Generationship News

[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.
  

[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
  

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

[h2]Updates in this Iteration[/h2]


[h3]Building Storages[/h3]

The Buildings can have now an internal storage of a resource. This was already used for the Condition, but now it can also be directly used in a work process. This means e.g. the Storage have a included water barrel, to store e.g. Water something without a box. It can also be used as internal work process like in a greenhouse where the workers plant food and the food grows without need of a worker.



[h3]Water Tubes[/h3]

Many buildings need water but the waterboxes are very heavy. Its was also not realistic to store big water barrels in each building. To solve that, there is now Water as a new ship-resource. It represents the WaterTube and all buildings are automaticaly connected to it. It behaves like power, so buildings can produce or consume this. To make it work from the start of the ship, the storage gets pumps to pump resources to the tubes.



[h3]Multiple Work Processes[/h3]

For the tubes it was necessary to switch between pump in and pump out. To make this easy work, i decided to implement a feature that is also needed for other future buildings. Each work can now have multiple processes, where the player can choose from. Later e.g. a factory could produce different things, depending what the player needs.



[h3]Visible Resource box fill state[/h3]

To make the visuals better, i added special shaders for the resource content, so they can show the filling-state of the box.



The Box for water is also now different to the others, to see the content better. It also has a Glass around, to have a nicer effect.



[h3]New Storage design[/h3]

Including Water pumps for the Ship and a Water barrel with visible filling state.



[h3]New Building designs[/h3]

Improved the 3x storages to a side by side design, to save space.

The Canteen gets a new design, due to the new Water Tubes and the possible animations.



Also the Toilet has been adapted and now just has 1 output garbage storage for the Brown Water. I also left a bit space for a small shower if this comes in one of the next iterations. I also added a sit-down animation.



The SleepingModule also get updated to have an open bed and a lay down/sleeping animation.



[h3]Animation Improvements[/h3]

While adding several new Animations, the System got enhanced. It can now also blend between the different animations, so it should be way smoother now. To make e.g. sleeping nice and easy, i added also a looping feature, that can loop inside of the animation. So the Animation will start usual, and repeating one segment in it. When the Animation should stop, it finishes it till the very end.



[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]

• Change just emissions not the complete material for working effect
  
• Fixed an overlapping of the Building Details UI
  
• Queue up speech, so speakers are not interupted by events
  
• Fixed Broken animations on loading a game
  
• Fixed Inflate animation starting also on non finished buildings (Thanks to ichao for report)
  
• Fixed possible >3 connections when using modifier keys while connecting
  
• Fixed random flickering of highlights
  
• Fixed Doors closing when moving a plan over an existing building
  
• Fixed Doors not animated in loaded games
  
• Door flickering through the wall of Photovoltaic panels
  
• Photovolitaic panels are just be selectable at the building, not at the panels.
  
• Improved Performance of Animation Bake / Person Generation to fix lags
  

[h2]Release Video[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Updates in this Iteration[/h2]

In this iteration a complete new Animation System has been added. It were massive changes, so sadly the old save games will not work anymore :(.

[h3]New Animation System[/h3]

I worked a lot on the animation system, so its now also possible to add animations to buildings. Till now this was very hard, due to several operations on them to fit them to the circle.
As an first building, the photovoltaic panels got an animation. When the building is done, they unfold a bit. Than they will unfold the amount of solar panels depending on the usage of the panels, so the player can directly see the current usage.





[h3]Spin System[/h3]
I also completely redo the spinning systems, so the landing of the ships could match better. The Shuttle Bay is rotated due to that 180° to turn in the other direction.



[h3]Effects[/h3]
To make the ships dock on the generation ship more realistic, i added some engine effects to them.



[h3]Inflatable Wall animations[/h3]

The Inflatable walls were improved. Its now inflating starting from the walkway step by step, instead of all at once. Its also covering high buildings completely and is better animated.




[h3]Animated Doors[/h3]

The old doors were just shown and hidden when it was needed. Due to the new animation system, it was now possible to build way better doors. They look like elevator doors and



[h3]Person Animation[/h3]

I also worked on the person animation, there is just a dying and working animation added for now, but more will come in the next iteration. This iteration, the focus was on making it work in general, so more can be added fast and easy. The Buildings will now have Animation Action Points, where the person will perform an animation and the different person activities can have also their own animation.



[h3]Person Models[/h3]

Due to the iteration is already breaking the old save games, i decided to also try out another breaking change. A Generator for the Persons, to make them look better and players can difference easier between them. They are generated at live runtime with different DNA, Cloths and colors. The animations are baked into it like at the buildings, so they can run very performant on the gpu.




[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]

• Fixed Bug when skipping tutorials (thanks to Oogah for report)
  
• Fixed Main menu of Error Popup is not closing the popup (thanks to Itchao for report)
  
• Added one comma number to percent values (thanks to Itchao for the hint)
  
• Fixed Camera bounds for big buildings
  
• Sabatier Module is now an energy consumer
  

[h2]Release Video[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Updates in this Iteration[/h2]

Last iteration there were several play testers where i learned a lot how to improve the game. They all came with good feature requests what i wanted to add. I also added an Event Help so new players can interpret and deal with them better.

