in ship recipe selector
- introduce high prio busy walk for manual walk orders
higher than flee
- display item list for officers in crew picker for ships
- add new resources
- add new objects images
- fix: stale corpses being eternally carried by officers
use busy aspect checking for the parent
- hospitality tech tree
buildings
research tiers
decors
- change "bartender" to "hospitality"
- put all room unlocks in facilities tree, for now
- fix: production tutorial is broken
- fix: asteroids still are being hardcoded to one gray shade for home
- make sure enemies are using the earlier aggressor target semantics
now they are pursuing targets to the other end of the map
- cancel forced targets on walk and teleports
- add object use purchasing
hygiene: use soap price, already there
fun: use item price
and a fixed price for dance floor
- add fixed object vital factors
fun: dancefloor is hardcoded, for now
sleep: vital-sleep-step for object model, set in component in finalize-bed, sm takes it
- normalize job xp based on duration
30s is 1 xp, with a min of 1xp
- custom mechanic: hotel
entities have can have sleep vital, and refuse to use some beds but not others
entities can get the need to make a booking at an hotel reception
an hotel reception sells bookings, needs to be staffed first, like the bar
after buying a booking, the entity is entitled to use beds of the right category
- fix: xp scaling is wrong, too high
- fix: anchor jobs for tending desks should wait for ReadyComponent on parent
- refactor "bartender" job logic and anchor entity to be used by other systems
test with pre-v3.5 hospital bed logic first
support
continuous standing (bar, reception)
spot standing (doctor jobs)
custom job data (duration, resources, comp, etc)
custom posing
custom parent aspects for job validation
generic presence component
- object building should also display needed empty tiles around an object, and complain when they are not
default tile by peeking into the object settings
anchor: prop for other objecs
fix: restore immediate floodfill area draw
- full disease system
different disease have different effects on entities
vomiting
interruption: forced sleep
interruption: dizzy
gigantism
shrinkage
color change
mutant reskin
slowpox
each disease has a checklist of treatments to be performed, in order
generic vital fullfill system that can delegate to right SM and their data, based on the disease checklist
generic registry for medical objects
once the checklist is at the end, the entity is cured
- fix: correct selection reticle for scaled entities
- inspector for disease checklist
- introduce doctor desk (placeholder gfx)
desk job for officers
must have officer present
- re-introduce hospital bed for resting and treatment
using the new tender system
tender consumes pills
- fix doctor desk anchors
- fix hospital bed anchors
- add tender job bias support
- introduce xray
pose patient as idle
once a patient is on one side, a standing job opens for officers
- introduce analyzer
same as xray
- introduce surgery pod
same as patient bed, but requires organs for doctor job
- introduce regenerator pod
same as a shower, but requires bionanites stock
- add tint layer for cryopod
- temp recipes and factory for new medical and hygiene products
- helper to decide if a disease can be applied given the tech level
- patch and enable random officer disease system to consider tech level
- hygiene area of new health tech tree
properly model objects
- restore research tiers for medical and hygiene objects
- commercial tech tree
gfx
object models
add products to shops
product recipes
add recipes to factories
research tiers
- add missing soap tier
- use new checklist style for shopping list
- entertaiment tech tree
gfx
divide fun into more vitals
fun, gambling, inebriation, knowledge, dancing
object models
add products to shops
refine systems and makers for each object
tavernbar: transition to inebriation
tavern table: for inebriation
barbar: transition to inebriation
disco table: for inebriation
holo1: for knowledge
holo2: for knowledge
library table: for knowledge
comics
book-shelf
dancefloor: for dancing
jukebox: dance in front, for dancing
gogobot: dance in 4 sides, independent, all must trigger action pose, for dancing
pinball: for fun
arcade: for fun
excessivemachine: for fun
photobooth: verify angles, for fun
changemachine: shop for casino coins
slotmachine: for gambling
blackjack: needs croupier, for gambling
- entertaiment tech tree
