The Universim News

Happy Halloween, everyone!



We hope you have already prepared plenty of treats and costumes for Halloween. The spookiest time of year is almost upon us and, today, we would like to present you with some exciting changes. These changes are related to the Halloween holiday in addition to the actual game. With that said, this patch is a bit unusual regarding content.

This patch contains some things that were set to be released in one big combat patch (one that is happily on the way). We are finishing some things and are excited to enter the polishing stage within the next couple of weeks. For now, let’s concentrate on the new thrills you’ll find in this newest patch.

First and foremost, as many of you have noticed, our Halloween event has returned to The Universim! In launching the game, you will be greeted by our Skull Moon. Once you have entered the game, you will have your choice of a regular planet (for players who wish to forgo the Halloween event and its various challenges) or the Halloween Planet by clicking the pumpkin checkbox. This action will switch all of the planet sizes to the Halloween Planet.

The Kraken
Playing on the Halloween Planet will allow you to encounter the Kraken. This evil creature can arise from deep waters and will spawn unusual zombies. These zombies will attack your civilization from time to time until you destroy the source of their creation.



Mysterious Portals
Demonic Nuggets will invade your world during Halloween! You may recall a mysterious portal being opened for brief periods of time. Well, now you will uncover the cause behind it as a protector of your civilization. Closing the portal will provide you (and your Nuggets) with a handsome reward. Close the portal by destroying it. Your military Nuggets may be able to assist you.



Witches
Witches will appear during nighttime! You may see them flying and cackling through the sky. After all, Halloween is their holiday as well!



Blood Rain
You may encounter a phenomenon of red clouds appearing over your planet. Hopefully, your Nuggets won’t be frightened by some kind of red rain.



Ghosts
They’re back! Ghosts are here to roam your planet but, this time, these are friendly spirits that will appear after the death of your Nuggets.



Halloween Planet
This time around, our Halloween Planet didn’t change much from the previous year. However, we’ve added some new resources to the game as well as tree variations.

Now, let's talk about some of the content that is not related to Halloween but that you’ll be able to enjoy in this patch.


Snapping Tool
We have received plenty of feedback on implementing a snapping tool to The Universim. Well, we are pleased to tell you that the tool is finally here! You can now adjust and place your buildings as precisely as possible. The snapping tool will be available once you select a building that you would like to place.

You will see in the left hand corner some instructions on how to use them and what buttons will activate snapping buildings. This tool will have 3 different modes:

• Mixed. Buildings will attempt to snap to the road or a building based on the distance to them.
  
• Snapping to buildings. This mode will completely ignore roads and will snap a building as close as possible to another building, allowing you to align structures together.
  
• Snapping to roads. Perhaps you would like to align your buildings to the road, if so, switch to this mode.
  

Machine Guns for Defense Towers
As we’ve developed more and more military content for the game, we decided to be a bit more practical with the use of the rockets. Now, when defense towers will be shooting flying objects or heavy armory objects, they will be shooting rockets. Otherwise - instead of shooting poor wolves with rockets - they will be using machine guns. Machine guns will be as effective as rockets, just without a big splash.



News Messages

We added additional options to the settings within News Messages which will allow you to turn off all messages except critical ones or adjust current news messages and showcase only selected messages. The options that we’ve added are:

• Family Messages (messages that indicate that Nuggets formed a new family)
  
• Believer Messages (messages that indicate any believer interaction)
  
• Seasons Messages (messages that indicate the change of seasons)
  

Warehouse Disable All
Another request from the community was to disable the acceptance of resources within the warehouse. Now, within the warehouse panel, you will be able to find a Disable All button which will disable the acceptance of all resources within that particular warehouse. From that point, you can enable any resources that you would like to accept by manually selecting them. You can also revert the change by clicking on the same button and enabling the acceptance of all resources.



