Colony Survival News

Colony Survival is currently on sale! Pick it up for 30% off between now and January 4.
The Builder’s Contest is also still going on. Follow the instructions and upload a world before January 5 to compete for the prizes!

Roughly nine weeks ago, we released 0.10.0. The response has been great! There were some things we still wanted to finish, and unexpected issues that popped up after release, so a bunch of other patches have been released. At the end of November, we hit 0.10.0.12. Then we took a development break in December.

What is 0.11 going to be? What is 0.12 going to be? These are big questions we’ve been thinking about since the release of 0.10.0. I think we’ve been struggling with that question more than we ever did in the history of Colony Survival.

We're full of ideas, but the question is how to integrate them into Colony Survival. In the achievement data, we can see that only a small fraction of players who launched 0.9.0+, less than 1/33rd, has reached the end of the tech tree. Releasing an Industrial Era update and adding it to the end of the tech tree, where it will be experienced only by that tiny percentage of players, seems pretty wasteful.

We could have industrial-like machines earlier in the game, like windmills. But we want them to involve significant gameplay, it should give options to players, it shouldn’t just be a standard jobblock with slightly more complicated requirements. That could mean having to connect things together with for example pipes/cables or something like that. But with our “magic stockpile” and total absence of real life logistics, such things become problematic quite quickly.


Of course, we can change that as well! But we’ve got multiple ideas like this, and we’d basically have to change the core fundamentals of the game and rebuild it entirely from scratch again, in a way that is substantially different from the product that people decided to purchase and that they got used to.

More strongly than ever before, after more than 10 years of working on this project, and after more than 6 years of being in Early Access, we feel like the time for a Colony Survival II might be coming.

We will continue developing Colony Survival "1" in 2024. If we’re going to leave Early Access, we want to do that in a more finished, more polished state. There are still some rough UIs and little things that don’t make a lot of sense. And, this is the time for ‘fun stuff’. Players have mentioned that building big structures without the flight cheat is truly frustrating. To alleviate this, something like an in-game, historically appropriate 'jetpack' at the end of the tech tree seems very suitable. Another example of a “finishing feature” could be a special UI that allows you to create large custom monster attacks, to test your defenses to the breaking point. Things like these wouldn’t be major updates by themselves, but they do help to satisfy some remaining problems and curiosities.

We’re thinking hard about the future of Colony Survival and a potential Colony Survival II. We’re still uncertain about the optimal way to spend our development efforts. Massively change the current Colony Survival? Finish the game up, polish it, leave Early Access and build a CSII with different fundamentals? What things would you still like to see added to CS1 before we leave Early Access? Let us know how you feel about it! Share your suggestions in the comments or on Discord.

We wensen jullie hele fijne Kerstdagen en een gezond & gelukkig Nieuwjaar!

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Pathros by PatateNouille

We are organizing a new Builder’s Contest! The best world will win a digital Steam Gift Card worth €100, and the next spots will win €50 / €25 / €15 / €10, respectively. We are planning to use these worlds to film a new main trailer and to make new screenshots for the Steam Storepage. This leads to a bunch of specific needs and preferences:

[h3]What are we looking for?[/h3]

• Worlds showcasing many of the features in the game, especially newer features like the rails, roofs, gliders, outposts, traps etcetera
  
• Houses for colonists to work/sleep in
  
• Visually appealing colonies that form a coherent whole, like a village, castle or city.
  
• Functionality of what's built - it should be actively used by colonists and serve a purpose beyond the visual
  
• Visible infrastructure between colonies and outposts, with rails / paths / bridges / gliders
  
• Colonies that do "the whole game"; they should be approximately self-sufficient in the way it ends up when you naturally play the game, they should look "lived in".
  
