Dawn Apart News

Today we are releasing a major update to the game, focusing on massive content changes that includes new buildings, recipes, items, trades, updated progression, and just in general revamps to much of the existing content.

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Added Lucrum Smelter which refines Lucrum Ore into Lucrum Ingot
  
• Added a large number of new converters
  
• Adjusted many existing recipes
  
• Basic conveyor belts are now 75% cheaper!
  
• Added various new items
  
• Added new tutorial steps and adjusted existing steps to include new buildings
  
• Added gifs to many tutorial steps
  
• Added additional workbenches to have more specific targeted crafting (Advanced Workbench, High-tech Workbench, Carpenters Bench, Stone Masonry).
  
• Added Crafting Spot which can be used to craft basic items in the case that all crafting tech is destroyed
  
• Added red, green and blue tech tier
  
• Overhauled the color scheme of many voxel assets to match with their respective tiers
  
• Added a number of new trades and updated many of the existing trades
  
• Added another faction as trade partner: Saturn Fields
  
• Added a few half wall variations (More building variation is always a good thing)
  
• Added Glass Roof Building
  
• Increased base level depth and radius of resources patches
  
• Shortened fade out for Floating Texts
  
• Highlighted buttons in ConstructMenu and RecipeSelectMenus with green tint when the respective ingredients are available
  
• Repositioned the crafting queue of the WorkstationDetailView
  
• Increased number of autosaves kept 3->10
  
• Updated Logo and Application Icon
  

[h2]A Note on Save Breaking PT. II Electric Boogaloo[/h2]
With this update we removed and changed so many buildings that old saves might not survive and will crash on load.

We have been building the game from the start with modding support in mind, and interestingly this update contains very close to no code changes and instead almost the entire overhaul lives in player facing Definition Files that are parsed and loaded at runtime. With that in mind it is on our radar that making changes to those files specifically put there for people to create new stuff and change, shouldn't lead to completely breaking behavior where possible.

The breaking of saves will happen once more with our upcoming combat release which is another massive overhaul to many of our core systems. Speaking of that we are now finished implementing all features in combat and are now working on optimization, polishing, and general fixes.

Stay tuned for the next update because it's going to be another great one! As always we can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Until next time!

The best place to get in touch with us and see what we are working on is by joining our Discord server. So if you haven't yet, stop by and let us know your thoughts!

It's been a while since our last update, but we've been cooking something really cool which we'll be able to share soon. For today we have various fixes and quality of life improvements. We also added some new analytics functionality which will help us understand how players are playing the game. This can be disabled and all data deleted from the settings menu.

[h2]A Note on Save Breaking[/h2]
Just a heads up, but this update will break existing saves. We really hate to do this We had an existing issue with our serialization that made it impossible to fix legacy saves on the new versions. We are still discussing how to show this and allow players to easily delete old saves. We will have at least one more breaking change before Early Access, but we are working on improving the foundational things in our serialization/deserialization pipeline which will allow us to adapt legacy saves to whatever new changes there might be.

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Added an AnalyticsManager that logs specific game events to help us visualize player progression
  
• Added popup at game start (after splash screen) to ask for player consent to track data
  
• Added options to settings menu for data collection and deletion
  
• Added a WorldCreationTime and a unique WorldID to the world's data and bug report xml
  
• Added new world tiles to the eastern border of the world
  
• Removed Kickstarter buttons from main menu, pause menu and GameHUD
  
• Moved order buttons from their own category menu into the GameHUD directly
  
• Recolored bug report button
  
• Added (placeholder) alarm button to GameHUD for the upcoming safezones
  
• Added "Safe" und "Unsafe" (placeholder) buttons to GameHUD for the upcoming safezones
  
• Added "allow" order to remove denied item orders
  
• Updated "allow" and "deny" orders to be draggable
  
• Added temporary 45 degree rotation camera keybind (Shift + Q/E)
  
• Updated Craft and Mine Quest Steps to check for previous progress when starting
  
• Added context menu opens to the storage buttons of the Space Port to allow for direct hauling
  
• Added a small performance info box to the video settings menu
  
• Updated the save service to use json serializing for all non-ecs component data (This is groundwork for allowing us to not break saves between versions a bit easier)
  

[h2]Fixed[/h2]

• Fixed Modals not closing on loading a game from the pause menu
  
• Fixed buttons of Confirmation Modals jumping in position on first highlight
  
• Fixed audio settings not properly saving if leaving the settings menu without applying
  
• Fixed crash on load
  

We are looking to wrap up our next feature soon which will introduce combat into the main game loop and bring more largescale pacing updates. We can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Until next time Playtesters!

The best place to get in touch with us and see what we are working on is by joining our Discord server. So if you haven't yet, stop by and let us know your thoughts!

[h3]The Kickstarter campaign for Dawn Apart runs for two more days - and so far the journey has been incredible! [/h3]

• ✅ 600+ backers helped us get fully funded in no time—a huge thank you to everyone who pledged, wishlisted, and spread the word!
  
• ✅ Together, we unlocked three social goals (nukes, orbital bombardment, mechs) and a major stretch goal: full modding support.
  
• ✅ Thousands of players explored Sirius B 3, launched mining operations, and traded Lucrum 115 with Kobayashi Schwarz in the demo.
  
• ✅ Our demo climbed Steam’s "New & Trending" charts, becoming the top-ranked demo in the Automation genre.
  
