A new major version of The Spatials: Galactology is now available! The goal of version 3.5 was to flesh out many "placeholder" objects, items and game systems. It introduces 3 all-new research tech blocks, with proper progression, and dozens of new objects and products. All-new game systems like medical checklists and hotels have been added to the game to make the new content more interesting. There's now a lot more variety of options for satisfying vital needs and for building the perfect tourist trap. The main highlights for this build are:

• New, simplified combat controls
• The Hospitality tech block with the new hotel system
• A new Health and Hygiene tech block
• New diseases with a new system for medical care
• A new Commercial tech block with new commercial products with new shop objects
• Fun has been divided into new vitals: fun, gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing
• The new Recreation tech block has many new objects and products to serve the new fun vitals
• Visitor archetypes, opinions and expectations

V3.5 is not save game compatible with v3.4 save files. But your saves are still there! If you want to keep playing them you can opt out of v3.5 by right clicking Galactology in your Steam library listing, select Properties, select Betas, then select the v3_4 branch. This will force your game installation to be v3.4 forever. When you are done make sure to go back to the default branch to keep getting updates and new features.

Simplified and enhanced manual combat controls

After finally enabling some light combat on low level planets, the flaws of the manual combat system were made evident. It was too complex, with bad UI. It has now been removed from the game. There's no more "manual" combat mode for officers. Instead it's now possible to manually select a target for your squad or for individual officers, with the new Set Target action:
This is aided by the new target visualization, which displays the current combat target of any entity, officer or enemy:
This new system is still being tweaked, but for now it enables a much more usable walk+set target interaction, leaving the details of when and how to fire to the officer AI. And setting targets is still optional, the AI will automatically pick them up if none is set (or the set one dies).

Better squad visualization

The current squad selection will now be displayed for all officers in the squad:
The primary selection is still a rectangle, but now, when pressing Tab or manually selecting officers in the squad bar with click+shift, they will get a 4-corner reticle around them to indicate they are also part of the selection. Additionally it has also been made much more clear that squad members are in exclusive combat mode:
Now, while in combat mode, the HP bar is always displayed, and it also gains a small combat icon.

System and research review: hospitality

A remake of the hospitality tree:
It adds new objects that will serve a new game system: hotels. The current beds will all be restricted to officers. Then new beds will be introduced: motel and hotel beds. These beds will only be usable by tourists, and they will first need to make a booking and pay for it in the check-in tables.
Players will need to make sure there are enough beds for your visitors. There's nothing worse for their opinion than overbooking!

Hotel system

A new system has been introduced in the game: hotels. Beds are now segregated between officers and visitors. Visitors will need to purchase a booking at a reception table before they can make use of a visitor bed (which will be a motel or hotel bed, with different pricing). The system involves the visitor entity transitioning into different states. First a visitor arrives, sleepy and wanting to book a room:
He needs to find a staffed reception desk. The old, too-specific bartender job is now the hospitality job and it covers all desk tending jobs in the station.
In the reception desk the visitor is able to purchase a booking:
And then he's able use hotel or motel rooms:
The hotel system may receive some more mechanics in the future, like better room furnishings for higher categories and prices, but for now its initial implementation is ready for testing.

New health and hygiene block

A new, fleshed out progression and mechanics for health and hygiene are now ready.
This new work introduces new game systems: the hospital/medical care system, and the diseases system. We all know and love the Gastrodisaster, but more diseases are needed to make the system interesting, with varied effects, plus a more fleshed out medical care system. The current bed care by doctors will be just one of the possible treatments. More objects and products are being introduced so treating diseases and injuries can become a multi-step process, from initial diagnose to surgery to resting.

Add new diseases

The new medical system in v3.5 finally abandons any relationship with the health vital. Health is cured by officers equipped with healing items, and it's now considered more of a combat vital. The new medical system is instead based on curing diseases and injuries. Gastrodisaster remains in the game, and seven new diseases are being introduced: Slowpox Entities affected by slowpox walk a lot slower than normal. Narcolepsy
Narcoleptic entities fall asleep from time to time, interrupting their work. Dizzylapse
Dizzylapsed entities feel sudden dizziness from time to time, interrupting their work. Argyria
Even in the 55th century people keep ingesting things that they shouldn't. Gigantism
A huge hassle. World enlargement
It all depends on your frame of reference. Mutosis
A terrible disease, it will require your best equipment and research to cure.

Treatment checklist

When an entity is afflicted by a disease, it gains a checklist of all the objects it needs to use to be cured:
There's a variety of new medical objects. One was already in game (the hospital bed), and a new one has been introduced, the doctor desk. Entities will need to visit a doctor desk as the first step of their treatment, but it must be staffed by one of your officers to be usable.

