Hi :) Lee here (FE lead dev)-- I think we can all agree that posting here is somewhat over-due, and we've fallen into the all-too-common pattern (for better or worse) of posting small updates over on Discord whilst neglecting to mirror such things over here. I think this comes from such bite-size updates feeling too insignificant to warrant a mention on the store page itself, and us tending to direct elsewhere those interested in finding out more. It was suggested to me that it might make sense to try grouping some of these updates previously posted on the Discord into slightly more meatier posts here on Steam, so whilst this might seem a little out of context to get started with, I figure why not get things rolling :D
Also, you can skip to the bottom if you prefer to just watch some new video footage.
Points of interest beyond planets
One of my more recent drives has been to include focal points other than planets/moons-- a kind of location that I refer to as a Region. Now we can place features in a more typical 'flat' area of space, and still attribute scripting elements and interaction with things placed there in a similar way to how we interact with planet surface elements. The chief driving force behind wanting such areas was to be able to feature warp gates and their surrounding infrastructure, and have the fleet behave appropriately around such structures rather than trying to move in orbital arcs like they do in orbit.
I've also spent some time making sure that warping between solar systems now works with the new region approach and tinkered with the warp sequence itself to make it more, err, engaging. You can actually park ships at different outgoing gates and each gate that has at least one ship parked up is a viable target for warping out. Only the ships parked at the gate you select will actually be carried forward to the next system, however!
Improving space ambiance with radio chatter
Feeling like a game about saving the last of humanity needed more, well, evidence of actual humanity in it-- I've been prototyping the idea of having 'dynamic' radio chatter between ships of the fleet. This system essentially delivers appropriate lines of dialogue that simulates ships talking to each other-- trying to inject some semblance of 'professionalism' without necessarily branching fully into a militaristic vision of the future. You would think communications tech would have advanced in 700 years to not sound like walkie talkies, but you've got to go with what people are familiar with :p
Space exploration and discovery
First off, the right-hand menu System panel has been updated a fair bit so that it can be used to hop the camera around the system, plus it now shows only what worlds you've actually explored (sent a ship to), whilst others are shown as greyed-out icons. Beyond that, ground points of interest are only available to view once the world has been explored (these are partly for flavour, and partly to direct players to interesting places on the surface). Ticking off the points of interest involves sending a ground unit down to the spot indicated, so that then becomes part of the surface exploration aspects (note that you also can only see the surface of worlds via the satellite camera view until you actually send a unit down to the ground too). The tactical map display now also shows whether you've discovered a particular location in the system too.
Selection palettes and cargo transfers
Recently, I've been re-working the group selection system: it now shows 'mini selection palettes' for all the fleet entities that you've got currently selected by opening the Assets side panel. This is just a great way to keep track of the sub-system damage and current actions that each unit is undertaking, plus it gives a location marker and can be used to focus the camera on specific units, remove units from the current selection group and change the current 'main' selection, which is the unit that gets the full selection palette in the bottom left of the screen. You can TAB and shift-TAB to cycle through the current selection group to change this too.
Beyond this, we also improved how cargo is transported between fleet capital ships, providing more UI functionality to 'pin' certain destination targets and effortlessly set up transfers between the two ships. Dropships will actually wait until the best time to deploy, and of course there's matching radio chatter depicting the logistics of all of this as it takes place. On the support craft side, we also improved the way that such vessels make there way back to their respective home capitals-- intercepting a moving ship at a future rendezvous point, rather than just flying directly towards it. We still want to improve the docking animations and such, but that's a later goal!
Miscellaneous improvements
The Logbook keeps track of all the notifications you receive as Fleet Commander, letting you step through and find everything that has been going on whilst you were busy elsewhere. We've also improved things like waypoint markers and sensor bubbles, and a whole bunch of UI indicators as we iteratively work towards the final look and feel of the game, and try to ensure everything is as functional and user-friendly as possible. We've also finally got around to adding a bunch of tooltips across the board, which let's be honest, you can't really do without!
Exclusive footage: Fleet exploration and tense encounters
I thought I’d record some footage showing off the latest developments, so that way you can see how the game is overall coming together. The video below involves a bit of everything – exploring the system, making planetfall, and coming into contact with another survivor group. Things get a little tense towards the end, and you may see an emergency evac called in!
This video is recorded in a recent build at 1440p, so it is a little more representative of the final look and feel of the game than my usual lazy video recordings! Enjoy!
Early Access release plans
Progress on Fragile Existence is going well! However, I’m sure some of you are wondering whether it will be out in Early Access by the end of this year (which is a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder). In short - afraid not! It's an ambitious title and there's still a number of features left to implement and test properly, but I'm hoping you'll agree that progress is at least happening and that we're working on something that is worth spending the time to get right. A lot of my more recent work is really dialling in and getting the minute-to-minute look and feel of the game where we want it, and I guess it's pretty cliché, but it really is ready when it's ready: there's only so many hours in the day and not everything is straightforward enough that it all instantly comes together the way you initially plan it (as I always say: spherical worlds make literally everything harder, and that alone is certainly true!)
If you want to keep up to date with developments as they happen, I encourage you to join the Discord, though the plan is that such iterative updates will get filtered across to here too in future; otherwise, don’t expect to hear anything on the Early Access release date until next year, I'm afraid. The Steam store page has been updated to reflect this.
Cheers for sticking around :)