The Universim BETA is now live!

Greetings, Creators!

It’s been a while since we were last here together! You know, reading patch notes, braiding hair, listening to a few of your favorite playlists. However, our small break was for a good reason. We’re officially moving into BETA! This means all the tools and features we need for full release are technically in the game, but we’re keeping a few things locked for now as we refine them and add content (there’s still A LOT of new stuff to play with anyway). The good news is, we’re planning to release The Universim in its entirety this year! The big 1.0 launch will see all of the hard work spent on systems, simulations, AI, sound, art, and more over the years finally smooshed together in a wonderful package.

As you know, we’ve been working on improvements to our in-game simulation engine (Prometheus) for a very long time. Today, we’re happy to roll the new system out for everyone to enjoy. One thing you’ll immediately notice is how the entire planet generation system was completely redesigned, allowing for bigger and more vibrant planets than ever before. Let’s not even mention how massive of an improvement it is over our piddly Kickstarter planet.

Before we dive into the gigantic list of changes below, we would like to ask you one small favor that helps us out tremendously -- if you’re enjoying The Universim, please leave us a review on Steam. Every positive review we receive gives our developers precisely 10 seconds to play with puppies. They need that time to stay sane.

Below is the list of the most significant changes (which we mentioned in the previous update). If you would like to join the community and follow our development as we edge closer to full release, hop onto our Discord server and see our live changelog there. Every time one of our devs pushes new updates to the game, you’ll see their comments. We’ve always done our best to be as transparent as possible, and now you get to see every little thing we do.

UPGRADED WORLD

The new planets are not only slightly bigger, they have been pumped up in many more ways. They are now wrapped up in a far superior pathfinding system that will help Nuggets find their way around easier (basically rewritten from the ground up to help prevent that silly lot from getting stuck). Mother Planet also has significantly more objects than before, moving from around 12,000 to around 57,000 objects. And the cherry on top: the planet actually loads faster, too! We even managed to optimize all of this to offer a performance boost. How about that?

NEW POLLUTION SYSTEM

A new pollution system is responsible for how often you’ll be bombarded with natural disasters. It’s basically a way for Mother Planet to criticize your civilization. It also affects seasons and Nugget behavior. Certain buildings will increase pollution, while some may reduce it. Additionally, pollution will no longer change immediately upon placing a new building; it will slowly be increased or reduced until it reaches the final level introduced by any new buildings. Be sure to pay attention!

BUILDING ICONS

We have decided to ditch building status flags. Based on your feedback, we agree that they were difficult to see, especially when in between tall buildings as your civilization progressed. The new icon system should make things a lot clearer.

TWITCH INTEGRATION

New commands and updates

• #FillWell - Allows viewers to randomly fill 1 Well
• #FillReservoir - Allows viewers to randomly fill 1 Reservoir
• #AttackNugget *Nugget Name* - Allows viewers to attack whichever Nugget they specified
• We added a special toggle where you can disable new viewers from being able to join your game. You can use this toggle whenever you feel necessary, such as when you want to control the birth queue and prevent things from getting too chaotic.
• We also did a complete UI redesign to make everything look much snazzier

RESOURCE VISUALIZATION

A much-requested feature! Now, whenever you place a resource extraction building (mine, oil jack, etc), you will see a mapping on the planet that indicates where you can find the most abundant supply of the specified resource. It was a surprisingly complex task, due to the world being spherical, but we managed to make it work. Enjoy!

IMPROVEMENTS AND GAME CHANGES

• Additional Slots were unlocked on refineries at level 0 (from 3 -> 6)
• Medieval Warehouse can now store modern resources
• Throwing rocks and trees can now damage trees
• Clothing is now unlocked via research perks instead of internal Era Change code
• Previously, flags would display if a building needed water or electricity. If the building needed both, it would still display only one requirement until it was satisfied. Now the new icons will display both requirements.

