Adaptory’s first major Early Access update is now live!!
The Materials Update touches on every aspect of the game, from making the game easier (or harder) with difficulty levels, adding more materials and resource management to the game, refinement and recipes, new buildings and options, and lots of balance and quality of life tweaks; the full patch notes are listed below.
If you previously found Adaptory too easy or too hard, this is the update for you!
Steam should automatically update your copy of Adaptory to the latest version. If you don’t already have the game, our publisher indie.io have included Adaptory in their publisher Steam sale, launching today. Get 25% off Adaptory for a very limited time!
What’s next?
Now that Update 1 is finally out, I’ll be spending today watching streams, celebrating the release, and trying to find any last remaining bugs and balance issues to patch. Please let me know if you plan on streaming Update 1, or if you find any issues!
I’ve learned a lot from the process of developing this update; releasing an Update is quite different than releasing into Early Access, and I’ve taken a lot of notes. I’ve already started production on the second Adaptory update, with a release date TBA, so watch this space – and let me know what you'd like me to prioritise.
What's coming in Update 2, I wonder...?
And if you somehow manage to beat the hardcore difficulty level without cheating, please let me know 😅
Reviews
Thank you very much to everyone on Discord who has helped play and test these unstable versions, and everyone who has sent through feedback, played the game on stream, or left a Steam review since we launched into Early Access. I’ve gratefully read every comment and captured every suggestion.
Reviews are incredibly important to help improve Adaptory’s visibility going forward – so please consider leaving an honest review of Adaptory on Steam. Thank you!
Please consider leaving an honest review of Adaptory on Steam <3
Full patch notes for Update 1 are listed below.
Release notes for Adaptory 0.17 (Update 1: The Materials Update)
New features
Difficulty levels!
Relaxed: for anyone who hasn’t played this kind of game before, give them less stress and more time to explore and learn and understand the mechanics in a much more forgiving (but still challenging) environment
Balanced: (this was the default difficulty before) this should always be fun but slightly challenging
Difficult: for anyone who found ‘balanced’ easy, this should be possible but challenging
Hardcore: the developer isn’t confident this difficulty can be finished
Each difficulty level is made up of a number of different settings:
Building requirements: how many resources are needed to satisfy essential buildings (such as the transmitter and distress beacon)
Explorer death: whether explorers can die from low oxygen, and if death is permanent (dead explorers will still be storable in cryochambers)
Explorer speed: how quickly explorers move
Event frequency: how often the game tries to trigger random world events
Event chance: how often random event tests will succeed, triggering an event
Event scale: increases or decreases the size of events that do occur (how many meteors, length of time, etc.)
Event difficulty: the distribution of events between generally positive and generally negative
Oxygen consumption: how quickly explorers absorb oxygen and convert it into carbon dioxide
Oxygen generation: how much oxygen is generated by trees and oxygen candle holders
Research cost: how many data chips are required per research node
Resources: how many resources are generated in world generation
Plant growth: how quickly plants grow
Plant death: how quickly plants reverse their growth when they fail to meet growth requirements
Stamina consumption: how quickly explorers consume stamina per second
Space exposure: how much mass is lost to unblocked space exposure per second
New buildings!
Gas tank: Can store 250kg of gas, and can be closed manually, or with the circuit network. Can also send a signal to the circuit network
Gas refinery: Can refine gases into new materials, based on its selected recipe
Glass furnace: Explorers can use this to turn sand and salt into glass (and magma)
Grate: Provides foundation to buildings and explorers, but allows liquids and gases to pass through
Liquid refinery: Can refine liquids into new materials, based on its selected recipe
Liquid tank: Can store 5000kg of liquid, and can be closed manually, or with the circuit network. Can also send a signal to the circuit network
Window: Made out of glass, allows light and aurora to pass through while still being impassable to liquids and gases
New building category: Resources
Moved storage box and big storage box into this category
Refining
Materials can now be refined using the liquid and gas refineries
Added “boil water” recipe, turning water into steam
Added “coal liquefaction” recipe, turning coal and steam into crude oil (and more steam)
Added “dry ice” recipe, turning carbon dioxide and water into dry ice and steam
Added “filter salt water” recipe, turning salt water into water and salt
Added “rocket fuel” recipe, turning crude oil and oxygen into rocket fuel
Multiple building elements
Different buildings can now have different building requirements
For example, all tiles and ladders now require a rock material, rather than dirt
Some buildings (research analyser, salt lamp etc.) now require more than one element to build
Existing saves should be automatically migrated, but you’ll probably want to start a new save, since world generation has been updated to generate much less dirt
Updated all biomes to generate iron, more rock types, less dirt
Buildings can be built on top of the same building if the new building has a different primary element
Your choice of primary element for a building type will be stored in your save file, and reloaded in future saves
When the primary element dropdown appears, the total accessible and unreserved mass for that element will also be displayed
Some buildings are now retextured using their primary element, giving you a wider palette to play with
Tile, ladder, background panel
E.g. marble tiles are brighter, basalt tiles are darker
What buildings would you like to be retextured next? Let me know!
