Hello everyone!

After the 2.8 patch release, we keep working hard to release the 2.9 version, one more step towards the major Beta3 version. Meanwhile, here we are again to tell you about the most important upcoming features of Project Aura!


The new health system is almost finished. We have introduced new features since the last time we showed you a sneak peek of it. Here you have a summary of the new features available for your colony management:

• Doctors will be in charge to treat your colonists producing "treatments" in the infirmaries, usable later to raise your colonists stats.
  
• New “medication productions” for the Pharmaceutical Building. These meds will be needed to eradicate certain illnesses and will require investigation -blue documents-.

Illnesses can strike at any time at your colony, so remember to be ready for this kind of eventuality, whenever it appears.




Disasters are challenges that your colony will have to face from time to time. Resolving them in a satisfactory way will bring major benefits or adverse effects if failing.




We introduce automatic buildings, a new type of building which will:

• Support other buildings.
  
• Optimize your valuable platform's space.
  
• Help you out with some needs of your colony.

Automatic buildings won’t take up more than a few squares of your platforms, will run on their own and will require no workers -no Org chart inside-. However, to work in such automated way you will need the Programming Labs services.




We’re still polishing the upcoming modkit and all its features, wrapping up most of the basic mechanics and implementing new features to make Project Aura a more pleasant experience for more “casual” gamers.

That’s all for today's devblog. Remember to stay tuned for more info, we hope you have a happy Christmas and new year as well!

Thanks for the interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

Hello everyone!

After the 2.8 patch release, we keep working hard to release the 2.9 version, one more step towards the major Beta3 version. Meanwhile, here we are again to tell you about the most important upcoming features of Project Aura!


The new health system is almost finished. We have introduced new features since the last time we showed you a sneak peek of it. Here you have a summary of the new features available for your colony management:

• Doctors will be in charge to treat your colonists producing "treatments" in the infirmaries, usable later to raise your colonists stats.
  
• New “medication productions” for the Pharmaceutical Building. These meds will be needed to eradicate certain illnesses and will require investigation -blue documents-.

Illnesses can strike at any time at your colony, so remember to be ready for this kind of eventuality, whenever it appears.




Disasters are challenges that your colony will have to face from time to time. Resolving them in a satisfactory way will bring major benefits or adverse effects if failing.




We introduce automatic buildings, a new type of building which will:

• Support other buildings.
  
• Optimize your valuable platform's space.
  
• Help you out with some needs of your colony.

Automatic buildings won’t take up more than a few squares of your platforms, will run on their own and will require no workers -no Org chart inside-. However, to work in such automated way you will need the Programming Labs services.




We’re still polishing the upcoming modkit and all its features, wrapping up most of the basic mechanics and implementing new features to make Project Aura a more pleasant experience for more “casual” gamers.

That’s all for today's devblog. Remember to stay tuned for more info, we hope you have a happy Christmas and new year as well!

Thanks for the interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

This is a major update, next is the description of the most important features introduced with it:


Finally, energy is fully implemented. It brings full control on management and opens new features like redirecting energy to boost your preferred platforms.

Are your processing plants in the colony struggling with not enough materials?: boost your raw extraction platforms to work faster or reduce the energy for your processing plants until you get a proper stack, etc.




2.1- Promotion: Colonists, once reached level 10, won't auto-promote to a higher rank, instead you will have to do it yourself with a cost in influence docs (diplomacy).

2.2- Skills: Vital Reserves are becoming more efficient training and evaluating the colonists that will become available later for the colonies. After this patch, picking a char of a profile will ensure he/she has the proper skills and in more according level to their rank.

2.3- Progression: Colonists will improve their skills according to the tasks they do. These skills depend on the profession you assigned to the char, and, you can see it in their sheet.



The numbers in green are the active skills to calculate the workpoints, the number in orange is the skill used to calculate how much xp the colonist will earn (a char with a higher intelligence will learn faster).


