First things first: The demo is available now on Steam. If you've been following these devlogs, you'll know this has been a long time coming. We've said "soon" more times than we'd like to admit, so it feels good to finally just say: go play it. And there's no better time to jump in, because it launches alongside a new update that adds a whole new layer of complexity to the game.
Medical Update
If you've followed along, you'll know that food items in the game have different nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, fat, fiber and vitamins. While plants showed this information clearly, the simulation didn't really cover much when it came to digestion, deficiencies, effect on toilet needs, etc.
The first thing that had to be implemented here was a new system for "Conditions". These are temporary or permanent issues that have an effect on health. They range from simple bruises and cuts to nutrient deficiencies, diseases and CO2 poisoning, each with different severities and progressions.
Where do these injuries come from? Work accidents, machine breakdowns and even colonists going berserk have now all been implemented along with some contagious diseases.
Resting
Colonists now seek medical rest if they're allowed, and will go lie in beds or medical beds so they can recover faster. This is very much recommended as a colonist forced to work not only heals slower but can be at risk of causing accidents, and depending on the exact nature of the condition, might even go unconscious, fall and get further injured. Still, the choice is yours. Depending on the state of the base, rest might just not be feasible.
Cooking changes
With colonists resting in bed, however, came the problem of feeding them. Before this update, during free time they would just take some ingredients, prepare a meal and eat it. The ingredients picked would be based on levels of hunger and some rough nutrient balancing. An incapacitated colonist, however, cannot just get up and prepare a meal, so someone else has to do it. This all turned rather complex with all sorts of edge cases, so the cooking system has instead been reworked to be a regular job where colonists will just spend regular working hours cooking multiple meals out of the available ingredients, trying their best to split them into balanced diets.
Balancing
With all these changes, balancing became a problem. Schedules can be set up in all sorts of different ways, traits have an effect on appetite and food consumption, meals can be of different sizes and with varying nutrient compositions. All in all there's around 90 different cases that have to be tested over the course of many in-game days, and this was just not feasible to do manually. The solution? I created a sort of prison where each cell has its own test case, with the game automatically maintaining oxygen levels and food sources, and even providing an artificial workplace.
Suit varieties
One feature that we've been asked about multiple times before was whether we could have different suits. I'm pleased to say that with the latest update there are 11 different suits. Even though they're just a visual change, they really do seem to make a difference. Colonies feel a lot less uniform and it's easier to tell colonists apart at a glance.
That's it for this one. Go try the demo, find creative ways to break it and tell us about it here, or on Discord if that's your preference. And if you enjoy it, a wishlist helps us more than you'd think. Thanks for sticking with us all this way. It's a lot more fun writing "the demo is out" than "the demo is coming soon."
See you next time!