Hi everyone,
The main beta branch on Steam was updated last night -- apologies for the delay in getting the build notes out.
We also updated the demo moments ago. Please note that those of you playing the separate "demo" app on Steam (via the Alienware Indie Game Challenge distribution from a few weeks ago) should now have full access to the expedition system in the Arido Mesa sandbox map!
New features:
- You can now "dock" charts from the Statistics tab onscreen while you play, as announced here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543810926317367
- You can now "scrub" the charts in the Statistics pane by hovering the mouse over them to see the previous historical values of the selected data, as announced here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543429191110582
- Added support for "Competition Mode" -- pass in CompetitionMode=1 as a command line param: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543429194952659
- Please note that all of the above features are PC-only features and should not be expected in the console versions of Aven Colony
- The small Holo-Bot that projects protest holograms will now enter and exit smoothly using the same elevator the protesters use
- When you turn on the Martial Law social policy, all holo-bots now face toward the protests and project a hologram that says "DISPERSE"
- When you decommission a building, the progress bar now goes DOWN properly and shows the correct percentage value
Art improvements and fixes:
- Lots of small updates to many building textures to improve visual continuity/conformity
- Improved the look of the data items in the Stats pane
Tuning / balancing / minor changes:
- Improved drone movement when building Skyscrapers
- Increased the amount of time before the colony automatically switches out of Energy Battery mode
- Significantly improved the scoring algorithm ("Score" in the Statistics tab of the colony control panel)
- Updated banners for the Holo-Sims in the campaign mission list
Performance Improvements:
- Improved load times
- Turned off unnecessary shadow-casting for objects that didn't need it
- Improved frame rate in the expedition UI
- Fixed various instancing issues that hampered performance slightly and caused rare graphical glitches
- Plasma turret shots are now ~12% faster; this helps them hit creep spores and plague spores moving perpendicularly
- Fixed an issue where toxic gas emissions would drain performance slightly even after they disappeared
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug where construction drones could get stuck hanging in space if their C-Drone Hub lost power while you'd also requested an upgrade and they were doing something else at the time
- Fixed bug where Wind Turbines weren't pushing away toxic gas if the camera was facing away from them
- Improved some issues with incorrectly blocked tiles in Tenari Glacier
- Fixes to some very rare cases where the camera could get stuck inside a Skyscraper
- Buildings that can't be sold (such as the Expedition Center) can still have their construction cancelled properly
- Fixed issue where recycling a 3x3 (or larger) building that was under construction could result in a building at a random position in the map
- Overlay tiles are no longer visible in the valley in Tenari Glacier
- The 'Drones' overlay no longer renders in blocked tiles; this prevents huge bars from being visible inside the holes in Sandy Gulch and other desert maps when in the Drones overlay
- Fixed the water rate-of-change indicator to work properly at game startup
- Fixed Refraction on drone station Force Fields
- Farms now stay properly selected when upgrading them
- Fixed bug where if a farm/greenhouse was selected when construction completed, there would be no visible borders in the crops overlay mode that would appear
- Fixed a small black sphere being visible on some maps
- Fixed the game speed splash not fading out
- Fixed issue where volume settings weren't restored properly in the main menu
- Fixed some issues where you could build inside some of the mesas in Arido Mesa
- Fixed some rare bugs with the camera rotating too much when returning to the colony on some maps
- Fixed bug with Energy Batteries refusing to allow you to build the next-higher tier after you'd already built the previous tier but not connected it to the power grid
- Expedition system: fixed a bug where "Stockpile" and "Supply Drop" POIs would sometimes be impossible to complete
Also, the NVIDIA Ansel support (for 360-degree panoramic screenshots) has pretty much been implemented but we've heard from NVIDIA that whitelisting our app will take a bit longer than expected. We'll post here once Aven Colony gets whitelisted, which is necessary for Ansel to work.