2.4- Numbers:Awakening colonists will be now more expensive, on the other hand, the amount of workers required per lane have been dropped substantially.

Colonists new defrost price:

• Junior from 250 to: 500
  
• Senior from 500 to: 2,500
  
• Master from 1,000 to: 5,000
  
• Super Engineer from 2,500 to: 10,000

2.5- Directors: Finally, becoming more relevant for the buildings they are in.

• A worker will add points to the blueprint he/she is linked every time his/her production is finished and the blueprint will stack these points until getting the required work points to produce.
  
• The work speed for a colonist depends on his/her morale.
  
• The amount of points a colonist adds to the blueprint depends on his/her profession involved skills, and, from now on, there is a new "third" skill summing up, which is the director's leadership.

How does the activity system works?:

Imagine 2 persons, A and B, bringing boxes from point 1 to 2.
The fast they move the boxes depend on their morale and the amount of boxes each one carry depend on their strength. 2 persons with the same morale will move at the same speed, but, if person A is twice stronger than B, person A will carry 2 boxes and B only 1 box.

Our system works the same. Colonist morale tell us how fast they progress in the blueprint, and, once it’s finished, the skills will tell us how many “boxes” (work points) are added to the blueprint.

Nodes will show now more information, and, a new "manual" mode is available. This mode allows you to share the director leadership bonus point manually among your blueprints.




4.1- Construction panel: Templates will indicate now also its energy consumption per cycle.

• The sum of all the buildings’ energy consumption, on a platform, will tell us its energy consumption.
  
• The sum of all platforms energy consumption will tell us the colony total consumption.

4.2- Help panel (F1): Help windows have been updated according to the last patch.



Redesigned the main window to show more clear that you can drag it.


4.3- Char sheet: Char sheet has been redesigned.



Promote char button has been added.


4.4- Log: There is a new button in the management bar, on top of the Log panel, to display the health panel, but it is still in-progress (disabled).



5.1- Ctrl+Click:We have set the Ctrl+Click combination to go anywhere in the world. Do you see any word in brackets in the log? Ctrl+click to center the screen on it.

E.g.: In the log, click on a char in brackets to open its sheet, or Ctrl+click on it to go to the building he/she works. Click on a production in brackets to open its Org Chart (its related blueprint will be remarked), or Ctrl+click on it to go to the building. In a char sheet, Ctrl+click on the org chart button or residential to go to the building that char works or lives respectively.

5.2- Management bar shortcuts: Use numbers to open/close all the management bars in the same order as they appear in the management bar: 1. Market, 2: Quests, 3...

• Some extra key shortcuts:
  • I key: Opens/Closes the Inventory.
    
  • C key: Opens/Closes the Construction window.
    
  • M key: Opens/Closes the Market window.
    
  • O key: Opens/Closes the Organization Chart window (only if you have selected a building).

5.3- Building Search window:

• Click on a building to open its Organization Chart.
  
• Ctrl+click on a building in the search window table to find it in the scenario.

6.1- Generator components new production values:The materials needed to craft generator components has been modified to a more easy combination. Basically you will need x4 items of a quality to craft a new one of a higher quality + some extra component. *Core qualities require x8.

6.2- New diplomacy items: Use the corporation buildings to produce influence documents of their color or transform them into Vital Reserve and the rest of corps influence docs.

*Until the diplomacy is implemented (very soon) there is only one source to obtain influence docs: through a special production in the corporation buildings.



6.3- Farming
The production times and costs have been changed to a more realistic values.
To extract or recover seeds, it will require Green Investigation docs.

• Help windows updated to the last changes.
  
• Wrong resolution for DPP >96 screens resolved.
  
• Cabbage seeds was missing in the Botany Lab.
  
• WASD keys were blocking game hotkeys for opening inventory, market, food and other menus. Now you can access any game shortcut at the same time than moving camera.
  
• We uploaded a new dll version for our audio libraries to help on some users issues.
  
