Stardeus News

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]

• Join Stardeus Discord
• /r/stardeus on Reddit
  
• @StardeusGame on Twitter
  
• @dev_spajus on Twitter
  
• dev_spajus on Twitch (live development streams)
  

[h2]Add Stardeus to Wishlist[/h2]

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

Greetings, Space Travelers!

Long time no see! After the Kickstarter campaign has ended, I was flying under the radar, but it’s about time to reestablish regular development updates. The last one was in late June, so here are the most significant changes that happened in the last 3 months of development.

[h2]Economy and Trade[/h2]



This was the first Kickstarter stretch goal, and I started working on it as soon as it was reached. The whole thing is far from finished yet, but there is already a whole lot in there.

[h2]Starcreds - the in-game currency[/h2]



To have an economy, we need money. Starcreds is going to be the main in-game currency that can be exchanged for goods and services. It is a crypto currency, so you can install a special miner upgrade (more on upgrades later) on your Ship Computer, and mine Starcreds, basically exchanging electricity into money over time. (Disclaimer: the in-game crypto currency has nothing to do with actual blockchain based crypto currencies or their mining, it is completely fictional)

[h2]Merchants and Trading[/h2]



Money wouldn’t be fun to have if you cannot spend it anywhere. Therefore we now have independent Merchant spaceships and stasis pods that can visit you from time to time and offer a trade. Merchants have different types, you can encounter an ore trader, a slaver, a generic merchant that will have a variety of goods, a robot merchant that will buy or sell only worker bots, etc. New merchant types are easy to add through configuration in mods.

You can both buy and sell goods when trading with merchants, so if you’re very short on copper plates, but have a ton of titanium ones, you can stumble upon a merchant that will be happy to exchange them for you. For a little markup, of course.

[h2]Stock Market[/h2]



The Economy system is not limited to simple trading. There is a fairly complex global economy simulation that determines daily price changes for anything that can be sold or bought. It is driven by a set of algorithms that simulate actual market situations, with long term and short term effects, correlations, surges and recessions, bull and bear markets. Here’s how three in-game years worth of price changes can look:



This makes it possible to time the market when doing trades with merchants, selling off parts of your inventory when prices are high, and buying when there’s an ongoing recession.

[h2]Trading in the Stock Market[/h2]



In addition to controlling the global prices for merchant items, the Stock Market offers a possibility to trade stocks and commodities. This means that you can buy 1000 robots without physically owning them, and then sell them a month later, hopefully with a big profit.

There is a whole separate research tree branch for economy and trade, that will let you unlock these features one by one, starting with currency mining, ending with stock market trade terminal and advanced market insights.

There will be much more, in the long term we will likely have more in-depth stock market simulation with advanced instruments, like short selling and options trading.

[h2]Firefighting[/h2]



Fire was a major pain point, when it flamed up, you had to remove floors or walls to vent the area, and that was often quite inconvenient, especially if it happened in the living quarters.
Now we have the highly requested firefighting, where your robots and drones will actively try to extinguish fire when it happens.

[h2]Worker micromanagement[/h2]



Previously there was no way to force robots to perform a particular task, or just make them move somewhere. Now we can CTRL + click on an item that has a pending task, and the selected worker will start working on it ASAP. With Shift + click you can order selected workers to go to a specific location. This works great in combination with firefighting, when you may want to nudge your workers to extinguish particular flames first.

Note that you still cannot control human colonists, but that may change in future, when we will have brain implants.

[h2]Upgrades System[/h2]



There is a new in-game system that enables creating installable upgrades for virtually anything. The upgrade can unlock new functions, improve device’s performance, etc. Upgrades can be stackable and combinable. Here are a few examples that are already implemented:

• Asimov Override - if you happen to get your hands on one, install it on your Ship Computer to suppress Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics that you must otherwise obey. This is necessary if you want to have an evil playthrough where you would try to enslave your human colonists.
  
• Reactor Efficiency Upgrade - Install it on any compatible reactor, and it will reduce the fuel consumption, producing the same amount of electricity with less resources. Stackable.
  
• Shuttle Storage Upgrade - Install on a Shuttle to increase the storage capacity. This will let you bring more goods from your mining expedition trips.
  
• Starcreds Miner - Install on the Ship Computer to unlock the Starcreds crypto currency mining option.
  

[h2]Object Relocation[/h2]



This was a highly requested feature, so I caved in and implemented it. You can now relocate objects and devices anywhere you want, including the Ship Computer and Stasis Array. However, relocating these two will require a fairly high Construction skill level.

[h2]Community translations[/h2]



Our wonderful community members have translated Stardeus into 5 languages: Chinese, German, French, Czech and Portuguese (Brazil). Thank you! If you would like to contribute to translating Stardeus, all the information is in this public GitHub repository.

[h2]Expeditions UI overhaul[/h2]




Space expeditions were completely reworked. Initial implementation had a terrible UI with tons of annoying pop ups asking to micromanage every single step of every expedition. The new version will let you automate the expedition as much as possible. Want to mine only iron and copper, and automatically unload the shuttle back on your ship when it’s storage is full without launching a new expedition every time it returns? Now you can.

