Dev Notes

This patch was quick! The last one was only a few days ago. This patch is the result of the final effort before the lead developer (one who is writing this) goes on holiday. 2 week holiday to be exact. However I can't say I achieved everything I wanted with this patch. I really wanted to get the interactive demos in, but that will have to wait till after my holiday. Anyway onto the changes:

Cascading Experiments

Experiment modules have gotten some design changes. The main change is that experiments when failing will make the experiments around them fail as well. You can see this below:

Experiments get a yield bonus by being near other experiments but in turn have this cascade failure risk. However if you want to really increase your yields, look no further than the experiment rel

Experiment Relays

Experiment relays are objects you can place around experiment modules. What's its function? It connects all the experiments together such that activating one will activate them all at the same time. This is an easy way to run multiple experiments at once (instead of running them individually).

Experiment Observation Tube

Introducing the new "Experiment Observation Tube". This handy block generates experiment logs when researchers use it to observe anomalies in their cell. Pretty simple.

You can see in in use below. Le fishe is getting observed by some scientists here.

Why did I add this no one asked? Well because I figured there should be a bridge between generating science from science modules and creating science from experiment logs taken from staged experiments. In between that, the experiment observation tube exists as a easy way to get experiment logs created, without setting up staged experiments, allowing you to figure out how labs work before getting to the big stuff. Makes sense right?

Spooky Appliance Action at Distance

A major change has come to appliances. We decided that it was just too janky to have to place those small cables ad infinitum. So we got rid of them. Now appliances connect automatically to the nearest large cable. See below:

With this comes a realisation. Power just isn't very compelling in terms of logistical design! There aren't really any constraints or considerations players need to keep in mind, which I feel is an area of improvement going forward. We have some ideas for how to make electrical logistics more interesting, but we are open to any ideas you may have!

Smarter Nuggets

One thing that was really silly was nuggets wandering into containment cells. This was probably the worst oversight in terms of design! It caused a lot of unnecessary headache (and deaths). But no more! Nuggets no longer wander inside containment cells, or many other high risk and important regions for that matter. So you can build your containment cells with the peace of mind that that one janitor isn't going to wander into that particular containment cell for the 100th time.

Some Polish

We found it hard to communicate the idea that those lines by the road were power and water lines! Many players we found didn't realise this and were trying to place down a power generator (and mistakenly thinking the steam generator was the solution, oops). So it should be impossible to miss now.... hopefully.

And no longer do you have to stress about selecting objects in a stack. You can now cycle between stacked entities. How lovely.

What's Next?

Well that's it. Sad I didn't achieve the main goal of this patch, which was to improve onboarding. But it sort of turned into a polishing and design patch... like most patches do. Since I am gone for 2 weeks, expect radio silence until January. So what's next? Nothing, I suppose. But after the near year, more patches and new anomaly content. Things people actually want!

Changelog

• Fixed bug with arrows not disappearing when assigning anomalies

• Fixed bug with objects larger than 5 by 5 not being built

• Added new "Experiment Relay" object

• Added result modals for assigning cells

• Fixed lag from autosaving causing UI to refresh

• Added latest changelog to main menu landing page

• Fixed bug where nav notifications would "bunch up" when switching between UI interfaces

• Staff no longer wander inside containment cell

• Staff no longer wander in dangerous areas

• Fixed issue with NPC mugshots

• Background color of main menu now set to black

• Fixed refresh state bug when Firing staff on view employed menu

• Can no longer fire unhirable staff members

• Fixed bug with right-click menu hidden behind inspector

• Fixed bug where database menu was not accessible if no anomalies were on site