Hello Builders! Last month was a really busy month for us. We participated in a big game jam and streamed a lot about it. This prevented me to post blog posts update here. However, it did not prevent me to make great improvements to Gate Builders! Many of them are based on your feedback! Thanks a lot to everyone who took the time to test the game! You are amazing! There was a few sneaky update to the game during October, but this post will list and explain everything! (up to version a026b.281022)

Graphical Update:

New images:

Every single images in the two intros, background, investor images, etc. is brand new. With the help of the community and stable diffusion, we created a large amount of very tailored pictures that will set the mood of the game. We would have loved to work with an artist, but due to the large amount of images required and our low budget, this was not possible in the time being. In the future, if the game gets a bigger budget, we will hire a real illustrator to re-create these images with a more coherent style. In the meantime, my own stable diffusion experience will have to do. Here is some examples: [table] [tr] [td]
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[/td] [/tr] [/table] I still have to make a lot of new images for the sponsors, anomalies and the victory / defeat screen but this process takes a lot of time. Every single image take up to a few hours of work, so they will come slowly during the next updates of the game.

Re-design of the Station Map

The old station map was just a grid of all the buildings, very reminiscent of the old Colonization game but uglier. This couldn't stand anymore as this is a main focus of the game. I present you the brand new style for the stations: a full 3d view!
Additionally, the station construction info now display how many building components your citizen are producing and how many turns are left to complete the current project.

Higher resolution

The game also run natively in 1920x1080 now, allowing for a much more crips esthetic. You can decide to switch back to 720p in the option menu.

Better asteroids and color:

All asteroids have been redrawn with a higher quality and less developer art colors.

Gameplay Update:

Anomalies

Introducing anomalies! A very big addition to the game! Anomalies where only planned to be added in the beta but during playtest and while reading your feedback I realized they were needed as of now to keep the player entertained. In previous Alpha, there was very little reason to keep exploring the map once you settled your first few space stations. Floating crates were giving a bit of value for explorers but were not exiting enough. Anomalies attempts to fix this. They are unknown elements on the map that can be scanned with a Probe or with the brand new Explorer ship. Scanning an anomaly will take a few turns an can reward the player with many outcomes: a decision to take, new citizens, plenty rewards, or even a pirate attack. There is currently 11 different types of anomalies in the game, with various level of rarity and various resolution. Can you find them all? Many more anomalies will be added to the game in the coming months. Anomalies also add a lot of lore to the game with custom description and images.

Turn Order

Previously, when a ship had a move order and couldn't complete it in one turn, it would auto complete it at the beginning of the next turn. This was great for the flow of the game but was preventing the player to react to changes. Now, aligning with many other 4x design, ship will only execute their remaining movement at the end of the player turn. [table] [tr] [th]Old order[/th] [th]New order[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]New turn[/td] [td]New turn[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]All ships move[/td] [td]Trading ships move[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Player plays[/td] [td]Player plays[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]End turn[/td] [td]All ships finish moving[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]End turn[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Ship Statistics

Ship statistics are now visible on the main game map and when purchasing a new ship in your Homeworld. In the future, the same statistics will be displayed when building a ship and in the Gatepedia.

New tier in station progression

The beginning of the game could be confusing for new players as there was many available building option at the start of a new space station. I added lower tier in the station progression by including a lower level of workshop. New stations now start with a much smaller pool of possible constructions, making the game much easier to understand.

Move ship back to Homeworld

It is now possible to move a ship back to the Homeworld if it was ordered to travel to the belt by mistake

Small feature changes:

• Added a few Sound Fx: click, enter subspace, scan anomalies, etc. giving more feedback to the player actions
• The outliner shows ship health bar
• A new popup propose you to rename your newly settled space stations
• The score graph do not show prestige or gate progress by default
• Add more info on building tooltip about production
• Add a lot of contextual info in many tooltips
• Add tooltip all products icons to say what they are and how to get them
• Show remaining number of turn to convince a new sponsor to join your cause
• Better visualization of what input material are missing in a station production chain
• The Homeworld now sell Probes
• Pressing escape in the Homeworld while recruiting or training a new citizen now close the recruitment window instead of closing the Homeworld
• Fixed a bug that allow citizen to be "stowaways" behind a cargo in ship

And don't forget, more then ever, I need you! Let me know if you have any feedback on the game so far! Comment greatly help! The game is evolving a lot and I hope the direction is a good one! The best place to get in touch and chat with the community is on discord: https://discord.gg/eqxF58uqjC