May 31, 2019

SCUM - Sippy

And we are back! Before we go into the update, we want to say sorry for no patch this week... you know, reasons, but we have some new interesting things to show that should hit the game soon, so let's get into it!

Missions are almost done, you will get a tutorial in the first wave, but with time we will add more missions that will tie into the lore and the various activities on the island.

It came from the darkness in silence, and it brought only death and doom. The steed of annihilation. Please make a super dramatic video while riding a bike in our game.

If the AK-47 had a 35 years younger brother it would be this beauty, the AK-12

There are a few things that our new inventory system will bring, from the obvious visual rework to the most important part that are the optimizations that will impact the game big time. More on that once the system hits the Island.

A small craftable cabin for your own universe.

But to build that cabin you will need a lot of logs and other stuff, and that takes time and lots of animations.

Tons of ruins, who knows what you can find exploring them?

Numbeeers, because we all love them. Here you will be able to keep track of your adventures, also if you have any suggestions what you would like to see in the stats section, let us know in the comments!

Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

Do you wanna knows the secret of growing a bad ass beard? Me too, if you find it let me know.

Here is a fresh community showcase from yours truly Beda, straight from the oven:

When you already know it is gonna stink bad, you need a mask to breathe

Link to original

Howdy neighbor!

Link to original

At least someone is

Link to original

"Don't worry comrade, you find your rocks, I shall cover you"

Link to original

Day 34: Goat still hasn't discovered I am undercover

Link to original

SCUM has a different kind of campers

Link to original

Here we see 2 kinds of people: one who likes his new sniper and one who won't

Link to original

Remember that preacher crow from the last showcase? It knocked on the wrong door.

Link to original

Is this SCUM or an Airsoft meetup?

Link to original

Meet Mike. Mike is an ass

Link to original

Bye Mike

Link to orginal

Oh rock you so funny! I can Bearly control myself.

Link to original

Bonus video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlC5zrbsmB0
Slavs gonna slav.

Now for some questions from our previous post:

Yes both features are planned to make an appearance down the line.

Plans? Yes. When? Can't say for sure so keep an eye out till Wonder leaks it.

It is planned yes. But currently all focus is on finishing the PC release and leaving Early access.

You may ask. Next question please.

Uhhmmmm.... Thanks?

Beda? Never heard of him.

Thanks for enjoying the game! As for the hair question check out the post above. Piercings, eye colors and more faces are all planned. We are still looking into height as it draws its own problems.

Considered. Planned. Done.

Can someone please remove this man from the premises? Security!

May 31, 2019

Dev Update: V1.2 & V1.3 released – Ship models, optimisations, story missions, ancient ruins, AI improvements, diplomacy changes, and more!

Predestination - Nyphur

Hey everyone!

I posted this update a few weeks ago with the V1.3 patch but it didn't seem to go live, so I'm re-issuing it. Apologies for the inconvenience to anyone left wondering about what was in the update.

The V1.2 update has been in people’s hands for a while now and we’ve deployed 7 follow-up patches with bug fixes and small changes since then. We’ve also just released V1.3 and want to get everyone caught up with the latest developments.

These updates contained the final 3D ship part models for all races, huge optimisations in the map generation and End Turn code, two new story missions (with two more coming this month), Ancient Ruins improvements, AI improvements, some Diplomacy changes, and a series of small features and bug fixes.

The biggest feature in V1.2 was the release of all the 3D ship parts for all races. The Sauros have gold and sand coloured components with ornate wings, the Starforged have huge utilitarian blocks with pipes and grills, and the Kazzir have brightly coloured racers with floating cameras and completely unnecessary wings and spoilers. We’ve also added a default Dreadnought ship design for each race, and unique new models for the Revenant ships. Check out the screenshots below for more:

The V1.2 launch update included a series of major optimisations to speed up the game. We added a Planet cache system with hundreds of pre-generated planets of all types and sizes, drastically speeding up planet generation times in exchange for the game taking up 2gb more hard drive space. This completely eliminated the delay when opening a planet for the first time, and cut down Space Exploration and Space Colonisation era map generation times by over 70%.