• Improved the lighthouse light effect -- it is now using real-time lighting
• The “assign all” button was added to each Factory and Mine. Pressing the button will assign all required Nuggets to the building.
• Meteor Strike, Fire and Lightning strike will cause animals to drop Piles of food. Previously, they were not dropping it.
• Guards, Police and Hunters will defend the city from wolf attacks or Exile attacks. They will also take reduced damage from enemy attacks compared to other Nuggets.
• Factories gathering resources restrictions were removed. Previously, only one Nugget was allowed to gather resources for Factories if all Nuggets were busy. Now all Nuggets will go and gather resources that are missing if other laborers are busy with other tasks.
• Auto-scrolling of a Nugget’s status was added to the Nugget panel. Now the status will be scrolled if the status is too large to fit.
• Unborn Nugget icon was added to the Clone Center
• Adjusted volume / audio priority in our sound system
• Added the ability to drop dead Nuggets into the cemetery in a similar way to how resources are being dropped for the buildings
• Added the ability to drop crops into the farm in a similar manner to how resources are being dropped for the buildings
• Added lights to modern buildings to glow at night

• Amount of bushes on the planet was rebalanced and their appearance in specific biomes was changed.
• Bushes are dependent on local temperatures rather than seasons. Placing an Epicenter close to the mountains will decrease the amount of food that Nuggets will be able to collect due to low temperatures.
• Added Era Labels to the buildings deremoveion
• Improved Defense Towers AI, improved defense guard AI. Guards will attack animals that are in range.
• Modern Police got an additional slot unlocked
• Prison / Rehabilitation center got additional slots unlocked
• Mines got additional slots unlocked
• Reduced the number of rocks that are being thrown by rioters at Nuggets that are passing by
• Medium Park is unlocked via research and the restriction on the amount of parks of that specific type was removed
• Optimized Job Search System for Nuggets
• Reworked Oxygen System. Each building will add or subtract a certain amount of oxygen. Parks will improve the oxygen level on the planet, as well as trees.
• Water Level is now being changed visually as you drain oceans and lakes
• Added the ability to place buildings during the pause menu
• Improved water animal path finding.
• Improved the performance of the save / load menu. The delay that it took to display and load all the saved files has been reduced drastically.
• Reworked the Blur effect. In certain menus, the blur was not applied correctly and was affecting the performance.

• Factory / Mines automation. These structures will work as long as you have workers assigned there. Each additional worker will increase the output of the resources that the building produces.
• Reworked the temperature and weather systems. Snow will affect areas where temperature is low instead of using just a season as a variable for a snow.
• New Mountain Generation System (realistically shaped mountains)
• New Building Icons instead of Flags. Previously, we used a flag system that was displaying the status of the building, but as you progress forward and all the buildings were getting taller, that system was not sufficient anymore. It has been reworked completely. Instead, icons above the building will now display the status, which makes it extremely easy to see what needs to be done to keep buildings functioning.
• Improved particle spawning
• New Oxygen panel will display useful information about the issues that the player might have with the oxygen and it will indicate the consequences as your oxygen drops.
• Reworked News Messages system. Now, news messages will contain 2 types of messages. Important and unimportant. Important messages won’t be closed automatically. You will have to close them by clicking on them or clicking an X button. Unimportant messages are messages that have a flavor text and contain information that is not so important or necessary for your civilization's survival. Those messages will be closed automatically after a couple of seconds.
• Additional Warning Messages that appear on the left side of the screen were added for: Tornado, Windstorm, Locust Swarm, Wolf Attack, Exile Village Attack.
• Forestation Creator Power got a tree amount adjustment. Now it will produce way more trees.
• Reworked the placement system for Residential houses. Previously, we were utilizing the Residential block system which was filling up with houses. In certain cases, that system led to the placement of the buildings across the ocean and was super prone to errors and bugs. This system was reworked. Currently, Nuggets will place the Houses based on the center of your city.
• Reworked how the Season Change Creator Power is triggered. Instead of pressing and selecting immediately to which season you would like to switch, you will be able to select it and trigger the selection of the season by pressing the ctrl button. This was added for consistency with other Creator Powers
• Added New Modern Decals to the Factories. Not all factories.
• Manual trade system. You are now able to trade with any Exile village at any time as long as they have at least 1 building. Simply clicking on the building will open a panel which will have a trade option.
• Improved Boomer (explosive Nugget) sounds
• Added Shock and Awe effect to UFO’s, meteors and collapsing buildings
• Added Resource map for the resources. Now each building that can mine resources will have a resource map for the specific type of resources it uses. Once the building is selected, you will see a resource map of required resources for the building. Mines have a radius around them, which displays where the mine can reach and from where it can mine all the resources.
• Added a limit to how many houses can be upgraded at the same time in order to prevent the issue where other buildings would not be upgraded, because all resources would be delivered to the houses instead.
• During building placement, all objects that will be removed underneath a building will now be highlighted.
• New decal system (still in production)
• Improved seasonal temperature calculation, snow formation

UI AND ART

• Improved main HUD. Everything is much cleaner and easier to understand.

