Colony Survival News

-------------IMPORTANT INFORMATION-------------
Here's how to join the beta
Official Release Date for 0.7.0:
Friday July 26, 10AM Amsterdam time / 4AM NYC / 1 AM LA / 5PM Tokyo
---------------------------------------------------------------

We've finally decided on an official release date! 0.7.0 will go live for everybody within a week. We can't wait to see how everyone will respond!

This week, we've done something that we should've done a long time ago. Zun wrote some simple scripts that calculate how much time it takes to create a specific object, keeping in mind the costs of all required ingredients. We found quite a lot of very unbalanced recipes, and we released a big update on Wednesday that overhauled a lot of them.


Old data from before the big balance patch
Fullscreen

In the 'Time/item" column, you can see how much seconds are needed to craft one item. As you can see, some items like the luxury meal and the perpetual stew take an enormous amount of time.

This is mostly compensated in the next column. It shows how many items colonists need to reach 100% distribution of that happiness type. Berries are easy to harvest but colonist need more than 4 of them, while they only need 0.03 luxury meal per day.

In the third column, these numbers are multiplied to show how much effort is required to provide all colonists with each happiness item. The next column shows how much happiness is provided to the colony when the happiness item is distributed sufficiently.

At the end is the most interesting column. It's a division of the two previous columns, effectively showing how much effort is required to produce 1 happiness.

This number is highest for berries. They're barely worth the effort, but that makes sense: they're a very primitive food source, not an effective happiness item. On the other hand: books are a very advanced happiness item, and they have a relatively low "happiness output" as well.

Happiness items that are unlocked later in the tech tree should be more effective. We've done a lot of rebalancing to make the numbers more sensible. But instead of merely looking at the output, we've also looked at the input. What jobs are necessary to produce all happiness items?


On the left the required jobs before the big balancing update; on the right the same but afterwards.
Fullscreen

Chicken meat and eggs require a lot of barley, and for example the luxury meal required three chicken meat and ten eggs. This made barley farming way too important. We've decreased both the required amount of barley, and the amount of eggs and chicken meat required as ingredients. We've changed some other recipes as well. This should make the distribution of jobs a lot more sensible, and make production a lot smoother.

Fullscreen

After some iterations, Zun decided to also count the food values. The higher the number in column H, the more effort is needed for one calorie. That number does not have to be identical: some food items are hard to unlock, other are primarly meant as happiness item. But especially the exotic food items were very unbalanced. Bread was nearly four times more effective than the rice meal. On the other hand, foofoo was even more effective than bread.

Fullscreen

In the end, we settled on this balance. The amount of effort to produce calories and happiness is a lot more consistent now, with better values for items further along the tech tree.



We're working on the final preparations for releasing the update now. We've got to redo the tutorial and manual. We're working on a splash screen with some important info and disclaimers. To make clear you're in a big new update (and that you didn't suddenly lose your savegames), we've changed the background of the main menu. Thanks PatateNouille for letting us use your creation!

We're perfectionists, and 0.7.0 isn't perfect yet. The new features and complexity increase the demand for other new features. Faster ways of transport, better tools for navigation, better ways to manage your colony, tools to remotely manage colonies, more purpose for large colonies. We'd love to add those things, but we can't justify postponing the update any longer. We do want to add these features in future updates!

We're going to film the new trailer next week, so this weekend is your last chance to submit your world to #trailer-worlds-only on Discord.

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord

-------------IMPORTANT INFORMATION------------- Here's how to join the beta
Expected time of official launch: in 1-2 weeks
---------------------------------------------------------------

Zun is back! He left the hospital on Saturday and has been feeling a lot better. He's had an MRI scan today and a doctor will discuss the results with him soon. We're suspecting gallstones and hope it's nothing worse than that.

Thanks a lot for all your well wishes! There was an outpouring of support for Zun, in the comments on Steam, on Discord, in PMs. We deeply appreciate the kindness of the community!

