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Generationship News

Release 0.68.0 - More Rooms

[h2]Release Video[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Factory Room[/h2]
A new Room has been added to create tools by the player itself. A new 3D Printer can now print out tools so there is no longer need for the supply from earth. For now, it just needs Steel, later i might add some more rare materials.
To complete the resource cycles, i also added a Smelting, to convert the Garbage Iron to Steel. This might also just temporary, maybe more things will be added in between later on.


[h2]Converted more Buildings to Interior[/h2]
The process of the conversion from the old buildings to the new Interior has been continued, so the chemical buildings are now also converted.



[h2]Modular Buildings[/h2]
The Basic Buildings to drop interior in has been updated to a more modular approach. So they are created out of several reusable peaces. For this iteration, they are not changable by the player and always the same for the basic buidlings, but its prepared for a more dynamic approach, where each dropped building could look different or even that the player can configure them completely free :)



[h2]Selectable Interior[/h2]
The new System allowed it to create several works in one building. To get a better overview for the player, i made the interior also selectable like buildings and Persons. For now, it just shows the related work, but in future, i will add more useful things to it.



[h2]Different Storage types[/h2]
The current storage could take 3 boxes and needed 2 tiles space. To make it more flexible, i readded the small box stoarge as an interior. Its just using 1 tile space and cost half of the resources.



[h2]Custom Templates[/h2]
The Templates can be now created and deleted by the player. For customized buildlings, there will be a button in the building details to create it.



[h2]Better Person Animations[/h2]
Persons are now idle randomly moving around the station when idling. They also switch between the interior when working on them. The interior lights are now also react on the working persons on them.



[h2]Seal Button WorldElements[/h2]
To make the seal buttons more convenient, i moved them to to the doors as World Elements. They are just moved to the place, where the door is rendered, so its way more intuitive what button will close what door. I also fixed the delay there, so its now instant following the camera.



[h2]New Icons[/h2]
I created more Icons and added layered Icons, that are also capable to render in 3D. A usage e.g. is for works, with combined icons like recycle water or recycle iron. Till now, i needed to create for each one an individual new model and add it to my icon generator. Now i can reuse the basic icons, to just setup a custom icon. It can be also used for the scene-overlays, so the calculation done in the UI is also done in 3D with the models to build up a similar look. I also updated the icon-camera, so its a less 3d effect, turns into more clear and larger icons.



[h2]Live update Language changes[/h2]
To make the community translation process faster, i added a live update feature. When the file is changed outside of the game, the game detects that and updates most of the text direct, without any need of reload.



[h2]Person Icons[/h2]
The person icons are now created from the actual generated models, so it feels, the player got more closer to the persons, they are not so anonymous anymore. They are used everywhere in the game now.



[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]
  • Fixed Popups could appear through blocked panels
  • Fixed general 1 frame delay for the UI
  • Fixed delay of world-elements (e.g. interior panels above the models)
  • Fixed maximum height of buildings with a lot of activities.
  • Emissions of Interior is now related to the Work
  • Working lights of Interior works same as emissions
  • Fixed Animation Path of Dock Module
  • Not executing shortcuts, when focus in on a text field
  • Stop interior drop when closing the panel or cancel the work
  • Persons start work-animation instant instead of waiting for end of idle animation
  • Hide Section Panel, when no other details are shown
  • Fixed not showing a problem when the water tubes are empty
  • Added an Event for water pipe empty and explain the problem (Thanks to gus)
  • Removed interactive part of the help (outdated)
  • Support more than 4 holes cut in the floors of buildings (e.g. for storage)
  • Move Resource Boxes move always to the lowest position
  • Closing Build menu keep starts walkway (due to search blur)
  • Fixed exception when person walking somewhere and updating in a rare case. (Thanks CadetKael for report)
  • Gather up Exceptions when save games are broken (or in too old version), so still debuggable
  • Improved zoom close for Inside camera

Release 0.67.0 - Graphic Performance

[h2]Release Video[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Graphic Performance Improvements[/h2]
The change of the rendering and added realtime lighting had impact on the performance. The minimal ship already hit a very high amount of verticies, so it was needed to improve that. I added LOD support to the system, so when zoom out, so the model swaps to a less vertecies version. I created for most of the expensive models some LOD versions and added them and could push the vertex count for the starting scene >50% down. It should have a big impact on big ships, due to the content of the container took a lot of verticies.

[h2]More Interior and rooms[/h2]
The Air Buildings and the Generator has been converted to the new interior system, so they can be placed as the other buildings. In addition, the style of the starting satelite has been adapted to fit to the buildings.



