This update brings a host of new fixes and features!

I Can Feel The Fire

Colonists now have more natural reactions to fire. They will take notice of it sooner, run from it and try to avoid running past it for less life-threatening needs and situations. The flashpoints of clothing and skin have been tweaked for a more accurate reaction to extreme heat and flames. They are still flammable, but are no longer... inflammable. Colonists can now be burnt by fire without it killing them, and can suffer from various levels of burn injuries when exposed to high temperate. Lesser burns will need a trip to medical, and worse ones will result in an extended stay.

Pathfinding, equipment placement and AI tweaks.

The way colonists navigate your bases has been adjusted to allow for them to move more efficiently through your base. They can fit into smaller spaces and pass objects more easily, reducing the chances for AI lock ups in congested layouts. Pathfinding has also been optimised for better CPU performance. Object placement has been adjusted to warn of problematic layouts, bad paths and objects being blocked by new equipment being placed. Nearby built objects will show their interaction points when placing new items, so you'll know when your placements are optimal.

Save changes

This update also brings a new save system to the game along with support for Steam Cloud saves. On Windows the save folder has been moved out of My Documents to AppData to be more compliant with modern OS standards. Old saves will be automatically backed up, upgraded and moved when you open the game.

Other changes:

• Research computers now give better feedback of when all possible research is completed.
• Fixed rare crashes when clicking on dogs that were in the middle of finding something to do.
• Chicken AI code optimised and cleaned up.
• Chickens will now hunt and eat insects they see inside your base.
• Colonists with surface walking skill walk are even faster now when wearing a surface suit.
• Colonists and some other creatures no longer think that some species of aliens are dead when they are just sleeping, which was breaking pathfinding.
• Various parts of the AI code have been cleaned up to reduce hitching and instability.
• Fix for a soft lock in the tutorial caused by a player deleting the rooms in their base.
• Updates for stability and performance on new hardware and OSes.

More updates are coming soon. Join the Discord to give your feedback, report any issues, and share your coolest bases! - Si

[ 2025-03-24 18:58:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's Maia update time! This build brings features, fixes, interface, optimisations and Steam Deck and controller support to the game. [previewyoutube=N0J-ykZbos8;full][/previewyoutube] Cartographics! The new map pop up allows you to see the layout of your base quickly, track colonists and robots, spot threats and fires and to move around the map fast. Switching between the overlay modes also allows you to see atmosphere and temperature conditions in your base.
Controller support! The game now has controller support that will allow you to play the game on most modern controllers, compatible accessibility devices and of course portable PC devices such as the Steam Deck. To support low power mobile devices the game has been deeply optimised. As well as general improvements, several large frame-time spikes have been eradicated, which should keep it running smoothly. The memory footprint of the game code has also been painstaking optimised down by about 25%. This means that lower end machines will benefit from better performance, and huge bases on large heavily populated maps on regular machines should run much smoother too.
Petting the animals in the game now has better feedback with a new cursor animation and friendlier AI responses from the dogs, and of course, absolute apathy from the cats. Keeping your animals social needs fulfilled will make them more eager to defend your base and catch any invading insects. It will also stop dogs distracting the colonists so much and the cats from destroying the furniture (maybe).
Other changes:

• Fixed a shader issue with AMD GPU driver support that was stopping the game from running for some users.
• Pause button on keyboard now rebindable.
• Fix for colonists trying to make small adjustments whilst running causing them to abruptly come to a half and then start running again.
• Upgraded SDL support.
• Objective flashing animation improved.
• Rain textures and animation improved.
• Grid simulation no longer shows invalid values on energy storage devices when the game is paused.
• Lava simulation optimised and threading removed to prevent crashes. (Full lava rewrite postponed due to complexity)
• Colonists will now prioritise the meteor pickups in the second level of the campaign.
• Massively reduced the constraint iterations on the cloth simulations to improve CPU performance when the player has lots of flags.
• Fix for incorrect light colour in Radiation Containment room.
• Protobird sleep behaviour fixed to stop it running automatically into groom behaviour.
• Capsules landing will no longer set the ground on fire if the ground is covered in snow.

Join us on the Discord to show off you base, report bugs, request features and chat with the community. On the deck I recommend using the Proton GE for maximum compatibility. Linux builds will go live this evening. Thats it for now. More updates coming soon! See all the changes going into the codebase as they happen on https://dev.maiagame.com/

[ 2023-01-27 19:35:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings from the tier 5 exclusion zone! I hope this update finds you well, or at least alive. Drop in on the Discord and let us know how you are doing. [previewyoutube=QpL6J9QU1u8;full][/previewyoutube] MAIA now features a brand new ray-marched voxelised shadow system allowing every light in your base to cast accurate dynamic shadows into the world. This system really augments a colonys atmosphere, doesnt require any ray-tracing specific hardware and also wont totally obliterate your frame rate.
Continuing the visual improvements, several new colonist head variations are now in the game, and the quality of many existing game textures has been increased. A multitude of small visual tweaks and polish improvements have been carefully worked in to improve the general feel and aesthetic. Along with with the new lighting system and graphics improvements the game has been given a deep optimisation pass on the core game code and graphics pipeline. This means that densely populated maps with a mature ecosystem simulation and a large number of colonists, robots and creatures will see performance gains of up to 30-40% on a middle range CPU, which can lead to a much smoother frame rate.
On the GPU you may see up to a 15% increase in frames per second (with the new ray shadows switched off). The engine also now caches generated code, shaders and other data and will load the game several seconds faster. The user interface was feeling a little left out so we gave it some love too. The middle click menu has now been extended to room placement to for those who prefer a list based selection. Many menu boxes, buttons and pop up texts have been given shadows and extra borders to improve readability in high contrast scenes.

Other changes:

Changing texture settings on the fly no longer causes glitches. MSAA settings changes are improved. Several menu options now require an apply click to help stop accidental changes. The game will now spawn a much lower number of threads and use them better. Screen space reflections straightened slightly. Support for OpenGL 4.5 added. The GUI now has a visual autosave notification. Text colours are fixed when on in-game colonist selection screens. The outbreaks of contagious colonist hypochondria have been reduced. Colonist needs balanced. The Utility bots will wait less for jobs. Colonists need to be a lot more fatigued to go AWOL. Colonist trauma will fade significantly faster. Colonists will now need to be closer to cave-ins to be traumatised by them. Room temperatures will now simulate more accurately. Game log files updated to newer more detailed format. Better shader loading verification. Lots of small AI tweaks. Intel 3000HD support dropped and fired into the sun. Instability caused by giant wildfires fixed. We'll be back soon with more features and fixes. Watch the updates as they happen on the dev site.

[ 2021-01-22 18:22:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

About time for an update!

Wildfires.

Raging infernos can now spread through the game world mercilessly incinerating everything in their path.
Keep your base clear of ground cover or risk being caught up in conflagration. These rapid oxidation events can be triggered by faulty equipment, explosions, tracer rounds and even the soft landing rockets on the capsules. High winds and sustained droughts heighten the dangers of the blaze.

Desertification

The planet's soil is now even more accurately simulated with erosion, soil stability, drainage, fertility and microbiomes all being computed. Ground stripped of foliage by colonists, fauna or fire will eventually become desertified as the wind and rain relentlessly ravage the landscape. The dust from this depleted ground makes for poor foundations and can damage equipment. [previewyoutube=phs9U9UIGUE;full][/previewyoutube]

Balance and AI tweaks

The need for repairs for many items has been adjusted to ensure the colonists are more productive in the early and mid game. Priorities for repairing have been shifted to favour repair bots in the later game to ensure research doesnt slow down or stop entirely as your base is consumed by entropy.

Interface changes

Removing room tiles now requires holding a right-click. This should reduce issues with accidental misclicks. A progress bar has been added to loading sequences to give a better indication of time remaining. Several optimisations will mean that loading times are also significantly shorter. Windowing has been improved to allow for high DPI monitors, better 4k support and Windows scaling options. The missing window icon has been readded.

Graphical improvements

The particle system has been revamped, new effects added and many older effects such as the smoke and fire have been improved to look more realistic. Several graphical issues leading to stability problems on some systems have been patched to ensure your base building is uninterrupted.

Full modding support.

New game objects can now be created using a fully featured scripting interface. The system uses Squirrel, a language similar to LUA, that looks like C++ and has many modern language features and great performance. I will be releasing more documentation for this very soon, in the meantime if you want to start learning how to make mods join the Discord.

Coming soon:

• Native fauna planting and rewilding.
• Ground water extraction and irrigation systems.
• More colonist variety.
• New equipment and AI.
• Several GUI changes.
• Modding documentation and mesh importers.

The build is already live on Windows and will be going out on Linux later this evening. To see changes as they happen you can check out dev.maiagame.com. Despite the large changes, older saves are supported. If you have any issues loading an existing map, start a fresh exploration mode, and load, and the game will fix the save. That's it for now. Join the Discord and come show us your fancy base designs!

[ 2020-06-25 21:36:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

It is the holidays and so you know what that means! Yep, its time to curl up into a ball and enjoy the cold sweats of some intense mental trauma!

Affliction

The drama and disasters around your base will now have a more complex effect on your colonists, with individual traumas embedding themselves in their minds. Earthquakes, cave ins, fires, alien attacks, meteor strikes, severe illness, neglect, deaths, and even intensely unpleasant social interactions can now cause long term anguish to your colonists. Their suffering will manifest in unpredictable behaviours, task aversion, distressed emails, and even as acute physical illness.

Science-fiction

The IMP first person mode has now been greatly improved with interface changes, and more responsive way to pick things up. They also now have the ability to grab, carry and use more useful items (such as minerals).

Improved Diction

Colonist emails are now more detailed with more descriptions of their actions in their reports, and several suggestions for the optimisation and balancing of your base. For instance they will now mention when there is a shortage of repair robots for the current base repair load.

Reduced Friction

There are many more small changes. With dozens of tweaks and balance changes made based on player feedback and further testing. Notable changes:

• Dogs no longer become so tired that they become despondent and never respond to orders.
• Cats also no longer do nothing due to tiredness. (Given their interests, this is probably a bad thing)
• Campaign mission 2 now allows more colonists after the (spoiler!).
• Right click now drops tool for room placement mode.
• To destroy completed rooms segments you now need to click and hold the right mouse.
• The reloading of turrets is better handled and colonists will get around to it faster.
• UI warnings panel will mention if repair bots are insufficient.
• Microwave smelter bug where it would be stuck closed fixed.
• Microwave smelter progress text updates slower to be more readable.
• Fix for terminal computer getting stuck reporting no capacity.
• World gen now checks to avoid plants placed slightly in walls or unwalkable tiles.
• Repairing burnt planters need changed from food creation to food preparation.
• Priority orders can now be switched off.
• Font size of manifest reduced.
• Manifest screen now has text alignment for data after names.
• Condenser name loading fixed.
• Nerve gas research name and text fixed.
• Fixes for vox nocturnis's getting stuck in their nests.
• Door frames set for destruction no longer need to be upgraded before being destroyed.
• Propagators can now be disassembled.
• Solar flares slightly reduced on all maps.
• Fix for too many pop-ups caused by the pop-up limitation code doing the exact opposite of its job.
• Fix for crew selection pop ups shortening time to colonist choices.
• Fix for tutorial state remaining into next mission after completing it.
• Crew selection pop ups will be totally skipped if Place Room, Rotation or Rename modes are enabled.
• Crew selection pop ups will be postponed if user is in place entity mode until they leave that mode.
• Lifespan on text without VO longer.
• Bug stopping VO playing fixed.
• Level 3 typo for VO.
• Fix for typos in campaign mission 2.
• Fix for the code that was designed to push colonists out of walls pushing colonists into walls due to weird room shapes.
• Chickens will now idle correctly.
• Fix for bug that was saving the music in a low volume state if you exited the game whilst VO was playing or waiting.
• Console spawn command can now include number of items to spawn after the item ID.
• Text GUI buttons now have a border area to make them easier to click.

Thanks to the community for their detailed feedback and save files. If you want to get involved join us on the discord and keep an eye on the development site for changes going into the game. Obviously this is a slightly more compact update than usual. I'm working on a much larger release with some much bigger changes and some very interesting features for release in the new year. Until then, enjoy the holidays, be merry, and try not to set too many things on fire.

[ 2018-12-24 23:12:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's finally time to launch the game! The 0.69 update has hundreds of changes, fixes and a space shuttle's worth of new content. It's live now so give it a go!
This won't be Maia's final update, we're got a lot more coming very shortly!

The Campaign

The full seven mission narrative campaign is in with voiceover. The missions will take about 14 hours for the average player and test your skills in a variety of situations.

Role Allocation Systems

Want a dedicated builder, hydroponics worker or researcher? Construct the role allocation systems in the control room and choose from your colonists with the right skills. Remember if you don't have the skills the desk in the research room can be used by colonists to learn new expertise.

Soundscape

The entire soundscape of the game has been reworked. The environment sounds richer, more varied and also gives away many more useful game play cues. The soundtrack has been extended with many more spine tingling dark 70's synth tracks.

Build Menu and Interface changes

In item build mode you can hold alt or middle click to bring up a selectable menu of items to place. This makes dealing with the longer lists much easier. Many other small tweaks have come to the interface with smarter popups, less text, a smaller default cursor, better responsiveness and less clutter.

AI and balance

The colonists needs and AI have been given a balancing pass, with the notable change that fatigue is reduced on several actions. Surface operations will be more viable with longer trips and better use of suit refill points and airlocks.
Other changes: You can see a full list of changes since the last update at the developer website. Daily builds will continue on the dev branch so make sure you're on that if you want the latest fixes and features.

[ 2018-11-23 19:55:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

After a several month mission Maia 0.68 has touched down! Watch my video below to see a quick overview of some of the new features and fixes. https://youtu.be/y28WgF5jozI This is the penultimate development version of Maia. The next update, 0.69 will take the game out of the early access program. This of course won't be the last addition to the game and there are plenty of new and exciting things to come. (I'll also be sticking to my no DLC policy, all main game content updates will remain free.)
If you enjoy Maia's updates, but want to try them earlier, don't forget to set your game to use the development beta branch on Steam which will give you access to my daily builds. (Right click on the game in your library, click properties and go to the beta tab.) We also have a new Discord server to report bugs and talk about the game. Leaving a review would also help us very much as we approach release. This update brings the all new fire fighting utility robot. This nifty little machine will dart across your base to extinguish the inevitable conflagrations of your poorly maintained colony. If you need a more hands on approach it is of course fully controllable in first person too.
New AI behaviours have been bestowed on the animals, robots and alien creatures in the game, adding many new avenues for emergent game-play. Chickens now can be startled and will flock dynamically to avoid perceived danger. But don't worry, they'll also now nest on many items in the game, providing plenty of annoyance to your colonists and plethora of new and exciting fire hazards.
Colonists are more aware of the actions you take and will sometimes mention if they think you followed their advice and will also comment on what they think of new equipment. They'll also produce more detailed emails and discuss new topics such as the weather, storms and climate and how it's affecting the base and it's inhabitants. The alien creatures of the planet have had many of their territorial behaviours improved and will now migrate independently in herds on and off the mission area. The changes will also see them attacking your bases in a smarter ways, leading to more dramatic incursions.
Your IMP robots are now more fragile and can be seriously damaged by earthquakes and have their circuits scrambled by solar events. You'll also want to keep them happy as they can now take action against your poor management, hijack your email system and organise a labour movement. Listen carefully and you'll hear IMP robot's new voice-over lines. They'll comment on the awful state of your base, provide snide but perhaps useful observations of your colonists and go on endlessly about how depressed the doors are making them. The base announcer now has twice as many lines detailing equipment state and supplies, and several new call outs for the colonists. Several of the announcements note ongoing progress in the base that will save you from watching every unboiled kettle.
The new rename tool allows you to set a callsign for any item, room, animal, plant, colonist or robot in the game. The new name will appear in the quick selection menus and emails to help you better manage your base. The mouse over information on unbuilt objects now states any recent attempts to build an item and if those are still ongoing or if the colonist has given up and why. The base manifest has had another pass too with a new layout with more information and an easier to read format. But that's not all. There are a lot of changes to the game.

• Meteors can now break up and hit your outdoor equipment.
• Fresh meteors produce more research data when sampled.
• Colonists body bagging corpses now pick up food and building materials from the dead.
• Colonist food preparation need increased when there is little food.
• Colonists looking for somewhere to shiver (show hypothermia) will tend towards warmer places.
• Colonists no longer wait for an escort if there is a turret within 30 metres of the destination.
• Colonist choice of airlock when suiting up fixed on complex multi entrance bases.
• Fix for colonists getting stuck in a panic cycle when patrolling towards creatures.
• Change for colonist power generation needs balancing due to bug calculating current wattage.
• Earthquakes now need to be a little stronger to hurt colonists.
• Placement of objects that colonist need to get on and off now requires more space to stop players boxing colonists in accidentally.
• Research generated from sleeping reduced.
• Colonists will no longer come up with new research data if they already have 64mb of data on them.
• Wait added to dog movement to make them more likely to follow move orders.
• New research perk: HUMAN BODY LANGUAGE AI ANALYSIS. To allow utility bots to move faster down corridors.
• Biosythesised Antibiotics research perk hooked up.
• Ablative armour research fixed.
• Creature lure research added for sight and scent lures.
• Flywheels, turrets, wind turbines and solar stills, degrade slightly slower depending on conditions.
• IMP first person labels updated.
• IMP mineral drops now limited.
• IMP method for finding storage space now requires a larger clear area.
• IMPs no longer use incomplete body storage.
• IMP first person now uses camera movement key bindings.
• Minerals complaint email now takes into account contents of the hopper.
• Minerals in hopper now tracked (Manifest screen now includes hopper Minerals.)
• More information added to the colonist identity structure.
• Power report emails now include a maximum theoretical output.
• Wait between colonist popups choice increased.
• Fix for missing electricity graph label on wall screens.
• In game crew selection added.
• More colonist misc inventory items.
• Turret range increased up to 20m.
• All first person text now has shadows for easier reading
• Email for when megacephalalgia and other creatures destroy surface equipment.
• Creature lure scent added for Megacephs.
• Synapsid creature eating code clean up.
• Synapsid creature now more susceptible to lures.
• Fix for molerat contaminating livestock with millions of exterior plants.
• Protobird will now ignore items that are on fire when invading your base.
• Sounds for colonist pistol bullets hitting metal or meat added.
• Rewrite of code dealing with reactions to invading creatures for more dramatic attacks.
• Creature wander position generation bug fix.
• Nitrate boost mode added to crop planters.
• Portable solar array's now close when clicked.
• Solar energy generation now more impacted by settled ground snow on panels.
• Countdown for power and colonist report emails now written to and loaded from save file.
• World generation cleaned up.
• Chickens panic when near fire.
• Chickens send a new transmission when dead.
• Creatures placement changed to ensure better placement.
• Plant sample container now requires a click to transmit collected data to the terminal computer.
• Placement of various items tweaked on world generation.
• Create colonist landing issue fixed with ignoring airlock pos.
• Dining table now tracks how many meals have been eaten.
• Message system brownout warning fixed.
• Infotips cleaned up for many items.
• Super capacitors, Fusion and Fission reactors now need associated research to build.
• Fix for megacephs incorrectly performing actions when they had not reached their target.
• Removed error from megaceph for distant attacks on wind turbines.
• Circuit breaker room detection fixed.
• UI focus fixed with several pop ups.
• Fission reactor shutdown on low fuel and damage.
• Fission reactor output reduced to that of a experimental system.
• Fusion reactor interaction points moved out.
• Subtle vector screen flickering effect added to UI borders.
• Utility robot movement fixed so it's no longer backwards.
• Power requirement for scanner added.
• Agent path to targets optimised.
• Corrections in warning emails.
• Materials hopper resized.
• Research tape pick up bug fixed.
• Email for when the game can not find a lander location.
• More famous (British) author names added to generation list (Kickstarter names coming soon!).
• Fix for ascii rendering error on text glitch effect.
• Fix for unbuildable aesthetic plant pots due to no propagator.
• Lava code cleaned up and optimised for different system types.
• IMP invisibility fix and NAN glitch.
• Large sections of game and engine code cleaned, modernised and made more portable.
• Save compatibility lock set to new 0.68 save implementation.
• Load times have been greatly improved with several save optimisations.
• Mission saving expanded.
• Check to see if building facility is valid before making build order.
• Async thread waits on load to ensure no data corruption.
• Sound options menu added with slider interfaces.
• Objective tracker no longer culls objectives that are waiting on a countdown timer to launch an event.
• SN1572 mission start made easier.
• Potential crash to AI player fixed.
• Escape can now be pressed to go back from a menu.
• Text input in the console and in game improved.
• Escape can now quit out colonist selection screen.
• So many spelling corrections.
• Tutorial line switched from double click to middle click to prioritise builds.
• Tutorial now ticks off keypresses and scrolling faster.
• Change so game does not force a screen native resolution when saving a windowed screen state.
• Fix for crash caused by pathfinding cache corruption.
• Updated to a new Microsoft compiler to fix the random crash bug plaguing the game caused by their broken Async implementation.
• SDL update to 2.0.8
• [There were a few more but I'm going to max the character limit on this post!]

