Hey folks, we've got a new story update ready for ya to try out. The primary goal with this update was to expand the gameplay and story content related to the crew of the Hermes, who set up their residence in the Pioneer Station before you land on the planet. We've dramatically redesigned the Pioneer Station with the intention of making it more interesting to explore, as well as less hospitable. Aside from the story content, we've also added a new platinum material tier, a bunch of new weapons and gadgets and made quite a few quality of life changes. You will need to create a new character or a new world for your existing character if you want to experience much of the new content.

Redesigned Pioneer Station

This is where most of the new content is in this update. We've dramatically expanded and redesigned the Pioneer Station to be much more interesting to explore and more fulfilling in terms of story content and mechanics. When you first reach the Pioneer Station the power will be out, and you will need to find a way inside and get the generator working before you'll be able to fully explore the station. There are new weapons and gadgets to find and craft, new creatures and a new boss fight with a certain fowl creature...

New Potions and Vessels

We realized that the early game experience can be a bit unforgiving for new players because of the lack of decent heal options, so we revamped the potion systems pretty significantly. Now potions should be accessible much earlier in the overall "tech" progression, and the heal potions do a better job of quickly healing you. Instead of being single use, potions now have a number of charges, and one charge is consumed by each chug of the potion. You can also hold down the drink button to chug the whole potion if you wish. There are 3 tiers of vessels that can hold potions: A glass vessel that holds 3 charges, a standard vessel that holds 4 charges, and a reinforced vessel that can hold 5.

Platinum Material Tier

We added platinum ore to the world generator, and added a platinum armor set as well as a sword, spear, axe, pick, club, bow and crossbow. The armor is heavy with high defense, and its set bonus increases your melee damage.

Elevators

As part of the revamp of the Pioneer Station, we ended up also reworking the way elevators work and have made them craftable by players. Right now there are 2 elevator types, a small "personnel" elevator that is 3 tiles wide, and a large "freight" elevator that is 9 tiles wide. An elevator can travel up and down a track made out of elevator shaft tiles elevator floor tiles. The elevators will stop automatically at the top and bottom of the shaft as well as any of the elevator floor tiles.

New Music

We added quite a few new ambient songs that play while you're exploring the world. The songs are:

• Daylight by Andrew kn
• Sphere by Andrew kn
• Surreal Ambient Mix by Andrew kn
• Drops by Andrew kn
• Road in the Forest by Andrew kn
• Thing II by Night Note
• Friday 13. Night meditation by Night Note
• Sunday moved to Monday by Night Note
• Landscape of Dreams by Night Note
• On a smooth surface by Night Note
• I don't have to get up early on the weekend by Night Note
• Away at sea by Night Note
• The way to the constellation Andromeda by Night Note

Experimental Mod Support

We've also started exploring mod support. We're still fairly early in the process, but we have gotten it far enough that you can already do some pretty cool stuff with it. We're still figuring things out, so expect things to change and your mods may break as we nail down exactly how it all needs to work. So far, you can mod in the following stuff:

• Basic items - Simple items that just have a sprite, name, description etc. Examples include things like metal ingots, wood sticks and toilet paper.
• Containers - Any kind of item that holds other items.
• Consumables - Potion vessels, potion types, and food.
• Melee Weapons - You can add simple melee weapons fairly easily, and we've also got some basic lua support working as well for more complicated melee weapons.
• Recipes - You can add new recipes that will be used in the crafting window.

I'd like to get it set up so you can mod in guns and armor soon, and we'll go from there.

Mod Installation

Right now mods can be distributed as zip files, and are placed in a new "Mods" folder in your Documents/My Games/Signs of Life directory. For the most part the mods should work in multiplayer as long as everyone has the same mods. In the future we're planning on setting up Steam Workshop support.

Mod Creation

There is very little documentation right now, but we're starting to fill out the Wiki with information about how do get started with modding. If you need help or just want to talk about modding, feel free to make a post in the modding section of the forum or in our official Discord server.

Behind the Scenes

This update took us a heck of a long time to get done, partially because we were re-working a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we've been meaning to do for a long time. On top of the new content that we added, we integrated a new, better animation tool (Spriter), fixed a bunch of issues with our particle effect system and started integrating mod support. These things took us awhile to get working, but they're already paying off in a big way. Long story short, we're really happy with the way things are coming together, and hopefully a lot of the time we invested will result in quicker updates from here on out.

What's Next?

Our primary goal is to continue working on the story content. Our next bit of story content is going to involve a rework of the mining station similar to what we did with the Pioneer Station. As part of that update, we'll be expanding the story and mechanics related to the [spoiler]aliens[/spoiler]. There are just a handful of content updates left to finish the story we have planned for the 1.0 release, so we're getting there! Signs of Life is a work in progress, and we always want to hear your feedback about the current state of the game, so let us know what you like and don't like. Tell us what you think in the comments, the Steam Forums, or our official Discord server.

[ 2020-04-26 23:45:18 CET ] [ Original post ]