Hello friends!
Today we're putting out a patch with new worldgen in it, allowing you to start on a version of the Terra Asteroid from the base game reimagined as a cluster of smaller worlds, as well as spreading some random geysers around both clusters. We still consider Terra to be the "Default" ONI experience and we're glad to be getting all the old biomes back into the game.
This will be the last content update before the holidays (not counting bug fixes), so I want to let you know a bit more about what's happening next in the new year. As always, this is not a complete roadmap for the entirety of the DLC (especially with regards to Radiation systems), just what we're looking at for the beginning of next year.
Continuing to Expand the Cluster
There's still a lot of work to do to worldgen and clustergen before Spaced Out! is ready for launch. We've been focusing on the three "core" Planetoids up until now, but are starting to turn our attention towards the outer Planetoids -- their design and resource distribution (especially making sure all resources are available and various paths to sustainability are supported). We'll need to see just how many there are and where they sit in the cluster map!
Of course, in order to enable the gameplay around this, we'll be building out the next phase of rocketry. This includes porting over many of the original rocket modules to the new system, as well as adding a few new modules to deal with the new challenges of the cluster map.
Getting the full breadth of gameplay into the cluster is our first goal, and a little bit later we'll add back in more randomization, traits, starts (including a "classic start" big world) and so forth.
Unifying Spaced Out! with the Base Game
We're making lots of quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes in Spaced Out!, and it's always been our plan to bring the two versions of the game together so that when someone is playing on the base version of Oxygen Not Included, they'll be playing on the latest and greatest version of the game, regardless of whether they own the DLC. However, because of the fundamental changes to the code that we've made for Spaced Out!, there's still a lot of work to do to make the two versions of the game unified.
The result is that the base game is "frozen" on the old code, and some time in the future when the new code is ready to support both the DLC and the base game we will have a major update to the base game (with a proper preview period of course) to bring in all the new features. (This will also solve having to re-download the game when you switch DLC on and off.)
Sometime before we launch, all players will be playing on the same version of the game, with DLC content and features being toggled on and off from the main menu.
Mods
We've been taking a closer look at getting mods going, but there are issues in both the modding pipeline and in mod installs between the base game and Spaced Out! that we won't be able to resolve in time for the holidays.
Sometime after the holidays, we'll open a testing branch with fixes to the mod system. From that point on, modders will be able to use the "archive versions" in the mod system to allow both base game and DLC mods to exist in the same workshop download, and later on once the two versions of the game are unified, there will be an explicit setting in the mod config to allow supporting one, the other, either, or both versions of the game in the same download.
Translation mods work a little differently, and our goal is to create a single .pot file which contains all possible strings for both the base game and DLC. Translators will be able to just translate the Spaced Out! version of the template and it will work in all versions of the game. Until then, it will be necessary to have two versions of the translation in the workshop to deal with incompatibilities.
… And Beyond!
This is not a complete roadmap, but there have been a lot of specific questions in the forums that we wanted to provide answers to before we take a break. We'll continue updating you about our goals as we continue updating the game, and as always: Thank you so much for your feedback, bug reports, and suggestions!
If you’re interested in a light outline of the future plans for Spaced Out!, you can check out the early access launch post.
Talk to you next year.
Patch Notes for 445375
New:
- Added Terra Cluster as a new starting option
- Switched Terra Cluster to be first in the list
- Added some random geysers to the inner cluster non-start worlds
- Added a new Liquid Sulfur Geyser
Changes and Fixes:
- Added Plug Slugs and Sweetles to care packages
- Changed the composition of the barren biome in the Swamp starting planetoid, and added volcanoes
- Re-added the Early Access message at the beginning of the game
- First pass planetoid description/name revisions
- New art hooked up on the cluster select screen
- Fix crash when entering an invalid number for Coordinates on the cluster select screen
- Another crashfix for when habitat modules are destroyed