Generationship News

This time I reworked another feature of the game, that was not touched for a long time and needed an update to the new gameplay.


I updated the Center of Mass, to make it easier to see what's going on. The old “possible area” was not very intuitive, so I added a manual logic and an acceptable offset to the perfect mass balancing. The Player can now change the Target Mass and the extension of the Mass Balancers Water Balloon.




To visualize this, I reworked the Overlay for it. It will also become visible, when the Mass Distance is changed by the player with Drag&Drop. Then it also shows the Center of Mass of the Ship when the Mass Balancer reached its target fill level. In case of the normal overlay, it shows the ships Center of Mass when all of the balancers reached its target fill level.




This iteration I migrated the Mass Balancer to the new Interior Item System. It’s similar to the Dock reaching to the outside of the ship, to not disturb the player. The construction is made out of a big balloon that can be filled with 100T of Water. The Balloon can be extended via pipes that can be moved out. Similar to drilling oil, the pipes get mounted or unmounted when moving further. The tube storage and a connection is in the inside of the ship, so the crew can easily maintain it.




The artificial gravity was a late game feature till now, due to the mass balancers moving their mass to the outside of the ship. But in reality it's also possible to use that technique for a small ship towards the other direction. This makes it now also possible to start the artificial gravity for the small new starting ship. I added an Achievement and Explanation later in the game as to not overload new players too much.




To show that system to new players, the help has been changed. The Help menu now contains the old help for the activities, as to have one central place. Instead there are now context relevant help buttons, shown in green if they have not been seen by the player.




All testers asked about adding doors in finished buildings, so I had to support that and created a door interior item. It also has the effect that it’s easier to open and close the doors. All new rooms must get a door interior before they can be built.




To improve the playing speed and make it more convenient, you can now start the time warps by just pressing the Tab Button. It will timewarp if there is a useful timewarp, e.g. it will timewarp to the end of the sleeping when the person is selected; or when a construction site is selected, to the end of the construction.




Each interior item has Containers and they were all shown without a logical structure. The condition has been moved to its own place, and the others are now sorted by the input and output storages. When the interior has Recipes like the workbench, the items are split by a Progress element, to make it even better to see what’s going on.




To make the outside of the Ship better visible in the shadow of the sun, an ambient occlusion for the outside of the ship has been added.




Players have reported feelings of dizziness when engaging in the time-warp feature while rooms are visible. To combat this, I have implemented a feature that allows players to adjust the background brightness. By default, the background brightness will be dynamically calculated to match human perception, providing a more comfortable experience while time-warping.




Analoge spinning clock to the timewarp overlay. This was a suggestion from the growing community, thanks to Revolus for the idea.

• Fixed wrong Door button
  
• Fixed special cases for Transport Tasks not updated Task (Thanks to ichio)
  
• Fixed ship was not spinning anymore when it should be
  
• Fixed mouse capture was not working in special places on bars
  
• Fixed wrong offset at dragDrop a bar
  
• Fixed Engines start effect when the first engine is on.
  
• Fixed duplicate resource container visible in ch4 engine
  
• Fixed Not centered Problem Icon over N2Releaser
  
• Fixed HideTopOfWalls Mode changed after adding the first interior item
  
• Fixed Creating a room with preadded interior items takes too long time
  
• Fixed Box arrival with small boxes still not starting the interior construction in special case
  
• Fixed position of Room Problem icons in Scene
  
• Fixed Part of the StackStorage Model was in the floor
  
• Fixed Recipe not stops assigned persons activity
  
  
• Added better Spawnpoints for DockingPort
  
• Improved Intros Camera at the end not aligned good
  
• Move Dock to separate interior Item category
  
• Take Resources From Storage is sometimes shown 0.0x. Dynamic adding more numbers there.
  
• Adapted stats for old Hydroponic Box (thanks to EkuDza)
  
• Show the Construction Bar on top also for rooms.
  
• Hide not needed containers for interior items in construction/dismantle phase
  
• Added Warning for Paused Constructions
  
• Added Storage Setup to the Blueprints
  
• Hide Delete Recipe Button in output state, due to it has to be first emptied
  
• ConstructionStorage should always merge automatically on arrival
  
• Remove input and Progress container when recipe is done instead of later when its finished
  
• Wrap line when too many resource Filters are active in a storage
  
• Closed a hole in a room part mesh when ceiling is cut.
  