roulette: 3 sides like gogobot, plus croupier, for gambling
billiard: 2 anchors for vitals, independent, both must trigger action pose, for fun
product recipes
product factors and prices
add recipes to factories
research tiers
- add some randomness to vital obj selection
- add prices for medical object use
- show full object info in description panel
- increase social vital gains
- visitor archetype model
pick a few vitals or systems
name plus short description
research dependencies
min civ rep
archetypes
Researcher
Shopper
Sick
Bored
Wasted
Tired
Gourmet
Party animal
Gambler
- update visitor maker to use archetypes
check research dependencies and civ reputation
diseases must be curable by unlocked tech
goods must be purchasable by unlocked tech
disable some harsh negative consequences for low vitals in visitors
- display visitor archetype in vitals inspector
- opinion vital and system
update based on avgs of visitor archetype vitals and systems
expectation mechanic
the more civ rep, the more expectations
ui on archetype block
High expectations (35% meet)
Reputation hit on departing: -15
hook rep deltas when visitor leaves
- move chemical factory as soap factory to health tech
- use placeholder metal press for fuel cells
- bring back vital progression tied to officer promotion
- fix: update officer power stats on spec promotion
- fix: diseases not being applied
- fix: visitor archetypes with no extra vitals not being handled correctly
- fix: wrong var in consumerist SM
- enable PoseAnglesCache
- fix: unlock item pallet at right moment
- slow down doctor xp progression
- increase tourist ship frequency, amount of tourists
- add missing decorations in hospitality: wardrove, wardrove02, wardrove03
- fix: tending job for hotel desk was not created
- fix: rotation errors
comic library
book libary
motel desk
hotel desk
- fix: add some missing strings
- fix: billiard is not working
missing maker call
check for non-stock objects when applying vital delta for product in vital SM
- ease up min vital thresholds for visitors
- different vital thresholds for visitors and officers for all vitals
- fix: non ascii renamed officers are not serialized properly
- fix: tavern bars had wrong hints
- make inventory window not display locked products, unless some stock already exists (or are unlocked)
- inventory min stock UI should be more visible
- station: prices for each object in finalized trees
- set initial cash to 150K
- fix: set mead as default stock for tavern
- add homelydivisor to dinner tier
- add classydivisor to bistro tier
- increase req xp for doctors and tenders
- fix: add proper owner hint for job transport sm items
- leak: while on pause the mover system creates useless move objects
disable pause mode for mover system
Update 3.5.1
This is a bug fix release:
- meds dispenser is making it impossible for bed doctor jobs to complete
- Esc should properly remove the selection
- repair parts and fuel cells should not be demanded by visitors
- wrong display for shopping list
- allow civs to visit starting at neutral rep
- gambling does not work
- shopping should be faster
- shoppers are purchasing items not in their shopping list
- slowpox is too slow
Update 3.5.2
This is a bug fix release:
- min rep for visitor archetypes must be 40%, otherwise stuck visitors can be created
- internal shopping vital is counting backwards
- chemical workshop -> soap maker
- remove extra randomization when picking vital objects
- photo frames are not a shopping item
- some fun-giving objects need to be marked as shops to stop being used as source pallets
- 3 of gogobot sides were free to use
- ignore ready status when checking if a planet object already exists
- warp existing stocks out of tile when changing the preferred pallet/shop resource
Update 3.5.3
This is a bug fix release:
- hangup on new game with russian translation
- don't stock bionanties in meds dispenser
- missing setup code for slot machines, nuclear kitchen and saunas
A new major version of The Spatials: Galactology is now available!
The goal of version 3.5 was to flesh out many "placeholder" objects, items and game systems. It introduces 3 all-new research tech blocks, with proper progression, and dozens of new objects and products. All-new game systems like medical checklists and hotels have been added to the game to make the new content more interesting. There's now a lot more variety of options for satisfying vital needs and for building the perfect tourist trap.
