Hey Mars Fans!
Sorry you guys haven't heard from us in a while, we have been super busy with all sorts of projects not least among them, the complete overhaul and rework of PeriAreion!
I know it has been a long time coming but we got a contract working on some games for NASA and had put some of the PeriAreion patchwork off. Additionally we increased the scope of the changes to PeriAreion because we were not happy with leaving some stuff in there the way it was.
So this patch will touch on everything. Graphics wise, the whole game has gotten a fresh coat of paint. Every environment texture has been redone and every model has been remade and painted. These new models have ambient occlusion, spectral, normal, and diffuse with reflection probes so they should look a lot more realistic and more along the lines of the art style we originally wanted but couldn’t do because we didn't know how.
The 2D art has all but been replaced with a brand new HUD. The HUD is easier to access at the top of the screen, cleaner, and neatly displays resources on the left, rations on the right, and your map/build/research buttons in the middle. The colonist portrait along with the return to base button and a new cycle colonist button have moved to the bottom right corner. We have also added a permanent stats display button to see colonist stats.
The notification system and information display has been reworked. Now all information you will need about pretty much everything will appear in the bottom left corner along with the action you can take. Notifications are smaller and will no longer interfere with the HUD and will display until dismissed. All text is now legible at any resolution.
We have added support for all aspect ratios without the pillar boxing we had in before. So play in glorious 16:9 to your heart’s content.
The ant artic training tutorial is now gone. It has been replaced with an in-game tutorial notification system that can be toggled on/off from the options menu.
The biggest gameplay changes come with the addition of parts as a resource. Parts are used to repair other modules and manufactured from the geo module. The base screen is gone, you now interact with your base from the outside by right clicking any module and selecting a task to perform.
The Rover no longer has any limit on number of colonists on board and must be driven by a colonist at all times. The unmanned rover research upgrade has been replaced and will now spawn a second rover. Additionally the rover will not spawn until you build a level 2 Geo module changed from level 1.
New voices have been added for the Chinese colonist, Jamaican colonist, and German colonist with voice actors matching those accents. We will hopefully get a full complement in there eventually but for now you have less repeated voices.
Other changes include new colonist select screen, pause menu/periarepedia HUD reworks, notification animations, cloud system, skyboxes, and color corrections.
Known issues right now: the PeriAreipedia. Obviously since we changed everything the gameplay articles don't match or are entirely irrelevant. Hopefully we can get those fixed before we release but that might have to be a later update since it does not affect gameplay at the moment.
We are testing right now and making tweaks. We have an event on the 9th where we will be presenting the game, so we would like to be released shortly after, although we will not release until we are completely satisfied that everything has been tested and is working.
Cheers,
PeriAreion Development Team