• New Resource Icons: better represent the appearance of resources

• Kobe Clothes were added to the game and are available via the Clone Center

• Space Age clothing was added to the Clone Center

• Redesigned building information pop-up panel. Now it shows how it will affect oxygen levels.
• Added butterfly particles
• Reworked the snow accumulation shader, which creates a smoother transition into the winter season

• New UI displaying what Creator Power is currently being selected by pressing the Ctrl button
• New Oxygen Panel was added to the game
• New Factory Panels

• New Mine Panels

• New Well Panel

• Monk Clothing and hats were added to the Clone Center and monk jobs

• Coral added to the game

• New Panel that displays information about the population, which includes: Total Nugget Population, Unemployed Nuggets, Educated Nuggets, Required amount of Nuggets that need education based on the buildings that require educated Nuggets, Injured or Sick Nuggets, Unmarried and Believers.

• New Twitch Settings Menu + Panel

BUG FIXES

• Fixed: All Nugget status icons were being drawn on top of the menu screen when the ESC button was clicked
• Fixed: Locust swarm was not killable via lightning strike
• Fixed: University learning points were not correctly distributed which stalled the progression of the students
• Fixed: In Anticity Alley park, Nuggets were not using benches and were instead sitting inside bushes (no more creepy hiding Nuggets)
• Fixed: House Props were not properly disappearing after medieval or stone age huts were destroyed. They stayed on the ground forever.
• Fixed: Memory leak caused by game loading. Every time the game was reloaded, it caused a spike in memory usage.
• Fixed: Memory leak caused by placing new trees. Trees were not removed properly when they were placed, causing the increased memory usage.
• Fixed: Previously you were able to place buildings on top of a space box
• Fixed: Missing strings and localization fixes
• Fixed: Incorrect tooltips were displayed when the mouse was moved over the building list button, population count and Nugget panel button
• Fixed: An error that was causing issues in the game after the Riot event
• Fixed: An issue when multiple Nuggets would go for the same resources, which stalled the overall progress
• Fixed: Nugget Juice settings were not affecting the temple crushing machine
• Fixed: The House Panel was not always correctly displayed and in certain cases it was covering the full screen length
• Fixed: Selecting Trickle Effect and clicking on an object would remove points, but the actual cloud was not appearing on the screen
• Fixed: Protection Dome sometimes would not work correctly if during the cast, it was clicked on another object
• Fixed: Sometimes tall buildings would disappear on the horizon if you are far away from them
• Fixed: Warning Messages / Quest messages on the left side of the screen had a gap between the message and the beginning of the warning stripe
• Fixed: Warning Messages / Quest Messages sometimes were not correctly displaying the messages and in certain cases it would not progress
• Fixed: In certain cases camera was clipping through the ground or hitting the mountains
• Fixed: An error was appearing with Cemetery building during its upgrade to Medieval which in some cases was breaking the game
• Fixed: An issue that was breaking the game during Manual Trade with exiles
• Fixed: An issue where Exile buildings were counted as your buildings, resulting in different messages that are not related to your civilization
• Fixed: An issue where trade messages where cancelled when the trade was manual
• Fixed: Missing icons for the Cemetery. New Icon was added for Dead Nuggets.
• Fixed: An issue where a UFO was landing on rocks or mountains and it was getting stuck
• Fixed: Lost Nugget quest issues, where Nugget or wolves were disappearing or the sound was missing during the quest
• Fixed: An issue with Exiles where after certain amount of events, new events would stop popping up
• Fixed: An issue where Exile Villages would not spawn
• Fixed: Nugget Stat Panel UI would not open properly causing weird artifacts on the screen to appear
• Fixed: an error that was produced by missing ocean config
• Fixed: Error that was appearing during House upgrades due to the modular structure of the buildings that in some cases caused crashes in the game
• Fixed: Temperature value getting stuck after save / load
• Fixed: Certain Warning / Quest Messages were not removed from the screen when they ran out of time
• Fixed: Issue when terrain height was different after loading the game
• Fixed: Exile Villages had water as a tradable resource which was causing the game to crash during trading, if they were about to trade water
• Fixed: Wolves during winter were immune to lightning strike
• Fixed: Quest Rewards were inconsistent with the rewards that they were unlocking
• Fixed: Missing Localization during Locust Swarm event
• Fixed: Nuggets were able to build a building without a resources
• Fixed: Dead Nugget icon was bound to multiple different buildings, which caused icons to turn white.