The main highlights for this build are:
New, simplified combat controls
The Hospitality tech block with the new hotel system
A new Health and Hygiene tech block
New diseases with a new system for medical care
A new Commercial tech block with new commercial products with new shop objects
Fun has been divided into new vitals: fun, gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing
The new Recreation tech block has many new objects and products to serve the new fun vitals
Visitor archetypes, opinions and expectations
V3.5 is not save game compatible with v3.4 save files. But your saves are still there! If you want to keep playing them you can opt out of v3.5 by right clicking Galactology in your Steam library listing, select Properties, select Betas, then select the v3_4 branch. This will force your game installation to be v3.4 forever. When you are done make sure to go back to the default branch to keep getting updates and new features.
Simplified and enhanced manual combat controls
After finally enabling some light combat on low level planets, the flaws of the manual combat system were made evident. It was too complex, with bad UI.
It has now been removed from the game. There's no more "manual" combat mode for officers. Instead it's now possible to manually select a target for your squad or for individual officers, with the new Set Target action:
This is aided by the new target visualization, which displays the current combat target of any entity, officer or enemy:
This new system is still being tweaked, but for now it enables a much more usable walk+set target interaction, leaving the details of when and how to fire to the officer AI. And setting targets is still optional, the AI will automatically pick them up if none is set (or the set one dies).
Better squad visualization
The current squad selection will now be displayed for all officers in the squad:
The primary selection is still a rectangle, but now, when pressing Tab or manually selecting officers in the squad bar with click+shift, they will get a 4-corner reticle around them to indicate they are also part of the selection.
Additionally it has also been made much more clear that squad members are in exclusive combat mode:
Now, while in combat mode, the HP bar is always displayed, and it also gains a small combat icon.
System and research review: hospitality
A remake of the hospitality tree:
It adds new objects that will serve a new game system: hotels. The current beds will all be restricted to officers. Then new beds will be introduced: motel and hotel beds. These beds will only be usable by tourists, and they will first need to make a booking and pay for it in the check-in tables.
Players will need to make sure there are enough beds for your visitors. There's nothing worse for their opinion than overbooking!
Hotel system
A new system has been introduced in the game: hotels.
Beds are now segregated between officers and visitors. Visitors will need to purchase a booking at a reception table before they can make use of a visitor bed (which will be a motel or hotel bed, with different pricing).
The system involves the visitor entity transitioning into different states. First a visitor arrives, sleepy and wanting to book a room:
He needs to find a staffed reception desk. The old, too-specific bartender job is now the hospitality job and it covers all desk tending jobs in the station.
In the reception desk the visitor is able to purchase a booking:
And then he's able use hotel or motel rooms:
The hotel system may receive some more mechanics in the future, like better room furnishings for higher categories and prices, but for now its initial implementation is ready for testing.
New health and hygiene block
A new, fleshed out progression and mechanics for health and hygiene are now ready.
This new work introduces new game systems: the hospital/medical care system, and the diseases system. We all know and love the Gastrodisaster, but more diseases are needed to make the system interesting, with varied effects, plus a more fleshed out medical care system. The current bed care by doctors will be just one of the possible treatments. More objects and products are being introduced so treating diseases and injuries can become a multi-step process, from initial diagnose to surgery to resting.
Add new diseases
The new medical system in v3.5 finally abandons any relationship with the health vital. Health is cured by officers equipped with healing items, and it's now considered more of a combat vital.
The new medical system is instead based on curing diseases and injuries. Gastrodisaster remains in the game, and seven new diseases are being introduced:
Slowpox Entities affected by slowpox walk a lot slower than normal.
Narcolepsy Narcoleptic entities fall asleep from time to time, interrupting their work.
Dizzylapse Dizzylapsed entities feel sudden dizziness from time to time, interrupting their work.
Argyria Even in the 55th century people keep ingesting things that they shouldn't.
Gigantism A huge hassle.
World enlargement It all depends on your frame of reference.
Mutosis A terrible disease, it will require your best equipment and research to cure.
Treatment checklist
When an entity is afflicted by a disease, it gains a checklist of all the objects it needs to use to be cured:
There's a variety of new medical objects. One was already in game (the hospital bed), and a new one has been introduced, the doctor desk. Entities will need to visit a doctor desk as the first step of their treatment, but it must be staffed by one of your officers to be usable.
