Hey everyone!
Its time for the next big update! There is a lot to cover! With this update we also focused on preparing the game for the next big update the "Military Update" by fixing a lot of bugs especially around the multiplayer part! But now let`s have a look at the changes and additions:
Visuals:
+ NEW Added atmospheres and clouds to planets! Clouds and Atmospheres can be toggled on and off separately in the advanced graphics options. Clouds will also become invisible if you get too close to them to prevent them from blocking your view onto the planet surface when building or planing your colony.
+ NEW Added particle effects to many buildings!
+ NEW Added actual residents to cities which will wander around from building to building and make your cities look a lot more alive! Higher tier city buildings will spawn more residents to make your cities look more and more densely populated
+ NEW Added actual light sources to many buildings throughout the game which will turn on at nighttime or if another planet blocks the planet the building is on
+ NEW The game will now display an icon above buildings that require your attention! Example: Farms without at least one field will display a missing fields icon and buildings which are not supplied with enough energy will display a missing energy icon
+ Buildings will now also light up if they are in shadow because of another planet that is blocking the light
~ Made some improvements to minimap rendering to improve the clarity
NEW Diplomacy:
Added a diplomacy system which allows players to negotiate deals, treaties with and without consequences.
Currently there are 3 relation states:
- Peace: The default state, not a friend but also not a foe
- Trade Treaty: The next level above "Peace" which allows the two factions to trade goods between each other!
- Alliance: Currently has no real effect but with next update the two factions will share the same enemies
"War" will be added with the Military Update.
You can also demand or offer/gift money!
On top of that, all of these function can be combined at will so you can offer somebody a Trade Treaty in exchange for some money or you can also demand money and threaten to cancel the Alliance if with person doesn't pay!
We plan to expand this system just like the research system with the coming updates!
NEW Trade:
You can now trade with colonies of other factions in multiplayer! To do that we added a new tab to the spaceport menu where you can add trade entries to buy or sell certain goods.
You can specify the price per unit you are selling or buying at as well as an item limit.
For example you can sell vegetables at 4 credits per unit as long as your colony has more than 10 vegetables in stock! That you can always keep enough goods in stock while selling the rest.
The spaceport menu now also has a tab for the recent trades history which will show you the past 20 deals that happened!
NEW Neutral trader:
Added a neutral trader that will visit the solar system every 10 minutes to trade with everyone in the solar system!
We thought this would be a cool addition especially for solo players so that they can also make use of the trading system!
The trader has a buget per faction that increases with the tier of the largest colony of each faction!
You can identify the trader by his special spaceship as well as his special minimap icon.
NEW Statistics menu:
Added a statistics menu that allows you to manage the production and consumption of goods! On top of that you can manage your income and see the amount of buildings you have on a planet. You can open the menu via the button in the building info menu or via the hotkey (default is "N").
Performance:
~ Optimized frustum culling for buildings
~ Optimized shadows. They should now perform noticably better on higher settings and look a lot better on lower settings at the same performance
~ Optimized ambient occlusion
~ Optimized god rays. They should also perform noticably better
Multiplayer:
* Fixed a possible desync related to trade routes
* Fixed a possible desync caused by moving a building
* Fixed a possible desync related to residence satisfaction
* Fixed savegames sometimes not being submitted correctly
* Fixed the world seed being display as a floating point number for clients in a multiplayer lobby
* Fixed research effects being shown if you select a building or spaceship of a different faction
Quality of Life:
+ Added the power production of buildings to the construction costs tooltip
+ Added hotkeys for the four buildings tool. The default keys are assigned to the number keys above the regular letters on your keyboard: Deconstruction = "1", Upgrade building = "2", Pipette = "3", Move building = "4". The keybindings for these can be changed in the options menu as always
+ Added a scroll bar to the chat window that will show up if somebody sends a long chat message that exceeds the windows width
~ The energy shortage notification now has a cooldown to prevent it from being spammed to often
~ Sounds of the same type that are close to eachother will now be a lot smarter to prevent them from overlapping weirdly
Bug fixes:
* Fixed a bug that caused spaceships that are on a trade route to stop randomly
* Fixed the building button in the resource menu sometimes showing up even though the building is not unlocked
* Fixed the technology effect of "Servicing Robots" which reduced the upkeep by 100% instead of 25%
* Fixed black squares sometimes appearing on the planet surface on AMD GPUs
* Fixed the building info menu popping up for a brief moment when select a spaceship that is on top of a building
* Fixed god rays passing though emissive parts
* Fixed multiple GUI layout issues on 16:10 displays
* Fixed another issue that caused buildings and spaceships to be invisible or corrupted
Hotfix [29.10.2022]:
* Fixed an issue that caused the trader to desync in multiplayer (only a visual bug, didnt cause an actualy desync)
* Fixed an issue that caused the dairy, charcoal kiln and fracking tower to not work at all
* Fixed biofibres not showing up in the statistics menu
* Fixed a desync related to diplomatic treaties containing money gifts/demands
* Fixed a UI icon alignment issue in the diplomacy menu
There you go! We hope you enjoy the new features and changes!
TeamJA