Generation Exile News

[p]We won’t beat around the bush - you can go play Generation Exile right now![/p][p][/p][p]We’re so excited to finally be able to share what we’ve been working on with everyone. It’s been a long road to get here, and while Early Access is in some ways just the start, every playtest we've done for Generation Exile has been a genuine delight and we are very much excited to bring the same spirit of feedback and collaboration to everyone.[/p][p]Speaking of which, if you want to connect with us directly for any feedback, ideas, or to share your starships with others, check out our brand new Discord: https://discord.gg/dKaCuJm3M6[/p][p]We have a lot already planned for our Early Access Roadmap, and will more specific info in the lead up to each major Content Update. But here’s a sneak peek of what we have lined up:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]And for this initial Early Access launch period, we'll of course be providing interim patches and hotfixes to address bugs and common issues.[/p][p][/p][p]If you enjoy playing Generation Exile and want to help support our studio, please help us get the word out to others by leaving us a review on Steam, and sharing the game widely to anyone you might think enjoy it![/p][p]
[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]From everyone at Sonderlust Studios, we hope you enjoy checking out Generation Exile![/p]

[p][/p][p]You read it right, the time is (almost) here![/p][p]We’re excited to announce that Generation Exile will be available for you to play in Early Access at 9am Nov 4 PT / 5pm Nov 4 GMT.[/p][p]Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey - from those who have wishlisted and shared news about the game, to those who have been supporters from day 1, and to the many people who checked out our demo during Next Fest and took the time to send us your thoughts and feedback - from the bottom of our hearts we’re truly grateful.[/p][p]We have lots of things planned for our Early Access that we’re looking forward to sharing in the future, but for now we hope you enjoy what we’ve created. We’ve worked our metaphorical butts off to get here, and we could not be more thankful to any of you who are choosing to spent your time with us and our game.[/p][p]Every wishlist, follow and share goes a long way to helping us reach new people, so please help us share the game widely to anyone you might think enjoy it- friends, favourite content creators/streamers, that cat you always see in window of the apartment across the alleyway...[/p][p][/p][p]From everyone at Sonderlust Studios, thank you so much for being here with us, and we hope you enjoy checking out Generation Exile on Nov 4th![/p][p][/p][p]And finally, a new trailer to highlight some of the things arriving on day one in Early Access![/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[h2]Thank you everyone who checked out Generation Exile during Next Fest![/h2][p]With the Next Fest event itself wrapped up, we went heads down this week to get in a bunch more fixes that were more involved or higher risk, and thus we didn't feel comfortable pushing for them during Next Fest itself.[/p][p]But as we will be leaving the demo up for quite a while yet, we wanted to ensure that anyone coming to check it out between now our Early Access launch will get the best experience we can provide as well as addressing some of the bigger issues folks who had already checked out the demo were running into.[/p][p]Full patch notes are below but a couple of highlights:[/p][h3]Better ultrawide monitor support! [/h3][p]It's still not at the level of robustness we are planning for the Early Access launch, but it's a big step forward. For now, having the full render resolution wider than 16:10 is not officially supported and where might be some visual bugs, but the functionality should be fine. And if one selects Borderless WIndow with a 16:9 or 16:10 resolution, the rest of the display will letterbox and otherwise work quite seamlessly. This would be our recommendation for anyone playing the demo on an ultrawide display for now and we'll get everyone with a mighty drive-in theatre screen display (which includes some members of our team!) properly accommodated come Early Access.[/p][p][/p][h3]This accursed problem[/h3][p][/p][p]We finally tracked down and addressed this very vexing bug! This one was quite a gremlin, as the cause was isolated to anyone who has an OS locale setting that represents decimal numbers using a comma rather than a period, e.g. "twelve and a half" being formatted 12,5 (as compared to 12.5).[/p][p]We might make a more detailed forum post if anyone is interested in the deep details of Why Computers Might Have Been a Mistake, Actually. but the tl;dr version is there a few OS-level .NET calls that perform file I/O that by default will take any number read using the OS locale setting, which most of the time is correct and wise! However, in this instance, we are using SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics) for many of our UI assets and technically, an SVG file is actually just a huge list of coordinate points and modification operations to those points. But that meant the seemingly innocuous OS call we made to read values like "12.5" out of our SVG asset files would absolutely choke if the OS locale expected to be getting decimal numbers in the form "12,5" instead. Once we found the issue, the fix was very easy (use a slightly different OS file input call) so everyone, everywhere - regardless of how you scribe fractional numbers - will now have their UI render correctly.[/p][p]Also included are a heap of stability, performance and QoL updates as well![/p][p]And as an additional note, unfortunately due to the scope of the changes needed, any saves from a prior version of the demo won't load correctly in this update.[/p][p][/p][p]Our next updates will likely gear toward our push for Early Access, but if there are more things you'd like to hear about please let us know in the discussion forums or at our feedback site: https://www.generationexilegame.com/support/[/p][p]Thank you again for being with us![/p][p][/p][h3]Patch notes (demo version 0.3.11)[/h3]

