Generationship News

The last months i worked on new graphics, models and some other larger changes. In this post i will show you the new graphic style that brings the game to a new level of detail.


[h2]New Painting[/h2]
Lets start with the Resource Boxes, some i just updated a bit, like the gas bottles or the steel and glass boxes shown here. They got a detailed painting, labels and signs on it:



[h2]New Models[/h2]
Others got a complete new model like Biomass and Iron Garbage.



For the liquids i added an industry like container that can show the filling state as before.



[h2]Random Details[/h2]
To make it look a bit more realistic, i created a shader that is moving and rotating the single items in the box, what is nice visible here at the new cooked food model:



The first feedback i got was to add an OCD Mode, so i made it possible to turn it off in the options :)



Here you can see all Resource Boxes i updated:




[h2]Design[/h2]
The Rooms got also a complete rework, they have thicker walls and have some panels outside. When spinning or increasing the game speed very fast, some players reported some motion sickness, what was even worse in the first person mode. So i keep the new Rooms completely closed.


Later i plan to let the player choose some parts of the building, so he can exchange some walls or roofs to ones with windows.



[h2]Hide Top[/h2]
To make it possible to hide the top part of the rooms. I added 2 different heights, like in many other games.


[h2]Customize[/h2]
The system is designed, that the player can later exchange different walls through walls with windows or do other customizations. Till now, the player can customize the wall color, maybe I'll add more colors to be picked later.


A big new feature what i did while creating the new design was to make the Floor space can be setup by the player. Till now there is a maximum size given (~20 tiles). Maybe i need to add some downsides for larger rooms later, like the persons will not like it, or additional interiors need to be placed to enlarge it.



The new Unity update finally supports the Lens flares for my experimental renderer i use, so i could finally create it!



So far to this part, i also started to rework also the interior. I'll create a post like this when everything is ready. I also post daily the progress with pictures on our Discord Server:



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

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

The simulation of the game has a detailed algorithm to calculate the efficiency of an Activity. To make this better visible, i am proud to introduce you to the new Interface for activities.

Due to the feedback, i received from some playtesters, i thought about the layout of the activity ui and found a good way to merge the productivity, storages, workers and more together to one single interface.



At the headline its still similar, showing the title, and the main Problem. Below there is the current Productivity where the player can turn it off, or setup the productivity. If there is a target, the state is also shown below with a smaller line.




Below are the new items showing several details of it. Its split up in single items that have 3 columns:

The first column has a large icon, showing the type of the influence. Clicking there can navigate to the items or change them. In the followed column a short headline with details are added. At the end of this column are some details. It ends with the influence change.

[h2]Condition[/h2]
The first influence is the condition of the Building. Its reduced over time and can be increased by the maintenance activity.



[h2]Gravity[/h2]
Some Activities are influenced by the gravity. It belongs to some internal processes of the interior item are more efficient with gravity. Also when workers need to do something on the machine, on low gravity it took more time.



[h2]Player[/h2]
Here the player can set a maximum efficiency, to e.g. reduce the amount of energy or other resources are used. He can also turn it off completely.



[h2]Resource-Boxes[/h2]
If the Activity creates or uses Resource Boxes from storages in the rooms, they are also shown. In this line, there is also shown how much resources are used and how much would be used with 100% productivity.



[h2]Ship Section-Resources[/h2]
Some Activities using from or adding gas to or using it from the air of the section. The maximums here can be controlled by the ship section, to adjust automatically the amounts in the air.



[h2]Ship-Resources[/h2]
Additional to the Ship Section Resources, there is also Energy, used by the whole ship. If there is not enough energy, or the batteries are full, this value will be regulated by the ship automatically.



[h2]Target[/h2]
Some activities have targets, like the maintenance or construction activity. Usually the distance to the Target influences the efficiency.



[h2]Workers[/h2]
If the activity needs workers, they are shown here. Some need special skills, that are shown next to the headline. The mood will influence the productivity a lot, so if that is low, they will not work well.



[h2]Users[/h2]
Service activities will increase or decrease values of users of the activity. E.g. a Dringing activity will increase the H²O value of the person.




There are different calculation methods used for every line. They are applied from top to bottom, showing the total efficiency till the row.

• Multiply
  
• Multiply Average
  
• Minimum
  
• Minimum Average
  
• Subtract Relative
  

to the growing community for all the ideas and feedback.
Thank you for reading. we would be happy to welcome you on our discord.


and don't forget to wishlist and follow us to keep up to date.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/

Storages are one of the main gameplay elements, so its important to make them act understandable are easy configurable.


Since the last iteration, the there existed input and output storages, that are related to the activity. Activities needed an input storage for consuming and output storages for producing resource boxes. Beside that there are general storages that can have in and out behaviors, special storages e.g. for the dock or the shuttle bay and many more.

