Life’s been a bit crazy with all the Covid stuff. We’ve been focusing more on development, and less on outwardly communicating (it was difficult to do both).

Here’s what we’ve been doing.

Quality of Life Improvements

We improved many core aspects of the game to make them more fun or easier to understand

Expanded Item Tooltip

We kept adding new items to Starmancer, and it became difficult to keep track of what every item does, and how you acquire them.

The recipe for the Friendly Nanobots requires 1 Pheromone. If you’ve never acquired Pheromones (or if you forgot), you’ll have no idea what to do.

So we created a new tooltip for items.

Ideally, this will lead the player to create some of their own goals. If you want to create a Friendly Nanobot, you’ll have to place an Incubator, acquire the raw materials necessary, and level up your Botanist.

Hopefully this makes players feel less overwhelmed.

Pathfinding Improvements

Imagine that a colonist wants to use a bed. Ideally he/she would always use the closest bed. But the only way to figure out which bed is closest is to generate routes to all beds, and compare the lengths.

Previously, this was done in a way where an entirely new route was generated each time (discarding the previous route). This allocated tons of memory (that eventually had to be garbage collected) and was incredible inefficient.

The new algorithm is a variation of the Dijkstra Algorithm. The gist is that when generating a route from Colonist to Bed, every object along the way is stored. Later, if I want to find the route to a different bed, I check if it was already found. If it was, we’re done (no additional calculations required). If it wasn’t found, I resume route generation from where the previous generation stopped (as opposed to starting over from the colonist’s position).

(Technically, I’m only storing each floor, and checking if any floor belonging to an access position of the target bed was found)

Finding the closest object is incredibly common. It happens every time a colonist eats at a floor, transports items between shelves, or uses an object for free-time.

Stations can now be bigger, and you can place more objects and colonists.

Colonist HUD Display

When you have many colonists, it becomes difficult to keep track of individual morale, health, and needs.

So we added all active colonists to the HUD

The green background changes color based on their needs (I think it changes based on their lowest need?)

You can left click a colonist in the HUD to open their window. (As a side benefit, this makes it possible to select colonist who are performing missions)

Colonist Balance

We continuously make changes to things like Morale, Needs, and Relationships. It doesn’t outwardly look like much, but it takes a lot of time (and playtesting).

If a colonist rarely sleeps, it’s almost pointless. If a colonist is always sleeping, it’s frustrating.

At the same time, the player should be able to build objects, upgrade colonists, or craft items that will make sleep less necessary. This would require that sleep is something that feels at least a little bothersome at first, but not so bothersome that it’s annoying.

Day-Night Cycle

We made changes to how sleeping works. Specifically, colonists will now wake up at predetermined times, based on their perks and where the slept.

All colonists wake up at a baseline time of 08:00 in the morning. Sleeping on the floor will make a colonist wake up 2 hours later. Sleeping in a bed will make the colonist wake up 2 hours earlier.

This change makes it easier to understand how long your colonists spend doing things, and provides better incentive for placing beds.

Previously, your colonists would just sleep and wake up randomly. There was never any “down” time.

Skill UI

We improved the skill UI so that it better shows max level, and what’s unlocked at each level.

Mousing over the next skill will show the percentage until level up

Skill Changes

Previously, when a colonist died, they would lose all their skills.

This felt frustrating or hopeless (what am I even grinding for?). So colonists now have “skill checkpoints” at level 5 and 10. So once your colonist reaches level 5 in a skill, they’ll keep it forever. Once they hit max skill level (at 10), they’ll permanently keep it.

To be more clear, if your colonist dies at level 7, they’ll revert to level 5.

We also added permanent colonist buffs when they max a skill. A max level Doctor has increased health regeneration, for example

Morale UI

We added an actual UI for showing morale. Mousing over will give the player some minor information about what each morale category means.

Object Quality of Life

This got a bit long, so here’s another section, but about quality of life improvements for objects.

Object Status

Many players were confused about what an object was doing. If you placed an Ore Refinery, what do you have to do to make it work? Have you already done enough?

So we added object statuses when you mouse over an object (and in the object window).

We also added a notification when an object is offline

There’s lots of different status:

Waiting for Resource
Requires Offload
Lacking Power
Waiting for Orders (for a crafting bench)
Waiting for Engineer (for a crafting bench)

Power Grid UI

It wasn’t super clear to the player that objects required power, and it was even less clear how much power was currently available.

So we added power requirements above blueprint objects, and a “power available display” above the closest object that extends the power grid (wires, machines, etc)

Probably should have zoomed out a bit more

Blueprint Visuals

Blueprint objects now change color when they’re in an invalid position

This makes it much clearer when placing external objects

Inaccessible Objects

Objects will now display a notification if they’re in an inaccessible location. This would happen if you placed a toilet facing a wall or accidentally blocked an object when placing something new.

You can mouse over notifications now too

Mission Changes

We added some new objects to the Starmap, and improved how missions feel.

Derelict Trading Pods

Some objects and recipes can’t be researched (like Tomatoes, Memory-Wipe Nanobots, and most cosmetics).

To unlock them, the player has to find a Recipe Cache. Caches can randomly be found from any mission, but they have a 100% chance of spawning in Derelict Trading Pods.

If the player has already unlocked everything, the Recipe Cache will award them 10,000 credits.

In the near future, we’ll probably cater the random Recipe Caches so that the unlocked recipe is somehow related to where you found it.