• Worlds that have depth, that you can get lost in, with outposts in the distance and plenty of small streets and alleys

[h3]What are we not looking for?[/h3]

• Huge fields of tightly packed beds
  
• Giant warehouses
  
• "Car park farming"
  
• Worlds that look like they were built with cheats, where it is obvious that the player always used the flight-cheat to move between colonies, that many resources appeared without the required production facilities
  
• Worlds visibly using mods
• Purely decorative builds

[h3]The rules[/h3]

• Upload your world to the Steam Workshop from Colony Survival (Main Menu > Mod Manager > Create Item)
• Navigate towards the Colony Survival Workshop in Steam, acces "Your Workshop Files" and click on the world you just uploaded
  
• Put “2024 Builder’s Contest” at the start of the description
  
• Add at least one screenshot to showcase your colony
  
• Fully publish your world to the Steam Workshop
  
• Do this before January the 5th 2024, 8AM Amsterdam time
  
• It’s fine to use worlds that you’ve started before the start of the contest
  
• It should be a world of your own creation, you’re not allowed to download a stranger’s world and upload that
  
• You’re allowed to upload multiple worlds
  
• We operate according to the spirit of the rules, not the letter of the rules. We might adjust the rules to better fit the goals of the contest.

Good luck and have fun building! The winners will be announced in a Friday Blog after the contest has ended. If you have any questions left, put them in the comments or share them on Discord. We’ve got a dedicated channel called #builderscontest where you can share your progress and discuss the contest with us and others.

Bedankt voor het lezen!

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The update has been released to the default, public branch of Colony Survival! By popular request, it mostly adds decorative items like doors and window frames. Much of that content has been detailed in previous blogs, so we’ll start by mentioning some features that have been added since the start of the Open Beta.


0.9.0 added “horizontal elevators” that could quickly move players in a straight line. The Open Beta changed that to actual rails which could go up hills and around corners. This full release adds junctions, both three-way and four-way. Hold the default movement buttons to determine your direction: “A” to go left, “D” to go right.


We’ve also added rail gates. They are closed by default, blocking passage towards both monsters and colonists. When a railcar approaches, it quickly opens and closes to allow the railcar to pass the gate smoothly.

Another new feature that can be seen in the picture is signs! They can stand independently on the ground, be attached to walls or hang from roofs. Players can enter their own custom texts on the signs.


The final important new feature of the last few weeks is Archimedean screws. When you’ve accidentally flooded your mines, this is the new tool to drain them. Sadly, completely realistic, realtime 3D water physics on a large scale aren’t possible yet, so their functioning is a bit wonky. When you place an Archimedean screw, water in a radius around it just straight up disappears. Unrealistic, but practical and computationally inexpensive.

Apart from these recent features, there is a long list of new content and changes. A lot of it is based on a new system of automatic adaptation. Roofs will react to their local environment and other roofs that are placed around them. Doors will automatically combine into double doors, window frames merge with nearby windows. Crown moulding automatically forms proper corners, pillars receive their top and bottom in the appropriate location.

Items like doors, window frames and flowerboxes can be painted to make buildings even more unique. We’ve added “proper” stairs that look much more realistic than the old quarterblocks. Of course, all these new items can be produced by your colonists, requiring a bunch of new recipes, sciences and a new job: the artist. Another practical benefit of 0.10.0: controller support has been significantly improved.

Last but not least are the less practical, less tangible improvements. Zun has done a lot of deep technical refactoring. The networking code has been enhanced, and there are some performance improvements which are mainly noticeable in worlds with enormous amounts of colonists.


Since the release on Steam in 2017, we’ve added large amounts of new content, dwarfing the amount of content on the day of release. Simultaneously, at least 25% of inflation has occurred. As announced before, this is why we’ve decided to do a slight price hike, coinciding with the release of 0.10.0. The price has gone up from €/$19,99 to €/$24,95.

We wish all of you a lot of fun with the new update! Let us know what you think of the changes, and please alert us if you encounter any bugs. We’re planning to film a new trailer showing the new content, so if you build something interesting and/or beautiful and upload your world to the Steam Workshop / to our Discord, there’s a chance of it being featured in the new main trailer!