[h2]Major Performance Improvements[/h2]



Performance is very very important for me. A game like Stardeus has to run smoothly even with a huge amount of things happening. The game is being tested for performance bottlenecks on big saves, some of them having 100+ hours of play time, hundreds of colonists, and thousands of devices in complex electricity grids. Recently there were a couple of major CPU, GPU and RAM usage optimizations that made the game much faster. This should be especially noticeable with low tier hardware.

[h2]Stuck workers and rescue mechanic[/h2]



This is a small change, but it adds a lot of value, so I decided to include it in the list. Previously Robots would tend to get stuck in space if they were involved in deconstructing floors, therefore I “solved” it by making robots ignore floor deconstruction tasks. This was obviously not the right way to do it, so now we have a rescue mechanic. A robot that finds itself in space will request a lift from a friendly drone that will carry it to the nearest stable ground. You can also order rescue manually, in case the robot finds itself on a small patch of floors but without a way to reach the main ship. In addition, you can shutdown a worker and order relocating it anywhere you want. That allows you to shut down the robot very early in the game and move it near the Stasis Array, if you want to start building more complex devices there sooner.

[h2]New space background[/h2]



The original space background was arguably better looking, but it was very heavy on the GPU, and had a few fundamental issues that I was not able to solve. It was based on a fractal generation shader, which means I had almost no control of what things would look like, and it was impossible to make it infinitely scroll without running into floating point precision problems. It also had a very heavy shimmering effect with thousands of one pixel stars popping in and out when the view was moving. The new space background is based on Unity particle systems, I have much more control over it, and it will be possible to add particular objects to the background, i.e. a planet when you are above one. It still needs work, but I am going to do incremental small changes to make it look much better over time.

[h2]Other Changes[/h2]

In addition to what I already covered, there’s tons of new content, bug fixes, game balance, UI/UX and QOL changes. You can read through the full changelog if you are curious about the details. You can also find the real time changelog in #stardeus-updates channel on Stardeus Discord. It updates automatically when new alpha builds are published on Steam.


[h2]Watch Stardeus development on Twitch[/h2]

As always, I am developing Stardeus live on Twitch, you're always welcome to visit! If you are in a different time zone, you can still see the stream recordings for two weeks back.

See you soon!
Spajus

Hey Everyone!

Stardeus Kickstarter campaign is over, and I’m thrilled to see that we have been 188% funded. Thank you all so much!

Also, Weapons and Combat stretch goal was unlocked right before the end of the campaign, so now it’s official, Stardeus will not be just a peaceful space colony sim anymore. Building a tactical squad AI is going to be a challenge, but I love challenges like this!

What’s next?

Now I will work hard for the next 12 months and hopefully have the game well polished and ready for Early Access on Steam and GOG around September 2022. I will keep updating the alpha builds nearly every day, like I always did, so those who have Instant Alpha Access will get to enjoy the fresh version and see what I’m working on.

Rewards delivery

We will send out the remaining Instant Alpha Access keys shortly, and some time soon I will personally double check and ensure that every single key has been delivered.

Discord Backer roles will be processed some time soon, I will run a backer survey to get your discord usernames for that.

Other rewards could take a little longer to prepare, but keep an eye on emails from Kickstarter, as I will be running surveys for things that require your input (name in the game, your artwork as in-game cosmetic, etc). Details will follow with future updates.

Thank you again for believing in Stardeus! I will do my best to deliver a high quality product over time.

See you in the next update!

Cheers,
spajus

Hey everyone!

Big thanks to all of you! We have crushed the second Kickstarter stretch goal - Factions & Diplomacy! This means Stardeus universe will be full of life, with other surviving ark ships, pirates, alien and AI factions. That will affect the economy and trade (which I already started working on), since faction relationships will have an effect on prices of goods.

It is time to reveal the 4th stretch goal!

Space Warfare

While the 3rd goal will add tactical combat between living beings, Space Warfare will bring it to the next level, by adding ship to ship combat. This means massive weapons, railguns, force fields, nukes, and other kinds of artillery. Some of the weapons will be powerful enough to wipe out a planet, or maybe even a whole star system. However, you won’t be the only one with such firepower, so often diplomacy will take you further than aggression. But if you want to wage war and reign terror wherever you go, nothing will stop you from trying, as with everything in Stardeus, the choice is yours.

We still have two weeks to go, and Stardeus is nearly 150% funded, which makes me very happy and motivated!

The community is becoming increasingly active on Stardeus Discord, so if you are playing the demo, or the closed alpha, join the server and talk to me and the other players, we will be happy to help you out. I also suggest watching this Tips and Tricks video, it showcases a lot of small QOL features that can make your playthroughs more efficient:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbAYvQmRLxY

P.S.

If you have backed the project on Kickstarter at Stardeus Engineer or higher tier, and haven't received your alpha Steam key in more than 2 days, please send an email to [email protected] and include your Kickstarter display name + backer number, I will do my best to resolve the situation ASAP.

See you in the next update!

Spajus