• Morale bonus from entertainment buildings was giving always the max bonus.

• Interface text generation has been optimized to run faster.
  
• Log message queries have been optimized to not impact FPS on new queries.
  
• UI responsiveness improved (still more work to do in this area).

As always, thanks for your interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

This is a major update, next is the description of the most important features introduced with it:


Finally, energy is fully implemented. It brings full control on management and opens new features like redirecting energy to boost your preferred platforms.

Are your processing plants in the colony struggling with not enough materials?: boost your raw extraction platforms to work faster or reduce the energy for your processing plants until you get a proper stack, etc.




2.1- Promotion: Colonists, once reached level 10, won't auto-promote to a higher rank, instead you will have to do it yourself with a cost in influence docs (diplomacy).

2.2- Skills: Vital Reserves are becoming more efficient training and evaluating the colonists that will become available later for the colonies. After this patch, picking a char of a profile will ensure he/she has the proper skills and in more according level to their rank.

2.3- Progression: Colonists will improve their skills according to the tasks they do. These skills depend on the profession you assigned to the char, and, you can see it in their sheet.



The numbers in green are the active skills to calculate the workpoints, the number in orange is the skill used to calculate how much xp the colonist will earn (a char with a higher intelligence will learn faster).


2.4- Numbers:Awakening colonists will be now more expensive, on the other hand, the amount of workers required per lane have been dropped substantially.

Colonists new defrost price:

• Junior from 250 to: 500
  
• Senior from 500 to: 2,500
  
• Master from 1,000 to: 5,000
  
• Super Engineer from 2,500 to: 10,000

2.5- Directors: Finally, becoming more relevant for the buildings they are in.

• A worker will add points to the blueprint he/she is linked every time his/her production is finished and the blueprint will stack these points until getting the required work points to produce.
  
• The work speed for a colonist depends on his/her morale.
  
• The amount of points a colonist adds to the blueprint depends on his/her profession involved skills, and, from now on, there is a new "third" skill summing up, which is the director's leadership.

How does the activity system works?:

Imagine 2 persons, A and B, bringing boxes from point 1 to 2.
The fast they move the boxes depend on their morale and the amount of boxes each one carry depend on their strength. 2 persons with the same morale will move at the same speed, but, if person A is twice stronger than B, person A will carry 2 boxes and B only 1 box.

Our system works the same. Colonist morale tell us how fast they progress in the blueprint, and, once it’s finished, the skills will tell us how many “boxes” (work points) are added to the blueprint.

Nodes will show now more information, and, a new "manual" mode is available. This mode allows you to share the director leadership bonus point manually among your blueprints.




4.1- Construction panel: Templates will indicate now also its energy consumption per cycle.

• The sum of all the buildings’ energy consumption, on a platform, will tell us its energy consumption.
  
• The sum of all platforms energy consumption will tell us the colony total consumption.

4.2- Help panel (F1): Help windows have been updated according to the last patch.



Redesigned the main window to show more clear that you can drag it.


4.3- Char sheet: Char sheet has been redesigned.



Promote char button has been added.


4.4- Log: There is a new button in the management bar, on top of the Log panel, to display the health panel, but it is still in-progress (disabled).



5.1- Ctrl+Click:We have set the Ctrl+Click combination to go anywhere in the world. Do you see any word in brackets in the log? Ctrl+click to center the screen on it.

E.g.: In the log, click on a char in brackets to open its sheet, or Ctrl+click on it to go to the building he/she works. Click on a production in brackets to open its Org Chart (its related blueprint will be remarked), or Ctrl+click on it to go to the building. In a char sheet, Ctrl+click on the org chart button or residential to go to the building that char works or lives respectively.

5.2- Management bar shortcuts: Use numbers to open/close all the management bars in the same order as they appear in the management bar: 1. Market, 2: Quests, 3...

• Some extra key shortcuts:
  • I key: Opens/Closes the Inventory.
    
