Generationship News

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.

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

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/

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/