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Dev Update 2022-03-27

Hey, Space Travelers!

It’s been longer than usual since the last development update, but the lab was as busy as always. Let’s take a quick look at the biggest additions.

[h2]Release Date and a new Trailer[/h2]

Stardeus now has an official Early Access release date (September 15th, 2022), and a new cinematic trailer with a voiceover. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Weapons and Combat[/h2]

This was something many of you have been asking for, and finally, the first iterations of the tactical combat system are in place. It’s a bit rough around the edges at this point, but there is a fairly solid foundation for creating more in-depth combat simulations. Your enemies won’t just try to kill everyone. They will also steal your valuables, sabotage your infrastructure, and even steal your shuttles when they have to.

[h2]Breach Capsule Raids[/h2]



One of the ways to get into combat is to get boarded by raiders in a Breach Capsule. It will fly towards your ship from below, and attach itself to your hull with the help of a sharp spike.



Raiders will take some time (depending on the type of your floors) to drill through, and then all hell will break loose.



After the raid is over, the capsule will detach itself and float away, either carrying the raiders and their loot, or empty.

[h2]Carrier Drones[/h2]



To unburden your construction bots from doing menial hauling tasks, a new type of worker was introduced. Carrier Drones are blazing fast, but they are limited to hauling materials only.

[h2]Attachments[/h2]



Your colonists are going to form attachments to other beings and things. Someone sleeping in a bed will claim the bed as their own. People will create friendships, pets will bond with those who cuddle them. Someone who drinks a lot of coffee will become addicted. All this is driven by the new attachment system.

[h2]Aesthetics[/h2]



New Aesthetics overlay will show how pretty or ugly things are. Colonists will react to their environment, they will be unhappy if all they see is dirt, dead bodies and industrial machinery.

Every single object contributes to overall aesthetics of the area, including colonists themselves and each piece of clothing they’re wearing.

[h2]New types of materials[/h2]



There are a bunch of new resources that you will have to produce in your space factory. Harvest Crude Oil from planets, use the Refinery to turn it into Petroleum, produce Rubber and Plastic, craft Transistors, Copper Wire, Optical Fiber and Gears. Everything will have its use.

[h2]Emblems and custom floor tiles[/h2]



Want to put a custom logo or a picture of your cat in the middle of your ship? We got you covered. Place some images in a custom folder, build an Emblem, and configure it to use one of your custom images.

There is also a special type of floor tile, where you can load your own textures in the same way.



[h2]More vibrant HDR colors[/h2]



All in-game light sources are now HDR enabled, and will look more rich and lively.

[h2]Name in the game templates[/h2]

Some Kickstarter backer rewards included naming your Colonist, Robot, Planet and Galaxy. The custom name templates are now implemented. If you backed the project at an eligible reward tier, you can fill out a google form to provide your custom names (form is linked in Kickstarter email update).

In addition to this, there were countless bug fixes, balance changes, QOL and UI improvements, and various minor additions. Full list of changes can be found on the website: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog/

See you in the next update!

[h2]Follow the Development[/h2]


[h2]Add Stardeus to Wishlist[/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380910/Stardeus/

Stardeus NEXT FEST Live Stream - Gameplay Showcase, Q&A

Hey Space Travelers!

Although I am streaming Stardeus development nearly every single day, I will have a scheduled Showcase / Q&A stream on Thursday 24th.

Join me live on the Steam page or Twitch!

If you have any topics you would like me to discuss, let me know in the comments.

See you there!
Spajus

Dev Update 2022-01-29: Trade with Factions, upcoming NEXT FEST

Greetings, Space Travelers!

It’s been over a month since the last update, and we’ve been busy! Let’s take a look at what has changed since the last development update.

[h2]Factions and Trade[/h2]



Some of the planets in the universe are now controlled by several different factions. You will be able to see what faction controls the planet, and also initiate a trade with that planet when your ship is nearby. Later there will be more ways to interact with factions, including some not so peaceful options.

[h2]More survivors in the shipwreck[/h2]



When starting a new game in the “Wrecked ship” scenario, there will be an area with a couple of survivors that have the necessary devices and resources to last a week or two. This makes the beginning of the game more exciting and gives you extra incentive to research human survival technology sooner.

