Slipways News

This is a small bugfix patch that fixes the following issues:

- Undo: "Ghost" products would sometimes remain after undoing in some complex interactions between technologies. The easiest way to trigger it was using culture + skill download. This should no longer be the case.
- Achievements: The "Bite-sized Empire" achievement failed to unlock at the end of some runs. If you encountered this issue and still have the save, reloading and ending the run again should properly award you the achievement.
- Quirks: The "Unstable Core" planet quirk incorrectly allowed some researchable/special people-using industries, such as xenotourism.
- UI: Ctrl-overlay tooltips could sometimes display in front of the technology or information tabs.
- Text: Explanation for the "Izzium Refinement" technology mentioned "basic needs" when "all needs" was meant.

This patch brings the version numbers up to 1.1 (b809) on Windows and 1.1 (b810) on Mac.

This is a small bugfix patch that fixes the following issues:

- First game: When using the first game mode, it was possible to trigger a crash by using the "Abandon run" option
- Achievements: The "12-science lab" achievement sometimes prematurely unlocked when the Self-Hosting AI technology was used
- Controls: Modifier keys could get stuck after Alt+Tabbing or Cmd+Tabbing away from Slipways.
- Controls: Pressing some keys during game load could lead to a crash due to user settings not being available yet when the keypress was handled.

In addition, here is a list of quick fixes done between the first update's release and now, mostly in the form of small hotfix patches:

- Crash: Sending a probe and quickly pressing/releasing another mouse button could trigger a crash.
- Crash: Using the "jump to" functionality in the domain tab would sometimes trigger a crash in the UI system
- Crash: The stats window would sometimes crash in Endless mode due to incorrect handling of difficulty level
- Controls: Alt/Ctrl and other modifier keys were unusable on Mac OS
- Tooltips: Using the "sticky help keys" UI setting could prevent tooltips from appearing correctly
- Tooltips: Undo button tooltip included the hotkey information in weird places for some actions.
- Probes: The "send probe" hotkey made it possible to start probing while in a ruin event, confusing the UI system and resulting in a stuck probe.
- Achievements: Some "challenge run" achievements could be unlocked in an invalid way by starting from an old pre-update save that did not track relevant data
- Achievements: In some rare cases starting from a pre-update save, it was possible to unlock an achievement that was not available in this game mode.
- Stats: Stats displayed in the stat window for "forgiving" displayed a "sandbox" difficulty incorrectly

This patch brings the version numbers up to 1.1 (b805) on Windows and 1.1 (b806) on Mac.

It's time! The first big update to Slipways is now available! So, you should probably start that download.

...Still here? Oh, then I'd like to mention that Slipways is taking part in the Tiny Teams Festival, which is a super-cool event here on Steam, showcasing titles like Slipways - big games by small developers. To celebrate the update and the festival, Slipways will be 10% off for a week.

You can also get the Slipways soundtrack now right here on Steam! It's available in a bundle together with the game, but I set it up so that you can use the bundle discount for just the soundtrack even if you already own the game itself.

But back to the update, this post wouldn't be complete without a list of new...

[h2]...features![/h2]

• achievements to highlight your progress (integrated with Steam's, GOG's achievement systems)
  
• stat and run tracking to let you look through your past results and see how your runs developed
  
• updated pinning system to make it more comfortable to use
  
• more work on the undo system (more insight into what will be/was undone, better behavior around eg. council tasks)
  
• key rebinding and various UI settings to help you adjust the interface to your needs
  
• switchable view modes to easily assess your planets
  
• easier navigation, eg. jumping to planets/structures of a specific type/level from the "Domain" list
  
• map generation tweaks to make it more consistent and make truly bad starts rare
  
• a new overlay triggered by [Ctrl], showing all available colonization options simultaneously
  
• better support for community localizations
  
• more information available at a glance at various places where people wanted it
  
• various new accessibility options and UI settings
  
• tons of smaller bugfixes and improvements
  

[h2]What next?[/h2]
Well, the second update, of course! Our simple naming convention makes it easy to come up with those.