• [p]Fixed UI vector images rendering error occur on machines where the OS locale settings use commas as decimal separators[/p]
• [p]Added better support for monitor aspect ratios wider than 16:9/16:10[/p]
• [p]Added some missing structure/resource icons[/p]
• [p]Various UI polish and adjustments[/p]
• [p]Improving handling of cancel structure build state[/p]
• [p]Improved stability after loading a save game[/p]
• [p]Fixed a couple bugs causing sound effects to fire multiple times in quick succession in some very specific circumstances[/p]
• [p]Fixes for various narrative event issues[/p]
• [p]Various performance improvements[/p]

[p]We come to the weekend of this fine Next Fest on the most sinister of all Fridays. Hopefully none of you have been visited by... entities overnight.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We just pushed another update to the demo of Generation Exile! This patch was primarily focused on improving clarity and system feedback around a key component of a game like ours- placing structures on the map! After some excellent feedback from players, we realized that one aspect of building placement was not as self-presenting as we intended. Or at least one system was contributing to this friction more than the rest.[/p][p]The design intent is that most key "people-oriented" structures initially need to be built near the central Hub structure and then the by expanding the "power grid" with certain structures, (heh, to be a touch reductionist, it's pylons from Starcraft, basically) And then separately from the radius of the power grid, there is an actual enumerated amount of power available, with certain structures drawing more power than others, etc.[/p][p]While there are other city-builder/management that have a notion of power grid increasing its area of effect as well as separately modelling the actual power production vs. draw on the grid, given our theming and presentation we realized that conflating those two separate systems ("what is the area of power grid" vs. "what is my power generation vs. consumption") was not actually providing much. That specific intertwining of mechanics was something of a hold-over from previous iteration and exploration around this aspect of the game's design. So to make things clearer, we have adjusting the presentation of the "power grid radius" system to be "Signal" instead. We have updated the iconography and explanatory text.[/p][p]It's fully possible we'll continue to iterate on the theming of that system as we move toward Early Access, but this feels like a marked improvement to the game's intelligibility without losing anything, so we wanted to prioritize getting this update into our demo before Next Fest concludes. We also continue to get as many low risk, high reward optimization improvements into the demo as well.[/p][p]\And if you got a enjoyed the Generation Exile demo but haven't had a chance to leave a review yet, taking a moment to do so really helps us out and helps surface the demo to other players who might not have seen it in Next Fest yet!\[/p][p]As always, thanks to everyone who have provided great feedback on the demo that helps us make informed, ideally high impact changes like this. We hope you can find some other great demos to check out during Next Fest and if there's anything especially catching your eye, let us know in the discussion under this post.[/p][p][/p][p]Full patch notes follow:[/p][p][/p][h3]Patch notes (demo version 0.3.6)[/h3]

• [p]Revised existing "power grid" system to be called "Signal" instead to better convey its intended purpose and behaviour[/p]
  • [p]Updated UI and icons to support Signal presentation[/p]
  • [p]Revised name/description of a few structures to support Signal presentation[/p]
  • [p]Revised onboarding text to support revised terminology[/p]

• [p]Updated build mode ("ghost" structure attached to cursor) feedback to better convey reasons why a structure cannot be build on a given tile[/p]
• [p]Fixed bug with a few structures where there minimum or maximum capacity was not set correctly[/p]
• [p]Fixed bug with some narrative events where memories on some characters in the event were not being set correctly[/p]
• [p]Adjusted sizing and presentation of some UI panels[/p]
• [p]Ongoing performance optimizations[/p]
• [p]Other various small fixes (text colour highlighting, typo fixes, etc)[/p]

[p]The third day of Next Fest is wrapping up, and we've updated the Generation Exile demo once again. Focus remains primarily on optimizations and fixing critical bugs, but we did manage to sneak in a few more hair options. Or to be more precise, lack of hair options...[/p][p][/p][p]It's remains absolutely great getting interact with folks checking out the game, thanks again for being here with us![/p][p][/p][p]Full patch notes follow:[/p][p][/p][h3]Patch notes (demo version 0.3.4)[/h3]

• [p]Fixed to various structure assets that were occasionally display incorrect states.[/p]
• [p]Cleaned up styling on some text panels.[/p]
• [p]Added hairstyle and beard options, adjust categorization of various options in the character creator.[/p]
• [p]Additional performance improvements for End of Turn Processing.[/p]
• [p]"Clean Tiles" Development Level goal count no longer decreases when converting to a reserve area.[/p]
• [p]Reduced number of tiles needed for "Clean Tile" requriement across a number of development levels.[/p]
• [p]Various small fixes to narrative events.[/p]
• [p]Various additional minor fixes (text clarifications, button labels, etc)[/p]