Recipes
Buildings that do element conversions and processes (e.g. oxygen generation, oxycan holder) now use recipes
Different buildings can have different possible recipes, and you can select the specific recipe for each building
Selecting a building will display the current building’s recipe
The in-game database will more clearly describe the inputs and outputs for each possible recipe for a building
Recipes can be locked behind different research nodes
When a building changes recipe, any mismatching solid, liquid, or gas stored masses will be automatically ejected into the world
Liquid disintegration action
Explorers can now disintegrate small amounts (less than 100kg per cell) of liquids, anywhere in the world
This permanently deletes the mass from the world, allowing you to clean up puddles of liquids that might be present
This is intended to be temporary until I’ve added more buildings and mechanics to deal with small amounts of liquids, and after work currently planned for Update 2
Liquid disintegration is locked behind the new “disintegration” research node, to not overwhelm new players
New explorer buffs
Above tile: +10% movement speed if directly above a tile (the building)
Above window: -10% happiness, -50% movement speed if directly above a window
Relaxed: +5% happiness if the world difficulty is easy
Nervous: -5% happiness if the world difficulty is difficult
Impending doom: -10% happiness if the world difficulty is hardcore
Added new “refining”, “tanks”, “disintegration”, and “basic rocketry” research nodes
The “sensors” research node now also enables liquid and gas tanks to send signals to the automation network
Added a new neutral random event “shock wave”
The remants of an ancient and distant supernova are washing a random gas over the planetoid, affecting all unblocked space exposure tiles
Added nine new elements: bitumen, crude oil, marble, glass, iron, molten iron, iron gas, rocket fuel, and salt water
Added a new music track to play over the initial game tutorial <3
Story
The distress beacon now requires oxygen and rocket fuel to launch, rather than water and hydrogen
Loading an existing save will automatically replace any stored masses to match
Simulation
Increased liquid packet size from 2kg to 5kg (pipes, pumps, vents, filters)
Oxygen generator has remained at 1kg/sec water consumption, so one liquid pump can now potentially supply five generators
When an explorer is low on oxygen and running to find some, if they pass a location where they can breathe, they will now stop running and breathe that oxygen instead, unless that cell has less than 50g of oxygen (about two seconds’ worth), OR there is a door or hatch occupying this location
This should prevent explorers from interrupting a “running to catch breath” errand too early, and prevent them from holding open doors to catch their breath
Dead explorers will now automatically be pushed out of impassable tiles
Explorers will now not do personal errands in a 1x2 space where the top of the space is occupied by a door/hatch
Explorers must now be immediately next to a door in order to lock/unlock it
The effects of aurora are now considered blocked by a cell with a light absorption factor greater than 25%, rather than if the cell is currently impassable
If an element cell changes phase into a solid, the cell will now turn into a raw item if the cell mass is low (by default, less than 10kg), rather than into a solid tile
Oxygen candle holders and planter boxes will no longer be supplied with more than a single unit at a time (oxycan or seed)
Previously, an oxygen candle holder could be supplied with up to 500kg of oxycans in a single trip, even though one oxycan is normally 35kg
All buildings that now require foundation or ceiling can now also be “buried” in impassable tiles, with a new “buried” overlay icon, preventing them from working
Performance
Moved coal generators’ power generation calculations from the element simulation to the building simulation
Significantly improved the performance of errand pathfinding for worlds with hundreds of tile or supply errands
Improved tile errand simulation performance for worlds with hundreds of supply or storage buildings
Balance
Updated world generation
Tweaked how resources and plants were generated as part of world generation, to work with difficulty levels
World generation can now generate gas pockets
World generation can now generate marble, iron, salt, and salt water
Ocean biomes can now generate salt water springs
Deep biomes can now generate crude oil springs
Oddberries will no longer generate within the first 40% of the world
Increased the natural spring cycle range from (120 ~ 480 sec) to (600 ~ 2400 sec)
Reduced base explorer movement speeds by 10%, just to give everything a bit more space to breathe
Reduced base explorer oxygen consumption from 29.7 g/sec to 14.85 g/sec
Increased explorer carbon dioxide minimum emission mass from 0 g to 5.9 g
This should look more like breathing, and should also result in fewer random carbon dioxide blobs throughout your base
Increased tree building mass from 10kg to 100kg
Elements can now have multiple element tags (e.g. fuel, rock, metal), although these only impact building materials for now
Reduced oxygen generator maximum output storage from 10kg to 2kg per element
Reduced tree photosynthesis maximum conversion rate from 500g/sec (previously enough for 50+ explorers/tree) to 40g/sec (still enough for 10 explorers/tree)
Reduced tree maximum stored mass from 1kg to 0.1kg (oxygen and carbon dioxide)
Increased power generation from coal and coralite by a factor of four
Reduced coal generator fuel consumption, and output generation, by a factor of four
The automation, computing, and sensors research nodes now also require a working research mainframe
Reduced average spring in drought event length from 6.0 days to 3.0 days
Reduced average spring in flood event length from 7.0 days to 4.0 days
Updated random events triggering and size to difficulty level
Random events can now occur based on the total number of tiles dug out, so that long games will continue to have new random events
Updated most random events to increase/decrease their scale/size based on the difficulty level (e.g. more or larger meteors, longer solar flare, etc.)
