Version 3.10 is almost ready, with some bugs and testing left to do. A few more features have been implemented to round up the release in the past week.

New antagonist civ variant

Some civs are now a "pure antagonist". Unlike the other civs, antagonists cannot own planets and they will always be hostile to you. Pirates, Robots and Lactians are now antagonists. Their discovery is not galaxy map based. Instead they are triggered by some conditions. For example pirates appear when your bank account reaches certain amount:
And robots appear when you first unlock the robot factory:

Lactians

The Lactians, as the members of the Church of Lactus are called, are a new civ in Galactology. They venerate a mysterious milk god entity, and are more interested on conversion than on slaughter. Here's how their planet invasions look like:
They won't hesitate to fight you if you decide to liberate the planets they convert tho. Lactians will have more content and specific events in 3.11.

Ship skills

Since planet combat is more important than ever, in 3.10 all ships will feature 6 officer slots, so you are not limited by ship crew capacity when assembling a strong force for planet liberation or invasion. But this made ship differentiation even less visible than it already was. To enhance ships and their role in planet exploration ship skills have been introduced:
Ship skills are actions that appear when you select an officer on a planet, which can be used by any officer. They have a global cooldown like the current teleport (indeed, the teleport is now a ship skill and it is standard for all ships). Each ship model has different sets of skills, with the largest and more expensive ships having a large selection of them. The currently implemented skills are: - Surface teleport: the one already in game - Orbital bombing: click an area on the map to bomb it from orbit (remember the removed asteroid shower event? It's back as this ship skill, and you can control it!) - Healing wave: all officers get healed - Ship dome: a large damage shield is spawned - Mass hysteria: all enemy units on the map go crazy for a limited time - Robodrop: a squad of combat robots is spawned These skills increase in potency with bigger, faster ships. Additional skills will be investigated for future versions, and they may include non-combat abilities too.

QoL fire changes

Fire is the feature many love to hate. Combined with combat it's surely easier to hate than to love, specially in its current state. So for 3.10 some quality of life changes are being introduced with the hope to make fire less dumb overall. Panic runs for fire are now replaced by "avoiding danger" runs. They are much shorter, and are intended just for that, to step away from the fire area. They are also non-chaining, so you won't get officers or enemies running away for an entire minute because of a fire in some corner. Fire spawns will also proactively try to assign a nearby officer or robot with the firefighting job from the very moment they spawn. This is an inversion of how the game job system works, but it's certainly appropriate in this case. Finally fire won't interrupt firefighters. If an officer needs to cross a fire because he's on the way to get some water to extinguish it, the fire won't interrupt the job (fire has a low DPS damage, just walking by inside won't kill a healthy officer).

[ 2018-01-09 13:57:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 3.10 is almost ready, with some bugs and testing left to do. A few more features have been implemented to round up the release in the past week.

New antagonist civ variant

Some civs are now a "pure antagonist". Unlike the other civs, antagonists cannot own planets and they will always be hostile to you. Pirates, Robots and Lactians are now antagonists. Their discovery is not galaxy map based. Instead they are triggered by some conditions. For example pirates appear when your bank account reaches certain amount:
And robots appear when you first unlock the robot factory:

Lactians

The Lactians, as the members of the Church of Lactus are called, are a new civ in Galactology. They venerate a mysterious milk god entity, and are more interested on conversion than on slaughter. Here's how their planet invasions look like:
They won't hesitate to fight you if you decide to liberate the planets they convert tho. Lactians will have more content and specific events in 3.11.

Ship skills

Since planet combat is more important than ever, in 3.10 all ships will feature 6 officer slots, so you are not limited by ship crew capacity when assembling a strong force for planet liberation or invasion. But this made ship differentiation even less visible than it already was. To enhance ships and their role in planet exploration ship skills have been introduced:
Ship skills are actions that appear when you select an officer on a planet, which can be used by any officer. They have a global cooldown like the current teleport (indeed, the teleport is now a ship skill and it is standard for all ships). Each ship model has different sets of skills, with the largest and more expensive ships having a large selection of them. The currently implemented skills are: - Surface teleport: the one already in game - Orbital bombing: click an area on the map to bomb it from orbit (remember the removed asteroid shower event? It's back as this ship skill, and you can control it!) - Healing wave: all officers get healed - Ship dome: a large damage shield is spawned - Mass hysteria: all enemy units on the map go crazy for a limited time - Robodrop: a squad of combat robots is spawned These skills increase in potency with bigger, faster ships. Additional skills will be investigated for future versions, and they may include non-combat abilities too.

QoL fire changes

Fire is the feature many love to hate. Combined with combat it's surely easier to hate than to love, specially in its current state. So for 3.10 some quality of life changes are being introduced with the hope to make fire less dumb overall. Panic runs for fire are now replaced by "avoiding danger" runs. They are much shorter, and are intended just for that, to step away from the fire area. They are also non-chaining, so you won't get officers or enemies running away for an entire minute because of a fire in some corner. Fire spawns will also proactively try to assign a nearby officer or robot with the firefighting job from the very moment they spawn. This is an inversion of how the game job system works, but it's certainly appropriate in this case. Finally fire won't interrupt firefighters. If an officer needs to cross a fire because he's on the way to get some water to extinguish it, the fire won't interrupt the job (fire has a low DPS damage, just walking by inside won't kill a healthy officer).

[ 2018-01-09 13:57:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Spatials are back on a new adventure!

The Spatials: Galactology is The Spatials reimagined as a deeper, more rewarding simulation game. With mod support and active pause, Galactology adds new items and structures to build, trade routes to exploit, planets with many new variables, sophisticated AI, civilizations that actually attack your station -- and unique gameplay systems behind every object and room.

Key Features

• Design a space station and watch your crew as they build it in real time
  
• More freedom for your designs: use any room with any objects, color the floor tiles as you wish
  
• Reinforce your space station with new buildings, management decisions, and staff
  
• Assemble robots to assist with station chores
  
• Explore a detailed simulation with many systems to play with -- including manufacturing, research, healthcare, disease, emotional breakdowns, combat, hunger, thirst, cleaning, decay, security, FIRE!, and more
  
• Handle complex logistics, requiring restocking and inventory control
  
• Earn in-game cash by growing your space station’s hospitality business
  
• Designate staff for your bar or your research lab
  
• Visitors and officers have a mind of their own. Make sure their needs are met!
  
• Build hospitals to care for the wounded and diseased
  
• Secure your station with cameras, scanners and turrets
  
• A randomly-generated galaxy with 100+ planets
  
• Build spaceships and explore the galaxy
  
• Explore the surface of planets and asteroids
  
• Engage in real-time combat to forge alliances and make new enemies
  
• Find natural resources, civilizations and ancient ruins
  
• Establish trade routes with your allies
  
• Develop and download gameplay mods from the Steam Workshop
  
• And more, much more is coming!

About Weird and Wry

Weird and Wry is a Barcelona game development studio founded in 2014 by two brothers: Carlos and Max Carrasco. Carlos (a programmer) and Max (an artist) share a love for simulation games and classic play -- which heavily influenced The Spatials, their first project. Inspired by the great classic sim games of the '90s, The Spatials combined classic base-building gameplay (based on isometric tile room building) with a real-time combat system and an exploration campaign. The Spatials was released on Steam in March 2015 and took off! Thanks to its success and growing fan base, The Spatials spawned a sequel -- The Spatials: Galactology, which updates the original concept with deeper gameplay and a whole new take on the space station management business.