  • C key: Opens/Closes the Construction window.
    
  • M key: Opens/Closes the Market window.
    
  • O key: Opens/Closes the Organization Chart window (only if you have selected a building).

5.3- Building Search window:

• Click on a building to open its Organization Chart.
  
• Ctrl+click on a building in the search window table to find it in the scenario.

6.1- Generator components new production values:The materials needed to craft generator components has been modified to a more easy combination. Basically you will need x4 items of a quality to craft a new one of a higher quality + some extra component. *Core qualities require x8.

6.2- New diplomacy items: Use the corporation buildings to produce influence documents of their color or transform them into Vital Reserve and the rest of corps influence docs.

*Until the diplomacy is implemented (very soon) there is only one source to obtain influence docs: through a special production in the corporation buildings.



6.3- Farming
The production times and costs have been changed to a more realistic values.
To extract or recover seeds, it will require Green Investigation docs.

• Help windows updated to the last changes.
  
• Wrong resolution for DPP >96 screens resolved.
  
• Cabbage seeds was missing in the Botany Lab.
  
• WASD keys were blocking game hotkeys for opening inventory, market, food and other menus. Now you can access any game shortcut at the same time than moving camera.
  
• We uploaded a new dll version for our audio libraries to help on some users issues.
  
• Morale bonus from entertainment buildings was giving always the max bonus.

• Interface text generation has been optimized to run faster.
  
• Log message queries have been optimized to not impact FPS on new queries.
  
• UI responsiveness improved (still more work to do in this area).

As always, thanks for your interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

Hello everyone!
Here we are again to give you a fresh summary of what we’ve been up to during this week.

So far, fellow players, you haven’t had much to worry about your colonists. Here it is the first of many things you’ll have to be aware of from now on: diseases.

The Health Panel will show you the medical status of your colony. Providing information such as how many colonists are sick, what is the level of danger of their sickness and how many resources your Care Centers are producing to solve those problems. Everything you need to deal with this new feature.

Here you can take a peek at the window. And remember, you’ll have to be alert from now on!



The Creation Kit will be the main modding tool for Project Aura. Inside it you will find the Quest Kit, the tool players will use to create their own breathtaking stories through a series of quests.

With it you’ll be able to create variables, choose the rewards and objectives of the mission, and perform various actions: such as giving the player items, money or even activating user-made quest items or productions.


Since today, we have opened a new specific forum for modding on Steam!

We want you to be able to track every colonist and make of him/her a deeper resource, and there are some changes toward this goal:

1. Awakening colonists will be now more expensive, on the other hand, the amount of workers required per lane is going to be reduced.
   
2. Colonists, once reached level 10, won't auto-promote to a higher rank, instead you will have to do it yourself with a cost in influence docs (diplomacy).
   
3. Colonists will now improve their skills based on their activity, up to a value limited by their rank. To keep improving their skills, you will need to promote the char.

Once we publish our next patch, you will be able to test these changes by enabling the “test” mode inside the game.
Here it’s explained how to do that.



Coming soon:More buildings are being made, bugs fixed here and there and, last but not least, we’re happy to announce that we’re developing a feature that’s been requested a lot: a short campaign that will serve as a tutorial.

That’s all we have to say. Remember to stay tuned every Friday for more info and have a happy Halloween!

Thanks for the interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

Hello everyone!
Here we are again to give you a fresh summary of what we’ve been up to during this week.

So far, fellow players, you haven’t had much to worry about your colonists. Here it is the first of many things you’ll have to be aware of from now on: diseases.

The Health Panel will show you the medical status of your colony. Providing information such as how many colonists are sick, what is the level of danger of their sickness and how many resources your Care Centers are producing to solve those problems. Everything you need to deal with this new feature.

Here you can take a peek at the window. And remember, you’ll have to be alert from now on!



The Creation Kit will be the main modding tool for Project Aura. Inside it you will find the Quest Kit, the tool players will use to create their own breathtaking stories through a series of quests.

