Sorry for the radio silence, I've been going through a divorce and it's quite stressful. Anyway, here's a new patch that really fills out the core gameplay and sets the stages for end-game goals (aimed for next patch)

Overview

NPC colonists (villagers) can now spawn in dungeons and as stowaways. Villagers are regular colonists, except they don't work and you can't control them. If you kill them and return their head to your core, you can keep them forever. Added random events, such as stowaway, solar flare, and core o2 malfunction. Added many new types of slimes. Noticeable performance improvents. Far fewer instances of intermittent "stutters"

Important Changes

[olist]

Added villagers that can spawn in dungeons. Harvest their heads and return it to your core in order to keep these humans forever. You can also keep them as a pet or meat source.

Villagers can spawn with a variety of diseases and perks (such as maniac, cannibal, and fanatic)

Dungeons with villagers spawn with extra food.

Added random events: Stowaway, Random Disease, Solar Flare, Core O2 Malfunction, and more. Random events have a much higher frequency while in the void. There is a gameplay setting for event frequency. By default, events occur every 5 days or so.

Added unfair events: random death, fire, entity abduction, entity mutilation, etc (also a gameplay setting toggle for "allow unfair events")

Inevitably, your core's o2 will now eventually malfunction, forcing the player to rely on oxygen emitters

Improved performance of atmosphere flow.

Greatly improved performance when colonists use floors for various purposes (urinating, eating, sleeping, etc)

Colonist now have only 2 shift types: work and non-work. This makes it much simpler to provide free-time, sleep, and food for your colonists.

Low tier beds now restore less sleep per second and higher tier beds restore much more sleep per second. Higher tier beds give your colonists more time for free-time (because less time spent sleeping).

Buffed wood furniture's comfort and sleep rating (so that wood is more lucrative). Wood furniture now restores the most sleep per minute.

Objects that restore needs, such as beds, now display their need restored per hour. This allows you to make an informed decision for best bed 2025

Airlocks in dungeons are now only sometimes locked rather than always locked

Added new slime colors: White (produces milk), Red (raw meat), Blue (water), Green (biomass), Black (fuel), Pink (heals nearby colonists), and Yellow (generates power to nearby batteries)

Colonists infected by a colored slime will produce more slimes of that same color

Added recipe to create Slime Cheese from Slime Milk at the oven

Added Raw Human Meat, Raw Meat, Cooked Meat, Cooked Whale Meat, Rotten Meat, Slime Milk, Rotten Slime Milk, and Slime Cheese

Improved the antagonist system. Colonists with morale of 10 or greater will now stop being antagonists. The rebellion event now correctly works

Higher tier foods now award more health experience. Feeding your colonists higher tier foods will increase their health level (over time)

Traders now spawn with higher quantities and better items. They also spawn with more construction materials. In general, traders are now always more worth it

Non-slavers no longer buy human meat or corpses

Objects now display total amount of currency available in the build menu (cost / total).

Removed the "boarding module" ship upgrade as stations no longer require it in order to be accessed.

Increased chance for dungeons to spawn

Slightly increased amount of wrecks that spawn in destroyed star systems

Increased number of far-away asteroids that spawn in each system.

Increased amount of resources spawned in most local resource nodes (crystal, goolerium, ice, ore, scrap, and silicon), and resource yield per node game setting is now applied to them.

Increased number of anomalies that spawn in destroyed star systems.

Anomalies now spawn with more loot.

Increased sell price of treasures.

Cannibals now only fight when they're hungry. [/olist]

Misc

• Ore Refinery and Programming Terminal now defaults to maintain X amount of most recipes
• Renamed "looking for food" to "eating food"
• Max competence penalty to accuracy is now -50% (was -90%)
• Melee weapons can now be used from the access positions of objects (melee weapons will now damage your core)
• Added awarded experience to attributes of items and objects
• Zombies drop raw human meat when killed.
• Cuddlers no longer drop space rock when killed and instead drop raw meat
• Star sytem objects (planets, etc) are no longer scaled by the asteroids per map gameplay setting
• Fixed a bug where colonists could wander outside the base during lockdown
• Fixed a bug where sometimes walkways would show the "if you warp, you'll lose this object" warning when "walkways extend warpzone" was set to false
• Fixed a bug where gameplay settings couldn't be saved even after pressing the "new" button
• Buffed max health symptoms slightly
• Strong virus is now much more contagious (this virus is used for villagers and other lifeforms)
• Increased the minimum hit chance of colonist arm
• Added metal material and silicon material cache (these are the construction materials and are named "hull material" and "electronics")
• Added more loading screen tips.
• Free-time now drains slightly slower and restores slightly faster
• Slimes now eat rotten food
• Fixed a bug where the "target object" was not displayed for the selected colonist (the blue flag that appears in-world).
• Slightly buffed ship speed and armor upgrades.
• Fixed a bug where wrecks would default to player-owned.

[ 2025-03-12 19:08:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.3.1 - The Sounds of the Void

Added so many sounds. Warping is now performed in real-time in the void. Greatly improved the Job Matrix, use it for all your job needs. Increased starting colonist cap to 7. Added a free-time need, and many free-time objects.

Changes

- Warp travel time is no longer instant. Instead, you enter a warp field where your crew can enjoy some much needed down-time. - Warpdrive must now be charged before you can travel. - Solar Panels and Radar Dishes do not work in the void - Nomads (pirates, space whales) now have a chance to spawn when you travel to a system. - Added many many many sounds. - Added free-time need. Colonists have a unique free-time preference and must perform an activity of their favorite type: - Athletic: Uses Target Dummy and Treadmill - Spiritual: Uses your core, Dragon Tree, and Shrines - Entertainment: Uses TV, Jukebox, Arcade Machine, etc - Creative: Uses Holocanvas Has a chance to generate Pigments. - Intellectual: Uses Research Station. Has a chance to generate Upgrade Modules - Added social need. Colonists restore their social need when seeing or talking to other colonists. - Added loner perk. Colonists with this perk require much less socialization (but still some). - Colonists can now deposit/withdraw items directly into/from liquid tanks, with no sink required. - Increased cuddler speed from 1.0 to 1.5 - Objects no longer default to crafting infinite items, and instead default to maintaining a reasonable amount. - Increased mini-dungeon spawn chance - Doors in the Asteroid Mine are no longer locked. So that you can raid it for sulfur to make C4 and skip the Bypass Module (explosions > hacking) - Colonists no longer puke while performing an action. Instead, they politely wait for their current state to finish, so that even more work can be done. - Increased starting colonist cap to 7, because it was taking too long to reach Programming Terminal tier (which leads to bypass modules, and the ability to breach dungeons). Pirates now attack if you have 8 or more colonist slots - Decreased chance for internal dungeon doors to be locked from 50% to 25%. - Colonists now have a consistent snap and extreme snap effect ("break"). This is viewable when buying/growing, and as a generic attribute in the colonist's object window. - Added Holocanvas. Creative colonists use this to paint. - Added Kat Shrine. Spiritual colonists worship here. - Increased default priority of "Transport Items" job, so that colonists move items around more quickly. - Increased default priority of "Building" job, so that it's above "Transport Items". - Reduced frequency of puking. - Reduced amount of larva husks generated from cuddler infection. - Grilled biomass and nutrition brick now add brick belly. - Removed dangerous enemies from mini-dungeons (the type of enemies that kill everything early-game). - Improved the Job Matrix window. You can now: assign/unassign all, set job as exclusive (no one except the exclusive colonist will perform this job), set multiple colonists as the "exclusive" performer (maybe you want 3 miners), view/change job priority, view hated/loved jobs, tooltips now display that colonist's job skill level, and good colonist choices are shaded in green - Re-enabled slimes spawning 1 goo per day, because I missed farming them. - Purple Slimes ("Big Toxic Slimes") now spawn 3 goo per day. - Mang0 and Bouncer Bot now generate 1 silicon per day. - Decreased build cost of Television, Jukebox, Casino Table, and Arcade Machine so that they cost around 15 metal and 1-3 electronics. - Lifepod colonists now have a very high chance to have a bad perk, such as Maniac, Cannibal, and Arsonist. - Colonists now take increasing damage when starving. Good luck outhealing it. - You now start with 4 electronics, so that you can afford starting entertainment objects. - Nerfed Murder Bots slightly, so that they don't insta-murder everything.

Fixes

- Increased cooldown between object inspection from 1 day to 7 days. My engineer was needed elsewhere. - Doors now have an inspection duration of 30 seconds (was 2 hours) - Fixed a bug where doors were killing performance, due to searching for a bypass module. - Fixed a bug where entities trapped in a room would try to use every object in the map, even though they couldn't pathfind to any of them. - Significantly improved performance when retrieving an agent's position (this improves performance everywhere) - Colonist attribute entries (when buying and growing colonist) now display tooltips when moused over. - Multiple colonists will no longer use the same object at the same time (unless it's supposed to have multiple claimers, such as the Casino Table) - Possibly fixed a bug where the UI wouldn't refresh. (I've been unable to reproduce. Let us know if you still encounter it!)

What's Next

- I'm thinking colonist NPC's that spawn in dungeons. Return their head to your core to keep them forever.

[ 2024-06-28 22:20:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Added pirates and mutiny
You can now change many gameplay settings when starting a new game, including: permadeath, colonist speed, and damage multipliers. You can also change these settings at any time while playing the game (from the escape menu)
Added a Job Matrix, so that you can view and assign jobs to all colonists at the same time.
Added Handguns. Weapons are now visually equipped/used.
Added support for changing languages (but no new language files yet).

Changes

• Added prison posters to the prison dungeon.
• Added "change language" button on the main menu. Press it to change the languages (we did not add any translations. This specifically is the ability to change language by the user at run
• time)
• Added fallback fonts to support a variety of character sets: Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic, Korean, Japanese.
• Language files should be placed in your install directory in StarData/Text. (search for "english.data" to easily find it)
• Language file text order is now consistent, which makes adding/editing files much much easier
• Added custom game settings. You can edit, add, save, and load settings files. Files are in xml, and can easily be edited in any text editor
• Custom game settings are placed in your install directory in StarData/GameSettings. (search for "Easy.xml" to easily find it)
  • permadeath: If true, colonists cannot be regrown when the die (but the heads can be kept forever)
  • research duration multiplier: All research durations are multiplied by this value.
  • colonist movement speed modifier
  • npc movement speed modifier
  • colonist incoming damage: amount of damage colonist receives from all sources
  • colonist outgoing damage: amount of damage colonists deal in combat
  • asteroidSizeMultiplier
  • asteroidsPerMapMultiplier
  • colonist exp multiplier
  • colonist purchase cost multiplier
  • build duration multiplier
  • build cost multiplier
  • item price multiplier
  • start everything unlocked
  • skip tutorial
  • dungeons per map
  • dungeon size
  • enemies per dungeon
  • enemies per asteroid
  • starting colonist count
  • max colonist cap
  • resource nodes per asteroid
  • resource yield per node
  • TELL US MORE SETTINGS YOU WANT
• Gameplay settings can be modified at any time from the escape menu.
• Added new dungeon: Tech Hub.
• Added Tesla Coil. It's a new type of trap/turret. Consumes 20 power per shot. Can be hacked.
• Added a "nomad" system. Nomads are creatures, beings, ships, humanoids (etc) that wander around in the galaxy map. When they wander into your system they appear in your local starmap.
• Current nomads: Space Whales, Pirates, Undead Horde.
• Added a pirate system. Pirates attack every 2
• 3 days that they're in your system. Successfully defeating all pirates in a wave will cause a new, stronger pirate wave to spawn.
• Current pirates:
  • Recruit: Melee, No Jetpack
  • Rifleman: Ranged, Jetpack
  • Grenadier: Explosive, Jetpack, Long reload time
• Your core can now be damaged. If destroyed, it's game over.
• Pirates attack your core.
• Added a basic antagonist system. First antagonist: Fanatic. Colonists with morale of
• 10 or less have a chance to become a fanatic. This is hidden from you. Fanatics have a chance to make nearby colonists a fanatic. Once the number of fanatics outnumbers the number of non
• fanatics, they strike. Attacking all non
• fanatics and finally your core.
• Food now awards health experience when eaten. Raw Food: 400, Cooked: 2000, Space Whale Meat: 4000
• Added sprinkler. Automatically removes fire in a radius. Requires power. Requires Fire Suppression Foam. Crafted at Chemistry Table
• Added steroids to Medical Desk. They award strength exp when consumed. They also make colonists angry.
• Added Handgun, Handgun Magazine, and Handgun Magazine (large) recipe to the Workbench.
• Handguns automatically add a magazine to the colonists loadout. You can manually remove this.
• Added Handgun skill. Increases accuracy of handguns.
• Shooting range now awards Handgun experience.
• Added Melee skill. Increases hit chance and damage of melee combat.
• Punching bag (target dummy) now awards strength skill and melee skill.
• Maniacs now add shivs and handguns to their loadouts.
• Weapons are now visually equipped and have a cute little attack animation. Equip bread for fun
• Nerfed many skill sources so that colonists take longer to level up.
• Increased duration of many actions. However, certain skills reduce the duration of specific actions. (mining is now longer. level up mining to make mining go faster)
• Crops now require tending. They take 1 damage per day that they aren't tended.
• Treadmill now awards some health experience (because cardio is good for you)
• Colonists now contributes 1.0 power per excess speed at the treadmill (previously it was 0.5)
• Beds and the Healing Booth are now used automatically to heal
• Colonists now earn 25% more experience if they love a job that has that skill as the primary skill.
• Colonists now earn 25% less experience if they hate a job that has that skill as the primary skill.
• Reduced purchase cost of egos from 150 to 50 DNA frags
• Removed the Robot Beacon (it was a MurderBot spawner, but the murderbots were just too mean).
• Removed ice asteroids and planets from the starting system.
• Starmancer core and some cosmetic unlocks are now permanent (persist across saves)
• Added a Job Matrix, so that you can view and assigned jobs to all colonists at the same time.