Visualize entity anchors while constructing objects
The object build tool has gained a new trick, it will now show the required positions for interacting with the object:
I hope this will reduce some confusion when building certain objects.
Commercial goods
The commercial system is exclusive to visitors and 3.5 will enhance it with more product varieties and qualities.
This is now a big and varied tech block. For now the corresponding entity system remains very similar (a random shopping list of 5 unlocked items) but it may require some further refinement in the future to make it more interesting, like per-civ affinities.
Recreation
The recreation system has grown out of the old fun vital and associated systems. in 3.5, instead of a single fun vital, four more have been added: gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing.
This will give more variety to both the visitors and to the needs of your officers, which will become more extensive as they become more experienced, like in V2.
A dozen new objects have been added to this tech block alone, and they include new interaction modes, like objects with multiple user.
Visitor archetypes, opinions and expectations
Visitors to your station are now asigned a subset of vitals and systems, which match the technologies you have unlocked. The more technologies you unlock, the more varied your visitor demands will be.
This change also introduces the expectations and opinion system. The higher a visitor civ reputation with you is, the higher their expectations will be. This in turn will influence their opinion on the services and products they are using, making a good or bad opinion have a bigger or lower impact in your reputation.
RIP Cheat-O-Matic
Our favorite development aid, AKA cheat, has been eliminated. The cheat-o-matic is no more! All the placeholder item recipes it supported have been re-done and assigned to new and existing factories. Although the recipe ingredients themselves are not final (a raw resource review will be done as part of the final game balance), the quantities, duration, difficulty and unlock order are looking good.
Technical development notes
- remove planet storage limit
- display current target for selected entity, like it is done for walk target
add actual target icon
- remove per-squad-member aggressor action in the bar
- add "set forced target" action
- fix: manual target is lost even while alive
- fix: manual target for healing is a bad idea, the AI is much better, ignore it
- add right click action for setting target too
- restore walk button on toolbar
- remove auto/manual control from aggressor panel
- change the border in the squad buttons to line or corners, to reflect its selection status
- idea: while 2 or more squad members are selected do not display normal right panel
- put active item icon and cooldown display on top of squad selector button
display only while in cooldown
- when in combat mode
officers in squad always display hp bar
display small swords icon next to hp bar
- to any fear-capable entity, add the ability to stop walking when an enemy is sighted
with prio between combat mode busy and aggressor SM busy
just a one-time stop action, not a busy state
this makes the AI less suicidal, and healers don't go so much into a melee
- add some scrolling icons when interrupted due to enemies or when starting combat
- when setting a target, if the entity is not compatible (healer -> enemy), do a nearby walk
with the previous system it will stop because of enemy sighting, but still accompany their fighter friends
- fix: don't waste teleporter cooldown when the target is nonwalkable
- fix: restore melee-simple
- fix: if a factory breaks while an item stack is busy with it, the stack remains busy
patch the existing missing busy catcher to also use the item busy ID
if it's the job sm ID, and the subj busy ID is NOT job SM ID, then remove busy
make the job sm set the proper IDs on busy stacks
- fix: repair can pick an unwalkable position for work area
- replace use of dots as checkmarks with a proper checkmark
in the job matrix
in the filter for storage area
- dont display item categories in storage area filter
- factory recipe selector should be a picker list
in manual order: combo list
in filter for global production: checklist
in ship recipe selector
- introduce high prio busy walk for manual walk orders
higher than flee
- display item list for officers in crew picker for ships
- add new resources
- add new objects images
- fix: stale corpses being eternally carried by officers
use busy aspect checking for the parent
- hospitality tech tree
buildings
research tiers
decors
- change "bartender" to "hospitality"
- put all room unlocks in facilities tree, for now
- fix: production tutorial is broken