With it you’ll be able to create variables, choose the rewards and objectives of the mission, and perform various actions: such as giving the player items, money or even activating user-made quest items or productions.


Since today, we have opened a new specific forum for modding on Steam!

We want you to be able to track every colonist and make of him/her a deeper resource, and there are some changes toward this goal:

1. Awakening colonists will be now more expensive, on the other hand, the amount of workers required per lane is going to be reduced.
   
2. Colonists, once reached level 10, won't auto-promote to a higher rank, instead you will have to do it yourself with a cost in influence docs (diplomacy).
   
3. Colonists will now improve their skills based on their activity, up to a value limited by their rank. To keep improving their skills, you will need to promote the char.

Once we publish our next patch, you will be able to test these changes by enabling the “test” mode inside the game.
Here it’s explained how to do that.



Coming soon:More buildings are being made, bugs fixed here and there and, last but not least, we’re happy to announce that we’re developing a feature that’s been requested a lot: a short campaign that will serve as a tutorial.

That’s all we have to say. Remember to stay tuned every Friday for more info and have a happy Halloween!

Thanks for the interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

Hello everyone!

We are closing in to the Beta 3 release date, and from now on we'll be doing a weekly recap of everything we're currently working on!



We've been developing a new energy window that open (even) more micro-management features to play with! Boosting the generators or redirecting more juice to some platforms are some of the new features that will be available in the upcoming updates. But, as always, be careful with your colony management! Every choice has its benefits and payoffs :P




Yes! Finally! We are moving forward with this topic. Soon a solid and rich background will be available, so we can start on making the campaigns and creating a compelling story for the game! We bet most of you wonder about what is left in the new world after the climate disaster and what's about all those corporations around.


And, related to what I mentioned above, in order to work on the quests we'll be needing: The Quest Kit! (use with caution). This modding tool will let us develop the missions for Project Aura, so we can craft exactly how those play and feel during the game. And guess what? It will be available to the modders to use!! It will be the first of many, many choices we'll implement for the modder community: items, corporations, technology...

Coming soon:

So, what's next? We'll be working later on: new entertainment buildings, the Care Center features, the diseases system,...and much more, as always! There's always stuff to improve and things to be done until Beta 3!


That's all. Remember to stay tuned every Friday for more info! Have a nice weekend!

Thanks for the interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

Hello everyone!

We are closing in to the Beta 3 release date, and from now on we'll be doing a weekly recap of everything we're currently working on!



We've been developing a new energy window that open (even) more micro-management features to play with! Boosting the generators or redirecting more juice to some platforms are some of the new features that will be available in the upcoming updates. But, as always, be careful with your colony management! Every choice has its benefits and payoffs :P




Yes! Finally! We are moving forward with this topic. Soon a solid and rich background will be available, so we can start on making the campaigns and creating a compelling story for the game! We bet most of you wonder about what is left in the new world after the climate disaster and what's about all those corporations around.


And, related to what I mentioned above, in order to work on the quests we'll be needing: The Quest Kit! (use with caution). This modding tool will let us develop the missions for Project Aura, so we can craft exactly how those play and feel during the game. And guess what? It will be available to the modders to use!! It will be the first of many, many choices we'll implement for the modder community: items, corporations, technology...

Coming soon:

So, what's next? We'll be working later on: new entertainment buildings, the Care Center features, the diseases system,...and much more, as always! There's always stuff to improve and things to be done until Beta 3!


That's all. Remember to stay tuned every Friday for more info! Have a nice weekend!

