Localization system, location pictures and a reworked location interface - Livin' La Vida Loca! Things are starting to get really interesting at this stage, as a lot of milestones are in motion and about to join the game step by step now. Our goals for 1.0 are getting closer and we are grinding towards the final polishing phase of the Caduceus Story Arc.
Thanks for all the positive reviews and the great community feedback so far!
Story
The first visit on Caduceus HQ is now 120% more polished :D - new events, new dialog, new sidequests, new achievement!
New NPCs added, new dialog and new items (more readables, some can now be retrieved in the ISA Library)
Localization system
To meet the wishes of many people, we have implemented the basics for an easy translation of the game. See how it works - any help is much appreciated!
All names and descriptions, the biggest part of the UI and some first dialogs like the tutorial have been translated to german for beta-testing the localization system with the new patch.
Along with this so-far translation, a lot of corrections and optimizations have been made to the original text.
Location images
The Zone, ISA Auditorium, J-12 Living Quarters
Portraits
Don Gorgon, Seraphim & ISA randoms, FTA Manager (old guy reworked)
Weapons
Visual upgrade levels for the default gun turret
All weapons using this turret graphic are upgradable to 4 levels now
Auxi's Top Gun is upgradable to a dual projectile weapon
Sound
Shield shutdown
'Playing Doctor' achievement
General performance improvements
Interface
Location HUD: BIG images
We figured out that full-scale location images provide a lot more atmosphere and immersion when traveling around on planets or stations. Therefore, the location hud has been fully reworked.
With the exception of 1-2 special cases, all location pics are now in full 4K resolution.
Factions assigned to the locations
New weapon upgrade layout
Controller
Support Combobox
Support the options menu
Support the landable location HUD
Exit start menu windows with B too
Support MultiColumnList d-pad iteration on blocking HUD windows
auto select first entry for a multicolumnlist
Always highlight the currently active focus window
Make the active focus window look like a selector
Unselect the last controller selected MultiColumnList item when the controller focus leaves it
New Game Menu: button A should confirm portrait selection
More UI stuff
Newsticker auto-scrolling
Add a skill tooltip icon
Scroll the newsticker
Radar HUD: draw improvements
Add minimal padding to the item tooltip description
Landable HUD: Hide "visitors" subhead when no visitors there
Replace the default GUI tooltip
Added missing shop marker to some ship traders
Added missing item descriptions
Characters in the person list are sorted by importance
Randomized planets in main menu (Earth, Mars, Venus)
Minor landable HUD changes
Story
Added the possibility to hack the locked door on Essex with hacking level 3 (thx @Keith_McD from discord for suggestion)
Changed Billie Jean and Rufus NPCs from the Living Permit quest, so that the player will not break the quest if he attacks them before talking to them. (thx @Eckman Jones from steam community for bugreport)
World
During the 4K optimization process, a lot of location images have been improved and polished to look fancy in the new resolution as well.
Jupiter texture color optimization
J-12 Station polishing and new lights
Trash spawner around Earth
Pluto clouds enabled
Balancing
Added new big shields (thx @HALOSHOCK from steam community for suggestions)
Some ship & weapon balancing
Portrait polishing
Mr. Shiro, Kingston, Jerome, Dr. Cram Bokaj, Nortnex burning
Landable HUD: Hide the Exit button when on a location
Use the passive AI profile for planets and some stations leading persons
Keyboard focus index fixes
Trade HUD: support multi selection with the keyboard too
Show the supported resolutions of the selected primary display
AI: Friendly ship detection is only working partially
Person sort key is not used when the drawable is missing
Destroy the MultiColumnList custom tooltip correctly
Update the MultiColumnList item tooltip when scrolling
MultiColumnList page up/down should actually move a page
MultiColumnList generic key handler can crash (rare)
newsticker_group can have a 1 pixel gap/overlap
Location quest person target on the same location is not updated instantly if they have a ship
Options Menu: Show the correct shortcut type default assignment
Improve the TabButton imageset sizes
Change the TabButton Hovered/Pushed/Selected color
Crash Course: if you already have the 9 Aluminium the quest counter should instantly trigger
scripts: parse all files as utf-8 by default
Savegame the message queue
Savegame the perma noti state (tutorial info is lost)
Options menu reload triggers the logo animation
AI lands on the gate
Get the correct image dimension if an image settings base is set
Controller: Skills HUD focus order is broken
Controller: pressing B in the main menu breaks it
Loading hints formatting fixes
Added some missing quest markers for special cases
Some broken dialog (Kingston, Borg Johnson "Devi" question, Heimwehr and more)
Take off your winter boots, slip into something comfy, turn up the heater and dive into the next update of Gaia Beyond. Also – we are on a 21% discount during the Steam Winter Sale!