Increased the average time for random event tests from 0.06 world days to 0.1 days, before difficulty levels
Reduced the global chance of a random event occuring from 100% to 50%
“Spring appeared” random event now triggers up to 30 cells away from an explorer (up from 15)
Reduced the chance of the “spring appeared” event occuring by 33%
Updated how much the internal event budget increases from each type of world action, updated at each random event test (once every 0.1 days)
Passage of time: 0 per world day (not changed)
Digging: increase from 0.0014 to 0.002 per newly dug tile
Total digging: increased from 0 to 0.0001 per total tiles dug
Artefacts: decreased from 1.12 to 0.06 per artefacts unburied
Increased the standard time taken to complete research to 8 seconds per step (was 4 seconds)
Increased minimum time between conversations from 0.01 world days to 0.02 world days
Increased the length of conversations from 0.025 world days to 0.03 world days
Reduced explorers’ base social consumption from 1% per second to 0.5% per second, so they shouldn’t need to talk as much (they were just a little bit tooooo chatty)
Reduced explorers’ base hunger consumption from 0.5% per second to 0.4% per second, so they shouldn’t need to eat as often
Reduced explorers’ base stamina consumption from 0.3% per second to 0.25% per second, so they shouldn’t need to go to bed as often
Explorers now gain an additional 0.4% stamina per second while in bed, making beds much more effective
Increased the stamina gain effect of sleeping on the floor or in a bed by 20%
Increased the visual delay between conversation asks and replies from 3 seconds to 4 seconds
Reduced the chance an explorer would do an idle wander from 0.1% to 0.05%
“Builder” and “hates building” explorer traits are now mutually exclusive
Reduced base space exposure loss from 5g/sec to 2.5g/sec
Space exposure now also loses mass proportional to the mass in each cell, at 0.25%/sec
Accessibility
Added small icons to all elements and item types in the resource counter
Updated the cell information tooltip (element, mass, temperature, lux, etc.)
The tooltip now scales to UI scale %
The tooltip now hides when another tooltip is being displayed from an overlay layer
While dragging a build, the total building requirements for that build will be displayed
Added “no light” overlay icon and tooltip for trees and solar panels without light
Added lock or unlock selected building keyboard shortcut (default L)
Added toggle selected building keyboard shortcut (default T)
Quality of life
The detailed information box in the build panel is now collapsable
Build errands that are accessible, but don’t have enough materials available to supply them, are now rendered in red
Added “suppliable” property to a pending build errand’s panel
Added “accessibility” property to a building that has a pending errand, in the selected building’s “properties” tab
The mass, temperature, and element in liquid and gas pipes is now immediately visible with a tooltip in the liquid or gas network overlay
Selecting a bed will now display e.g. “Frank’s Bed” or “Unassigned Bed” in the selected building panel
You can now hide the “research finished” CHARLI notification until the next research node is finished
Added “blocked by high pressure” overlay icon for springs that are blocked (e.g. by another solid tile)
If the overlay layer has changed from selecting a building in the build panel, the overlay layer will no longer be reset when selecting context-specific “deconstruct” or “cancel” world actions
Explorers who are in danger (less than 40% oxygen) now have a red border in the select explorer panel (at the top of the screen)
When on a supported overlay layer, context-specific errands (build, deconstruct, cancel) are now rendered on top of other errands, making them easier to see
Errands and buildings can now be marked as low priority, and these errands will be done last
Added keyboard shortcut for low priority, default Ctrl+Shift+P
Added new option, “Automatically open all CHARLI events”
For experienced Adaptory players who have seen all of CHARLI’s helpful tips, this can reduce the notification noise
CHARLI will no longer show messages for tutorials and guides completed in other save games
Important events, such as story events and random world events, will still appear
This is turned on by default, but if it works really well, I could make it turn off by default?