• Better SupplyShip Speed when flying away
  

I also post the progress and more pictures to our Discord:



And don't forget to wishlist and follow us to keep up to date.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/

This update goes leaps and bounds to make the game playable for new players. The complete tutorial has been redone to adapt to the new Gameplay. You may also notice that there are a lot of bug fixes, this was due to the huge changes the last time, it should get less after each iteration till the playtest will start.


Due to the changes last year, the tutorial got more and more outdated. It didn’t show the new gameplay anymore. Due to the gameplay changing significantly and nearing it’s final stage, I completely re-did the tutorial.




With the tutorial, the starting satellite has also been re-done. The new gameplay makes it possible to reduce the size, so you can now build more things on your own.




The Dock has been migrated to the new Interior Items. The logic there has now also been changed. Before every Dock had their own supply ship, what led to an easy way to get lots of supply ships by just building more docks. Now the Supply Ships can be managed separately. More supply ships can be bought and for each supply request the dock can be chosen.




The storages can now be set up to support multiple Resource Types. This makes it easier to manage the resources in the ship.




The storages can now also be configured to allow the usage of the persons. This is to prevent the persons filling up the storage or emptying it when you don’t want that.




After all of these changes, the old setup was not useful anymore, so I changed the logic of the problems, to hint better towards the problem. For example the machines now hint to the needed resource types and not just showing “a resource is empty” icon. There is now also a problem added for no recipe set, low interior condition and resource container specific problems.




To hint at potential problems, new warnings have been added. One is the low condition for interior items. The condition has an influence on productivity, so it's better to see it earlier. It's shown as a warning, when it has an influence and error when it's very low.

• Fixed not rotating Photovoltaic Panels
  
• Fixed missing shadows in First Person Camera
  
• Fixed annoying camera rotation when zoom to other camera
  
• Fixed persons idling on used tiles when adding interior items
  
• Fixed person not moving around when idle
  
• Fixed person not start "real" idle when forced to walk
  
• Fixed error when person try to pick up from a removed resource box
  
• Fixed rounding Bug for InteriorItemBoxes arrived
  
• Fixed creation of Empty ResourceBoxes at Transport
  
• Fixed Exception when removing bed in configurator
  
• Fixed SealButton not hiding (thanks to ichao)
  
• Fixed SectionUI not change when selecting an interior Item
  
• Fixed Input connections resource count not filters correct (thanks to ichao)
  
• Fixed RoomConfigurator allows removing an part that should not be (thanks to ichao)
  
• Fixed RoomConfigurator now allowed doors to other rooms
  
• Fixed Exception in Updating special parts of the UI (thanks to ichao)
  
• Fixed endless loop when person get unconscious when constructing a room (thanks to ichao)
  
• Fixed Warnings on build, due to different materials
  
• Fixed missing select sound not played anymore for single selection
  
• Fixed wrong align of some Tooltips
  
• Fixed Idle persons staying very long
  
• Fixed Error on illegal Savegame FileNames
  
• Fixed Maintenance Priority for Rooms not just updated when air-leak is starting (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed not showing names of renamed interior items in the room overview
  
• Fixed rare exceptions in productivity visual element(thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed some rare exceptions in simulation (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed RoomIcons are not changable
  
• Fixed Bug in assigning Residents
  
• Fixed Bug in Room Creator special case for some doors (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed Problem with Popups where Esc not opening Menu (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed Persons transported Resources to unfinished Storages (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed abort construction of interior in special case not finish (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed some rounding errors, where constructions were not finished (thanks to Bluesky-WR)
  
• Fixed bug where building lot starts when some resources still in transit
  
• Fixed Dismantle can create Empty resource Boxes
  
• Fixed some Boxes started at a wrong position
  
• Fixed Room construction person animation seems not working
  
• Fixed Not Possible to let person fill up empty interior item with transported resources
  
• Fixed Filllevel of H2O and H2O Brown were wrong visualized
  
• Fixed Empty transport slot to a Storage shows 0g in PiMenu
  
• Fixed OCD MODE in savegames
  
• Fixed showing wrong connections on hover over ResourceOverview
  
• Fixed Wrong Problem shown for empty resource container activities in private rooms
  
• Fixed end of visualisation connection for special interior items (thanks to ichao)
  
• Fixed Endless loop, related to an null AnimationPathEntity (thanks to ichao)
  
• Mark current Residents in the resident window
  
• Click on empty recipe opens add recipe popup
  
• Hide some outdated blueprints and interior items
  
• Improved SupplyPopup lower bars are broken
  
• Add Door marker when placing Blueprints (thanks to ichao)
  
