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Patch
Another Monday, another patch.
We’re shifting our focus to “Colonist+”. The intent of this goal is to make colonists feel more like people and less like robots. We’ll be implementing things like: perks, relationships, and fighting.
You can view our Starmap for more information about our development timeline.
Breakable Objects
I implemented a bunch of “bad things” that happen when objects break:
Heaters: Target temperature is now randomized between -100 and +100
Oxygen Recycler: Target atmosphere is randomized.
Biotank: Produces a colonist with a genetic abnormality that has green or blue skin and receives 1 damage every 5 minutes until it inevitably dies.
Incinerator: Leaks very hot gas. Really hot. So hot that it will kill everyone in the station instantly.
Sometimes you use a broken furnace, and the temperature spike kills all of your friends.
You can read more in the patch notes (I didn’t want to copy and paste the patch notes here)
Wall Vents
Wall vents can be turned offline and online now. This allows you to create rooms full of really hot gas, and then open the vents to share the warmth.
It’s now even easier to keep your colony heated!
Personality
We want some colonists to become friends, and other colonists to become enemies.
To achieve this, we implemented a system where colonists are assigned a random personality type: A, B, or C.
Then, each colonists randomly likes or hates between none or all of the personality types.
So some colonists like everyone, other colonists hate everyone, and some colonists only like a specific personality type. It’s also possible for 1 colonist to love someone who hates them.
The intent isn’t for the player to micromanage the personality types. We just needed some way for certain colonists to like or dislike other colonists.
Relationship levels are modified through conversation and sight (below).
Sight System
I also implemented a sight system, so colonists can “see” things around them. Every second, the colonists “look” and receive information about the things around them.
For now, colonists will modify their relationship values whenever they see another colonist.
Colonists can also see dead bodies, and they’ll receive a morale penalty if they see one. This includes carried or abandoned body bags and fresh corpses.
Perks
Colonists are now assigned 3 random perks when they’re created. Perks can do almost anything, so if you have any ideas, please tell us in Discord.
Some of the current perks are (you can read all of them in the patch notes, below):
Charismatic: Everyone likes this colonist.
Hateful: Likes no one.
Mute: Can’t talk, but can listen.
Deaf: Can’t listen, but can talk (it’s a bit weird that a deaf person can still respond, but if they couldn’t talk, they’d be mute. Right now, the deaf person always responds randomly with angry, laugh, or happy—because they have no idea what was said.)
Athletic: Moves faster
And my personal favorite:
Disgusting: Only pees on floors. Eats in toilets. Sleeps on floors or toilets. Prefers raw food storage over a dish drop-off.
This colonist is crippled, but at least he has cool hair.
Potato Soup
We also added a few new food recipes, like potato soup.
You’ll have to place a sink, because soup requires water.
(There was a bug where sometimes potato soup would be grown in the potato crop, but I think it’s fixed. Probably)
Patch Notes
What Is New:
- Heaters will now randomize their target temperature between -100 and +100 when they break.
- ObjectState values now default to false, instead of true.
- Oxygen Recyclers will now randomize the target atmosphere and temperature when they break.
- The water recycler now has a chance to not create clean water when it breaks (but it will continue to consume dirty water) or to emit hot temperatures (or both).
- Generators now have a chance to emit temperature, gas, reduce power, or generator no power when they break (or any combination of those 4).
- The incinerator will now emit really hot temperature or gas when it breaks (if it's being used to incinerate a body). The heat will probably kill everyone in the colony instantly. By the way, you can delete a wall and it will vent all of that hot gas out to space.
- Doors can no longer be used while broken.
- Object windows are now refreshed insntantly when you change tabs.
- The ore refinery now does bad things when it breaks (some variation of the previous bad things).
- The food recycler now does bad things when it breaks.
- The food brick factory now does bad things when it breaks.
- The biotank will now produce a colonist with a genetic abnormality that has blue or green skin and receives 1 damage every 5 minutes until it inevitably dies.
- Crop Spots will now damage their crops when broken.
- Wall vents can now be turned offline. This allows you to create rooms full of really hot gas, and then open the vents to share the warmth. https://imgur.com/a/yPIeWo1
- Added food recipes for Tomato Soup, Potato Soup, and Cooked Carrots
- Wall Sink can be used to withdraw water for food recipes
- Colonists now have 3 personality types, and they randomly like or hate the 3 personality types. Some colonists will like everyone. Some colonists will like 1 or 2 or 3 personality types. Some colonists will like no one. (the same thing is true of dislike).
- Colonist relationship is now modified through conversation.
- Created a "sight" system, where colonists can now see objects. Right now a colonist performs a "sight check" every second.
- Colonists will now modify their relationship levels when they see another colonists. This value is lower than when they hear another colonist.
- Colonists will now see the item being carried by the other colonist, but nothing does anything yet (soon dead bodies will add their own memories, but there are three variations of dead bodies that have to be covered: actual body, carried body bag, and abandoned body bag)
- Colonists will now receive a memory when they see a dead body (this includes a carried or abandoned body bag)
- Improved the UI backend so that only affected elements are refreshed. I'm not sure if this will improve performance, but it will improve how it feels to interact with buttons and tooltip elements.
- You can now click on current recipes to open the menu to change them
- Adjusted crop output so they are all relatively the same now
- Added a perk system. Colonists are assigned 3 random perks when created.
- Some perks can't be combined, for example, a colonist can't be both crippled and athletic or both oversleeper and insomniac
- We'll continue to add more perks, but here are the perks are I just added:
- Charismatic: Everyone likes this colonist.
- Friendly: Likes everyone.
- Hateful: Hates everyone.
- Mean: Everyone hates this colonist.
- Mute: Can't talk, but can listen.
- Deaf: Can't listen, but can talk.
- Anxious: Morale penalties are doubled.
- Tolerant: Morale penalties are halved.
- Excitable: Morale boosts are doubled.
- Oversleeper: Gets tired twice as fast.
- Insomniac: Gets tired at the half the normal rate.
- Gluttonous: Gets hungry twice as fast.
- Loner: Requires less socialization (the social need doesn't do anything yet).
- Athletic: Moves faster.
- Crippled: Moves slower.
- Disgusting: Only pees on floors, eats in toilets, sleeps on floor or toilets. Prefers raw food storage over a dish drop-off.
Bug Fixes:
- Objects are no longer selectable when their renderers are toggled off.
- Abandoned crates are now positioned slightly higher (from 0.0 to 0.35) to prevent clipping into floors.
- Dead body crates are now selectable when abandoned. Selecting them will select their owning colonist.
- The nanobot builders will no longer visually "spawn" when loading the game.
- Fixed issues with some booleans not being saved correctly and then getting the wrong default value. This fixed issues with doors, conversations, and walls.
- Fixed a bug where material property changes were erased on load (and at other times) when an object had multiple renderer keys.
- Bio-Tank glass no longer disappears when the tank becomes lit
So Long
The patch notes were a bit long this week, but that’s not the worst thing in the world.
By the way, I forgot to place nutrition bricks in the alpha station, so prioritize building farms.
Thanks for reading,
-Tyler
