As some of you know, Plasma was part of Steam Next Fest in October 2022, when we had a Demo of the game available to try out for a 3 week period.
We are often asked what has changed since the Demo, loads of things went in (too many to list!) but we'll focus on the more important changes.
Homebase
We added a special world called Homebase, a reference point for players to always come back to and explore. This is the first place players visit when finishing the tutorial, and is designed to be the place you return to when you finish playing a Staged World or just want to relax in a familiar setting.
New Components
We added a lot of new components that you can have fun building with, here are some highlights:
- Color Sensor - It senses and outputs colors
- Component Spawner - It spawns a Component
- Color Painter - Allows you to automate the coloring of Components
- Zero Gravity - Disables gravity on the Device it's attached to
- Holographic Screen - A neat new screen with no frame and transparent background
- Death Ray and Self Destructor - Components that allow you to destroy Devices
- Communicator - Allows you to send/receive data in real-time between Steam players
Handheld Devices
Using a special new Component, the Player Connector, we opened up the possibility of building handheld devices that mount to the player, allowing you to build all kinds of handheld fun! A good example of this is found in the Homebase, keep an eye out for it!
New Biomes
New exciting Biomes to build in!
- Mars
- Moon
- A new huge (and we mean huge!) Lab world - totally flat and empty!
Staged Worlds
We overhauled and put a lot of work into the Staging tools. With these you can define a number of permissions in the World, effectively allowing you to create a specific experience to share with other players.
These could be challenges, puzzles, stories, adventures, explorations, whatever you can think of you can make it happen in a Staged World.
In fact, the Tutorial and Homebase you experience in the game were made using the same tools we give you.
New Lua integration
By popular demand we switched to Luau for our Lua implementation which allowed us to add:
- Image creation and per-pixel manipulation
- Proper table and array support
- Better support for out-of-the-box Lua functionalities
- Huge performance increase
Custom Palette
Some players found the in-built color palette too limiting, so we added the ability to edit the palette and customize it to your liking! Want to make that vomit green robot you've always dreamed of? Well now you can, while also annoying our art director at the same time!
Lots of Quality of Life improvements
Too many to list! But, just for you, here's a short list of some we can actually remember:
- Added Array data type to Sketch (Number Array and Text Array)
- Texture resolution increased to 680x512
- Device maximum link capacity increased from 64 to 256 (a link is a moving part)
- Configurable linear/angular drag on Devices
- Documentation for some of the more complex nodes (Lua, Math Expression, etc.)
- Thousands of bug fixes! Millions!
- All the other things we can't remember!
It's been an incredibly long journey for the team to get to where we are now (over 5 years, in case anyone's keeping count) - we are so very excited for the Early Access release and can't wait to see what you will build in your engineering playground!
Thanks for reading!