Happy Holidays!
Over 15 new sidequests!
Collect blueprints for the ISA
Find and rescue the forgotten spacemen!
Visit Nookrium on the Euphoria station ...and much more!
It's me again, Count Ixua. The Wicked have returned. But at least that gives you the opportunity to snatch one of those special halloween rewards. Send those pumpkin fanatics back to the land of the dead and have a look at my pumpkin full of presents!
The ancient curse has reappeared!
It looked like the creatures from the wicked dimension had been banished forever, but due to a magical coincidence, new portals allow them to spread all over the solar system AGAIN! Destroy them, cut the link between the two worlds – and unlock some exclusive content:
Pumpkin Shredder
A dangerous new weapon straight from the wicked dimension, coming with custom sounds and a fancy skull turret!
Mysterious Ghost Ship
Scare the 🎃 out of your enemies with a vessel of the undead!
Weapon qualities
First stage of randomized weapon qualities
Six new quality levels (3 weaker / 3 stronger)
More improvements coming soon!
New sidequests & events
Escort the tyrant or kill him
Helping the Isaac Family to get their place on Earth has new content
Visit new locations like SMD Woodrow or Damokles Station
Atlantic Rebels
Own faction logo
New ships & faction spawner
SFX
Quick travel sound effect
Sound is played when Lt. Devi pushes you into the corner the first time you visit Caduceus Station
Autopilot with target selection double click
Weapon upgrade HUD: Show the weapon changes
FoW should fully hide unexplored areas
A lot station sizes were increased, giving them a more station-like feel!
Mine spawners - pirate fortresses look even more inviting with decorative mine fields around them!
Display and compare Laser dps on tooltips
Ship Trade HUD: increase linked rendering fps to 60
Landable HUD: Support rendering Emitter
Menu: Draw the FoW
Map Mode: Show the player ship radar range
Neptune visual improvements
Autopilot evasion with big sprites fail
Engine emitter are sometimes drawn over the ship
"E" dialog skip does not work sometimes
Fix the "The Scheherazade Embargo"
Limit the text width of in-space quest info tooltips
Do not draw quest target icons for respawning ships
Auxilium "Hey! Where are you going?" can still endless loop if Auxilium reached his target pos
Menu ships lose emitter after a while
Draw area spawner geometry over the FoW
Menu ships can collide with the player ship
Asteroid impact emitter scaling broken
Do not autosave when the script crashed
Low texture quality breaks fonts
"Simon Boswell" without "teal_visit" respawns when the cad station explodes
Savegame upgrade: Create_Simon_Boswell() can be called when the caduceus_station does not exist anymore
"Devi's Datacube" dialog can repeat endlessly after savegame load
"Can't Chat. Enemies are nearby." should not happen if low affinity ships are nearby but not attacking
Save upgrade: Cad station is not unlocked if "Crash Course" has ended
"Asuka Langley" script crash
Venturas has a wrong identifier
A message request calling the fail_callback with a null person crashes the script
We are moving closer towards the 1.0 release, so we've got all hands full of stuff to do – and a few announcements to make. Scroll down to see the current status of the game and what has changed during Early Access! Join the adventure NOW and become part of the growing Gaia Beyond community.
🐄 Latest update: 'Holy Cow!' (0.12)
A brand-new content update that has become pretty big, check out the trailer and patch note!
Get into the Action!
Explore an immersive and dynamic version of our solar system in the future
Discover the hidden background story about a war fought not too long ago
Dive into the Caduceus storyline with 10 missions and discover the truth behind the Ganymede Flu
Find and solve around 40 individual sidequests (more coming!)
Decision-making & consequences - influence the fate of characters in the world
Miguel has finalized the official Gaia Beyond soundtrack, check it out! Also, meet him in the game at Bartholdy's Bar. ;)
Gameplay features:
Hacking Currently used on freight containers, this feature is to be expanded in the future.