The first update focused on Make it Better™. The second update is a little different, since it's all about More Stuff™: the second act of the campaign, plus new additions in many parts of the game, including new council tasks, new technologies, new sector types, quirks and events to encounter around the galaxy.

But before that can happen, I, the developer, need some rest. I was supposed to take a break after Slipways released in June, but that didn't pan out - I got pulled in by the whirlwind of feedback and there were always things to do and bugs to fix, resulting in a flurry of patches all the way into July. The rest of July was all about getting the update ready for you as soon as possible, and that job kept getting bigger and bigger as I was doing it.

Now, it's August, and it's finally time to hang up my keyboard for a while and take care of some big non-Slipways things in my life. I'll be fixing any bugs that pop up (they're probably inevitable with a big update like this), but I won't be doing new development this month. I should be properly back some time in September and that's when you can expect a more detailed roadmap for the second update :)

Until then, see you around the galaxy!

Hi everyone!

This took a while, but I'm happy to announce that the first big update to Slipways is almost ready and coming out in a week!

This update focuses on "better" - adding features and cleaning up existing ones to let Slipways play even better than it already does. It includes things that I really feel improve the gameplay experience, plus tons of other improvements based on all your feedback (thank you for providing that!).

Most of the update is already implemented - it's mostly a question of testing, localization and applying the final level of polish to the new features now.

[h2]What's in it?[/h2]
First, the big stuff:

• achievements to highlight your progress (integrated with Steam's, GOG's achievement systems)
  
• stat and run tracking to let you look through your past results and see how your runs developed
  

There are also tons of other things big and small, with a focus on quality of life, accessibility and UI customization. Here are some of the more important changes:

• updated pinning system to make it more comfortable to use
  
• more work on the undo system (more insight into what will be/was undone, better behavior around eg. council tasks)
  
• key rebinding and various UI settings to help you adjust the interface to your needs
  
• switchable view modes to easily assess your planets
  
• easier navigation, eg. jumping to planets/structures of a specific type/level from the "Domain" list
  
• more information available at a glance at various places where people wanted it
  
• various new accessibility options
  
• tons of smaller fixes and improvements
  

Also, the Slipways soundtrack is going to be available on Steam for the first time ever (if you can't wait, it's already on Bandcamp!)

[h2]When?[/h2]

The update hits on August 7th, just in time for the Tiny Teams Festival. It's a cool Steam event we're taking part in, celebrating games made by small development studios and solo developers, making it a great fit for Slipways.

As I mentioned earlier, this update focuses on "better". The second update will change that focus to "more" - I'll tell you about the roadmap for that once the first update is out.

Until then, see you around the galaxy!

This update addresses several balancing issues that could be used to achieve *ridonkulous* scores, especially in Reasonable Ranked or any other mode where you play a known seed.

- Teleporters: Teleporters are back to their beta functionality and allow only one incoming connection per teleporter. To make them a bit better at their intended function, you only pay for the first teleporter in each pair (making them faster to build by 1 month, and a little cheaper).
- Monoliths: One prosperous planet can only provide the +1% happiness bonus to one monolith. This means that it's no longer possible to stack monoliths, "reusing" the same prosperous planets for enormous happiness scores.
- Ruins: Options in events offering technologies ("add X to your tech tree") work differently now. Each ruin with such an option now has one fixed tier 2-4 technology that it will confer, and it should no longer be possible to influence this via opening the ruins earlier/later or exploring ruins in a different order.

The motivation behind the first two changes is removing degenerate strategies that achieve outsized returns compared to other options and aren't that fun to play.
The ruin change was made to remove an annoying aspect from ranked (the necessity to pre-scout all options at all ruins in all possible RNG combinations) and increase variety between ranked weeks (via more limited tech choices each week).

From this update forward, playing ranked will also require an up-to-date version of Slipways - trying to play with an outdated version will result in an error. If your version of Slipways is older than about a week, this error will be "could not connect to Slipways server" - this is not a connection issue and should clear up once you update the game.

These changes push the version number to v1.0 (b697) on Windows and v1.0 (b698) on Mac.