Surviving Ceres News

Greetings Pilgrims;

I am pleased to announce that the first round of visual updates are now live in the demo and beta version of the game.

All 10 place-able machines have had unique visuals, effects, and sfc created and applied.

They are not insane high detailed AAA quality models, but I am not a AAA developer. They are however each unique with interesting animations and stylized visuals.

On top of the machines the early game facilities such as the refinery, basic manufacturer, and fuel refinery have had a visual overhaul.

There is still a lot of work left to be done in terms of set dressing, ambience, and advanced facilities. However, this is a great first step.

I will continue to work and bring the game to life with a unique visual style over the next few months at minimum. If you would like to help shape the games future consider joining the beta. You can do so by popping into the discord and requesting a key. Thank you for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy what has already been done with much more to come.

Greetings Pilgrims;

I have been bust working on new visuals, but many others have been playing the beta and providing feedback. A big thank you to everyone for the feedback as it has raised some great ideas and changes that are now implemented.

Change List;

- Fixed the rec-room pre-placed visual to match the final building
- Fixed an issue that could prevent ice from melting at the correct percents
- Fixed an issue that caused the mounted rail-gun when used manually that caused shots to go through aliens not triggering a kill and the attached achievement from doing do
- Added some extra slots to the liquid processor
- Added a new facility that auto generates filtered water. This facility only functions after 25% terraforming (when rain starts)
- Added the workshop which is a large 2 tiered empty space that is perfect for organizing machines and or storage boxes
- Fixed an issue that prevented the colonist achievements to not correctly fire when adding 8 and 12 colonists
- Reduced the normal level difficulty for drains related to air, food, and water. Some players found it a bit strict so it has been reduced. However, the highest levels of difficulty are still the same, only the lower difficulty settings where changed
- Added a toxic effect to the alien caves you can explore to acquire high end loot. There was not many ways to lose hit points so this change will enforce creating health potions. It is not to drastic of a damage over time, but it will make players move a little faster when inside the caves
- Added a warp type intro to starting a new game that makes the initial launch feel more spacey.
- Added and changed a few icons for certain items and materials
- Reworked the "Basic Base Constructor" visual. It is now better looking and smaller
- Added the workshop to the players starter inventory and reduced how many HUB's you start with to one

This is it for this small patch. I will continue to work on visuals, polish, vfx, sfx, and other aspects to bring the experience to life. Please continue to enjoy the beta and or demo while providing critical feedback that will be used to improve the game. Thank you for your time and support.

Greetings Pilgrims;

For a while, I and other beta testers have been aggressively playing the game and generating feedback around the overall game loop and feel. Using that feedback, we have refined, changed, and improved many aspects of the game. The beta client now offers a smooth and relatively bug-free run from start to 100% terraforming, with all critical systems functioning well and the game loop itself feeling smooth and fun.

We will continue to refine recipes and other balance issues based on feedback, but I am very happy with the current state of the game. Here is a list of the affected aspects without going into too much detail.

- Modified the speed of the advanced farms growth of raw foods
- Many buildings, parts, and goods were unlocked at the start of the game to make transitioning to mid-game smoother
- Many recipes were reworked to be simpler and faster for players
- Changed from night and day shifts to one 16-hour shift for colonists to reduce complexity
- Made planting of foods continuous
- Fixed an issue that caused some buildings to incorrectly trigger mission objective completion
- Changed many item stack sizes and weight values
- Changed some supply drop contents to be better or worse in different cases
- Cleaned up some machine HUD displays to better give clarity to relevant information
- Changed, added, and moved many lights to better light facilities
- Greatly reduced crafting times for machines/facilities that require a lot of crafting such as the parts machine and refineries
- Fixed a ton of small bugs as well as major game-breaking bugs (too many to list)
- Changed several help entries to be more relevant
- Updated the cheat menu with more parts, ores, bars, and goods
- Increased storage capacity of many machines and facilities based on importance
- Reworked some milestones and fixed issues with milestones not firing correctly. All milestones can now be completed
- Fixed issues with certain aspects not returning items on deconstruction
- Added pop-up messages for when drills are destroyed by aliens
- Many changes to turrets, alien hit points, drill hit points, and everything related to attacks to make them feel fun but never oppressive on the player
- Reworked milestone funding rewards to be valid but to ensure exporting is a critical aspect of the game
- Significant changes to colonist AI, stats, perks, flaws, task systems, and more. They are still far from perfect, but functioning quite well
- Fixed some achievements that didn't fire correctly. All achievements can now be earned
- Changes to facility timers such as terraforming speed, missile cooldowns, and manufacturing times
- Fixed an issue that caused the barracks to have the advanced farm pre-placed visual
- Fixed issues with the mounted rail gun that prevented it from hitting targets when placed to farm away from your terraforming facility
- Reworked delay times for terraforming when failing to stop bombers
- Fixed many issues related to expeditions. To many to list, but they are now functioning perfectly minus the visual level design


With these changes, as well as the several smaller patches over the last few weeks the beta is in a really good place. There is still much refining to be done in terms of balance and we will continue to do so as we get feedback. However, the game is running great, can be completed, and never feels to boring in terms of grinding materials and items. While never feeling too easy to where you aren't forced to make decisions and earn your progression. This is a very difficult thing to get perfect, but your feedback has already given the game a huge step forward in that direction.

I am now confident enough in the game loop to move on to the modeling/visual side of the game. Over the next several months you can expect to see updates with new machines, props, set dressing, VFX, SFX, and overall polish brought to the game.

We still have a long road ahead, but I am very happy with the current state of the beta. If you would like to take part in the beta please join my discord and request a key. Thank you so much for your support, and have fun out there.

Greetings Pilgrims;

This is another small patch aimed at improving and smoothing out the game play experience. Here is a list of changes made.

- Unlocked Copper Dust in the grinder
- Unlocked Iron Dust in the grinder
- Increased the parts constructor inventory capacity
- increased the grinder inventory capacity
- Reworked copper frames to be easier to craft
- Removed Research cool down times
- Reduced refinery time for all bars
- Reworked a few mid-game structure costs
- Added Blocks Of Ice to the supply pod with refined materials
- Added a Refinery to the supply pod that contains base modules.

These changes are more to come are aimed at making all aspects of the game transition and run smoothly for players. Currently early-game feels pretty smooth,and the beginning of mid-game does as well. However, the transition from colonists arriving to tending to there needs and starting terraforming felt sluggish. These changes are aimed at smoothing out that transition.

We will continue to test and refine the experience over the next while, you can expect more small patches soon.

A few quick fixes and tweaks based on feedback. They are as follows;

- Removed an issue related to transferring all items to machines
- Fixed an issue where oxygen would not go to max capacity on loading
- Added funding to the main player inventory / stats menu
- Changed the export value for bars and manufactured export packages
- Added a message for rockets landing on Ceres
- Fixed an issue that allowed exported goods to re-appear when rocket was recalled from Earth
- Added Block of ice as a refined version of Ice
- Added Blocks of ice to a few recipes
- Tweaked some iron costs vs copper and ice (Game flow wise you needed significantly more iron than any other resource. I am attempting to smooth this out and have all three types be important more equally)
- Unlocked a few recipes to smooth out the flow from early to mid-game
- Changed the RND menu to be more clear and concise with less sub categories
- Increased storage capacity and refinery capacity
- A variety of colonists fixes and improvements to there AI and pathing (This is a tricky aspect to get right but with enough iteration we will get there)

We will be posting more small updates to further improve the game as an experience in the near future as we continue to test and iterate. Huge thank you to everyone helping with testing. If you want to join the beta pop into the discord and request a key.