- fix: asteroids still are being hardcoded to one gray shade for home
- make sure enemies are using the earlier aggressor target semantics
now they are pursuing targets to the other end of the map
- cancel forced targets on walk and teleports
- add object use purchasing
hygiene: use soap price, already there
fun: use item price
and a fixed price for dance floor
- add fixed object vital factors
fun: dancefloor is hardcoded, for now
sleep: vital-sleep-step for object model, set in component in finalize-bed, sm takes it
- normalize job xp based on duration
30s is 1 xp, with a min of 1xp
- custom mechanic: hotel
entities have can have sleep vital, and refuse to use some beds but not others
entities can get the need to make a booking at an hotel reception
an hotel reception sells bookings, needs to be staffed first, like the bar
after buying a booking, the entity is entitled to use beds of the right category
- fix: xp scaling is wrong, too high
- fix: anchor jobs for tending desks should wait for ReadyComponent on parent
- refactor "bartender" job logic and anchor entity to be used by other systems
test with pre-v3.5 hospital bed logic first
support
continuous standing (bar, reception)
spot standing (doctor jobs)
custom job data (duration, resources, comp, etc)
custom posing
custom parent aspects for job validation
generic presence component
- object building should also display needed empty tiles around an object, and complain when they are not
default tile by peeking into the object settings
anchor: prop for other objecs
fix: restore immediate floodfill area draw
- full disease system
different disease have different effects on entities
vomiting
interruption: forced sleep
interruption: dizzy
gigantism
shrinkage
color change
mutant reskin
slowpox
each disease has a checklist of treatments to be performed, in order
generic vital fullfill system that can delegate to right SM and their data, based on the disease checklist
generic registry for medical objects
once the checklist is at the end, the entity is cured
- fix: correct selection reticle for scaled entities
- inspector for disease checklist
- introduce doctor desk (placeholder gfx)
desk job for officers
must have officer present
- re-introduce hospital bed for resting and treatment
using the new tender system
tender consumes pills
- fix doctor desk anchors
- fix hospital bed anchors
- add tender job bias support
- introduce xray
pose patient as idle
once a patient is on one side, a standing job opens for officers
- introduce analyzer
same as xray
- introduce surgery pod
same as patient bed, but requires organs for doctor job
- introduce regenerator pod
same as a shower, but requires bionanites stock
- add tint layer for cryopod
- temp recipes and factory for new medical and hygiene products
- helper to decide if a disease can be applied given the tech level
- patch and enable random officer disease system to consider tech level
- hygiene area of new health tech tree
properly model objects
- restore research tiers for medical and hygiene objects
- commercial tech tree
gfx
object models
add products to shops
product recipes
add recipes to factories
research tiers
- add missing soap tier
- use new checklist style for shopping list
- entertaiment tech tree
gfx
divide fun into more vitals
fun, gambling, inebriation, knowledge, dancing
object models
add products to shops
refine systems and makers for each object
tavernbar: transition to inebriation
tavern table: for inebriation
barbar: transition to inebriation
disco table: for inebriation
holo1: for knowledge
holo2: for knowledge
library table: for knowledge
comics
book-shelf
dancefloor: for dancing
jukebox: dance in front, for dancing
gogobot: dance in 4 sides, independent, all must trigger action pose, for dancing
pinball: for fun
arcade: for fun
excessivemachine: for fun
photobooth: verify angles, for fun
changemachine: shop for casino coins
slotmachine: for gambling
blackjack: needs croupier, for gambling
- entertaiment tech tree
roulette: 3 sides like gogobot, plus croupier, for gambling
billiard: 2 anchors for vitals, independent, both must trigger action pose, for fun
product recipes
product factors and prices
add recipes to factories
research tiers
- add some randomness to vital obj selection
- add prices for medical object use
- show full object info in description panel
- increase social vital gains
- visitor archetype model
pick a few vitals or systems
name plus short description
research dependencies
min civ rep
archetypes
Researcher
Shopper
Sick
Bored
Wasted
Tired
Gourmet
Party animal
Gambler
- update visitor maker to use archetypes
check research dependencies and civ reputation
diseases must be curable by unlocked tech
goods must be purchasable by unlocked tech
disable some harsh negative consequences for low vitals in visitors
