Surviving Mars - TheLetterZ

Hey everybody! You've probably noticed a quick download if you play on Steam! We got a new hotfix done and it is live NOW on Steam! Not a lot but here are the changes:
  • Fixed an issue where sometimes after Dust Storms, rockets won't be able to launch from Mars
  • Fixed an issue with some buildings not getting any workers
Surviving Mars - TheLetterZ

Hey everybody! You've probably noticed a quick download if you play on Steam! We got a new hotfix done and it is live NOW on Steam! Not a lot but here are the changes:
  • Fixed an issue where sometimes after Dust Storms, rockets won't be able to launch from Mars
  • Fixed an issue with some buildings not getting any workers
Surviving Mars

As you might imagine, establishing the first functioning human colony on a foreign planet is hard work. I mean, just ask Fraser who, in his 80-scoring review of the strategy management sim, praised Surviving Mars' compelling nature despite having to work hard for his success. 

Sorry Fraser, but it appears Surviving Mars' latest update adds more work still.

As outlined in this forum post, a huge number of tweaks, nips and tucks comprise the latest 'Spirit' update (I count ~100 or so)—including adjustments to mod implementation, UI and in-game mechanics. 

The full list of changes can be viewed this-a-way, however highlights include the renaming of Science Institutes to Hawking Institutes, in tribute to Stephen Hawking; a birth control policy in domes, whereby births can be set to "allowed or forbidden"; the addition of a free camera option in Photo Mode; and improvements to Rovers' pathfinding maneuverability.  

All of which should keep us busy. Like Fraser:

Between the dust, meteors and tornados, carving out a life on Mars is a lot of work. Overcoming these disasters and watching as an army of drones fix everything is an incredibly satisfying experience. If you've planned for the worst, kept your stockpiles topped up and put your drones in the right place, you’ll be treated to a mechanical ballet as diligent gatherers scoop up resources and then, in seconds, have everything under control, fixing up machines and repairing drones all over the colony. 

Even once you’ve got some automation set up, however, it still feels like disaster is nipping at your heels. It's a battle between humans and nature, and for all the fancy tech, it's dogged perseverance that builds successful colonies. It's thrilling rather than exhausting, though. Something is always going on, making sure there's no time for ruts, and most of the the crises feel surmountable with a bit of creative tinkering.

Thanks, RPS.  

Surviving Mars - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Adam Smith)

There are too many idiots on Mars but that’s about to change. Colony-building sim Surviving Mars, which pleased our Alec well enough when it launched last month, has received its first major patch. The update notes are a treat – not quite Crusader Kings, The Sims or Dwarf Fortress quality, but there’s some solid stuff in there.

“Colonists will no longer try to walk kilometers on foot to resettle resulting in them dying from lack of oxygen”. Like the headline says: fewer idiots.

(more…)

Surviving Mars - candyalien


Major Changes
Science Institute renamed to Hawking Institute in tribute to Stephen Hawking
Added Birth Control Policy in domes. You can now set births to allowed or forbidden (Ctrl + LMB sets birth control policy in all domes)
Increased max zoom out distance
Optimized the way colonists pick workplaces. Colonists should now pick the best workplace for their specialization correctly and much faster
Added "Reassign All" button to drones which reassigns all drones from this commander or orphaned drones in the area
Colonists will no longer try to walk kilometers on foot to resettle resulting in them dying from lack of oxygen
Rover Command AI tech now removes the batteries of all rovers
Added a keybinding (default: i) that hides/shows resource & anomaly icons on the map
Rovers are more likely to effectively use tunnels
Rovers pathfinding improved
Added free camera option in Photo Mode
Press Ctrl + F1 and you will open an in-game bug reporter

Mods
Published most of the game code for reference purposes
Added cheats menu to mod editor
Mod editor now loads a map with a prebuilt colony
Enabled a Lua console on the mod editing map
Localization tables from mods can now localize the main menu
Mod documentation fixes
Allowed renaming of mods
Added support for PNG files in mod cover images
Easier way of adding technologies, research points and applicants from mission sponsor and commander profile mods
UI modding: templates
Infopanel modding: all templates in groups InfopanelHeader and InfopanelContent
Added list of technologies to documentation
Added autoattaches and night lighting objects to modding documentation

