We've been having a difficult discussion this week and we're still not fully sure what we're going to do. We'd love to have your input! Would you please answers these questions in Google Forms? When we decided to organize a 'poll', we immediately thought of some other questions we'd like to know the answers of :)
Update 0.4.0 added lots of new content and significantly increased the complexity of the game. This is wat a lot of people have been asking for, but we've noticed that the game might have become too confusing for some new players.
When players start a new colony, they instantly have the ability to craft lots of job blocks that they don't need. We believe this overwhelms a lot of players. It leads to suboptimal choices, like trying to grow wheat and bake bread before harvesting berries, and worrying about mints & shops instead of science labs & bronze anvils. These suboptimal choices make the game even more difficult.
So we're thinking about adding four "technologies":
-"Bread": Wheat farms, grindstones and ovens
-"Economy" - Mint & shops
-"Kiln"
-"Splitting Stump"
Like the bronze anvil and the tailor, they'll be quick & cheap unlocks, requiring 3x ingredients or something similar. It might be annoying for experienced players, but it'll make the early game a lot more intuitive for new players.
So, should we lock more content behind research? We'd love to have your input. Please reply here, on Discord, or in the survey!
0.4.2: Better collision, better performance, less crashes!
There has been a rare issue in the game for a long time that causes players to randomly clip through blocks, causing them to float through the world. This week, we've looked at the collision code and we found a couple of ways to improve it.
The issue should be totally gone now! Simultaneously, optimizing the code should've slightly improved performance. The new code is also a lot better prepared for colliding with non-cube items. Currently, you'll often accidentally remove torches and wheat when removing blocks in close vicinity of them. This happens because the game doesn't check whether you're actually aiming at the torch or wheat itself, it just checks if you're looking at the "cube" that "contains" the torch or wheat. This is easier to improve with the new code.
Another new feature that would rely on proper collision with non-cube items is stairs, and we know that they're in high demand :) They're not in 0.4.2, but they're easier to add in a future update now.
0.4.0 has resulted in a significant amount of crashes for a small amount of players. Last week, we narrowed the problem down to the change in torch rendering. Apparently, that change doesn't work well with Intel integrated graphics cards, often found in for example laptops. We've updated the code and those problems shouldn't happen anymore in 0.4.2!
PingPerfect Server Hosting
Last week, we released the Dedicated Server Tool. Within a couple of hours, we received a message from PingPerfect. They wanted to add Colony Survival Server Hosting to their services! We've been testing the combination of PingPerfect's hardware and our server software, and it seems to work flawlessly. If you want to host a 24/7 server without running your own PC 24/7, it's now possible to rent a server at PingPerfect!
Bedankt voor het lezen!