• Only show center of mass overlay in overview perspective
  
• Auto start Achievements to prevent players who don’t know what to do
  
• Changed Color of Credit Text in Supply popup when running out of credits
  
• Forced using Weight for Interior Item Boxes in Supply Popup
  
• Improved Selection of Persons
  
• Sort Choose Resident
  
• Added WorldElements for Choose Resident Action
  
• Added more AutoCorrections for usual problems
  
• Updated UnderConstructionProblem WaitingForResources and make it as a warning, when the boxes are on the way
  
• Zoom while adding interior only use the room-areas
  
• Better Default Animation Position for Storage Interior Items
  
• Added Missing ResourceType to BuildingLots
  
• Custom SelectionBounds for CH4 Engine to prevent problems clicking on things behind
  

In this iteration I want to give special thanks to BurritoBotV3000 from our growing community, to help with the new Docking Port model and also for improving the text for the new Tutorial. Also to Ichao and Bluesky-WR this iteration for the good testing and bug reports.


I also post the progress and more pictures to our Discord:



And don't forget to wishlist and follow us to keep up to date.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/

Hello everyone, let me give you a short update what happened in this year and what's you can expect for next year.


The Year started with a improvement of the Graphic performance. The main part was using LOD levels for some of the models and adding support for this to my systems. I improved the highlighting, selection and other systems, to improve the performance. I also converted all buildings to the new Interior System and finished Templates, so players can create their owns now.




In the second month was planned to add more person features but it was needed to refactor the simulation. Moving the activities out of the building and doing the person metrics and activity updates more async helped to add these new features. It was a big effort, but it also leads to very high performance improvements what was planned for later, so it was switched.




The March was planned to do the Person Skills more needs and Environment, but end up in another big performance update, now back to 100fps at the starting ship and several optimisations and fixes, due to some really good testers building very large ships. I could finish the Residence feature and moved the activities to the Interior, to get an easier workflow and ui for the players.




In April the rooms has been restructured and all activities have been moved to the interior items. This should make it more clear and easier to use. The rooms were restructured, so more things can be added to a room. The Persons got Skills and the interior items can require some minimum skill.




The May started with a 3 week vacation after the 2.5 years working close to every day :) The rest was smaller polishing bugfixes and post processing improvements. I also changed the font and make more languages possible. At another good Playtest i fixed a lot and got good feedback to polish everything more.




In June i tried to hired the first employee for the game. But it didn't went as expected, cause i needed a lot of effort for communication ending up in stopping that experiment and continue alone. I played around with substance painter and it got way better and faster results than i had before. I also added storage options and refactored a lot to make this work.




The July went pretty fast without much time for large features. I worked a bit more on my sideprojekt for money to have more time for further development. I painted a lot of models and did a new room type. I also bring the animations to the next level to make e.g. the toilet work well and fix some blending issues between them.




In August i created the room configurator, where the player can setup their own room designs. I added more features to support interior overlapping to the outside like solar panels, and their animation towards the sun. The rest of the month i was very busy, due to we moved from Germany to china for some years.




In September i moved to china with my family for some years, after a long quarantine i was just able to finalize the latest release and more models. I also started to migrate to a new Version of Unity, what was a big mess, due to they add breaking changes that completely ruins my current architecture, so it took a long time to adapt to it. I was able to bring the spinning engines to the new architecture.




In Oktober i worked most of the time on the new design of the rooms. I removed the underground layer and let the boxes drive on the floor and created a complete new room design and a room-building. The framework of unity I'm using is also getting closer to the final release. I tried to update, but there are still too many problem with it. But in general it seems i can update end of the year to it.




In November the main purpose was to change to a new gameplay. The Persons become way more important and are now moving resources around, constructing rooms at the room location and maintain things by themself. The Interior Items got their own resource box, that can be crafted at the old construction workbench.




In December i did the last change of the gameplay, to make the rooms updatable. Also Pi menus have been added, so you have a Sims like Interaction with the crew. It affects close to all parts of the game and took a bit time to polish all of this. I invested some time to prepare for a large Unity update and got everything stable.




[h2]Release[/h2]
Following the original plan we would get now close to the release, but the game changed so much, that it will not be possible. The original gamedesign plan was to build just the buildings but changed to manage the interior items and persons. Due to i am still alone developing on this game, i have to move the release one year further, to get you a good game.