Gameplay
Extended the range rovers need to be in to recharge from cables. The RC Transport looks for cables in the start and ending point of transport routes automatically
Lowered the chance for idiot flaw to appear in the colony and applicant pool
Space Rehabilitation tech removes flaws before newly arrived colonists decide in which dome to settle
Fixed an issue where shuttles could fail to pick up a colonist for resettlement
Fixed an issue where some buildings connected to a very large power network failed to get power
Reserved residence slots are released if the colonist can't reach the dome during resettlement
Salvaging a rocket without its cargo unloaded should no longer leads to stuck drones
Colonists that fail to reach a dome won't constantly try to reach it again and again
Dome Streamlining tech now affects the Geoscape Dome
Construction Nanites no longer construct sites that are turned off
Renegades and rogue drones no longer target construction sites
Superconducting Computing now provides less research points
General Training tech now has flavor text
Fuel Refinery now has the Factory AI upgrade
Colonists are now immune to Earthsick when playing with IMM sponsor
Colonists no longer reserve residential slots in faraway domes if shuttle hubs are not operational (e.g. during a dust storm)
Triboelectric Scrubber no longer scrubs buildings inside domes
Colonists can now be manually assigned to training (School, University, Sanatorium)
It is no longer possible to select the same trait multiple times in Schools
Construction of building upgrades is now serviced by more drones
Fixed a bug with calculations of modifiers and small amounts of research points
Fixed an exploit that allowed the construction of buildings via keybindings without the necessary tech
Fixes for the mystery log of the Spheres mystery
Fixed an issue which caused colonists to eat less food. Boosted production of farms slightly to compensate for the increased consumption.

UI
“Research complete” notification now shows the tech description in question on rollover
Added option to rename buildings
Shuttle Hub now shows information about shuttle load across the colony
Botanists & Geologists have new icons
Changed dome quarantine button to Immigration Policy control
Merged the "Assign Workplace", "Assign Residence" buttons for colonists into a single button "Assign to Building"
Added an indicator which traits are selected in schools and sanatoriums when selecting traits
Keybindings for rover commands now work correctly
Fungal Farm Automation upgrade now uses correct icon
Allowed rebinding of camera zoom in/out and camera tilt keybindings
Seniors are no longer considered "outside the workforce" after researching Forever Young
Drone workload information added to RC Rover
Fixed a bug where rocket fuel was not displayed in certain cases
Rocket pins no longer blink ready during dust storms
Selecting a building while the build menu is open no longer causes the building's AOE visuals to break
Hints for game speed, camera controls and orbital probes now display bound keys correctly
Added an error message when trying to overwrite a save during upload to cloud
Added confirmation prompt when closing the Filter UI
Exports notification now shows accumulated funding if multiple rockets arrive on Earth consecutively
Added salvage button to the info panel of pipes, valves and switches
Excess fuel caused by Advanced Martian Engines is now unloaded from rockets before take off
"Daily Production" changed to "Production per Sol"; "hourly production" changed to "production"
Renamed a control hint to "Queue on top" in the research UI
Added new icons for Construct Drone and Dismantle Drone button
Vacant residential slots text in domes no longer includes slots from nurseries
Officers are no longer called "security" in filter UI
Cargo rocket UI now shows the number of resources in the colony on rollover of a given resource
Depots resource icon is no longer mirrored
Colonists can no longer be manually assigned while they are in the process of resettling
Autonomous Drone Hubs and Sensor Towers no longer display an empty power consumption section in their info panel
Implemented tutorial hint for building upgrades
Updated credits

Other
Domes no longer get constantly dusted. Only domes that are turned off or not working are dusted.
Children now play around in the school (visualization only)
Fixed some issues in the trajectory of shuttles
Glass decals are removed when the dome is destroyed
Domes no longer leave grass behind when destroyed
Recharge stations no longer turn their light off when a drone visits them
More precise slider for time of day in Photo Mode
All adult colonists now have the same walking speed
Cargo shuttles return to the hub when it's being destroyed
Increased number of lights at night
Photo Mode night lights of building match in-game lights
Photo Mode particle effects fixed
Various performance optimizations
Various stability improvements
Various sound FX tweaks
CO2 geysers only erupt sporadically, as intended
Surviving Mars - candyalien


