Generationship News

The next huge step for the new Gameplay is finished.


The Interior Items now need the matching Interior Item Resource Box. Each Interior Item got their own box. Inside are the prepared things to construct the Item, so the person can assemble it in the building, or disassemble it to the Resource Box.




The person can now create the Room without the need of the construction Workbench. He is walking to the building lot now.




The maintain Task got also updated like this, so the old Maintenance Table is also outdated now. Its all added to the Pi Menu of the Person.




To split up the interior items more from the building, i added also a condition effect on the interior item. Its similar than the one from the room, but sure not causing air leaks. Instead it influence the activity as worse the condition gets.




Due to the old workbench is not constructing things anymore, i made a huge extension of the working logic what can be explained as crafting. I added Recipies to create different Interior items. The work contained 3 steps. Filling up the needed input resources, processing and clearing the output resources.




A requested feature by the community was to queue up the building tasks. I added this now to the new Construction Table, so you can setup up to 30 items to be crafted. As usual, there is also a timewarp button to jump at the end of the crafting.

• Fixed BoxCount in Storage Connections
  
• Fixed several Transporting Issues
  
• Fixed wrong change icon for some resource container icons
  
• Fixed wrong height of Bars with text
  
• Fixed PiMenu popup on wrong position in special resolutions
  
• Fixed Scrollbar for PersonUi and Supply Popup
  
• Fixed not animated Photovoltaic Panels
  
• Fixed persons not idling outside of the ship
  
• Improved UI for Person Overview: Group Activities together
  
• Transport Activities are now always at the Interior
  

ps.: For Playtesters: Like last time, the build will be just available in the Latest Branch, till the savegame problem related to unity is fixed.


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.

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Hello friends,
the last weeks i worked on more gameplay related features, to make the game more interactive. It's the first part of the last huge gameplay change, i plan to work on the rest of this year.


The connection between the storages and the interior items were not so intuitive, so i split them up. Each interior item has now their own resource container included. In the next iterations, i plan to do this more visual, so showing the state of it by changing the look of the interior item.




The game was also lacking some interactions of the crew. Till now, the crew just worked on the interior items and using the services to serve their needs. With this update the crew got more important, due to they are the only one to fill up or empty the new Interior Item Resource container. To make this work, the persons got a Transport Slot, where they can transfer some resources.




Due to a person have now way more interaction possibilities with interior items, i created a pi menu like in Sims, where you can force the person to do something. Its opening by holding the right mouse key down. The major usage of the items will be in the center, so its just a simple right click to e.g. let the person eat on the table.




The persons will automatically transport the Items to the interior items or empty their garbage/production resources. For special cases i also added other actions to fill up or empty their transport slot, to make sure they are not stuck somewhere.




Another possibility i could add with that pi menu is to command the crew member to move to a specific place inside of the ship. For now, this has no gameplay usage, but later when the ship gets damaged or a virus is spreading around, this will get more important.




Due to this update, the logic of the interior items with the activity/storage has been changed. The Interior items are now more independent from the building and will be split up in the next iterations. This makes each interior item has their own storage, so they can be setup individual. To make it easier to setup the storages, i created a large box storage with storage of 15 items with one interior item.




Another more internal change in this iterations is the animation system. It now deal with the interior positions by itself, so the persons are directly move to the target position and just start the activity when they arrive at the position. I could remove a lot of the old code and removed a lot of special cases.




Due to the last updates, i was also able to add some emergency lights when the power goes off. Its turning the complete ship in a dark red light.




- Fixed flickering of Room-Configuration
- Removed Delay of WorldElements
- More error tolerant savegames

The bad news at last: There is a new unity bug related to the savegames caused by the current unity version. Downgrading takes too much time. The related packages got a huge update to 1.0 these days, but still got big bugs. So the plan is to update when this is more stable hopefully at the end of this year. In that time, i will just release on the test branch (for the Playtesters) and keep implementing the new features.


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/

A thing what i always struggled were the design of the rooms. I want to show you the reasons and some impressions of the new design here.

[h2]New Design[/h2]
They had several problems, like when the ship is spinning, it causes motion sickness looking outside. Due to the "cut ceiling" feature i added latest, its now possible to create fully closed rooms.
Another point was the general design, to have a better pressure capsule, a cylinder design is way more effective. So in case of realism it should be changed to this kind of design.



[h2]New ResourceBox Design[/h2]
To create this new tube design with the old logic was complicated, due to the resource-rail system below. Due to that i changed that completely, so the resources are now above robot, that will move the boxes over the floor, where also the persons are walking.



[h2]Room Configurator[/h2]
The main thing was now, that the tile based old room configurator was outdated, and replaced by an easy to use room configurator. The player can drop the start of the building and can than extend the tube or attach others next to it to extend them. There is a maximum of 3 tiles per tube and 3 tubes per building, to prevent too large room. The system supports more room styles, so the old Greenhouse design or a design with a glass roof can be added easy.



[h2]New Storages[/h2]
Due to the resources are not moving below, all the storages needed to be updated. The wall height was also reduced from 3m to 2.5m, so the large storage wasn't fitting anymore. To still support that, i restyled them. The new Buildings can have a bit less space, so i also added an outside storage. This feature is also needed later when i change the shuttlebay and supplyship landing to the new interior items.



