Colony Survival News

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

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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 :)

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This Sunday, Father's Day, the Early Access release of Colony Survival will be two years ago! The game was a lot simpler back then. There was a handful of jobs and items and the progression was very shallow. The game was meant to be played with a couple of dozen of colonists.

To introduce some much needed depth and complexity, we quickly added the current science system. It has served us well, and a similar system will always be in Colony Survival.

But the current version has quite a lot of drawbacks. On one hand, it's the center of the game. It constantly needs new resources and items, encouraging players to expand. But in 0.7.0, with the happiness system and the exotic biomes, expansion itself is way more complex than it was in the past. Colonists now need an ever increasing variety of items instead of merely bread and ammo.

So science has become less central to the game. In the past, producing hundreds of science bags was one of the most complex things you could do. In 0.7.0, you'll be producing thousands of happiness items per day for large colonies. But the game ignored that. It only rewarded you for the science items you made.

This felt wrong. We wanted to reward players for expanding, despite its challenges. We'd like to recognize and reward players when they recruit hundreds of colonists, distribute thousands of happiness items and fire tens of thousands of missile projectiles.

The current science system purely relies on items in the stockpile. The scientist grabs and consumes them for his science cycles. It's very difficult to add statistics like "# of colonists in the colony", "# of luxury meals distributed" and "# of crossbow bolts fired" to that system.

We considered replacing the science system with a system that relies more on "counters". Instead of your scientist consuming 10 flax, you'll have to harvest 100 of it - but you can keep the flax and use it for other purposes. That shouldn't change gameplay much in the early game, except for preventing people from accidentally starving their colony by consuming food as science items.

For the end game, instead of asking players to make "science bags" with arbitrary end-game items, the focus will lie on distributing large amounts of end-game happiness items. Fundamentally, the system is not very different, but we feel it fits 0.7.0 a lot better. One final improvement is the fact that it allows us to use stats like "# of bronze arrows fired". We'd like to add some of these requirements where they're appropriate. It would be weird to skip bows and go straight from slings to crossbows without ever having fired an arrow.

It's a very big decision, and we did not want to implement it without asking feedback from the community. We didn't want to wait a week before working on it either, so we posted this message. We received a lot of feedback! Over 400 people voted in the poll. Thanks a lot :D

Here are the results:



A majority of the voters supports adding the new system, but a large minority is still skeptical.



The ratings for the old system are pretty low. A rating of roughly 5 to 7 is most popular.



The new system does a lot better! The rating seems improved to 7 to 9.



Nearly half of the community is unreservedly in favor of the new system. More than a quarter leaves the choice to us. The last 23% wants us to leave the science system alone or at least think of a better alternative.

Lastly, we asked about the priority of potential new features. Here are those results:



The priorities of the community seem to align pretty strongly with our plans for post-0.7.0-content! I'm very excited about industrial content, new guards and new monsters. The new save system was made with Steam Workshop in mind. Better animations and PVP certainly have benefits, but other things currently have a higher priority for us. We were just surprised about the lack of enthusiasm for splitscreen. We love that feature, but that might be the result of being brothers :)



We've decided to go ahead with the new progression system! Zun has worked very hard in the past couple of days and we think we've now got a pretty functional build with the new version. When the blog is released, I'll go test it and later in the weekend it should be available for all open beta testers.

It was a busy week, but we feel like the new changes mitigate most of the issues described in last week's Friday Blog. This is the last big feature change planned for 0.7.0. For the next couple of weeks, we'll mostly focus on polishing, balancing and fixing smaller issues, and then we'll be ready for the full public release!

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

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In last Friday's blog we describe the biggest problem we've encountered. It can be hard to get 'into the flow' of the game, and it ends pretty abruptly when you've unlocked most of the tech tree.

We've done a lot of thinking and discussing. We're thinking of replacing the current science system with a lot of "counters". For example:

• Gather 100 berries - Unlock bread production
  
• Gather 50 copper ore - Unlock bronze anvil
  
• Kill 100 monsters - Unlock archers
  
• Reach 100 colonists - Unlock banner range increase I
  
• Fire 5000 bronze arrows - Unlock crossbow bolts
  
• Reach 500 colonists - Unlock banner range increase III
  
• Produce 3 gliders - Unlock colony starter kit
  
• Consume 100 tea - Unlock health upgrade IV

We needed the science system to add diversity and complexity to the game nearly two years ago, but all of the new items, features and jobs in 0.7.0 make running a colony complex enough without the necessity to produce hundreds of science bags.