[h3]Event Helps[/h3]
I saw playtests where players ignored the important warning panels. So i added a Help Panel to them when an event panel appears the first time. It's showing a help text next to it (with speech) with reasons and solutions.



[h3]New Timewarp button[/h3]
Players accidentally dismantled buildings, due to they are used to double click. To make this less, i changed the behavior of the Time warp button. It now just needs a single click. When pressed, its turning to a stop button, due to players who clicked it by accident can just click again to stop it. I hope the old players are not too annoyed to use it, due to they learned to double click on them.



[h3]Improved Multi Selection[/h3]
Ships gets bigger, crew increases. This caused a remake of the multi selection logic. Its now unfolding as much as possible, up to the maximum amount. Means, when e.g. 30 walkways are selected, 20 of them will be unfolded, and just the 21. item will be "10 Walkways" more that can be selected also. It has also a priority for less selected buildings, so non-walkways will be unfolded more likely.



[h3]Convinient Shortcuts[/h3]
To cancel buildings, i added the cancel button to the multi selection view. But when a lot was planned, it was still annoying to cancel them. Thanks to a good idea from Melodie i added a shortcut to cancel the selected buidlings. Its showing a summary popup to prevent unwanted cancels.



[h3]Transfer multiple boxes[/h3]
When coming to the later game, it was a bit annoying, to transfer the water to the mass balancers, so i added a ctrl support to transfer multiple boxes. Its just possible for boxes of the same storage and just for the same resource type. I also changed the transfer to the left mouse key, due to this feels way more convenient. Thanks to Melodie and Hokay for the hint.



[h3]Adapt to pressure[/h3]
Till now, all air values had the optimum value calculated for 1 bar. This ment, that when the pressure is low/high e.g the Oxygen was not adjusted to 20% causing troubles for the crew. I update now the optima, so this value is updated and there should be no strange problems with that values anymore.

[h3]Center of Mass[/h3]
The Center of mass Overlay now shows the current center of mass. Before it was shown the center with 0 balancing activators, to make the mass balancers look working, the ui is moving now the center of mass point, where the mass balancers pushed it. Thanks to Melodie for the hint.



[h3]Connect Storages[/h3]
Its now easier at the startup to connect the storages.

• Added a field for "choose all" to the popup, to all possible connections with one click.
  
• Holding the SHIFT Key while clicking the building will also select all of them, without showing the popup.
  
• Holding the CTRL Key while clicking will also just restart the choosing, so multiple ones can be selected
  

So if the player presses CTRL and SHIFT, and just clicking on all Buildings, he can do that setup now in a very short time. Thanks to acidbeats for the hint.





[h3]More Warnings[/h3]
I also added a warning icon to the overlay for general storages, when they are full. Depending on the player usage, it might be a problem to be full. By default it's not shown and need to be enabled with the warnings overlay.




[h3]Choose Overlay Colors[/h3]
When using the choose feature it was just shown in one color. It is useful, to see more details there, so i make the highlight individual and action specific. So e.g. for Person Activities its differenciate the work and service buildings (and later the living quarter). For Maintenance it will show the current condition and for building a difference between dismantle and construction.




[h3]Discord Bot[/h3]
I created a custom Discord Bot for the Game. Its uploading the highscores now directly to discord. The bot is also checking roles of the members to connect from the game. I also added a license model, so all players are at default getting just a "Demo" License. This means, the game will stop at a specific point. To gain the full access, players can enter their discord id and the bot will verify, that they joined the discord server.




[h3]Other smaller changes[/h3]

• Fixed crash when building Shuttle Bay
  
• Fixed Chinese System language crash Unities UI Framework (thanks to I0lOl0I for report
  
• Fixed Tutorials can stuck when deselecting at wrong time (thanks to Najeeb for report)
  
• Fixed Air Leak not removed from the UI when dismantled
  
• Prevent Empty possible names at renaming (thanks to Ichao for report)
  
• Fixed Problems with Continue and Load Game buttons in special cases (thanks to IOIOIO and alexa for report)
  
• Fixed Selection State of overlay buttons
  
• Set max width for Event Help to look better
  
• Fixed Bug with Event Help when panel disappeared before help was closed
  
• Shows also the current Speed when simulation is too slow in normal time acceleration
  
• Fixed not removed red highlight border in special cases
  
• Style of Scrollbars improved
  
• Hide the Cursor in Intro scene
  
• Building require Walkway instead of Grid to inflate walls
  
• Fixed Line breaks in Person UI and removed workaround for old UI-Toolkit versions
  
• Fixed Bug when all air is out of the ship, the air is not updated well.
  
• Fixed overlapping Person Icon in Consultant Tab
  
• Fixed not clickable buildings above the consultant tab-circle
  
• Slow down default Time warp at unknown estimation.
  
• Make not chosen crew in gray in shuttle bay
  
• Fixed Not correct simulation break on special Event Registration
  
• Use default Time warp at special cases on Person-Time warp
  
• Make it all buildings with condition maintainable by the player (auto start at 80%)
  
• Fixed clearing the Problem when directly switching between special time warps