Greetings, Spacefarer!
It's a pleasure to return to you with another progress report. This time we take a look at what's upcoming in Alpha 12! Alpha 12 will be a very special milestone, for the reasons mentioned below.
2 Milestones: 1 Year in Early Access - 5 Years Since the Start of Development
Alpha 12 will mark a big milestone, two big milestones actually. We are closing in on not only 1 year since the Early Access release, but also 5 years since the start of development. 5 years! Just a month or two and we're there!
Upcoming in Alpha 12 - Some of the Most Requested Features
We've decided to make this event special. Alpha 12 will be an anniversary update, celebrating both of these big milestones. We've decided to focus on features, which have been some of the most requested features by you, our players. We hope you like what you see upcoming in Alpha 12. =)
Logistics bots
Work in Progress - Logistics bots helping you in your logistics needs! Final form may differ from the presented one.
Logistics overwhelmed! That has really been a theme with Space Haven. If one grabs everything there's bound to be a lot of crates, and while that should be the case (pun intended) it would be good to have some tools to try to ease it up a bit, too.
Logistics bots have certainly been one of the most wished for feature, and we're happy to announce we are working on them for Alpha 12! We will be able to give more details on how they function once we have fully implemented them and been able to test them in action.
Windows
I had a dream that we found a habitable planet to live on. I don't think that planet is it...
Windows have been one of the most requested features by you, our players. There's just something about windows it seems! Well, it is finally happening. We have windows coming up in Alpha 12, both for the ship hull and inside walls. There's a few different widths to choose from, and you will be able to build windows side by side to have lots of light come in!
Windows are not only cosmetic, they will help light up the rooms to a degree.
Roofs and a Hull Paint Generator
Work in Progress - Roof paint pattern generation. The pirates could have red patterns on their ships.
Roofs are now visible by default on ships, which have not yet been visited or explored by the player. It always frustrated us a bit that ships would often just be black blobs in the sector, unless the player specifically presses a button to see the roofs.
Ships and stations actually look like such when the roofs are up, so we created a system to allow roofs to be shown more, while keeping the needed visibility when exploring ships with your crew members.
Work in Progress - A close up of the hull with some paint on it.
We have also created a hull paint generator, which creates paint patterns on spaceship and station hulls. We want to have some distinction between the various factions spaceships, to make it easier for you to see who you are dealing with. It also makes the visual aspects of spaceships more varied.
More Sounds - Less Quiet
Oh, you guys make some real noise now. Neat!
More sounds have been another much requested feature. We've started adding more sounds and we also modified the overall sound space to not be as quiet as before. We added more sounds to many facilities of the game, such as consoles, industry facilities, power generators, power nodes and thermal regulators, and hyperdrives (Although not the hyperjump sequence itself, not yet at least).
Note that the sound volume of various elements is dynamic, it is based on the current zoom level.
Work In Progress
Note that we will still need time to finish these features, so Alpha 12 is still very much a work in progress. Time will tell if we will have time to work on other features besides these for Alpha 12.
When will Alpha 12 be released?
As always we cannot say an exact date, but we want to try to pair the update somewhat close with the anniversary, which is in mid May. It could be a bit before, or a bit later. Let's see how it goes!
Join Space Haven Discord: http://discord.gg/spacehaven
Space Haven subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceHaven/
Report bugs here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/discussions/4/
Discuss Space Haven here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/discussions/0/
Technical Support: https://steamcommunity.com/app/979110/discussions/1/
We will continue our development of Alpha 12 and let you know when we have more news.
Stay tuned for more news. =)