Approaching Infinity News

Greetings galactic explorers! There's a small update this weekend in all branches:

• Fixed medical bay device description
  
• Attempted to fix an error where ship weapons given as quest rewards are sometimes not the specified size.
  
• More than quadrupled the number of last names for officers.
  
• Officer rescue quests now usually offer away team equipment as a reward instead of credits.
  
• Fire and gases now appear transparent on top of the player and monsters
  
• I spent a large part of this week on a special new monster that will probably not be introduced until sometime in version 1.7 , but I think it will be worth it.
  

These are the main goals of version 1.6 (current development cycle):

Fixing bugs and making quality-of-life improvements
• That's a constant!
  
Presenting more depth and "promise of things to come" in the early game.
• Letting players interact with the sentient alien races sooner.
  
• Giving starter quests to point new players in the right direction.
  
• Making more monsters available, and working to make them not repeat too much.
  
Balancing the difficulty of away team combat.
• Adding damage types (fire, shock, cryo, etc.) to away team weapons.
  
• Giving officers activated skills with cool-downs.
  
• Giving monsters powers to balance that out!
  
• Analyzing and changing monster hit points and damage.
  

Of course there were many other awesome developments along the way, but those are the ones I set out specifically to accomplish. And aside from the very last point, "balancing monster stats", those things have been DONE!


So the next step is obvious: let's get those monsters balanced!


As I mentioned, I'll be away March 29th - April 5th, so when I come back, I'll get straight to work on those numbers. (I might even start before I leave). I also expect to be able to give you a decent preview of what version 1.7 will entail...


So: if there are any big problems with today's version (1.6L) , let me know ASAP, so I can fix it *before* I go away, ok?


Thanks, and enjoy!

• Away team auto-movement no longer avoids harmless gasses.
  
• Fixed an out-of-bounds error concerning shock weapons and water ;)
  
• Confirmed shuttle ace is working as intended.
  
• Ship repair devices and skills now help repair the shuttle when it is damaged beyond normal.
  

Approaching Infinity has a brand new Steam trailer. Even if you already own the game, you might get a kick out of watching it... Just make sure to have your sound on ;)

Or you can watch the almost-final version on Youtube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Here's something suggested by a player here on Steam: whenever you have the maximum number of officers and you detect "human life signs" on a planet, you now have the option of rescuing them. (In the past, they were just turned into "human remains" instead...)

It's just one more small way that the universe is becoming more "alive".



(These are taken straight from the list of daily accomplishments on the Approaching Infinity Discord)

• Reduced the value of planetary surveys
  
• Each race now prefers surveys of a specific type of planet (vordalene like barren planets, humans like terran, etc.)
  
• You can no longer survey Whiteworlds (their value was negative!)
  
• The "trader" starting quest can now be completed by purchasing 200 commodities.
  
• I took aggressive action against warping into the middle of an asteroid belt or ion storm (you're welcome!)
  
• I have addressed monster permanence issues. (This makes alien spaceships behave more as intended.)
  
• "Crew lost" stat now includes crew killed in every way (I think), not just on away missions.
  
• Shrank the purple diamond on the mini-map that represents items.
  
• Increased the display size of space stations and the warp point on the main map.
  
• Stopped the over-spawning of quest items in the same sector.
  
• When you kill a Holeworm, there is now a 33% chance that the sinkhole will collapse
  
• When doing the Bankers "deposit money" quests, you now get a pop-up message asking if you want to pay now.
  
• I fixed a visual bug when unlocking a ship by completing a quest. (they were displayed on top of each other)
  
• I fixed some sounds that were playing even if you had sound turned off.
  
• I increased the sensitivity or the mouse-wheel for zooming in and out.
  
• (Thanks to some discord users for many of these... If you've got suggestions, that's a great place to have them addressed)
  
• Got 29 new "HD" sets of shipwreck walls from David!

Work continues this week, but on Monday March 29th I will be going away for an entire week! My wife is vaccinated and so are her parents. My mom is vaccinated and I should be getting my first shot this week. SO WE ARE GOING TO SEE OUR FAMILIES!

So I plan not to make any major changes near the end of the week, to avoid problems while I'm away.

Take care and enjoy,

Bob / IBOL17

Hey space captains! There are lots of new features waiting for you in Approaching Infinity.




Until now, you've been thrown into the hostile universe, left to realize your own destiny. There's nothing telling you what to do (AKA "Freedom"), and you intrepid captains have always managed to get out there and find something cool to do.

But maybe that's a terrible way to treat new players?

