We recently had some relatively boring and frustrating weeks. A lot of things changed behind the scenes, but there was barely any visible progress. Those weeks of work finally paid off! We've got a new internal development branch with new features. It's far from perfect, but it's now possible to start multiple colonies in singleplayer! Here's the video:
https://youtu.be/lh0bQ37JBE8
It's a lot of work to "port" features so that they work with multiple colonies. Step by step, we're adding jobs and mechanics back into the game. For example, area jobs and science are still broken and require attention. It takes time, but 'multiple colonies' is a mechanic with a lot of potential and we're looking forward to testing it more extensively!
The consequences of multiple colonies and happiness
We mainly wanted to add the multiple colonies mechanic so people could start new colonies in different and far-off lands. Now that multiple colonies are in-game, we realized it's quite fun to start new colonies relatively close to your first one.
If the happiness mechanic works the same for your second and third colony as it does for your first one, it becomes even more desirable to start new colonies nearby instead of expanding your first one. Why recruit colonist #400 in your first colony, who will require coffee, tea, chocolate and more, while colonist #50 in your third colony will be happy with only a new shirt once in a while?
It's actually pretty good if people are motivated to build new colonies. On the other hand, it's frustrating if the optimal way of playing the game requires you to start lots of highly similar small outposts. We'll have to find a way to balance it. One way of doing this would be to make productivity research apply only in the colony it was researched in, instead of globally. Another way is to make trading relatively expensive. Anyhow, it'll be hard to balance, and we'll require a lot of testers once these features are fleshed out a bit more :)
A new idea for icons
"Drawing" 3D models and textures for a game is very different from "normal" drawing. A computer can take multiple relatively simple objects and textures (normal maps, height maps), apply a fancy lighting system and make it look pretty great. With the right settings, of course.
"Normal" drawing lacks those luxuries. The shadows, the reflections, everything has to be done by the artist. It's a lot harder.
Blocks in Colony Survival benefit from those fancy lighting systems. To make an icon, I just screenshot a block and crop out the block, and it will look relatively decent. A couple of months ago, we updated a couple of icons. For example, the bed had a terrible hand drawn icon, and now it's a screenshot of an in-game bed. It looks a lot better.
But I can't do that with a lot of other items. Science bags, bread and wheat seeds lack an in-game 3D item. I can't screenshot them, so they've got hand drawn icons and a decent amount of them is terrible.
With the happiness mechanics and the new world in 0.7.0, we're going to have a lot of new items without in-game 3D models. Cacao, chocolate, sugar, cups of tea and coffee, etcetera. Instead of expanding our repertoire of terrible hand drawn icons, we believe it's a good idea to start updating our old icons, and to replace them with rendered icons. Make a simple 3D model that will not be used in-game, and render it in software like Blender. I've been experimenting with it this week, and I'm quite happy with the results. One of the results is the image at the start of this Friday Blog :)
Bedankt voor het lezen!