Gaia Beyond News

Originally posted by Instructor

🐄 No cows were harmed for the development of this update - actually it has nothing to do with cows at all.

Be praised, travelers!


It's been a while this time due to exceptional circumstances - like a team member's XXL relocation (ทักทาย from Thailand!), including re-establishing our workflows and communicating straight through the globe at 5 different time zones! :D Expect future updates in the usual frequency again.

Anyway, nothing was left untouched - actually we've created a big pile of new content, bringing the game a good step closer to the 1.0 vision (and everything Beyond). Also, scroll down to the end to see what is currently happening and what are the next steps.

Special thanks to some people that have shown epic support lately - 8ByteGaming, Hakimodo, IndieGameLover, the USMCsky discord community and many more. Thanks to all of you for playing and supporting!

Note: Since 32-bit binaries with their memory limitations are becoming increasingly difficult to support, we will switch to 64-bit with one of the next updates.


But now showtime :)

https://youtu.be/lBeHKpc2jlU

• The Caduceus arc now has an additional mission, new events and dialog
  
• The Seraphim got their first station populated with NPCs, new locations, background story and sidequests
  
• Added the pirate leaders in game
  
• Support dialog camera targets
  

Yeah! 40+ awesome ships can now be built at Rajid's Garage once the location is unlocked. Some of the new ships are exclusive for crafting and can NOT be purchased anywhere else. Where to get blueprints:

• Random NPC ships have a small chance to drop their blueprint when destroyed!
  
• Purchase them from traders
  

• Plasma, Photon and Nuke Torpedoes
  
• Atlantic, J12, Sphere and Seraphim Projectile Turrets
  
• Dual Missile turrets
  
• Drone Launcher
  
• Scattergun & Mine Shotguns
  
• Holy Mines
  
  
• Mining Lasers: newly-balanced, can now be upgraded to be more powerful
  
• Shock Cannons: newly-balanced, the regular one can be upgraded
  
  
• Random Weapon Qualities - hey NormireX ;)
  (This feature is almost done, but still in progress and will be enabled soon!)

To thank our earliest and most loyal supporters from streamers to press, we've just implemented them as ingame NPCs. Meet Nookrium, USMCsky, Leon from Red Event Games and DannyDSC in the Gaia Beyond universe!



The current state is more or less just an introduction of the characters - the basic setup for a whole quest arc. Stay tuned for the crazy stuff that is going to happen here until 1.0!

• Jupiter J12 Colony
  
• Caduceus HQ & Nexus
  
• Bar: Zion & Atlantic
  
• Seraphim 'Hall of Prayers'
  
• Doomsday Fortress
  
• Seraphim Hospital & Workshop
  

Purchasable:

• Atlantic Destroyer "Aries"
  
• Zeraph
  
• J12 small attack Ship
  
• 2 Sphere civil ships
  
  

Others:

• Stolen Caduceus Guard (bad paintjob - will they trick you? :D)
  
• The old "Seraphim Station" was converted into a faction-spawned battleship (Mercia) and will soon be available!
  

• 2 new Player portraits!
  
• New Seraphim males
  
• Old Seraphim male updated & back in game
  
• J12 male variations
  
• Various 'crowd' portraits
  
• Statue
  

• Controller button images
  
• Show the bullet weapon range in tooltips
  
• Remember the map zoom z position
  
• Savegame the last camera zoom positions
  
• Container hacking levels displayed in analysis
  

• All new weapons come with custom fire and hit sounds
  
• Projectile non-hit explosion sounds added
  
• Custom mine explosion sounds
  
• Custom spam weapon sound
  
• Repair sound added to dialogs
  

We are currently reviewing and organizing new libraries - these are some first introductions, expect more to be added!