So from now on, you start with 4 quests. But you want to know the tricky part? These quests are about things that were already in the game to begin with, just waiting to be found :) But I think it will help some people have purpose in their first few play-throughs...

And what's more, if you want to ignore those quests, or even abandon them from the start, that's fine. There's no pressure. Do what you want!




We all like explosions, right? Well, here's some more!

First, an idea inspired by a Steam community member, black stars can explode and become black holes:



Next, and something you can use to your own tactical advantage: exploding chemical tanks!

You've seen them before (though the art has changed), mostly on shipwrecks. Back then they were just scenery. Now they're an interactable part of the world :D

• Some weapons will cause them to explode immediately, others will just make them leak, still others have no effect.
  
• They also explode into a multitude of effects, like fire, poison gas, harmless vapor, or rarely nano-machines.
  
• Some areas, all the tanks contain the same thing, in others it's random.
  
• If fire reaches them, they will start to leak...
  
• Leaking tanks can explode at any moment (5% chance per turn) , and can be set off by any type of weapon.
  
• Of course area-effect weapons can set them off too...
  

You can set off some glorious chain reactions...




Officers recently gained access to advanced activated skills: powers that never existed before, allowing far more tactical decisions in dangerous situations.

But now it's time to balance the scales...

Monsters can now have cool-down powers too! Some monsters can now immediately close the distance to attack (jump), deflect or dodge ranged attacks, pull you closer or push you away, and even become invisible!

Some of these powers were given to existing monsters, but some are so unique that they inspired entirely new creatures to be created. In your travels you may now encounter the Greeter, Transcendent Horror, Caerban, and Primordial Liquidator. Look out!




In keeping with the concept of giving you (the player) more information, the target info window has been remodeled to show more information at a glance about monsters and ships. Sometimes it will let you know things like "hostile at range 4" or "monster is stationary", as well as whether they're much faster or slower than you.



And it will tell you "Tool-tip monster for full information" when it has special powers or resistances:



With all this information, you should be able to make much more informed decisions.




This is a major step toward inviting new players into AI's mythology...

In the past, the 12 major alien races were introduced randomly over time, and believe it or not, you would sometimes have to go over 100 sectors before you met the 12th race (and that 12th race could be just about any of them) !

It's different now.

I've created a system that introduces all 12 races, in a balanced but still semi-random way, over the first 33 sectors! It's all determined when you start a new game. After those 33 sectors, the game continues just as it always has.

This goes hand-in-hand with other changes that have been made to help ease you into each race's quest line. The alien quests are the heart and soul of the (current) story line, and I think a lot of people just weren't getting that far.

8 of the current possible victories are through the alien races, and so are 12 of the unlockable playable starting ships. So I want you to actually get there! I look forward to seeing how this change is received by players.





That's a lot of big changes, to be sure. But this one. This one is HUGE. It's called "Planetary Surveys".

It was inspired by 3 very different things:

• Players often try really hard to explore planets to 100% (reveal all the tiles).
  
• Players ask for a "filter" or some way to remove fully explored planets from their sector maps.
  
• I don't like the extra data hanging around for planets you'll never revisit.
  

Enter Planetary Surveys!

Now, once you've fully explored a planet, when you leave you're told something like this:



So: it removes explored planets from your map. It lets me delete the data of that planet. And it gives you a tangible reward for all your hard work. Take that survey and sell it! (And yes, you do actually have to take it to a space station and sell it in the pawn shop.)

Doing surveys is the 4th "Starter quest" you're given in a new game, and it explains the process in-game. It's yet another optional feature you can use if you like, and ignore if you don't want to bother.

[h3]Just Remember:[/h3]
It's not easy to fully explore a planet when you're first starting out! There's no time limit, no rush, and you won't go broke if you don't do it. Do what you can, when you can!


What about shipwrecks?

Good question! At the moment, you can't "survey" a shipwreck. but rest assured, I have a few possibilities in mind for getting them out of the way too (and getting you something else useful out of it) !


Thanks very much to the folks on Discord for helping me find the 2 huge bugs in that version!


And on that note, I'd like to invite you to join the IBOLOGY LLC Discord where we talk about Approaching Infinity, you can get some inside information, and read what I'm working on *right now*. You don't have to own the game, just come talk (or listen).

That's right, monsters can have activated skills now too!

Here's some new sink-hole worms tossing around my away team:



Every few turns they can reach out and pull you in from a distance.


But most of this week was spent on interface improvements and debugging.




On the salvage screen, you now get icons for everything, tooltips about what items disassemble into, and the screen can now be scrolled if you have that much stuff. The icons for crafting parts have finally been matched to their pictures (what, you didn't notice?), and the way crafting parts are picked up is new...