Visualize entity anchors while constructing objects

The object build tool has gained a new trick, it will now show the required positions for interacting with the object:


I hope this will reduce some confusion when building certain objects.

Commercial goods

The commercial system is exclusive to visitors and 3.5 will enhance it with more product varieties and qualities.
This is now a big and varied tech block. For now the corresponding entity system remains very similar (a random shopping list of 5 unlocked items) but it may require some further refinement in the future to make it more interesting, like per-civ affinities.

Recreation

The recreation system has grown out of the old fun vital and associated systems. in 3.5, instead of a single fun vital, four more have been added: gambling, knowledge, inebriation and dancing.
This will give more variety to both the visitors and to the needs of your officers, which will become more extensive as they become more experienced, like in V2.
A dozen new objects have been added to this tech block alone, and they include new interaction modes, like objects with multiple user.

Visitor archetypes, opinions and expectations

Visitors to your station are now asigned a subset of vitals and systems, which match the technologies you have unlocked. The more technologies you unlock, the more varied your visitor demands will be. This change also introduces the expectations and opinion system. The higher a visitor civ reputation with you is, the higher their expectations will be. This in turn will influence their opinion on the services and products they are using, making a good or bad opinion have a bigger or lower impact in your reputation.

RIP Cheat-O-Matic

Our favorite development aid, AKA cheat, has been eliminated. The cheat-o-matic is no more! All the placeholder item recipes it supported have been re-done and assigned to new and existing factories. Although the recipe ingredients themselves are not final (a raw resource review will be done as part of the final game balance), the quantities, duration, difficulty and unlock order are looking good.