Save/Load Error Handler
We’ve reworked and added a new error handler which will fire up when the error occurs within the game when a save is pending. Recently, we’ve encountered an error which erases or does not save certain data to the save files, causing the corruption of those saves. This new system will detect that activity by checking if the save file has all the needed data in order to load. An error message will be produced if something is missing. If you encounter that error, please let us know. There is no way for us to track it right now, unless someone will be able to trigger it.



Other Improvements

• When Discovery Points (DP) are used to discover a perk, the price of DP will be hidden afterwards for this perk
  
• Incorrect DP icon was changed to the correct one in order to be consistent with the rest of the game’s DP icon
  
• Minister of Space was missing a lock icon on the slot
  
• Added icon to the finishing hut when there is no fish to catch or gut
  
• Reworked the interaction of Nuggets with the Colonization Rocket and Trade Rocket Now, the prioritization system will be as follows: Nugget should be educated, adult, have no partner, and be between 2-12 years old. This Nugget will be prioritized for the Colonization or Trade Rocket. If none of these Nuggets are found, the system will instead prioritize Nuggets within the same category, but older until age 54-74. Once all Nuggets are exhausted, the system will prioritize Nuggets who are adults, have an education, have a partner, but are still young. After that, the system will continue checking for Nuggets within the same category but who are older. Following that category, the system will then begin to board Nuggets who are educated adults with no partner. Lastly, if none of the Nuggets are within the categories above, the system will select any Nugget that is left. This prioritization should ensure that you will get the best Nuggets that will be sent for the colonization of a new planet as well as for trading
  
• Nuclear Plant received assign all button
  
• Consistent Nugget interaction within any building. You can now interact with a Nugget inside the residential building or any other building. Previously, you were not able to use Creator Powers on a Nugget within certain buildings
  
• Cosmodrome resources were rearranged. This arrangement was according to the resources observed on the bottom panel (where all resources are located) for better readability and consistency
  
• Added a tooltip and a popup panel for the auto constructed buildings such as Temples and Black Markets
  
• Arrested/Imprisoned Nuggets will be immediately removed from their occupations
  
• Selecting Unobtanium Extractor building will highlight Unobtanium plates which should help to identify placement sites more easily
  
• Added deselected effect to the eras buttons located on the left hand side of the screen. Located above construction and the Creator Powers buttons in order to distinguish the era you are currently in
  
• Warehouse received a button to disable all
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the Spaceport didn’t allow for adding up to max supply and only allowed increments of 10. In other words, if you had space for 2 more resources, clicking ‘add 10,’ would not fill the rocket to the max. It would just ignore that interaction. Now, it will add those 2 missing resources that it can actually fit
  
• Fixed an issue where Tesla Parts could have been dragged outside the screen if the movement speed of the camera was too fast
  
• Fixed an issue where the Unobtanium extractor didn’t function properly when the player was on another planet
  
• Fixed an issue where a shader for the raincloud didn’t appear at certain angles
  
• Fixed an issue where sending food via Spaceport caused a rounding error and therefore displaying a very large number
  
• Town Hall didn’t kick Nuggets out of the building when it was turned off
  
• Localization error was happening when Nuggets were returning from expedition
  
• Fixed an error within the Spaceport that was breaking the game when the player was sending resources
  
• Fixed a scaling issue with the button located within the vertical consumption layout which was increasing the on/off button scale but it was never returning to normal
  
• Fixed an issue where some sections of land didn’t have roads. This system was tweaked quite a bit. Some issues might still happen, but they should be rare
  
• Fixed an issue where the simulation system was not correctly working with drones and allowed the creation of an unlimited amount of drones while being on the other planet
  
• Loading a planet could sometimes produce an error which was breaking the save file
  
• Fixed an issue where the player was not able to fly to the location of the Nugget who died due to the Sarlacc
  
• Fixed an issue where a mystery box could not be picked up from the crater
  
• Fixed an issue where the Unobtanium extractor would burn despite using rain cloud on it
  
• Fixed an issue where the Nugget creation screen was incorrectly displayed when UI Scaling was set to MAX
  

Besides everything we have done above, we are also working full speed ahead on the next Large Update that will be coming out shortly! Our estimation time is around 2-2.5 weeks. This update will introduce new buildings and a combat system. Some things we had covered last week and, currently, we are at a stage where we can polish our combat system. After polishing, the update will have to go through QA. Once we get approval from QA, we will post new patch notes with its release!