[h3]Scroll the pawn shop![/h3]



Did you ever have so much to sell at the space station, that it wouldn't fit on one screen? Now you can easily scroll the pawn shop screen to sell whatever treasure horde you've amassed.



[h3]Races have tool-tips too...[/h3]




[h3]And so do artifacts![/h3]



Information in the artifacts screen is now color coded, giving you better information at a glance. Unidentified artifacts are bright yellow. Artifacts with known bad effects are red. And artifacts that are temporarily causing problems are a rusty orange.

What makes artifacts go bad? Never seen that? Well, if you get too many at once, strange things start to happen...

And while I was going through all this artifact code, I discovered a surprising number of display and calculation bugs. I fixed them.

[h3]Other fixes and changes:[/h3]

• Introduced "sinkhole" planetary terrain feature. There are 2 ways to destroy a sinkhole, and a third one in the works.
  
• Introduced "holeworm" monster, which can live in sinkholes.
  
• Introduced monster power "Pull" and gave it to holeworms. If you get within 2 tiles of them, they pull you next to them and get a free melee attack.
  
• Gave "deep sleepers" the ability to pull you in from a distance of 3 tiles, but with no free attack.
  
• Fixed a bug where officer cooldown skills would get "lost" when an officer died or was dismissed. It's still not perfect, but work will continue until it is.
  
• Added "slime" environment effect, which makes you (and monsters) unable to move if you walk into it.
  
• Gave "slime trail" power giant snail monster. It now leaves a trail of slime. Flying creatures won't get stuck in it, but most others will!
  
• Added "Ultra-Lichen" monster, with a 3-stage life cycle (and some unique behaviors).
  
• More monster skills and powers are in the works for the coming week.
  
• Limited "shuttle ace" skill to only be able to land in relatively wide-open areas. It has been suggested that higher levels of shuttle ace reduce those limits. Sounds like a good idea, right?
  
• Fixed a bug that made certain items not save their special descriptions and damages, resulting in blank tool-tips.
  
• I Started keeping a real-time development log in the Discord, which you can join here.
  

...and...

David recently sent me 110 updated images (mostly loot) that are much *sharper* than the previous versions. Those are in the current version, enjoy!



[h3]Alien Plants[/h3]

Last time, I asked for some names of alien plants, and the Steam community did *not* disappoint! I ended up using almost every single one that was submitted. (There are a total of 135 of these "unique and valuable specimens".)

There are a few that still don't have names.

So this time, just pick a few and name those. I can't use several hundred more names, and I really hate to throw out good ones. But everyone should take a stab at #119.

Name them in the comments as before ;)

It's been a great week for AI, talking and taking suggestions on the new Discord. Most of these changes originated there.

A lot of time was spent upgrading the tool-tips of all the different types of equipment. Back when away team weapons were remodeled, they got a lot of new information. Now everything else gets that treatment too!

• Fixed an issue with skill key assignment
  
• Added a "percentage explored" counter to away missions
  
• Changed all equipment tool-tips to use the new larger format
  
• Added a new status effect "oxygen leak"
  
• Gave a terrain (shattered crystals) and a monster (crystal creature) the ability to give you the new status effect ;)
  
• Added "ready to level up" and "I'm on the away team" icons on the officers screen
  
• Changed "monster repellent" to be less over-powered.
  
• Gave an extra damage boost to slow-firing ship weapons
  

[h3]Percentage Explored Counter:[/h3]


This is going to be very useful for an upcoming feature called "Surveys"...


[h3]Officer Icons:[/h3]


Now you can tell at a glance who is ready to level up (green arrow), and who is assigned to go on away missions (suited figure, gold for captain, blue for officer).


[h3]Terrific Terrain Tool-Tips Too![/h3]



Terrain tool-tips will now show whether they can be affected by your weapons. Is it flammable, freeze-able, corrode-able, etc. ? Now you'll know ahead of time.

[h3]Improved Skill Page![/h3]



The Activated Skill window now has several pages, including overview / instructions, equipped skills with shortcut keys, and all owned skills. Gel supplies are shown at the bottom.


[h3]Closer to Finishing 1.6[/h3]

We're getting close to the end of version 1.6, which is basically a total overhaul of away missions. First, monsters are going to need powers to combat your new skills. Then they'll get a complete difficulty re-balance.

At this point, I estimate another month to hit version 1.7, and of course there will be lots of other little features added here and there.


But first, can you do me a favor?

What would you call these strange alien plants? Share your idea (including the number) in the comments below!