The old design had several hardcoded behaviors, depending on the type of the storage and how they are used. It was build at the start of the development and being improved a lot of times, but the major design survived till these days.


Now all of that has been replaced by just one kind of storages with several options. These options replacing the old special behaviors and make them way easier to understand and as a good side effect, the player can change them to their needs. It depends a bit on the kind of storage what options are changeable by the player or not, due to for some special storages, it doesn't make sense to change them.

To make it easy, the activity storages get automatically options, depending on what interior items are placed in the blueprints. So if activities just using it as an input storage, the storage will be preconfigured as only input behavior, but it can be changed later afterwards.


[h2]Input Storage Option[/h2]
Not Allowed
No Input connections are allowed.
Request Only Full Boxes
This is the default behavior for the Activity storages. They just request boxes when they are full, so not so many transport actions are triggered.
Request Partial If Empty
In some cases the other box is filling very slow, but its essential to get that as fast as possible, to get the activity to be able to work. This will be only triggered when the storage has no more boxes, so its not filling all up.
Request Partial
This is a special option that is default for construction storages to be able to grab all resources they need at the building lot.



[h2]Output Storage Option[/h2]
Not Allowed
No output connections are allowed.
Auto Send Only Full Boxes
This is the default behavior for Activity storages. They just send boxes when they are full.
Auto Send Unused
In some cases it can be useful to send a box out, when its not used by the room anymore, e.g. when an activity stopped.
Force Empty
This is a special option and is used e.g. for the Dock or dismantle building lots.



[h2]Problem Option[/h2]
There are 2 different problems that can be configured. Full storage and empty storage. After several playtests i figured out, that players use the storage in different ways, so sometimes, the "full" is good, sometimes its bad.
For each Storage, the player can now configure them depending on the usage:

• Error (Red Icon)
  
• Warning (Yellow Icon)
  
• or nothing should be shown
  

To round the storage changes up, i also improved the Connect Storage Overlay. I used the new approach what i developed for the Person Activity and added also existing ones and show problems e.g. for maximum connections.




to the growing community for all the ideas and feedback.
Thank you for reading. we would be happy to welcome you on our discord.



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

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

To make the builder assignment easier, i added a popup-button to the Construction Sites. It shows all possible Builders and an easy assign button, so its not needed anymore to assign it on all construction rooms in all interiors, what was a bit much work.




After the change of the working places it was not easy visible how many workers are assigned to a room. To make this visible, i added a list of all persons, assigned to the selected room to the details panel.




To have a better view to the inside of the ship, there is now a button to hide the upper part of the rooms. I'm thinking to close the normal rooms in general, so its more realistic and they can be darken better when adding a night mode.




Due to a lot of feedback to the construction Priorities, i added more priorities to let the player differenciate easier. It also contains a Pause Option, so the building is not automatically choosen anymore.




Like in most Strategie games, you can now use Ctrl+(1..0) on the keyboard to save the selected things and restore it with a simple press on the (1..0) Keys.
Thanks to BLUESKY-WR for the idea.


This are just the smaller changes of this new Version. Larger things will be published from now on in more detail besides that updates.


[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Always show the Unseal Buttons even when the building is not selected
  
• Better text alignment in FillBars (Thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Add Arrow-Keys to WASD to move camera (Thanks to Revolus for Report)
  
• Shift For SupplyRocket to completely fill/empty (Thanks to Revolus for Report)
  
• Using lower value check for Air-Values to check for equals
  
• Added Support for Click on the Buildings in the Resource-Overview Tooltip
  
• Added Support for Click on the ContainerUser Window
  
• Added General Burst to options for debuging hard crashes
  
• Set Minimum Center of Mass Distance for spin to -1m to make Mass Balancers optional
  
• Hide +-0 at gaugepanels when not updated
  
• Improved Light setup for BigHemisphere
  
• Shortcuts for Select or Choose are now correct shown in the current Shortcut area
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Improved performance for Supply ship Setup
  

[h2]Bufixes[/h2]

• Fixed Unity Bug where space was used as mouseevent on a not shown button (thanks Glitch for report)
  
• Fixed missing Unit in GaugeElements
  
• Fixed Empty Area of Configurator blocked dropping Interior Items (thanks to Revolus)
  
• Fixed Interior Items can't be dropped when over 0 cylinder position (thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Fixed Crash using the delete button in the interior Item list (thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Prevent Autosaves when game is already removed to prevent broken savegames (thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Fixed Crash like UI Update after special kind of big bugs due to History (thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Fixed Endless update Loop where a patient wanted to heal himself (thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Fixed not shown Storage at Mass Balancer
  
• Fixed overlapping Resource-Overview Panel (lower left) to all resolutions (thanks to Revolus for report)
  
• Fixed Buildmenu could open in first person mode
  

to the growing community for all the ideas and feedback.
Thank you for reading. we would be happy to welcome you on our discord.