The new automatic adaptation / paint system gives us a lot of new options for new content. If you feel like some options are missing, if you think you’ve got a good idea that fits in well with the new content - let us know and there is a very decent chance it will get added!

Veel plezier :D

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We launched the Open Beta a couple of weeks ago and it’s going well! Many people are testing the new content and sharing their feedback. There were some technical issues and a stream of patches has been released to fix them.

But the most interesting stuff is some new features and content! The roofs got some criticism in regards to the front. The “diagonal holes” were filled up with simple 3D-planks. These don’t look like the 1x1x1 block textured planks.


We did some discussing and Zun thought he could replace the 3D planks with the actual texture, to make them match precisely. And he proposed giving the blue roofs the cobblestone texture, so that these can be matched in a different way. He implemented this plan and it looks great!


Rails have received junctions, to make them even more flexible. Paths can cross each other, and players can determine where they go on junctions. By default, players travel in a straight direction, but they can go left by holding A and right by holding D.


Last but not least, we’ve introduced signs! They can be placed on the ground, or on walls, or be hung from the ceiling. And of course, they can be inscribed with your own custom texts! It really helps to personalize your colony, and we’re looking forward to seeing what you will build with all these new things.


If you want to join the Open Beta, the relevant instructions are here.

Bedankt voor het lezen :)

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https://youtu.be/KY6LGJQBI2I

The last blog ended with an open problem concerning the bottom of roofs. The response to roofs in general was very enthusiastic, but we also got a fair share of feedback surrounding that specific problem. We think we found a solution: multi-purpose crown moulding. It looks good in combination with roofs, but players are free to build without it, or to use it in other places!

0.9.0 added the “horizontal elevator” to the game. It deliberately wasn’t called “rail”, because it suffered from a bunch of constraints. It could only travel in a straight line. Moving to the left or to the right, or moving up or down, just wasn’t possible. That’s quite problematic.

With 0.9.2’s auto-adaptation system, Zun saw an opportunity to fix this! So the horizontal elevator has been upgraded to true rail. Rails that can navigate corners, and which can climb and descend hills. It’s very convenient - and fun!

We’re planning to release 0.9.2 in a few weeks. That release will be combined with a price hike. Colony Survival was released with limited content and features in 2017, for $20. In the past six years, the amount of content in the game has exploded. Sadly, inflation exploded too. When 0.9.2 is released, the price will rise to $25. If you were still on the fence in regards to Colony Survival, or if you’re planning to invite friends to your colony, this is the right moment to purchase a copy!





Do you want to test the new content? An open beta is available right now! Most of the new content is finished. A bunch of it is decorative: the roofs, flower boxes, street lanterns, doors, windows, pillars, stairs, crown moulding. Many of these have unique variants that are sensitive to their context. The doors and windows can be painted with special paint items.

All of these items should be unlockable without cheats, using the science system and a bunch of new recipes, at old jobs and a new one.

The rails mentioned above are available too, but they’re not totally finished yet. Auto-adaptation doesn’t work yet, so you'll have to manually choose between regular straight pieces, corner pieces, and up/down-pieces.

The update also contains some other changes. The UI has been adapted to be much more controller-friendly, but it's still pretty wonky in regards to the stockpile. The networking code has been improved. There are some optimizations that are mainly noticeable in enormous worlds or on low-level hardware.

If you’re playing the beta, please let us know your opinion! What works, what doesn’t? Is the place of the new content in the tech tree appropriate? Are the recipes reasonable? Are there unexpected problems? Have you got ideas for potential easy additions that would fit this update well? Share your thoughts in our Discord in the #openbeta channel, or in the comments!

To access the beta, right-click on Colony Survival in the Steam Library. Go to Properties, then Betas, and enter the password ForBlogReadersOnly. Select the 0.9.2 branch.



Bedankt voor het lezen :D

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