Dawn Apart News

Welcome Pioneers, to a new - albeit short - installment of Weekly Apart, the dev blog series about all things Dawn Apart. This week we just wanted to send a friendly reminder to tune into our special preview streaming event/Q&A that will take place on August, 25 at 5 PM CEST/11AM EST exclusively on Discord. So if you haven't please make sure to join our server and get a sneak peak at some good old alpha gameplay in action!

In our stream we'll mine for resources, set up some more or less elaborated assembly lines, and create a factory from scratch. We'll also show off terraforming, colonists engaging in various activities, and fire up our cool voxel destruction physics system.



But of course we'll also be there to say hi and answer all of your (game-related:) questions. So if there are any aspects of Dawn Apart that you would like to know more about, please drop your questions here in the comments or post them in the chat on Discord- we'll make sure to collect them and answer them during our preview stream.

We can’t wait and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible next week on Discord!

Welcome to the latest episode of Weekly Apart, our dev blog series for all things Dawn Apart. This week we have some bad and some good news. Let's start with the bad: We know that you are anxiously waiting to set your feet on Aurora and finally start mining for Lucrum. While we’ve been working hard to release a Discord-exclusive demo of Dawn Apart by the end of Summer, we kindly ask you to have a little more patience as we're postponing your first steps on the planet to a later date.

The reason is as follows: As much as we have poured ourselves into creating a unique blend of automation and colony simulation, the state of the game has not quite reached the point where we feel comfortable to share it with streamers, the press, and, most importantly, you the players. We want our demo to give you an excellent first impression and sharing a build now wouldn’t actually do justice to what the full game eventually will be (once the demo is ready our followers on Discord will still be the first to get their hands on it before anyone else).



With our "Glass Factory" approach and countless "Weekly Apart" dev blog posts we have been very open and transparent about the progress we are making on a weekly basis - from creating an intuitive UI to putting our own twist on the Sphere of Influence concept to sharing snippets of our incredible soundtrack. And to continue that tradition we are unlocking the #active-development channel on our Discord server so you can stay posted on the progress we make on a day-to-day basis.

Finally, to hold you over until you can start building and managing your own factories, we would like you to invite you to an exclusive streaming event on Discord on August, 25 at 5 PM CEST/11AM EST when we premiere the state of the game and are happy to answer any questions you may have. We can't wait to meet you so please save the date and say hi!

Welcome back to Weekly Apart! While the rest of Europe is melting and especially the Mediterranean turning into a burning hot cookie sheet, temperatures in Germany, where IT&W's headquarters are located, are ridiculously low for this time of the year. So no lounging at the pool for us for now - but on the upside we’re making good progress on our demo scheduled for later this summer and to be released exclusively for our Discord community.

While in past posts we have talked about the features you can expect from the demo as well as the many bugs that we fixed along the way, today's edition is all about the gameplay tasks you'll encounter in our prologue-esque glimpse into the main game.


[h3]The premise[/h3]

Equipped with a small sample of machines, conveyor belts and resources, the equally powerful and dubious mining corporation Kobayashi-Schwarz sends a manned spaceship to the planet Aurora. The crew of the Magpie is tasked to lay the groundwork for greater colonization - namely getting enough resources out of the ground and crafting all the necessary machines to build a landing pad for a much greater spacecraft that in turn delivers more people, weapons and machinery to the planet.

The landing party will consist of five engineers (to get the first assembly lines running) and five marines (to protect the outpost against interference from the It'ak, Aurora's indigenous population). And they have brought with them some stuff to kickstart the operation: a workbench, bunk beds, a toilet, a sphere of influence beacon and a stockpile of machines that will come in handy: a furnace, mining drills, feeders, conveyor belts, lamps as well as bunch of walls and floors to repurpose the Magpie into a "founder's house" and the centre of the colony.

[h3]First steps[/h3]

You then set out to start your production chain: find ore deposits, drill into the surface, smelt ores into ingots, craft your first machines, use those machines to further refine resources, and so on and so on. While we won't spoil the walkthrough from setting foot on Aurora to having the landing pad ready (especially for those who shun tutorials and want to find out the solutions on their own), here is a glimpse at our Miro board where we have laid out the various tiers of machinery (many of them previewed in our #MachineMondays YouTube series) that you need to craft to get to the end of the demo and trigger a cool cliffhanger!



We’re going to make an announcement on Discord soon about the exact release date of the demo and how people will be able to access it, and, most importantly for us, how you can give us feedback so we can improve the main game. Until then stay tuned and see you next week!