• Customized mine explosion emitters
  
• Astronaut cargo item
  
• Heat effect for new Seraphim weapons
  

• A lot of NPC script and dialog improvements
  

• Caduceus: Guards, Hunters & Heimwehr's ship polishing
  

• Reduce the autopilot speed based on distance to target pos
  
• Waechter animated lights
  
• Tyrell Wharf visual improvements
  
• CoC & FTA Transporters were slower than their loaded versions
  

• General performance improvements
  
• Improved background starfield
  
• Earth texture: structure added
  
• Nebula edge & pixelation fixes
  (thx to 8ByteGaming for ploughing through all the pirate hordes twice to find them!)
• Greenhouse location pic details added
  
• Bar location pics polishing and faction-related details
  
• Rajid's Garage: sky added
  
• Bokaj Lab minor changes
  
• Turret Platform respawn time increased
  
• Some spawners added
  

• Loading Screen: Hide the mouse cursor
  
• Loading Screen: Visualize the early level loading progress
  
• Side notifications (tutorial hints) centered
  
• Player portrait selection: temporary layout change
  
• Weapon comparison: DPS should be at the top
  

• More updates on all player portraits
• Fancy backgrounds added on a lot of portraits, more to come
  
• Harrison Cruise polishing
  
• McKenzie polishing and leg version
  
• Some reassignments
  

• Particle emitter performance improvements
  
• Main menu background improved
  
• Customized projectile explosions, more to come!
  
• 2-framed emitters optimized
  
• Projectile improvements
  

• Rare crash when loading "coll_geometry convex_polygon" settings
  
• Savegames: Mission Target can be lost
  
• Ship slot tooltips can stay indefinitely
  
• Flickering HUD emitter
  
• Some weapon volume fixes
  
• HUD auto pause should not override dialog auto pause
  
• Character HUD: Crash when leveling up from the script
  
• If a person with a ship is docked on a station and then moved to a new location, the location change HUD event can fail
  
• Enemy ships with the behavior set to autopilot are not considered for the fight music check (No auto fighting music during The Cure battle)
  
• Add an error when the active person dialog block changes while a dialog is still active (and don't crash)
  
• Support changing the player docked location when a dialog ends
  
• Crash when unloading a level with an active message request
  
• Landable news text breaks if one entry is too long
  
• Locked Caduceus HQ dialog returns you to Distribution Hall
  
• Laser scale could be too small
  
• Elisha dialog block 1_1 stage 2 can break (Albatross)
  
• Do not treat weaponless enemies as active enemies (Can't chat near Caduceus Drones)
  
• Turret only ships should distance themselves with the weapon range in fights
  
• Message HUD: Number keys sometimes don't work for answer confirmation (8byte)
  
• All blocking HUD windows exit differently with ESC if the focus is not on the main window anymore
  
• Landable HUD: Controller doesn't work
  
• Shield "Init Time" comparison is broken
  
• Savegame upgrades based on quest stages do not work
  
• Kalypso does not enter "Atlas HQ" when "Genocide Consignment" fails
  
• Eric Strong repair option broken
  
• Don't crash if a weapon drawable is missing
  
• A ship with a mining attack state does not defend itself when under attack (RoadsterTracker)
  
• Auto-pause missing for the first dialog with Vasquez
  
• Dialog repair removes less credits than displayed
  
• Destroyed containers should only drop 25% of the loot
  
• Persons do not restock on creation
  
• Noob does not retaliate on "Ambush Henderson."
  
• New Game Menu: Draw the ship emitter
  
• Some Auto-Pause events are triggered incorrectly
  
• Weapon range doesn't recognize decel (also breaks the fight ai)
  
• Emitter can miss the last emit if the last frame ends on the emitter ttl (see p_shockwave)
  
• CEGUI SharedStringStream Thread fix (failed to convert attribute 'position' with value '0.0' to float)
  
• Don't show a notification if a person credits change ended up becoming a 0
  
• Random NPC Fighting lines often not triggered
  
• Turret platforms have a wrong death sound
  
• Fix the Jurgen Winters corpse description
  
• Weapon comparison could have an empty "()" comparison block
  
• Weapon comparison line formatting does not match with lasers/bullets
  
• The small sprites mouse selection radius increase is broken
  
• Default_Dialog_Handler_gac is not used
  
• Reset the last camera zoom positions when starting a new game
  
• The CZE_TO_MAP camera zoom event ends instantly. Should only end when near the target z
  