Fixes

• Waste recycler no longer requests infinite biowaste.
• Fixed some instances where extra biowaste would be delivered to the waste recycler when there was incoming biowaste.
• Farmers no longer take extra biomass/water when planting crops.
• Locked doors are no longer purchaseable.
• Reduced electronic build cost of many objects.
• Radar dishes will now automatically scan when warping to a new system.
• Radar dishes now automatically scan the closest star system first.
• Floors near the core no longer leak atmosphere
• The small turret now appears friendly when hacked.
• Sorted the cheats in the cheater menu so that commonly used ones are in the front
• Colonists are now pathfindable while in the top of bunk beds (fixed at least one source of this bug)
• Colonists now return to base immediately upon activating lockdown.
• Added in-world marker to objects that will be lost on warp (if you press "show me" in the warp warning)
• Cheat right clicking crystals in the currency window now awards 1k crystals (previously was 100).
• Healing Booth and Therapist Bot 9000 now only consume power when being used to heal (previously they would consume power while being inspected and any other time they were "used").
• Fixed a few instances of notifications being really big or stretched out.
• Colonists will no longer sometimes take their helmets off in a vacuum, resulting in instant death (they would do this in order to create container space for food)
• Water in tanks will no longer decay into dirty water.
• Objects now longer require immediate maintenance/inspection

What's Next

• Quests
• Faction System
• Object Ownership
• Throwable Biowaste (adding a system for colonists to throw items as weapons)
• Return of the gossip system?

[ 2024-03-13 16:13:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Many objectives in the tutorial now have a video showing you exactly what to do. Airlocks in derelict stations are now locked, and must be breached with a security guard. Heads, in Jar and Corpses can now be stored wherever items are stored. Added a new Prison Ship dungeon, and drug rework (more details below). Many many many dungeon objects are now purchasable and placeable as "decorations", so that anything you find can be replicated in your own base. Also fixed many bugs

Changes

• Added videos to many spots in the tutorial
• Added more arrows throughout the tutorial.
• You can no longer turn npc objects offline/online.
• Added Bypass Module. Crafted at the programming terminal. Has 10 uses. Colonists with this item acquire a new context option, "hack", that deals 50 damage to bots.
• Many doors are now locked in derelict stations, and require a guard to breach them. Breaching requires a Bypass Module.
• Colonists assigned "security" are automatically assigned "Bypass Module" as a loadout item.
• Breaching is now the only way to get into dungeons (also C4, removing the door, replacing a wall with a window and then removing the window, finding an opening, or picking up and dropping your colonists)
• Reduced snap chance from .1 to .05
• Colonists now restore morale through catharsis much more slowly.
• Renamed "Metal Framework" to "Hull Framework" so that it's less confusing with "Metal"
• Renamed "Star Fuel Station" to "Star Fuel Extractor".
• Added dead body and head to item filter, so that BloklanderXD will be less lonely. (Medical > Waste). Also added the "Carry Dead Body" job task.
• Increased build cost of additional ships to 200 Hull Material and 20 Electronics (first build is still free)
• Added Prison Ship dungeon / derelict station.
• Added Small Turret. It shoots colonists that walk in-front of it. Can be hacked with a Bypass Module to fire at enemies. Steal the ammo and it will also stop firing at you. You can also punch it.
• Added Small Turret to the "cheater" menu. Type "cheater" into the build menu's search bar to view all cheats.
• Added Tranquilizer. It spawns in the prison ship and whereever relics spawn. Instantly knocks out the target colonist. Has 3 charges.
• Many many many (aiming for 100%) dungeon objects are now "decorations" and can be purchased and then placed anywhere you want. Decorations don't do anything, but they look interesting. A few examples: Ship Thruster, Trash Eater, Medilab Terminal, Extruder Crane, Magma Pit
• Added context option to steal from unconscious colonists.
• Colonists will now assist other colonists in combat. They must be friends with the other colonist, and they must not be friends with the target. They must also be conscious and reasonably close to assist in combat.
• Added recipe to convert corpses into DNA frags at the Medical Desk. (you have to place a new desk to see the new recipes)
• Added recipe to create pigments at the Chem Table. Ingredients: Red Cuddler Sac, Green Biomass, and Blue Jelly (you have to place a new chem table to see the new recipes)
• Added Hotkey to activate the mining/harvest tool. Press F (U for other dvoraks among us). TELL US THE OTHER HOTKEYS YOU WANT
• Reduced chance for colonists to become space rock users, space rock addicts, and alcoholics.
• Space rock now awards +2/+5 morale (memory, "I used space rock" / active effect, "I'm spacing out...dude") now increases movement speed even more, restores sleep and hunger, and increases competency by 25. Also tastes delicious
• Purple Mushrooms now award +2/+7 morale (memory / active effect). Mushrooming colonists are now pacifists. They remove all bad memories with a morale penalty of -3 or greater. Cures all madnesses, manias, nightmares, etc. Chance to have a "bad trip". Colonists experiencing a bad trip can go crazy and suffer from brain damage.

Fixes

• Colonists with the snap perk "lazy" will now eat when hungry.
• Monsters no longer destroy locked npc doors.
• Monsters no longer get "stuck" on each other. Monsters will continue to block colonists, but not each other. Nothing blocks monsters anymore.
• Dead and unconscious colonists no longer block pathfinding.
• Updated FMOD, this should fix issues with audio on linux.
• Space whale meat no longer displays as "rotten" in a living space whale (they live).
• Explosives now display a warning in the hud before exploding (click to goto).
• Fixed a bug where stars disappeared from the galaxy map sometimes. (a list was being reused, rip)
• Placing an external object on an external floor will no longer remove the warp zone. (placing a solar panel on an external floor, for example)
• Colonists will now spawn only 1 rainbow mushroom per day max (when puking).
• Colonists no longer have a chance to get infected when performing star fuel missions.
• Removed cuddler, zombie, and slime symptoms from generic viruses.
• Treadmill no longer displays warp zones.
• All "thin" tables (2x1) can now store and display 2 items.
• Fixed build grid looking weird.
• Colonists now restore morale through catharsis even when unconscious.
• Agoraphobic colonists will no longer fly away in ships (because space is really really far from their bed)
• Fixed a bug where walls would sometimes use external light colors even when inside.
• Shamblers now deal direct damage to HP, in addition to organ damage.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes carried items weren't dropped when a state was abandoned/failed.
• Ore objective is now finished with ore outside player's base.
• Camera bounds are now expanded if you expand your base beyond the border (so that you can pan the camera to the new objects).
• Decreased amount of scrap that spawn at each node from 1-5 scrap to 1-2 scrap.
• Increased chance for traders to have pigments.
• Toilets now request offload of anything colonists poo inside them.

What's Next

• Quests
• Faction System
• Throwable Biowaste (adding a system for colonists to throw items as weapons)
• Return of the gossip system?

[ 2024-01-24 19:48:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick hotfix

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't craft at machines when they should have
• Fixed a bug where colonists would attempt to craft at machines when they should not have
• Colonists will no longer "see" themselves puke
• Added a log message when items explode from heat

Have a nice holiday! Continue to submit bug reports and we'll fix em! - Tyler

[ 2023-12-18 02:49:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

When colonist morale is low, they now have a chance to "snap". Added a tutorial. Kat is back! Water now decays into dirty water, and dirty water emits germs. Added the flammable item attribute (this is a big deal, so be careful). Improved lockdown behavior so that colonists now return to base much quicker.

Changes

• Colonists now have a chance to "snap" when their morale is low. This chance increases the lower that their morale is. When colonists snap, they acquire a random perk, such as graffti artist. Every extra snap increases the chance that the colonists will get an extra bad perk, such as pyromaniac, saboteur, and maniac. Every few hours, colonists gain +1 morale as "catharsis", capping at +15. Colonists "snap out of it" when their morale returns to positive. Snap count is reset to 0 upon: death, therapy booth use, memory wipe from memory pen. Snap count is reduced by 1 every 10 days. In this way, colonists will no longer stay upset forever, and the first few snaps are very forgiving.
• Added new snap perks: Hider, Space Terror, Lazy, Crybaby, Binge Eater, Vomit, Dazed, and Militant Incompetence
• Added tutorial
• Added notification when no colonist is assigned mining, building, or scavenging
• Slinkers now eat rotten food.
• Colonists (and all lifeforms) now respond when they're attacked by another agent and it's a miss. Previously they would only react once they took damage.
• Water now decays into Dirty Water in the presence of germs.
• Dirty water now emits germs.
• Biowaste and Puke now emit more germs.
• Added "flammable" item attribute. Flammable items catch on fire when near fire or explosions. The item is destroyed when it catches on fire. Flammable items: Biomass, Goolerium, Most Food, and Biowaste.
• Fire now triggers explosions when near to items with the explosive attribute.
• Windows and the Water Recycler now cost Scrap instead of Metal Framework
• Lifeforms (monsters, etc) now obstruct pathfinding (so they stop colonists and other monsters. colonists could become trapped. much fun)
• Whale Meat is now flammable. Rotten Whale meat is now explosive. For the good people, this is dangerous. For the pirates, this is free explosive.
• Galaxy map can now be opened always.
• Colonists now lose relationship points when they see another colonist puke. Added a memory (-2 morale) when colonists witness someone else puke.

Fixes

• Colonists will now store warpfuel in the warpdrive before putting it on floors.
• Colonists no longer explore while lockdown is active
• Larva husks in a hot room now grow into eggs much faster.
• Fixed a bug where dimple was eaten by a worm while on the treadmill.
• Fixed a bug where colonists would pretty much ignore lockdown all the time.
• Colonist level up messages are now only displayed every 5 levels, and all levels above 40.
• Colonists will no longer remain wandering outside your base after lockdown is activated. Now, during lockdown, colonists will only wander near your core (this is fun, because everyone gets to hangout).
• Fixed an atmosphere bug with shelves.
• Fixed a bug where fog-of-war would be created when placing floors near asteroids.

What's Next

• Quests
• Faction System
• Throwable Biowaste (adding a system for colonists to throw items as weapons)
• Return of the gossip system?

[ 2023-12-15 16:16:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is just a small polish patch. Good performance improvements in this one. We also added a radar dish, chainable explosives, searching items by name, new star systems, and more. Chainable Explosives
Searching For Items
Job Descriptions in tooltip

Changes

• Reduced many instances of "stuttering". 3x speed is now more playable.
• Colonists will now talk with many lifeforms (but the lifeforms don't talk back)
• Those same lifeforms will now randomly display speech bubbles
• Corpses now emit germs, and they're ugly
• Added memory when colonists sleep in a noisy room
• Eyeball portal now stores 10k power, and is removed when all power is drained
• Chloropods now get aggressive when they see trees being chopped down.
• Added a text search filter in the item selection window.
• Added descriptions for all jobs in their tooltip.
• Added destroyed star system. It's a star system with only scrap, and destroyed planets. High chance of space whales
• Added "void star systems". It's a star system with nothing at all. No asteroids, etc.
• Added radar dish. It's used to scan nearby stars, revealing their contents, such as lifeforms and traders. (this information is now hidden until the star is scanned)
• Added many more attributes to items, such as "Human Edible", "Rotten", "Hot"
• Gas Giants now spawn Hydra Gas, an item that can be sold to traders for money.
• Explosives now chain react together
• Fuel, Star Fuel, and Sulfur are now explosive.
• Sanitizer can now be stocked with immune boosters. Doing so will provide immunity to any nearby colonists. (this invention is made possible by the Bloklander Corporation)
• Added more scrap to starting system and reduced number of asteroids.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where chefs would cook food without destroying the reagent if the reagent food was in their inventory.
• Thermal Regulator now correctly triggers its cooling animation.
• Colonists will no longer consume anti-virals if "use anti-virals" is turned off after the colonist is infected.
• Colonists no longer die instantly if their max health is under 1 (max health minimum is now 1).
• Food dishes are now longer "biomassable"
• The ship and solar panel now automatically place warp zone tiles so that they're not lost on warp.
• Fixed a bug where "seemingly-random" objects would be displayed as "lost on warp"
• Out of bounds message no longer references expansion permits.
• Ship requirements no longer say "purchase with credits and an upgrade module"
• Only the first 6 assigned colonists are now displayed in job task cards
• Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't use items that were stored on asteroids.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes colonists wouldn't craft even when all items were available.

What's Next

• Tutorial
• Quests
• Faction System
• Throwable Biowaste (adding a system for colonists to throw items as weapons)
• Return of the gossip system?

* Remember to check out builds early on the "earlier_access" testing branch!

[ 2023-11-29 20:46:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

(I moved houses during the last patch, so I combined the previous patch and the current patch together into one post) The Warp Field Update is live!
In this patch, we added construction materials, security task, gear crafting station (with shiv), and currency display in the HUD. Also added a new permission UI for controlling colonists. The arbitrary "square" base boundary has been removed, and you can now build in any direction you want. Asteroids and stations can now spawn very close to your base. Asteroids are now slightly bigger. You can also claim any part of a map that you want, and keep it forever, later, unclaim it and warp to remove it (you could keep an abyssal eye portal forever). Full Patch notes (0.2.16): Patch Notes Full Patch Notes (0.2.17): Patch Notes Devblog: Devblog Link Stream (every Friday): Stream I also recorded a video that covers similar topics (reading for nerds) [previewyoutube=osgtOdB-itk;full][/previewyoutube] Thanks! - Tyler
p.s. There's a new build on the earlier_access branch with some performance improvements

[ 2023-11-10 15:59:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Added construction materials, security task, gear crafting station (with shiv), and currency display in the HUD. Also added a new permission UI for controlling colonists. Part of the intent with these balancing changes is to make the game a bit more challenging by removing your god-like ability to always control your colonists.
The arbitrary "square" base boundary has been removed, and you can now build in any direction you want. Asteroids and stations can now spawn very close to your base. Asteroids are now slightly bigger. You can also claim any part of a map that you want, and keep it forever, later, unclaim it and warp to remove it (you could keep an abyssal eye portal forever).