We've released multiple new builds this week, containing all kinds of changes, improvements and fixes. Here's a partial list from the Discord:

Fullscreen

Now that we're getting very close to the release, we've been talking about our plans for after the release of 0.7.0. Here's what we currently think we're going to do.

At first, we'll probably be releasing multiple patches for small things like balancing issues, translations and bugs. These updates will be numbered 0.7.0.1, 0.7.0.2, etcetera.

Our next priorities are:

• A new menu to display graphs that make a lot clearer how your production is going. See how many items are consumed and crafted, how many monsters are slain and how much days have passed. This is very important because of all the new jobs, items and complexity in 0.7.0.
  
• Integrating these statistics in the tech tree, with requirements like "Fire 500 bronze arrows before you can unlock crossbow bolts", "Distribute 100 luxury meals before you can unlock Colony Starter Kits". It won't be a full replacement, it'll be a mixed system.
  
• Add Steam Workshop and Steam Cloud support, with an in-game mod manager and support for specific mods per savegame

The things above will probably be the main new features in 0.7.1 & 0.7.2.

In the next "priority-tier" we find industrial content and new guards/monsters. Perhaps new guards and monsters will come in 0.7.3 and industrial content in 0.8.0. Maybe it will all be bundled into 0.8.0, although we don't want to keep you waiting as long as you did for 0.7.0 again. We could also release industrial content first and add new monsters and guards in 0.8.1.

As described in the previous blog, we're very enthusiastic about the pipes, tanks, pumps and rails that Pandaros adds in his mod. We'd love to add similar mechanics to standard, unmodded Colony Survival. Image having to supply jobs with cold or boiling water, or oil, or electricity, and having to build an infrastructure with water pumps, oil tanks, generators and batteries.

The endgame in 0.7.0 is not a proper endgame, because it's not intended to be. Colonizing other biomes and combining resources from exotic regions should be a stepping stone towards industrial content, with materials like oil, rubber, cobalt and lithium being gathered from far-flung regions. In turn, these ingredients should be required for new weapons, advanced happiness items like radios, and new transport like some kind of retro-jetpack and teleporters. That should be the endgame of Colony Survival. We'd love to have your opinion about these ideas!

Bedankt voor het lezen en alle beterschapswensen :)

Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord

Mod content by Pandaros and Xweert

-------------IMPORTANT INFORMATION------------- Here's how to join the beta
Expected time of official launch: in 2-3 weeks
---------------------------------------------------------------

A couple of days ago, Zun started suffering a pretty severe stomach ache. He's been having this problem once or twice a year for a while now, but the pain mostly seems to disappear after a couple of hours. But not this week.

The pain kept coming back in waves. Eating seemed to increase the pain. Yesterday, late in the evening, he decided to visit the after-hours doctor service at the local hospital. They completed some scans and are suspecting gallstones. He slept at the hospital and they're performing more tests and scans now. They're currently planning to keep him there until at least Monday.

Suffice to say, progress was less than hoped for this week. We haven't changed our expected release date though. We're pretty happy with the state of the beta. While there are definitely things that can be improved, there do not seem to be any major problems at the moment. Here's a list of things we still want to do before release:

• Balance recipes: change the cost, food value, happiness value
  
• Add a compass, to make it easier to find your colonies
  
• The updated science menu is way more clear in regards to what you actually unlock. Unlocks that were in the past separated for clarity, can now be merged. For example crossbow bolts + crossbows could be one research, same for matchlock guns and their ammo. Kilns and bloomery can be combined too.
  
• Update the F1 help-menu
  
• Update the UI to explain why players cannot access their old worlds anymore and how they can fix that (use the 0.6.3 branch)
  
• Add a splash screen with some general info
  
• Make a new trailer

For that new trailer, we're going to need awesome colonies! We're looking for beautiful, detailed, semi-realistic towns that display all the new features in 0.7.0. Towns with walls, gates, squares, greenery, houses and buildings like temples or churches, gardens and small alleys. Towns that look awesome from a distance, but also when filmed from up close. This weekend, we'll open a new Discord channel called "#trailer-worlds-only". If you want your world to be featured in the trailer, please build a town according to the standards above, post one or multiple screenshots of it in the #trailer-worlds-only and upload the savegame-folder there!