- display visitor archetype in vitals inspector
- opinion vital and system
update based on avgs of visitor archetype vitals and systems
expectation mechanic
the more civ rep, the more expectations
ui on archetype block
High expectations (35% meet)
Reputation hit on departing: -15
hook rep deltas when visitor leaves
- move chemical factory as soap factory to health tech
- use placeholder metal press for fuel cells
- bring back vital progression tied to officer promotion
- fix: update officer power stats on spec promotion
- fix: diseases not being applied
- fix: visitor archetypes with no extra vitals not being handled correctly
- fix: wrong var in consumerist SM
- enable PoseAnglesCache
- fix: unlock item pallet at right moment
- slow down doctor xp progression
- increase tourist ship frequency, amount of tourists
- add missing decorations in hospitality: wardrove, wardrove02, wardrove03
- fix: tending job for hotel desk was not created
- fix: rotation errors
comic library
book libary
motel desk
hotel desk
- fix: add some missing strings
- fix: billiard is not working
missing maker call
check for non-stock objects when applying vital delta for product in vital SM
- ease up min vital thresholds for visitors
- different vital thresholds for visitors and officers for all vitals
- fix: non ascii renamed officers are not serialized properly
- fix: tavern bars had wrong hints
- make inventory window not display locked products, unless some stock already exists (or are unlocked)
- inventory min stock UI should be more visible
- station: prices for each object in finalized trees
- set initial cash to 150K
- fix: set mead as default stock for tavern
- add homelydivisor to dinner tier
- add classydivisor to bistro tier
- increase req xp for doctors and tenders
- fix: add proper owner hint for job transport sm items
- leak: while on pause the mover system creates useless move objects
disable pause mode for mover system
Update 3.5.1
This is a bug fix release:
- meds dispenser is making it impossible for bed doctor jobs to complete
- Esc should properly remove the selection
- repair parts and fuel cells should not be demanded by visitors
- wrong display for shopping list
- allow civs to visit starting at neutral rep
- gambling does not work
- shopping should be faster
- shoppers are purchasing items not in their shopping list
- slowpox is too slow
Update 3.5.2
This is a bug fix release:
- min rep for visitor archetypes must be 40%, otherwise stuck visitors can be created
- internal shopping vital is counting backwards
- chemical workshop -> soap maker
- remove extra randomization when picking vital objects
- photo frames are not a shopping item
- some fun-giving objects need to be marked as shops to stop being used as source pallets
- 3 of gogobot sides were free to use
- ignore ready status when checking if a planet object already exists
- warp existing stocks out of tile when changing the preferred pallet/shop resource
Update 3.5.3
This is a bug fix release:
- hangup on new game with russian translation
- don't stock bionanties in meds dispenser
- missing setup code for slot machines, nuclear kitchen and saunas
The past weeks were devoted to the bulk of new v3.5 content. The addition of the hotel system and the revamp of the disease and medical system were done first and documented in previous updated. For the last two weeks another two blocks of new and revamped content have been added: commercial goods and recreation.
Commercial goods
The commercial system is exclusive to visitors and 3.5 will enhance it with more product varieties and qualities.
This is now a big and varied tech block. For now the corresponding entity system remains very similar (a random shopping list of 5 unlocked items) but it may require some further refinement in the future to make it more interesting, like per-civ affinities.
Recreation
The recreation system has grown out of the old fun vital and associated systems. in 3.5, instead of a single fun vital, four more have been added: gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing.
This will give more variety to both the visitors and to the needs of your officers, which will become more extensive as they become more experienced, like in V2.
A dozen new objects have been added to this tech block alone, and they include new interaction modes, like objects with multiple user.
RIP Cheat-O-Matic
Our favorite development aid, AKA cheat, has been eliminated. The cheat-o-matic is no more! All the placeholder item recipes it supported have been re-done and assigned to new and existing factories. Although the recipe ingredients themselves are not final (a raw resource review will be done as part of the final game balance), the quantities, duration, difficulty and unlock order are looking good.