If you're playing the game for the first time I would suggest watching the 0.67 video guide, as it will help you pick up many of the things the tutorial has to skip in the name of brevity. https://youtu.be/9zvcbDKnqsU Remember you can read every single commit I make to the repo on dev.maiagame.com. If you are enjoying the huge amount of work going into the game, don't forget to update or leave a review and send me your feedback.

[ 2018-10-04 12:43:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.67 is here! This huge update is all about polish. Check out this quick video of me showing off the major changes: https://youtu.be/rb7sM-HgOaA

Polished.. floors.

Fine dust in a humid underground base quickly turns to sticky, sticky dirt. Colonists will inevitably traipse it all around the base, making everyone intensely miserable at the state of it all. Thankfully there is now a floor cleaning robot ready to remove dirt and polish scuffs off the floor! Just build it and watch it methodically work its way around the base. Or maybe take it for a spin in first person?

[Seedyness Intensifies]

The propagator adds a new level of depth and interaction to your hydroponics room. The systems grow seedlings in a carefully controlled environment to maximise yield from the colony’s seed stocks from earth.

IMProvements

The IMP robot can now pick up items (and creatures) in first person, manipulate them and carry them about. This new level of interaction gives you more control over the little things in life (such as chickens). The repair bot has also been upgraded with new first person user interface systems to help identify items requiring repair.

What are they plotting?

The colony’s wall screens are now able to show useful base data graphed. See real time feeds of room temperature and atmosphere, grid status, storage amounts of rations, materials and minerals and even receive advanced notice of shockwaves and earthquakes using the accurately generated seismograph.

Inbox Zeros

Colonist emails are now more detailed and varied and will focus on core issues in the base. They also include profile pictures for the colonists sending them to help you identify the sender and grow closer to them before they inevitably die in a fire.

Mist opportunities

Exterior rendering has been improved substantially with new detail in snow and ground water. A new volumetric effect outside will render fog, dust and smoke with realistic movement depth and shadows.

It must be f/8

The user interface has had a lot of tweaks and improvements. The game camera is now smoothed and can also zoom into rooms and will adjust its height automatically when moving around the base. Placing rooms is now easier with new icons for each room type. Many of the UI modes are more responsive or have been tweaked for clarity. More text has shadowing, and mouse over info tips have been clarified and shortened to make them easier to skim.
 

Other notable changes:

• AI player added. Type "aiPlayer" in the console to activate a basic self-playing base AI that can construct rooms, items and manage basic functions.
• Tutorial reworked for new items and to give the player more time to digest information.
• Cassiopeia mission lengthened, made easier.
• Colonist stockpiling needs tweaked.
• Other misc colonist AI needs balancing.
• Colonists will no longer interrupt social interactions between others.
• Colonists are less (intentionally) suicidal.
• Breakdown rates for many items tweaked.
• IMPs are less grumpy and won't smash everything now.
• Ground overlay info no longer comes up if emails are open.
• Game meta-progress now saved.
• Finished mission names now shown in blue.
• Fix for flywheel sound when locked.
• Click interactions added for more objects.
• Building geothermal power equipment underground no longer requires airlock proximity.
• Tape drive infotip added.
• Tape drive power use increased, disks spin down during blackout.
• Atmosphere generator, smelter and nanoprinter infotips update slower.
• Megacephalagia creature attacks on wind turbines are now more dramatic with extra animation and pfx.
• Vox Nocturnis creature territorial need increased.
• Game will now push new players to try a tutorial.
• Wait added to dogs and robots when clicked on to give player more time to give a move order.
• Dogs place a higher priority on patrol orders given by a player.
• Chicken breath amount slightly randomised.
• Colonist diseases added to save files.
• Shader generation info now goes into log.
• Shader fix for MSAA not showing lines in IMP first person vision.
• Fix for IMP vision masking out text due to sky mask.
• Removal of log terminal on Windows builds.
• Text renderer bugs fixed.
• First person mode labels now have shadows for easier reading.
• Width fix for border for colonist names on selection panel.
• Numerous shader optimisations.
• Fix for potential crash caused by colonist memories.
• More code modernisation to C++14 standards.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repository on the development site. 0.68 is already in the works and will again be focused on improving the AI, more management and feedback from the games systems, rounding off some of the sharper edges. Please let me know if you find any big bugs or issues. If you appreciate the effort going into the game, don't forget to leave a Steam review!

[ 2018-05-17 11:16:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.66 is here! This build brings hundreds of changes focusing on balancing, emergent behaviours, performance and the user interface. Here's a short video of me showing off a small handful of the new features: https://youtu.be/M2zi-qsPgBs

Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where Im standing?

Your I.M.P robots now have a growing sense of person, and with that of course, comes existential dread. Keep your robots occupied with work or they will start getting depressed, misbehaving, annoying your colonists or even smashing up valuable equipment.

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

With the new middle-click menu you can set which colonists are allowed to use a certain item. This functionality has many potential uses uses, from assigning ownership to a bed, to optimising entire rooms by having a select team of skilled users for the equipment. In the later game it can even be used to segregate off entire sections of the base. Of course the colonists, being human, might not always follow the rules forced upon them.
Colonist mouse-overs have been improved with ECG readouts now hinting at what exciting life threatening issues they may have and a brief inventory list of what the colonist is carrying around with them.

Bok bok.. thud

Chicken AI is improved with new physical and personality traits. Some may be more susceptible to fire and sparks, some able to breath in a low atmosphere environment, some social, some anxious. As the chickens breed these traits will be passed down and potentially strengthened. Of course for this selection to happen chickens have to die a lot more, so they do.

What the photon is it?

0.66 brings many optimisations and performance gains for many system configurations as well as improved visuals with a new ambient occlusion algorithm and lighting systems.
Many aspects of item placement and path-finding have been improved. Placement holograms are improved with smoother transitions between warning states and clearer information when there is an issue. Interaction points are brighter and higher resolution to better indicate how to face an object.

More changes:

• Mouse over info for different terrain types.
• New research tech added for Cognitive millimetre wave networks.
• In the colonist panel on the bottom left. If a colonist needs attention the colour of their name will be yellow. If they are unconscious it will now be red.
• Colonists will no longer write long boring emails about people they don't know yet.
• Colonists will no longer write emails about dogs that they confused for humans.
• When an email is being drawn, left clicking will now immediately draw all the text on screen.
• Colonists will now place less importance on going to the toilet
• Harvest early option added to hydroponics.
• Added delay to colonists pulling out glowsticks or putting them away as they got really indecisive if your power supply was varying and it was migraine inducing.
• IMP robots will now pick up materials left outside and bring them to storage.
• Extra bullet proofing of email code.
• Rain storms will now occasionally have some thunder. The distance of the thunder will indicate incoming storms.
• Room ambience changed to only play one room tone at a time.
• Room ambience will fade out faster (and is now more audible).
• Hurricanes tweaked for bigger impact.
• Solar events more sporadic.
• Toilet door animations fixed.
• Mineral mining is now deterministic from world seeds.
• Creature wandering behaviours now leave an 8m safe zone around map edges.
• Utility robots, protobirds and chickens using an item will quit out early if object is destroyed during use.
• Larger solar panels are prioritised over portable ones when building.
• Object placement errors and warnings are now less likely to get stuck on an incorrect warning state.
• Fix for colonists carrying hologram glowsticks.
• Colonist glow sticks less bright, more attenuation.
• Fix for base randomisation and generation issues.
• Colonists less likely to put raw food packets into storage room.
• Tutorial world seed changed, for a easier layout.
• Noise class now carries its own random generator for better world generation results.
• Colonist food preparation needs reduced.
• Building material stockpile need reduced.
• Aesthetic item need made more fuzzy.
• Entertainment need made more fuzzy.
• Needs for top level building facilities reduced.
• Need for data input balanced.
• Colonists will sleep for longer.
• Colonists will place items on the top shelf in storage and work down.
• Fixes for colonists duplicating work because they didn't realise someone already went out the airlock to do it.
• Room storage shelf picking for colonists more spread out through a room.
• Fix for one frame delay on weapon carrying animations.
• Fix for toilet door animation problems.
• Get next meaningful item in action sequence now returns a handle to the entity.
• Super capacitor and flywheel build importance reduced below that of power generators.
• Room parameters initialised on startup to prevent lockdowns.
• Utility robot will now properly aim at target when it's welding to prevent zapping people by accident.
• Lights added to individual utility robot sparks.
• Worklight food creation (when placed in hydroponics) need increased.
• Chicken egg creation time doubled.
• Fix for broken mining order colonist choice where colonists placed the dig markers and doors somewhere really stupid.
• Psychologist light modification choice now only changes settable lights. Chance that all lights are randomised.
• Increase in IV drip build importance.
• If there are 2 chickens they try to avoid asphyxiation.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Nanoprinter interaction point moved back slightly.
• Fix for crash if colonist tries to store something on a room shelf that you delete as they are placing.
• Fix for specular issue when MSAA was enabled.
• Doors now spark when damaged.
• Sparks can now cause items such as beds and chickens to ignite.
• Individual sparks can now emit light (Added to doors and worklights).
• Worklight sparks randomised.
• Worklight flicker brightness reduced.
• ECG RR interval readout fixed.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Solar array infotip spaces added.
• Colonists waiting in the airlock will perform idle animations such as yawning and looking around.
• AI agents will avoid idling in awkward corners of rooms.
• Suited colonists will now perform a repair animation.
• Airlock waits are reduced in length and by potential distance to cut down time wasted.
• Anything living now gets a short wait command if the door they are near gets locked.
• Additional text for colonists reporting on meals.
• Tutorial seed changed.
• Shadow added to text in emails.
• Airlock loading issue fixed.
• Door flipped lighting issue fixed.
• Potential fix for colonists getting too scared of dead alien bodies to do anything else.
• Insect lighting optimisations. Number of insects reduced.
• Mission timer changes.
• Removal of 8xMSAA option (Too many drivers die when this is enabled due to the huge VRAM cost).
• Optimisation to deferred lighting tile passes.
• Game random functions fixed to be conistant over different platforms.
• Lights are no longer culled if camera is inside them.
• When placing items the prev and next key text is now based on the key bind.
• Menu now locked at 60fps.
• Fix for uninitialised tutorial marker flag giving the player an easy base in missions.
• Behind the scenes UI changes for new colonists item assignment system.
• Utility bot no longer suffers from a glitch where its short ranged signalling system defers jobs to other bots that turn out to be itself.
• Interaction points (the blue person holograms) when placing items now cover a 1m circle. This makes it harder to place stuff too close to walls and get colonists stuck.
• The bounds of an item being placed are now tested against the room pathfinding grid, rather than just the items center. This means things are less likely to erroneously intersect walls.
• The pathfinding mesh map around all wall types has been refined to sit tighter to walls and is consistent in all directions. This should fix issues with some wall items being unreachable.
• Fix for key binding settings order mistake for different placement modes.
• Dormant insects stop creating light.
• Fix for insects floating upwards whilst resting.
• When a colonist placing an item there will be some sounds now.
• Fix for lack of grass on polar maps.
• Fix for too much grass causing crashes on some small high flora map generations.
• Workshop fires caused by unskilled colonists using the smelter have been reduced by half.
• Flywheels now specify their energy storage is in KW seconds.
• Flywheel and super capacitor storage increased a bit.
• Airlock priority increased
• Airlock interaction points are now on the outside until built. (making it easier to do room intersects)
• Tutorial tweaked for clarity.
• Colonist AI code cleanup.
• Sections added to the tutorial for the colonist and warning panels.
• Border added around room options panel
• Room options panel alignment issues fixed.
• Light brightness options added to more rooms
• Plants starting to get blight have higher priority for harvest.
• Blight emails now point out you may need less planters.
• Bulkhead door placement stickyness fixed.
• Fusion reactor degradation fixed.
• Repair robots can now fix fusion reactors.
• Repair jobs advertised by equipment to utility bots earlier. Colonists later.
• Utility bots have fuzzy preferences as to what sort of work they want to do.
• Check when starting a path find that the first node is within the world.
• People fighting fires in space suits will return to airlock if the fire goes out and cools down enough to prevent autoignition
• Event email spam on loading fixed.
• Engine compression added for more texture types.
• Crash fix for bases with no airlock.
• Fix for uninitialised research data issue.
• Sound latency reduced.
• Colour bleeding optimised.
• Bilateral blurs tweaked.
• Fix for lighting bug on skinned objects caused by transformations effecting vertex normals.
• A lot of small tech changes behind the scenes.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site. As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review as they drive sales which allows further investment in new content and development.

[ 2018-02-14 14:33:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.66 is here! This build brings hundreds of changes focusing on balancing, emergent behaviours, performance and the user interface. Here's a short video of me showing off a small handful of the new features: https://youtu.be/M2zi-qsPgBs

“Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I’m standing?”

Your I.M.P robots now have a growing sense of person, and with that of course, comes existential dread. Keep your robots occupied with work or they will start getting depressed, misbehaving, annoying your colonists or even smashing up valuable equipment.
 

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

With the new middle-click menu you can set which colonists are allowed to use a certain item. This functionality has many potential uses uses, from assigning ownership to a bed, to optimising entire rooms by having a select team of skilled users for the equipment. In the later game it can even be used to segregate off entire sections of the base. Of course the colonists, being human, might not always follow the rules forced upon them.  
  Colonist mouse-overs have been improved with ECG readouts now hinting at what exciting life threatening issues they may have and a brief inventory list of what the colonist is carrying around with them.  

Bok bok.. thud

Chicken AI is improved with new physical and personality traits. Some may be more susceptible to fire and sparks, some able to breath in a low atmosphere environment, some social, some anxious. As the chickens breed these traits will be passed down and potentially strengthened. Of course for this selection to happen chickens have to die a lot more, so they do.  
 

“What the photon is it?”

0.66 brings many optimisations and performance gains for many system configurations as well as improved visuals with a new ambient occlusion algorithm and lighting systems.
Many aspects of item placement and path-finding have been improved. Placement holograms are improved with smoother transitions between warning states and clearer information when there is an issue. Interaction points are brighter and higher resolution to better indicate how to face an object.
 

More changes:

• Mouse over info for different terrain types.
• New research tech added for Cognitive millimetre wave networks.
• In the colonist panel on the bottom left. If a colonist needs attention the colour of their name will be yellow. If they are unconscious it will now be red.
• Colonists will no longer write long boring emails about people they don't know yet.
• Colonists will no longer write emails about dogs that they confused for humans.
• When an email is being drawn, left clicking will now immediately draw all the text on screen.
• Colonists will now place less importance on going to the toilet
• Harvest early option added to hydroponics.
• Added delay to colonists pulling out glowsticks or putting them away as they got really indecisive if your power supply was varying and it was migraine inducing.
• IMP robots will now pick up materials left outside and bring them to storage.
• Extra bullet proofing of email code.
• Rain storms will now occasionally have some thunder. The distance of the thunder will indicate incoming storms.
• Room ambience changed to only play one room tone at a time.
• Room ambience will fade out faster (and is now more audible).
• Hurricanes tweaked for bigger impact.
• Solar events more sporadic.
• Toilet door animations fixed.
• Mineral mining is now deterministic from world seeds.
• Creature wandering behaviours now leave an 8m safe zone around map edges.
• Utility robots, protobirds and chickens using an item will quit out early if object is destroyed during use.
• Larger solar panels are prioritised over portable ones when building.
• Object placement errors and warnings are now less likely to get stuck on an incorrect warning state.
• Fix for colonists carrying hologram glowsticks.
• Colonist glow sticks less bright, more attenuation.
• Fix for base randomisation and generation issues.
• Colonists less likely to put raw food packets into storage room.
• Tutorial world seed changed, for a easier layout.
• Noise class now carries its own random generator for better world generation results.
• Colonist food preparation needs reduced.
• Building material stockpile need reduced.
• Aesthetic item need made more fuzzy.
• Entertainment need made more fuzzy.
• Needs for top level building facilities reduced.
• Need for data input balanced.
• Colonists will sleep for longer.
• Colonists will place items on the top shelf in storage and work down.
• Fixes for colonists duplicating work because they didn't realise someone already went out the airlock to do it.
• Room storage shelf picking for colonists more spread out through a room.
• Fix for one frame delay on weapon carrying animations.
• Fix for toilet door animation problems.
• Get next meaningful item in action sequence now returns a handle to the entity.
• Super capacitor and flywheel build importance reduced below that of power generators.
• Room parameters initialised on startup to prevent lockdowns.
• Utility robot will now properly aim at target when it's welding to prevent zapping people by accident.
• Lights added to individual utility robot sparks.
• Worklight food creation (when placed in hydroponics) need increased.
• Chicken egg creation time doubled.
• Fix for broken mining order colonist choice where colonists placed the dig markers and doors somewhere really stupid.
• Psychologist light modification choice now only changes settable lights. Chance that all lights are randomised.
• Increase in IV drip build importance.
• If there are 2 chickens they try to avoid asphyxiation.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Nanoprinter interaction point moved back slightly.
• Fix for crash if colonist tries to store something on a room shelf that you delete as they are placing.
• Fix for specular issue when MSAA was enabled.
• Doors now spark when damaged.
• Sparks can now cause items such as beds and chickens to ignite.
• Individual sparks can now emit light (Added to doors and worklights).
• Worklight sparks randomised.
• Worklight flicker brightness reduced.
• ECG RR interval readout fixed.
• Colonist should face towards smelter when using it.
• Solar array infotip spaces added.
• Colonists waiting in the airlock will perform idle animations such as yawning and looking around.
• AI agents will avoid idling in awkward corners of rooms.
• Suited colonists will now perform a repair animation.
• Airlock waits are reduced in length and by potential distance to cut down time wasted.
• Anything living now gets a short wait command if the door they are near gets locked.
• Additional text for colonists reporting on meals.
• Tutorial seed changed.
• Shadow added to text in emails.
• Airlock loading issue fixed.
• Door flipped lighting issue fixed.
• Potential fix for colonists getting too scared of dead alien bodies to do anything else.
• Insect lighting optimisations. Number of insects reduced.
• Mission timer changes.
• Removal of 8xMSAA option (Too many drivers die when this is enabled due to the huge VRAM cost).
• Optimisation to deferred lighting tile passes.
• Game random functions fixed to be conistant over different platforms.
• Lights are no longer culled if camera is inside them.
• When placing items the prev and next key text is now based on the key bind.
• Menu now locked at 60fps.
• Fix for uninitialised tutorial marker flag giving the player an easy base in missions.
• Behind the scenes UI changes for new colonists item assignment system.
• Utility bot no longer suffers from a glitch where its short ranged signalling system defers jobs to other bots that turn out to be itself.
• Interaction points (the blue person holograms) when placing items now cover a 1m circle. This makes it harder to place stuff too close to walls and get colonists stuck.
• The bounds of an item being placed are now tested against the room pathfinding grid, rather than just the items center. This means things are less likely to erroneously intersect walls.
• The pathfinding mesh map around all wall types has been refined to sit tighter to walls and is consistent in all directions. This should fix issues with some wall items being unreachable.
• Fix for key binding settings order mistake for different placement modes.
• Dormant insects stop creating light.
• Fix for insects floating upwards whilst resting.
• When a colonist placing an item there will be some sounds now.
• Fix for lack of grass on polar maps.
• Fix for too much grass causing crashes on some small high flora map generations.
• Workshop fires caused by unskilled colonists using the smelter have been reduced by half.
• Flywheels now specify their energy storage is in KW seconds.
• Flywheel and super capacitor storage increased a bit.
• Airlock priority increased
• Airlock interaction points are now on the outside until built. (making it easier to do room intersects)
• Tutorial tweaked for clarity.
• Colonist AI code cleanup.
• Sections added to the tutorial for the colonist and warning panels.
• Border added around room options panel
• Room options panel alignment issues fixed.
• Light brightness options added to more rooms
• Plants starting to get blight have higher priority for harvest.
• Blight emails now point out you may need less planters.
• Bulkhead door placement stickyness fixed.
• Fusion reactor degradation fixed.
• Repair robots can now fix fusion reactors.
• Repair jobs advertised by equipment to utility bots earlier. Colonists later.
• Utility bots have fuzzy preferences as to what sort of work they want to do.
• Check when starting a path find that the first node is within the world.
• People fighting fires in space suits will return to airlock if the fire goes out and cools down enough to prevent autoignition
• Event email spam on loading fixed.
• Engine compression added for more texture types.
• Crash fix for bases with no airlock.
• Fix for uninitialised research data issue.
• Sound latency reduced.
• Colour bleeding optimised.
• Bilateral blurs tweaked.
• Fix for lighting bug on skinned objects caused by transformations effecting vertex normals.
• A lot of small tech changes behind the scenes.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site. As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review as they drive sales which allows further investment in new content and development.

[ 2018-02-14 14:33:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's that time of year again! For a holiday? No! What's a Holiday?! It's time for another Maia update of course. https://youtu.be/sn2QTFseTEs

Hands-On.

Colonists are now able to hold items whilst walking around the base allowing them to telegraph what task they are hoping to do next. A colonist with a hammer may be on their way to build some room segments, one holding a wrench on a build or repair job, rations the food station or storage, and a colonist holding a glow stick during a blackout might just be afraid of the dark.

Intentional Bugs

Insects form a critical component of any food chain, and on Maia the rule holds true. The new flying insects will provide a food source for the smaller alien creatures, allowing them to broaden their diet and grow quicker. The bugs use bioluminescence for mating, so exterior base lighting might attract their attention and cause them to swarm your colonists.
The migration and breeding of the alien life has changed to reflect this new system. The balance should reduce the risk of equipment destruction or alien incursions to new bases, but increase it substantially later in the game.

Physical Research

Raw research data is now represented by physical data tapes in the world, allowing colonists to stockpile and store information they have learned about the planet ready for it to be crunched into new technologies and techniques in the research lab computer systems. Just be careful to keep them dry and safe, magnetic tape is flimsy and extremely flammable.

Colonist Variation

As well as adding several new colonist visual models into the game this update brings new psychological differences to your colonists. The personality of a colonist can effect their motivation, moods, how they interact with others and even their susceptibility to certain mental conditions. Picking the right traits might just be a matter of life and death.

Announcements

The base system will now announce many more of the incoming issues and disasters facing your colony. Many sounds have been added or tweaked in the game world and user interface to give better feedback and a more balanced soundscape.

Performance Changes

New cache optimisations, path finding changes, C++ code modernisation and threading balance has improved CPU performance for large bases up to 40%.

Other Notable Changes:

• Stand alone missions extended
• Chickens set for destruction will be prioritised for eating over others.
• Chickens respond to player by ejecting feathers.
• Utility robot is now much less likely to immobilise itself in first person mode.
• Text crawl effects reinstated for new emails and messages from colonists.
• Updated (deliberate) glitching effect on infotips of objects hit by solar flare eletromotive effect.
• Clean up of solar arrays and geothermal infotip generation.
• Meteor strike lighting tweaked.
• Communications tower now repairable by robots.
• Megacephalagia initial migration randomised to prevent email spam.
• UI made more responsive.
• New item descriptions.
• Photosynthesis more accurately linked to light wavelengths.
• Work light power usage reduced according to what colour the light is.
• Colonists walking and running tweaked. Fix for stamina and stop-start running.
• Movement tweaks to reduce pauses waiting for doors.
• Colonist social needs reduced so they waste less time.
• Colonists can turn faster in suits to prevent them getting stuck walking in circles.
• Starting base has a wall screen to hint to new players they should be using them.
• Snap-to-grid key now rebindable.
• Bulkhead doors and airlocks are more effective at stopping cave ins.
• Plant blight spreading behaviour changed (If you get a lot of blight, plant less crops!)
• Fix for object selection issues when tracking or when setting colours.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site. As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review!

[ 2017-12-22 21:36:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's that time of year again! For a holiday? No! What's a Holiday?! It's time for another Maia update of course. https://youtu.be/sn2QTFseTEs

Hands-On.

Colonists are now able to hold items whilst walking around the base allowing them to telegraph what task they are hoping to do next. A colonist with a hammer may be on their way to build some room segments, one holding a wrench on a build or repair job, rations the food station or storage, and a colonist holding a glow stick during a blackout might just be afraid of the dark.

Intentional Bugs

Insects form a critical component of any food chain, and on Maia the rule holds true. The new flying insects will provide a food source for the smaller alien creatures, allowing them to broaden their diet and grow quicker. The bugs use bioluminescence for mating, so exterior base lighting might attract their attention and cause them to swarm your colonists.
The migration and breeding of the alien life has changed to reflect this new system. The balance should reduce the risk of equipment destruction or alien incursions to new bases, but increase it substantially later in the game.

Physical Research

Raw research data is now represented by physical data tapes in the world, allowing colonists to stockpile and store information they have learned about the planet ready for it to be crunched into new technologies and techniques in the research lab computer systems. Just be careful to keep them dry and safe, magnetic tape is flimsy and extremely flammable.
 

Colonist Variation

As well as adding several new colonist visual models into the game this update brings new psychological differences to your colonists. The personality of a colonist can effect their motivation, moods, how they interact with others and even their susceptibility to certain mental conditions. Picking the right traits might just be a matter of life and death.

Announcements

The base system will now announce many more of the incoming issues and disasters facing your colony. Many sounds have been added or tweaked in the game world and user interface to give better feedback and a more balanced soundscape.

Performance Changes

New cache optimisations, path finding changes, C++ code modernisation and threading balance has improved CPU performance for large bases up to 40%.

Other Notable Changes:

• Stand alone missions extended
• Chickens set for destruction will be prioritised for eating over others.
• Chickens respond to player by ejecting feathers.
• Utility robot is now much less likely to immobilise itself in first person mode.
• Text crawl effects reinstated for new emails and messages from colonists.
• Updated (deliberate) glitching effect on infotips of objects hit by solar flare eletromotive effect.
• Clean up of solar arrays and geothermal infotip generation.
• Meteor strike lighting tweaked.
• Communications tower now repairable by robots.
• Megacephalagia initial migration randomised to prevent email spam.
• UI made more responsive.
• New item descriptions.
• Photosynthesis more accurately linked to light wavelengths.
• Work light power usage reduced according to what colour the light is.
• Colonists walking and running tweaked. Fix for stamina and stop-start running.
• Movement tweaks to reduce pauses waiting for doors.
• Colonist social needs reduced so they waste less time.
• Colonists can turn faster in suits to prevent them getting stuck walking in circles.
• Starting base has a wall screen to hint to new players they should be using them.
• Snap-to-grid key now rebindable.
• Bulkhead doors and airlocks are more effective at stopping cave ins.
• Plant blight spreading behaviour changed (If you get a lot of blight, plant less crops!)
• Fix for object selection issues when tracking or when setting colours.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repo on the development site. As always I am very open to feedback and will fix bugs as we find them or they are reported. If you are enjoying playing the game, please remember to leave a Steam review!

[ 2017-12-22 21:36:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.64 is here! Cats, Dogs, Hurricanes, GUI, detailed new AI and lots of optimisations and fixes. Here's a quick video showing off some of the cool new things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtiB-eOa-C4

MEOW

Firstly we have the cats. Based off the pets of our Kickstarter backers, our feline friends have travelled across the cosmos to keep us company (when they feel like it), damage furniture and sleep in a lot in inconvenient places. They will, very occasionally, socialise with the colonists and boost moods around the base.

WOOF

The dogs make themselves a little more useful. Defending the territory of the base, they will follow patrol routes, noting weaknesses in the bases defences as they go, iterating and improving their coverage. They will alert and then defend against alien incursion, barking and growling at any intruder. They can also be given move orders which they will (sometimes) obey and integrate into their guarding behaviour. It's not all work, they will also distract colonists for tummy rubs, boosting moods and fulfilling the social needs of the lonely. Whether the dogs make friends with the cats or not is up to the cats, and so is a rare and unpredictable occurrence.

RAWR

The alien creature AI is now more dynamic, with all species now having social structures and breeding patterns. They now suffer from fear and panic and so can be forced out the base using your dogs to herd them, rather than using the weak and unpredictable colonists.

WOOSH

Hurricanes can now make landfall and threaten your bases. These catastrophic events will build up over time, tearing apart equipment on the surface and shutting down wind and solar generation. They will also leave a lasting effect on the weather simulation, leaving drastic pressure changes that will take weeks to normalise. On the bright side you'll generate a lot of wind power before the turbines go into lock down and/or explode.
]

CLICK

There are many changes to the UI, but a key one is the new finder panels opened by clicking the colonist, warning and robot buttons on the left hand side. These provide an easier way to find a specific colonist, robot or problem with the base. The warning panel now focuses on many of the smaller issues that a base may face, allowing you to isolate and fix smaller issues before everyone dies in an embarrassing manner. Autosaves are now in game, so you will always have a base to go back to when you "accidentally" murder everyone in your charge by locking them in a room with no doors and a hundred angry chickens.

TWINKLE

The lighting engine has had some major rewrites and optimisations. This will allow for more extravagant base designs at higher and smoother frame rates. Remember, your choice of lighting will have a noticeable impact on the moods of your colonists. Many shaders and effects have been tweaked or in some cases rewritten, leading to more natural lighting and more aesthetically pleasing visuals.

Beyond lies the.. WUB

The dogs aren't the only woofers you'll be hearing in 0.64! We've implemented many new sounds and reworked some of the existing ones to add more feedback from the game and realistic detail in the soundscape. Other Tweaks:

• Over-ripe crops will suffer less blight progression.
• Airlock cycles and new door models.
• Wall heaters now turn off at 26 rather than 30 degrees.
• Several late game food generation issues addressed
• New font tweaks for better shadows and easier reading.
• Text button active areas better fitted to buttons.
• Several texture compression artifacts fixed.
• Screenspace raytraced reflections corrected.
• Creature territory systems optimised
• Events and dangers generation balanced and tweaked for longer games.
• Thousands of small optimisations and code modernisations.
• More temporary names in the colonist generator (Kickstarter names list coming soon!)

That's all for now. I will be back soon with more updates, content, fixes and softly spoken update videos. Get yourself on the Steam development branch to get them as they go live. All feedback is appreciated!

[ 2017-10-19 13:27:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.64 is here! Cats, Dogs, Hurricanes, GUI, detailed new AI and lots of optimisations and fixes. Here's a quick video showing off some of the cool new things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtiB-eOa-C4

MEOW

Firstly we have the cats. Based off the pets of our Kickstarter backers, our feline friends have travelled across the cosmos to keep us company (when they feel like it), damage furniture and sleep in a lot in inconvenient places. They will, very occasionally, socialise with the colonists and boost moods around the base.

WOOF

The dogs make themselves a little more useful. Defending the territory of the base, they will follow patrol routes, noting weaknesses in the bases defences as they go, iterating and improving their coverage. They will alert and then defend against alien incursion, barking and growling at any intruder. They can also be given move orders which they will (sometimes) obey and integrate into their guarding behaviour. It's not all work, they will also distract colonists for tummy rubs, boosting moods and fulfilling the social needs of the lonely. Whether the dogs make friends with the cats or not is up to the cats, and so is a rare and unpredictable occurrence.

RAWR

The alien creature AI is now more dynamic, with all species now having social structures and breeding patterns. They now suffer from fear and panic and so can be forced out the base using your dogs to herd them, rather than using the weak and unpredictable colonists.

WOOSH

Hurricanes can now make landfall and threaten your bases. These catastrophic events will build up over time, tearing apart equipment on the surface and shutting down wind and solar generation. They will also leave a lasting effect on the weather simulation, leaving drastic pressure changes that will take weeks to normalise. On the bright side you'll generate a lot of wind power before the turbines go into lock down and/or explode.

CLICK

There are many changes to the UI, but a key one is the new finder panels opened by clicking the colonist, warning and robot buttons on the left hand side. These provide an easier way to find a specific colonist, robot or problem with the base. The warning panel now focuses on many of the smaller issues that a base may face, allowing you to isolate and fix smaller issues before everyone dies in an embarrassing manner. Autosaves are now in game, so you will always have a base to go back to when you "accidentally" murder everyone in your charge by locking them in a room with no doors and a hundred angry chickens.

TWINKLE

The lighting engine has had some major rewrites and optimisations. This will allow for more extravagant base designs at higher and smoother frame rates. Remember, your choice of lighting will have a noticeable impact on the moods of your colonists. Many shaders and effects have been tweaked or in some cases rewritten, leading to more natural lighting and more aesthetically pleasing visuals.

Beyond lies the.. WUB

The dogs aren't the only woofers you'll be hearing in 0.64! We've implemented many new sounds and reworked some of the existing ones to add more feedback from the game and realistic detail in the soundscape. Other Tweaks:

• Over-ripe crops will suffer less blight progression.
• Airlock cycles and new door models.
• Wall heaters now turn off at 26 rather than 30 degrees.
• Several late game food generation issues addressed
• New font tweaks for better shadows and easier reading.
• Text button active areas better fitted to buttons.
• Several texture compression artifacts fixed.
• Screenspace raytraced reflections corrected.
• Creature territory systems optimised
• Events and dangers generation balanced and tweaked for longer games.
• Thousands of small optimisations and code modernisations.
• More temporary names in the colonist generator (Kickstarter names list coming soon!)

That's all for now. I will be back soon with more updates, content, fixes and softly spoken update videos. Get yourself on the Steam development branch to get them as they go live. All feedback is appreciated!

[ 2017-10-19 13:27:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.63 is ready. This update brings a lot of new features as well as an overhaul of the game's simulation and balance. I want to say thank you to everyone who gave feedback over the summer, it's helped me improve the game significantly. Here's a video of me playing the latest build and showing off some of the new features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3i7aMNqyvA&feature=youtu.be

AWOL

If treated poorly enough, colonists can now leave the base and head off to their inevitable deaths in the barren wastelands of Maia. Fulfilling food, rest, social needs and building an aesthetically pleasing base will all be important to keeping them loyal. That said, some colonists are just cowards, so don't feel too bad about them.

High Energy

The games bodily simulation of the colonists has been made more accurate with heat loss through convection, conduction and radiation in different mediums. Colonist metabolisms are finer tuned with effects from sweat, to kinetic energy losses affecting them as they go about their days. Keep your colony warm and sources of water abundant to keep them happy, efficient, and breathing.

Maian Time Slip

The day length of Maia has been made longer. This will give your colonists more time to carry out essential.. and less essential tasks, and take the pressure off growing colonies. Conversely with the slower simulation of the climate and weather, and longer nights, solar and wind generation will now be more challenging to keep online, requiring a greater focus on efficient storage and energy management.