Welcome to another edition of Weekly Apart, probably the only and thus coolest dev blog/newsletter in the world :) We continue to be busy fixing bugs and implementing features that move us closer to our Discord-exclusive demo in late Summer. In this week's post we are introducing our very own day and nighttime schedule for our colonists, because, as a wise man once said (according to a quick google motivational quote search) “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

But before we check out the timetables of Aurora's inhabitants let us remind you to join our Discord (to be among the first mortals to check out said demo) and follow us on our other social media channels. We're especially happy if you subscribe on YouTube, which just debuted the 25th episode of our #MachineMonday series, where each week seedy mining megacorp. Kobayashi-Schwarz promotes their products, including drills, gun turrets, and, well, bunk beds.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Mastering time
[/h3]
As every life coach (and prison warden) will tell you, having structure and organization in one's life minimizes wasted time and maximizes productivity. That's why we developed a schedule which prioritizes the tasks and activities of the engineers and marines colonizing the planet and running the factories - and to a certain extent fosters social harmony. It is based on four elemental pillars of activity: Work (delivery services, maintaining machinery, crafting/building), recreation (eating, going to the bathroom, leisure), sleep (going to bed and going to the bathroom) and an 'Anything' category, that is affected by status levels.

The micromanaging and customization of each colonists schedule, namely the allocation of daily hours to each activity category, results in changes to status effects: Brutal work hours will deplete energy and increase tiredness causing colonists to move slower, become more prone to ugly workplace accidents and lower their productivity - down to the point where they are deemed useless by their employer.



[h3]From compliance to insurgency[/h3]

Allocating less recreational time, on the other hand, at first leads to a bad mood but can quickly spiral out of control. If pioneers are not allowed to relieve themselves in the powder room they become irritated, to say the least. Worse, if you don't give them enough lunch or dinner time or struggle with food shortages their loyalty will take a serious blow. This in turn not only affects their work output but may lead to sabotage or even outright rebellion. You get the idea.

We're obviously not reinventing the wheel here but we do aim at creating a clever and unique system of having to balance individual needs and economic incentives - after all Dawn Apart will be both a colony sim and an automation game with a strong focus on optimizing production chains. We can't wait to let you try it out for yourself. See you next week!

Welcome Pioneers to the 24th episode of Weekly Apart, our (mostly) weekly dev blog/newsletter in which we keep you posted about the state of development of Dawn Apart. Lately we've been doing A LOT of bug fixing and polishing to give you the best possible experience when you'll be able to check out our upcoming demo (more info on that in the next few weeks). Most of the issues we fixed seem like minor details but in sum they'll make a huge difference in terms of the overall gameplay experience.

But before we start we'd like to give a shout out to the many new pioneers who joined our mining operation thanks to our participation in Steam's "Games made in Germany" sale, which ran parallel to the Steam Next Fest - but nevertheless netted us a considerate number of new wishlists and followers. Welcome to Aurora and make sure to follow us on our socials and join our Discord server!



[h3]More realistic walking animations[/h3]
See how Pioneer Isabella is setting her foot on Aurora's surface and claiming the planet for the human race? That was made possible by the awesome power of triangles in the form of two bone Inverse Kinematics. Previously we did some tests with procedural humanoid movement, and while that didn’t work out, we finally brought some of those older systems forward to play nicely with our animation systems - Meaning the engineers and marines aren't floating over the ground anymore and will actively try to ground their feet onto the dynamic terrain.

And speaking of walking, selecting groups of pioneers and having them move to a particular place on the map (for example when drafting them for an incoming It'ak attack) now looks way more natural as they gather in a formation rather than elbowing their way to the same spot like a pack of sardines trying to fit into a phone booth.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]Quality of life fixes[/h3]
Other updates include updating how Inverse Kinematic hand targets work for weapons or items the pioneers are carrying, giving wildly better results than strictly canned animations.. They also now respect stairs and ladders and will actually use them to reach higher factory floors. We also further refined our conveyor belt logic inside factories - conveyor belts that are placed near walls now behave as expected instead of phasing items through solid matter.

We are also in the process of implementing the event modal controller, which pops up in the upper left side of the screen and keeps you up-to-date on all the stuff that is going on in your factory and beyond - whether workers fleeing from the compound because they can't stand those graveyard shifts anymore or the Kobayashi-Schwarz Corporation increasing the Lucrum quota again.



Scheduled for the coming week, among other things, is to refine our Agent Priority Logic and create an editable schedule for the colonists and how different moods, states, and activities reinforce and influence each other. As you can see there is still a lot on our plates so we better get back to work. See you next time!