Hello everyone!
I hope you are all doing well heading into the later half of this year! I know this is a busy time for many, so hopefully many of you are able to find time to take breaks, keep healthy, and play some games :)
Following up on the last post - I am now moved into my new place and have my new studio area setup. This means I'm now back to work full-time, with my main priority this last week being on the upcoming v0.2.4 patch, which is shaping up to be quite a large content-focused update!
Get Vectorio 20% off (September 6th - 13th)
Before we dive into it this is also just a heads up that the game is currently on sale this week for 20% off, so if you like what you see here and have been thinking about diving in, now's a good time to pick it up!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2082350/Vectorio/
If you're still not convinced about the current state of the game, or are waiting for it to be fleshed out further, wishlisting & following it on Steam helps immensely. It improves the chances of Vectorio being shown to other people, and keeps you updated & in-the-loop on the latest news. A win win!
Alright, I've said my piece, let's dive into what you can expect in the upcoming v0.2.4 patch!
What's coming in v0.2.4
This update is mainly focused around actioning initial feedback from v0.2's live release, as well as iterating on more gameplay systems that have been long-overdue for some love. Let's dig in...
Claim Mechanics
One of the bigger changes to this update is how the claim mechanic works, which has been a big point of contention in the past with many players finding it annoying & difficult to work with. I agree, so in this update it will be receiving some large changes to help make building bases less of a pain...
No Building Restrictions
You will now be able to build anywhere without needing to worry about the area being claimed beforehand, which should make expanding much much easier!
Unclaimed Penalty
The caveat to this is unclaimed buildings will receive an "unclaimed" penalty stat, When a building has this penalty, it will operate at a drastically reduced efficiency. This makes reclaimers act more as "power poles", except they don't require tethering across any power network. (yet, still in consideration)
This penalty is still being worked on, and will be visible in a buildings info panel.
Removal Of Claimer Explosions
When a claimer is removed, it will no longer destroy all the surrounding buildings. The buildings will receive the unclaimed penalty stat, but besides that they will remain. Again, this change is done in the hopes of making adjusting your base & expanding a much easier process!
UI Improvements
As always with any update comes a host of new UI improvements, and this time my focus has really been on establishing a consistent design theme & quality-level that I believe would be more representative of what the UI would look & feel like at 1.0.
Right now I've been establishing this design theme for the top bar, which includes your heat, power, and region overview. A good example of this updated UI is the heat element specifically...
New UI design for heat:
You'll notice there's a bunch of new details in this UI element, including some background smoke, animated embers, reduced border width, cleaner text, and a more pleasing text layout.
This is the type of quality I am hoping to achieve for 1.0 across every UI element in the game. I want different parts of the UI to feel unique to what it's displaying, whilst still retaining a design that is easy to read and fits the overall theme of Vectorio. It's a challenge, but one that is doable!
Going back to this top bar specifically, this is the new design (still WIP) for this entire bar...
Top bar design update (WIP):
You'll notice that the same smoke texture is repeated on the power side; this is not final and is very much placeholder, as I still need to design a small little animation for the power that does a better job at representing that strategic resource. Right now the idea is for this to be little sparks!
This is all I can show you for right now, but you can expect more improvements & updates to the other parts of the UI around the game similar to this when the update goes live!
Resource Tree
For those that haven't been keeping up on Discord, this is an entirely new tech tree dedicated to resources, where you slowly research new information about resources that enable you to be more proficient with those resources inside of your base.
This not only includes previously hidden details like "power value" and "burn time", but also the rate at which these resources are collected, transported, and stored throughout your base.
New resource panel with revealed info:
Below was an early mock-up of how I figured this tree might progress, where you'd input more of a specific resource to find out more details about it, as well as upgrade the efficiency of it inside of different logistical buildings. More of a passive upgrade path using pre-existing lab resources.
Early mock up of Resource Tree progression:
However, I've started to iterate on this idea a bit more, and I'm now considering moving it out of the research tree and into a separate proficiency tree. However, more testing is required on my side to determine the best approach, just know this sort of "resource upgrade" type tree is planned for v0.2.4!
Merging v0.2.3g
This update was originally planned to be v0.2.3g Live, however since the update has grown quite a bit in size, it's been renamed to v0.2.4 to more accurately reflect what's in the update.
While v0.2.4 has it's own features with it, a lot of the improvements in this update stem from what was going to be in v0.2.3g, which is currently in testing on experimental. If you wish to read up on these changes, check out the update post linked below! It contains quite a bit of exciting stuff as well.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2082350/announcements/detail/4267810371710625315
Quality of Life
While not directly related to new content, this is arguably just as, if not more important. A big point of this update is focusing more on quality of life, which mainly revolves around making the game easier and more accessible to play. Here's a list of all the QOL changes coming in v0.2.4!
Highlight QOL changes in v0.2.4 (not inclusive):
- Some entities can now be "replaced" (i.e. replacing walls with barriers)
- Power usage statistics, to help track what buildings are using the most power.
- Holding control in drone selection will let you select groups of storages, collectors, etc.
- Destroying a reclaimer will no longer destroy all buildings inside. (seen above)
- Area delete tool, letting you remove a large chunk of your base at one time.
- Turrets that require ammo will no longer require direct input, and will instead draw from your global storage bank instead. This is a VERY much a testing change and may not be permanent.
- Changes to some of the resource designs to make them look more unique and distinguishable.
- More ways to control the camera, including screen panning and a dedicated mouse drag button.
- And finally, at long last, a way to queue research techs!
Early example of building replacement:
Much more to come!
What we covered here is just a taste of what's to come, with update v0.2.4 being very focused on making the gameplay feel a lot more smooth. There's more to come with this update, and this is just the start of a long line of updates planned to come out over the course of the next year.
Just as one last reminder, Vectorio is currently 20% off on Steam for the next week. If you wanna stay up-to-date with what's being worked on, also consider joining the Discord server linked below!
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Vectorio
Thanks for reading!
~ Ben