Well, steam next fest has been a blast! Wanted to thank everyone for hopping on streams, downloading the demo, and wishlisting Minicology! I've gotten a lot of feedback on controls, movement, tutorials and UI and have put together an update that hopefully addresses a lot of these issues.
If you want to take full advantage of these tutorial improvements, I suggest you start a new world!
Changelog:
Changes to event tags
- Event tags will now automatically highlight for 30 seconds after an event/tutorial starts. Hopefully this brings player attention towards the event tags, which often feature new and helpful information on how to play.
- Added a motion sickness tutorial tag - some people have commented that the rotating screen is nauseating. In my experience, changing the speed of the camera rotation can help with motion sickness - so if you're unhappy with the rotation, try playing around with camera speed settings!
- Added a generator tutorial. When Placing your first Generator, an event tag will pop up with helpful instructions on how to use generators.
- Added an event tag tutorial. Again, event tags often feature very helpful info! Mouse over event tags often, and select them to change where your wayfinder arrow points - the wayfinder will help you locate events and points of interest on each planet!
- Changed description of the star event. There was some confusion about whether catching '3 stars' referred to the currency 'stars' or the shooting star object, which drops 10 star currency. Description has been changed to say "collect 30 star pieces", which hopefully reduces the confusion :)
- Locked chests event now contextually refers to the nearest locked chest. In the future, I may give each of the 3 locked chests its own event tag and description - but for now, the description refers to nearest locked chest on screen!
- Climbing and Sprinting tutorial now requires that the player spend several seconds climbing and sprinting before it is marked as complete. Many players were jumping and climbing accidentally, and the tutorial was marked as complete without them every really learning these helpful mobility shortcuts.
UI Changes
- Shift+clicking now properly stacks items of the same type together, and furnaces now properly auto-place fuels in the fuel slot and furnace materials in the input slot.
- Research stations now give an indication that they can be used to print. This was always the case - many people thought that you had to memorize recipes, which would be terrible and demanding! You can craft directly from the research station by clicking the hex tiles - it's a few seconds slower than the 3d printer, which rewards some light memorization, but does not require the tedium of running back and forth. Again, this was always possible - but UI now makes it clear that you do NOT have to memorize crafting recipes.
- Added tabs on research station that allow you to switch between printer and research functionality.
- Pause menu now has volume sliders.
- Gear structures now have a small tab that tells you how to spin gears. The tab also notes that any gear structure can be automated with a generator.
- Cooking menu now only lets you drop a single food item in each slot. Hopefully this clears up some confusion and indicates to people that the cooking process can be started by placing a food item in each slot of the cooking UI
- Repaired spaceship now starts with 25% charge, so you can start exploring the stars without hooking it up to a generator first. Spaceship UI also indicates that spaceship power can be provided with a generator.
Balance Changes
- Ships now always crash on the ground. Landing on a floating island or other tricky location was always fun, and increased replay-ability of the tutorial. However, enough new players were confused by their spawn location that I've decided to guarantee a safe landing location .
- Additionally, to reduce confusion, crashed ships no longer start with a 3d printer. The 3d printer has always just been a lighter-weight version of the Research Station - one that allows fast crafting without scans. I included it in the crashed ship loot pool to allow players to start crafting faster. However, many players were confused about the difference between a research station and 3d printer - so I figure it's best to start players off with the research station and let them get comfortable with that before introducing the less-powerful but cheaper 3D printer. To balance this, 3d Printers have been added to the loot pools of nearly every challenge chest. This will also help if you've forgotten to take a printer with you to another planet ;)
- Tier 1 minibots are now less punishing. Instead of being activated by proximity, players now have to interact with them to awaken the boss. Tier 1 minibots now also despawn after 25 seconds with no interaction, rather than 45 seconds. Tier 1 minibots have had their health pool reduced from 250 to 200.
- Cave-ins are now less frequent. Players must mine at least 10 crystals to trigger a cave-in, rather than 5. After 10 crystals have been mined, chances of a cave-in increase for every additional crystal.
- Players now gain heat slightly slower.
- Trees now drop wood, rather than logs. Refining logs into wood confused new players enough that I've decided to remove them for now. They will likely return - as well as unique logs for each tree type - once axes are implemented. Axes will function similarly to pickaxes do now, but for trees.
- Speaking of pickaxes, pickaxes have been rebalanced. Pickaxes now guarantee the player at least one metal shard or crystal dust, as long as the strike has been timed right. If the strike is timed wrong, the pickaxe will lose durability, but the shard will not be destroyed.
- Animals now avoid ledges more aggressively.
- Sprinting has been rebalanced. Players sprint slightly slower, but use less stamina.
- Groves in the main planet will now spawn with a higher ratio of crops to herbs. Hopefully this means fewer players get stuck starving, and more are able to complete the initial terraforming chest.
- Piranha and urchin invasions now have slightly lower frequency.
Minor Changes
- Chests have been resprited to look a little more chest-like.
- Buckets have been resprited to look a little more bucket-like
- Minicology should now auto-detect whether or not you have a graphics card and enable/disable GPU mode accordingly
- Fixed bug where targeted lunges (such as the lunge attack of tier 1 minibots) allowed enemies to lunge backwards. This should make some of these fights sliiiighlly easier, and also look a bit more 'natural'
- Lambcats have been resprited. I actually had this change done before the demo started but forgot to push the new graphic ;)
- Tracking rockets emit light
- Harpoons are no longer gravity-affected projectiles
- fixed bug where multiple bombs being thrown within 0.1 seconds of each other caused an infinite-chain-reaction-mega-explosion. Was fun while it lasted.
- Pocket solar panel nerfed
- Vertical gardens have been removed as a craft recipe. These had some issues with saving/loading and are best left un-craftable until they've been polished a bit.
- Players will now automatically duck if in a 1-block-high space.