We also extended this to add a Homeworld Cache for each race, with a collection of pre-generated homeworlds for each race. This reduces sandbox game generation times by up to 90% depending on settings as the most resource-intensive part of generating a new map is colonising the AI homeworlds. It used to do that completely from scratch every time even though the outcome is always about the same, and now it just uses one of 100 pre-generated planets and makes small changes.

A series of AI optimisations reduced AI processing time down from 200-500ms per turn to 0-10ms, which in turn allowed us to run the AI code on every race each turn to make them smarter. Previously the AI took turns executing some of their more complex tasks, and this could delay their response to a threat. Multithreading the planet End Turn code also yielded 25-50% performance increases, but we have disabled this feature temporarily as it prompted a number of unusual edge case crashes.

Story Mission: The Z’loq Emerge: “Having conquered the oceans of its homeworld, the Z’loq empire is now facing overpopulation in the Coral Spire. The legendary Z’loq Chieftain Grizn’q has demanded that additional spires be built and the planet’s oceans be exploited to their fullest potential. As the population grows, the Z’loq now look for new territories to explore … or to conquer.” This story mission is complete and released.

Story Mission: The Colonies Unite: “The colonies of Earth have united under a single banner and begun an era of space exploration and colonisation. Mysterious ancient ruins found on Earth have given hints of powerful technology scattered throughout the galaxy, and the new United Colonies Technocracy aims to find them all.” This story mission is complete and released.

Upcoming Story Mission: Renegade Republic: “The United Colonies of Earth have plundered ancient ruins throughout the star cluster and unwittingly awoken the ancient Revenant threat. As word of the United Colonies’ part in the disaster spreads, support for a new Renegade political faction is growing and the colonies are fracturing.” This story mission is complete and releasing in the next few days.

Upcoming Story Mission: We Are Starforged: “Abandoned on an icy world, a United Colonies troop transport filled with Robotic AI soldiers has become the seed of new race: The Starforged. Trapped on the planet, these robots have adapted themselves to run on fossil fuels and are now emerging into sentience.” This story mission has taken a bit longer than usual to test but will be releasing as soon as possible.

We improved the ancient ruin excavations system. Ruins on the homeworld now always give you a piece of ancient infrastructure when excavated, and ancient ruins or crashed ships further from homeworlds get more powerful technologies. We’ve added some more powerful pieces of ancient infrastructure such as the Ancient Robotic Lab, Ancient Robotic Factory, and Ancient Robotic Farm.

Crashed Ships can now yield Ancient Ionising Beam (beam weapon), Ancient Ionic Missile (missile weapon), or Ancient Ion Cannon (projectile cannon) techs. They can also give Ancient Alloy Design (+10% armour HP), Ancient Shield Design (+25% shield regen), or Ancient Thruster Design (+1 combat speed). More powerful crashed ships can give +25% beam, projectile, missile, or drone damage.

In V1.30 we also fixed a major bug causing ancient ruins and crashed ships to be deleted when colonising the planet in some circumstances, and made them more likely to spawn on uninhabitable planets (Barren, Molten, and Toxic).

When you reach the First Contact tech era and haven’t met another race yet, you used to get a popup saying you received a transmission from deep space, but nothing actually happened. Now you will automatically make contact with the closest alien race when the transmission is received. When the Galactic Council is formed by any race, all races who haven’t made diplomatic contact with each other will also automatically meet each other.

This helps maintain the diplomatic pacing throughout the game, especially in large maps where you might not meet everyone quickly enough. We’ve also sped up the council voting animations based on feedback and the vote now takes place on the planet of the person who proposed the vote as that made more sense.

We made some big improvements to the AI in order to make them create better empires. The AI will now colonise non-habitable planets using biospheres and can set up trade routes between planets to supply them with food, which in turn allows you to passively harm their empire by sending ships to blockade the trade route.

The AI also now explores temporal rifts for bonuses, and it can now rush production on ships for money just like the player when it comes under threat. The value the AI places on money in diplomacy will now depend on how much money you have, and money is now traded in increments of 100 as the previous increment of 10 was insignificant and could still trigger the “gift” response from AI.