• ✅ Streamers & content creators worldwide—from the US, Germany, Japan, Australia, Poland, and France—played Dawn Apart with their communities.
  
• ✅ We announced an exciting publishing partnership with Astra Logical, experts in automation and systems games.
  
• ✅ Most importantly, we gathered tons of valuable feedback via Discord, bug reports, and demo surveys—helping us polish the game for Early Access this summer!
  

[h3] 48 Hours Left – More Stretch Goals Ahead![/h3]
At $30K, we'll unlock a first-person camera, letting you walk through your factories and inspect your assembly lines up close. If you haven't backed yet, now’s the time!

Here are some of the Reward Tiers that are still available:

• PRODUCER: Early Access copy + work-in-progress builds + name in credits + special Discord role.
  
• EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: All of the above + name a colonist!
  
• PILOT: All previous perks + an exclusive 3D-printed Magpie dropship + name an in-game spaceship!
  

Plus, all backers enter a raffle to become the face of the new space pirate faction leader terrorizing Kobayashi Schwarz!



Two dawns remain—let’s make them count!

And we have liftoff! You can back Dawn Apart now on Kickstarter!



Head over to the campaign page to watch the brand new Kickstarter trailer and get your hands on some really cool rewards- including early bird discounts for Early Access copies of the base game, ways to get your name and likeness into the game or a few and limited physical rewards such as this 3D-printed model of the Magpie, the ship that lands on Sirius B 3 at the beginning of each campaign.



At the same time we’re opening Dawn Apart’s playtest for everyon so you can try out the beginning of the game which contains a short tutorial and your first batch of Lucrum trade missions. Head over to our Steam page and join the playtest (during the campaign we'll also launch our first official Steam demo so stay tuned for that)

Important note: Dawn Apart is fully funded and will launch into Early Access no matter what. So why Kickstarter? Because together we can:

Expand the game world
We’ve planned stretch goals that add awesome features to the game, including full modding support, a ‘walking through your factory’ gimmick and a diorama photo mode. More stretch goals will be announced during the campaign!

Polish the experience
Our funding goal is relatively low, with proceeds going toward QA testing and expanded localization to make the game even better and more accessible.

Boost visibility
While we've built a solid Steam following, a successful Kickstarter will help spread the word and give us a strong push toward Early Access in Summer 2025.
For this we actually set ourselves new wishlists goals. For each milestone we hit, we’re going to add a cool feature to the game:


So TLDR: Check out the playtest and back us on Kickstarter so together we can deliver an even better game when we go into Early Access this summer!

We are so excited to start getting people into the playtest and start gathering feedback. We've been working hard on a ton of new stuff and are feeling ready to get some hands on it!

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Added serialization functionality for trades, quests, and gameplay events
  
• Added PlacedPlant buffer and logic for deserializing destroyed plants in the premade pipeline
  
• Added option to disable shadows (This is will make a huge difference if you are GPU bound. We will be addressing this in the future)
  
• Added new interrupt type which can only be interrupted by emergencies
  
• Adjusted priority values for goals
  
• Added Hygiene to prospector ui
  
• Added logic to disable hovered outlines when ui is disabled
  
• Use DisplayCategories instead of ItemDef Category in the Global Stockpile
  
• Updated Global Stockpile categories to use DisplayCategory icon instead of a text
  
• Clicking on Global Stockpile elements brings up construction UI for them
  
• Increased size of icons in Global Stockpile elements (removed border)
  
• Added "In Development" info texts to priorities and schedules modals
  
• Corrected font size of headline text preset
  
• Added discord, kickstarter, and feedback buttons to main and pause menus
  
• Added sound effect for items getting produced
  
• Added sound effect for ores getting mined
  
• Added sound effect for items getting loaded into a trader
  
• Added sound effect for quest started, completed successfully, and failed
  
• Added sound effect for modal opening
  
• Added overload parameter for pitch variation to PlaySound method of the AudioManager
  
• Added a number of German Translations
  
• Updated loading screen hints pool
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed issue where multistep quest steps would not reinitialize it's child steps properly
  
• Fixed multistep quest steps not properly unsubscribing their children on teardown
  
• Fixed issue displaying tooltips for items without ingredients
  
• Fixed issue where blueprints were going through the standard voxel object system on load
  
• Fixed clicking not clearing tile order properly
  
• Fixed issue where walkable HPA entities would always rebuild their nodes (big oops)
  
• Optimized smart object interaction position calculation (big non-oops)
  
• Fixed crash when multiple agents were chopping a tree (Thanks Tarlin!)
  
• Fixed BaseEventSystem not clearing its list of events OnDestroy
  
• Fixed message window not opening the message list after closing and re-opening
  
• Fixed scaling issue for quest steps at various resolutions
  
• Fixed agent attributes not properly being decreased over time
  
• Fixed agent mine count going up on failed mining attempts
  
• Fixed dropdown template having wacky z position causing rendering issues
  
• Fixed game seed header not being localized
  
• Fixed bug report button and menu not being localized (confirmation modals still aren't localized)
  

In the next update we will be addressing mostly crashes and game breaking bugs. Both ones that we know about and ones that you all help us find, so if you encounter any issues the best way to let us know is by creating a bug report through the in game reporting tool, or by letting us know directly on discord!

The best place to get in touch with us and see what we are working on is by joining our Discord server. So if you haven't yet, stop by and let us know your thoughts!