We feel the new "counter-system" has many benefits over the old science system:

1. The old system indirectly encouraged colony growth, the new system directly counts, displays and rewards colony growth
   
2. The old system consumed resources, which could disrupt the balance of your colony. The new system merely counts them. We feel this is more realistic. In real life, we got better at making spears and arrows because we made a lot of them and used them for hunting and warfare, not because we sent some to a scientist where they just disappeared.
   
3. The requirements of the old system changed haphazardly from one research to the next, the new system will have more requirements that grow along with the colony in a more stable and predictable way, like "reach X colonists", "kill X monsters".

The new system also has drawbacks:

1. The old system had specific in-game colonists (scientist, technologist) with their own job blocks, the new system will probably be a more abstract interface element
   
2. The old system was more active [select research, gather items, do science] while the new system is more passive [watch counter, click "complete" when done]
3. The old system had specific ingredient requirements matching the ingredients required to craft the unlocked item, the new system will have less specific requirements
   
4. It will probably delay the definitive release of 0.7.0 by ~two weeks

We believe the new "counter-system" to be a significant improvement, that will both make the game more intuitive for new players, and provide longer lasting rewards and entertainment for large colonies. It also makes the core gameplay of 0.7.0 feel different from earlier versions.

But before implementing such a drastic change, we'd love to have your feedback! Here's a form where you can leave your opinion about the proposed changes. And while we're busy, we'd love to ask you some other questions about the future of Colony Survival!

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

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The response to the Open Beta has been overwhelming! We're currently at 662 663 testers - only counting the ones who've joined since the last blog.

It has been extremely useful. 0.7.0 contains many new features, recipes and UI elements. Playing the game from start to the last science unlock without using cheats literally takes days. It's very different from the game we released nearly two years ago. We could playtest that version in it's entirety in 90 minutes.

We've received an immense amount of feedback. Small bugs, typos, glitches, inconsistensies in the tech tree, balance problems. The testers are doing a great job, despite many features lacking explanation and the quick-start-menu not being updated.

We immediately took care of many of the smaller problems. But there are some larger issues that will probably only be solved in later updates. The issues are best explained by dividing the game in three stages:



You've just bought Colony Survival, and perhaps you aren't very experienced in (voxel / strategy) games. Now you've got to figure out how the game works. You need to learn about the command tool, the banner tool, recruiting colonists, placing jobs, adjusting recipes. With some experience, seriously reading the quick-start-menu and persistent experimenting, you'll probably get a colony up to speed, but it's not intuitive and smooth.



You've mastered the basics. You understand how to recruit colonists, give them jobs, feed them, make them happy and defend them from monsters. You've unlocked the first steps of the tech tree.

For your next science unlock, you need that new crop or ore, so you place some new jobs and recruit more colonists. You need a new building for your beds. The monsters are overwhelming your defenders! More guards. Now they're unhappy. More happiness items!

I think this is the best stage of Colony Survival. It's immersive and engaging.



You've got most of the important science unlocked. You could gather some extra happiness items, but happiness is stable and you don't need more colonists. Perhaps you decide to build something beautiful, or you want to recruit as many colonists as possible, and you're motivated by your own goals. Or you're a bit disappointed and bored and decide to quit the game.



We think we can improve the Stage-1-issues by adding some kind of "Mission System". Imagine a new tabbed menu with a series of missions.

• Place the banner
  
• Place three beds
  
• Recruit three colonists
  
• Recruit a berry gatherer
  
• [...]
  
• Unlock matchlock guns
  
• Build a colony in the tropics

Each mission can be clicked on for a more detailed description of how to accomplish the task exactly. It would introduce each of the mechanics to new players, without hindering experienced players in any way. I doubt we've got enough time to polish 0.7.0 ánd add this new feature, but I think it would be a great addition in 0.7.1 or 0.7.2.

Fixing the Stage-3-issue is a lot more complex and time-consuming. We're thinking of industrial content, more diverse weapons and monsters, and special monster waves that can be triggered for a unique reward. If you've got ideas how we can encourage people to recruit thousands of colonists, and both reward them ánd keep the game challenging, please let us know! We'd love to hear your ideas.

Bedankt voor het lezen!

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