Portable switch: Adding a portable.txt file to the Content folder will enable a new portable mode where the ini file and save game files are relocated to within the game folder rather than in your AppData folders. This would be useful if you wanted to run the game off a pen drive and keep your saves with the drive so you can bring them to any PC. If you disable the portable switch, the game will automatically try to copy your local save games into your appdata the next time you launch the game.

Technology Tree changes: We realised that the pacing was off for players who wanted to conquer alien worlds more than colonise heavily, so we moved the Troop Pod technology to the start of the Space Colonisation tech era. This let us expand the First Contact tech era with a series of spying technologies.

Left Handed Mouse: We added left-handed mouse support to the game, which works automatically depending on your system settings. Before this version, left handed mouse users would have broken radial menus and some buttons wouldn’t click properly.

Tax Changes: The default tax rates are now automatically set to 30% Citizen Tax and 30% Industrial Tax when you start a new game.

Ship Shaders: Each race now has its own ship shader and shader variables, which are loaded in from moddable files. They allow us to add some animated effects etc to the ships, for example the blue parts on the United Colonies ships now pulse with light and the red crystals on Sauros ships now glow with a cloudy burnt orange light.

Star/Fleet Selector: When clicking on a Star or a Fleet on the Galaxy Screen, the game now opens whichever is physically closest to your mouse pointer on the screen. This should help you sellect fleets that are near stars more easily and stop the UI from getting stuck.

Text Updates: We’ve added the credits screen and dedication, final crew names for all races, star names, and nebula names.

The number of bugfixes we made in V1.2, V.13 and all the intervening patches is too long to list, but a few headline fixes include:

Ship Designs will now save correctly in computer systems that use commas as thousands separators.
We implemented a new music fade system to combat a problem where the game could rarely end up with two pieces of music playing at the same time.
Singleplayer missions now correctly update their progress when you close the Score screen at the end of the mission. You no longer have to quit and restart the game to see your rating appear in the mission list.
The Singleplayer Mission UI will no longer be drawn on top of the Fleet Combat or Diplomacy screens.
Fixed a large number of crashes. Thanks to everyone sending in those crash reports, please keep them coming any time the game crashes.
Fixed a SlimDX DLL problem that happened on some people’s games where the game would just crash on launching when trying to load the ship 3D models.

Cheers,
— Brendan, Lead Developer

May 31, 2019

Beta 24 - 24.3 Release Notes

PULSAR: Lost Colony - leafygamesdev

Hey everyone!

Devlog 81: https://youtu.be/ONTZWHxwDCM

Beta 24 is now out! The main focus for this update is Steam integration and some ship combat variety!

To start off, the game now supports new features when playing on Steam.

We’ve added support for Steam friends including the ability to directly join a friend’s game and invite other players into your crew through Steam. You can also see information about a friend (role and crew level) in the Steam friends list while they are playing.

When logged into Steam, the host can now optionally start a Secured Game, which offers some additional account-based features for crews. This allows in-game kicks to be more permanent, and the game lobby shows you games where your friends are playing as well as games where people who you have blocked or previously kicked are playing. You can now also add your crewmates as Steam friends via the Tab menu.

Steam achievements can now be earned. Some of these may be immediately achieved based on your previous statistics, but others will not. We’re starting with 26 achievements and we’ll likely be adding more as we continue to develop the remaining parts of the game.

Steam Cloud Support allows saves, progress data, AI priorities and input bindings information to be saved on the cloud so they can be accessed on a different computer.

As for ship combat variety, we have added quite a few more enemy ship modifiers for unmanned drones. The modifiers change various aspects of the enemy ships and stats. For example, ships with the “irradiated” modifier can impart radiation into your ship when they deal hull damage, and ships with the “corrupted” modifier continually broadcast the corruption virus and can attack ships of the same faction. Some of the other new modifiers are negative modifiers that weaken enemy stats, which we hope adds another layer of decision making to the fight.

The negative modifiers are more likely to exist near the lower chaos levels to help keep the difficulty curve from being too harsh. We’ve also taken the time to rename the drones in the game. While the previous names were practical, we thought there was additional room for variation. Additionally, faction-specific drones have slight differences between them.