Notable Changes since 0.62:

• IMPs no longer get stuck sparking.
• IMPs will now place minerals in the smelter. They cannot start it themselves however so you will have to manually - or wait for a colonist.
• Player now receives an email when they lose all their IMP robots.
• Flywheels can be clicked on to be put into charge only mode. Allowing you to store energy for emergencies.
• PAUSE BUTTON added to the UI. Pausing no longer causes glitching, is compatible with the building UI. (Don't get too used to the bottom left placement, it's going in the top right soon)
• UI changes to hide text and mouse attached objects when hovering over buttons.
• Mouse now sits properly infront of UI items.
• Condenser now has visible running water when clicked on or used.
• Minerals make dust clouds when dropped or clicked on.
• Workshop table, bodybags, foot packets, grass and other items now have click reactions.
• Alien plant samples have a nice mist effect.
• Numerous tweaks to AI and balancing.
• Large amounts of food creation balancing.
• Food preparation bugs fixed.
• All food KJ calculated more accurately based on the correct breeds and in many cases have increased substantially (potatoes and chickens are over double what they were).
• Ration packs are now far more likely to be built.
• Ration packs can be opened by colonists and the player.
• Colonist standard and binge meal sizes increased.
• Condensers now advertise the high level "water purification" need (like the solar stills) so are better prioritised when building.
• Many small optimisations and a huge amount of code cleanup. Potentially fixing a lot of bugs and likely preventing future ones.
• Missing rain fixed.
• Food trays appearing "unbuilt" issue fixed.
• Colonists now simulate heat radiation and conduction due to convection on their skin.
• Colonists put less direct heat into a room (as roughly 20% is put into kinectic/mechanical energy)
• Fix for missing molerat animation causing a crash.
• Smelting priority tweaks.
• Stockpiling bugs fixed.
• Creation of hydroponics planters priority increased.
• Bug fixed on determining food creation priority need.
• Colonists with suitable skills (construction) will be able to produce twice as much building materials from the smelter.
• Colonists are less likely to hoard materials.
• Colonists can now binge on food if they need to make up more than one meal. This means they can eat 10000kj of energy rather than the usual 6000kj.
• Colonist energy needs slightly balanced to account for heat generated by food digestion.
• Wind turbines will take more damage before advertising repair task to colonists (although will repair bots will maintain the current level)
• Fix for black tiles being left when a door is removed.
• Doors sat in the middle of rooms will now automatically be set to be destroyed by colonists.
• Fix for missing text on the Fusion and Fission reactors.
• Fix for KW/W mixups.
• Fix for IMPs not picking up fossils.
• Desks now moveable by colonists.
• Fix for colonists not filling up the storage room shelves with raw food once a prep station has become full.
• Smelter now advertises it's need for minerals sooner after being emptied. This should speed up construction of building materials marginally.
• Stockpile settings for building materials lowered so people get less stuck if they don't realise they should be managing it.
• Stockpile settings panels now comes up when mousing over a room. Hopefully people will realise it exists now.
• Window sizing bug fixes.
• Full screen now works far better.
• Rendering quality improved.

There are more updates, fixes and features coming soon. I recommend jumping on the development branch if you haven't already! That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews. I'd really love some up to date Steam reviews.

[ 2017-08-15 17:41:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.63 is ready. This update brings a lot of new features as well as an overhaul of the game's simulation and balance. I want to say thank you to everyone who gave feedback over the summer, it's helped me improve the game significantly. Here's a video of me playing the latest build and showing off some of the new features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3i7aMNqyvA&feature=youtu.be  

AWOL

If treated poorly enough, colonists can now leave the base and head off to their inevitable deaths in the barren wastelands of Maia. Fulfilling food, rest, social needs and building an aesthetically pleasing base will all be important to keeping them loyal. That said, some colonists are just cowards, so don't feel too bad about them.

High Energy

The games bodily simulation of the colonists has been made more accurate with heat loss through convection, conduction and radiation in different mediums. Colonist metabolisms are finer tuned with effects from sweat, to kinetic energy losses affecting them as they go about their days. Keep your colony warm and sources of water abundant to keep them happy, efficient, and breathing.
 

Maian Time Slip

The day length of Maia has been made longer. This will give your colonists more time to carry out essential.. and less essential tasks, and take the pressure off growing colonies. Conversely with the slower simulation of the climate and weather, and longer nights, solar and wind generation will now be more challenging to keep online, requiring a greater focus on efficient storage and energy management.
 

Notable Changes since 0.62:

• IMPs no longer get stuck sparking.
• IMPs will now place minerals in the smelter. They cannot start it themselves however so you will have to manually - or wait for a colonist.
• Player now receives an email when they lose all their IMP robots.
• Flywheels can be clicked on to be put into charge only mode. Allowing you to store energy for emergencies.
• PAUSE BUTTON added to the UI. Pausing no longer causes glitching, is compatible with the building UI. (Don't get too used to the bottom left placement, it's going in the top right soon)
• UI changes to hide text and mouse attached objects when hovering over buttons.
• Mouse now sits properly infront of UI items.
• Condenser now has visible running water when clicked on or used.
• Minerals make dust clouds when dropped or clicked on.
• Workshop table, bodybags, foot packets, grass and other items now have click reactions.
• Alien plant samples have a nice mist effect.
• Numerous tweaks to AI and balancing.
• Large amounts of food creation balancing.
• Food preparation bugs fixed.
• All food KJ calculated more accurately based on the correct breeds and in many cases have increased substantially (potatoes and chickens are over double what they were).
• Ration packs are now far more likely to be built.
• Ration packs can be opened by colonists and the player.
• Colonist standard and binge meal sizes increased.
• Condensers now advertise the high level "water purification" need (like the solar stills) so are better prioritised when building.
• Many small optimisations and a huge amount of code cleanup. Potentially fixing a lot of bugs and likely preventing future ones.
• Missing rain fixed.
• Food trays appearing "unbuilt" issue fixed.
• Colonists now simulate heat radiation and conduction due to convection on their skin.
• Colonists put less direct heat into a room (as roughly 20% is put into kinectic/mechanical energy)
• Fix for missing molerat animation causing a crash.
• Smelting priority tweaks.
• Stockpiling bugs fixed.
• Creation of hydroponics planters priority increased.
• Bug fixed on determining food creation priority need.
• Colonists with suitable skills (construction) will be able to produce twice as much building materials from the smelter.
• Colonists are less likely to hoard materials.
• Colonists can now binge on food if they need to make up more than one meal. This means they can eat 10000kj of energy rather than the usual 6000kj.
• Colonist energy needs slightly balanced to account for heat generated by food digestion.
• Wind turbines will take more damage before advertising repair task to colonists (although will repair bots will maintain the current level)
• Fix for black tiles being left when a door is removed.
• Doors sat in the middle of rooms will now automatically be set to be destroyed by colonists.
• Fix for missing text on the Fusion and Fission reactors.
• Fix for KW/W mixups.
• Fix for IMPs not picking up fossils.
• Desks now moveable by colonists.
• Fix for colonists not filling up the storage room shelves with raw food once a prep station has become full.
• Smelter now advertises it's need for minerals sooner after being emptied. This should speed up construction of building materials marginally.
• Stockpile settings for building materials lowered so people get less stuck if they don't realise they should be managing it.
• Stockpile settings panels now comes up when mousing over a room. Hopefully people will realise it exists now.
• Window sizing bug fixes.
• Full screen now works far better.
• Rendering quality improved.

  There are more updates, fixes and features coming soon. I recommend jumping on the development branch if you haven't already! That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews. I'd really love some up to date Steam reviews.

[ 2017-08-15 17:41:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's update time and Maia 0.62 has been deemed fit for consumption! Here's a quick video of me showing off some of the latest features I've been working on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR-8YrmHrWY

Alien Breeding and Parenting Behaviours

More of the alien creatures can now breed and produce a flock of tiny cute murder machines. This will change how they protect their territories, react to colonists, and also feed back into the simulation of the ecosystem in new and emergent ways. Baby creatures, and animals of all sorts, will now imprint on the first thing they see and follow and copy their new parent. So be sure to keep your livestock room doors locked unless you want your dogs to become unsuspecting parents to your hatchling chickens.

Fear

Colonists will now sometimes break down and run away from something if it terrifies them, such as an alien sneaking into the base or an out of control fire breaking out. They will go cower and cry and feel guilty about how much of a burden they are to the colony. When trapped in rooms colonists will start getting very upset and start banging on doors to try and escape. Leaving them in the room will deeply upset them, potentially damaging their sanity causing them to harm equipment or themselves!

Fine Dining

Colonists can now sit down at the dining table for relaxing communal meals in the living area, allowing them to rest, eat and socialise simultaneously. They can can also now deposit raw food supplies in the storage room if there is a surplus of production. These can be picked up later to build ration packs or to fill a food preparation station.

Deep Learning

Colonists can now learn skills by practising them, once a new skill is leant it will allow the colonist to perform the action better, faster or more often. They can also sit at desks to learn new expertise in theory, saving themselves the effort and bringing more exotic skill sets to your colony.

Other major changes:

• Fix for locked doors blocking nearby objects.
• Loads of new detail and variants in colonist activity report emails.
• Colonist activity reports added for building rooms, panicking, and shooting animals.
• New 32 exe for Windows users. Stop using 32 bit Windows, please, join us in the future.
• Turret tracer effect added. Turret PFX updated.
• Several object placement problems fixed (such as nearby blocked objects stopping you placing something).
• Higher density of grass, foliage and creatures on the exterior world map.
• Button flashing added for new emails to grab the user's attention faster.
• Fusion reactor now requires you to initiate a power up. This will require many fly wheels or super capacitors.
• Fly wheels and super capacitors have a higher capacity to better represent future materials. This now makes a larger solar powered base more feasible.
• Smelting rebalanced.
• Colonist stockpiling needs balanced.
• Rebalancing of lighting.
• Colour grade changed.
• New animated volumetric fog outside.
• Lava fluid simulation optimised.
• Body KJ of energy for creatures changed which should lead to different hunger and carrion behaviours.
• Bug with air vents settings fixed.
• Crop blight tweaked to be slightly less predicable.
• Several maintenance needs tweaked for different items.
• Pips added to the GUI between emails to denote the differences in specific days.
• Fixed several door pathfinding fixes.
• Massive performance optimisations on several core systems. (40% better frame rate in some cases).
• Many small optimisation fixes.
• Fixes for several missing pfx in the exterior and lava.
• Large amounts of code cleanup on game and engine.
• A few potential crash bugs fixed.

Maia is now undergoing very regular changes. Sometimes several a day. Get on the development branch if you'd like to be part of this transition from Alpha to Beta. The 1.0 release for Maia is now set for August so I need all the help I can get with testing. That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.

[ 2017-06-23 15:06:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's update time and Maia 0.62 has been deemed fit for consumption! Here's a quick video of me showing off some of the latest features I've been working on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR-8YrmHrWY

Alien Breeding and Parenting Behaviours

More of the alien creatures can now breed and produce a flock of tiny cute murder machines. This will change how they protect their territories, react to colonists, and also feed back into the simulation of the ecosystem in new and emergent ways. Baby creatures, and animals of all sorts, will now imprint on the first thing they see and follow and copy their new parent. So be sure to keep your livestock room doors locked unless you want your dogs to become unsuspecting parents to your hatchling chickens.
 

Fear

Colonists will now sometimes break down and run away from something if it terrifies them, such as an alien sneaking into the base or an out of control fire breaking out. They will go cower and cry and feel guilty about how much of a burden they are to the colony. When trapped in rooms colonists will start getting very upset and start banging on doors to try and escape. Leaving them in the room will deeply upset them, potentially damaging their sanity causing them to harm equipment or themselves!  
 

Fine Dining

Colonists can now sit down at the dining table for relaxing communal meals in the living area, allowing them to rest, eat and socialise simultaneously. They can can also now deposit raw food supplies in the storage room if there is a surplus of production. These can be picked up later to build ration packs or to fill a food preparation station.  
 

Deep Learning

Colonists can now learn skills by practising them, once a new skill is leant it will allow the colonist to perform the action better, faster or more often. They can also sit at desks to learn new expertise in theory, saving themselves the effort and bringing more exotic skill sets to your colony.  
 

Other major changes:

• Fix for locked doors blocking nearby objects.
• Loads of new detail and variants in colonist activity report emails.
• Colonist activity reports added for building rooms, panicking, and shooting animals.
• New 32 exe for Windows users. Stop using 32 bit Windows, please, join us in the future.
• Turret tracer effect added. Turret PFX updated.
• Several object placement problems fixed (such as nearby blocked objects stopping you placing something).
• Higher density of grass, foliage and creatures on the exterior world map.
• Button flashing added for new emails to grab the user's attention faster.
• Fusion reactor now requires you to initiate a power up. This will require many fly wheels or super capacitors.
• Fly wheels and super capacitors have a higher capacity to better represent future materials. This now makes a larger solar powered base more feasible.
• Smelting rebalanced.
• Colonist stockpiling needs balanced.
• Rebalancing of lighting.
• Colour grade changed.
• New animated volumetric fog outside.
• Lava fluid simulation optimised.
• Body KJ of energy for creatures changed which should lead to different hunger and carrion behaviours.
• Bug with air vents settings fixed.
• Crop blight tweaked to be slightly less predicable.
• Several maintenance needs tweaked for different items.
• Pips added to the GUI between emails to denote the differences in specific days.
• Fixed several door pathfinding fixes.
• Massive performance optimisations on several core systems. (40% better frame rate in some cases).
• Many small optimisation fixes.
• Fixes for several missing pfx in the exterior and lava.
• Large amounts of code cleanup on game and engine.
• A few potential crash bugs fixed.

Maia is now undergoing very regular changes. Sometimes several a day. Get on the development branch if you'd like to be part of this transition from Alpha to Beta. The 1.0 release for Maia is now set for August so I need all the help I can get with testing. That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.

[ 2017-06-23 15:06:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.61 is out now. Right now. This build brings many new useful features to the game and a significant amount of tweaks and fixes. Here’s a video of me playing the latest release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZyRkEkUCME

Interface

This update brings several new user interface and management tools to the game. Room options are now available and allow for managing the stockpiling of items, new security features and even tweaking the lighting of a room. Just click a room to see the available options. Carefully managing these fine grained controls can significantly improve the efficiency of a busy base.
When placing items the UI now presents more useful information about whether an object is reachable, and visible paths are shown to illustrate how the colonists would walk to the item.

Movement orders

You can now practice your interior design skills and rearrange items in your base using the new movement order. By click-dragging on an item you will create a new move order and your colonists will push the items to their new locations. Utility robots given movement orders will use them as waypoints and if they are not too busy, go directly to the locations.
The tutorial has been significantly reworked and with more guidance and information, and provides an easier and clearer first contact with the game. Even experienced players may find it useful to give it another go.

Planning

Build priority changes for better base flow and design. Colonists are now more aware of the flow of a base and will order door builds based on the need of that specific room. They will also no longer have complete emotional breakdowns when locked in a room with no doors, so will build one if it is placed. They will also share workbenches more efficiently and the amount of duplicated builds has been reduced. Suit refill points are now critical to surface operations. You can no longer build items far away from your base and must build a supply chain to the item so your colonists can restock their suits and rest.  
Resuscitation and first aid has been added, allowing colonists to save unconscious members of the team (if they like them enough). Just ensure you pick some colonists with medical skills as improperly given resuscitation can give patients other health complications.

Other notable changes:

• Colonists with surface walking skills will now walk much faster in suits.
• Atmosphere generator output increased a little.
• Vent system tweaked to push less air than the atmosphere generator.
• Medical emergencies are now mentioned by the base announcer.
• Probe generation fixed. Every map now has several lost robotic probes to find.
• Tutorial spelling mistakes fixed.
• Migration event emails now lock onto specific creature.
• Camera locks on to colonist who sent an email when it is opened.
• Utility robot infotip fixed.
• If an AI is destroyed in code they will now properly release any item they were using.
• Tutorial can now be completed using the alt-rotate.
• Text overlays for objects and rooms are no longer drawn when an email is open.
• Mouseover text is hidden if the player opens the manifest.
• Cursor animations for left and right clicking.
• Cursor size options added to the menu.
• Capsules should no longer land next to each other.
• Holes in several environment models fixed.
• Fix for pathfinding bug where colonists went to wrong interaction point, potentially getting stuck.
• Interface options menu split off.
• Lights brighten when mouse-overed.
• Tracking sound fixed to only fire when clicking a living item.
• Sounds for selecting colonists on the menu added.
• Sounds for turning on and off heaters fixed.
• Fixed several colonist animation bugs.
• General game code improvements and optimisations.
• Inter-gameobject messaging improved code quality and to reduce bugs.
• Engine render calls made more efficient.
• Lava lights fixed.
• Lava optimisations.

As you may be aware, we are rapidly approaching beta, so do send us all your bugs and issues. Be sure to get yourself on the development branch to see all the latest changes. That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.

[ 2017-04-21 15:14:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.61 is out now. Right now. This build brings many new useful features to the game and a significant amount of tweaks and fixes. Heres a video of me playing the latest release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZyRkEkUCME

Interface

This update brings several new user interface and management tools to the game. Room options are now available and allow for managing the stockpiling of items, new security features and even tweaking the lighting of a room. Just click a room to see the available options. Carefully managing these fine grained controls can significantly improve the efficiency of a busy base.
When placing items the UI now presents more useful information about whether an object is reachable, and visible paths are shown to illustrate how the colonists would walk to the item.

Movement orders

You can now practice your interior design skills and rearrange items in your base using the new movement order. By click-dragging on an item you will create a new move order and your colonists will push the items to their new locations. Utility robots given movement orders will use them as waypoints and if they are not too busy, go directly to the locations.
The tutorial has been significantly reworked and with more guidance and information, and provides an easier and clearer first contact with the game. Even experienced players may find it useful to give it another go.

Planning

Build priority changes for better base flow and design. Colonists are now more aware of the flow of a base and will order door builds based on the need of that specific room. They will also no longer have complete emotional breakdowns when locked in a room with no doors, so will build one if it is placed. They will also share workbenches more efficiently and the amount of duplicated builds has been reduced. Suit refill points are now critical to surface operations. You can no longer build items far away from your base and must build a supply chain to the item so your colonists can restock their suits and rest.
Resuscitation and first aid has been added, allowing colonists to save unconscious members of the team (if they like them enough). Just ensure you pick some colonists with medical skills as improperly given resuscitation can give patients other health complications.

Other notable changes:

• Colonists with surface walking skills will now walk much faster in suits.
• Atmosphere generator output increased a little.
• Vent system tweaked to push less air than the atmosphere generator.
• Medical emergencies are now mentioned by the base announcer.
• Probe generation fixed. Every map now has several lost robotic probes to find.
• Tutorial spelling mistakes fixed.
• Migration event emails now lock onto specific creature.
• Camera locks on to colonist who sent an email when it is opened.
• Utility robot infotip fixed.
• If an AI is destroyed in code they will now properly release any item they were using.
• Tutorial can now be completed using the alt-rotate.
• Text overlays for objects and rooms are no longer drawn when an email is open.
• Mouseover text is hidden if the player opens the manifest.
• Cursor animations for left and right clicking.
• Cursor size options added to the menu.
• Capsules should no longer land next to each other.
• Holes in several environment models fixed.
• Fix for pathfinding bug where colonists went to wrong interaction point, potentially getting stuck.
• Interface options menu split off.
• Lights brighten when mouse-overed.
• Tracking sound fixed to only fire when clicking a living item.
• Sounds for selecting colonists on the menu added.
• Sounds for turning on and off heaters fixed.
• Fixed several colonist animation bugs.
• General game code improvements and optimisations.
• Inter-gameobject messaging improved code quality and to reduce bugs.
• Engine render calls made more efficient.
• Lava lights fixed.
• Lava optimisations.

As you may be aware, we are rapidly approaching beta, so do send us all your bugs and issues. Be sure to get yourself on the development branch to see all the latest changes. That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.

[ 2017-04-21 15:14:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alpha 0.60 is here! Lava can now rain down into your base, incinerating anything in its path. Here's a video of me showing off the new features and changes to the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20AsxhlpBkU

Lava

Lava, (perhaps more accurately, magma) is now in the game! Maps with high tectonic activity will run a huge risk of lava breaches, that will pour into your colony and destroy anything in its path. Watch as your equipment and colonists die gloriously in the all consuming fire. The system is a full 3d fluid smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation so has realistically simulated viscosity, density and pressures all running in real time.
 