Major Changes
Science Institute renamed to Hawking Institute in tribute to Stephen Hawking
Added Birth Control Policy in domes. You can now set births to allowed or forbidden (Ctrl + LMB sets birth control policy in all domes)
Increased max zoom out distance
Optimized the way colonists pick workplaces. Colonists should now pick the best workplace for their specialization correctly and much faster
Added "Reassign All" button to drones which reassigns all drones from this commander or orphaned drones in the area
Colonists will no longer try to walk kilometers on foot to resettle resulting in them dying from lack of oxygen
Rover Command AI tech now removes the batteries of all rovers
Added a keybinding (default: i) that hides/shows resource & anomaly icons on the map
Rovers are more likely to effectively use tunnels
Rovers pathfinding improved
Added free camera option in Photo Mode
Press Ctrl + F1 and you will open an in-game bug reporter

Mods
Published most of the game code for reference purposes
Added cheats menu to mod editor
Mod editor now loads a map with a prebuilt colony
Enabled a Lua console on the mod editing map
Localization tables from mods can now localize the main menu
Mod documentation fixes
Allowed renaming of mods
Added support for PNG files in mod cover images
Easier way of adding technologies, research points and applicants from mission sponsor and commander profile mods
UI modding: templates
Infopanel modding: all templates in groups InfopanelHeader and InfopanelContent
Added list of technologies to documentation
Added autoattaches and night lighting objects to modding documentation

Gameplay
Extended the range rovers need to be in to recharge from cables. The RC Transport looks for cables in the start and ending point of transport routes automatically
Lowered the chance for idiot flaw to appear in the colony and applicant pool
Space Rehabilitation tech removes flaws before newly arrived colonists decide in which dome to settle
Fixed an issue where shuttles could fail to pick up a colonist for resettlement
Fixed an issue where some buildings connected to a very large power network failed to get power
Reserved residence slots are released if the colonist can't reach the dome during resettlement
Salvaging a rocket without its cargo unloaded should no longer leads to stuck drones
Colonists that fail to reach a dome won't constantly try to reach it again and again
Dome Streamlining tech now affects the Geoscape Dome
Construction Nanites no longer construct sites that are turned off
Renegades and rogue drones no longer target construction sites
Superconducting Computing now provides less research points
General Training tech now has flavor text
Fuel Refinery now has the Factory AI upgrade
Colonists are now immune to Earthsick when playing with IMM sponsor
Colonists no longer reserve residential slots in faraway domes if shuttle hubs are not operational (e.g. during a dust storm)
Triboelectric Scrubber no longer scrubs buildings inside domes
Colonists can now be manually assigned to training (School, University, Sanatorium)
It is no longer possible to select the same trait multiple times in Schools
Construction of building upgrades is now serviced by more drones
Fixed a bug with calculations of modifiers and small amounts of research points
Fixed an exploit that allowed the construction of buildings via keybindings without the necessary tech
Fixes for the mystery log of the Spheres mystery
Fixed an issue which caused colonists to eat less food. Boosted production of farms slightly to compensate for the increased consumption.

UI
“Research complete” notification now shows the tech description in question on rollover
Added option to rename buildings
Shuttle Hub now shows information about shuttle load across the colony
Botanists & Geologists have new icons
Changed dome quarantine button to Immigration Policy control
Merged the "Assign Workplace", "Assign Residence" buttons for colonists into a single button "Assign to Building"
Added an indicator which traits are selected in schools and sanatoriums when selecting traits
Keybindings for rover commands now work correctly
Fungal Farm Automation upgrade now uses correct icon
Allowed rebinding of camera zoom in/out and camera tilt keybindings
Seniors are no longer considered "outside the workforce" after researching Forever Young
Drone workload information added to RC Rover
Fixed a bug where rocket fuel was not displayed in certain cases
Rocket pins no longer blink ready during dust storms
Selecting a building while the build menu is open no longer causes the building's AOE visuals to break
Hints for game speed, camera controls and orbital probes now display bound keys correctly
Added an error message when trying to overwrite a save during upload to cloud
Added confirmation prompt when closing the Filter UI
Exports notification now shows accumulated funding if multiple rockets arrive on Earth consecutively
Added salvage button to the info panel of pipes, valves and switches
Excess fuel caused by Advanced Martian Engines is now unloaded from rockets before take off
"Daily Production" changed to "Production per Sol"; "hourly production" changed to "production"
Renamed a control hint to "Queue on top" in the research UI
Added new icons for Construct Drone and Dismantle Drone button
Vacant residential slots text in domes no longer includes slots from nurseries
Officers are no longer called "security" in filter UI
Cargo rocket UI now shows the number of resources in the colony on rollover of a given resource
Depots resource icon is no longer mirrored
Colonists can no longer be manually assigned while they are in the process of resettling
Autonomous Drone Hubs and Sensor Towers no longer display an empty power consumption section in their info panel
Implemented tutorial hint for building upgrades
Updated credits