Technical development notes

- remove planet storage limit - display current target for selected entity, like it is done for walk target add actual target icon - remove per-squad-member aggressor action in the bar - add "set forced target" action - fix: manual target is lost even while alive - fix: manual target for healing is a bad idea, the AI is much better, ignore it - add right click action for setting target too - restore walk button on toolbar - remove auto/manual control from aggressor panel - change the border in the squad buttons to line or corners, to reflect its selection status - idea: while 2 or more squad members are selected do not display normal right panel - put active item icon and cooldown display on top of squad selector button display only while in cooldown - when in combat mode officers in squad always display hp bar display small swords icon next to hp bar - to any fear-capable entity, add the ability to stop walking when an enemy is sighted with prio between combat mode busy and aggressor SM busy just a one-time stop action, not a busy state this makes the AI less suicidal, and healers don't go so much into a melee - add some scrolling icons when interrupted due to enemies or when starting combat - when setting a target, if the entity is not compatible (healer -> enemy), do a nearby walk with the previous system it will stop because of enemy sighting, but still accompany their fighter friends - fix: don't waste teleporter cooldown when the target is nonwalkable - fix: restore melee-simple - fix: if a factory breaks while an item stack is busy with it, the stack remains busy patch the existing missing busy catcher to also use the item busy ID if it's the job sm ID, and the subj busy ID is NOT job SM ID, then remove busy make the job sm set the proper IDs on busy stacks - fix: repair can pick an unwalkable position for work area - replace use of dots as checkmarks with a proper checkmark in the job matrix in the filter for storage area - dont display item categories in storage area filter - factory recipe selector should be a picker list in manual order: combo list in filter for global production: checklist in ship recipe selector - introduce high prio busy walk for manual walk orders higher than flee - display item list for officers in crew picker for ships - add new resources - add new objects images - fix: stale corpses being eternally carried by officers use busy aspect checking for the parent - hospitality tech tree buildings research tiers decors - change "bartender" to "hospitality" - put all room unlocks in facilities tree, for now - fix: production tutorial is broken - fix: asteroids still are being hardcoded to one gray shade for home - make sure enemies are using the earlier aggressor target semantics now they are pursuing targets to the other end of the map - cancel forced targets on walk and teleports - add object use purchasing hygiene: use soap price, already there fun: use item price and a fixed price for dance floor - add fixed object vital factors fun: dancefloor is hardcoded, for now sleep: vital-sleep-step for object model, set in component in finalize-bed, sm takes it - normalize job xp based on duration 30s is 1 xp, with a min of 1xp - custom mechanic: hotel entities have can have sleep vital, and refuse to use some beds but not others entities can get the need to make a booking at an hotel reception an hotel reception sells bookings, needs to be staffed first, like the bar after buying a booking, the entity is entitled to use beds of the right category - fix: xp scaling is wrong, too high - fix: anchor jobs for tending desks should wait for ReadyComponent on parent - refactor "bartender" job logic and anchor entity to be used by other systems test with pre-v3.5 hospital bed logic first support continuous standing (bar, reception) spot standing (doctor jobs) custom job data (duration, resources, comp, etc) custom posing custom parent aspects for job validation generic presence component - object building should also display needed empty tiles around an object, and complain when they are not default tile by peeking into the object settings anchor: prop for other objecs fix: restore immediate floodfill area draw - full disease system different disease have different effects on entities vomiting interruption: forced sleep interruption: dizzy gigantism shrinkage color change mutant reskin slowpox each disease has a checklist of treatments to be performed, in order generic vital fullfill system that can delegate to right SM and their data, based on the disease checklist generic registry for medical objects once the checklist is at the end, the entity is cured - fix: correct selection reticle for scaled entities - inspector for disease checklist - introduce doctor desk (placeholder gfx) desk job for officers must have officer present - re-introduce hospital bed for resting and treatment using the new tender system tender consumes pills - fix doctor desk anchors - fix hospital bed anchors - add tender job bias support - introduce xray pose patient as idle once a patient is on one side, a standing job opens for officers - introduce analyzer same as xray - introduce surgery pod same as patient bed, but requires organs for doctor job - introduce regenerator pod same as a shower, but requires bionanites stock - add tint layer for cryopod - temp recipes and factory for new medical and hygiene products - helper to decide if a disease can be applied given the tech level - patch and enable random officer disease system to consider tech level - hygiene area of new health tech tree properly model objects - restore research tiers for medical and hygiene objects - commercial tech tree gfx object models add products to shops product recipes add recipes to factories research tiers - add missing soap tier - use new checklist style for shopping list - entertaiment tech tree gfx divide fun into more vitals fun, gambling, inebriation, knowledge, dancing object models add products to shops refine systems and makers for each object tavernbar: transition to inebriation tavern table: for inebriation barbar: transition to inebriation disco table: for inebriation holo1: for knowledge holo2: for knowledge library table: for knowledge comics book-shelf dancefloor: for dancing jukebox: dance in front, for dancing gogobot: dance in 4 sides, independent, all must trigger action pose, for dancing pinball: for fun arcade: for fun excessivemachine: for fun photobooth: verify angles, for fun changemachine: shop for casino coins slotmachine: for gambling blackjack: needs croupier, for gambling - entertaiment tech tree roulette: 3 sides like gogobot, plus croupier, for gambling billiard: 2 anchors for vitals, independent, both must trigger action pose, for fun product recipes product factors and prices add recipes to factories research tiers - add some randomness to vital obj selection - add prices for medical object use - show full object info in description panel - increase social vital gains - visitor archetype model pick a few vitals or systems name plus short description research dependencies min civ rep archetypes Researcher Shopper Sick Bored Wasted Tired Gourmet Party animal Gambler - update visitor maker to use archetypes check research dependencies and civ reputation diseases must be curable by unlocked tech goods must be purchasable by unlocked tech disable some harsh negative consequences for low vitals in visitors - display visitor archetype in vitals inspector - opinion vital and system update based on avgs of visitor archetype vitals and systems expectation mechanic the more civ rep, the more expectations ui on archetype block High expectations (35% meet) Reputation hit on departing: -15 hook rep deltas when visitor leaves - move chemical factory as soap factory to health tech - use placeholder metal press for fuel cells - bring back vital progression tied to officer promotion - fix: update officer power stats on spec promotion - fix: diseases not being applied - fix: visitor archetypes with no extra vitals not being handled correctly - fix: wrong var in consumerist SM - enable PoseAnglesCache - fix: unlock item pallet at right moment - slow down doctor xp progression - increase tourist ship frequency, amount of tourists - add missing decorations in hospitality: wardrove, wardrove02, wardrove03 - fix: tending job for hotel desk was not created - fix: rotation errors comic library book libary motel desk hotel desk - fix: add some missing strings - fix: billiard is not working missing maker call check for non-stock objects when applying vital delta for product in vital SM - ease up min vital thresholds for visitors - different vital thresholds for visitors and officers for all vitals - fix: non ascii renamed officers are not serialized properly - fix: tavern bars had wrong hints - make inventory window not display locked products, unless some stock already exists (or are unlocked) - inventory min stock UI should be more visible - station: prices for each object in finalized trees - set initial cash to 150K - fix: set mead as default stock for tavern - add homelydivisor to dinner tier - add classydivisor to bistro tier - increase req xp for doctors and tenders - fix: add proper owner hint for job transport sm items - leak: while on pause the mover system creates useless move objects disable pause mode for mover system

[ 2017-02-20 13:14:00 CET ] [ Original post ]