[h2]Tutorial and Achievements[/h2]
The tutorial has been updated to cover the customized buildings. Its now requesting to build one lifesupport backup building instead of the 4 specialized air modules. To fix some issues with the starting generator being damaged, its now the dock, that is damaged. It has no relevant implications, so its an easier target for the start for being repaired.


[h2]Other new Models[/h2]
The new Resourcebox. No wood anymore, but steel and also added a small light, to be maybe used later for the fillstate.



[h2]Resource Merging[/h2]
Due to its now possible to have partial resources for the construction, there was also a way needed to merge them together again. For now, i added a merging mechanism that starts, when a storage is full. Its than merging all resourceboxes with the same resource as much as possible together. Later i plan to add this as a storage option like the "Throw out when full" Option and add a manual "Merge" button.


[h2]Building Templates[/h2]
Due to more and more buildings are converted to the new templating system using the interior, the template choise is moved to the Buildmenu. This makes it searchable and easy choosable. Its shown as a kind of tree-structure and showing all details of the building while hover over it.




[h3]Internal improvements[/h3]
Most of the UI Logic has changed by using now Prototype Entities instead of GameObjects. Due to this the GameObjects are not lying around, so no performance impact anymore from them. With that, the game initialisation process could be changed to be more clean and easy. The other setup has been also simplified by more generic systems. All of that is also needed for a mod support later. The new change had some performance impact to the tests so it took ~15min to run all of them. To fix that a cache has been added pushing the usual 1.2s initialisation time down to 200ms by reusing the first init data, so they run now in 5min.


[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]
  • Improved Detection if the Cursor is over a menu element
  • English locale improvement (Thanks to BurritoBotV3000)
  • Removed Big Dock due to exceptions (Thanks for report to BurritoBotV3000)
  • Fixed problem with SaveLoad properties could lead to illegal states (Thanks for report to BurritoBotV3000)
  • Changed logic for autoselecting interior to work also for machine room
  • Fixed new bug dismantle when buildings with customers (Thanks for report to BurritoBotV3000)
  • Fixed problems where moving persons on very high speed are the wrong position.
  • Improved internal Animation calculation for more performance.
  • Removed GridStructure from some buildings to look nicer (Thanks to Melodie)
  • Fixed shadows are wrong on highhest zoom levels
  • Prevent some rounding errors to stable the simulation.
  • Handle Exceptions while loading a broken savegame
  • Autosave in general checks for thrown exceptions (Thanks to Ichao)
  • Fixed Shadows are wrong in loaded games
  • Fixed wrong shown values
  • Added Resource users to resourceBoxes popup (same as for other containers like electricity or air)
  • Fixed extrem vertex count for Icon-Meshes
  • Fixed Person Pathfinding not working in a special case
  • Fixed shortcut for directly start planning a building using enter in searchField
  • Added a hint to the building rotation in the totorial (Thanks to "Gideon_Medic")
  • Photovoltaic Panel visual fixes
  • ProblemText now better eadable

Release 0.66.0 - Interior placement

[h2]Release Video[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Updates in this Iteration[/h2]
This iteration tooks a bit longer than usual, but its a very big think added, causing a lot in the game and tests to change. Hope you enjoy it and tell us if you like it :) I was also able to fix a unity bug, causing the simulation not run with burst (so x20 slower), but a sad news for MAC users: For Mac i couldn't fix it. I hope unity will fix this issue soon.

[h3]Interior placement[/h3]
The player can now customize the interior of a building and setup the work. It will now effect the efficiency and speed of a building and the maximum number of workers or users.



[h3]Templates[/h3]
Some of the buildings were migrated to templates for the basic buildings, so when placing a construction room, there are some default buildings. Later the player can also create custom templates.



[h3]Game Sceen Ui Overlay[/h3]
To show the details of the placed interior, the ui panels can now stick to the gamescene camera. This is also used for seal icons of the doors, and maybe later also for more details of the buildings or storages.



[h3]Partial Resources[/h3]
To make the interior also cost some reasonable amount of resources, its now possible to have partial building resources. The boxes are automaticly split to the correct size and transfered. Merge two boxes will come in the next iteration.



[h3]New Planning Shader[/h3]
To make the planning look more clean and nicer, i polished my old shader from the start of the game development two years ago. Its just rendering the model as a wire frame. The rendering logic is also changed, so there are no more overlapping renderings so it looks way nicer.