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

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

[h2]Release Video[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This release took a bit longer, due to a 3 week vacation after working every day over the last 2.5 years.

[h2]Skills[/h2]

This iteration skills for the crew was added. They have now 5 basic Skills that have different impacts. A general skill is the astronaut skill. As higher it is, as less impact the 0 gravity will have and as better the person is in navigating and steering the shuttles. The other skills are for the specialized machines and activities. As higher, as faster they can do the work and some are restricted with a minimum skill.




[h2]New Layout of Supply Request

Adding the skills also caused a rework of the Request Supply Ship. It has now way larger items and the summary is better to see. It also prevents to change the size of the popup and showing larger icons.




[h2]Better Person List[/h2]

The List of Persons have also been improved to show the new Details and the current Activity. It also shows the Basic needs to prevent choosing ones that are in a bad state. I'll add filters and sorting options in another iteration also to easier choose from groups of larger persons.




[h2]User and Worker layout[/h2]

For Activity Users there are now placed in lines instead of single icons, so its also shown the other needs of them and a written name. For Workers its similar, but it shows the relevant things that influence the efficiency.



[h2]New Choose Icons including Problems[/h2]

To make the choose of the Activity more easier, i enhanced the choosing mechanism with icons, showing above the interior items. It indicates the kind of activity. If its not available for some reason (like all slots used, no resources or private room) its showing now also but with a reason icon behind with a tooltip on hover.



[h2]Prepare for more Languages[/h2]

To make more languages available, the possible languages are now scanned. Adding a new language can be now done with just adding a new file in the Locales folder. To make Languages with non latin characters possible, i added an option to change the font and added some predefined fonts for chinese and japanese for now.



[h2]Graphic improvements[/h2]
I added a bloom effect and changed the lighting inside of the Base Buildings. They use now separate Lamps to enlightned it. The fake lights i used before sometimes made the lighting unreasonable strange.



[h2]Hide upper part of Buildings[/h2]
The upper part of a building is now cut off in the configuration mode. I'll add also an option, to cut the buildings as an option the player can choose to see more in the other parts of the gameplay.



[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]
Changes

• Better color for Choose Resident
  
• Add resourceType to the storage icons in configurator
  
• Fixed Warning: Entity didn't have interior bounds (dock module for new persons)
  
• Partial Boxes are send also out to construction sites
  
• Added TextShadow to Bar-Text to make them better readable on all backgrounds
  
• Using workhours as an estimation for a underconstruction without an active builder.
  
• Increased Icons in Container UI Elements
  
• Increased Readability of Shortcuts
  
• Allow some tooltips to over with the mouse over them
  
• Better readable Red for Error-Hints
  
• Changed behavior of Assign WorkSlot (was still workplace behavior)
  
• Randomize output of supplyship to make probems with not unloaded more rare
  
• Layout of Shuttlebay Storages are now aligned
  
• Added Bloom for nicer look
  
• Hide BuildingButton when clicked to make clicking easier
  
• Improved layout of Blueprints in the Buildmenu to show grouped InteriorItems
  
• Show Problems on Choose Activity for Private Rooms and No Slots
  
• Added Person Details popup to all Person-Icons
  
• Make the Font changable in the Language file to support more languages
  
• Added font for Simplified Chinese and Japanese
  
• Make use of similar work InteriorItems random, so everything is used more equal.
  
• Click on the Resource Type Icon in a Storage will now start transfer of all resources of that type
  
• Added Cutting of upper part of the building, to make the Hemisphere BaseBuilding better usable
  
• Added Wall Lamps for the Basic Buildings to improve lighting
  

Bufixes

• Fixed General Storages not shown in Resource Overview when only in transit boxes
  
• Prevent Assign Worker with the Working Slot button when its not possible
  
• Fixed possible crash when assign a person and shuttlebay is ready to mission
  
• Fixed disabled camera controls in special cases of popup closings
  
• Fixed wrong icon at Low H2O at metabolism Stopped
  
• Fixed not not showing details of storages in blueprint configurator
  
• Fixed Storage Problem of general storage sometimes not shown
  
• Fixed wrong highlighting when transfering resources
  
• Fixed Wrong iconshown for some blueprints
  
• Fixed flickering of Tooltips at first frame in some cases
  
• Fixed some Resource animation starts at 0,0 when split up
  
• Fixed highlight problems of transfer resources stayed on in special cases
  
• Fixed Hemisphere Basebuilding
  
• Fixed Problems of MultiSelect Itenerior Items (thanks to Glitch for report)
  
• Fixed Wrong Shadow Distance when switching to another perspective