Changes

• Added construction materials: Scrap, Metal, Electronics, Wooden (plant fiber), and Pigments (used to build cosmetics). Crystals are now used only as a tradeable currency.
• Ship upgrades now cost a construction material rather than upgrade modules and crystals.
• All mining in the ship now requires a mining drill (asteroids, planets)
• Adjusted Kat messages to better connect with the intro scene and to be more helpful
• Increased number of stars per galaxy region
• Added currency display UI in the HUD. Select which currencies you want displayed in the HUD (Crystals, Upgrade Modules, DNA Frags, Building Materials). Currencies are displayed similarly to items.
• Jetpack and helmet are now gear, and colonists must have 1 stored in their inventory to use them. You start the game with 6 helmets and 3 jetpacks. More can be crafted at the Gear Crafting Station.
• Zombies now drop Rotten Leather. This is used to craft helmets.
• Bots (Mang0, Bouncer Bot, etc) now drop Servo Motors. This is used to craft Jetpacks
• Added Gear Crafting Station. With recipes: helmet, jetpack, and shiv (shiv is a basic weapon that does more damage than unarmed)
• Removed the distribution booth. The model will be stripped for parts and sold off. (this object was added before you could context order colonists. It will return at a later date).
• Added "security" task ("monster hunter"). Colonists assigned this task will automatically attack lifeforms marked with "terminate". Your own colonists can also be marked for terminate.
• Cryptominer now generates "Crypto Hash" and sometimes "Rare Crypto Hash". These can be sold for money to traders.
• Dreamcatcher now creates "dream capsules" and "rare dream capsules". These can be sold for money to traders.
• Added "permission UI". Every colonist has their own set of permissions: Leave Base, Use Foreign Objects, Drink Alcohol, Fight, Permit Self-Defense, Heal Automatically, Use Antiviral. Let us know which permissions you'd like to see (they're easy enough to add)
• Colonists now require 0 or greater morale to be drafted (previously -4 or greater). Context command now requires -4 or greater (previously -9 or greater).
• Colonists now die immediately if they remove their helmets while in a vacuum.
• Increased chance for colonist to contract disease slightly.
• Cheat spawned colonists (type "cheater" in the build menu's search bar) now spawn with a helmet and jetpack
• Rotten food can now be converted into Biomass in the waste recycler
• Reduced goolerium dropped by slimes from 3-7 to 2-4 (to reduce the amount of goolerium that you could too easily become overwhelmed with)
• Colonists no longer eat food instantly, and must once again eat at floors, tables, etc. Medkits can be used instantly.
• You can no longer drop or eat items directly from a colonists inventory (in the inventory UI)
• Added new dungeon, Magma dungeon.
• Added sulfur to magma dungeon. Sulfur is now used to craft C4.
• Removed excess recipes/items that weren't doing anything useful: Superheated Metal, Special Oil, Essence of Goo, Quantum Data Chip
• Added silkworm to the worm lifeform archetype. 100% chance to drop silk. 3 silk makes 1 rough fabric, which is used to create helmets.
• Many dungeon rooms now spawn with a liveable atmosphere.
• Traders are now listed separately from "Outposts" in the galaxy map's UI (visible when mousing over a star sytem).
• Colonists can no longer be drafted or ordered for the first 2 seconds of combat.
• Decreased price of recipe cache from 5000 to 500.
• Space whale meat can now rot (in warm rooms and in the presence of germs).
• Colonists with a cuddler infection will now always like other colonists with a cuddler infection.
• Redesigned cuddler perk so that it will better spread throughout the colony and spawn larva. (no longer causes puking, bleeding, or maniac). Now increases hunger (something has to feed the larva husks)
• Cuddler and Zombie disease now has a small chance to add the maniac perk when acquired (the preceding line is a lie)
• Reduced the frequency of puking from all sources
• Changed virus transmissions so that the likelihood of transmission increases the longer that a colonist is near another colonist
• Added "Chloropod" lifeform (and archetype). These tree lifeforms drop Plant Fiber when killed.
• All garden and sand cosmetics (trees, bushes, cacti, etc) found in derelict stations can now be harvested for Plant Fiber.
• Removed the base size system and replaced it "warp field extenders". You start with 500 of these (numbers subject to change). They're automatically placed when you expand your base. You can manually place them to claim any part of a map.
• Added "Warp Field Extender", when powered, it increases the number of tiles that you can own.
• Wilderness colonists can now spawn with jetpacks and helmets (rarely)
• The Abyssal Eye Portal now has a cooldown of 60 seconds before it will damage a colonist again. It will now damage the same lifeforms that the rainbow mushroom damages. Reduced damage range from 4 to 2. Implemented eyeball portal attack animation.
• Dungeon walls can now be painted
• Power is now displayed as "per hour" rather than "per minute" (because it's easier to understand "2 / hour" rather than ".03 / min"
• Objects that create power--treadmills, generators, and solar panels--now display the amount of power they create per hour
• Added mesh, standard, and wood furniture back to the tech tree.
• Moved overlays and zone tools into the build menu (as their own tab buttons)
• Build categories are now visible when viewing the delete menu.

Fixes

• Zombied colonists will now drop their items when they turn into the undead.
• Lifepod colonists no longer spawn in full containers
• Space floor generation is now correctly performed during warp and loading screens (this fixes one-time stuttering when generating pathfinding routes in new areas)
• Food Brick Factory now has the "production order UI" (craft X amount, craft endless, craft until X)
• Lifepod colonists no longer spawn in full containers
• Space floor generation is now correctly performed during warp and loading screens (this fixes one-time stuttering when generating pathfinding routes in new areas)
• Food Brick Factory now has the "production order UI" (craft X amount, craft endless, craft until X)
• Venting an atmosphere will now set temperature to 0 (this fixed a bug where venting a hot room wouldn't work)
• Door line-of-sight colliders are now much smaller, which should reduce the likelihood of colonists being unable to hit a nearby monster when fighting near a door.
• Ships can no longer be assigned missions when not at base
• Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't put on helmets after moving an airlock
• Fixed a bug where dungeon entrances could spawn in on top of other dungeons or the player's base (you would rarely see this previously, because dungeons used to spawn far away from each other and your base)
• Increased bleed cooldown and damage cooldown
• Fixed a bug where colonist's carry slot would get positioned at 0,0,0 (and be tiny) after loading sometimes.
• Fixed a bug where rollrift was forever generating a route to themselves.
• Contracts are now completable without a mining drill (or other location requirement).
• Fixed some instances where crafting recipes would appear as a pink box in the context menu.
• It's no longer possible to click on buttons that are "behind" the warp screen.
• Objects that can be built by holding and drag (floors, wires, walls, etc) will now display relevant build warnings.
• Colonists are now displayed in a consistent order in the HUD UI and a few other places (after loading, they'll be in the same order)
• Replacing posters with other posters will now refund 100% of the build cost.
• Fixed miscellaneous crashes.

* Remember to check out builds early on the "earlier_access" testing branch!

[ 2023-10-25 20:06:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed a bug where players loading an old save couldn't warp anywhere. rip

[ 2023-09-01 18:38:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Added galaxy map, traders, and space whales. Going forward, more "life" will continue to be added to the galaxy map.
In order to travel, you need "Starfuel", click on the local star in the starmap to create a "star fuel station".
Traders sell a bit of everything:

Changes

• Added galaxy map. Warp around using starfuel. Hauler now starts unlocked.
• Construct star fuel stations at stars (in the starmap) for starfuel (powers the warpdrive).
• Stars now light the map based on their color.
• Colonists no longer spawn alive on the map, and instead spawn in a crashed lifepod with a control module, a corpse, and some random items
• Added trade ships. They sometimes spawn in star systems.
• The loading bar while warping is now incremented at more intervals and has text updates.
• Bioshroom now creates 3 biomass when harvested.
• Added Space Whales. Harvest their tasty meat with C4. (more missions of this type to come soon)
• Sinks (and toilets) can now be used as "output" for restocking other objects.
• Added recipe to chem table that converts biomass, biowaste (for the DNA), and goolerium into DNA frags

Fixes

• Fixed position of cuddler head when sleeping
• Minor tweak to toxic mushroom animation
• Changed the sprite of biomass mushroom nodes on asteroids
• Fixed a bug where tooltips would become orphaned.
• Thermal exchangers placed on external walls now use the system temperature.
• Fixed a bug where colonists would often "double-back" to the ship when offloading (etc)
• Intro music volume is now set to the music volume in the options menu.
• Fixed a bug where crop seeds would be destroyed when planting crops.

What's Next

• Construction Materials
• "Change Language" button (for playing in not english)
• Monster Hunting Job Task
• Jetpack and Helmet are gear
• Quests
• Return of the gossip system?

* Remember to check out builds early on the "earlier_access" testing branch!

[ 2023-08-30 14:58:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 0.2.15 is live! (and has been for 2 weeks) This patch adds Jetpacks, Loadouts, The Undead Plague, and more.
For full patch notes: Patch Notes Here's the devblog, on our website: Devblog Link LInk to Stream (every Friday): Stream I also recorded a video that covers similar topics (reading for nerds) [previewyoutube=7uZwxh03yfQ;full][/previewyoutube] Thanks! - Tyler

[ 2023-08-09 19:02:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Added jetpacks. Colonists and a few lifeforms can fly around the map now. Added actual diseases when Slimes, Zombies, and Cuddlers infect colonists. Crops now require light. Added starting Bioshroom crop (doesn't require light). You can now set "loadouts" for colonists. They'll automatically store whatever items you set during their free-time.

Changes

• Added "Zombie Disease". Colonists infected are bald (so that you never trust bald people). Zombies will not instigate fights against any colonist with a zombie infection (they'll still defend themselves if attacked. ZLM).
• Added "Slime Disease". Colonists infected become gingers and poop out goo. The "Upset Stomach" perk no longer goes away automatically. Purple Slimes won't instigate fights against colonists with a slime infection.
• Added "Cuddler Disease". Colonists infected become Albino. Cuddlers won't instigate fights againts colonists with a cuddler infection.
• Nerfed Dream Catcher. Reduced base value from 75 to 20. Reduced value increase per skill from .5 to .1. Increased duration from 10 seconds to 20 seconds. (this might be too much of a nerf, but it was way OP, and I'll buff if necessary)
• Added a cheat to unlock all core eyes and bodies.
• Added "Bioshroom", a starting crop that creates biomass (yummy).
• Crops now require lights (any lights) to grow (bioshroom doesn't require lights).
• Crops now have better statuses when they lack atmosphere, seeds, etc.
• Added a "Crop Checklist" UI on crops. It shows the required items and atmosphere.
• Added "Loadout" UI to colonists. Assign items to them and they'll automatically find and store them during free-time. Assign relics, food, medkits, etc.
• Added jetpacks. Colonists, Electro Jelly, and all bots can fly. Death to walkways.
• Added Goolerium Tank.
• Purple Mushroom infection now causes vomitting. Anytime a colonist vomits while infected, they'll spawn a new Purple Mushroom in their vomit (fun).
• Purple Mushrooms can now be marked for harvest (colonist assigned the farmer task will harvest them).
• Dead bodies can now be marked for harvest (colonist assigned the doctor task will harvest them).

Fixes

• New storage zones will no longer default to storing items stored in any "exclusive" storage zones.
• Floors with unliveable atmosphere now show 0 comfort in the overlay.
• Farmers will now take Biomass directly from Waste Recyclers.
• Production Success chance now displays 0% if the colonist is underleveled.
• Space Madness and Space Phobia now add a colonist hover status
• Items can now be taken directly out of sinks when colonists craft, farm, etc. (only piped items, such as Water, Biomass, and Fuel)
• Wall lights now rotate correctly when repositioned
• Main Menu music no longer plays during the intro cutscene.
• Fixed a bug where colonists would try to take items out of toilets
• Fixed some issues with colonist animations and lighting.
• Fixed a bug where mang0's would swarm the player's base, murdering and bullying everything
• Fixed misc crashes.

What's Next

• Random Starting Stations
• Harpoonable Space Whales
• Traders
• Bedrooms
• Gear and Colonist Customization (long term)

[ 2023-07-27 18:01:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 0.2.14 is live! (and has been for 2 weeks)
This patch focused on quality of life fixes, but we also added conditional crafting, pride decorations, an intro cutscene, and more
For full patch notes: Patch Notes Here's the devblog, on our website: Devblog Link LInk to Stream (every Friday): Stream I also recorded a video that covers similar topics (reading for nerds) [previewyoutube=9AWagHqlbCk;full][/previewyoutube] Thanks! - Tyler

[ 2023-07-12 16:02:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.2.14: A Polish Update (and Bug Fixes) Fixing bugs and quality-of-life improvements. You can now "maintain X amount" (of stock) at any crafting station. Added a "new game" cutscene.

