Greetings, Pioneers to a new edition of Weekly Apart, our, yes, weekly dev blog to keep you posted about the state of our space colony and automation sim! Today marks the, checking notes, 21st episode and this series by now has become a real treasure trove of knowledge for all things Dawn Apart. In today's edition we'll talk about our agent system, but please feel free to browse through previous posts covering everything from lore to the soundtrack to our user interface.
But first we want to thank you for pushing us into the top 500 wishlisted games on Steam according to SteamDB - as of today we are ranking exactly on spot #500! To keep climbing the charts please recruit more friends and fellow gamers to join our interstellar mining mission and make sure to follow us on our various social media channels!
Multitasking
While previously we mainly focused on developing the automation/factory aspect of the game, in the last few weeks we finally began to tackle the space colony elements, especially the daily routines of the pioneers living on Aurora. Therefore we developed an agent system that controls, manages and prioritizes the task of each of your colonists as they navigate the daily hustle of living in a strange new world all while working for a corrupt interstellar mining corporation.
To test our system we have for now settled on the, among others, following fun activities: transforming raw materials into extraordinary marvels of technology (also known as 'crafting'); felling towering alien trees to get the resources needed for expansion; hitting those comfy bunk beds for a well-deserved cosmic siesta; tirelessly repairing every nut, bolt, or nanochip in case a leaky space pipe wreaks havoc on your infrastructure; preparing tasty meals for your colony's canteen; hitting the bathrooms for a quick decompression session; and putting out raging flames that threaten the very fabric of your settlement. For a (very work-in-progress) sneak peak watch how Pioneer Sebastian saves the day by extinguishing four burning walls:
Free-range colonists
Also below you can see a work-in-progress version of our Priority Panel GUI, clearly influenced by Rimworld, which is a great source of inspiration for us (of course we're putting our own spin on the space colony genre). The panel, which in-game is just one button away, list all activities of a colonist as well as showing the skill level for each activity. For now all actions have the same priorities except eating and going to the bathroom which replenish agent attributes after they decrease over time.
Obviously this was just a tiny glimpse into our agent system which will be more fleshed out in the upcoming weeks and polished for our demo scheduled for summer. But overall it is very exciting for us to see our colony slowly coming to life and pioneers roaming around freely and independently on Aurora's surface - so we wanted to share it! Stay tuned for more updates and see you next week!