We will be working on an issue with bot pathfinding for a hotfix in the near future. A content / polish pass of planets is planned for Beta 25.

Additions
- Steam Friends: You can now join games from the friends list. As host, you can invite friends to your crew from the friends list, and you can add friends in-game through the Tab menu. Additionally, friends of the host do not need to type in the correct password to join their private game.
- Secured Games: Hosts can pick the secured game option when starting or loading a game. Secured games enable Steam account-based online features like friends, persistent kicks as well as viewing which games in the lobby have friends or people you have kicked previously. Secured games require players to be playing through Steam in order to join.

NOTE 1: Secured games are also susceptible to Steam activity (if it goes down for maintenance, then secured games will too).The normal game mode is still available for those not playing on Steam, and Steam players can join normal games.

NOTE 2: Kicking a player in a secured group will block them from all future games you host. If you wish to undo this you must find their steam ID and remove it from the “Blocked ID’s section of your settings.xml file. Alternatively you can just delete the entire settings file and it will reset all blocked Steam IDs.

- Steam Cloud Support: Support for saves, progress data, AI priorities, and bindings files
- New Drone Class: Drone Overseer - This drone can coordinate field repairs to other drones in the sector mid-fight. The other ships will need to lower their shields for a brief period of time in order to receive the repair, which opens up a window for your crew to deal some direct hull damage!
- New Drone Modifier: Corrupted - Continuously broadcasts the Corruption virus. It also attacks any ship it detects regardless of faction. It is also flagged so no reputation loss with occur if you defend yourself.
- New Drone Modifier: Irradiated - When a ship with this modifier deals hull damage to your ship, it imparts radiation inside your ship.
- New Drone Modifier: Legendary - This ship is a better version of the “Elite” modifier. Its ship components are better and finely tuned. Be careful when choosing to fight a ship with this modifier.
- New Drone Modifier: Secure - A ship with this modifier has a much higher cyberdefense and can resist being infected with viruses very well.
- New Drone Modifier: Vulnerable - This ship has armor and shield weaknesses, both are reduced by 50%
- New Drone Modifier: Neglected - A ship with this modifier hasn’t been maintained in a while and it’s starting to show. Turret damage and charge speeds are reduced by 50%.
- New Drone Modifier: Brutal - A ship with this modifier is finely tuned to deal as much damage as possible.
- New Drone Modifier: Frozen - surrounded by cooling gas which helps manage its heat, if you fly very close you might also benefit from the effect.
- New NPC: The Sylvassi Skiah has a structure set up in Cornelia Station in the hopes of getting daring crews to take out some Sector Commanders.
- New Mission: “Defeat 3 Sector Commanders” - Assigned by Skiah in Cornelia Station. This offers a few rewards, one of which will be a Lost Colony Data Fragment when implemented.

Steam Achievements
- Steam Achievements: Now possible to unlock. The game has 26 achievements listed below:
- Veteran Crew: Reach Crew Level 25
- Galaxy In Chaos: Reach Chaos Level 6
- The Wasted Wing: Complete the Colonial Union faction mission line
- Call of The Void: Defeat the V’uurog
- The Swarm: Defeat the Swarm
- Researcher: Research 10 talents
- Pacifist: Reach crew level 10 without dealing any damage
- The Madman’s Mansion: Complete the Alliance of Gentlemen faction mission line
- Dice Champion: Win a game of Liar’s Dice
- Hold Still: Heal 5,000 hit points on your allies
- The Grim Cutlass: Defeat the Grim Cutlass
- The Great Biscuit Race: Win the Fluffy Biscuit sales competition
- The Forsaken Flagship: Complete the W.D. Corporation faction mission line
- The Ancient Sentry: Defeat the Ancient Sentry
- Extortionist: As captain, extort 25 ships
- Explorer: Make 150 jumps
- Diplomat: As captain, pacify 25 hostile ships
- Seeking Death: Defeat a deathseeker
- The Caustic Corsair: Defeat the Caustic Corsair
- Leap of Faith: Blind jump 5 times in a single game
- Biscuit Madness: secret
- Master Chef: Perfectly cook 5 biscuits in a row
- Big Spender: Spend 100,000 credits in a single game
- Sandscarred: Win the Sandscar Arena
- No Questions Asked: Complete Rumibard Warger’s artifact collection missions
- First Place: Win the Ion Races

