Hi! Here are the things that we're currently doing:
Standalone processes (Well underway)
We are making improvements to processes to increase the realism and fix some holes in the current gameplay. It will be possible to have a production which can run on its own without a worker present. This will improve the kiln, smoking and cooking processes because it frees up the worker who can then go do something else instead of being present the whole time (like we have now).
It will also make sure that characters don’t run off with tools that are being used for a process before it has finished. The current gameplay has some hacks where tools are simulated as inputs in order to prevent this. One example is the production of salpeter.
It also makes us able to have new processes such as:
-Alcohol distillation
-Brewing
-Automatic production
-Structure printing (automatic building of structures)
-Many kinds of chemical processing
Processes and substances (Started)
We have also begun preparing the code and UI that will allow us to have things like water, electricity, liquid fuel, gas etc in the game. Basically a thing that cannot be described as an item because it does not have a fixed size or location - we call these things "substances" and we're trying to make the code flexible enough that it can be used for concepts that we haven't even thought of yet. We also use the term "substance" for heat and moisture.
This area involves:
-how liquid, gas and electricity is contained and transported in pots, barrels, pipes and wires.
-how items and substances change their properties when influenced by heat and moisture.
This will give us more options for doing things such as drying meat for example. A piece of meat should be able to either dry or rot, depending on the conditions where it's stored. The player should be able to look at a meat item and see what the current condition of the item is and if it's on the right track to become meat jerky or if it's rotting or burning. We've begun doing some UI layouts to organize all this information which you can see below. In this case the meat is influenced by the air, by being on fire and by rainy weather and is on its way to burn to ash:
UI Improvement to mini-map and resource display (Almost done)
We have been wanting to improve this area for some time and we're now implementing it so that you have a handy way of keeping track of all the resources and animals you've discovered as well as the things and people in your colony:
Trade/migration (On hold)
You may remember that we started working on this area some time ago - the reason why it was put on standby and we shifted focus to production related features is that we needed to open up for more possibilities for the content makers so that they can add more crafting features, items and structures. It's important that we keep the different team members active and sometimes this means that we have to change tracks and clear out bottlenecks.