Adaptory News

[p]I’m very happy to launch the latest free update to Adaptory today! Alpha 13 features CHARLI, your adorable helpful tutorial and guide. There’s also more unusual buildings and objects to discover, and plenty of tweaks and polish to the demo.[/p][p]You can download the latest demo on itch.io, or play the game on Steam:[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]We’re also excited to share that Adaptory will be part of the ANZ Indie Showcase 2025, and our dear friend Zeppy will be streaming Alpha 13 live! Set your reminders, because Jevon will be hanging out in chat 😊[/p][p][/p][h2]CHARLI[/h2][p]Introducing the brand new Computational Holographic Assistant for Resources, Logistics and Information – also known as C.H.A.R.L.I., as your helpful guide and tutorial to Adaptory:[/p][p][/p][p]CHARLI is introduced at the start of the game and gives you information, guidance, goals, and background information as you play through the game. If you’re very experienced, CHARLI can be minimised at any time, but otherwise they’ll just hang out in the top right corner, giving you guidance and help. Our new animator Kat did an amazing job animating CHARLI and I can’t wait to get more of her animations into the game 😊[/p][p][/p][p]We’ve also rewritten the entire introduction and tutorial sequence in Alpha 13. The tutorial is now more flexible, with multiple steps and stages, based on what is actually happening in your game. We’ve tested the tutorial in many different scenarios, and hopefully all of the bugs are ironed out, but please let me know if it breaks![/p][p][/p][h2]Mysterious alien ruins and artefacts[/h2][p][/p][p]What have we found?[/p][p]While the planetoid you landed on initially appeared to be deserted, as you dig down deeper, you will start discovering evidence of an ancient civilisation. With research, you might be able to gain knowledge from these abandoned artefacts to look after your crew and ultimately resume your journey home…[/p][p](Ancient civilisation buildings and artefacts will only be generated in new save files.)[/p][p][/p][h2]Better control over prioritisation[/h2][p]I’ve tweaked explorer priorities to make a bit more sense, to be more controllable, and with better defaults:[/p]

• [p]If two possible errands have an identical priority across all priority categories, they will now fallback to the left-to-right order listed in the priorities dialog.[/p]
• [p]Explorers will now prioritise toggle errands over build errands, and build errands over dig errands.[/p]
• [p]The “go to bed” errand has been moved into Personal, but explorers will still run to their assigned bed if they’re close to passing out.[/p]

[p]This should improve explorer behaviour for large bases, and this should also improve your ability to configure who does what, and when.[/p][p][/p][p]Explorer prioritisation has been improved in Alpha 13[/p][p][/p][h2]A lot of polish and tweaks[/h2][p]This release also has a lot of tweaks and improvements suggested by players at Gamescom and PAX West, and by our amazing community. Thank you very much for all of your feedback and ideas! These include:[/p]

• [p]The breathability overlay (F1) now also shows areas of unblocked space exposure[/p]
• [p]Added “edge offset” option to increase the horizontal padding of user interfaces for ultrawide monitors[/p]
• [p]Added option to show or hide the UPS/FPS panel[/p]
• [p]Improved performance of user interface rendering by up to 50% by using runtime texture atlases[/p]
• [p]Improved pathfinding performance[/p]
• [p]Fog of war is now revealed as an ellipse, rather than a square[/p]
• [p]Fixed looping sounds not restarting when a save file is loaded[/p]
• [p]Fixed the user interface not working correctly in Turkish locales[/p]

[p]The full patch notes are listed below.[/p][p][/p][h2]What’s next?[/h2][p]Importantly, this is planned to be the final demo update before Early Access, so that we can put all of our efforts into polishing our EA release. The specific launch date for early access has not been announced yet, either. Watch this space![/p][p]The unstable demo build will continue to be updated for our community testers, so we can have an updated demo at launch; if you’d like to continue playing the latest features, test improvements, and generally contribute ideas and feedback for the development of Adaptory, we’d love to have you join the community testers group on Discord 😊[/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h3]New features[/h3]

• [p]CHARLI[/p]
  • [p]Rewrote introduction and tutorial sequence[/p]
  • [p]Added guide for helping stranded explorers[/p]
  • [p]Added guide for building your first bed when you have a sleepy explorer[/p]
  • [p]Added guide for reading your first diary entry[/p]
  • [p]Added guide for building and connecting power wires and liquid pipes[/p]
  • [p]Added guide for building your first oxycan holder[/p]
  • [p]Added guide for accessing the breathability overlay[/p]
  • [p]Removed old alerts panel[/p]
  • [p]Removed “tutorials enabled” options[/p]
• [p]World features added to in-game database[/p]
  • [p]Added “space exposure” as the first documented world feature[/p]
• [p]Distress transmitter sequence updated[/p]
  • [p]Once the transmission is sent, the transmitter does not require any additional transmitite[/p]
  • [p]The transmitter can now be deconstructed after the transmission is sent[/p]
  • [p]A “ready to transmit” bouncing overlay icon is also shown when ready[/p]
• [p]Added mysterious alien buildings in world generation[/p]
• [p]Added explorer conversations when uncovering artefacts for the first time[/p]
• [p]The breathability overlay (F1) now also shows areas of unblocked space exposure[/p]