Ship Crafting You no longer have to rely solely on ship dealers to expand your fleet - get new blueprints, collect the materials you need and craft them yourself, right in Rajid's garage!
Carrier load of ships and weapons!
50 purchasable ships and 40 craftable blueprints
Capital ships are now in the game (carrier functionality planned)
Upgradable weapons, growing weapon variety
Passive devices
Game World
Locations We added more locations and moons to discover, got rid of a lot of placeholder images 🖼 and polished what was there from the start. A quick compilation:
Also, you will find more of the following:
Local NPCs & traders, asteroid fields, plasma fields, war memorials, hackable containers, hidden chests & threats!
Controls
Gamepad Support (steady improvements but working)
Improved mapping options
Steam achievements
📆 Release: Q2 / 2020
The schedule was moved to the second quarter of 2020 – as we recognize a lot of community requests and want to make sure everything is right for 1.0! This is going to be only a part of the full vision (still a 'finished' game) and our post-release goal is to keep working on it for as long as possible. As you can read from this schedule, we see our game in an advanced state, it just hasn't reached all our goals for the full release yet.
🎃 Spooky things
The Halloween event is going to be activated any midnight now - take your chance to grab the special content this year!
🐢 Warp Turtle
We're proud to announce that we finally founded a company! After more than a year appearing on the store page with our real names, we felt like it was time for a little burocracy...
🐄 No cows were harmed for the development of this update - actually it has nothing to do with cows at all.
Be praised, travelers!
It's been a while this time due to exceptional circumstances - like a team member's XXL relocation (ทักทาย from Thailand!), including re-establishing our workflows and communicating straight through the globe at 5 different time zones! :D Expect future updates in the usual frequency again.
Anyway, nothing was left untouched - actually we've created a big pile of new content, bringing the game a good step closer to the 1.0 vision (and everything Beyond). Also, scroll down to the end to see what is currently happening and what are the next steps.
Special thanks to some people that have shown epic support lately - 8ByteGaming, Hakimodo, IndieGameLover, the USMCsky discord community and many more. Thanks to all of you for playing and supporting!
Note: Since 32-bit binaries with their memory limitations are becoming increasingly difficult to support, we will switch to 64-bit with one of the next updates.
The Caduceus arc now has an additional mission, new events and dialog
The Seraphim got their first station populated with NPCs, new locations, background story and sidequests
Added the pirate leaders in game
Support dialog camera targets
🛠️ Ship Crafting
Yeah! 40+ awesome ships can now be built at Rajid's Garage once the location is unlocked. Some of the new ships are exclusive for crafting and can NOT be purchased anywhere else. Where to get blueprints:
Random NPC ships have a small chance to drop their blueprint when destroyed!
Purchase them from traders
🔫 Weapons
Plasma, Photon and Nuke Torpedoes
Atlantic, J12, Sphere and Seraphim Projectile Turrets
Dual Missile turrets
Drone Launcher
Scattergun & Mine Shotguns
Holy Mines
Mining Lasers: newly-balanced, can now be upgraded to be more powerful
Shock Cannons: newly-balanced, the regular one can be upgraded
Random Weapon Qualities - hey NormireX ;) (This feature is almost done, but still in progress and will be enabled soon!)
💎 Celebrities!
To thank our earliest and most loyal supporters from streamers to press, we've just implemented them as ingame NPCs. Meet Nookrium, USMCsky, Leon from Red Event Games and DannyDSC in the Gaia Beyond universe!
The current state is more or less just an introduction of the characters - the basic setup for a whole quest arc. Stay tuned for the crazy stuff that is going to happen here until 1.0!
🌇 Locations
Jupiter J12 Colony
Caduceus HQ & Nexus
Bar: Zion & Atlantic
Seraphim 'Hall of Prayers'
Doomsday Fortress
Seraphim Hospital & Workshop
🚀 New Ships & Stations
Purchasable:
Atlantic Destroyer "Aries"
Zeraph
J12 small attack Ship
2 Sphere civil ships
Others:
Stolen Caduceus Guard (bad paintjob - will they trick you? :D)
The old "Seraphim Station" was converted into a faction-spawned battleship (Mercia) and will soon be available!