Colony Survival News

It has been a week since 0.7.0 was released! It feels like a much longer period. We've received lots of feedback, and nearly everybody had a positive view of the update. There have been some issues though.

Twenty minutes before the release of the update, Zun uploaded a new build with optimized networking. Sadly, it introduced major problems when trying to load a world. So shortly after releasing 0.7.0, we had to release a hotfix that reverted back the networking.

A problem that hasn't been fixed yet is broken achievements. The achievements for colonizing new biomes and the 100+ happiness achievement cannot be unlocked. This should obviously be resolved.

The most pressing issues that Colony Survival still had in 0.6.3 are resolved in 0.7.0. FaceIt doesn't break the game anymore and savegames are way less likely to corrupt. But there are still some wonky behaviors that can cause issues.

One of them is pathfinding. Colonists look for the closest bed, crate and grocery store in a straight line, right through the ground, walls and floors. They do not care about the actual path they have to take.

Generally, in large colonies where jobs, beds and crates are spread out evenly, this doesn't cause any issues. But it can create lots of confusion in specific scenarios.



Let's take a look at the example above. There's a house with beds for guards and farmers, and there's a mine with a couple of colonists. Inside of the mine, there's an underground room with beds where the miners can sleep.



When nighttime arrives, the miners leave their jobs and walk towards the underground room with beds.



...and they walk straight past it to claim the beds in the house. They even go past the beds on the ground floor and go to the basement. They deliberately search out the farthest beds possible.

But actually, they're the closest beds! They're right above them when they're working. So these are the beds they claim, and then they calculate a path towards them, not caring about available beds along the way.

These issues can compound and cause further issues. There might be colonists working right next to the house who lose their beds. If other nearby beds are also claimed already, they might have to walk a long distance towards beds on the other side of the colony.

It's pretty easy to prevent these problems:

1. Place beds abundantly. When you've got eight guards, build barracks with ten beds.
   
2. Don't make very complex paths with beds hidden behind difficult mazes.

Follow one or both rules and you'll probably be fine. But if you're building complex structures with difficult entrances and exits, and you're placing a limited amount of beds for specific groups of colonists, you'll run into problems.

We could of course change it so that colonists don't merely look for the closest bed in a straight line, but let them compare beds while keeping in mind the distance they are forced to travel. But this would dramatically increase the required computing power. Imagine hundreds or thousands of colonists, each calculating paths to multiple beds every night. It would be way less optimized, for something that is only a problem in a relatively small minority of worlds.

Still, it's a problem that we can work on. There is probably a middle ground between the current way of selecting beds and fully realistic, detailed pathfinding every night. We've also thought about other solutions, like special beds for certain jobs. Green beds for farmers, black beds for miners, grey beds for guards. If that's something that appeals to you, please let us know!



In general, we had a pretty relaxed week. We listened to feedback and watched pretty much all new Colony Survival videos on YouTube. We've discussed plans for future updates, but we haven't actually worked on the game a lot. For more than a year, we lived with the idea that we'd release 0.7.0 in a couple of months. The release really did feel like a burden was lifted of our shoulders. We're recuperating for a bit and are looking forward to the next updates!

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

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https://youtu.be/HMOwl5YMWYw --------------------------------

After more than a year of work, update 0.7.0 is now live! It's by far the largest update in the history of Colony Survival. It's a fundamental overhaul of many systems, and adds lots of new content, features and quality-of-life improvements.

We barely ever ask you to share/subscribe/like, but we're making an exception here. Tell a friend, share the trailer, write a review, subscribe to our YouTube channel - it truly helps us!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMaFZ8I2Xg8



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t07K9_QuBs



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLqoJrafuII



The trailer mentions most of the big new additions. Co-op, multiple colonies, trading, happiness, exploration, the glider. But 0.7.0 is much, much more than that. We'd like to highlight a small portion of the other improvements here!



We made big strides here. For example, the options for recruitment are a lot more advanced now.

• You can still recruit a single colonist
  
• You can enter a number and recruit a specific amount of colonists in one click
  
• You can fill the amount of empty beds
  
• You can fill the amount of empty jobs
  
• You can toggle auto-recruitment, which automatically recruits a colonist when the colony is happy, there is enough food left, and there's an empty bed & job.

With all of the new items and jobs, the economy is a lot more complex now. We're going to add better visualization and management tools in the future, but for now, one of the changes we've made is coloring the sliders. When you browse through all of the recipes of a crafting block, the color of the slider indicates whether the item is sufficiently produced (green) or severely lacking (red).

Starting servers is also a lot easier! No need to browse the game folders, you can now host servers with just the in-game interface by using the "Host Co-op" button in the main menu.

We've finally got a decent splash screen! Instead of immediately entering the main menu, launching the game will first present two screens with our logo and some important information.



The savegames were large and would sometimes get corrupted. Zun has redone them entirely and they're both dramatically smaller ánd way more resistant against corruption! They're also prepared for a planned update in the near future which adds saving on the Steam Cloud and Steam Workshop support.

Mod content by Pandaros & Xweert



While working on 0.7.0, we kept in close contact with modders and listened to their requests. As a result, mod support is a lot more extensive in the new update! Modders have had access to 0.7.0 as long as we've been working on it, and there are already awesome mods ready at this very moment.



Colony Survival was made in Unity. For the sake of stability, we didn't update from a version of Unity that was released in 2017. Update 0.7.0 utilizes a stable Unity version from 2019 that contains many upgrades.

One of the most notable improvements is (hopefully) a fix to the "getthreadcontext error" which happened often to people who had FaceIt/Avast installed. That was the most common game-breaking problem!





We've added some new tools to our toolbelt. When we released Colony Survival in 2017, nearly all icons were handdrawn. Mostly by me. And I'm not an experienced artist!

For the new update, most of the new icons were rendered in 3D. We believe it's a huge improvement, and have decided to redo some old icons as renders. Among the victims are the icons for the command tool and the banner tool.

We've also streamlined a way to add new 3D models to the game. Instead of using standard squares as job blocks, most of the new jobs use more complicated models, and we also redid some old ones in 3D. Let us know your opinion - should we replace more of the older job blocks?



It took longer than expected. We had hoped to release in 2018, and ended up fearing to miss Summer 2019. Mother Nature herself tried to delay the update by scorching the Netherlands with temperatures that are completely unprecedented in our national history. It was over 40°C (104°F) yesterday. At 10PM, it was still a windless 30°C (86°F) outside, which is also the current temperature inside. Most places don't have AC in the Netherlands!

But we pulled through! Even during these last days of development for 0.7.0, Zun added some awesome new features. The auto-recruitment toggle was asked for by the Yogscast in a recent video. Just this morning, Zun improved the bed choices of colonists, probably fixing a common complaint. We believe 0.7.0 to be an improvement in all aspects, but we love to have your opinion!

Veel plezier met 0.7.0!

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-------------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
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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 :)

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

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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!

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