[h2]Hallways[/h2]
The old Walkway had many special cases and was not included in the interior drop system. But it would be great to be able to let the player to customize them too, so i also used the new Room Configurator for them. Till now, this is the only way to create multiple exits at the rooms. The other advantage is, that it now way easier to create the whole circle of the cylinder, by "just" dropping large hallways blueprint the user can create. The disadvantage is that the player need to plan the exits in front, so it cause more early planning.



[h2]Animation System[/h2]
All of that change also affected the Animation System, that i completely refactored several times, to a now more easy code without the need of the old special cases, that caused a lot of complexity.





Thats the last update of the Graphic update. Hope you like the new graphics and i will continue with more gameplay now. 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/

Hi there, you may noticed, that the last update was a longer time ago, but there was a lot of work done in that time, i want to present you. The major change this release is the new Graphics. Like you can also see in the latest News, it brings the game to a new level of detail. Here some impressions.

Resource Boxes and their content were rewritten


and became a randomize position and rotation.


Many interior items were updated. Here just few of them


There are also new Interior Items, like the new Hygiene area (inspired by the ISS)


Interiors can be place inside of walls, like the Spinning Engines


The Photovoltaic Panels are migrated too and extends depending on the electricity usage


are rotating towards the sun


The Animation System has going through several large refactorings. Persons now directly move to their target positions through different rooms.


As you see, the Resource boxes are now also moving along the walking areas now. To do that, they get a small robot below.


Due to the missing underground level, the resource storages also got a remake


The reason for that were the big change of the rooms. They got now a cylinder shape.


Beside changing the Floor, the wall color can also be changed now


You can create these rooms with a new customizer tool when placing a new room


The Walkway is also replaced by the room Configurator, using blueprints, its now way faster to build the circle for the artificial gravity.


There is also a possibility to cut parts of the rooms away. This is used now for a new storage type, that can be placed in the wall to save space and later for shuttle bay and the dock interior item.


In the end, i could finally add the Lens flares for the sun.


Besides that more larger changes:
- The savegame is now smaller and the save and load process got way faster.
- Interior dropping has been improved, showing better problems and are animated
- Cut top of Rooms
- One big Unity Update with tons of breaking changes
- Another big Unity Update with even more breaking architecture changes, but compile was broken in this version. But i prepared the architecture to update soon.
- And for sure a lot of UI Changes




Or have any questions, feel free to join our Discord.



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

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After the last article, where i presented the new resources, i'm proud to present you some new interior Items and their new Design:

[h2]Photovoltaic Panel[/h2]
The photovoltaic Panels are updated to the new Graphics



They are now also interior items, that can be dropped in an electrical room. They causes a large change. Its now possible to add outside interior items to the rooms.



The idea of that interior item is to have them extendable, to be able to easy maintain them in the inside of the ship. As before, they extend depending on the energy needs, so you can see that at the model.



Another feature is, that the solar panels will orientate towards the sun, what brings a bit more movement to the timewarp.



[h2]Engine[/h2]
Another outside interior are the new Engines. They replace the old spinning engines and can now also be used later for accelerating the ship.


You have to build engines in spinning and against the spinning direction and the system will detect the orientation and turn them on when needed for the artificial gravity adjustments.



[h2]New Storages[/h2]
To achieve the target to make as much things as possible to interior items, i also enhanced the General Storage. You can now drop Storage Interior with general storage or special storages not related to the activities. Means, you can setup a complete custom storage by yourself.

Here the new General Storage with also 14 box space like the old one as a room.


It also causes a rework of the UI in that part, but that i will show in a separate article when its finalized.

[h2]Methane Generator[/h2]
The first update was for the Methane generator. Here a comparison from old to new.


[h2]Water Pump[/h2]
Pumps water to the ship pipes, to be used everywhere in the ship, like toilets, water dispensers and more


[h2]Fuel Cells[/h2]
Using H² and O² to generate electricity


[h2]3D Printer[/h2]
This machine can create Tools. It just get a new painting.


[h2]Toilet[/h2]
The Toilet got a complete redesign. Its now opened on the side, and includes a slidable door to close it. While doing that, i improved the animation system to have nicer and smoother animations


[h2]Hygiene Area[/h2]
The old sink got replaced by a hygiene area. This is also used in the ISS, due to normal washing would not work well on 0g. It contains a towel drying area, mirrors, a small water dispenser and some private closets for the astronauts with toothbrush and others.


[h2]Small Table[/h2]
The small table with chair got a more futuristic design and more colors that the old plain steel one.


[h2]Water Dispenser[/h2]
The water dispenser got another update, that makes it easier to see and more colorful


[h2]Bed[/h2]
The bed just got a painting update to look similar as the other interior items.




[h2]Medical Bed[/h2]
The Medial bed to increase the health of the crew also got nicer painting




So far to this part, i also started to rework the Buildings and the rest of the game. All of that are huge changes in the design and effects a lot of the code. I'll create a post like this when the rest is ready. 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/