Memories.

All intelligences in the game now have a detailed long term memory, allowing them to remember their actions, moods and feelings. In their emails, colonists will now comment on what they did in a day, why they did it, how they felt about it, how important it was and even details down to what the bases conditions were like at the time. Domestic and alien creatures will use their memory to make better choices in the future, such as returning to a place they found food or warmth.
 

Relationships

Colonists can now make friends, build relationships, fall in love and make enemies. The relationships will change their attitudes towards each other, their moods and their behaviour in the base. New interactions, such as arguments, follwing and shoving will come about as colonists get to know each other.

Interface improvements

The game's zoom has been improved substantially to allow you to get in close to the action, and also to allow you to pull back for a wider overview of your colony. Many small changes have been added to the user interface to improve object placement, such as wall-snapping auto-rotation of items and object-type rotation memory, to allow for consistent placement when placing several duplicate items. A small amount of latency has been reduced from the mouse movement which will also make things feel more responsive. The new mission-day counter on the top right of the screen will give you a better feel for your base's progress as you track the passage of time.
 

Other notable Changes:

• Plants can now be harvested earlier if needed. Priority is given to plants that are fully matured.
• Colonist food preparation priority increased.
• Extra detail added to colonist emails regarding food and base planning.
• Pressing escape from the options menu now takes you back to the game.
• IMP digging cancel requests no longer pop up if there are no dig orders.
• Colonists can now request to disable the alarms for a short period of time.
• Game window buffer swap now performed before the frame end sleep, to improve responsiveness.
• Tweak for world gen to prevent jungle worlds!
• If water need is higher than food need, the colonists may now eat to fulfil it too.
• Colonist water need only hijacks food need if need is greater than 50%
• Eating now gives a bit more water.
• Solar arrays now correctly advertising food need to the vox nocturna.
• Geothermal generator now repairable by robots.
• Twilight Zone mission ending and some text fixed.
• Colonists will no longer go outside without suits to shoot or inspect downed aliens.
• Fix and tweaks for medical room items build priority.
• Chance of leg or arm fracture from earthquake reduced down to 2% for each.
• When choice to torch medical beds is given and dismissed colonists will only have a 25% chance of getting gastric distress instead of 100%.
• Fix for geothermal generators causing colonists to go outside without suits on.
• Sitting on the floor was not giving colonists enough rest. Therefore if you did not build colonists beds before they got tired your base would become very unmanageable.
• Entire world object placement generation code updated. Must faster now, and you will always have some creatures on the map.
• Colonists have a little more water in their bodies now.
• Sweating reduced when dehydrated.
• Sweating reduced to two litres per hour equivalent. If a colonist has one litres of sweat on their body, sweating now stops.
• Fix for announcer bugs.
• Food prep priorities tweaked a little bit.
• Object destruction order priorities tweaked on many objects. Fossils are rarer. So less likely to jam up your storage room in the early game.
• Gaps removed from emails.
• Multithreading improved for systems with four or more cores.

As you may be aware, we are rapidly approaching beta, so do send us all your bugs and issues. The estimated date for the 1.0 release of Maia is now the end of May. That's all for now. If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.

[ 2017-02-17 17:57:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

I hope everyone enjoyed trying out the latest update over the weekend. I've been working like a mule to smooth off a few of the rough edges. Here's the main changes gone in over the last few days.

Tuesday:

• Sweating reduced to 2 litres per hour equivalent. If a colonist has 1 litres of sweat on their body, sweating now stops.
• Grass is no longer an impediment to path finding.
• Utility robots and colonists can now crush grass when going over it.
• More grass spawned on the world, better clumping.
• Email system scrolls to newest email if the user does not have one open and is not mousing over the "scroll back" button.
• Potential fix for colonists complaining about no minerals when there is a hopper available.
• Removal of confusing save and load buttons on game hud
• Fix for announcer seldonly causing a crash when fire is started in an unknown room.
• Fix for announcer announcing fires instead of rations low.
• Fix for announcer announcing power depletion instead of power low.
• Removal of strange 1MW output claim on wind turbine text.
• 32 bit exe updated for people on ancient Windows.

Monday

• Research room incorrectly labelled.
• Incomplete door no longer suffers mechanical damage.
• Incomplete door no longer blocks atmosphere.
• AI agents now have a temperature weight (in addition to distance and need fulfilment). This weight reduces the chance of picking a task by 2.5% for every 10 degrees C away from 21 degrees Celsius.
• Minerals in storage room now have a higher needs fulfilment for colonists than those in excavated areas. Minerals in the hopper now have a slightly higher needs fulfilment than those in the storage room.
• Unbuilt doors can no longer be locked.
• Colonist action level fixed to correctly change fatigue.
• Chance of yawning increased when tired.
• Fatigue fixes and balancing.
• Colonist perspiration and ambient heat loss balancing. Fix for excessive sweating.
• Sweat, ventilation and misc bodily water loss updated with better science.
• Ventilations effect on room atmosphere now more accurately simulated, taking into better account lung capacity, CO2 toxicity and breath rate.
• Potential fix for energy storage depleted complaint from Announcer.
• Atmosphere generator output increased slightly.
• Fix for lander lockups when there are no spots for a landing.

Sunday

• Linux lib issues fixed which were preventing the game from starting on some systems.
• Small lighting system performance optimisation.

Again thanks for all the bug reports and save files. I'll be releasing 0.60 quite soon. We haven't quite nailed down the feature list yet, but it should bring a few very anticipated things from the road map.
Keep up to date with the progress of the game on dev.maiagame.com!

[ 2016-11-30 16:44:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.59 is now live. This update brings the threat of dangerous alien creature incursions into the base. Don't panic! Your colonists are now armed and ready for them, with new patrol behaviours to hunt down and eradicate the threat. 0.59 also brings a multitude of cool new features, such as the command and control room, new UI changes, AI updates and hundreds of bug fixes. Here's a video of me showcasing some of the new features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNe3cNYEuxk

Invasions.

The local creatures are now far more likely to breach a base that sits within their territory. They may enter to steal livestock and rations or just to mark their territory by destroying your vital equipment. Colonists are ready for them however with new side arms and patrol behaviours to locate and destroy the intruders.

Special Stuff

Not all the local wildlife is a menace. With ecological research, the nocturnal aliens can now be captured, domesticated, bred and slaughtered for high quality tasty food production.

Overseer

The new command and control room gives your colonists better command oversight of your base. It lifts the population cap and provides a map table that gives insight to the movement of colonists and threats to your base. It's thermal mode allows you to spot issues with heat distribution within your network of rooms.

Easy Reading

UI accessibility has taken a step forward with a new dyslexic mode for the game that presents a dyslexia friendly font and increases text sizes throughout the game. Dynamic drop shadows have also been added on overlay text to ease reading in high contrast scenes and many button behaviours have been tweaked to stop misclicks and other small annoyances.

T'annoy

Several base announcements have been added to provide feedback for many base systems such as power grid issues, blackouts caused by solar storms and energy storage depletion. The announcer will also warn of incoming natural disasters, base events and fire emergencies.

Basophobia

The games's pathfinding systems have been improved, which should lead to less issues with complex build orders and also see greater performance gains on low end machines.

Rough change log since 0.58:

• Colonists now carry and use sidearms.
• Colonists will now patrol inside the base .
• Colonists with markspersonship skills are now more effective at shooting.
• Rifle firing outside is better in synced in sound and animation. Includes tracer rounds pfx.
• Alien protobirds can now eat ration packs, dead voxnocturnus and also... other protobirds.
• Protobirds can attack worklights and other base equipment.
• Alien bum scooting animations no longer give the creatures too much velocity.
• Sound lure now makes voxnocturnus clicking sounds .
• Dyslexic mode added and several GUI changes made for readability.
• 2x MSAA added.
• Door frames can now be built without materials, but require them to be completed.
• Flare burn time now saved to stop them all reigniting on load and creating a headache inducing din.
• New colonist emails to ask for medical and research rooms.
• IMP AI tightened up to prevent dawdling.
• IMP sound and pfx synced to animations.
• Many more objects generate heat from wasted electricity.
• Super capacitor energy storage now degrades much slower.
• Object holograms given bases to aid placement.
• Base announcements for fires, earthquakes, solar events, energy storage depletion and more.
• Utility robot wheels now kick up dirt.
• Damage particle effects added to many objects.
• Control room added. Colonist cap reduced to eight, control room raises that to 12.
• Map table added with sonic mapping and thermal mapping modes.
• New research for alien domestication and captive breeding.
• Some research perks now have prerequisite research that is needed before they can be discovered.
• Medical bed interaction point moved to stop colonists getting stuck using it.
• Chicken wandering behaviour fixes. They will now seek out the livestock room faster and not wander out of it so much.
• IMP pathfinding and framerate issues fixed when stuck in in anomalous locations.
• Room update improvements and optimisations. Larger bases supported.
• Fix for occasional bug where a room tile is not deletable on right click.
• Fix for loads failing because the ongoing mission flag was not set and the game exiting back to menu in the blink of an eye.
• Atmosphere spread in subrooms of large blue casing areas fixed and optimised.
• New colonist surnames added.
• Game world rendering improved and optimised.
• Airlocks no longer cause intermittent pathfinding blockage. Reducing the chance of issues with building outside.
• Rooms no longer locked on startup allowing colonists to wander about before an initial room is placed.
• Crop blight adjusted to be less predictable.
• Colonists will now assign a higher priority to body-bagging up corpses.
• IMPs will no longer use hoppers when not carrying enough materials.
• Flywheel integrity degradation adjusted, colonists will consequently no longer spend as much time trying to fix them as a high priority task.
• AI agent path verification on world changes optimised. Building, locking doors, cave ins and digging should cause less CPU spikes.
• Colonist and IMP idle behaviours now checked against reachable sectors. Should reduce failed pathfinds and improve performance.
• Dog pathfinding optimised.
• Cat pathfinding optimised.
• Several spelling mistakes fixed
• Potential data corruption fixes.
• Every item in the game now has a very simple description of what it does in general terms when placing it.
• Basic food production added to the tutorial.
• Basic explanation of the heat mechanics added to the tutorial
• Colonist requests can now be answered with a y/n key press. Those are rebindable in the menu options.
• Build priority added to the tutorial. (Double click on items to set them higher!)
• Objects no longer maintain high priority after being built.
• Cave ins and structural weaknesses no longer persist between level changes. This may also prevent a crash.
• Colonists will now be less likely to over run when approaching an object. Stopping them getting stuck in and behind things.
• Dracaena plant selection fixed and readded to the game.
• More rooms given the selection of three aesthetic plants.
• Aesthetic plants no longer spread blight.
• Aesthetic plants no longer show Kj of energy stored in them like food plants as they are quite inedible.
• Colonists will no longer join a team meeting if they are already going to an action with a high need.
• Sounds added for loading and saving and for successful and failed loads.
• Greyed out buttons now capture input so elements behind them can not be clicked on.
• When an email is open no left or right clicks will be accepted apart from to the email manager buttons.
• Emails can be dismissed with a right click.
• No input is accepted for a fraction of a moment after closing an email to prevent misclicks that might cause dig orders etc to be placed.
• Hud no longer updates when the player is in first person, stopping it grabbing input or applying the screen darkening effect.
• Chickens no longer self destruct after being on fire if there are two or less remaining.
• Building materials no longer placeable in workshop or storage room to reduce player confusion (Colonists will automatically move surplus materials from the smelter to the shelves).
• The colonists will no longer present the player with any choices in the first few minutes of game play.
• Engine draw call optimisation.
• 32 bit exe updated.

I'll be back soon with our next update in December. Here's a rough roadmap of what to look forward to as we approach Beta and then release.
If you like these updates be sure to drop us feedback via Twitter and Steam reviews.

[ 2016-11-24 16:05:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.59 is now deep into production, and I have decided to release some of the fixes from that milestone early. This build focuses on improving performance and several small annoyances in the game. The CPU and cache optimisations in this release will bring a frame rate improvement of up to 20% on some previously bottlenecked systems.

• Chicken wandering behaviour fixes. They will now seek out the livestock room faster and not wander out of it so much.
• IMP pathfinding and framerate issues fixed when stuck in in anomalous locations.
• Room update improvements and optimisations. Larger bases supported.
• Fix for occasional bug where a room tile is not deletable on right click.
• Fix for loads failing because the ongoing mission flag was not set and the game exiting back to menu in the blink of an eye.
• Atmosphere spread in subrooms of large blue casing areas fixed and optimised.
• New colonist surnames added.
• Game world rendering improved and optimised.
• Engine draw call optimisation.

Thanks for all the feedback and reviews on the previous build. We will be back very soon with a feature full 0.59. You can watch as I make and check in changes to our code base on https://dev.maiagame.com/ (some spoilers if you want the 0.59 update to be a surprise)

[ 2016-11-01 21:10:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another hotfix build! Today's update brings several important improvements to 0.58, and fixes several bugs that were hampering the AI and the simulation of more complex bases.

• Airlocks no longer cause intermittent pathfinding blockage. Reducing the chance of issues with building outside.
• Rooms no longer locked on startup allowing colonists to wander about before an initial room is placed.
• Crop blight adjusted to be less predictable.
• Colonists will now assign a higher priority to body-bagging up corpses.
• IMPs will no longer use hoppers when not carrying enough materials.
• Flywheel integrity degradation adjusted, colonists will consequently no longer spend as much time trying to fix them as a high priority task.
• AI agent path verification on world changes optimised. Building, locking doors, cave ins and digging should cause less CPU spikes.
• Colonist and IMP idle behaviours now checked against reachable sectors. Should reduce failed pathfinds and improve performance.
• Dog pathfinding optimised.
• Cat pathfinding optimised.
• Several spelling mistakes fixed
• Potential data corruption fixes.
• 32 bit exe updated.

Thanks for all the feedback on the previous builds. We will be back very soon with more updates. You can watch as I make and check in changes to our code base on https://dev.maiagame.com/ If you want more help getting into the game. Check out the useful guides on the community portal, including this getting started guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=779670720

[ 2016-10-26 17:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks for everyone who took the time to try the latest build and leave their feedback on the forums and and in reviews. I've fixed several of the pressing issues in the latest two hotfixes.

Yesturday's changes:

• Every item in the game now has a very simple description of what it does in general terms when placing it.
• Basic food production added to the tutorial.
• Basic explanation of the heat mechanics added to the tutorial
• Colonist requests can now be answered with a y/n key press. Those are rebindable in the menu options.
• Build priority added to the tutorial. (Double click on items to set them higher!)
• Caveins and structural weaknesses no longer persist between level changes. This may also prevent a crash.
• Colonists will now be less likely to over run when approaching an object. Stopping them getting stuck in and behind things.

Today's changes:

• Dracaena plant selection fixed and readded to the game.
• More rooms given the selection of three aesthetic plants.
• Aesthetic plants no longer spread blight.
• Aesthetic plants no longer show Kj of energy stored in them like food plants.
• Colonists will no longer join a team meeting if they are already going to an action with a high need.
• Sounds added for loading and saving and for successful and failed loads.
• Greyed out buttons now capture input so elements behind them can not be clicked on.
• When an email is open no left or right clicks will be accepted apart from to the email manager buttons.
• Emails can be dismissed with a right click.
• No input is accepted for a fraction of a moment after closing an email to prevent misclicks that might cause dig orders etc to be placed.
• Hud no longer updates when the player is in first person, stopping it grabbing input or applying the screen darkening effect.
• Chickens no longer self destruct after being on fire if there are two or less remaining.
• Building materials no longer placeable in workshop or storage room to reduce player confusion (Colonists will automatically move surplus materials from the smelter to the shelves).
• The colonists will no longer present the player with any choices in the first few minutes of game play.

Again, thanks for the feedback, I will continue to fix the larger issues in the game and be back with more updates and patches in the future. You can watch as I make and check in changes to our code base on https://dev.maiagame.com/ If you want more help getting into the game. Check out the useful guides on the community portal, including this getting started guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=779670720

[ 2016-10-19 18:02:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.58 has arrived. This update brings new AI systems, multiple base support, deepened simulation, procedural colonist written music and sci-fi and hundreds upon hundreds of bug fixes. Here's a video of me playing the latest build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pqq1bqldI4

Emergent-cy

Colonists are now able to use their skill sets and experience to plan tasks and directly consult players on the running of the colony. From complex base management and room planning, to scientific excursions to the surface, torching failing crops and even presenting their mood-reflecting avant-garde electronic music or their desperately clichéd (procedural) science fiction writing. These emergent choices add a little extra challenge, depth and flavour to the game.

Expansionism

Multiple airlocks and even rudimentary multiple bases are now supported, allowing for much more ambitious building projects and paving the way for colonising the game's massive maps. Colonists will now take much greater care to manage their suit usage, planning their journeys around efficiency and safety.

Thinking Machines

Robot batteries now run down and will need to be replenished at a robot recharge station. A robot on low power will become sluggish and throw more fussy tantrums, upsetting the colonists. The IMP AI has had a major rewrite to re-prioritise their efforts around digging and materials collection. Their new detailed mouse over info-tips presenting a clearer picture of their robotic planning process.

Feed the rot. Rot the feed.

Crops are now susceptible to fungal blights, which spread based on temperature and maturity of the plants. These diseases can transfer to nearby hydroponic planters and wipe out plants of the same species. Growing varied crops and carefully considering placement of the growers, lights and heating adds new depth and challenge to food production.

Neighbors (become good friends?)

The creatures in the world will now migrate around the map to expand their territories and seek out new food sources. If the animal's new territory includes your base you will receive a warning email, giving you more time to consider defences.