Thanks for the interest in Project Aura ;)
--
Pixel Quality Games
http://www.projectaura.com
Twitter: @ProjectAuraGame
Facebook: ProjectAuraGame

In this new patch we have redesigned the management bars which have been merged with the log panel to make the interface a bit more clear.
A new full-screen mode has been implemented to avoid alt-tabbing issues and, finally, you will find a fully working log.
Please, keep reading for more details:

Log panel is now interactive and a bit more verbose. Its main features:

• Interactive messages:
You may find some parts of the messages are in square brackets. Click on them to access its related content. Clicking on:

• A building will open its Org chart
  
• An item will open inventory
  
• A char will open the char sheet
  
• A char no longer in colony, will open the Org chart he/she worked.
  
• etc.

*If the information is related to an element in the world like a building, hold shift and click to go to it.

• Filter messages per category:

1. Citizenship
   
2. Corps and Quests
   
3. Climate & Energy
   
4. Production
   
5. Supplies

• Filter messages per message gravity:

1. none, used to hide messages (text in grey)
   
2. low (text in white)
   
3. med (text in yellow)
   
4. high, will display an on screen popup (text in red)

• You can assign a message gravity yourself: Right click on a message in the log and choose.
• When a log message includes a reference to an item or a char, it will take a color related to their tier: green, blue, violet, orange.
• There have been added 3 new options to the setup window (Options->Game). There you can disable the popup window and log text colors. Hover mouse on the available options for more info.

Alt Tabbing shouldn't be an issue any more.

They now sit on top of the log and have been merged.
*We have added a new button(disabled) in the management bar to access Govern Panel, this feature is still under development.

Auto sell option will only sell default production items, if a blueprint with the option set produces something unexpected it will be notified in the log and not sold by default.

• Solved an issue where some ATI video cards users were having a crash after launching game.
• Some players were experiencing screen flickers on game launch due to a bad setup built by the application. We are preventing this now!
• Solved an issue in the Colony Expansion panel where it was no possible to select platforms 1, 2, 11, and 12 on Ring 3.
• Text generation process has been optimized, now it is faster and requires less memory.
• Other minor issues and typos corrected.

Thanks for your interest in Project Aura. Many cool news to come! :)

In this new patch we have redesigned the management bars which have been merged with the log panel to make the interface a bit more clear.
A new full-screen mode has been implemented to avoid alt-tabbing issues and, finally, you will find a fully working log.
Please, keep reading for more details:

Log panel is now interactive and a bit more verbose. Its main features:

• Interactive messages:
You may find some parts of the messages are in square brackets. Click on them to access its related content. Clicking on:

• A building will open its Org chart
  
• An item will open inventory
  
• A char will open the char sheet
  
• A char no longer in colony, will open the Org chart he/she worked.
  
• etc.

*If the information is related to an element in the world like a building, hold shift and click to go to it.

• Filter messages per category:

1. Citizenship
   
2. Corps and Quests
   
3. Climate & Energy
   
4. Production
   
5. Supplies

• Filter messages per message gravity:

1. none, used to hide messages (text in grey)
   
2. low (text in white)
   
3. med (text in yellow)
   
4. high, will display an on screen popup (text in red)

• You can assign a message gravity yourself: Right click on a message in the log and choose.
• When a log message includes a reference to an item or a char, it will take a color related to their tier: green, blue, violet, orange.
• There have been added 3 new options to the setup window (Options->Game). There you can disable the popup window and log text colors. Hover mouse on the available options for more info.

Alt Tabbing shouldn't be an issue any more.

They now sit on top of the log and have been merged.
*We have added a new button(disabled) in the management bar to access Govern Panel, this feature is still under development.

Auto sell option will only sell default production items, if a blueprint with the option set produces something unexpected it will be notified in the log and not sold by default.

• Solved an issue where some ATI video cards users were having a crash after launching game.
• Some players were experiencing screen flickers on game launch due to a bad setup built by the application. We are preventing this now!
• Solved an issue in the Colony Expansion panel where it was no possible to select platforms 1, 2, 11, and 12 on Ring 3.
• Text generation process has been optimized, now it is faster and requires less memory.
• Other minor issues and typos corrected.

Thanks for your interest in Project Aura. Many cool news to come! :)