Other
Domes no longer get constantly dusted. Only domes that are turned off or not working are dusted.
Children now play around in the school (visualization only)
Fixed some issues in the trajectory of shuttles
Glass decals are removed when the dome is destroyed
Domes no longer leave grass behind when destroyed
Recharge stations no longer turn their light off when a drone visits them
More precise slider for time of day in Photo Mode
All adult colonists now have the same walking speed
Cargo shuttles return to the hub when it's being destroyed
Increased number of lights at night
Photo Mode night lights of building match in-game lights
Photo Mode particle effects fixed
Various performance optimizations
Various stability improvements
Various sound FX tweaks
CO2 geysers only erupt sporadically, as intended
Surviving Mars - candyalien


If so - what was your favourite?

Surviving Mars - candyalien


If so - what was your favourite?

Surviving Mars - candyalien


The new frontier... The perils of the unknown... The great difficulties and the great hope for the next generation? No, I'm not talking about colonizing Mars. I'm talking about the greatest technical risk we took on with Surviving Mars: building the game for modding support.
Haemimont Games has shipped a cool 15 games on various platforms, but not one of them has had official modding support. And modding was something Paradox wanted from the very beginning of the project. Games that welcome the players to join in the creation are loved more, played more, and live more, they said. What's the point of partnering with a well-respected experienced publisher if you don't heed what they say?


The bad news was that over the previous several games, the data loading process of our engine had been optimized in the opposite direction, to be as monolithic and economical as possible, to allow for minimal loading times. This had to be reversed, and many types of data can now be loaded in pieces, or late after the game has started, to allow for asset authoring and tested.


The good and much more important news was that our games are written in a mixture of two programming languages: C++ to handle the low-level stuff like graphics, audio and talking to the underlying hardware; Lua. Which allowed us to implement virtually everything you think of as "game", from the simulation logic of the colonists on Mars to the user interface that allows the player to control them. And Lua is not only much easier for modders to learn - it's also easy to be loaded from different places, even when the game is running. We knew that we needed to give modders this ultimate power, to modify and add new Lua code to the game.


The overarching goal of the mod support is, in the words of Alan Kay, simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible. For the simple part, we identified a handful of small but impactful changes to the game that can be implemented by anyone who's not afraid of their computer. Mission Logos, for example, let you leave your imprint on every building of your colony. You only need to supply a simple, transparent PNG file

You can read the full dev diary here
Surviving Mars - candyalien


The new frontier... The perils of the unknown... The great difficulties and the great hope for the next generation? No, I'm not talking about colonizing Mars. I'm talking about the greatest technical risk we took on with Surviving Mars: building the game for modding support.
Haemimont Games has shipped a cool 15 games on various platforms, but not one of them has had official modding support. And modding was something Paradox wanted from the very beginning of the project. Games that welcome the players to join in the creation are loved more, played more, and live more, they said. What's the point of partnering with a well-respected experienced publisher if you don't heed what they say?


The bad news was that over the previous several games, the data loading process of our engine had been optimized in the opposite direction, to be as monolithic and economical as possible, to allow for minimal loading times. This had to be reversed, and many types of data can now be loaded in pieces, or late after the game has started, to allow for asset authoring and tested.


The good and much more important news was that our games are written in a mixture of two programming languages: C++ to handle the low-level stuff like graphics, audio and talking to the underlying hardware; Lua. Which allowed us to implement virtually everything you think of as "game", from the simulation logic of the colonists on Mars to the user interface that allows the player to control them. And Lua is not only much easier for modders to learn - it's also easy to be loaded from different places, even when the game is running. We knew that we needed to give modders this ultimate power, to modify and add new Lua code to the game.


The overarching goal of the mod support is, in the words of Alan Kay, simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible. For the simple part, we identified a handful of small but impactful changes to the game that can be implemented by anyone who's not afraid of their computer. Mission Logos, for example, let you leave your imprint on every building of your colony. You only need to supply a simple, transparent PNG file

You can read the full dev diary here
...