Internal
Updated CHARLI to Update 1
Added new “building materials”, “complex buildings”, and “previous tutorials” guides
Refreshed tutorials with a couple more steps and images to help new players
For tutorials highlighting areas in the game, each point is now highlighted separately, rather than a single area showing the maximum bounds of all highlighted points
Fixed long-running world events (solar flare, meteor shower, etc.) not re-opening CHARLI the second time
In-game database improvements
Added “growth test every”, “test success”, and “test failure” properties for each plant type
Buildings and explorers now displays effective rates for e.g. oxygen consumption
The element list now includes separate sections for each element type (e.g. rock, metal, fuel)
Each item type now also lists the type of items it is (e.g. food, seed, fuel)
The difference between coal and coralite power generation is now clearly listed in the in-game database page for coal generator
Added in-game database page for relic items (a generic page)
Tooltips and dropdowns can now align bottom and/or right to the mouse cursor when they appear, so that they are not clipped off the edge of the screen
Updated “base” building category icon
Added particles to springs when liquid is emitted
Added new “locked by circuit” overlay icon to buildings
Updated pending and unconnected circuit network points in the circuit network overlay to be more readable
The selected building panel now displays maximum storage for all input and output slots for every building (pipes, tanks, etc.) without needing to refer to the in-game database
The circuit network overlay now displays visually distinct icons for “read” and “write” points
Added tooltips to circuit network overlay
Improved performance of circuit network overlay renderer
Increased the minimum rendered size of liquid/gas packets from 0% to 20%, so tiny packets are still visible (and not 1px)
The liquid/gas packet renderer is no longer affected by world light levels, so the network and packet contents should be easier to see
Renamed “spring in drought” to “reduced spring” to make it clear the spring is still creating elements
Selecting a research node in the research tree no longer lists the research nodes that it unlocks, because this information is already shown on the tree
The select explorer panel now shows what explorers are doing with an icon (sleeping, eating, having a tantrum, etc.)
Bitumen is a valid solid fuel for coal generators, with more than twice the efficiency of coal, but does not naturally generate in world generation
Cleaned up the text in the tile information tooltip
Added “(missing resources)” if not enough resources are available for a build errand
Increased the number of FMOD channels to improve the sound quality for saves with hundreds of active buildings
The selected characters’ errands panel now says “supplying coralite to coal generator” rather than “to 26,30”
Fixes
Fixed spring amplified event not triggering as frequently as intended
Fixed an explorers’ research speed sometimes using their digging speed instead
Fixed a bug where liquid or gas packets in the network would sometimes be able to merge with mismatching elements already present in a blocked vent
Fixed automation networks layer sometimes not updating when a building changed the signal it was sending to a network with no other network components
Fixed a migration bug where old save files could add or remove too much stored temperature when the internal storage of a building had changed
Fixed liquid and gas pumps absorbing from the environment at 100% efficiency when the building was underpowered
Fixed world generation generating collections of background bricks floating in space exposure
Fixed world generation generating “bricks” buildings in solid elements
Fixed some large animated buildings not being rendered at the edges of the screen if placed on a chunk boundary
Fixed a bug where pending building errands would not immediately visually update when their accessibility changed
Fixed the bottom-right world actions panel breaking layout at 130% UI scale
Fixed pending connection tooltips and icons (liquid network source, power network connection, etc.) sometimes getting in the way of a pending build command, causing flickering
Fixed background bricks being unexpectedly deconstructed when building a tile or ladder above it
Explorers who are in the process of dying can no longer absorb oxygen, as it’s confusing
Fixed a bug where if an explorer was assigned to a cryochamber, but the errand was somehow removed or cancelled, the explorer might not be supplied to that cryochamber
Fixed buildings locked behind research (like the light) being buildable before research was unlocked by using the keyboard shortcut (O), or by selecting the duplicate button in the selected building panel
Fixed explorers talking about past aurora in the present tense
Fixed a visual bug where inoperable solar panels (e.g. solar flare, no foundation) looked like they were generating power
Plants can no longer self-seed behind large buildings
Fixed oddberries trying to self-seed on the ground; they now self-seed on the ceiling, as long as they’re in a one-tile gap
Fixed a visual bug where selected springs could say they were creating a negative amount of mass
Fixed a pathfinding bug where explorers low on oxygen would sometimes select a far-away target with little oxygen to catch their breath if the oxygen level within a 10-cell radius was always less than 1kg