• Fixed: Building Panel button “Move to building location” was offset from the actual building
• Fixed: Guards would chase wolves indefinitely after the wolf attack
• Fixed: Perks that were adding buildings boost won’t not be applying boost to buildings after save / load.
• Fixed: Incorrect status for a policeman, when they were patrolling the territory
• Fixed: Sometimes Nuggets would disappear upon entering / exiting the fishing hut
• Fixed: Students would get stuck and do nothing
• Fixed: Multiple buildings that could accept the resources did not have an indication of that around them when you have resources picked up with Telekinesis
• Fixed: Monks would get stuck on the side of the Temple
• Fixed: Monks would move sideways while climbing up to the Temple
• Fixed: Certain sounds were not playing properly due to low audiosource pool allowed
• Fixed: In certain cases, objects picked up with telekinesis would get stuck to the cursor
• Fixed: Batteries were not providing electricity to the buildings if they were charged with a lightning strike
• Fixed: UFO was getting stuck in one place upon arriving on the planet
• Fixed: An error when you hover over the building and it got destroyed while you had an object picked up
• Fixed: An error that would break the game when you destroyed the Wind Turbine, while it was still in the construction stage.
• Fixed: Multiple issues where main menu was breaking if ESC button was clicked during transitions in the menus
• Fixed: Happiness and Crime panels were stuck if the game was paused and then unpaused
• Fixed: Subtitles desync during the intro scene
• Fixed: In some cases, due to lack of space, some Exiles would stop expanding
• Fixed: Error during wolf attack that would cause the game to crash
• FIxed: Spots that were previously on fire would not receive a proper temperature and will never freeze
• Fixed: Missing Localization when Nuggets died due to Exile Village Attack
• Fixed: Animals unharmed by fire
• Fixed: Saving a game during a fire and loading that save file would cause an error to appear that would create different glitches later in the game
• Fixed: Nuggets would not attack wild animals immediately
• Fixed: Cosmodrome panel allowed you to click other panels behind that panel, due to sorting problem
• Fixed: Multiple issues with the Cosmodrome panel not working properly
• Fixed: Missing ghost arrow for the Cosmodrome building
• Fixed: Incorrect UI panel for Big Ben building
• Fixed: Nuggets would get frightened when a building is completed
• Fixed: Placing multiple Hunters Huts would prevent Hunters to hunt in the future
• Fixed: Clone Center displayed incorrect storage capacity
• Fixed: Previously, multiple Hunters Huts could choose the same animal to hunt, causing different types of issues. Now all Hunters Huts will select their own animal to hunt.
• Fixed: Missing Nugget accessories after load
• Fixed: Wrong Nuggets animations after load
• Fixed: An issue were partners would be waiting for each other in different locations
• FIxed: During the Heal Nugget quest, if the injured Nugget was healed via hospital, the quest would not be completed and therefore failed.
• Fixed: Hunters, Guards and Police were not using proper weapons despite the research
• Fixed: Local business displayed incorrect amount of resources needed for an upgrade
• Fixed: Colliders on all buildings
• Fixed: Twitch Criminals were lighting themselves on fire trying to burn down a building
• Fixed: Missing Riot icon
• Fixed: Inmates were dying in cells from hunger / thirst / injury
• Fixed: Incorrect Nugget orientation during attack animation
• Fixed: Policeman performing an arrest had a chance to die from thirst and hunger while waiting on a criminal that was sitting inside the building. Currently, policemen will go and eat / drink / heal if needed and after they are done with this task, they will continue pursuing their target.
• Fixed: Incorrect name was displayed during Broken heart quest, always asking to punish the wrong Nugget
• Fixed: Incorrect Animation for Couriers
• Fixed: Not researching anything message was appearing after all perks were researched
• FIxed: Turning off building and unassigning Nuggets won’t release the Nuggets from the building
• Fixed: Wind turbine panel will show that it is working despite not having wind or generating any energy
• Fixed: Factories and Mines working animation was playing despite the building being turned off
• Fixed: Adjusted construction site collider area
• Fixed: An issue where saving the game during a meteor strike would cause an error
• Fixed: Skipping Intro during specific cutscene caused camera to break in the game

The Universim is on a Sale right now, be sure to let your friends know!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/352720/The_Universim/

Thank you all so much for your amazing support of The Universim! You make development such a pleasure. Please don’t forget to leave us a review on Steam if you’re having fun, and be sure to join us on our new Crytivo Discord Server to get in on some awesome giveaways in the coming days. Stay godly!

Also, the next update will have bridges. Isn’t that cool?!

All the best,

The Crytivo Crew