[h2]Advanced space travel options: FTL Drive and Void Ripper[/h2]



To travel vast distances across galaxies, you will have to research and build advanced technology, like FTL Drive or Void Ripper. You are probably familiar with FTL (Faster Than Light) drives already, but Void Ripper needs a short introduction. When you are near a black hole (every galaxy has one in the middle), Void Ripper can charge up and let you warp through the black hole. The catch is that you don’t know where you will emerge, and you are not guaranteed to return to the same place when you try to go back.

[h2]Build fully functional ships that look good[/h2]



You can now put the engines wherever you want, they don’t have to face all directions anymore, and their facing is purely cosmetic. This was done to allow you to build beautiful ships that don’t look like a flying pizza. In addition, the mechanic required to have functional engines in all directions was often tedious and annoying, rather than fun, so it got removed.

[h2]Closable electric vents[/h2]



To have more control over the atmosphere, you can now plug all vents into your electricity grid, and open / close them at will. This makes it much easier in early game, when you have to restore hull integrity on the broken parts of the ship. You had to deconstruct or wall off all the vents before, now you don’t have to.

[h2]Emergency control for unplugged devices through robots[/h2]



As you are the Ship Computer, you cannot control anything that is not connected to your electricity / data grid. Until now. Your robots and drones will be able to reach any disconnected device and provide a temporary data link and a small amount of electricity so you can configure the device. This is extremely useful when your electricity grid gets split into multiple subgrids, and you cannot change some settings that require immediate attention.
It can also be used to force open an unpowered door or airlock, letting your workers access the unpowered areas of your ship without breaking down the structure.

[h2]Automatic electricity grid management[/h2]



Some players found the micro management of the electricity grid a little frustrating, especially in late game, when you have thousands of devices connected into a big network. To alleviate this menial work, you can now research Auto Connect Upgrade and install it on your Ship Computer. With this upgrade installed, newly built or repaired devices will get linked to the closest available connector automatically. This upgrade is optional, so it’s up to you if you want to micro manage the grid.

[h2]More detailed and fully moddable UI[/h2]



The tech behind Stardeus UI hasn't improved much since over a year ago, and it was lacking modding support. It was overhauled to add more details and consistency, and made moddable, so you can replace colors and images in the same way you tweak any other game content - through JSON files.

[h2]Hotbar[/h2]



Not everyone liked the new Radial Menu, so now there is also a Hotbar, where you will keep your most used tools and blueprints for quick access.

[h2]Damaged devices will still work[/h2]



Light damage will not disconnect or impede device operations. This was a pain point whenever there was a fire or some other disaster. Now the device has to take significant damage to lose function.

[h2]Steam Workshop support[/h2]



You can now upload and download mods from Steam Workshop directly in-game. It even works in the demo! Talking about the demo, it will become available very soon for the Steam NEXT festival!

[h2]Try Stardeus Demo in Steam NEXT FEST![/h2]



Don’t miss the Stardeus Demo in Steam NEXT FEST next month! The demo will be up a couple of weeks before the fest.

That’s all for now, see you in the next update! Full list of changes for the curious ones: https://stardeusgame.com/changelog/

[h2]Follow the Development[/h2]


[h2]Add Stardeus to Wishlist[/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380910/Stardeus/

Stardeus Demo with Steam Workshop support, Alpha lottery on Discord

Hey all!

Due to a popular demand, Stardeus Demo has been brough back for the rest of the Holiday season!

Demo limits per save:
- Up to 2 hours
- Up to 15 friendly beings
- Up to 12 unlocked research items

You can play as many saves as you like, and demo saves will work with full game when it's released.

Also, Steam Workshop support is now available, and it even works with the demo. You can learn more about modding Stardeus here:
https://github.com/kodolinija/stardeus-mod-template

There is also a Stardeus Alpha access lottery running in Stardeus Discord #lottery channel - you can win alpha access. Assign yourself a "Stardeus Playtest Queue" role in #get-a-role channel to get notified when lottery starts and ends. While the demo is up, I will be running it a little more frequently than usual, so there's is a high chance of winning!

Happy Holidays!
Spajus

Dev Update 2021-12-10: Radial Menu, VFX, Controller Support and more

Greetings, Space Travelers!

It has been over a month since the last development update, and there are a bunch of changes and improvements that happened to Stardeus during the time.