Escape Pods

The player now starts with 3 colonists. To acquire more, you have to “rescue” colonists from escape pods.

Escape Pods (and Trading Pods) will appear even if you don’t have a Radar Dish.

There’s a max count of 8 colonists. This number will increase depending on performance and how it feels. But you can always edit the XML files to change the max limit to whatever you want (Starmancer is almost completely moddable).

Escape Pods contain a Head, in Jar. When deposited at your Core, you’ll permanently add the new colonist to your station. They have random treasure in them too.

This encourages the player to perform missions, without forcing them to do it. It teaches them that resources exist out in space, and that they can go get them.

Skill Requirements

We added skill requirements to Infested Stations. They require a level 5 engineer just to perform the mission. The actual loot requires a Botanist.

The lore justification is that the Infested Station is locked, and your engineer can override the docking protocols. Your Botanist is then sent in to harvest the goodies.

Here’s the loot table for Infested Station:

In order to harvest a Larva Husk, you need a level 1 Botanist. If the Botanist is level 6, you’ll be able to get an additional Larva Husk.

Treasure Items

We added many new items that serve no purpose besides being worth money. You can freely sell these items.

Higher level miners will come back with more and better treasure.

Things like: Pendant, Spice, Alien Relic, and Crystals.

The intent is that mining is always worth something, even if you don’t need any Ice or Ore.

New Stuff

I wasn’t sure if some of these things belonged in Quality of Life, but they felt new enough to warrant their own section.

Research Unlock

You can now “research” objects to unlock them.

This went through many different prototypes until we were happy with how it felt. We don’t like when unlocks are completely random (because the player has no control over their own gameplay direction). We also don’t like when unlocks are too easy (it overwhelms the player).

Consider a Generator. The player needs a Generator to produce power, allowing them to place more objects. Without a Generator, you can’t expand. If unlocks are completely random, the player just has to hope that they get a Generator. (Obviously, you would have some sort of unlock order where a Generator is always unlocked early, but that gets a bit stale).

We decided on a system where the player has to do some sort of “quest” before they can unlock each tier. Some of the quests are “Produce 10 Biomass”, “Reach Miner Level 7”, and “Perform 3 Missions”.

The intent is that the player will unlock objects related to the way they’re already playing (you unlock an Ore Refinery by doing missions, for example).

At the same time, we want to force the player to get a little out of their comfort zone if they want to get the best objects. (The highest crafting recipes require objects from both Organics and Engineering).

From a design perspective, this introduces many game mechanics to the player at a pace they’re comfortable with. The Engineering unlock requirement might teach you about missions, for example. This will hopefully encourage the player to explore and learn everything about the game organically.

Multiple objects can be researched at once, but it will be slower. You can stop and resume research at any time.

Object Upgrades

Many objects can now be upgraded.

Upgrades are completely free, but they require the player to perform some sort of “quest” type activity.

The intent for most upgrades is that the player has to go out of their way to perform them. The Nutrition Brick Factory, for example, is only upgradeable if it produces 8 bricks in 24 hours. The only way to do this is to lock a few colonists in a room with the Brick Factory, forcing them to unload it.

From a design perspective, we want the player to care when their objects are destroyed (it’s also fun to upgrade things).

Production Order UI

Most items have multiple uses. Ore, for example, could be converted into either Space Rock (at the Chemistry Table) or Metal (at the Refinery).

It would be frustrating if you wanted to make some sweet Space Rock but your Ore kept getting converted into Metal.

Item production can be set to Endless (like if you wanted all Biowaste to always be converted into Fertilizer).

Sell Filter

Almost every item in the game can be sold. In general, this is good, but it’s almost always better to keep an item and convert it into something more profitable (Ore can be converted into the more valuable Metal, for example).

We added a much better UI for controlling which items should be sold at your core.

Treasure items aren’t listed in the sell filter, because it saves lots of space (and treasure items exist only to be sold)

Daily Recap

At 08:00 every day, a daily recap is displayed. It shows how much money you made in the previous day.

This gives the player a clear metric on how much money they’re earning.

Literally spent time implementing custom names for months

Part of the design intent is to show the player that other parts of the game exist. Encouraging the player to mine or craft medical items.

The categories match the sell filter categories.

Slimes

We added a random event system to missions. Our intent is to add lots of bad or neutral “things” that your colonists can bring back to the station.

Things like Slimes, Bug Infestations, Cults, Bombs, Diseases, whatever.

These events don’t require any input on the player’s part—they just happen.

When a colonist goes on a mission, they have a chance to acquire the “Upset Stomach Perk”. The next time they use the bathroom, a slime puddle spawns.

Slimes reproduce every 3 to 5 minutes. There’s a global max of 10 slimes (for performance).

When killed, the slime drops a random item.

There’s a chance that a slime will reinfect a colonist during combat.

Slimes can also be killed by venting the atmosphere or setting them on fire

Thats It

We probably did other things, but I did a bad job keeping track of everything.

I know it’s frustrating Starmancer isn’t released. We don’t want to release a broken game.

Post-release, we’ll continue to add new free content to Starmancer for a long long time. If the game is released before it’s ready, it won’t sell well, and it will be much more difficult to add new content. (Do people really ever give games a second chance?)

That said, release is really close. This whole Covid thing didn’t help at all, though.

You gave us your money. You didn’t have to. It means a lot to us, and we take it incredibly seriously.

-Tyler

Crazy Covid World