Changes
- Renamed common drone ships in galaxy based on faction owner:
- C.U. Scout Drone >>> C.U. Ranger
- C.U. Security Drone >>> C.U. Guardian
- C.U. Tactical Drone >>> C.U. Arbiter
- W.D. Scout Drone >>> W.D. Scout
- W.D. Security Drone >>> W.D. Warrior
- W.D. Tactical Drone >>> W.D. Vindicator
- Bandit Scout Drone >>> Bandit Clunker
- Bandit Security Drone >>> Bandit Ripper
- Bandit Tactical Drone >>> Bandit Marauder
- C.U. Ranger, W.D. Scout and the Bandit Clunker have a chance to have obsolete hulls, making them easier to defeat.
- Bandit specific drones will generally have stronger sensors, be harder to detect, and move slightly faster.
- CU specific drones will generally have 15% faster charging shields.
- WD specific drones will generally have stronger weapons with 15% more damage.
- Research materials from probes can now be any type.
- Other ships you encounter can now be damaged when you first encounter them.
- UI tweaks - Enemy health bars should be easier to differentiate from allies.
- The above-player crew health bars have been removed, although you can see information about their health if you have a hand-held scanner equipped.
- Load game UI has been tweaked
- Drone modifiers are much more likely to appear
- Significant tweaks to how enemy ship components are leveled up as chaos increases, the result should be certain ship components spike up in level more often while the average component level is the same

Fixes
- Spreadshot turret should be firing in a proper spread now
- Sensor screen tweaks to help prevent incorrect order of UI elements especially when scanning for components
- Heal grenade launcher model updated
- Fixed an issue regarding autosaves
- Fixed an issue that caused Fluffy Biscuit mission “Deliver Biscuits to Restricted CU Site 881” to fail upon start
- Fixed a collision issue found in the Caretaker’s room on the Estate.
- Fixed a collision issue found on the abandoned robot factory planet
- Fixed a texture error found on the abandoned robot factory planet
-The “Compare Ship Components” shop menu now correctly shows a decrease in min shield integrity as a positive and an increase in Min for QT shields as a negative.

Beta 24.1 Release Notes

Beta 24.1 is now out! This addresses some of the early feedback and reports we received so far from Beta 24. As always, thanks for your feedback and suggestions!

Changes
- You can now change your in-game online player name when logged into Steam. In the game options you can type whatever name you want to appear in game and it should work in secured games. If you want to use your steam handle you can leave the field blank.

Fixes
- Destroying unclaimed ships now doesn’t cause reputation loss
- Hunt The Resolution mission should no longer cause rep loss

Beta 24.2 Release Notes

Beta 24.2 is now out! It contains a handful of tweaks and fixes based on the feedback and reports we’ve gotten!

Changes
- For those who want to keep their privacy, there is a new option to play secured games more anonymously. You can toggle the “Allow Crewmates To View Steam Profile” in the game options to control the ability of fellow crewmates to view your profile or request to add you as a friend while playing in secured games.
-Tweaked the material properties for some planet creatures

Fixes
- Unsecured games should no longer have Steam profile / friend options in the TAB menu
- Shield generator tooltip now shows correct shield recharge rate

Beta 24.3 Release Notes

Beta 24.3 is now out! This one is focused on improving AI navigation on foot.

Changes
- Updated default AI priorities for PiBot to disable Align Ship To Sector when the Captain hasn’t set a waypoint
- Bot pathfinding / jetpack use tweaked to help avoid some situational issues we found
- Crew bots movement and animation speed tweaked to be a little slower

Fixes
- Certain achievements related to completing missions were not triggering properly. This should be fixed now for the Wasted Wing, Forsaken Flagship and other achievements.

Thanks for your time!

Best,
The Leafy Games Team