[h3]Simulation[/h3]

• [p]If two possible errands have an identical priority across all priority categories, explorers will now fallback to the left-to-right order listed in the priorities dialog[/p]
  • [p]For example, explorers will now generally prefer to do building over digging, and digging over supply[/p]
  • [p]“Go to bed” errand has been moved into personal, although this has not changed any behaviour; explorers will still prefer going to bed if they’re about to pass out[/p]
• [p]Explorers will now prioritise toggle errands over build errands, and build errands over dig errands[/p]
• [p]Fog of war is now revealed as an ellipse, rather than a square[/p]
• [p]Added “stranded” debuff when an explorer can’t access the distress transmitter[/p]
• [p]Reduced frequency of object emissions by 50% to reduce visual and aural noise[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where liquid drops dissolving into a tile could incorrectly merge with another drop within the same tile[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where a liquid pump could get stuck in a flickering loop of blocked/unpowered while blocked[/p]
• [p]Improved pathfinding performance[/p]
• [p]Explorers will no longer idly wander for 5 seconds after being told to move somewhere[/p]
• [p]Increased explorer conversation length from 0.02 world days to 0.025 world days[/p]

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• [p]Updated world generation to create a more consistent and configurable balance of plants, world features, buried resources, and general world debris[/p]
• [p]Buried artefacts are no longer generated in one of the first tiles your explorers will likely dig up[/p]

[h3]Accessibility[/h3]

• [p]You can now click anywhere within the Resource counter to toggle visibility[/p]
• [p]Added “edge offset” option to increase the horizontal padding of user interfaces for ultrawide monitors[/p]

[h3]Internal[/h3]

• [p]Slightly improved rendering performance of gas and liquid layers[/p]
• [p]Improved performance of user interface rendering by up to 50% by using runtime texture atlases[/p]
• [p]Improved performance of rendering explorers[/p]
  • [p]The game now requires a graphics card that supports 4096x4096 textures[/p]
• [p]Updated nekohtml, CSSBox, jstyleparser libraries[/p]
• [p]Improved startup performance when loading the story database[/p]
• [p]The distress transmitter can no longer be used multiple times per game[/p]
• [p]Added “new game” and “main menu” buttons to the “everyone is dead” dialog[/p]
• [p]Buried buildings, plants, and explorers are now also rendered with a buried item texture[/p]
  • [p]Partially buried buildings and plants are no longer listed in the tooltip when a cell is hovered over[/p]
  • [p]Vastly improved buried object textures[/p]
• [p]Added “blocked” overlay icon to liquid pumps when the liquid network is backed up[/p]
• [p]Added option to show or hide the UPS/FPS panel[/p]
• [p]Reduced vertical whitespace in the options panel[/p]
• [p]Made solar flare overlay icon more easily understandable[/p]
• [p]Added more information about plant growth mechanics in the growth tooltip[/p]

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• [p]Fixed the play/pause sound sometimes playing while starting up a new game[/p]
• [p]Fixed postcard seeds not setting explorers’ genders[/p]
• [p]Fixed looping sounds not restarting when a save file is loaded[/p]
• [p]Fixed a memory leak that could occur when multiple games were started in a single session[/p]
• [p]Hopefully fixed the user interface not working correctly in Turkish locales[/p]
• [p]Fixed a rare bug where the game could crash when loading or starting a new game[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash when explorers would try to talk about a meteor shower that had occured in the past[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash that could occur when an explorer tried to pick up an item that had a tiny fraction more mass than the usual unit mass of that item[/p]
• [p]Removed duplicate “light sensitive” trait[/p]
• [p]Fixed 3D spatialisation not being updated for moving objects that have a sound loop (such as meteors)[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to supply two storage boxes with one item, and one of the boxes was almost full or almost empty[/p]
• [p]Fixed mouse cursors not being reset between new games[/p]
• [p]Fixed space exposure not applying on the crashed ship top wing[/p]
• [p]Fixed some repeating textures and overlays having seams at certain zoom levels[/p]