The past weeks were devoted to the bulk of new v3.5 content. The addition of the hotel system and the revamp of the disease and medical system were done first and documented in previous updated. For the last two weeks another two blocks of new and revamped content have been added: commercial goods and recreation.
Commercial goods
The commercial system is exclusive to visitors and 3.5 will enhance it with more product varieties and qualities.
This is now a big and varied tech block. For now the corresponding entity system remains very similar (a random shopping list of 5 unlocked items) but it may require some further refinement in the future to make it more interesting, like per-civ affinities.
Recreation
The recreation system has grown out of the old fun vital and associated systems. in 3.5, instead of a single fun vital, four more have been added: gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing.
This will give more variety to both the visitors and to the needs of your officers, which will become more extensive as they become more experienced, like in V2.
A dozen new objects have been added to this tech block alone, and they include new interaction modes, like objects with multiple user.
RIP Cheat-O-Matic
Our favorite development aid, AKA cheat, has been eliminated. The cheat-o-matic is no more! All the placeholder item recipes it supported have been re-done and assigned to new and existing factories. Although the recipe ingredients themselves are not final (a raw resource review will be done as part of the final game balance), the quantities, duration, difficulty and unlock order are looking good.
This past week work continued on the new medical system, adding more diseases to the game, introducing the treatment checklist, and starting the systems for the new objects.
Visualize entity anchors while constructing objects
The object build tool has gained a new trick, it will now show the required positions for interacting with the object:
I hope this will reduce some confusion when building certain objects.
Add new diseases
The new medical system in v3.5 finally abandons any relationship with the health vital. Health is cured by officers equipped with healing items, and it's now considered more of a combat vital.
The new medical system is instead based on curing diseases and injuries. Gastrodisaster remains in the game, and seven new diseases are being introduced:
Slowpox Entities affected by slowpox walk a lot slower than normal.
Narcolepsy Narcoleptic entities fall asleep from time to time, interrupting their work.
Dizzylapse Dizzylapsed entities feel sudden dizziness from time to time, interrupting their work.
Argyria Even in the 55th century people keep ingesting things that they shouldn't.
Gigantism A huge hassle.
World enlargement It all depends on your frame of reference.
Mutosis A terrible disease, it will require your best equipment and research to cure.
Treatment checklist
When an entity is afflicted by a disease, it gains a checklist of all the objects it needs to use to be cured:
There's a variety of new medical objects. One was already in game (the hospital bed), and a new one has been introduced, the doctor desk. Entities will need to visit a doctor desk as the first step of their treatment, but it must be staffed by one of your officers to be usable.
Next week the remaining medical objects will be introduced to be used by the disease checklists.
This past week work continued on the new medical system, adding more diseases to the game, introducing the treatment checklist, and starting the systems for the new objects.
Visualize entity anchors while constructing objects
The object build tool has gained a new trick, it will now show the required positions for interacting with the object:
I hope this will reduce some confusion when building certain objects.
Add new diseases
The new medical system in v3.5 finally abandons any relationship with the health vital. Health is cured by officers equipped with healing items, and it's now considered more of a combat vital.
The new medical system is instead based on curing diseases and injuries. Gastrodisaster remains in the game, and seven new diseases are being introduced:
Slowpox Entities affected by slowpox walk a lot slower than normal.
Narcolepsy Narcoleptic entities fall asleep from time to time, interrupting their work.
Dizzylapse Dizzylapsed entities feel sudden dizziness from time to time, interrupting their work.
Argyria Even in the 55th century people keep ingesting things that they shouldn't.
Gigantism A huge hassle.
World enlargement It all depends on your frame of reference.
Mutosis A terrible disease, it will require your best equipment and research to cure.
Treatment checklist
When an entity is afflicted by a disease, it gains a checklist of all the objects it needs to use to be cured:
There's a variety of new medical objects. One was already in game (the hospital bed), and a new one has been introduced, the doctor desk. Entities will need to visit a doctor desk as the first step of their treatment, but it must be staffed by one of your officers to be usable.
Next week the remaining medical objects will be introduced to be used by the disease checklists.