Modders have had access to the beta branch for a long time. 0.7.0 contains a lot of extra mod support, and modders have made good use of it! Pandaros and Xweert have added fancy new systems that currently have no equivalent in the base game.

They've added a system where mana is stored in tanks and carried from one place to another with pipes. One of the uses of mana is powering a hovering platform. The platform can be entered by players like the glider, automatically transporting them from one station to the next!

We're very excited by mods like this one. Adding Steam Workshop support is one of the highest priorities after releasing 0.7.0. We've been thinking about adding industrial content in future updates, and we're strongly considering to add similar pipe/rail systems. Here's a video of the mod features:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujKS0MVYJMU
Bedankt voor het lezen!

Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord

-------------IMPORTANT INFORMATION------------- Here's how to join the beta
Expected time of official launch: in 2-4 weeks
---------------------------------------------------------------

In the past week, we released multiple new builds with all kinds of small optimizations, fixes and improvements. At the start of 2019, in January, we started counting the amount of "builds", new versions of the beta branch. In 171 days, we've released exactly 100 builds. That's more than one update per two days! Here's an example, the changes in build #98:

• add ability to cancel started cycles based research
  
• send a "Science xyz is ready to complete" message when it's ready
  
• fix incoming trade deal text using the wrong colony
  
• remove "type" word from trade deal description
  
• add a header name to the trade deal creation popup
  
• reduce monster spawn distance a bit more aggressively when closer to sunrise
  
• add a server log message for when near-banner chunks are done loading post-startup
  
• fix siege mode being enabled upon loading a world for a moment (while near-banner chunks are still loading)
  
• fix uncompleted science dependencies being completed without being marked as such when loading an savegame with manually edited science

Many of these changes aren't very exciting, but very important for a polished end product. A change that I do believe is very exciting, is an improvement to the happiness interface!

It was pretty confusing and unintuitive. We've reworked it, and one of the most important changes is the colors of the sliders. They now vary from red to green, based on the distribution. If there is enough of the item in the stockpile for all of the colonists, the slider will be green. But if there's a shortage, the slider will gradually turn red.



We feel like this is a huge improvement. Instead of requiring players to hover over individual sliders and wait for a detailed tooltip to appear, shortages are now clear at a glance.

After adding this, we suddenly had an idea.

1. We know what the crafting limit of every recipe is
   
2. We know how many of that item are in the stockpile
   
3. We've got code that can change colors of sliders based on a ratio

Why not use the same system at every job block to make clear whether an item is produced enough or not? So we copied the system, adjusted it a bit and applied it to all crafting jobs. It looks like this:



We think this makes it a lot easier to sort out problems in your production chain! It's very satisfying to adjust things and see red sliders turn green.

An other important change this week is new content in the tropics. You've got to bring items from the New World there to unlock crops like cacao and vanilla. You can use them to craft happiness items like chocolate and cookies! Banana farmers also use a proper mesh now.



In other news, the Yogscast has started a new YouTube series where they play Colony Survival! Last week, we wrote about their livestream, but now they've decided to also run a YT series. It has received a lot of attention. The first video has gained over 300,000 views in less than a week, and they've already released four videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKJBFPpGKF8&list=PL3XZNMGhpynPANjExSrWHmOVVSMg9WjPx
We've immediately noticed results. One of the consequences is a large spike in beta testers. There are now 1419 of them! Their feedback is very important for the release of update 0.7.0. The Yogscast has also had an impact on the forester. They noticed he planted the same trees in all biomes. That has now been improved: he plants local trees now. For example, in the Far East he will grow cherry blossom trees!