While some of our team focused on the combat system, the rest of the team was hard at work racing toward the finish line. All major systems are officially in place from a technical standpoint. Our outstanding list of tasks consists of new tutorials, cinematic shots, a credit screen, and final scene. Of course, we’ll be polishing and rebalancing existing systems in order to improve gameplay during the later stages of the game.

We sincerely hope that you will enjoy these new changes and are looking forward to our combat patch! We are extremely excited to show it to you. As always, if you enjoy what we are doing, make sure to leave a Steam review and join our Discord. If you happen to find an issue, join our Discord and let us know. Our magical team of programmers will do their best to exterminate every bug that we, and our community, will find. Lastly, enjoy Halloween and have a great time with your friends and family.

Sincerely,
The Crytivo Crew

https://store.steampowered.com/app/352720/The_Universim/

Hello, Creators!



It’s time to celebrate as we’re full swing into this haunted time of year. Our special Halloween spooktacular is back with some bewitching classics that you may recognize, but just wait until October 25, 2022 - we have all sorts of goodies in store for you. At the start of Steam Scream Fest, enjoy everything from blood rain to demonic portals and everything in between!

For now, be sure you’re ready to fight the mysterious Kraken - a beast that possesses unusual powers - as it summons hordes of zombies hungry for your Nuggets.

A Surprise Encounter
This Halloween, alongside the Kraken, a demonic portal has been opened. We can’t confirm if this portal will bring treats, but there are certainly tricks that this anomaly will offer you. That’s not to say, however, that closing this portal won’t yield a reward…

Witchly Sightings
Be sure to watch the skies as witches fly overhead! It’s never a good idea to spook these broom riders, but you can admire them from afar. This is the only time of year where they don’t mind being spotted.

Ghoulish Delights
Alongside the witches, the ghosts are once more taking up residence in your towns! Ever wonder what happens after Nuggets bite the dust? Well, perhaps you will now.

While you may recognize some familiar hauntings, there’s plenty of new adventures in store this season. Find out what else awaits you on the Halloween Planet!

As always, thank you to everyone for your support and for your constant feedback on Discord, Twitter, and Steam. Every comment and suggestion helps us to define the mechanics and game systems our community most desires while we fine tune our content.

If you’re enjoying the game, especially with our spooky additions, please feel free to leave your honest review on Steam. Want to see any changes to The Universim? Drop us your feedback on Discord.

Happy haunts to everyone!

Love,
The Crytivo Crew

https://store.steampowered.com/app/352720/The_Universim/

Hello dear creators,
We hope that you had a wonderful time this summer and that everyone is rested and prepared for the start of the new upcoming season.

As many of you probably know, we recently moved our headquarters from San Diego, California to Dallas, Texas. This relocation caused some disturbances to our progress within the game, but for the last 2 months, everyone on The Universim team was able to pick up the pace and move forward with extra speed. Recently, we added two additional programmers to our team along with an additional concept artist. This should help us to speed up our development progress quite a lot. Due to that addition, we decided to release one more patch after this one. We heard a lot of you loud and clear - that you would like to have some expansion on Exiles. Therefore, we dedicated a couple of people from our team to work specifically on military expansion.



This v57 patch will be a bit unusual for us and for you. In this patch, we put a lot of attention to bug fixes and improvements to the current systems. Since we are currently in the end phase of the game, we are heavily concentrating on end game content and polishing. Therefore, this patch is very important for us to see if we were able to resolve some of the major issues within the game.