[p]We are thrilled to be part of the Indie Brew ANZ Indie Showcase and the ANZ Indiefest 2025 Steam Event, launching tomorrow![/p][p]The showcase is premiering live on 5 Sep at 7:30pm AEST on YouTube: [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]We are also thrilled that our dear friend Zeppy is going to be one of the first streamers playing our latest demo, Alpha 13![/p][p]You can watch the stream live here on Steam or on YouTube, starting 5 Sep at 9am AEST: [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]We're excited to share that indie.io is bringing Adaptory to PAX West 2025 tomorrow!! You can check out our latest demo at booth 1115.[/p][p]While Jevon won't be there this time, you'll be able to learn more about the game, and play the latest version of Adaptory, including a preview of ALL of the content coming exclusively to Early Access.[/p][p]Thanks to everyone who attended our lil' booth at our Indie Arena Booth at Gamescom last week – we had an amazing time, met so many amazing devs, ate a lot of vegan hot dogs, and ran out of cards to give away (twice!!). I hope we're able to attend again soon![/p]

[p]We are very excited to be at Gamescom 2025 with Indie Arena Booth... tomorrow!! Check out Adaptory at the arcade booth #A3 at Hall 10.2, Booth F010g - E019.[/p][p]On the floor, you can meet me (the solo developer from New Zealand) and Care (artist from Chicago), learn more about the game, get some exclusive cards and stickers, and play the latest version of Adaptory - with ALL of the content that's exclusive to Early Access.[/p][p]Including whatever this is...[/p][p][/p][p]If you or anyone you know is in Europe, or if you know anyone coming to the event, especially content creators: please let me know and forward them this news. I'd love to meet as many peeps as possible, and I'm bringing special swag for you. CODE NZ and NZTE for their support in bringing us all the way to Gamescom this year.[/p]

I’m very happy to launch the latest free update to Adaptory today!

Alpha 12 now has a brand new world generation algorithm for you to play with, and you can now see the Adaptory research tree coming to life. (Most of the content we’ve been adding since Alpha 11 is locked behind Early Access.)

You can download the latest demo on itch.io, or play the game on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2201620/Adaptory/

We’re planning to do one final free demo/alpha release before our Early Access launch. You can expect this build to come out in September; if you want to be notified, don’t forget to join our mailing list or follow the game on Steam.

[h2]Research tree[/h2]

A preview of Adaptory's new research tree. You'll need to play the demo to see the rest 😁

Data chips have been scattered across the world after your crash landing, and your explorers will be able to research them using the new research desk building to unlock powerful new technologies and buildings.

You won’t need to do any research in the demo – the research desk building isn’t available, so you won’t lose access to any buildings. But you’ll be able to see what research nodes and content is currently in our EA build. More buildings, content, and systems will be added to the tree while we get ready for launch!

[h2]World generation[/h2]

A preview of Adaptory's new world generation, using noise, biomes, and cave systems

We’ve massively revamped world generation to generate more interesting, varied, and challenging worlds.

World generation now uses a combination of perlin noise and voroni points to generate biomes. Each biome has a different palette of elements and features. My goal is to make each world feel interesting and unique, but still conceptually coherent. As your explorers dig down further into the planetoid, who knows what you’ll find?

Cave systems are also now generated, giving your explorers the opportunity to explore further and deeper. World generation now also creates boulders, columns, stalagmites, and stalagtites as well, to give the world a bit more depth. (I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft recently…)

The world generation is still very much a work in progress! I’d honestly love to hear your thoughts because we’ll be iterating the world generation parameters frequently before EA.

[h2]Mac Arm64 support[/h2]

As mentioned in the previous post, arm64 builds are now available for Mac, and are live with Alpha 12! I think this has been well-tested and we’ve worked out all the kinks, and the demo’s ready to play. From our testing, the game should now be approximately twice as fast.

A huge thank you to all of our Mac users on our Discord who have helped with testing and feedback. There probably wouldn’t be Mac support without your help!! Thank you 💖

[h2]And more[/h2]

And of course, there are lots of other improvements in this release, bug fixes, optimisations, and quality of life improvements. I’ve also tweaked some of the game balance, and you now need to fully power the emergency transmitter to finish the game.

The full patch notes are listed below.

----


[h2]New features[/h2]

• Adaptory is now available on Mac with both x86_64 (Intel) and arm64/aarch64 builds!
  