• Ghost items in cargo ("type": 4) (not deleted on load)
  
• Shizhong goes to meeting point instead of Kalypso after hacking
  
• Controller: ship slots can be selected in ship crafting hud
  
• Controller: landable focus elements can be selected from blocking HUD windows (limit focus to the blocking window)
  

NEXT GOALS

• Random weapon qualities Hold on, NormireX! ;)
• More sound customization As mentioned before - improving the overall impression
• Station scales Some are a bit off - using a real scale overview to balance sizes
• Halloween things!
  👻
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur

• Trading NPC items now restock
  
• High Harvey Mini Questline
  
• McKenzie is now helping to stop the CAD transport if you got his leg first
  

• Zion field location
  
• GAC gas / water mine locations
  

• Ship Trade: Show the slot icons
• Missile Battery
• Med-Drone Launcher
• Weapon turrets are colored in faction schemes now
  

New turret shooting 3 missiles at once

The Cure got himself a nice new drone launcher.

• Pirate boss Dieu-Le-Veut, Simon Krull, Mr. Gates
  
• Adaptions: Vasquez' lizard own portrait, GAC male: Sun-Moon version
  

• More neon info signs (quick travel, ship trade, cargo container, garage, bar / café)
  
• Punch sounds added to various dialog scenes
  
• One-hit-exploding asteroids
  

Not too dangerous yet, but could become salty in the future.... ;)

• Capitals acceleration increased
  
• Weapon optimization (Capital lasers and more)
  

• General performance improvements
  
• Renderer modernization
  

• Ship Trade: Show additional drawables and emitter
  
• Analysis HUD: Draw items and asteroids with emitter
  
• Tooltip improvements
  
• Readables inspect window: vert scrollbar added
  

• Updates & polishing
  
  FTA random female, Atlas, J12 random military, J12 female, Mr. Shiro, Caduceus male, Supreme Court judge, FTA agent male
  
  
  

• Missile lens flares, laser glow
• Big laser: recharge emitter improvement
  
• Daedalus signal lights added
  

• A lot of dialog and dialog format polishing
  
• Savegames: Validate shields and devices too
  
• General savegame improvements
  

• Savegames: docked ships loose the detail mode state
  
• Controller: Cursor gone after exiting trade window with B
  
• Thruster is always uncharged on savegame load
  
• Possible crash when a person is deleted but still has a pending Message Request
  
• Burst weapons can fail trying to finish the first recharge
  
• Ship AI does not attack the Player sometimes if no friendlies are nearby
  
• The Travel group waiting at destination state disables the ship target rotation (The Cure doesn't rotate during battle)
  
• Auxilium cannot attack the CAD Escort
  
• Crash when opening inventory (old savegame)
  
• Old saves could have an invalid rajid dialog block
  
• Ship selection stays after death when the respawn is delayed
  
• Only show autopilot landing/leaving when a docking state is active
  
• Autopilot says "landing" even if it cannot land
  
• End an auto pause, on dialog end, only when it came from the dialog
  
• Show the Cooldown HUD when a laser is bursting
  
• Minimum energy required for laser should be based on the p_ttl
  
• Remove the unused "Zion Farm" ship data
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur

• Automatically switch the UI shortcut hints when using a controller
  
• Show the customized shortcuts instead of the default ones where possible
  
• Capital ships balancing (thanks deymoslex)
  

• Add missing prices to some ships who still have the default pricing
  
• Savegame upgrade for "Simon Boswell" can crash the script if the cad station is destroyed
  
• Recreate persons that sell stuff for capital ships
  
• Don't compare the same equipped item multiple times in tooltips
  
• When large tooltips go out of screen they should check on which side the cutoff is less
  
• First free slot is not used on auto equip
  
• A very rare Landable HUD Player_Leaves() crash
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur

• New ships
  • Capital ships are available now!
    