The main areas of focus were:
  • UI / UX improvements
  • Controller support (mainly for Steam Deck)
  • Graphics and Visual effects
  • Performance with large maps
  • Code refactoring


[h2]Radial Menu[/h2]



If you tried the demo or alpha builds, you may remember a quirky bottom menu that expanded like a tree and was notoriously difficult to navigate. That menu was removed without a trace, and replaced with a much more intuitive radial menu that can be invoked by clicking the right mouse button anywhere. It is, of course, controller friendly, which brings us to the next subject.

[h2]Controller and Steam Deck support[/h2]



The addition of the Radial menu gave me a strong push to go for a complete rework of controller support. Now Stardeus has first class controller support, complete with input rebinding and button glyphs. I managed to play for hours without even thinking about reaching for a mouse, and I am certain that Stardeus will be very enjoyable on the Steam Deck!

[h2]Graphics and VFX[/h2]



Since the beginning of the project, I have always put gameplay and mechanics above graphics and visual appeal. I would rather create more content and deeper mechanics than spend a significant part of the time creating animations, but don’t get me wrong, I want Stardeus to look and feel great. This is why I have recently shifted my focus to spice things up with beautiful visual effects. They are easy to create, they run on GPU, and the game doesn’t feel that static anymore. Lights will blink, broken devices will emit sparks, you will see oxygen leaks and all devices will have some particle effects when they operate, so it’s easy to tell what’s on and what’s off. I believe it’s a great way to bring the visuals alive without spending months on creating individual animations for everything.

The most noticeable change to visual effects is the new electricity grid lines. They look gorgeous, and the arch layout shows connections in a much more understandable 3D-like way.

To compare how far the game went in terms of visuals, here is how things used to look a bit over a year ago, on September 2020:



So yes, I do believe graphics are important, or it would still look this way today.

[h2]More interesting starting conditions[/h2]



I’ve read through tons of your feedback that was collected from demo and alpha playtesting forms, and one of the things that were mentioned quite often was a slow and boring start. To make the early game more exciting, the main scenario will have a bunch of damaged devices and various items scattered across the wreckage. You can repair and relocate those devices to get yourself up to speed a little faster.

[h2]Performance with large maps[/h2]



You might think that all the new visual effects would give performance a hit, but on the contrary, it’s the opposite! The main reason for this is that the project migrated from Unity’s built-in (a.k.a legacy) renderer to their new Universal Rendering Pipeline, which opened up a couple of very powerful tools - VFX and Shader graphs. The VFX graph is something of a technological marvel, and, for example, the new electricity grid displaying 5000 connections does not have any noticeable FPS drop. Before the VFX graph, when it was rendered with lines, displaying 5000 connections would have a significant performance penalty even on high tier GPUs. Now you can do it on a laptop with an Intel HD graphics card.

[h2]Code refactoring and reducing technical debt[/h2]



With Stardeus development I am going for a long haul, and I did my best to keep everything very tight since the very beginning of the project. But inevitably, over nearly two years of development, some bad decisions were made, and the architecture had its fair share of ugly corners.

The project codebase grew to 112K+ lines (excluding external libraries), which is not small for a solo developer to handle, so I started rewriting parts that I wasn’t happy with. So far it’s going great, and I am getting more and more happy with the state of the overall project codebase. It is becoming more flexible, easier to work with, and more performant.

Since focus is now put on visuals, I am currently reworking the game’s rendering system, which was pretty slow when it had to display several thousands of sprites at the same time. Now I can tell that the refactored system will be able to render tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of objects orders of magnitude faster than before, thanks to the access to Unity’s new rendering pipeline tools and to the things I learned over the last couple of years.

[h2]Happy upcoming 2022![/h2]

This is the last development update this year, and I hope you all are having a great time, and that 2022 will be your best year ever! Last couple of years were really hard on everyone in many aspects, so let's stay strong and persevere!

And let me end with a couple of little things I added to make the game put a smile on your face:

[h3]Cat riding a cleaning bot[/h3]



[h3]Drone petting a dog[/h3]



[h3]Pets sleeping with colonists in double beds[/h3]



[h3]Coffee![/h3]



That's all, see you next year!

Spajus

[h2]Follow the Development[/h2]


[h2]Add Stardeus to Wishlist[/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380910/Stardeus/