  
  
  • If you're playing Adaptory on one of the new M1 etc machines, the arm64 version should be a lot faster (2x or more) and use less resources
    
  • When starting up the demo on Mac, you will now be presented with a dialog of which version you'd like to play
    
  • (This is the best solution I could think of because Steam doesn't provide architecture-specific launch configurations)
    
• Updated world generation
  
  
  
  • World generation now has more noise, variance, biomes, and cave systems
    
  • This is still a WIP and will be refined over the coming releases
    
  • Newly-generated worlds are now guaranteed to to spawn at least one brown bernie plant nearby as a source of food
    
  • Added boulders, columns, stalagmites and stalactites to world generation
    
• Added research tree
  
  
  
  • Building categories without any researched buildings are now hidden until researched
    
  • In the demo, all available research has been automatically unlocked
    
  • Buildings and content that are not available in the demo are shown as previews in the research tree
    
  • More buildings and content are going to be added to the research tree before Early Access
    
• Removed support for old .ymlz save files
  
  
  
  • These old save files were previously deprecated in Alpha 11
    
  • The filename for your preferences has changed from %APPDATA%/Adaptory/preferences.yml to preferences.json, and any previous settings may be reset to defaults
    

[h2]Simulation[/h2]

• Coal generators now accept any fuel, and can be configured to select only specific fuels (although coal is the only fuel available in the demo)
  
• Power generation with the coal generator is now calculated from the energy density of the fuel used
  
• Added power generation efficiency attribute to the coal generator
  
• Added a longer delay between creating liquid drops to reduce noise pollution
  
• Changed explorer behaviour with tiny supply errands
  
  
  
  • Before, any building trying to supply less than 1% of its target supplied mass would be ignored while calculating
    potential supply errands
    
  • Now, ALL buildings are considered regardless of pending mass, but if the mass requested is more than 2% of its maximum storage,
    OR a potential source item has unreserved mass less than that,
    then any source item will be a valid supply source for a new supply errand to supply that building
    
  • All of this is tricky to parse but basically small items should be cleaned up (so the base doesn't
    fill up with dust), while keeping large items mostly intact until they're required,
    and preventing explorers from endlessly obsessing over tiny amounts required in coal generators
    
  • Transmitters are still exempt from this test, because you need an exact amount to send the distress signal
    
• Items with unit masses can now automatically merge, improving simulation performance of long-term bases
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• The transmitter now needs to be fully powered in order to function
  
• Increased the minimum amount of power required for most powered buildings to at least 1%
  
• Explorers should no longer try to idly wander, write diary entries, or eat food at locations with very low levels of oxygen (0.1kg or less)
  
• Doors now take 0.25 seconds to close instead of instantly, allowing animations to play
  
• Reduced the number of alien artefacts generated in new worlds
  

[h2]Accessibility[/h2]

• Added Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut to open up explorer priorities
  
• Added Ctrl+I keyboard shortcut to open up the in-game database
  
• Added Ctrl+R keyboard shortcut to open up research tree
  

[h2]Internal[/h2]

• Improved the performance of rendering water drops
  
• Improved performance of supply errand, item accessibility, and explorer simulations
  
• Save games now keep track of the total playtime for that save, shown in the save/load dialog
  
• Added "not enough power" overlay icon to buildings that require a minimum amount of power
  
• The in-game database for powered building now displays the range of power required for that building to operate
  
• Significantly improved render performance of textures while the game is paused
  
• Added more idle conversations between explorers
  
• Moved light building from "base" building category into "power"
  
• Stored unit masses (such as 1.0000 kg) are now rendered as 1 kg in the building panel
  
• When selecting an explorer's Errands tab, more details are included for each errand (e.g. "dig out dirt", "build a ladder")
  
• When selecting an explorer's Errands tab, the currently active errand is now labelled
  
• Options that have not been changed from the defaults are no longer stored in preferences.json
• When an explorer passes out, an alert message is now displayed
  
• Added wire drag sound loop while dragging wire build errands
  
• Added plant sounds to all plants
  
• Updated mushroom plant art to be more visibly distinctive between growing and waning
  
• Updated power wire art
  
• Updated door animation to be more squishy
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where plants could render with the wrong skin immediately after loading an existing save
  
• Fixed the "time of day" tooltip on the world clock only updating when the mouse is moved
  
• Fixed beds clipping with items on the ground when explorers would sleep in the beds
  
• Fixed explorers not correctly taking the time to enter beds after their first successful bed time
  
• Fixed a bug where overwriting an existing save game would set the save game name to the empty string
  
• Fixed a bug where powered buildings supplied with 0% power would still be considered powered
  
• Fixed a bug where explorers, buildings, items and plants could be in the wrong state for one tick immediately after loading a save
  
• Fixed a very rare bug where rendering two onscreen components with the exact same dimensions could cause a crash
  
• Fixed a rare crash where an item could have 0.01g of reserved mass but no supply errands reserving that mass
  
• Fixed initial startup log messages not being written to log (in %TEMP%/Adaptory_*.log)
  
• Fixed the "errands" tab for an explorer saying "there's nothing for me to do" when the explorer is currently doing an errand
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a save game with an explorer that was in the middle of facing an idle pose
  
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when a supply errand had been reserved by too many other tile errands
  
• Fixed overlay icons in the top right going blank if hovered over while selected
  
• Fixed some libraries not being able to log to disk
  
• Fixed the game being able to be paused/unpaused while in the main menu