We are constantly looking over the suggestions in our Discord as well as the bugs that are being reported. Certain bugs have a higher priority than others. We are still trying to track one bug that does not allow us to save the game correctly. In order to catch this bug, we implemented a system that will provide a warning message stating that, during the game save, the game was not saved correctly followed by the error that comes with this. Please, if you encounter that error, reach out to us via our Discord. With your help, we will be able to locate and track that error and fix it for good!



Now to the content of the patch! Here are some of the improvements and bug fixes that you will encounter.

Improvements:

- Increased size of the Pollution warning notification

- Incorrect description for the Garrison Building

- Missing text for the Lizard Candy and Massage Buildings

- Incorrect translation within the main menu of the Twitch Integration (German language)

- Bunker improvements:

Meteor strike does not kill Nuggets within the bunker anymore
Lightning Strike does not kill Nuggets within the bunker
Tornados
Fire
Volcano
Earthquake
UFO Crashing onto the bunker
Drone explosion
Planet Cracker stomp
Blizzard Storm
Firestorm

- Fierce enemy quest drop zone ground projection didn’t look good when it was overlapped with the quest area projector

- Over 30 popup windows reworked in order to be closed by pressing ESC button

- Buildings without assigned Nuggets will have lower resource delivery priority compared to buildings that have Nuggets working in them

- Any Nugget within the building will have a consistent interaction throughout the game (in other words, you can pick them up, use certain creator powers on them, etc. while they are inside the building)

- Nuclear Plant received an “assign all” button

- Colonization rockets and Space Trade will now have a different Nugget priority when you are sending Nuggets to another planet. Young and educated Nuggets without a family will have the highest priority, next will be Medium/Old age Nuggets with an education, then Young uneducated Nuggets, followed lastly by Medium/Old uneducated Nuggets

- Finishing hut received an indication icon above the building showcasing when there is no more fish to catch

- All mines that extracted all resources beneath them will automatically remove Nuggets from the building and shut down the building

- System that will detect if the game is being saved incorrectly and will provide a notification to the player. That system was put in place in order to prevent broken save files and will allow us to track down certain game breaking bugs

Bug Fixes:


Fixed: Localization Error in the Overpacked quest

Fixed: Using switch Era functionality did not switch the Education requirements of the buildings back to corresponding building level education

Fixed: Certain quests didn’t show the correct name for the Nuggets quest giver

Fixed: Fierce enemy quest drop zone was not always correctly displayed on the ground and disappeared if you moved the camera too close to it

Fixed: Objects in the world can no longer be clicked upon while the celebration dialog is active

Fixed: Research screen and other full screen UIs are no longer overlapped by the celebration dialog

Fixed: Pressing ESC Button while being in the load game screen removed Load panel completely

Fixed: While holding a Nugget via telekinesis, Nugget could have been dropped if any pop up or UI Screen would be opened

Fixed: Min/Max temperature was not updated correctly within the Reservoir panel

Fixed: Power Hour event didn’t turn off electricity for the entire duration of the event

Fixed: Subtitles would overlap with Full Screen Menus

Fixed: Same Nugget could have been added to multiple different trades

Fixed: Missing localization within the spaceport

Fixed: Firestorm and Blizzard on screen effects were visible within different full screen menus (Loading Screen, Research, etc.)

Fixed: Error that was happening during the trade in space which was leading to corrupted save files

Fixed: Shadow from the raincloud disappeared at a certain angle providing no indication for the location of the raincloud

Fixed: Minister of Space was missing a lock icon on the slot

Since we are currently in a state of polishing and improving the game, we are planning to release bug fixes and overall improvements on a more constant basis.

We would also like to share some of the progress that has been made.

Currently Working On

Nuggets

We went through all the Nuggets and their jobs in order to update their clothing and accessories for the Modern and Space Ages. In total, over 20 different jobs will receive new outfits and over 20 new items as accessories will be added to them. Some of them you can check below:




Defense Towers

Defense towers are currently going through multiple stages of rework and upgrades. We are adding machine gun mode that will primarily target ground units where rockets will shoot anything flying up in the sky as well as Planet Cracker.