[h2]Roadmap[/h2]
At the start of next year, i will be busy to readd all features that were in the game before and outdated due to the last updates. One example is to migrate the Dock and supply ship to the new Interior Item approach. The starting ship will also be updated including most of the tutorials.

When this is done, i will work on the storyline and more content. In paralell a new Playtest-Phase will start. If you are interested, you are welcome in our discord :)



When all of this is done and the game is stable enough, i plan to launch a Demo while adding more content like Temperature Systems, more Resources and Interior items, till the final 1.0 release.



If you haven't it done yet, please wishlist and follow to keep up to date :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/

The main part of this iteration was a huge update of unity and the related packages. It had around 50% fps improvements, but there were many crashes when building the game and also on runtime, so I had to downgrade again. But I prepared for all necessary changes, so I will try it again next year.


I changed the interior item shader to make them more visible. It’s essentially the same as the rooms, but more visible and detailed.




To improve the development speed I have started purchasing 3D assets. I used several tools to integrate it to my workflow to keep a consistent style. As an example, I updated the N² and O² Releaser. The gas bottles are the same as from the boxes and will show the internal filling state inside of the interior item.




To visualize the amount of a resource that's inside of the machine, it's now possible to show this by the amount of visible e.g. Gas bottles.




To test another kind of asset I added a hydroponic box, where plants can grow. It can also show the progress by visualizing plants growing inside of the item.




Similar to the gas bottles, I also added some visualization of the progress to the new Hydroponic Box.




Multiple Interior Items like bed can now be selected at the same time. It shows an overview about the resources inside, the workers or residents and much more.




I added colors to the Resource Overview, to hint if it's increasing or decreasing.

• Fixed Savegame not working
  
• Fixed not working Interior Configurator (thanks to Ichao)
  
• Fixed bug when person died
  
• Fixed bug when person stop causing other person to update, doing the same task
  
• Fixed hiding selection panel when start transfer resources
  
• Fixed several other bugs found with automated tests
  
• Fixed wrong positioned Barrel icon in Problem Icon Overlay
  
• Fixed not working working-lights and effects
  
• Fixed not able to assign eating with PiMenu in a private room for residents
  
• Show Private hint also in Activities
  
• Add "Create New" Button at the top of Blueprints in Buildmenu to make it more clear
  
• Don't stop timewarp when person arrived. Should be till the end of the activity.
  
• Don't update the door in the interior editor, so the door stay open.
  
• Tooltips in PiMenu causing closing PiMenu (on hover)
  
• Added a "No Action" for PiMenus
  
• Removed activity icon from ProblemIcons, due to outdated
  
• Reduced size of problem icons in scene
  
• Moved Public Private Activity to an icon with tooltips
  
• Make Interior Items renamable
  
• Added description for Mood (thanks to Ichao)
  
• Prevent opening PiMenu when click on the ui
  

I also post the progress and more pictures to our Discord:



And don't forget to wishlist and follow us to keep up to date.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/

The last huge step for the new Gameplay is now done.


Interior items (e.g. furniture or machines) are now built after the room is created. Once the room finishes completion, interior items will be constructed by a person.




Interior items can now be disassembled. When removing interior items, you are given a boxed up version of that interior item. It is now required to deconstruct or disassemble interior items inside of a room before deconstructing a room.




Rooms can now be re-furnished. There is an interior items button in the building UI to re-furnish the room.




Another small improvement I made was to add affected units to the PI menu as well as general improvements to the PI menu.

• Fixed exception with multiple dropped Storages (thanks to BurritoBot for report)
  
• Fixed wrong Pi menu entries in some cases
  
• Fixed missing interior count in blueprints menu element
  
• Fixed problem where resources were not moved out of a dismantled building
  
• Fixed walking command had no scheduled ending time
  
• Fixed missing Activity and Storage in Room overview
  
• Fixed Exception on general empty resource slot
  
• Fixed Put Action is not allowed for non-resource containers
  
• Improved Resource weight format for ui elements
  
• Replace arrows for Exit with "Door" (thanks to BurritoBot for idea)
  
• Persons are now assigned to Beds instead of the Rooms
  
• Added Cheat for Resourceboxes of Generic Storages
  
• Added Cheat for Changing ResourceContainer values
  

ps.: For Playtesters: Like the last iterations, the build will again be just available in the Latest Branch, but i will try in the next iteration the update again and hope they fixed the bugs.


I also post the progress and more pictures to our Discord:



And don't forget to wishlist and follow us to keep up to date.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/