Last but not least: we've decided not to participate in the Summer Sale. One of the reasons why is that we don't want to "push" people into 0.6.3, we'd rather wait until 0.7.0 is released. We're also thinking of adjusting the price. A rule that Zun, Vobbert and I often keep in mind when deciding to purchase a game is "One Dollar per Hour". A game is worth $60 when we expect to play it for 60 hours, or $10 when we're done with it after 10 hours.

When we released Colony Survival two years ago, it was very barebones and only very creative people spent 20 hours in-game. Completing the "tech tree" happened a lot quicker. Nowadays, we're noticing lots and lots of players with 50+, 100+, 250+ and even 500+ hours in-game. We believe we're at a very reasonable price point at the moment, and are considering to raise the price after 0.7.0 has been released.

Currently, buying the game gives access to all content. There is no DLC, there are no in-game microtransactions and we will not release Colony Survival II in 2020. Personally, we're in favor of that strategy and we know we appreciate other developers who take that approach. But we'd like to know how you think about this. Do you prefer a higher price but no DLC and other costs, or a lower price but content locked behind new purchases?

Bedankt voor het lezen!

Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord

Last week, we started a discussion about replacing the old science system. We gave you a choice: would you like to see the old system with the scientist and technologist, or a new system based on counters? We argued in favor of the latter.

A majority was in favor of the new system, but there was quite a lot of opposition. A common reply was "neither, why can't you mix the systems and have the benefits of both"?

At first, we though this was unwieldy and hard to create. Well, Zun continued his work on the new system and last Saturday, we had a useable system. But it wasn't fully finished yet. It was... a mix. Exactly the kind of mix that many of you proposed.



So that's what the current system looks like. The UI has been enhanced a bit, it now also displays which technologies a recipe unlocks. And the counters are integrated in the old science system, that still includes scientists and technologists. Science unlocks can now require a combination of both ingredients and "counters" like "total amount of colonists"!

One of the reasons why we wanted to fix the system before last weekend was the Yogscast. They've made dozens of videos about Colony Survival, and last week we received a message from them. They wanted to livestream the beta! We allow everyone to share videos of the beta if they make clear that it's a work-in-progress that changes rapidly, so of course they were allowed to do so as well. They've played the beta for five hours last Saturday, and have uploaded the footage to YouTube:

https://youtu.be/m4iE0-IHrKk
There weren't many technical problems and they seem to have enjoyed the update quite a lot, so that's good news for 0.7.0.

An issue we've pondered about this week is the workbench. Some jobblocks have only a few recipes of which many items are crafted, like bronze arrows, bullets or gunpowder pouches. But the workbench has dozens of recipes, many of which are seldomly crafted. It has become quite cluttered, and can be hard to understand and confusing. When we proposed changing that, the reply on Discord was enthusiastic!

But we're not sure how to fix that. Transferring all the seldomly required recipes to a new job would create a pretty useless job, especially for smaller colonies. We could split the workbench in two jobs that both have an even mix of common and rare recipes, but it's hard to think of an intuitive split that makes some sense from a real-life perspective. If you've got a good idea, please share it with us in the comments or on Discord!



Last but not least, we've spent a lot of time this week fixing the food system. In the past, there were only a couple of food items, they had a "food value" and they were consumed automatically based on a set food consumption per day.

0.7.0 contains a lot of new food items, and "food value" became pretty confusing. It's now measured in calories. 2000 calories per colonist, per day is now the standard food consumption. But players can adjust this in the happiness menu, by distributing more or less food items. Distribute more than 2000 calories and colonists will be "well fed", leading to extra happiness. The reverse is also true.

These systems were quite glitchy at the start of the week. The statistics regarding food in the top-right corner of the screen were incorrect, and colonists consumed less food items than the happiness menu indicated. It was a lot of work to diagnose the exact problem. It has mostly been fixed now. The only "problem" left is good news for the colonists: they don't seem to starve anymore when they receive very low amounts of calories. We'll "fix" that (:

In general, progress is going pretty much according to schedule and we expect to release 0.7.0 in 3-5 weeks!

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord