Hello fellow Penal Colony Workers,

I'm back - This time with more sickness!

Ok so, MIGW and my holiday were great but I did also get a flu that stuck with me for almost a month. Dev is finally back on the menu.

The Goal

Between now and the end of the year I've got a list of features that I would consider critical for moving the game from MVP to a less shit MVP. This video shows off a few of them.

Parasite Behaviour
One of the area's that needed love was parasites. Previously these little guys would just spawn, damage the boat components and wait for you to remove them. In this pass I gave them actual movement so you'll see them skitter around the boat before reaching their target. And now if you wait too long to kill them but are close, they'll get mad and jump on your face dealing a little bit of damage.


Visual Optimisation
One big performance sink in the game for the longest time was all the dynamic lights on the ship, especially the interiors. So I had to build a custom culling solution to deal with that. Fortunately we already had the ship broken up into AudioZones so I was able to make this system more detail and hook into it for our culling. The optimisation can be disabled cause it does cause a tiny bit of light popping but the extra framerate you get back from only have 20% of the lights enabled at a time is well worth it I think.

Bilge Pump and Repair Systems
A major system that got a pass was how damage to the ships hull and it's repairs worked.
Now the damage to the ship increases the water level ship proportional to how much damage there is and that water will stick around even after you repair the holes. The pump allows you to eject the water and is super juicy to use. (video timestamp)

Finally we've got fish now.
That's right when you pull up your hauls sometimes you'll get fish, or maybe other things. These currently add nothing but juice up the visuals a little bit, but I feel like they're a necessary part of the crab sorting process.


Want more frequent updates?

Watch development live at twitch or join the discord to chat with me and the community about the game.