Planet Cracker

We are putting a lot of effort and polish into Planet Cracker. Upon full release, you will be able to encounter that evil machinery that has been created to stomp out civilizations and destroy planets.



Snapping Tool

We received a lot of requests from the community to help with the arrangement of buildings and the addition of a snapping tool. One of our engineers is currently working hard on adding a snapping tool that will allow you to snap your buildings to the roads or other buildings, aligning them perfectly in a straight line.



New Planets

We had mentioned that we created a system that allows us to create different planets. Now it is finally time to start making them! Our design team is working on brand new planets that you will be able to encounter during your journey.



Star Map

The star map was created internally quite a few months ago, but it still required some polishing. Using a star map, you will be able to discover both planets and different space objects. Currently, our engineers are working on expanding star map functionality in addition to the new UI/UX elements that should help with navigation.

Final Battle Scene

Yes, you will have a proper finish of the game as well as some story line. Even now, certain narrator phrases, quests, and other subtle elements within the game have some connection to the main story. After the final scene, we hope that you will be able to connect all the dots and figure out the connection :). The final scene is currently ready from the technical side, but still requires some polishing and UI/UX elements.

Credit Screen

The credit screen is also already created, but currently has a placeholder UI which will be improved as we get closer to the actual end of the game.

Below you can see the overall progress that we have made and where we are currently standing.



We hope that this will give you some understanding where we are and what we are currently working on.

Thank you everyone for all of your support and for staying with us. This means a lot for the entire team and we are grateful for having such an amazing community. We are almost at a finish line and we can’t wait to show you all the things that we have worked on.

Sincerely,
Crytivo Crew

https://store.steampowered.com/app/352720/The_Universim/

Hello everyone !
I hope you all have a wonderful summer and you enjoy the sun. We would like to conduct an AMA where you will be able to ask any questions about the game, company etc. Join our discord and feel free to drop your questions in the #AMA_Questions channel.

If you found an interesting question already asked, just vote for it. We will select a handful of questions ( voted ones will have priority ) and go over them on Tuesday at 11am PST | 1PM CEST | 2pm EST time. . The AMA will be conducted via Stage channel called #AMA. Just join the channel where we will be responding to any of your questions on the day of AMA.


Looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday!

Sincerely,
Crytivo Crew

https://store.steampowered.com/app/352720/The_Universim/

Hello Creators,

Each month, we strive to deliver something new for you to experience and to play. This time, our patch is a little bit different from the others. As we are only a few months away from full release 1.0, our team is working around the clock in order to prepare this exciting new content! Despite our busy schedule, we still wanted to showcase something new this month - just for you!

In this patch, we will introduce some new buildings and upgrades that we’ve been working on along with some balance changes and bug fixes. We hope that you will enjoy playing with these changes and we are looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Also, in the next few months, we were thinking about doing live AMA sessions where we will be able to casually chat with everyone and answer any questions that you might have. If this is something that you think would be cool, let us know and we will schedule something :)

Now, let's dive into the game and see what we have in this patch.


Key Features:

Rehabilitation Center & Prison Center



We already showcased the concept art for both buildings: the Prison and Rehabilitation Centers. Now, it is time to actually explore the way they look and work in the game. New upgrades for the buildings will drastically decrease the criminals who are walking among the Nuggets and will surely help to decrease criminal activity via rehabilitation or prison means, based on your choice.



Warehouse



This new upgrade for the Warehouse will offer even more space to store your resources. Who doesn’t like extra space?

Power Battery



More juice, more power! With an increase in energy consumption in the Modern and Space Ages, Batteries required more capacity to store energy.



Gas Mine



Throughout the Ages, Nuggets were improving their technology and techniques with gas mining. Finally, they were able to push their technology to the next level. This Gas Mine upgrade will double the production of gas which should be more than sufficient for the Space Age.