[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]
  • A lot of UI Fixes (thanks to Ichao)
  • Fixed wrong display of building mass
  • Fixed Selection in high zoom levels have a small offset
  • Moved the walking area to height 0 (from 1m)
  • Fix update of customer slots in UI
  • Improved FastForward and Assign Buttons in Person (thanks to Gideon_Medic)
  • Better visual separation of Building Parts (Thanks to Gideon_Medic)
  • Prevent Walkway to be rotated wrong with r key
  • Added Rotation with Middle MouseKey to Building Planning
  • Enabled Burst mode for Simulation again (was broken after a unity update)
  • Fixed section-details-headline was not shown after loading
  • Fixed problem with search field getting back the focus
  • Inflatable Walls have no longer unrealistic openings

Release 0.65.0 - Graphic update

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Updates in this Iteration[/h2]

The original plan in this iteration was to create Factories, but there was a unity update that makes it possible to do deferred rendering. So before i add more buildings, that all got obsolete soon, i decided to do a big graphic update instead.

[h3]New UI Style[/h3]

I got some feedback, that the UI colors were too bright and not really fitting to the style of the game, so i tried to improve this part also. I choose now way darker colors.



[h3]Graphic improvement[/h3]

With the new Unity update it was possible to use deferred rendering, what makes better lighting with the entity system finally possible. Before, the lighting was prebaked, now its calculated in realtime. Due to this it was possible to split up the buildings to different objects without breaking the lighting, so it was a very big refactoring of the buildings and settings.



The shadow of the sun is also working now.



[h3]Big refactoring[/h3]

A possible change in the next iterations will be custom buildings. So like in many other building games, the player can add the interior where he wants and also enhance it with other interior than the needed ones for the work. To make this work i refactored a lot in this iteration. I created empty 5 buildings with different sizes and used them to do the current buildings.



To make it usable for all kinds, the walls and floor textures can be changed on runtime, so different buildings will reuse the main textures and the complete model.



To make the small storage inside of a building work, i created a mechanism to cut parts out of the model, so at runtime the holes needed for them are done.



Interiors are now separate objects inside of the model. All settings related to it, like the action points, animation paths or the storage-settings are moved to there.



Buildings have now interior bounds what is now used for path calculation for the persons and later to know where the player can place the interior.



Besides all of that, the work is separated to a different object, to be also choosen later from the player, make one internal storage can be reused by multiple works and changed the internal coordinate system. To round everything up, i generated the lights to have a balanced lighting inside of the building.



[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]
  • Fixed Animation of Unconciousness was looping wrong
  • Fixed not updating Animation when staying in the building
  • Readded Legend for inner Details
  • Fixed person Icons had no background-color on first selected building.
  • Fixed flickering of UI in some special situations
  • Fixed Crash related to not canceled Tasks after destroy a building (Thanks to Ichao for report)
  • The Dismantle button got an icon instead of a text.

Release 0.64.0 - Ship Sections

[h2]Release Video[/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Updates in this Iteration[/h2]

[h3]New UI Design[/h3]

Due to the new Ship Sections added in this iteration, it was needed to restructure a bit. I used this opportunity to redo most of the ui structure, to have a more modern and cleaner design. There is now an aligned style of the windows, the section parts of the values were moved to the bottom. The build button there was moved with the camera and overlay buttons to a side menu, that is visible, when nothing is selected.



[h3]Sections[/h3]

Next to the UI, another big features has been added: Sections. Till now the complete ship was one section, means they shared all values like air or the water-tubes. This could be bad, e.g. if a building leaks air, efffects the whole air of the ship. Now, the broken buildings can be split into separate sections, having their own air and tube system. All of the section values are shown in the lower part of the UI




[h3]Seal Building[/h3]

The player can now seal the doors by hand between modules. If there are multiple, like at walkways, he can seal them separate. This will block persons to move through, and will create new sections if needed. It can be used e.g. for emergencies like when a building is leaking air, and the player cannot deal with it. He can than just seal the building and not loosing the whole air in the ship.
Thanks to Ichao for the basic idea.




[h3]Search Buildings[/h3]

Due to the new UI, it took always a deselect to open the buildmenu. To make this faster, i added "b" as a shortcut, to deselect and open the buildmenu. Than its opening another new feature, that makes it possible to search for buildings. So the player can just press "b Wal" and the Walkway will be shown. If he is pressing enter or just clicking in the screen, the building is automatically selected as to be planned, so he can directly drop it.




[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]
  • Fixed endless loop in simulation (thanks to Ichao)
  • Fixed Flickering Doors at Photovoltaic Panels (thanksto Ichao for report)
  • Fixed bug for endless loop in special cases (thanks to Ichao for report)
  • Fixed bug for a special case in simulation (thanks to Gazzy for report)
  • Supply Popup not flickers when opening (faster update)
  • Fixed wrong selection highlight of some buttons
  • Added definable Positions for Icons, to prevent inside of buildinglots (thanks to Ichao for report)
  • Prioritize new consultants over old ones to prevent confusion of players