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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 ]

Maia 0.66: Caves of Steel

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

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

Bok bok.. thud

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.

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.

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

Maia

Simon Roth Developer

Machine Studios Publisher

2018-11-23 Release

Strategy Simulation Singleplayer Tags

Game News Posts: 43

🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse

Mostly Negative (822 reviews)

http://www.MaiaGame.com

Steam Store

The Game includes VR Support

Public Linux Depots:

Maia Linux [1.72 G]

About This Game

Maia is a strange and hostile alien world, toxic to humans, yet lush with new life. Your mission is to colonise this poison eden, survive it's dangers and establish humanity's first foothold in the stars. Created by independent developer Simon Roth, Maia is a space colony simulation game about surviving and thriving on another world.

Build your Base

Burrow into Maia's mineral rich crust to build and manage a complex base that fulfills your colonist's needs. They'll need somewhere to sleep, somewhere to build and a steady supply of food, water and energy.

An Enormous Procedurally-Generated World

Twelve light years from earth, the planet 3452C[Maia] circles Tau Ceti. Its atmosphere is toxic, its surface is ravaged by solar flares and meteor blasts and its unstable crust is constantly shifted by earthquakes. Nevertheless, it is theoretically habitable. Explore Maia through a series of vast procedurally generated mission areas, each one up to 2km by 2km in size.

Challenge Yourself

In addition to the sandbox mode players can take on four specific missions, with more to come in updates. Deal with an influx of refugees from a stricken space station in Cassiopeia, survive the perpetual night of arctic winter in The Twilight Zone, study Maia's local ecosystem in SN1572 and begin to terraform the planet in the shadow of an active volcano in Stratospheric Sulphates.

Research and Learn from the Planet to Survive

Maia is a hard science fiction game based on real or extrapolated technology. Some of the colonist's tools have been brought with them, but others must be fabricated from what they can find. Once your base is up and running colonists can begin to study the native environment researching new ways to use the flora and fauna of Maia to their advantage.

Dangerous Atmosphere

Maia's atmosphere is toxic to humans, so to keep safe you'll need carefully manage the atmosphere around your base with well placed airlocks, atmosphere generators, heaters and air vents. Air flow and heat circulation are realistically simulated, emulating the deadly challenge of surviving on an alien world.

Advanced Colonists AI

In Maia you don't have direct control of your colonists, they operate on their own initiative, fulfilling their wants and needs. You'll need to take care of both their bodies and minds if you want any of them to survive.

An Army of Robots

Colonising an alien world isn't something humanity can do alone, instead they've created robotic helpers to do the jobs they don't want to. The I.M.P. robot digs through Maia's crust and collects useful minerals, while the Utility Repair Robot takes care of all that routine maintenance humans can't be bothered with.

First Person Mode

Experience Maia through the eyes of your pet robots. Assume direct control and explore your base in first person, directly interacting with it by performing your robotic tasks. Become part of the world you've built.

Genetically Engineered Super Chickens

To survive, your colonists will need to create and manage new sources of food, thus the people of Earth designed the genetically engineered super chicken, the Uberhuhn. With enough time and diligent research you can even begin to collect and herd the native wildlife of Maia. Unfortunately most of it tastes terrible.

Custom Engine

Maia runs on a custom game engine made by independant developer Simon Roth. It is used exclusively in Maia and is purpose built specifically to support this game.

Immersive Soundtrack

Maia's immersive sci-fi soundtrack adapts and responds to in game events, ensuring it always reflects the mood of the game.

The Inspiration

Maia was inspired by games such as Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital and The Sims. It mixes strategy, management and construction with dark gallows humour about the many dangers of an alien world. Maia also draws from the retro future style of 1970s sci-fi.

To Come

A full story driven campaign, several hours long.
More rooms, and new base management systems.
Multiple bases.
More indigenous life forms and a functioning food chain.
Somewhat sassy computers.
Realistic water and lava simulation.
Cats with bee suits.

Get Involved

One of the great things about early access is being able to have players follow along with the game’s creation. This immediate feedback is extremely valuable to the games development. You can see our updates and give us feedback on the game via Twitter or our Development Blog. If you need some help with getting started in the game, you can check out our guides, head over to the official wiki or sign up to the forum.

MINIMAL SETUPOS: 64 bit
Processor: Intel Core i3-10100 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100Memory: 2 GB RAM
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia 280 or ATI 5770 - or equivalent with 1GB VRAM
Storage: 4 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: OpenGL 3.2 support is required.
RECOMMENDED SETUPOS: 64 bit
Processor: Intel i5-3570K or AMD Ryzen 3600Memory: 2 GB RAM
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 470 or ATI 5870 - or equivalent with 2GB VRAM
Storage: 4 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: OpenGL 3.2 support is required.

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