Changes

• Increased starting colonist inventory size from 2 to 4 (so that farmer and early-game item transportation is less painful)
• Colonists will now only poop on the floor if their urinate need is under 25% (and they'll queue the Urinate state at 75%, previously they queued this state at 60%)
• Added pride decorations
• Decreased mission durations and increased exp earned per mission.
• Changed "hive detection" to "Hostile Lifeform Detection". Also increased delay after warping before lifeforms starts to spawn around your base
• Combined "clean blood" and "clean floor" into single "Clean Station" task.
• Combined "Fix Object" and "Object Maintenance" into a single "Fix Object" task.
• Pilot now defaults to assigned.
• Colonists now eat anti-virals automatically when sick
• The Thermal Regulator will now warm/cool faster.
• All colonists with strength level 5 can now "crudely remove head" of corpses. High chance of skill loss. Colonists with doctor skill 5 will never cause skill loss when removing a head (competence roll is still performed).
• Comfort now uses the highest comfort value rather than an average. So placing a +25 object near a +50 object will now cause the comfort to be 50. Previously it was an average of 37.5. (the new value is the average of all negative comfort and the highest positive comfort).
• Mousing over a colonist will now display a variety of applicable statuses: Refuses to work, Organ Damage, Infected, Upset, Maniac, etc
• Moved water objects around in the tech tree. Also reduced research durations of "fundamental" objects, such as the Ore Refinery, Chem Table, Medical Desk, and Programming Terminal. Reduced all other research durations slightly.
• Hud messages, such as "Dimple started fighting Space Zombie", can now be clicked to goto the event.
• Added many more messages to to the HUD that were previously in the log window, such as "Dimple passed out from pain". Also added new ones: object maintenance failed, colonist is sick, and more
• Added conditional crafting UI to crafting stations. You can now choose between: Craft X Amount, Maintain X Amount (of stock), and Craft Forever. You could use this to always keep 10 medkits and 15 grilled biomass available. (Maintain X Amount is the only new option). Anything previously set to "infinite" will have to be reset back to "Craft Forever" (because this is a new back-end flag).
• Added "The Monty Special" recipe to the Juicer. Rerolls colonist's preferred job tasks.
• The "boundary" / "hull" floors are now buildable (the floors with holes big enough to fall through)
• Colonists now earn 10%/25% more exp in rooms with high comfort, at the thresholds 25/50.
• Chem table now costs 1k and Med Desk now costs 2.5k (previously they were both 5k). Chem Table is now a pre-req of the med-desk
• Crafting stations now have their own tab in the build menu. (rather than being in power)
• Reduced required skill for silicon missions from 25 to 15. Increased amount of exp earned from ship missions.
• Added intro cutscene

Fixes

• Changes to a colonist's uniform color are now immediately displayed in the HUD
• Colonists no longer flee from electro jellies
• Colonists are no longer growable immediately after being eaten by wildlife (zombie, slime, etc)
• Building a floor on top of another type of floor (boundary floor, etc), will no longer cause all objects on top of those floors to lose their stored rooms. (this caused shelves to not be connected to their storage zones and walls to not be paintable with the shift-tool)
• Many states will now automatically be requeued if they're interrupted. This includes healing
• Starting resource nodes are no longer placed at the edge, and pushed the access position of starting nodes away so that the starting node won't block pathfinding to its own access position.
• Colonists will now no longer attack monsters marked for "terminate" when in a healing state.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes crops didn't die when in a vaccuum.
• The game time is now set to 1x when a colonist dies (to prevent massacres).
• Fixed a bug where colonists would sometimes pick up too many items. This was especially noticeable when healing.
• Fixed a bug where food didn't decay properly when placed in a "null" atmosphere
• Objects now have a cooldown of 30 seconds after failed maintenance before they'll be "maintained" again. This prevents low competence colonists from immediately breaking everything you care about.

What's Next

• Jetpack
• Bioshrooms
• Zombie, Slime, and Cuddler Diseases
• Bedrooms
• Goolerium Tanks
• The return of the story
• Gear and Colonist Customization (long term)

[ 2023-06-29 18:32:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Starship Update is live!
Its been a long time since our last formal blog post. These posts take a long time to create. Weve been very busy working on Starmancer. Its just the two of us, so for a post like this to be created, one of us has to stop working on Starmancer and instead do these sorts of things. Id really like to get back to writing these and we fully intend to. For full patch notes: Patch Notes Here's the devblog, on our website: Devblog Link LInk to Stream (every Friday): Stream I also recorded a video that covers similar topics (reading for nerds) [previewyoutube=ZBOsyfmkzNg;full][/previewyoutube] Thanks! - Tyler

[ 2023-06-15 16:13:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.2.13 - The Starship Update Return of the ship The ship, missions, and the starmap have returned. We've made the ship a lot smaller, to fit the new base sizes and missions have been re-balanced a bit to fit the new gameplay introduced in The Wilderness.
Upgrade modules Upgrade modules have also returned. You can earn them from contracts and use them to upgrade the ship as well as machines and crafting stations. New Grill We added a grill, for cooking food early-game. There are a recipes for making grilled biomass, slinker bacon as well as something called 'regular' beef steak..
New Supply station We also added a Supply Station, for early-game crafting, along with a new recipe for a small medkit.
Scavenge Mechanic Loot containers in derelict stations can now be marked for scavenge, using the mining/harvest tool. Colonist will automatically pick up any loot that's been marked, and bring it back to the station. Organ Healing We added an Organ Healing Serum. Use to it instantly heal an organ to 100%. Full patch notes below

Changes

• Added back the ship, missions, and the starmap.
• Increased duration of missions and the required skill level to perform them.
• Ship now only offloads up to 4 crates
• Colonists now have a chance to get infected when performing missions.
• Added back upgrade modules.
• Added many new generated "mini-dungeons" around the player's base. Including caves, a zen station, medical outposts, and more.
• Player's base is now expanded only when warping, and boundary floors are no longer automatically extended.
• Containers found in the wilderness can now be marked for "scavenge", and your colonists will automatically "dump" their contents. This is similar behavior to marking mining nodes for harvest.
• Added Organ Healing Serum. Fully heals a random, damaged organ. You start with 5 of these. More can be crafted at the Medical Desk and also found in the Medilab. Tastes terrible. Colonists use this automatically.
• Toilet is now a -1 memory when used as a bed, because colonists shouldn't enjoy sleeping in a toilet (disgusting colonists will continue to receive a +2 memory for sleeping toilets).
• Doors now have their own "wreck" model when they're destroyed
• Decreased cost to warp to Asteroid Ridge and The Atlantic Sector (we'll be removing the warp cost soon)
• Increased starting player base by 4 and decreased starting floor size by 2. There is now a 6 floor gap between your starting boundary floor and your starting build limit. Also increased max base size from 36 to 38
• Reduced sell price of tier 2 and above crafted items, so that it's more difficult to become god emperor of finance
• Increased goo dropped from slimes from 1 to 4-7
• Increased many crafting durations and reduced exp earned
• Added a context option, "inspect biowaste". Awards 200 doctor exp. Only usable when under level 5 (use this to unlock head harvesting early-game)
• Crafters will now offload their own crafting stations if there's nothing left to craft (farmers will offload crops now too).
• Added a starting grill, for cooking Slinker Meat, Grilled Biomass, and Regular Beef Steak. The grill does not require power or fuel
• Biomass is no longer automatically edible. It also deals 1 damage, so it's a good poison source early-game.
• Colonists are now "stinky" if they hold biowaste for more than 60 seconds. This makes everyone else dislike them. Lasts for 2 days
• Added a Makeshift Toilet. It generates germs when it has Biowaste inside. +1 memory. Standard Toilet is now a +2 memory. Makeshift toilet starts unlocked and Standard Toilet is now found in dungeons.
• Added "Supply Station". It starts unlocked and has recipes for: Moonshine, Small Medkit, Purified Water, and Fuel.
• Added a few messages to the "hud", such as "Colonist started fighting"
• The "colonist started fighting message" now displays the target as well. "Dimple started fighting Space Zombie"
• Slimes and worms now have a 10% chance to start with a disease.
• Loved and hated jobs can now have their priority changed.
• Trade pod now automatically accepts piped liquid items (biomass, fuel, clean water).
• Increased starting colonist cap from 3 to 4.

Fixes

• Rules of Engagement (roe) changes are now remembered and apply to future enemy spawns. (if you mark a slime as "execute" then all slimes will forever be marked as "execute")
• Boundary walls (that mark the player's base bounds) are now positioned correctly
• Fixed one cause of colonists walking out to space after warping (this was a band-aid fix)
• A temperature icon is now displayed if colonists are wearing helmets due to low temperature.
• Contracts are now more likely to spawn at asteroids and stations
• Improved how storage zones combine their allowed items when merging
• Added notification when base is on lockdown
• Dead bodies are now placed at the same location as the dead colonist. (previously they were being placed at 0,0,0). This was a huge waste of food
• Drafted colonists will now always display "drafted" as their status
• You can no longer paint "dungeon" walls.
• Viruses now have a minimum transmission of 1.0
• Many external objects are now lit by the time-of-day lighting

What's Next

• Autocrafting (conditional crafting)
• Jetpacks for colonists (and enemies)
• Control of starting conditions (supplies, stations, crew archetype)

- Tyler and Victor

[ 2023-05-31 17:43:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.2.12 Starmancer core customization has returned! Find new cores in dungeons and change your core appearance (and name) at any time! We're also improving colonist behavior so that they'll try to solve their own problems (hilarity ensues?)

Changes

• Added Starmancer core customization and "collectables" to unlock more variants in stations
• Added a memory when context eating a dead body
• Added a quick tutorial message. This is temporary until we create a better, in-game tutorial
• Biomass is now a -1 food memory
• Colonists now heal automatically. They'll first try to use a medkit, if none are available, they'll eat any food.
• Colonists now flee from monsters when undrafted and under 50% health.
• Colonists now flee when taking damage from any source if it brings them under 50%.
• Buffed many virus symptoms
• Puke and slimes now generate more germs
• Added a basic "aggro" system for monsters. If they don't attack their target for 30 seconds, they'll stop fighting. If they get attacked by other colonists, they'll start attacking those colonists instead. (rip the cheese strats)
• Low construction skill no longer prevents you from building, instead, the construction duration is longer if a colonist is underleveled

Fixes

• Unity took too long to quit, so the Quit button is now similar to Alt-F4
• Fixed a bug where the starmancer lights couldn't be recolored
• Fixed a bug where chef would take items from fog of war tiles
• Fixed a bug where you could cook food for free if you manually deposited the raw ingredients into the oven.
• Fixed a bug where colonists would get stuck in the airlock if you cancelled their current command while they were in the airlock.
• Fixed a bug where virus symptoms weren't unlocked
• Fixed a bug where puke restored hunger instead of draining it.
• Fixed a bug where a colonist's helmet would not revert the "mouse over" material if the colonist was moused-over when the helmet was equipped
• Fixed snakeman--a bug where dead colonists would keep doing stuff
• Colonists will now stop researching (and generic using) when canceling their current command
• Fixed a bug where colonists would get stuck in a loop of attempting to withdraw an item, and being unable to do so, and then they'd just keep on trying until they got hungry
• Fixed misc crash bugs

What's Next

• More outposts/buildings/stuff around the player's base
• A real starmap
• Tutorial and Story

[ 2023-04-24 19:02:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Performance Update. Improved colonist performance, allowing us to raise the max cap from 7 to 15 (doubling the amount of colonists you can grow)

Changes

- Increased max colonist cap from 7 to 15 - Improved performance of finding nearby floors (for fog-of-war purposes) - Improved performance of calculating player item counts - Improved performance of noise and comfort calculations - Improved performance of obstruction checking during pathfinding - Colonists now automatically take off their helmets if they're in a liveable atmosphere - Added memories when colonists sees friend, best friend, enemy, and "best enemy"

Fixes

- Fixed a bug where sentry didn't attack robots - Fixed a bug where colonist inventory UI got weird when colonist capacity was over 10 - Adjusted research card tooltip (to make better space for the skill requirements)

What's Next

- Core customization, with collectables that are found out in space (aiming for this to be included in next week's patch) - More small buildings and small stations in each map. (a few of these might make it into the next patch) - Starmap, in-game (might take a patch or 2 before it's finished)

[ 2023-04-03 16:34:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Minor changes after The Wilderness release. We're continuing to monitor reports and feedback from Discord, Steam Forums, the in-game reporting tool and our weekly dev stream. Big changes in this patch are the "explore" job task, C4 is now craftable at the Chem Station, increased moonshine spawn, and new cheats for spawning colonists, leveling up colonists, and spawning monsters.

Changes

- Added "explore" job task. Colonists with this task will walk to the nearest fog-of-war floor until all floors have been explored - Chem table can now craft C4 - C4 will now destroy any resource nodes in its blast radius. (use them for mining) - Added cheats to spawn all monsters - Added cheat to spawn colonist - Added cheat option to "right click to level up colonist skills" (right click a skill in the skill window to immediately level up that skill) - Increased seed drop chance from farming to 1% - Increased cooldown before alcoholics drink again. - Added/increased moonshine drop rate in first two dungeons - Moonshine now spawns in item caches (and DNA frags no longer spawn in item caches) - Moonshine now spawns in the starting station and mental stabilizers no longer spawn in the starting station - Mental stabilizers now deal 2 organ damage (cuz they were so good) - Space rock damage increased from 1 to 2 - Addict perks (alcoholic and space rock addict) now cause a bit more aggression - Colonists can now be context ordered until morale is -10 or less (but they can only be drafted until -5) - Decreased lung HP from 9 to 6 - Added a cheat to "disable construction skill requirement". This lets you build anything you want regardless of colonist level - Added romance novels back to the Programming Terminal, because programmers have feelings too - Fuel now requires 1 biomass and 1 goolerium to be created, but 2 fuel is now created - Cleaning solution now requires Refined Goolerium instead of just goolerium - Sink can now be used for eating food (prisoners will eat biomass and they will be happy about it) - Buffed sentry: Doubled shots per ammo, reduced wait time to acquire new targets, increased damage, increased range - Required construction skills are now displayed on tech tree cards - Dream catcher now awards more money based on skill score (total skill count of a colonist)

Fixes

- Zombie nest is now context interactable - Windows can no longer be placed on walls that have objects on them (paintings, etc) - Fixed a bug where upset perks weren't added sometimes

[ 2023-03-28 15:10:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Starmancers biggest update, The Wilderness is out now! Leave the comforts of your space station to loot asteroids and derelict ships across the galaxy. Hunt for resources, take on territorial monsters, and avoid alien probing?! Advance your ship using your newfound space booty and experiment with forbidden technologies. You might even adopt a wandering Space Colonist - but be careful, you never know who or what you might encounter Try it out & watch the trailer! [previewyoutube=8wF1qpA855A;full][/previewyoutube] This update adds explorable space stations and asteroids around your base. We also added many new enemies and items, like C4 and a Purple Slime Monster. Colonists are now draftable (you can order them to do anything). We rebalanced many of Starmancers core mechanics: Morale, Tech Tree, Item Prices, Object Prices, Combat, etc. The game is very stable, crashes are very infrequent and most of the bugs have been fixed.