    Each one is coming with a unique big type weapon slot (click for video).
    
    The capitals were added in dialog with the community – due to your wishes to actually fly these things, we revised our first plan to hold them back until the carrier feature arrives. We will just add more of the big guys as it gets implemented. Have fun!
    
    
  • Higher-level Mosura versions are also available!
    (Top level comes with FIVE weapon slots)
    
    
  
  
  
• Quests
  • Crash Course has been changed to include a pirate wave defense segment
    
  • New escort sidequest
    
  • New Rajid pirate bounty hunt mission
    
  
  
  
  
• Portraits
  • Because that last guy was just a placeholder (to re-appear as Jack Sperrholz), here is the real Vasquez - coming with a badass robo lizard!
    
  
  Captain Vasquez, new CoC random male
  
  
  
• UI
  • Map mode: Non-discovered quest targets selectable for auto pilot
    
  • Add a key shortkut "0" to re-center the camera to the player in map mode
    
  • Custom icon for readable items
  • Plasma field map icons
    (known bug: icons should not be visible from the start)
    
  
  
  

• Quests
  • Many dialog improvements and formatting fixes
    
  
  
  
• Ships / Stations
  • Ship movement prediction improvements
    
  • Wächter & Caduceus Station size increased
    
  • FTA Hub polishing
    
  • FTA Hub open version (placed only once for now, at FTA Nexsen)
    
  • Essex Wreck full res polishing
    
  • Zion farms: lights animation
    
  • J12 Capital overall edge-fixing
    
  • Shuttle: turret slots swapped
    
    Note: CoC Mining Stations are not landable anymore.
    
  
  
  
  
  
• Weapons
  • Shock weapons are burst weapons now
    
  • More weapon upgrades and some minor balancing
    
  • Added 3 big weapons for capital ships
    
  
  
  
• World
  • J12 & GAC colony pics updated
    
  • New kind of Nebula spawner at Zion Station
    
  • Some Pluto nebula gradient smoothing
    
  
  
  
• UI
  • Origin menu re-layout, ship preview added
    
  • Added Autopilot text status "following", "landing", or "leaving"
    
  • Journal sorting: Sort by Main/Side/Finished Quests
    
  • Hide invalid slots when a drag-and-drop event starts
    
  • Analysis HUD: Show distance
    
  • Add a location person list "Visitors" sub-header
    
  • Freight hacking: show "Hack failed" (red) and "Hacked" (green)
    
  • Inventory: ship stats re-layout (turn rate + view range added, cargo moved to list)
    
  • Make RESUME the first main menu button
    
  • Inventory HUD: Replace the first matching weapon/shield/device slot by double clicking or on controller select
    
  • Inventory HUD: Remove "Boost" if it is the same value
    
  • Ship Trade HUD: Add turn rate, radar range, view range and layout improvements
    
  • Inspect-item window responsive layout
    
    HUD emitters are only animated with auto-pause off.
  
  
  
• Portraits
  • Kouji polishing
    
  • ISA male polishing
    
  • Quick-polishing / backgrounds updated: Player #5, Bobby Cliff, Noob Henderson, Cram Bokaj, Teal, GAC Soldier x3, Zion female 1, Visitor
    
  • CoC male 2 added to random pool
    
  • James Lancaster -> Xander pic
    
  
  
  

Gaia Beyond took off into the steam universe one year ago. 🎂🚀

We've hunted mutations, been chased by bats, fixed broken legs, found treasures in wrecks - and sure been grinding the hell out of those asteroids!

Time flew by like nothing (possible evidence for dimension shift... gonna check that later, let's focus on making this a great indiegame for now!) A big thanks to the awesome people who supported us during the last year and to the new fans!!

Anniversary discount running until tomorrow, April 1st!