Precipitation solution

Food and Water systems have been tweaked in many ways to reduce issues around dehydration and starvation. These range from the new condenser unit that can provide an efficient water source in any room, to new colonist crop anticipation priorities, down to small planning tweaks in the storage room reducing the chance of essential items being buried in mineral ore by a careless robot.
Notable changes include:

• Tutorial start base is warmer and has more atmosphere to take the pressure off new players.
• Base manifest now lists where colonists are going and more useful information.
• Added new emergent Colonist Suggestion emails
• Added Robot recharge station.
• Robots now move slower if they run low on charge.
• IMP AI rewritten.
• IMPs should no longer stand still when given unreachable orders.
• IMPs should no longer start conversations when carrying things, which lead to bugs.
• Creatures now migrate around the map based on habitat.
• Timmy the dog less likely to get stuck in walls. Sorry about that Timmy.
• Warning emails for creature migration added.
• Politeness no longer applies to using airlocks.
• Total rewrite of colonist airlock AI, including support for multiple airlocks.
• New Condenser object added.
• Creature Sound Lure added.
• Crops can now catch blight if in overly warm rooms and not regularly harvested.
• Colonists with medical skills now wear white shirts.
• Colonists no longer walk through locked doors
• Colonist food growth/preparation cycle rewritten to ensure colonists plan to create food, reducing starvation.
• Colonists can now use the smelter if it is left with minerals. However this risks fire as they are incompetent.
• Greatly reduced instances of colonists failing to build outside.
• Adjusted water barrel interaction points, leading to fewer interaction issues.
• Storage room tweaks to allow for better access and more efficient packing.
• Fix for rare case where cursor locked up when quitting to main menu.
• Medical Beds can now catch fire.
• Standard Beds can now be repaired after catching fire.
• Glitch effect during solar flares is now more obvious.
• Mouse over info-tips optimised. No longer update too fast to read.
• Several info-tips rewritten to be more useful.
• Some animation length fixes.
• Colonists will now mention it in emails if they are dehydrated.
• Utility Robots act on repairs before colonists.
• Workshop table now sparks when damaged.
• Reduced tendency for Workshop Table to get damaged.
• Illnesses now take longer to progress.
• Chicken AI improved. They should spread out more and show better flocking behaviours.
• Colonists using the scanner will no longer send multiple diagnosis emails.
• Tendency for healthy hypochondriac colonists to use the medical scanner reduced.
• Medical scanner cycling more consistent. Cooldown added.
• Fix for Bulkhead door disappearing when upgraded through research.
• Improved graphics for Body Storage Unit.
• Twilight Zone mission tweaked to account for new food system.
• Additional starting text added to missions.
• Repair sound added to make it easier to tell if colonists are fixing something.
• Room atmosphere simulation optimisations
• Miscellaneous spelling and grammar fixes.
• AI for colonists taking ownership of objects rewritten to be more robust. Stops colonists who pop their clogs on the job from never relinquishing control of items.
• Communications tower build priority changed.
• Fixed building materials giving three materials for every one picked up.
• Adjusted interaction points for Storage Room so that building materials could be taken off every wall.
• Expanded clickable area on multiple objects to make them easier to select.
• Solar Flares reduced.
• Storage room objects moved to create more space.
• Engine rendering optimisations
• Changes to save system to store more data.(old saves are no longer compatible).
• Mission hud now correctly resets.
• New art assets for several models.
• Fix for rare save-file issue where creatures had burrowed off the map and would cause instability.

I hope you enjoy this update, please let me know what you think over on the Maia forums or on Twitter. You can watch my development on dev.maiagame.com Maia 0.59 will be out at the start of November, with Maia 0.60, our first Beta build out on December 13.

[ 2016-10-12 14:45:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Simon here! Update 0.58 is on the way soon, but on the way we have been releasing many small fixes to the current 0.57 release. These fixes centre around AI behaviour and there have now been enough of them for them to change the game significantly. I'll save a full changelog for the next update, but here are some of the key changes to the current game:

• Colonists are more aware of the importance of different parts of the food production cycle and can balance the competing needs of planting, harvesting and then preparing food. This will make the food preparation stations more effective and allow you to quickly build ration packs too.
• Condenser units provide a source of drinking water and can be placed in most the rooms. This means that a lot less time will be wasted on regular trips to storage to drink. This coupled with food production fixes means dehydration will be much less of an issue.
• Utility bots can now act on repairs long before colonists. This means that in larger bases you are not going to have as much time wasted to colonists doing repair work. The sound for repairs has been hooked up now, so if you hear a ratchet tightening you will know that a colonist is repairing something and you should consider building more repair robots.
• Several parts of the building pipeline have been streamlined or fixed. Most the issues with colonists not building things outside are resolved. The workshop table now shows damage with a particle effect so it better telegraphed as unusable to the player.
• Illnesses take longer to progress, barring a lot of bad luck, they will become an issue for the later game now.
• IMP AI improved in several cases. Colonists will also no longer start conversations with robots that are carrying things, which caused stuff to get dropped in weird places and could break the game.
• Chicken behaviour bugs fixed. This should see less clumping in the livestock containment and also more natural actions around the base.

In testing we've found that this smooths over most of the issues people were having with the game. The upcoming update also has a lot of nice little changes that will add a lot to the experience. We'll see you then. Remember you can keep up to date with development by visiting https://dev.maiagame.com and viewing our changes as we make them.

[ 2016-09-15 09:39:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

This large update heightens the detail and complexity of the game's human body simulation with a series of conditions and diseases, which must be diagnosed and treated. It also features a new emergency air system, body storage unit, dozens of fixes and much more... Here's Simon playing the latest build: https://youtu.be/12V4me3FVUo

Medical Update

Colonists can now get a exciting variety of diseases, mental illnesses and conditions!
Colonists develop medical issues from hundreds of factors in the simulation. They may show their illness through action or cryptically through an email. In order to properly diagnose them however, a medical scanner or a skilled doctor is required.
Once a colonist is diagnosed they will require treatment. The diagnosed colonist can receive prescribed medicine from the new dispenser unit and rest and recuperate on a 'meat trolley' until fully healed. Researching the local ecology can provide new technologies and medicines to speed up treatments.

Possible Health Issues

Compound Fractures Colonists caught in earthquakes, cave ins and explosions may develop fractured limbs, which cause them to walk with a limp until cured. This puts a serious crimp on the colony’s interpretative dance sessions. Depression High amounts of stress and poor social activity can lead to colonists becoming depressed and lacking in energy. Antidepressants and a change in environment can help perk them up. High Blood Pressure High stress and frustration can lead to blood pressure issues. This is best treated with ACE inhibitors, soothing lighting and avoiding any discussion of the current political situation. Vitamin Deficiency If your colonists diet is not well balanced they can develop fatigue, dizziness and tingling in the hands and feet. Perhaps consider growing something other than just potatoes. Muscle Fatigue Although character building, too much hard manual labour can lead to colonists developing muscle fatigue, hampering their ability to help around the base. Building repair robots can help alleviate the strain on these fragile fleshy meatbags. Gastric Distress Eating raw food can cause severe gastric distress. This can cause serious fatigue and dehydration issues for your colonists. Watch out for them using the bathroom too much, they probably need treatment. You would too if you ate a whole chicken raw. Renal Failure One of two conditions that can potentially outright kill your colonists, Renal Failure is caused by a contaminated water supply or sustained untreated Vitamin Deficiency. None of Maia’s colonists are registered organ donors, so this is best treated early. Irradiation The other deadly condition, poor reactor maintenance or getting caught in cosmic rays can prove fatal to colonists. There is no chance of irradiated colonists developing superpowers, please stop trying to make this happen.

Body Storage Unit

Several colonists have complained about having to keep bodybags next to their rations in the storage room. The body storage unit holds onto the corpses a little more hygienically and without harming the sanity of your team.

Colonists Keep Warm

Colonists now gather around objects that produce heat to try and warm themselves up and stave off hypothermia.

Emergency Air System

This new system gradually generates a store of oxygen and nitrogen. In the event of a sudden loss of atmosphere the mixture can be immediately released, providing a short burst of breathable air and offering colonists time for an orderly evacuation or a short retrospective on the life choices that lead them to this moment.

Colonists Emails

Colonists now voice their opinion on your food supplies, with a wide range of emails ranging from “yum, enough for seconds” to “oh god we’re going to die”. Colonists with skills relating to food production can give better estimates.
Change log:

• Colonists can now get off the bed on the opposite side to how they got on.
• The colony manifest has been updated to include more information on food and rations.
• Hydroponic plant growers now give estimates on the amount of food energy in the growing plants, to help players plan their production.
• Earthquakes can now damage items so much they catch fire.
• The room menu now uses the new GUI added for object placement in 0.56.
• Colonists using the toilet is now properly simulated. Previously they used it whenever they didn’t have anything better to do.
• Several new Infotips added and many spelling mistakes fixed.
• Colonist water intake rebalanced and better simulated. They will use more water now.
• Added console commands for causing a solar flare.
• Object spawning limiters fixed. No more infinite jungles and deadly chicken explosions.
• Avian feeder action fixed. Previously colonists were running around it in circles.
• Fix for objects advertising needs with no actions available, wasting colonists' time by tricking them with something that was not really on offer.
• Colonist inventory size for food is now limited. Pushing them to share what they have taken instead of starving their team to death.
• Colonists no longer starve to death because they'd rather complain about being too hungry to eat because it was easier to complain and die.
• Fatigue rebalanced, better linked to colonists activity. Bed usage more consistent.
• Several interaction points modified on problematic objects.
• Colonists take much more kJ from ration packs.
• Ration packs kJ increased.
• Path finding fixes.
• Repetitive object usuage fixed. Specifically with ration packs and food stations.
• Missions rebalanced to reflect new food usage.
• Deprioritised food production when it’s not needed.
• Second tier research is now prioritised a little higher.
• Reduction for bored colonist eating, hunger better simulated.
• Added the ability for colonists to request several more objects and rooms in their emails.
• Many new sounds added and some older ones tweaked.

Update 0.58 is fast approaching. For this we’ll be focusing on the campaign and even more bug fixing. To see live development head over to dev.maiagame.com. We hope you enjoy this update, please let us know what you think over on the Maia forums or on Twitter.

[ 2016-07-12 14:28:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

This updates focuses on deepening the gameplay experience with improvements to many core mechanics and user interface. We've worked using your feedback to fix all the small issues and to make the game much more accessible, engaging and fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiNDgdrLfn4

Smart Stockpiling

Colonists can now stockpile building materials on the shelves in the storage room. Allowing you to manually build up reserves for future expansion and also keep your base neat and tidy.

Food Preparation Station

No longer will colonists have to crouch on the storage room floor to consume their necessary nutrients. The preparation station allows hungry colonists to get their meals ready in a better, more sanitary environment. It also allows for fast automated processing and stockpiling of crops and meat, allowing for larger more efficient bases.

UI Changes

A new object cycler has been added to improve the object placement interface. Allowing you to quickly select the items you want to build. Interaction points on nearby items will also fade in and out to better illustrate the most efficient ways to place items in crowded rooms.
Email and notification information has been added as well as several new notification and GUI sounds. Text will appear at the top of the screen to let you know what type of message is being received.Many new mouse over infotips have been added and several older ones improved for clarity and humour.

Change list:

• Greater email complexity and feedback from colonists regarding rooms and base equipment.
• Colonists can no longer gorge themselves repeatedly at the ration packs.
• Object destruction needs balanced to take into account more than building materials.
• Fossils are now taken to storage and are now destroyable by colonists.
• The Spathiphyllum plant can now be found in the game. They have also been balanced for atmosphere generation and aesthetic properties.
• Landers and Microwave towers can now be removed as intended.
• Objects have improved visuals when being placed and cycled through.
• Pausing the game now stops the countdown timer.
• Megacephalalgia now stay dead.
• Several IMP pathfinding issues fixed.
• Interaction points interference detection improved.
• Many game and UI sounds tweaked and improved.
• Broccoli deletion crash fix.
• Several instability issues have been solved.
• Starting materials fix.
• Black Screen crash fixed for a few cases.
• Entity name changes.
• Spalling and, grammar chunges.
• Fix for several mouse over issues.
• Object destruction issues fixed. If an object is destroyed it’s parent object is too.
• Parent objects now get marked for destruction by their children.
• Fix for multipart objects not having shadows.
• Fix for offset in pathfinding room physics mesh intersections, this should fix many bugs including walking through door frames.
• Fix for "base" being said instead of the correct room in announcements.
• Fix for inaccuracy in wall readouts in small rooms.
• Wall heater tweaks, build priority now better linked to the temperature at the position of the heater.
• Gameworld cleanup improved on loading.
• Removed redundant shaders and optimised loading
• Several Memory issues fixed.
• Memory buffer fixes.
• Support for variable refresh rates for Gsync and Freesync monitors.
• Code base modernisation to C++11 and C++14 standards.

We're looking forward to update 0.57 which we're already working on.The update will focus on sicknesses, diagnosis, treatment and first aid. To see live development head over to dev.maiagame.com. We hope you enjoy this update, please let us know what you think over on the Maia forums or on Twitter @Maia.

[ 2016-06-09 16:04:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

This latest update introduces changes to saving, the settings menu, new items, new research perks, vast improvements to the object and room placement system as well as complex creature and ecosystem simulation changes. Here's Simon's video of the latest build: https://youtu.be/MF4tRY-Av88

New Objects and Equipment

Portable Solar Panels

Quick to build, these additional new solar panels will provide less energy but are more convenient for a starting base. The existing solar arrays now require a full workshop to build and provide a higher output.

Flares

Flares will appear in the area a capsule will land. This helps the new colonists navigate their way to Maia and lets the player know that something will happen in that spot soon. Colonists will also be able to place them to distract animals.

New Decorative Items

New aesthetic items have been added. Cypress and Dracaena plants can be placed to make the base feel a lot more like home.

Multiple Save Files and Options

Players can now save their game to several slots along with the existing f5 quicksave. Allowing for you to have multiple bases on the go with zero hassle. Save and load buttons have also been placed on the pause menu and an option has been added for those wanting to quickly abort their missions and return to the main menu.
By going into the settings, players can create different key bindings which allow players to customise the controls to their liking and also enables people using alternate keyboard layouts, such as AZERTY, to play. The bindings are saved in human readable xml so can be modified by third party programs and shared between machines.

Improvements to Object Placement

When placing a blueprint of an object it may turn amber, to indicate a sub-optimal placement. This might make it more difficult to build or might indicate that the objects function will be impaired. Colonists are now better at considering whether a complex chain of actions can be fully completed, leading to less time wasted by the colonists on jobs they give up on half way through. Players are now also able to place priority orders for their colonists. Do this by double clicking a blueprint you have placed. These orders with be prioritised over most tasks, but will upset colonists by going against their own judgement and freewill.
Players may also notice that when placing a room the blueprint appears as a grid, this visual improvement makes it easier to understand how objects are placed.

Creature Updates

There has been various updates to the creatures on Maia including improvements to animation and AI. Also, some creatures are now able to breed.

Voxnocturnus

The Voxnocturnus that travels Maia’s plains at night will now find and create burrows to sleep in during the day.

Proto Birds

The unknown proto birds food sources have changed. This will encourage when to invade bases more and to eat other dead creatures.

Megacephalalgia

Megacephalalgia will now have migration patterns which means new packs will appear on the map. They also have new reactions to each other and idle actions.

Emails and Announcements!

The emails have been updated to relate to colonist skills. Your inhabitants will complain for even more reasons such as lack of robots, need for equipment and give unsolicited feedback on the base you have created. The emails will have a lot more personality so you can get to know your doomed colonists. In addition to this, the announcer will now alert you on even more issues and events.

Research Changes

Overall the researching in Maia is more balanced, new perks will be unlocked at different times dependent on what kind of research is being collected. Several interesting new research perks have been added to the game that provide the player with more options and choices on how to run their base. Colonists will discover new ways to create stable energy, how to capture animals and treat infections faster. Research advancements in computer technology and social compliance are also possible. The full list of research perks can be found at http://maiawiki.com/Research Also, probes can be found outside on the planet's surface. These can be selected and used to gain research. The research perks are also now tiered so players will not be able to unlock certain research perks until they have done the related one before.

Other Changes

• When walking or running or waiting with no idle animation, colonists turn their heads to look at what is interesting them.
• Outdoor wind directions on smoke and other effects balanced and corrected.
• Drift added to many effects such as snow, dust, ash and embers to cause the particles to float about naturally.
• Bum scooting animations for megacephalalgias are now more satisfying.
• Better hypothermia emails.
• Repair bot works faster, smarter.
• Trees grow in group to create forests.
• Plants grow more naturally, maxing out at over fifty thousand individual entities.
• IMP can now destroy plants in first person mode.
• Less poetry emails.
• UI sounds added for several interactions.
• Sound balancing on many items.
• Necropsy table visibility fixed.
• Meteorites are now easier to select.
• Build priorities and needs tweaked.
• Fix for ambient occlusion pass not being used.
• Colour bleeding added to the SSAO effect and increased.
• The Bloom system reduced in scale to save memory.
• Lights are now individually scaled for different rooms.
• Internal reflection threshold increased. To give more interesting lens flares.
• Graphics update and optimisations.
• SSAO is now working with AA and without it
• Spinning turret bug fixed
• Fix for corrupted files.
• Typos fixed in several descriptions. New descriptions added.
• Colonist's now think about base design
• Colonists now think about alarms
• Keybinding saved to XML
• More consistent code for warnings and problem status on all sub objects.
• Tree sample priority has been raised.
• Workshop table no longer missing on Linux builds.
• Save file changes
• Room updating optimised
• Several loading issues fixed
• Various code cleanups
• Particle FX now on less threads, and updated more optimally.
• Linux graphics fixes for Intel and ATI machines. Game now build against up to date libraries and tested on Ubuntu 16.04
• Cave-ins will now spawn at the centre of the screen when using debug cavein command.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJW56H1SxqE We're looking forward to update 0.56 which we're already hard at work on. To see live development head over to https://dev.maiagame.com/ Simon has been live streaming development nearly every Friday over on Twitch. We hope you enjoy Maia’s Update, give us your feedback on the Steam Forum, or by mentioning #MaiaGame on twitter.

[ 2016-04-20 15:32:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

This new release introduces increased feedback for players including wall monitors, an improved room placement system, measured temperatures and colour pickers. Maia will be 44% off on Steam from 6pm UTC tonight for 4 days! Here's Simon showing off some of the latest changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG1IjN3vuXE

Temperature Simulation

Thermal energy is now fully simulated in the game. Every element of gameplay is now affected by temperature and it’s a critical factor in keeping your colonists alive and well. Hypothermia and hyperthermia can affect your colonists with lethal consequences.
The caves of Maia are cold and dark, players can create heat by placing the new wall mounted space heaters as well as the existing atmosphere generators. Various other items create heat too, for example smelters, computers, human bodies, chickens and lights.
Be careful not to make the rooms too hot as colonists will burn up, quite literally. Colonists will also show signs that they are cold, you’ll notice their breath starts to show in cold areas of the base and them shivering as hypothermia takes its grip.

Base Customisation

Several items can now be customised using the new colour picker. Choosing either warm or cool colours can affect the moods of your colonists.
Wall mounted screens have been added to give more feedback to the players. These monitors show atmosphere status, temperature status and aesthetic images to improve your colonists moods.
Another placeable wall item is the Circuit Breaker, you’ll be able to turn these off and on to control the power in rooms. This is useful if you need to conserve energy or to stop the colonists from using certain rooms.

Stratospheric Sulphates

Begin the geoengineering of Maia with the mining of sulphur in the shadow of an active volcano. The latest standalone mission to be added Maia, Stratospheric Sulphates introduces several new challenges for experienced players. Rush to build a self sustaining base as hot volcanic ash and embers rain down on your demoralised colonists

User Interface Improvements.

We’ve worked to improve the overall feel of the game and provide the player with more feedback. The room placement interface has been dramatically improved. It’s now easier to use and allows the player more creative control and feedback. You’re also able to flood fill areas by double clicking whilst in the room placement mode and delete whole rooms by double right clicking them.
Rotation for objects has also been added to make it easier to place objects.

Emails And Announcements

Several new warning emails have been added. These include meteorite warnings, earthquake warnings, Weather warnings and new death alerts.
New announcements have been added to alert the players many new events including base power state problems, temperature changes, research alerts and the state of rations.

Development

You can now follow Simon’s code changes for upcoming updates in real time at dev.maiagame.com.

Change Log:

Colonist Changes

• Automatic Smelting. When colonists need building materials they will turn the smelters on automatically, however this comes with a risk. Colonists that are unskilled in smelting may cause fires and could fatally hurt themselves.
• Colonists medical need balanced.
• Fix for colonists breathing through their suits.
• Suit will no longer be stuck venting after the colonist has died.
• Perspiration, skin temperature, ventilation and heart BPM are now saved.
• Colonists no longer get stuck on external objects when repairing them.
• The first task on load for colonists is no longer to be social.
• The base roof no longer appears when trying to process colonists inside.

IMP Changes

• IMP Digging AI changes including removing the digging marker when the rock wall has been removed.
• IMP will place minerals further away from food or water barrels.
• IMPs are more able to pick up body bags in weird places.
• Game no longer crashes if the player is possessing an object and it gets crushed in a cave in.
• IMP’s animation for pulling plants has been corrected.

Object Changes

• Maximum fuel in many objects has been reduced to shorten burn time.
• Toilet multiplication on load has been fixed.
• Doors can not be placed on top of each other any more.
• Issues when moving broccoli fixed.
• Balanced the creation of atmosphere.
• Use R and T to rotate objects
• Fixes for non-buildable items. Desk and medical scanners.
• Necropsy table keeps giblets after saving.
• Fix for radiation containment research lock.

Creature Changes

• Dead creatures have stopped walking around after they have died.
• Chickens should no longer cause a memory leak.
• Chickens should no longer walk off into the unknown.
• Molerats will now only consider eating plants and equipment that are less than 100m away from it.

Room/World Changes

• Missing Roof tiles have been fixed.
• Living area and livestock room tones fixed.
• Invalid L shaped rooms are now marked red.
• Broken rock walls roof graphics have been corrected
• Deleting rooms no longer deletes rock walls.
• Reduced the “absurd” resolution of the rain textures.

Mission Changes

• Several fixes and alterations to the tutorial.
• Crew selection added to custom missions.
• Initial trigger for missions not working has been fixed.
• 3x3 room objective in tutorial now completes correctly.

Settings Changes

• Text effect option issues have been fixed
• Changing textures no longer breaks visuals.

Other

• Edge scrolling has been reduced. This means hovering over the save button doesn’t scroll the screen.
• Capitalisation errors that were causing issues with Linux have been corrected.
• Starting a new game after sandbox failure no longer causes black screen issues.
• Research cheats have been moved to the console. Type “r” or “research” in the console to complete all research.
• Refractor of the game.
• Fix for black screen when calling down a lander.
• Several memory leak issues fixed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55lw9vfVpNY Simon has been live streaming development every Friday over on Twitch. We hope you enjoy Maia’s Update, give us your feedback on the Steam Forum, or by mentioning #MaiaGame on twitter.

[ 2016-03-08 15:29:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first update of 2016 is now live! Welcome to the future! This build has fixed all critical game play issues and also introduces colonist selection, mineral smelting, the manifest screen, as well as a selection of new items and features. Here's Simon showing off some of the latest changes: https://youtu.be/hx41qDylphw

Colonist Picker

When starting a game you will now get a detailed colonist selection screen. You'll be able to pick 4 out of the 6 people displayed. The Colonists have over 60 different expertise possibilities along with a psychological profile and fitness information. Using these attributes you'll be able to pick your perfect team. Each skill will have a subtle effect on game play. Choose wisely.

Manifest

You'll be able to keep track of several things going on in your base through the addition of the manifest screen. Hover over the [?] button to receive a report of your colonists and robots as well as your minerals, materials and supplies.

Ventilation Systems

Along with improvements in the simulation of atmosphere you can now place ventilation systems to pull air in or out of a room. This allows you to control the atmosphere's flow through your base. Create backup airflows, reroute air away from fires or leaks or turn your hydroponics room into a massive atmosphere generator.

Smelting

In order to create objects colonists need to refine minerals for building materials using a smelting and extraction system. Minerals from the rock walls will be placed in the machine where they will be transformed in to building materials on your command. Colonists will then collect the finished materials for use in future construction.

Aesthetic items

Light up your colonist's world with new furniture items. Placing aesthetic objects will improve the look of your base and make your colonists so much happier. Use their motion detection setting to conserve precious energy.

Lost Colonists

Colonists stuck far away from your base will now express their confusion and wander around until they get to the closest part of your base. This will help you find out why they are stuck and let you clear a away for them with your IMPs or explosives.

New and Improved Tutorial

The tutorial has now been moved over to be part of the missions.

Additional Changes:

• Atmosphere simulation has been refined, bugs fixed.
• Utility bots no longer fix burning items.
• Sound for Utility bot is shorter to avoid sounds getting caught.
• Utility bot less likely to get stuck outside.
• Colonists needs rebalanced. Decreasing potential for starvation.
• Fix for cave in breaking camera.
• Fossil and fossil holder fixes.
• Plants no longer reduce atmosphere when respiring.
• Fixes for several rare interaction based crash bugs.
• Fixed several bugs that came from new features.
• It's not longer possible to possess a utility bot before it's been built.
• Turrets no longer spin uncontrollably after shooting a creature.
• Chicken fire sounds no longer loop on load.
• Several missing sounds added.
• Colonists will not run outside without a suit on to drink water.
• The colonist death stare has been eradicated. The humans will not stare at each other until they die anymore.
• Social needs for IMPs balanced.
• Accessibility of planters improved.
• Alerts during missions will now appear separately to avoid confusion from missing certain emails.
• No longer will chair blueprints grow plants if you delete the seats.
• Annoying continuous beeping after a colonist dies has been limited to one beep per death.
• The hand will now not disappear when pressing a key during the menu.
• Tape Storage Drives now keep their angle after saving and loading.
• First person camera jumps and glitches fixed.
• Room placement code more efficient.
• Path finding CPU optimisations.
• GUI and other sounds improved.
• Anti-Aliasing and lighting optimisations.
• Font data will not be reloaded for every piece of text.
• Menu crash bug fixed on OSX.
• Linux crash bugs fixed.
• All known crash bugs fixed.
• Extended scripting of missions added! Get modding!

Update Trailer

https://youtu.be/08H6f1L-a-0 We hope you enjoy Maia’s Update, give us your feedback on the Steam Forum, or by mentioning #MaiaGame on twitter. Simon is currently streaming live development right now! Come join us!

[ 2016-02-05 17:21:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.52 is now out. The main focus of this build has been bug eradication, AI improvements, and the long awaited first person "possession" modes. Here's Simon showing off some of the latest changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9FvTymEle0

First Person IMP Robot

Experience Maia through the eyes of the IMP Robot, walk around your base doing the tasks the IMPs usually do, explore outside, mine the rock walls for minerals and build Nanofibre Blocks. First person mode introduces a whole new way to observe and interact with the planet Maia. To enter this mode, click/track the object you want to possess and click the new icon that appears at the bottom of the screen.

Utility Robot Control

In addition to the first person IMP Robots you can also view the world of Maia through Utility Robots. Using it's repair arm you will be able to repair objects and "accidentally" set colonists on fire.

Turret View

Keep watch of your base by possessing the turrets. The turret view adds a unique way to view Maia.

Colonist Suit Head Cams

Cameras have also been mounted in colonist suits so you can see what they colonists see when they are outside.

First Person Door Control

Take control of the doors around your base. Open and close to allow colonists, pets and robots entry to rooms. This is really great for annoying colonists.

Hydroponic Agriculture

Feed your colonists a varied diet with the addition of potatoes, carrots, kale and broccoli. Each of these plants take a different amount of time to grow, and produce different amounts of energy and micro-nutrients, allowing you to manage your colonies supplies more effectively.

Rendering And Performance Improvements

Lens flares and reflections and general rendering have been improved and game performance has been enhanced by code clean ups and alterations.

Change log:

Construction planning tweaked. Colonists are more aware of complex needs. For instance won't build more beds than people, prioritize atmosphere generation in rooms more likely to run out of air, and not build more beds than there are people.

• Colonist can now die from dehydration.
• IV drips now work to medicate colonists who are dehydrated or starving.
• A sparkle has been added to the cave system to create the feel of dust.
• A whole host of new sound work have been added to the game and UI such as footsteps, robot movements and other ambient noises.
• When a colonist claims ownership of a blueprint, it will brighten the hologram to show it.
• IMPs are now smarter about picking up minerals. Can carry two at once.
• Most IMP lockups fixed.
• Colonists no longer get enamoured with Voxnocturnus when they are set to interact with them.
• Gaps in some of the info tips on items have been fixed.
• Colonists should no longer risk running outside with their suits off to get minerals.
• Several colonist needs balanced. Socialising will take up less time, colonists are more likely to avoid it if they have an important task.
• Socialising colonists do a lot less spinning around to look at the person they are interacting with.
• Colonists will no longer stare each other to death.
• Balanced base spawning for sandbox missions.
• Screenshots are now working in Steam.
• Colonists path finding to research trees has been improved.
• Colonists empty barrels of water at the correct time.
• A lot of sounds have been added or corrected. This includes email and UI sound effects.
• Flags can now be deleted if you're not feeling very patriotic.
• Hydroponics priorities have been reduced to stop colonists becoming obsessed with them.
• Turret blueprints can now be removed fully.
• Animation system fixes to stop stuttering and repetition of actions.
• Fix to stop dead colonist's brains using up processing power.
• Various memory leaks fixed, specifically when repeatedly f9 quickloading.
• Sun no longer rises in The Twilight Zone.
• Plant growth is balanced and more realistic.
• Path finding overhaul, colonists less likely to attempt to build things that are potentially inaccessible.
• Code clean up and optimisation of several subsystems.
• All known game play crashes fixed.

Update Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt_vpKcUPNA We hope you enjoy Maia’s Update, give us your feedback on the Steam Forum, or by mentioning #MaiaGame on twitter.

[ 2015-12-17 15:07:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.51 is live! Here's Simon playing the latest build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zyq6S-uXGQ

64 BIT OPTIMISATION FOR WINDOWS

Good news 64bit users! There’s been a change in how the game uses hardware. Maia now has both 32bit and 64bit versions, Steam will detect players hardware which means those using 64bit can get improved performance. Don’t worry, we’re still supporting and testing on 32bit and will be for the foreseeable future.

NEW SCENARIO MISSIONS!

In addition to the existing sandbox, Maia now has 3 standalone scenario missions with directed gameplay. Fleshing out Maia's hard science fiction narrative and lore, players now have several hours worth of missions with many more hours to be added in the upcoming months. The current missions included in update 0.51:

CASSIOPEIA

An orbital habitation module has taken a direct hit from a cloud of micrometeroids. Build a sustainable colony to house the influx of survivors.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE

Survive the arctic winter’s polar twilight in this remote research station. Battle with the cold and darkness to keep your colonists sane and alive

SN1572

Study the complex local ecosystem of a rapidly encroaching equatorial jungle.

IMPROVED CHICKENS

Along with the addition of Avian Feeders, Uberhuhns are now a lot more intelligent. Now with their own wants and needs, chickens will feed, socialise and lay Microuberhuhns to repopulate. Slight changes have also been made to how colonists choose which chickens to eat. The avian feeders slowly supply food to the chickens as well was attracting them to certain parts of your livestock containment room with warm lighting.

SUIT REFILL POINTS

Aid your colonists expeditions across Maia’s surface with refill points. Colonists can replenish their vital needs at these stations so they can travel further out into the unknown landscape.

SOLAR EVENTS

Solar events can cause your equipment to not work as intended. Players will now receive warning emails to alert them when a solar event is occuring.

EMAILS

Death, failure and mission emails now pop up as soon as you receive them to ensure players don’t miss important gameplay points.

UI CHANGES TO PLACING BLUEPRINTS

To simplify item creation, when the player right clicks in object building mode it will revert the mode to selection mode. Right clicking will also delete blueprints or set build objects for destruction. Left clicking on a blueprint in selection mode will “grab” the blueprint reattaching it to the cursor and put the player back in to object build mode. When placing objects, some items information will now show power requirements as well as current grid demand. Info tips have now been fixed for many items including fossils, bulkhead doors, beds and plant pots.

COLONIST ANIMATION

More colonists animations to show emotional states and needs! Hungry Colonists will now grasp their stomachs to let the player know they are hungry.

BALANCED PRIORITIES

The order in which colonists will want to build atmosphere generators and doors has been changed to work smoother in emergencies, such as atmosphere loss. Research has also been broken up into over a dozen separate needs to allow the colonists to better prioritise data entry, collection and computation in the four research areas.

UTILITY ROBOTS

The robots will now delegate tasks if they come across other robots. Lights have also been added to help you find them in the dark.

SUPPORT FOR EL CAPITAN

We are now building and testing our OSX version of the game against El Capitan. We recommend Mac users make the free update to El Capitan for an optimum experience.

OTHER CHANGES:

• Fix for missing research.
• Back buttons now go to menus a level above instead of the top level menu.
• New technology research perks added.
• All found start up and crash bugs fixed.
• Blocked interaction points will no longer be advertised to the AI. (Less getting stuck in walls)
• Small optimisations on world data, loading time.
• Optimisation of pathfinding to save memory.
• 64 and 32 bit save interopability.
• Tree research bugs fixed.
• IV drip now provides food and water to colonists.
• VO bug fixed. When stating the atmosphere is low, it’s now a lot more likely to say the room name rather than just “base”.
• Seems the colonists if you worked them hard enough would get incredibly hot. They’d then start sweating so hard that they’d get drenched and rapidly cool to a dangerously low temperature. Their bodies would then burn all their energy reserves thermoregulating back up to a better temperature. They’d then starve to death. This is now fixed.
• CPU optimisation for the colonists.
• Building materials/minerals pick up bug fixed.
• Fix to speed up AA a bit.
• Code cleanup reducing memory footprint.
• Cache optimisations.
• Texture loading fixed.
• Bugs removed from the email system.
• Important emails now pop up.
• Mission success and failure in sandbox.
• Wind variation reduced and balanced.
• Power usage and balancing tweaks.
• Bugs due to new missions fixed.

Update trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsxfUqWWLv0 We hope you enjoyed Maia’s Update, give us your feedback on the Steam Forum, or by mentioning #MaiaGame on twitter.

[ 2015-10-22 14:30:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've hit 0.50! Maia's latest update brings stability and some serious bug fixes! We've been working hard to eradicate as many issues as possible. We've also managed to squeeze in new features that improve gameplay such as custom maps, expanded research and a brand new robot. Update Trailer: https://youtu.be/b6rICbIjW2E Gameplay from Simon: https://youtu.be/RqYIkiqNiXo

New Features

Climate Change

The option to change the climate of your map has been added. Players can choose from Megathermal, Mesothermal and Polar as well as choosing map sizes, flora and fauna population sizes, and whether the map is on an earthquake hotspot. With these new climates, come the introduction of new trees.
Mesothermal
Megathermal
Polar

Aye, Robot!

The utility robot has been added! At the moment this robot is equipped with a repair arm. This arm allows the robot to travel around the base repairing items. This frees up colonists to get on with other tasks like staying alive.

New Research Upgrades

Once researched, players can now add lithium to the colonist’s water if they choose to. This stabilizes colonist's moods, however, it may cause... unwanted side effects. There is also the ability to research the new trees.

Necropsy

The Necropsy Table in the Research Lab can now be used to gain research data. Once the colonists have killed the Megacephalalgia creature they can study a sample they collect.

Email System Scroll

Mail can now be scrolled through using arrows that appear after you receive 6 emails. This means players can control which emails they keep. There are also new email icons to more easily show whether the email has been read.

The Only Good Bug Is A Dead Bug

The largest part of this update is the amount of bugs that have been fixed. Here's an extensive list of fixes and changes we have made to existing features in Maia.

IMP Robot Bug Fixes

• IMP Robots now remember their correct orders when the game has been saved and loaded.
• Robots will not become fixated on tasks that can not be completed.
• Dig orders that were removed will no longer revert on loading.
• Removing the last IMP Robot and using the IMP search button will no longer cause a crash.
• Removed IMP Robot's ghosts no longer count towards the robot safety limit.
• IMP Robots will now take body bags to storage meaning a less cluttered base.
• Thankfully, IMP Robots no longer deposit dead colonists (or building materials) in the rubble hopper.
• IMP Robots now have an idle wander behaviour, They will not wait around to get encased in walls.
• IMP Robots will store water barrels in more sensible positions.
• IMP Robot turn speed has been slightly increased to speed up their productivity.
• IMP Robot self awareness added.
• Although quite rare, colonists and IMP robots may have conversations.

Power Bug Fixes

• Flywheel and Super conductors now accurately display the amount of energy stored instead of defaulting to yellow.
• Power capacity is also now tracked and sent in power report emails.
• It will no longer be possible for underpowered objects to burst into flames. Items will also turn off if they are on fire.

Loading Game Bug Fixes

Maia had a few bugs caused by saving and loading the game. A lot of these bugs have been solved. These include:

• Meteorites are now loading correctly and maintain their fossil type.
• 3D Nanoprinters now remember that they are printing on loading.
• Hydroponic trees now maintain how much they have grown rather than resetting to their mid point.
• Water Barrel's now maintain their count on loading.
• Locked doors save on load and doors will no longer appear inside the walls.
• Fossils retain type on load and will be placed in stands correctly.
• Plant sample containers now save the transferred KB.
• Turrets save number of rounds remaining.

Colonists Bug fixes and AI improvement.

• Limping colonists will not get stuck in a looping animation when they are dead. (No more zombies.)
• Food energy intake has been rebalanced due to the colonists often starving to death.
• Colonists are no longer standing inside each other.
• If there are less than 3 available living people in the base, colonists will not wait in the airlock for a guard.
• Colonists will now take care not to let the chickens go extinct.
• More death reports have been added to inform the player of death from cave ins and explosives.
• The hygiene need has been turned on and colonists will use toilets. Toilets animations have been synced up.
• Colonists can now destroy unwanted glow sticks.
• Medical beds are now much more effective at healing colonists.

Other AI Bugs

• AI will now go towards the nearest interaction point on an object rather than a random one.
• Creatures no longer stand in the same place as others.
• Pets and Uberhuhns will no longer go outside into the dangerous atmopshere.

UI Bug Fixes

• The bug that causes Maia's UI to become warped and disappear has been worked on.
• The lander and save buttons should now appear for all players.
• Buttons no longer flash when they are not meant to.

Mail Bug Fixes

• Screen effect for open mail has been corrected.
• Players will now receive the correct failure message when all their colonists are dead.
• Players should no longer receive mail spam for building materials.
• Read emails now show a different icon to make it clearer for players.
• New email system! Scroll buttons will appear after 6 emails making it easier for players to open and keep important emails.

Light Rendering Improved.

• The engine's screen light tiles can now render up to 32 lights. This will reduce visual glitches and improve performance.
• Light distance tweaked to fix hard edges.

GPU Usage

• Many texture assets in Maia have been optimised, which as lead to a large reduction of GPU memory usage.

Oh no! The Steam Announcement page can't handle all the news! Head over to our site to read the rest of the update announcement.

[ 2015-09-03 15:51:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdCIKHkMmds This update introduces a host of new features including guns, colonist emotions, social interactions, and console commands. There's also been an overhaul of balance and the colonists priorities which will improve game play dramatically.

Emotions and Sanity

Colonists now experience emotions. Emotions will develop as they perform tasks, communicate with other colonists, and encounter the environment. You'll notice that colonists exhibit emotional outbursts such as breaking down in tears and cheering. Head over to the Maia wiki to see the ways in which you can influence their moods.

Social

Colonists now crave social interaction. These interactions may involve hugging, chatting, waving... or worse. Sometimes, anger can build up in the colonists and they may start to show some threatening behaviour towards each other.

Guns

Teamwork is essential to the construction of a successful base. Colonists that have strong social bonds will want to protect each other When colonists go for expeditions outside, they will group up. One colonist will do the job that needs to be done whilst the other brings a gun and watches out for danger.

Colonist Reactions

We've added new ways in which the colonists can interact with their environment. Firstly, if a creature approaches a colonist outside the base they will play dead to protect themselves. Colonists also flinch and steady themselves if there is an earthquake.

Console Input

Using the new in-game console, players can now execute a variety of development commands and cheats. For example, the console may be used to spawn objects, trigger earthquakes and instantly build objects. The Maia wiki lists the ways the console can be used.

Power Alerts

Power reports are now available through the email system. These reports represent the power supply, usage and need at the time the email was sent.

Balancing, Bugs & Stability

An in-depth simulation like Maia needs a lot of balancing to feel right. Since the last update we have iterated on a variety of balance variables. We have adjusted the balance of object maintenance, building priorities, object degradation and the new colonist emotions. In addition, a multitude of bugs have been fixed, and several crashes eliminated. Here is a detailed list:

• Black squares on ATI/AMD machines have been removed.
• Mines cause damage to living creatures instead of just destroying them.
• Vox's no longer delete tiles inside bases.
• Fixed crash caused by removing object a colonist is working on.
• Limping bug fixed.
• Fix for colonists getting stuck doing an action.
• Crash fix for missing animation.
• Other animation bugs fixed.
• Solar Still destruction bug fixed.
• Pressing Esc no longer locks up opening mail.
• Fixed bugs in tutorial.
• UI no longer becomes invisible when pressing Esc.
• Fixed glitching fire.
• Death hug fixed.
• IMP stops collecting Material bug fixed.
• Lander Animation occurring on external objects bugs fixed.
• Doors opening/closing sound no longer loops.
• No longer able to break the IMP robot in the tutorial.
• No more lockups when IMP robot is asked to dig inaccessible walls. Read the IMPs task list to see what it's up to.
• Colonists no longer get stuck inside objects.
• Colonists have stopped going outside without suits to fix geothermal generators.
• Bum Support and other furniture not longer gets "sympathy burns"
• Creature AI improved and expanded. Territories are now patrolled and explored.
• IMP printer issues fixed.

Here's some gameplay from Simon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HppJYyOpQ6c We hope you enjoy the “Use of Weapons” Update. Please give us your feedback! You can tell us what you think on the Maia forums, Steam forums, and by mentioning Maia on Twitter.

[ 2015-07-30 14:42:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Detonate explosives, study meteorites, harvest geothermal power and more: The Demolition Update is available now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_SSD7Vcgk Do your outside areas need clearing? Use the new mining explosives to clear your path of dead animals, landers, equipment and people. The explosives can also be used to trigger controlled cave ins.
Meteorites! Now your colonists can gain research from the pieces of debris that find themselves on Maia's surface. You'll find them in craters scattered around outside your base.
Building Materials givee a visual representation of the material your colonists are collecting from dismantling objects. Colonists will also be able to create building material from piles of minerals. In addition to this, colonists can now make ration packs to more easily store food.
The new Geothermal Generator can harvest energy from thermal vents found on Maia, providing power for base systems.
Tables and scanners make an aesthetic appearance in this update, but are not yet functional. These objects will start having interesting uses in future updates!
The way in which Maia generates the world has been tweaked. It is now much less likely that a starting base will be irrecoverably doomed. This is an example of the kind of under-the-hood improvements that the Demolition Update is full of.
These improvements have yielded greater stability, for less crashing and crazy camera antics. Changes to the particle effects system will boost framerates for players on less powerful machines, and improve visuals for others. Configuration file loading is now more resilient to corruption, and less likely to cause problems. Here's the Demolition Update in tasty convenient list form:

• Meteorite research, for big data rewards.
• Mining Explosives. Clear exterior areas of rock and debris, or use them cause controlled cave ins inside.
• Regaining materials from object disassembly.
• Salvageable debris from object destruction.
• Large stability changes in the codebase. Less crashes and camera resets.
• Several new items, including the ability to make building materials from minerals, and to create your own ration packs.
• Geothermal Generators.
• Changes to world map generation and some cool new procedural base layouts.
• New furniture in some rooms.
• Fixes for resolution issues.
• Pfx changes, for better looking exterior particles and also a performance boost for low end users.
• Lots of fixed infotips on items, that should make there uses more apparent, and provide more flavour.
• Loading of game config files is now done better and with more fallbacks for corrupt files.
• Loading bugs fixed.

[ 2015-06-12 17:50:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.48 is out! The ignition update bring us a new hazard. Fire! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4kgsfrDkKk&feature=youtu.be The brand new fire system really adds a challenge to base gameplay. Poorly maintained items will short circuit and catch alight. The fire is simulated realistically using oxygen from the atmosphere, the energy stored in objects and heat transfer between them. Even in an unpressurised room, objects can retain now heat and reignite when oxygen is reintroduced. Lock doors and bulkheads to choke off the air supply or risk letting your colonists try and fight the flames unaided.

Tutorial 2.0

The tutorial has been drastically reworked to provide a softer landing into the game for new players. Get a simple base up and running in five minutes by following the easy steps.

Hydroponics.

The hydroponic plants are now more deeply simulated. Responding realistically to changes in lighting colour and intensity around them. Through simulated photosythesis they produce more breathable air and can now be used in lieu of mechanical atmosphere generation.

Full list of changes:

• MSAAx4 and MSAAx8 support in the menu. If your GPU is hefty enough to run antialiasing you can now benefit from the extra clarity and detail in the graphics. 
• Text effects are now also tweakable in the menu. If you had problems reading the text before due to the scan lines or glitching, you will be able to adjust them to your needs.
• Long planned optimisations to the renderer. For some people they may see as much as a 30% increase in performance and also less lighting tile errors.
• Balancing for colourblindness. Several colours have been tweaked and information adjusted to make the game more playable.
• Fire and fire damage added.
• Space suits can become charred and damaged over time.
• More placement information, you will get a visual and text warning if interaction points of an object are blocked when in placement mode. If all interaction points are blocked, the object will not be buildable.
• Interaction point holograms are brighter and more obvious, change colour when blocked.
• Several unbuildable objects now fixed.
• Colonists will no longer get stuck placing a flag.
• Colonists will no longer eat chickens to extinction.
• Colonists wearing suits will no longer spin on the spot in the airlock.
• Game config.xml reworked, holds more settings data. Less likely to get corrupted, can rebuild properly if a corruption is detected.
• Picking game res at startup will pick the desktop res instead of the highest capable res of your monitor.
• Heat haze glitchyness fixed.
• Game rendering/lighting optimised, many shader bugs fixed.
• Reflections optimised.
• A new email tab. See all your emails, queue them up, right click to dismiss them.
• Email system's first email is now a quick intro to using it.
• Emails for deaths, research notifications and other major events.
• More email variation. New important information may be mentioned by colonists.
• Sleep is more effective at reducing fatigue.
• Flywheel system's model changed for easier reading of the lights.
• Several tweaked models and textures on items like the worklight.
• Critical AI bugs fixed. AI will now never ignore blueprints.
• IMPs will prioritize minerals better.
• The protobirds are now a bit more likely to kill chickens.
• Colonist lander capsules now work better. No more map glitching and multiple colonists can come down.
• Colonist lander UI is now never hidden, but is greyed out and a timer provided.
• New UI fixes and improvements.
• Loads of new music. Really really awesome synth ambient tracks that will make your spine tingle.
• Brand new comprehensive tutorial to get new users up and running with the game much faster.
• Toilets are no longer death traps.
• Flags have stopped exploding.
• Level generation is now deterministic so the tutorial will always be on a good world.
• 30+ major critical or crash bugs fixed.
• Glitching on older Nvidia hardware fixed. Thanks for all the feedback and bug reports. We have a lot of new fixes and features coming. We'll be posting an updated road map here in a few days.
  
  [ 2015-04-22 13:35:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.47 is here with some big gameplay changes. Here's a video demoing today's build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy-VOF7PZx0

New features

The PA system. A stern automated base announcer that warns of incursions into your base perimeter, low atmosphere levels and other hazards facing your poor neglected colonists.
Flywheel energy storage. Conserve your energy using um, the principle of the conservation of energy. Nothing says "safe" like a big hunk of metal spun up to thousands of RPM. Detailed construction. Colonists will now build new rooms based on your blueprints.
Aggressive protobirds! Protect your chickens and shiny objects from this new spiny menace.
Other new things:

• Animation system changes. Less teleporting and glitchyness. More fluid and efficient character motion through the world. Less "getting stuck".
• Save files now hold more data, colonists personalities will be maintained. Lots of small save bugs fixed. Including the much loved "colonist sex flip" bug.
• Creature AI expanded. See them search out places to sleep and mark their territory.
• Hydroponics now produce a more accurate (and useful) amount of atmosphere.
• Multiple airlocks now work much better. Colonists will pick reasonable routes to use them. Good for large bases.
• Balancing of damage and repair needs for wind turbines and work lights.
• Door placement based on raycasting. This system will allow arbitrary object placement on the walls. So soon we will have lights, readout screens and clocks to place around your base.
• Rewritten wall intersection tests. This should fix many of the issues with the AI getting totally stuck and also improve framerate
• Hunger and fatigue deaths for creatures are now balanced.
• Colonist needs tweaked for better accuracy, it will also make the game a little easier.
• Twenty or so crash bugs fixed.
• IMP wandering off bug fixed. Many rough edges fixed in the IMP code.
• Improved meshes for all rooms. Unified texture atlases to improve rendering speed.
• Chicken AI re-added so they will now prefer brighter warmer places.
• Chickens will also now breath atmosphere.
• Chicken breeding rate limited a bit more to stop them asphyxiating your whole base when their population explodes.
• Colonists will prefer eating chicken and hydroponic fruit over rations.
• Read information about rooms when mousing over them in interaction mode.
• Skinning is fixed on the main character bodies. No more weird distortions. (Some heads still need updating.)
• Many other bugs and issues fix that the community reported. Thanks!

That's all for now. As always, some things didn't make it in time for the announcement, so look out for new features popping up over the next week or so!

[ 2015-02-18 19:19:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.46 is ready to play! Here's a video showing some of the new features. http://youtu.be/d7WG3gdcCBQ

New features

Behold, Botany! Research the local flora with the new plant sample containers and added research technologies.
Nanoprinters! 3d print new IMP robots to expand your workforce and improve the efficiency of your base!
Bugs squished! Thanks to the help of the community we've killed over 50 bugs in the last month. The game is increasingly stable and glitch free. Other new things to look out for.

• Many IMP bugs fixed. No more random wandering off or freak outs.
• IMPs can now use teamwork, digging is much more efficient.
• Find your IMPs with the robots button. (bottom left)
• Rest facilities are now their own need. Colonists will build beds at a much higher priority.
• 4k resolution crashes and performance issues fixed.
• Massive optimisations on the CPU. Threading is improved, as is cache coherancy. Running on an Intel i5 you will be able to keep CPU usage under 50% at 60fps.
• Pathfinding is improved, so less performance spikes.
• Decent GPU improvements, shader fixes.
• Loading directly from the menu.
• Loading speeds are greatly increased as is saving.
• Ground water levels are now shown, watch puddles form and evaporate.
• More music tracks.
• More sounds for common base items to impart more game information via audio.
• Bodybags! No more treading on rotten corpses.
• Creature burrows on the surface.
• Colonist energy usage tweaked. Food values recalculated.
• Many colonist AI bugs squished. Including the one where half full barrels in the solar still drove the colonists insane.
• Placeable airlocks.
• Tutorial updates to point out UI changes.
• AI delegation is now weighted towards being more needs based. A colonist with a greater need will go for the action first.
• Lighting is redone for better effect. Less glitches.
• A few save state bugs fixed.
• Yosemite support added.
• Intel GPU shaders optimised for below minimum spec machines.

A few features didn't make the deadline, but as always we will be adding them in the coming weeks. In 0.47 you can expect colonists to show their emotions, write useful base reports and even look forward to a new terrifying creature to sabotage your base! We'll see you then!

[ 2014-11-27 14:38:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.45 is ready for playing. Here's a quick look video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czrGGgSi2rU

New features:

A problem shared! New AI interaction code allowing your colonists to communicate with each other and delegate tasks to the most able. Your colony will now run like a well lubricated Morris Minor. Research! Many new technology perks based on real science have been added. Improve your wind turbines with electrodynamic bearings and coat your bulkhead doors with carbon-carbon to make them stronger than ever! A new room. The living area provides an insulated, safe and quiet environment for your colonists to rest and recuperate in, improving their health and sanity. Many optimisations. Lower end CPUs will see a big improvement in framerate thanks to a new pathing system for locked doors and inaccessible rooms.

Other improvements:

• Key bindings reworked and interchangeable. 1..9 can cycle objects in a build list and q+e can cycle rooms.
• Doors are no longer in build lists, are context sensitive when walls are moused over (not perfect yet, can be finicky)
• Starvation is now more accurately tracked. Colonists will die much quicker without food.
• Imp now is more responsive to cancelled jobs.
• Reflections are now lit and are looking quite pretty.
• Some new meshes for upgraded items.
• All crash bugs nailed (he says).
• Earthquakes are slightly gentler.
• A whole bunch of Linux issues nailed down.
• Better performance for Mac users.
• Imp no longer recycles full water barrels like some sort of crazy eco warrior.
• Colonists no longer leave empty barrels by the solar still.
• Imp can destroy plants outside and uproot grasses.
• The ecosystem is balanced and you can see some cool battles between the plant species play out over the weeks.
• Pressing y during the tutorial no longer spawns earthquakes that make the game unplayable.
• AI needs have been tweaked to make mature bases more manageable.
• OCD placement mode (ctrl) no longer offsets everything randomly by 1 degree. ;)

There are a few features that had to be missed for the milestone such as loading direct from the menu and on-map meteor strikes - due to me taking a few days off with the flu. I'll drop these into the game in a week or so when they are tested. Thanks for all the feedback on 0.44!

[ 2014-10-03 01:23:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maia 0.44 is out! Here's a quick video of me giving the new build a go. http://youtu.be/g2nwQ999F_I

New features:

Catastrophic earthquakes! Poorly constructed bases are now vulnerable to chain reaction collapses. Digging out large areas will cause structural weaknesses to build in the rock above. Strong earthquakes can cause the rock to give way, destroying anything unlucky enough to be caught underneath. Build rooms and bulkheads to strengthen areas and avert disaster.
Reworked research! Secure new technologies with an improved research system. Collect animal remains and fossils to generate data on the planets ecosystem. Colonists with free time and rest will turn their minds to invention and generate data on their own. Creepy herbivorous underground dwellers. A new creature to destroy your solar panels and ruin your day! AI improvements. The AI now has a greater understanding of the world around them. Colonists now track over fifty individual and group needs and will make smarter decisions on what tasks to carry out. Even more Haikus! With many more topics to explore and a more detailed understanding of their environment, the colonists can now write one million different procedural poems. They can also write useful reports, which is probably more important that poems.
Save games. Detailed additions to the save system now track far more aspects of the simulation. Allowing you to carry forward every aspect of your base Engine performance upgrades. With some careful profiling and optimisation I have managed to increase performance by up to 15% for low end users. Further upgrades in the game code have levelled CPU usage, which should reduce frame-rate stutter and similar issues. Medical treatment. Your colonists can now rest up in the medical room to overcome their injuries and ailments. Injuries will are now more obvious and shown through the characters movements. Game code improvement. A massive rewrite of the core game code has eradicated the stability issues and allowed for more aggressive use of system memory. It also opens up the path towards extensive scripting support for modders.

Other changes:

• New shrubberies and a more realistic procedural planting system.
• More ground detailing.
• Linux fixes. XDG compliance and a few windowing improvements.
• Fail states when you are terrible and should feel bad.
• Hopper functionality actually working. Efficient storage of building materials.
• Amnesia issue fixed. Colonists will try to remember what they are doing when the world changes.
• Text speed variation. Larger chunks of text are drawn faster to remove waiting for it to appear.
• Animation flickering fixed.
• Fixed creatures coming into the base to sniff things.
• Colonists are no longer compulsive eaters.
• Lots of sound tweaks. Atmosphere alarms are more obvious.
• IMP lockups eradicated.
• Temporary quicksave icons on the GUI because nobody ever remembers to look up how to save.
• Death reports are no longer sent twice.
• Colonists landing from orbit are less likely to land somewhere bad.
• Lots of other small glitches fixed.

Thanks for being patient whilst we got this huge update together!

[ 2014-08-27 00:31:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've just released the latest alpha build of Maia. Here's a few things to look out for: Brand new IMP AI. The IMPs will now be more useful and plan and execute orders better. They can now run and will manage water barrels and the storage room better. Core AI rewrite. Lots of small AI bugs sorted. The code for the core AI components has been unified and as a result is faster and less buggy.
Pathfinding and multithreading optimisations: Smoother game-play with a 15% increase in performance on some machines and a noticeable reduction in stuttering. Casualty reports: When a colonist dies, you'll be presented with information about their injuries. The data obtained from their loss can be fed back into your research program. Snap rotations are more responsive and tweakable. Hold control when rotating an object to have it move to the nearest 45 degree angle. Crew drops have been polished. Expect your new charges to arrive with style. Beds are now usable from both sides and colonists will sleep for longer to reduce their fatigue. Graphics glitches on the edge of the map and many other small glitches smoothed out. Megacephalalgia is better balanced, will come inspect things you leave outside. It will also groom itself and perform other animal like behaviours. Other changes

• Progress reports can no longer come from dead colonists.
• Animation system flicker and popping fixed.
• Megacephalalgias no longer turn into chickens when loading.
• Several savegame crashes fixed.
• Colonists movement tweaked. Colonists will avoid running through bulkheads.
• Colonists who die outside will now collapse instead of turning into creepy statues.
• Comms tower is easier to build.
• Atmosphere generator will decay slower when turned off.
• Turret emits smoke when firing.
• Few other % tweaks on wear and tear.
• Fix for some objects not being prioritised well by colonists (Building superfluous workshop tables etc.
• Updated to the latest SDL.
• Fixes a slowdown caused by Megacephalalgia running out of food and flooding the path finder looking for more.

Previous Update

[ 2014-06-11 20:37:20 CET ] [ Original post ]