Iron Mine & Stone Mine



Along with a Gas Mine, a Iron Mine & Stone Mine received its upgrades as well. Similar to the Gas Mine, the mines will increase their output. This will provide a surplus of iron and stones to construct more factories and to colonize more planets.



Lumberjack



Just a tiny island of greenery among the metal and concrete. This beautiful architecture will constantly produce fresh and renewable trees which will help your civilization save as much nature as possible. Pollution levels will also be reduced dramatically.



Gas Plant



Among all other sources that produce energy, the Gas Plant was one of the old ones and - compared to new energy sources - it was definitely underperforming. With the new upgrade, the Gas Plant will shine with new colors (it will shine extremely bright during nighttime). Increased output, even compared to other sources, will help to keep the lights on in every single building and home.



As you can see, quite a lot of buildings received their upgrade in this patch! Additionally, our team was working on multiple different systems such as the Planet Kraker interaction, 3 new quests, 2 new events, a star map system, new planets, and planet generation.

Since those systems are still in production, we will be able to show you some snippets with more to come.




Improvements and Balance Changes

• Localization changes and assets preparation. As we are approaching 1.0, we are reworking a lot of older panels that might still use older text components that are making text blurry and potentially hard to read. Currently, all the building's panels and research panel work is done. The overall work is still not finished, but we are halfway through.
  
• Improved performance for the Modern and Space Age eras. Based on the machine, you should see around 10% - 15% in improvements.
  
• Drinkable water by Nuggets is now displayed at the water tooltip. This should help new players, as well as veteran players, to keep an eye on the overall situation with drinkable water in their cities.
  
• More than 30 different audio sounds were added to the Stone Age and pre-Medieval buildings and panels.
  
• Improved planet simulation system in order to control the inflow and outflow of resources efficiently and precisely.
  
• Increased the refill rate of drinkable water in the wells.
  

Bug Fixes:

Fixed: Missing localization in Residential Buildings, Expedition, Fishing Hut, Barracks, Artifact
Fixed: An issue which could occur if a protection dome was hit in the same frame it was created
Fixed: An issue which could prevent clouds from spawning on the moon
Fixed: An issue which could prevent the mating quest from starting
Fixed: An issue which could cause the bottom panel tooltip to display the incorrect amount of water
Fixed: Shock and awe not persisting through save/load
Fixed: Being able to use god powers through UI and on dead Nuggets when you shouldn't be able to
Fixed: Nuggets who are working in the Town Hall would become invisible if it was destroyed while they were inside the building
Fixed: Multiple audio and visual bugs in the intro scene
Fixed: Clouds on the moon were not always correctly displayed
Fixed: Nuggets standing directly on top of each other when hunting (not 100% impossible, but much less likely)
Fixed: A bug that caused the new space laser/instruments to not be stowed away correctly after use
Fixed: Multiple riot bugs: one would cause them to break and have the Nuggets stop performing any actions and riots had no sounds
Fixed: Terraformer was not correctly working in the planet simulation system
Fixed: A bug that was causing significant water drainage on the foreign planet sim
Fixed: A bug where well/drinking water refill bonuses were not applied on the foreign planet

We are extremely excited about the future and what it will bring to us all. Our journey was quite long, but we are extremely happy to have such an amazing community who was able to stick with us for all this time and share this journey. We are grateful for everyone who has patiently been waiting and supported us despite all the downfalls of game development and the twists and turns of life.

Thank you all so so much for your awesomeness! With the full release on the horizon, we would like to assure everyone that the full release won’t mean the end of The Universim. We still have plenty of ideas from the community (and our own, of course). With your support, we will continue development and accomplish many great things.

We hope that you enjoyed what you have seen and we can’t wait to bring more exciting things to the game to show you! Please don’t forget to leave us a review on Steam, it means a lot to us. Stay godly!

P.S: If you think that a live AMA is a fun idea, let us know down in the comments.


All the best,
The Crytivo Crew

https://store.steampowered.com/app/352720/The_Universim/