• New pirate portraits
  • Dr. Rick
    
  • Colonel Hintz
    
  • Captain Jack Sperrholz
    
  
  
  
• "Resume game" button added to main menu
  

• Ships
  • Mosura -> 3 different versions (purchasable soon!)
    
  • Create a "human_dropped" emitter on player death
    
  
  
  
• World
  • Ship radar and detailed mode upgrade to include landed ships and add radar gain/loss events
    
  • Right-side world: Pirate spawners & Fortress
  • One Hard Day of Work quest improvements
    
  • New trashfields & asteroid spawners
    
  • Overall nebula parallax improvements (detailed nebulas slower, blurred ones remain)
    
  • Distance between station turret platforms doubled
    
  • Repair sign redesign + animation
    
  • Nebula polishing / some artifact smoothing / final edge fixes
    
  
  
  
  
  • Callisto got an atmosphere (+slight texture improvement)
    
  
  
  
• UI
  • Add a free giveaway option if the trader doesn't have enough money
    
  • Ship trade hud: add credits info / overall layout cleanup
    
  • Character main: XP progress bar
    
  • Loading screen hints: key map update, quicksave info added
    
  • Show the patch notes when clicking on the version text
    
  
  
  
• Portrait updates
  • 3rd Zion male added to random spawner
    
  • Seraphim male replaced by Applicator pic
    
  • Ursa portrait switch
    
  • Overall assignment updates + some very old pics removed
    
  • Pirate default male polishing
    

• Some small JSON loading improvements
  

• Waechter hacking: The leaving ships are broken
  
• Detail range collision category can be overwritten when leaving (O Dog collision state is broken)
  
• Unicode crash when the Russian thousands separator is used
  
• Font getTextExtent() rare crash
  
• Text Box Popup: typing A+D keys fire focus events
  
• Atlas could have a nonexistent "7_1" dialog block
  
• Noob Henderson: Ignore the Pre-destroy callback when he is far away (is ignored)
  
• Auxi is now too fast out of range in the Tutorial stage
  
• Quest arrow draw can crash in map mode if the target has no map drawable set
  
• Use link_to_scale_is_instant for all engine/light/fan/sign emitter
  
• Savegames: When a docked parent of a ship is not available anymore the physics state is broken
  
• An empty analysis HUD is shown when a save is loaded with the Analysis HUD visible
  
• Map mode shows ships that shouldn't be visible
  
• AI: Don't mine or try to collect cargo if there is no cargo space
  
• Radar awareness improvements
  
• Hud: Radar elements can leave visual circle boundaries
  
• Different types of decimal point and thousands separator formatting
  
• fix an UnicodeStringException
  
• If a ship slot is clicked or controller activated the tooltip is lost
  
• Mouse cursor default image should be different in HUD windows
  
• When allow_target_loss_on_events is disabled don't retaliate when attacked
  
• Player turrets don't stop shooting when target is dead
  
• Trade HUD: Show the actual 'after trade credits' if one side doesn't have enough credits
  
• Handle message answer unicode strings correctly when animating (use the code point lengths)
  
• When allow_target_loss_on_events is disabled don't join fights on request
  
• Particle emitter data: Add the missing emitter_iteration_interval entries
  
• Input text: backspace repeat not working
  
• Tooltip comparison with lasers sometimes does not use the dps
  
• Add_Weapon_Cargo()/Add_Shield_Cargo()/Add_Device_Cargo() crashes when the element is not found
  
• Cancel the ship leaving state if the target distance is too big
  
• Never start the collision evasion when landing/leaving
  
• Pirates should not talk
  
• Ship data without a drawable set crashes the inventory HUD
  
• Landable HUD does not call the the hud window Enter/Leave event
  
• Old config files: The right mouse button could have 2 assignments
  
• Credits screen is broken if logic hz is over ~70
  
• Correctly unlink and delete Trade HUD cargo equipped links
  
• Devices are sometimes not deleted (memory leaks)
  

Let's have a chat on Discord:



Learn more & stay tuned!

• Website
• Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, Imgur