How to Play

If Starmancer is already installed, your game should update automatically. If you dont own Starmancer yet, what are you waiting for? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062000/Starmancer/ It's super important to note that for this update, saves prior to 0.2.0 (the wilderness update) will no longer work. This is unfortunate, but there were too many underlying changes to the game to keep saves working. The good news is that the game now has way more cheats and settings for customizing your gameplay experience. You can spawn items, unlock everything, build instantly, give yourself money, remove fog of war, and more. So you can easily rebuild anything youve lost. However, The Wilderness experience is much much more fun and its totally worth starting over from scratch. Want to dive into more details? Here's the full changes:

Asteroids

Asteroids now appear around your base. Resource nodes for ice, ore, silicon, biomass, and crystals spawn on asteroids. Worms, zombies, and other wildlife are often present too. Sometimes these asteroids directly touch your base, meaning worms and other critters will sneak onto your base and start eating your food (or colonists) if youre not careful.
Abandoned colonists can sometimes be found wandering on asteroids. These colonists can join your base and be regrown just like the rest of your crew. Sometimes they spawn with diseases and the maniac perk, but mostly theyre good little fellas just looking for a home. Unexplored areas are hidden in fog-of-war. You can disable fog-of-war in the options menu. Note: Previously you used a spaceship to mine at asteroids. This was a rabbit-hole type activity. This spaceship has been removed for now.

Explorable Space Stations

Every star system spawns with an explorable space station. The layout and rooms used are randomized, so no two stations are ever the same. Be careful, monsters wander the hallsprotecting the relics, treasures, and recipe caches found inside. Bring your best food to keep your colonists healed while they neutralize the monsters.
Your colonists can even live in these stations! Theyll use the toilets, beds, crafting stations, etc. You can purchase almost every object in a space station and keep it forever. After looting everything in a star system (or whenever you want to) activate your warp drive and travel to a new destination.

The Stations

This section contains some spoilers about the new stations. If youd prefer to keep the mystery and discover them on your own please skip this section.

Waste Station

A long abandoned Waste Processing Station that was taken over by the slimes. This is the first explorable station, with the weakest monsters. Goolerium nests provide the base ingredient for Chemistry and Medical. Fuel can be scavenged to run your generators.
Ore refineries and waste recyclers are found here.

Medilab

The original purpose of this medical research lab was lost forever when its inhabitants were overrun by zombies. This is the second station youll encounter. Undead monsters here are a bit tougher than slimes. Youll encounter creatures that can infect your colonists, requiring medical treatment before they turn into zombies or go crazy from a cuddler infection.
Medical crafting stations, Therapy Booth (for curing various madnesses), and Healing Booth (for repairing organ damage) are found here. You can also find anti-virals to cure colonists from zombie and cuddler infections.

The Lucky Kernel

A defunct casino ship operated by the Robot Mafia. This is the third station. Bots roam the halls and attack your colonists on sight.
Once the station is cleared, your colonists gain full access to the fun arcade machines and casino tables. They provide a big morale boost. Chemistry tables, silicon, and free-time machines (Arcade, Casino Table, Jukebox) are found here.

Draft Mode

Colonists can now be drafted and manually ordered around. You can order your colonists to do just about everything in the game. Some actions, like dragging another colonist, are only possible by drafting. Drafted colonists do nothing unless ordered to by you. If you accidentally leave a colonist in draft mode they will pass out eventually (from lack of sleep). An on-screen notification is created for every drafted colonist, as a reminder to set your colonists free once youre done ordering them around! Its a good idea to draft a soldier colonist (with high strength and health) to explore all asteroids and neutralize all threats before you send miners outside. If you close your borders, your colonists will automatically remain on your base. Colonists require positive morale to be drafted, but dont worry, you can always feed Mental Stabilizers to a sleeping colonist.

Relics

Relics are rare items with special properties that are found in derelict stations.

• Ordinary Pen: Erases target colonist memories
• Cosmic Bread: Colonist never gets hungry
• Matter Refabricator: Colonist poos out whatever they last ate
• Spiked Collar: Colonist is immune to zombie and cuddler infections
• O2 Cannister: Colonists helmet never runs out of oxygen
• Remote Uplink: Colonist is teleported back to base instead of dying (the remote uplink is destroyed in the process)
• And more!

We also added C4. Its not technically a relic, but its awesome. C4 blows up all nearby floors and walls. It also deals 50 damage to any enemies (or colonists) caught in the blast radius. Its amazing for defeating high level enemies and for creating emergency exits in derelict stations (because sometimes your dudes get trapped in bathrooms by purple slime monsters).

Player Base

The players base is now surrounded by a boundary floor. You can build on this and your colonists can walk on this. Anything outside this boundary is lost to space forever when you warp. You can delete boundary floors at any time. Expansion permits are looted in space stations and increase the size of your base, allowing you to build bigger bases. You can now lockdown your base so that colonists will not go outside your borders. This is very handy when arriving at a new system, because it prevents your colonists from wandering into a cuddler nest.

Internal Organs

Colonists do have brains! (and other organs) Organs take damage when a colonist is hurt and under 50% health. Lungs: If destroyed: unable to breathe Stomach: Without this, colonists are unable to eat food. Damage to the stomach can lead to incontinence. Liver: Used to process alcohol and drugs. Without this, the colonist cannot get inebriated Brain: Without this, colonists are powerless. If damaged: incompetence, cannibal, or maniac. Heart: If destroyed, instant death Organs are repaired at the Healing Booth. This is found in the Medilab and must be stocked with Medkits. You can also research the Healing Booth and build one on your own base. Shamblers are radioactive and damage organs directly.

Diseases

In Starmancer, things like Biowaste and rotten food generate germs. Germs are removed when a colonist cleans a floor. You can also use a sterilizer and some cleaning solution (found in the Waste Recycling Station) to remove germs from nearby floors. Germs spread to food and cause it to rot, (which leads to more germs). Your entire food supply could be lost if you neglect to keep your station clean. Colonists also get sad when they see a gross floor. A tidy station is a happy station! When enough germs accumulate, your colonists will start to get sick with a virus. Viruses have randomized symptoms and various transmission types. When viruses spread to a colonist, their symptoms can mutate. Scan an infected colonist or slime to unlock unknown virus symptoms. Once unlocked, you can create your own virus with that symptom at the virus maker.

New Skills

Colonists now have skills for speed, research, strength, health, construction, and cleaning. Treadmills increase movement speed, but so does walking. Faster colonists generate more power at the treadmill. Fast colonists can run away from slow enemies without much risk. Strength increases melee damage and increases colonist inventory cap (strong colonists can carry more stuff). Improve this by hauling resources or punching bad guys. The skill cap was increased to 99. The more skill levels a colonist has, the more expensive they are to regrow.

Combat Rebalancing

All food now heals colonists, and it can be eaten directly from their inventory. We also added a toggle to make your colonist automatically heal from their inventory Before exploring a derelict space station, you should equip your explorer with the highest tier food you have, so that theyll heal any damage they take. Enemies now attack locked doors Colonists now have a chance to passout if they take damage when under 33% health and monsters no longer fight unconscious colonists. This provides opportunities for rescuing explorers if they get into too much trouble. Monsters award small amounts of DNA Fragments when killedthe currency used to unlock and grow colonists.

New Enemies

Every star system has unique wildlife. For example, undead monsters only spawn in the Medilabs star system.

• Slinker: Its a worm, but you can eat it
• Toxic Slime: Its big. Its purple. Its mean
• Mang0: An ordinary service bot whose targeting protocols have gone haywire
• Drink Bot: Attacks colonists by throwing alcohol at them, making them drunk in the process
• Bouncer Bot: Bigger than a purple slime, but with great power comes great movement speed reduction (its slow)
• Alien Prism: Randomly found on asteroids. Very dangerous. Only attacks if provoked (this thing is awesome for clearing out enemies. But you have to attack it first to make it mad)

There are now 3 classes of enemies: Slimes, Undead, and Bots. Each type will attack the other on site. Its mildly funny to trap a purple slime in your base and then release it into a Medilab (with the help of a fast colonist as bait).

Quality of Life Improvements

We made many Quality of Life (QoL) improvements.

• Any item can now be tracked in the HUD. Allowing you to easily keep track of your supplies.

• Colonists now spawn with 2 perks instead of 3. Most bad perks now have trade-offs. Incompetent, for example, increases inventory capacity by 1. Aggressive increases strength exp by 10%.
• Colonists automatically equip helmets if they start to suffocate
• Thermal exchanger automatically shuts off if a room gets too cold.
• A loading screen when you warp (with tips!)
• Colonists display an icon in the HUD when theyre infected or have organ damage
• Colonists are now automatically harvested when grown
• Tech tree restructured

That's just about everything! We stream Starmancer every Friday at 11:00 am (gmt-5) over on Twitch. This is the same timezone as New York City. Come hang out and watch - your good ideas might be added to the game! The Wilderness is our biggest update. It sets the foundation for adding gear, NPCs, quests, and all the new updates were planning. We're excited for you to check it out! Thanks! - Ominux Games

[ 2023-03-14 16:20:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

The update is coming together great, and now were looking for your feedback to help push it across the finish line. The Wilderness adds asteroids and abandoned stations around the players base, new enemies, new skills, new cosmetics, improved combat, numerous quality-of-life fixes, and more. We also fixed many many bugs and improved gameplay balance.
The new mechanics lay a new foundation for how you play the game, by venturing out directly onto asteroids to explore, fight monsters and scavenge for resources to bring back to the station. This gives us more freedom to add new things, unique places to discover, and rare items to find. This a big step forward and you can try it right now!

How to Play

Accessing the new update is easy! To play, simply open Steam, then right click Starmancer and select properties. Next, go to the Betas tab, and select Earlier Access from the dropdown menu. The newest update should automatically start downloading!

Playtesting

While playing, just have fun! But to get the most from your playthrough, try to think of these questions:

• Am I having fun? What happened during your playthrough that you think youll remember for a long time?
• Are there any moments where you were confused about what to do? Were you able to figure out what to do in-game? For example, maybe you couldnt figure out how to assign a job to a colonist
• Are there times when disaster (and other bad things) happened and you didnt notice until it was too late? For example, maybe you ran out of food and everyone starved, but you didnt notice until it was too late

To get even more from your play session, use cheats! Cheats are accessed by typing cheater directly in the build menus search bar. We also added more settings in the option menu, including an option for directly spawning items. This helps while testing, but also its fun to spawn C4 and blow stuff up like a madman.

Where to Report Feedback

Please direct feedback to one of three easy locations: [olist]

On our Discord

Directly in-game via the feedback menu (accessed in the Escape Menu). Your game will automatically be saved and sent to us. This is the best way to report weird in-game issues.

On the Wilderness Update Steam Forums thread

During our weekly live stream every Friday! [/olist]

Stream

We stream Starmancer every Friday at 11:00 AM GMT-5 over at Twitch. This is the same timezone as New York City. Check it out and share all your ideas and feedback! Thanks Everyone!

[ 2023-02-16 16:57:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, its been far too long since our last post! Were adding asteroids and stations around the players base! These asteroids have all the resources, monsters, entities, and random events that previously spawned on the station.
It might not look like much at the moment, but we're laying the foundation for adding a ton of content in the future. Different asteroid types, derelict ships, pirate bases, alien ruins, and so on. We're excited because this allows us to do so much more with the game.

Get all the details here on our Devblog

Thanks everyone, - Victor

[ 2022-06-02 17:35:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed a bug where the game would crash when dead colonists formed relationships (We're working on Asteroids, but we're still looking at all the incoming bugs and hotfixing the bad ones)

[ 2022-05-03 14:44:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

This patch is just fixing up the last of the worst bugs. We also rebalanced generators and solar panels.

We're currently working on adding asteroids around the player's base, which is pretty neat. You can see this and help shape the game on the weekly dev stream. Every Friday at 11:00am (GMT-4. New York City Timezone) Weekly Dev Stream Link Here's a WIP image of resource nodes:

Patch Notes

- Fixed a stack overflow when placing wall objects - Fixed various crashes - Fixed a bug where objects from a different save would sometimes show up in a new save - Generators will now turn on immediately when a battery is low, and they'll store any unused fuel. Every fuel creates 2000 power. Generators now produce 2 power per second. - Reduced amount of power generated by the solar panels from 3 per second to 1 per second - Fixed a bug where wall objects that go through walls, like thermal exchangers, could be placed on walls that already had objects. - Removed the "no power" upgrade from the cryptominer. I think you'll keep the upgrade if you've already upgraded it. Sorry :( - Fixed the "clean up slime" error message so that it says the required laborer level is 3 (previously it said "requires laborer level 1". This was a lie) - Organs no longer display "took damage" messages when they're dead - Slimes can now be manually fed food (or whatever) via context option - Fixed distribution booth's build menu search text - Dead colonists can no longer be upgraded/promoted - Fixed a bug where unassigned job task notifications were inconsistently displayed - Fixed access positions of the Therapist 9000 (this doesn't backport to already placed Therapist 9000's) - Dead colonists no longer make friends (or enemies) - Colonists will now eat food out of their inventory before eating food anywhere else on the station. So if a colonist was holding biomass, they would eat it before they ate any cake that wasn't in their inventory - Adjusted door line of sight colliders so that lights don't bleed through them - Fixed some issues with dragging and dropping job tasks - Objects now show their actual palette color when being repositioned

[ 2022-04-11 17:27:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

More bug fixes. Looking to start working on new content once all these bugs are handled. Please keep using the in-game report tool. We do read them and it automatically uploads your save file, which makes fixing bugs much much easier for us. Thanks! - Tyler

Patch Notes

- Colonists will now remove bugged out carried items (like when they all start carrying bread or fish). - Log messages will now always use 2 digits for time (displaying 06:02 instead of 6:2) - When colonists turn into zombies, the zombie is now given their head. - Fixed a bug where walls near airlocks would sometimes not be removeable - Colonists will now more reliably take their helmets off when walking through airlocks that have a wall/window in front of the exit floor (this fix is not retroactive, currently placed airlocks will still be broken) - More objects will now count their items towards objective completion (waste reycler and food brick factory) - Cannibals no longer eat biowaste - Fixed various null references - The UI state is no longer saved (autosaves while the escape menu is open would re-open the escape menu after loading, etc) - Colonist heads will no longer detach if you pick them up while they're sleeping - Fixed a bug where sometimes colonist corpses couldn't be walked to - Added a custom status when incubation tank is growing a colonist - Fixed a bug where you could "grow colonist" when there were no colonists to grow. - Possibly fixed a bug where colonist torsos would look weird when they died. - Colonists will no longer occasionally appear dead after being grown. - Fixed a bug where sometimes objects didn't get unclaimed. - Lights are more correctly refreshed when repositioned now (this was an issue with the distance to the light being cached by the floor) - Windows will now be lit correctly after loading - Added colonist status text for fighting fire (and a unique icon) - Added extra internal space to crop boxes, so that high level farmers don't abandon excess seeds/food - Fixed Big Fuel - Notifications will no longer slowly drift towards the black abyss of space - Fire is now removed if it's created on an inaccessible floor (like the core) - Save time is now included in game saves (previously it used the date the OS date that the file was created, which caused issues when redownloading saves from the cloud) - Tomatoes are no longer reharvestable - Fixed a bug where items weren't unreserved if an item transfer failed - Fixed a bug where item caches would be removed even when they still had some items - Item crates on floors will more consistently be removed now (looking at you, ice) - Removed the "no water" notification from the sink - The log now displays the total day count instead of the current day in the game-month - Fixed a bug where the core eye would disappear if you loaded a save from within a game - Fixed a bug where the same kat message would be shown twice after loading - Ship now requires an empty inventory before doing missions - Airlocks no longer give away free oxygen when placed - Internal floors now correctly replace external floors - Colonists now stop bleeding when their bodies are removed - Dead colonists no longer create "Dimple is unhappy" messages - Fixed a bug where colonist perks weren't restored after they were regrown - Possibly fixed a bug where colonists would randomly explode - Possibly fixed a bug where entities would wander to the same floors - Batteries are no longer usable as free-time objects - Slimes will now fight zombies - Adjusted how currency is formatted so that 4999 will display as 4.9k instead of 5k

[ 2022-03-02 16:35:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

More bug fixes. Some balance changes too. Added a context option for fighting fire Here's some new critters that Victor is working on
Big List - Fixed a bug where colonists would sometimes have a weird skin color after loading - Fixed a bug where the crafting "bubble" would be blank after loading - Fixed a bug where external objects had a bad fallback color - The correct build error is shown when building a hold and drag object (floors, walls, pipes, etc) - Non-loved tasks can no longer be given a priority above a loved task - Changed the wreck description to be more understandable that the delete tool must be used. - Perks that cause job task love or hate will now provide the correct memory if that job is assigned - Fixed a bug where items weren't picked up from external floors, leading to infinite metal. - Items in a monster's inventory no longer create "item discovered" pop-up - Eating a colonist will now deposit their head into the inventory of the eater. - Increased sentry gun's default priority to higher than storage bin - Pressing Shift + a number will no longer change the game's timescale if you're typing in the save menu. - Fixed a bug where doors would remain open if a colonist died while using them. - Fixed a bug where the Oxygen Emitter would occasionally pump oxygen into a wall. - Colonists on missions will no longer get shambled, and get stuck in AI sleep forever (and other bad stuff too). - Removing/placing walls near lights will no longer turn them on before they're built. - Decreased spawn rate of power leeches. - Mission failure event is now invoked (so the fail message is now displayed). - Increased power requirement of Incinerator, because fire is hot - Object repositioning is now more consistently cancelled after confirming a new position (so that the object stops following the cursor) - Repositioning an object now requires a constructed floor (previously you could reposition it to a floor under construction) - Assigned correct reposition blueprint to many objects. - Satisfying all ego upgrades requirements will now make "level up immediately" free - Mining drone no longer displays fuel in its output hatch area thing (on the model, where the items are displayed). - Colonists will no longer add withdrawal (or addict) perks when their sleeve is removed. - Colonists should get stuck in walls less frequently now when building. - Temperature changes will now wake up floors for atmosphere flow. - Added a notification if no colonists are assigned "Object Maintenance" (and that task now defaults to assigned) - Added a random offset of +- .5f seconds when entities wander, so that collections of monsters don't wander in such an obvious synchronized manner. - Fixed some edge cases where saving would crash. - Fixed various null reference exceptions. - CO2 scrubber can now be connected with water pipes to water tanks. - Ice can now be used by the water recycler (you don't have to wait for it to thaw). It should be substitutable for dirty water in all situations, but maybe there's some edge cases that are missing. - Water recycler now displays correct status when all water tanks are full (previously it used the status message for fuel tanks being full). - Fixed more notifications becoming "stretched" after loading. - Fixed a bug where wrecks couldn't be removed. - Changed wreck size of treadmill so that it matches the size of the treadmill (4x2). - The skybox will no longer "bug out" when rotating the camera with Z (the skybox uses 2 cameras, sometimes rotating counterclockwise wouldn't reposition the out of bounds camera). - Removed the last tutorial objectives (the long term ones). - Vysnc is now turned on/off when the game launches (if the user sets it to on through the in-game menu, it will remember). - Airlocks will no longer be used before construction finishes. - Distribution booth will no longer be used before construction finishes. - Distribution booth no longer halts colonists if no items are set to distribute. - Object windows will no longer show notifications from the previous window. - Research cards now show progress in the tech tree. - Missions to locations with no resources are now cancelled. - Improved load performance when loading from in-game to another save. - Crops are now deposited directly into planter box, and require offload before new crops can be grown. - Significantly decreased spawn chance of an extra seed when harvesting crops (from 25% to 5%). - Crafting stations (workbench, refinery, etc) now deposit the created item into their inventory instead of giving it to the crafter. - The fridge will now be filled with any raw food (previously it would accept 10 of each type of raw food, which was weird) - Increased currency earned from the Dream Catcher. - Added flux coil recipe to workbench. It requires metal and a level 3 engineer. - Context ordering a colonist to pilot a ship will now also assign that job task. - Doubled the amount of oxygen created by the Oxygen recycler (so it uses less water). - Added game-time that save was created and game version and total days played to the save UI. - A save is now automatically uploaded when submitting user reports - Crop statuses now correctly mention seeds (if it can't find a seed) and also mentions a missing farmer. - Hint delays now use unscaled time (fixes some instances where messages appear before warping is finished) - Fixed an uncaught exception when trying to get the save folder in UWP (windows store) - Floors under windows/walls are no longer colored by atmosphere overlay - The correct item crate is now more consistently selected - Reduced big battery cost from 9k to 7.5k - Objectives are now more aggressively removed if tutorial is skipped - Added context options for using free-time objects. - Added context option for extinguishing fire.

[ 2022-02-08 14:40:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rip that last patch. The tutorial should work now, also colonists should stop freezing forever. Also did stuff with slimes. I stream Starmancer every Friday, be cool and check it out. https://www.twitch.tv/starmancergame Fixes / Minor - Fixed a bug where colonists would store relationship data for any visible object, like lockers - Changing the autosave duration while playing will now immediately update the time until the next autosave. - Enabling the autosave while playing will now work - Fixed a bug where colonists would get stuck in AI sleep (the colonists would be invulnerable, unselectable, etc) - Ship crates are no longer created if the ship returns with no items. - Fixed a bug where where crates would be placed in walls - Only active colonists are now displayed in the schedule UI (colonists that have bodies) - Saving while repositioning an object no longer permanently changes that object's material. - Fixed a bug where multiple load windows could be opened. - The unbreakable upgrade now prevents any object damage. - Fixed a bug where the no power notification was shown after selecting the "no power" upgrade. - Fixed a bug where colonist O2 bars were displayed when the colonists weren't wearing helmets - The escape menu is now hidden in user reports - Colonists will no longer attempt a food recipe if they don't have space for all required items - Reduced number of required items for the pizza recipe from 4 to 2. - Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't unboard ships in the tutorial (oops) - Fixed a crash that could occur sometimes when harvesting colonists. - Fixed many issues with colonists not correctly delivering items (or taking items that they shouldn't) - Added 3 autosave slots, because bugs happen. It iterates through each slot, but it doesn't look up the save time of the last used autosave if you restart the game, so slot1 will always be used when you restart the game. - Trade pod now checks the "real" inventory count when creating the "trade pod full" notification. - Juicer now uses the "no chef assigned" notification (previously was using the "no chemist assigned" notification) - Fixed various null reference exceptions. - Colonists now stop hiding when they die. - Withdrawal perks will no longer be added while colonists are under the effects of the drug/alcohol. - Increased cooldown between monster spawns after Mayday quest. - Fixed a bug where colonists would drop off crafted items at item caches - No pilot notification is now displayed only if there's a queued mission - Ships can no longer be deleted while they have a colonist inside - Crops will no longer grow in a vaccuum. Also fixed a bug where crops would be harvested when they died. - Fixed a bug where items (and colonists), could get repositioned into walls sometimes.

[ 2022-01-19 17:54:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Whats up, Starmancers? Can you believe weve almost reached the end of the year? Its been a busy time for us with the launch of Starmancer into Early Access and the initial period of development. Weve tackled a lot of bugs, tweaked the balance of mechanics, and added in some fun new content. Starmancer has grown so much in such a short space of time and theres plenty more to come in the new year.

10g new content, stat!

The first major content update for Starmancer will be Doctors and Diseases - Surprise!
Were working hard on this update and will share more specifics when were ready but you can get a preview of some of the content by enabling Experimental Features in the games settings. Please understand that experimental features can be buggy and potentially affect save files. We recommend enabling experimental features on a separate, new save file so you can try new content without affecting your precious stations. Expect deeper health mechanics combined with the signature chaos of Starmancer. What new equipment awaits? Is it possible to engineer viruses? Just what does a medkit taste like? Youll have to stay tuned to find out!

A new patch update

This week saw the release of V.0.1.51 in Starmancer. Featuring a plethora of new stuff and fixes, we hope you take time this holiday season to jump in. Who needs family time? A little of what you can expect: Monsters spawn with items which they drop on death Germs have more impact on gameplay Toilets can be connected to Waste Recyclers using liquid pipes Water Recyclers produce 2 water for every 1 dirty water Some festive Winter holiday cosmetics
Theres A LOT more in the patch to get your teeth stuck into so be sure to check out the patch notes in game and on our Wiki for the full details. As always, were working on bugs and looking through suggestions as they come in. While the frequency of patches may slow down as bugs decrease and we work on new content, we want to assure you that patches will continue to be released when ready. We appreciate your patience <3

Stream of consciousness

Starmancers programmer, Tyler, continues his weekly developer livestreams to share some behind the scenes insight of Early Access development. Be sure to join us on Fridays at 11:00 ET/08:00 PT (stream schedule may change during the holiday period so Tyler can spend time with his actual family and not the ones hes reanimated in space). Allow us to once again thank you for all your support for Starmancer. Were excited to continue building on the game and taking on your feedback to bring you a fun and chaotic colony sim experience. To stay updated on Starmancer development follow us on Discord, Facebook and Twitter.
We wish you the happiest of holidays and an exciting new year. Until next time!

[ 2021-12-15 15:24:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Stuff

- Every item in the game is now technically edible. And by that, I mean that your colonists can eat it and the item disappears--in exchange for liver damage. (and if you have preview off, colonist's don't even have livers). - Colonists can now drag and drop each other - Unconscious colonists are no longer context orderable - Added a context option for waking up a sleeping colonist (by shouting). - Jobs that should only be performed by 1 colonist now default to unassigned, such as Doctor, Pilot, and Engineer. This allows the player to more easily assign a single colonist to the job. - Monsters now spawn with items and drop them on death (so that you can click on a zombie to see if it has anything worth killing it for) - All types of seeds (except wheat) are now dropped by a specific monster: (other sources of seeds were unchanged) Tomato Seeds: Zombie Potato Seeds: Cuddler Carrot Seeds: Slime - When a colonist is eaten by a zombie, its head will now be stored in the inventory of the zombie, and it must be killed before the colonist can be regrown (because you have to get the head out of the belly) - This is also true for cannibals, but you can make them drop items. Unless their morale is too low, in which case you'll also have to kill them. - Colonist's germ count is now displayed in the health tab, with the atmosphere values - Added a message log, which replaces most messages that appear in the center of the screen - The mission ship now offloads "supply caches" when it lands, allowing the ships to travel - Added the incinerator, for disposing of dead bodies or any unwanted items. - Colonists can now hide in objects, like beds and incinerators, preventing monsters from seeing them. - Toilets can now be connected to the Waste Recyclers with liquid pipes to automatically transfer Biowaste - Added context option for equipping and removing helmets. - Added context option for eating dead body. - Pressing 'H' will now toggle the HUD on and off. - Colonists can now be picked up and placed somewhere else, Rollercoaster Tycoon style - Colonist heads must now be manually harvested and returned to the analyzer when they die. Harvesting the head awards doctor experience - After a head is harvested, a "headless remain" is placed. This must be taken to the incinerator. It can also be eaten. - Dead bodies now decay after 48 hours unless they're in a cold room. When the body decays it emits a massive amount of germ, leaving the head behind. Small chance to zombie. - Created a new starting station - Added some Winter holiday cosmetics

Fixes / Minor

- Water Recycler now produces 2 purified water for every 1 dirty water. - Oxygen Emitter now spawns with 1 water and each water can produce oxygen for 72 hours (previously was 24 hours) - Colonists can now be interacted with when sleeping in beds (previously their "access positions" were repositioned to be on top of the bed, and beds are unwalkable) - Improved look of context menu - Fixed some issues with the cuddler and zombie animations - Eating biowaste now has a chance to make colonists puke. - Starting item caches will no longer have multiple types of items in them. - The knockout command is now ended when the target is knocked out. Previously the knocker outer would flee from the unconscious target for a bit. - Pumpkin plushie now uses the correct sprite when being repositioned. - Blood now has a name and icon when selecting it via the context menu. - Fixed a bug where the final objective (deliver high tier resources to the core terminal) couldn't be finished. - Context menu actions now always display the name of option, and the text that indicates why the option is "invalid" is now shown next to the option name. - Fixed a bug where finishing an objective and then loading (without quitting the game or returning to main menu) would prevent the objective from advancing to the next message - Mountable objects (including the hauler) can no longer be repositioned while being used. This includes: Beds, Toilets, Ships, Chairs, Healing Booth (in preview). - Manually depositing an item to a fallback storage zone will no longer change the zone's filter (because it's fallback, so the item was already valid). - Fixed a bug where the whispers perk couldn't drain targets correctly - Fixed a bug where windows could be built instantly by placing them twice. - Dead slimes now become "slime puddles" and must be manually cleaned. - Temperature values are now more consistently handled when atmosphere pressure is low (in a vacuum, there's no temperature, because there's no air) - Objects (and colonists) when selecting them for the context menu will now display their mouse over status - Fixed a bug where objects wouldn't be correctly "stopped using" after loading

[Preview]

- Added Virus Maker. Choose symptoms and make viruses with Refined Goolerium. Scan corpses of infected colonists to unlock new symptoms. Slimes can also be infected and scanned - Viruses have a few attributes: Power: Colonists can be infected with one virus at a time. Viruses with a higher power level than the current virues will infect colonists when they're exposed Duration: How long the virus lasts Stability: Chance to mutate when infecting a colonist. When a virus mutates, it replaces one of its symptoms with a random symptom. Natural viruses always have 3 symptoms. Transmission: Chance to infect another colonist - Added many virus symptoms, such as: Bald, Undead, Tape Worm, Stinky Breath, Drunk, Ginger, and Diarrhea - Added a UI to show the colonist's current disease - Shamblers now deal radiation damage to colonists. Radiation doesn't affect HP and damages organs instead. - Fixed a bug where colonists would be repositioned to 0,0,0 after warping (this was related to their heart being destroyed by warp radiation) - Added attributes to the item tooltip. Virus syringes use this to show their symptoms

[ 2021-12-14 14:05:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

You know its the end of the year when videogame awards season starts. And like clockwork, the Steam awards have returned! For those of you who enjoyed Starmancers lonely, hauntingly hopeful and energetic soundtrack as you managed your chaotic stations, wed be super honoured if you would channel that love into voting for Starmancer in the category for Best Soundtrack.
The art of Starmancer is what inspired Dirk Kluesing (Starmancers Composer), to develop these sweet, spacey tunes. I wanted the soundtrack to convey the vast emptiness of space and loneliness but also a sense of hope. Since you are a sentient AI, I also wanted to limit the amount of human elements in the music. [previewyoutube=M1527y_sDOE;full][/previewyoutube] Starmancer continues to grow during Early Access and were grateful to you, our awesome community, for sharing your thoughts and developing Starmancer alongside us. We cant wait to release more new content in the new year. Happy gaming!

[ 2021-11-24 18:04:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

As the development of Starmancer continues in Early Access, we had a chance to chat with Starmancers talented composer, Dirk Kluesing. Dirk has been working as a Composer and Sound Designer since 2015, creating music from fantasy orchestral to deep space synth and more. Dirks music has been featured in retailers, indie games and short films. [previewyoutube=M1527y_sDOE;full][/previewyoutube] Find a comfy seat, treat yourself to some Starshine and join us as we explore Dirks musically creative mind. [Chucklefish] Hey Dirk, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Im loving the Starmancer OST and already find myself humming along while playing it. Im curious, how did you join the Starmancer project? [Dirk] I first found out about Starmancer when they launched their Kickstarter campaign. I was immediately drawn to Victors art and when I discovered that one of the stretch goals was to hire a composer and sound designer I started working on some music demos right away. I guess they really liked the demos, and after a few more emails and a sound design test we started working on a contract. Maybe it helped that me and Tyler were both from Michigan. I think maybe his brother and I even went to the same college (Michigan Technological University). Small world. [Chucklefish] Small world indeed! What influences, from music and beyond, did you tap into for the Starmancer OST? I imagine Victors art did more than draw you in. [Dirk] Around the same time I discovered Starmancer, Surviving Mars had just been released and that game had a phenomenal soundtrack. I dont think it influenced me much when creating the Starmancer OST, but it definitely got me motivated to make some sweet sci-fi, spacey tunes. The art of Starmancer was really the biggest influence to me when creating the soundtrack. [Chucklefish] Identifying those influences seems to be a key part of the process. What part of the music-making process do you enjoy the most? [Dirk] Starting a new song is always my favorite part of writing. Testing different sounds, messing around with synths, finding the perfect melody all that stuff is super exciting to me. [Chucklefish] And what presents the biggest challenge? [Dirk] Ive found that each new song provides a different challenge. Maybe the most frequent one that I run into is deciding when to just call it finished. If I work too long on a song I can start to hear problems that might not really be there, and in fixing those problems, I create new, actual problems. At the very least if youre stuck on a song for a while, taking a break for a few days or weeks can make the world of difference when you come back to it. [Chucklefish] As a writer, I totally understand the balance of being a perfectionist and knowing when to stop. Looking at the tracklist, which track in the Starmancer OST holds a special place for you and why? [Dirk] Deep Space and Space Station 14 are what became of the original 2 demos that I sent to Ominux Games, so those will always be special to me. Other than those, though, I have fond memories of working on Daydreams of a Colonist. I dont know why I remember that one specifically. And I really like the middle part of Zenith, the flute-sounding synth and interplay of melodies is probably one of my favorite things about the Starmancer soundtrack. [Chucklefish] Daydreams of a Colonist has great energy to it! Music has a big impact on the players feelings. What did you want the player to feel through the music when playing the game? [Dirk] In Starmancer, you are humanitys last chance of survival among the stars. I wanted the soundtrack to convey the vast emptiness of space and loneliness but also a sense of hope. Since you are a sentient AI, I also wanted to limit the amount of human elements in the music. The soundtrack is almost entirely composed of synthesizers with no real instruments to be heard. I made a choice early on to not add any percussion elements either; Star Dancer and Breach are the only exceptions. [Chucklefish] I definitely feel the lonely vacuum of space that youre talking about. You captured it well. Now for a little curveball. If you had the opportunity to have your consciousness uploaded onto a computer and implanted into living or synthetic bodies, would you do it? [Dirk] I hope I never have to make that choice. But probably, yea. [Chucklefish] Lets get existential for this last one. Do you believe theres life out there beyond Earth? [Dirk] I think the universe is too big for there to be no other life out there. I suspect there is more life out there than I can possibly even fathom. [Chucklefish] Maybe well find out in the future. Thanks so much for your time Dirk. I enjoyed picking your brain and getting insight into Starmancers music from you. Where can our community find you to keep up with your future work? [Dirk] You can keep up to date with all of my work by following me on Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify. Here are all of my links: https://linktr.ee/Dirkkluesing We hope youve enjoyed bopping along to the futuristic sounds of Starmancer and hearing about the process from Dirk. Bring the future of space travel to your life with the Starmancer OST, available now on Steam and Bandcamp.

[ 2021-11-04 16:07:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Stuff

- Added Halloween Starmancer Core. - Added a pumpkin plushie and a spooky painting. - Perks now display their duration in the UI. - Added morale-affecting perks to the morale UI, like intoxicated - Added a context option for knocking out other colonists. - Added a context option for feeding knocked out colonists. - Slimes can now be fed via the context menu.

Fixes

- Removed text references of drones caring about beauty. - Added visual effect for things that are instantly consumed, like med kits and mental stabilizers. - Perks now show their duration when moused over. - Fixed a crash that would occur when colonists tried to walk to an object that was unwalkable due to a blocked path, and they would keep generating a route to it endlessly. - The amount slider is no longer shown when context eating items. - Fixed a bug where colonists would attack slimes without being angry. - Fixed many instances where objects would show the wrong blueprint when being repositioned - Dead colonists will no longer become upset occasionally. - Reduced tech tree research duration for many objects.

[Preview]

- Added therapist 9000, must be stocked with mental stabilizers. - Fixed issues with healing booth and slime grower statuses.

[ 2021-11-01 14:22:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Stuff

- Morale modifiers are now shown on objects in both the build menu and the attribute area (bottom of the object window) - The ship can now be repositioned - Wall objects are now repositionable (sinks, oxygen creators, wall vents, posters, etc) - Added a cheat for instantly building. Type "cheater" in the build menu to access it. Objects must be placed after enabling the cheat. Click it again to turn off autobuild - Added memories for many decorations when colonists see them (posters, paintings, flower pots, holo display, and monument) - Autonomous colonists now have a -5 morale modifier and supreme colonists have a -10 morale modifier. This replaces the system where high ego (free-will) levels used to receive a multiplier on penalties - Hated tasks now have the lowest priority and the priority can't be changed by the player - Loved tasks now have the highest priority and the priority can't be changed the player - Wires, pipes, and airducts are now instantly buildable/removeable (colonists don't have to build them)

Fixes

- Fixed a bug where bunk beds and sofas were usable before being constructed - Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't talk - Colonists now have a cooldown of 15 seconds before they can use generic free-time objects again. This forces colonists to stop staring at the same poster for 4 hours straight - Added new material for window selection (mouse over, marked for deletion, etc)

Preview

- Added a new starting station. Content preview must be enabled before you start a new game. If you enable content preview after starting a new game, you can play on the old starting station - Added sterile window - Added spooky painting - Added pumpkin plushie - Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't get organs after loading the game if they were already grown

[ 2021-10-18 17:09:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Stuff - Colonists no longer heal in beds automatically (you have to make them) - Medkits and Mental Stabilizers are now used instantly (colonists will no longer take them to tables to eat them) - Revamped the negative morale system. Colonists now get an "upset" perk when morale is low. After 24 hours, this becomes one of the low morale perks (permanently). - Mental stabilizers now remove all negative morale modifiers, which also makes it handy for curing the upset perk - Simplified morale into Good Memories and Bed Memories. Memories no longer stack. Food, toilets, beds, and free-time objects now contribute positively to morale. Most bad memories can be "removed" by providing something good to the colonist. An example: Sleeping in a bed will provide a morale buff and also remove the penalty from sleeping on the floor. - Increased colonist walking speed - Colonists now eat Biowaste at 25 hunger. Previously they would only eat Biowaste when hunger was 0, but this was also when they would start snacking on other colonists - There is now "preview" content available by going to the options menu and enabling "Enable Preview Content". Please test out new content for bugs, balance, and fun. Once it's stable, we'll move preview content to live. Preview content is subject to many changes before going live. Fixes - Floors are no longer used for rec room free-time. This fixed a bug where the rec room setting seemed to do nothing. It also improves the fallback free-time state where colonists wander to a random floor - Colonists no longer display the hour-glass wait when they passout - Beauty no longer negatively affects morale, but it still positively affects morale - Slimes now default to fully fed, so they start friendly - Adjusted item ordering so that order count is decremented when production starts and incremented if production fails. This fixes an issue where the player will order 1 item and colonists will drop off additional required items when production starts - Fixed a bug where the wrong number of items were unrequested when cancelling a production order - Fixed selection material issues with wrecks - Rug wrecks (from fire) are now removed instantly when queued for deletion, because rugs can be deleted instantly (and there's a good chance that the player placed them in an inaccessible location) - Target dummy no longer requires power - Fixed a bug where walls would have the wrong rotation after moving an object from 1 adjacent side to another, if the object removed walls (like airlocks) - The O2 bar is now hidden when colonists are away on missions - Autosaving will no longer occur during the load screen. This would happen if you loaded a save while the autosave timer was almost finished. It could also happen if loading took too long - Fixed a bug where some objects could be used before they were constructed (this might not have fixed every occurrence). - The first crafting option in the context menu will no longer be grayed out if production can't start (the recipes that you select in the second part will still be grayed out) - Fixed a bug where the distribution booth didn't work - Hated job tasks now default to unassigned - Fixed a bug where colonists would become uninterruptible after using airlocks - Health can no longer become negative - Morale is now displayed in the attribute window (bottom of the colonist window) - The early access pop-up will no longer be shown on subsequent game launches - Moved free-time objects to a new build menu category, "Free-Time" - External floor is no longer used for eating - Fixed a visual issue with the standard window - Fixed a bug where planter boxes had the wrong material during construction - Zone tool is now easier to find with an icon that stands out more - Fixed a bug where colonists could walk through locked doors - Removed limp as a starting perk - Removed ego level from the attribute window (bottom of colonist window) - Eating animation is now the same duration as eating - Colonists now travel through airlocks much faster - Fixed a pathfinding bug that would cause an infinite loop (and would often crash the game or result in colonists appearing "frozen"). This occurred frequently if you sped up the game, because the bug was caused from high delta times [Preview] - Added internal organ system. An internal organ is damaged anytime a colonist is damaged below 5 health. Lung: Periodic damage when damaged. Colonist can't breathe when destroyed Stomach: Chance to cause incontinence when damaged. Colonist can't eat when destroyed Liver: Required to process alcohol and space rock. Sometimes damaged from eating alcohol or space rock. Consuming alcohol or space rock while the liver is destroyed will cause poison damage Heart: Small chance to be damaged from any damage source. Chance to cause bleeding when damaged. Instant death if destroyed Brain: Damage can add various mental perks, such as maniac, depressed, and incompetent. Instant death if destroyed - Added Organ UI to the health tab - Added medical desk, with recipes to create medkits and mental stabilizers from Goolerium - Added Healing Booth. Must be stocked with medkits. Restores health, heals internal organs, and removes zombie, cuddler, and slime infections. Also removes bleeding - Added Slime Grower. Creates slimes from Goolerium - [Experimental] Disabled terrain generation. Terrain will make a return as a "net" type mechanic when mining

[ 2021-10-11 17:00:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

From balance changes to bug fixes, weekly developer streams and updates, weve had a wild ride since Starmancer launched in Early Access on August 5 2021. We want to thank you all for your support, feedback and patience. We knew this initial period of development would prioritise bug fixing and stability improvements before we could start working on the fun content ideas we have (as seen below)
Over two months later and were proud of the progress weve made in improving the player experience, working with our community to listen to their concerns and addressing them where possible. Theres never been a better time to get back into Starmancer to develop your chaotic station.

So, whats changed?

• Based on player feedback, morale penalties have undergone several balance changes to reduce frustration when colonists become unhappy
• Several UI changes to improve user experience and fluidity of gameplay
• Colonists eating habits were altered to no longer require a strict variety of food. This would previously lead them to eat biowaste, ore etc.
• Several fixes for airlocks which would lead to suffocation or game crashes
• Several save game fixes to greatly reduce file corruption
• Adjusted the number of enemy spawns - no more nightmare Walking Dead scenes on your station
• Improved colonist pathfinding to address colonists getting stuck in random queues

If you love poring over substantial patch notes, you can find more information on the above by visiting our Wiki.

Whats next?

Weve only just started and cant wait to show you whats coming next! After a community poll in our Discord, it became clear that the community loves science. Doctors and Diseases, For Science! and Robot Lords were the top three most popular updates. This could factor into upcoming updates and content development if the screenshot above is anything to go by

Love for our community <3

Since launch, members of our awesome community have shared their incredible builds and creative fan art. We wanted to showcase some here:
By @John_Ernest_
From @LupisSicarius
By @Kass32403324
From Herozen13 on Discord In the meantime, well continue working hard to resolve your queries and developing Starmancer into the best space colony sim we can. Keep updated on Starmancer development by catching weekly Developer livestreams with Tyler on Fridays 11.00 ET / 08.00 PT. You can also follow us on Discord, Facebook and Twitter. Until next time <3

[ 2021-10-07 15:05:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't eat or sleep. This made the game more difficult than intended. (I changed the namespace for a very specific class that stored colonist Use Reasons, and I forgot to rebuild the agent library. I'm just a patsy)

[ 2021-09-17 17:47:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Stuff - Disabled animators on pipes, wires, and ducts, because they were killing performance when you placed too many (the visuals are now changed manually, so the effect is the exact same for the player) - Removed dev category from the build menu. You can still access it by typing "dev" into the build menu search bar - Moved the action buttons (turn offline, move, order colonist, etc) to inside the object window Fixes - Fixed a bug where an old save using the window wall paint wouldn't load correctly (this wouldn't affect new saves, only old saves) - Fixed a crash when colonists didn't save the recipient of an item delivery correctly - Fixed a bug where colonists would walk through airlocks to build floors if the colonist generated a route to the floor within 1 second of the floor being placed - Removed arbitrary wait when colonists remove an object - Fixed a bug where colonists would sometimes have no pathfinding floor. I'm not sure of the cause, but the band-aid fix for now is to manually find a pathfinding floor whenever they don't have one - Fixed a bug where queued colonist commands wouldn't be performed if they were queued while the colonist couldn't be interrupted, like when using an airlock - Contracts will no longer require more than 1 item. This makes them easier and also fixes issues where contracts would require 2 of the same item, and it could never be finished - References to components that are null will no longer cause crashes during loading - Memory icons are now smaller and easier to understand - Fixed a bug where cuddlers would spawn at 0,0,0 - The wander state will now use a random, nearby floor, instead of finding a valid floor for UseReason.Sit (this is a performance improvement and also a gameplay improvement) - The objective window will now close more consistently when you skip the tutorial - Fixed a bug where trying to claim an object that required being able to claim another object would result in the colonist using the wrong object - Fixed an issue with the sanitizer animation

[ 2021-09-17 13:03:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Added patch notes on the main menu - Added an oxygen bar when colonists are wearing helmets (helmets have a finite amount of oxygen in them, so if colonists wear them for long enough, they'll suffocate, but this wasn't indicated anywhere in the UI) - Added an hourglass above colonists that are doing anything that takes time (building, using the bathroom, repairing objects, etc)(there might be some cases where they display this at weird times) - Item caches now default to locked, and added alcohol to supply caches, for an early game morale boost. - Fire and blood are now automatically removed after a certain amount of time. Fire is removed after 12 hours and blood is removed after 3 days - Improved pathfinding performance - Slimes will now eat dead bodies then biowaste and then regular food - The internal overlay will no longer turn off if you build wires - Fixed a bug where some asteroids weren't removed after mining all resources - Fixed a bug where in-world interfaces weren't populated correctly after load. This affected the storage bin - Colonists now drop harvested crop items at their feet, so that someone else can worry about delivery to the correct place. This solves issues where farmers store seeds in fridges (this is a temporary fix, but might last a while) - Fixed a bug where internal floors could be built on external floors (this was caused from the terrain system changes) - Using shift to control time is now only enabled if "experimental" features are enabled. It's really just a developer tool for quickly speeding up time, but nice to have for everyone - Fixed a bug where repositioning the target dummy would turn it into an arcade machine - Fixed a bug where the overclocked upgrade didn't work. (this was a regression when I moved the duration value of production to a new query type, for performance) - Fixed a bug where chefs would cause a crash if they were using a recipe object while loading - Fixed various save issues - Colonists now need even lower morale to fight, and increased aggression required to fight - Colonists will now get negative morale perks at -95, previously it was -50 (this is to reflect that things should be going very bad and not just a little bad) - Removed arbitrary wait times before and after construction. Colonists had to wait a second before starting construction and then 2 seconds after finishing - Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't put on helmets after repositioning an airlock (this is not back-ported, you'll have to delete any broken airlocks) - Fixed a bug where the local star wouldn't load correctly if you loaded a save from within a save - Fixed a bug where using the window paint type would cause walls to remove wall sides. This is because walls remove windows, and the window paint was tagging wall sides with the "window" key, which is the same key that windows use to identify themselves - Colonists will no longer require a different food after a few days of eating the same thing. This was disabled because colonists would eat the same thing even if lots of variety was available, until they started eating biowaste - Fixed a bug where colonists didn't always correctly stop using objects. This would cause the jukebox icon to never disappear, and many other backend issues

[ 2021-09-10 13:12:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Added a button for skipping the tutorial, it's a close button located in the top right corner of the objective area - Metal pots will no longer be returned by the rec probe (this was because previously metal pots were used to craft space rock) - Objects offscreen are no longer colored by overlays or the order button (there's a tolerance of 50% off screen, and it's updated every second, so should cover most situations, unless you're moving fast) - Tomatoes no longer have a reharvest stage, because they were making lots of babies - Only internal floors will be used for overlays now (not external) - Fixed a bug where temperature emission didn't work for some objects - Fixed a bug where item reservations were never cleared. Also added a 12 hour timeout to all reservations, to catch anything missed. (Items are reserved so that multiple colonists don't try to take the same item. It's a "dibs" system). This especially fixes issues with seeds, but should fix most occurrences of colonists not transporting items - Fixed a load crash - Fixed a bug where colonists would sometimes walk through walls (this was caused from colonists generating bad routes to floors, and thinking they were already at the target floor) - Fixed a bug where colonists would walk through airlocks (and this time I mean it?) - Colonists will no longer pathfind timeout while waiting for an airlock (this was also a source of colonists walking through airlocks) - Colonists will no longer "arrive" at the next pathfinding node when they start walking on a route. It would cause colonists to walk through doors occasionally. This was a huge oversight, and I blame Victor - Added a max pathfinding distance, for performance, because colonists can travel much further now - Improved pathfinding performance (inb4 it breaks something) - Added an option in the options menu to enable experimental features, enable it before starting a new game

[ 2021-08-27 15:06:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Whats an ambitious A.I. to do? You work hard, managing your space station, babysitting mindless meatbags who eat their own waste and get into fights. Exhausting. Keep your circuits buzzing and your LEDs bright with the Starmancer Original Soundtrack from Dirk Kluesing! Featuring 12 tracks that combine the eerie emptiness of space with the swelling excitement of travelling among the stars. The days of watching your colonists sleep for entertainment are over. Activate the warpdrive and explore a new solar system with Nebula. Organise your troops and fend off relentless space zombies to the invigorating Breach. Or develop an impressive network of machinery to the enrapturing Daydreams of a Colonist. Theres a song for every mood. Load up the trade pod and save up that Zipher - the Starmancer OST launches today! Check out the store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708910/Starmancer_Soundtrack

[ 2021-08-23 13:17:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Doors can now be visually unpowered and also openable (adjusted the animations) - Fixed some door issues, like colonists walking through closed doors - Moving manual doors to a wall will no longer create an atmosphere leak - Added a cheat to spawn a zombie and a cuddler, this is for testing purposes, but you can do whatever you want with it - Zombies will now eat dead bodies - Added a cap of 30 monsters (cuddlers, zombies, slimes, power leeches). Technically it won't try to spawn a monster if there's 30, so groups of zombies could cause a higher count, but the highest zombie group is 3 - Fixed a bug where items were sometimes very big - Walls can now be used with the context order system (so constructing and deconstructing) - Improved performance of lights. This fix will significantly increase performance when floors are affected by multiple light sources - Fixed search text values for many objects (the search bar in the build menu) - Fixed a bug where template components (from recipes and other things) were NOT ignored and were being added to entities (like the chem table). This was potentially quite bad and was causing lots of weird behavior. Possibly introduced in the newest Unity version? - Fixed a bug where wall vent connections didn't persist through loading (this probably affected other similar types of objects too) - Fixed a bug where items were never removed from planets after warping. This was causing memory leaks (but probably not very big ones) - Adjusted space rock crafting recipe so that only an oven and ore is required - Contracts are now removed when their system body is removed. This fixes a bug where loading will cause many asteroids to have quests (because those quests were never removed, so they're floating around, looking for a location) - Kat notification will now correctly appear after loading (there might be some instances where a message that you previously read is created again, depending on when you made the save) - Colonist upgrade choices are now saved - Programming terminal will no longer request biomass - Increased priority of storage bins so that they'll always be stocked first (the priority is 99) - Items in storage bins will no longer be sold at trade pods - Added sounds to a few UI buttons that were lacking them - Colonists now display "dead" as their status if they're dead - Colonists and items will no longer be repositioned into doors or airlocks and items abandoned in airlocks will be repositioned - Fixed a bug where queueing a command while a colonist isn't interruptible (inside an airlock) would cause the command to never be invoked

[ 2021-08-20 13:19:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed a bug where saves would crash if they couldn't find a wall side (this seemed rare) - Reduced frequency that visitors spawn - Removed noise morale penalties, because they're weird (why is the player punished for doing things in the correct way?) - Fixed a load issue with child agents not being found - Fixed a load crash that would occur if you saved on the same frame that a window requested a UI refresh - Fixed a bug where sometimes contracts would lose the reference to their location after loading. - Fixed a bug where wall sides weren't loaded correctly, which could cause crashes and other naughty behavior - Biowaste in toilets and waste recyclers will no longer create germs - Fixed a bug where colonists wouldn't correctly remove themselves from airlocks, which would block future colonists from using the airlock until the original user went back through eventually (which couldn't happen, because they'd wait in line) - Fixed a bug where placing objects on top of items would cause an infinite loop. This would happen when a floor's count of "incoming items" became negative (this is now fixed), which caused the code to think that the floor had space, when it didn't, and then it would keep trying to deposit it to the same floor forever - The loading bar on UWP (windows store) will no longer ping pong around like a maniac - Floors with objects on them will no longer turn red when ordering a colonist (they turn red to indicate the floor isn't pathfindable) - Items will no longer be placed under walls - Doors no longer create a light source when opened (this was a leftover from the old system where lighting was room based) - Mental stabilizers will now cure alcoholism, space rock addiction, and all of the negative morale perks - Rotten food can now be stored on shelves and sold - Improved lighting performance

[ 2021-08-13 13:09:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Low morale perks (agoraphobia, pyromanic, brawler, etc) are now cathartic, and will restore colonist morale over 24 hours. So that the morale penalties are temporary. And the intent is that you have to clean up the mess rather than regrowing the colonist (just lock them in their room for a little bit, to keep them out of trouble) - Seeing a dead body will only affect social, and reduced the amount of morale lost when seeing a dead body (if colonists see the dead body multiple times you'll still get additional penalties) - Powered doors can now be opened when they have no power, but it's very slow - Removed free-will level requirements from the tech tree - Starmancer core now produces less oxygen - Reduced chance of fire from crafting failure from 15% to 1% - Reduced the frequency of object maintenance from every day to every 7 days. Reduced the break chance of objects - Colonists now have a 25% chance to become a maniac when morale is very low (previously it was 100%) - Colonists now display their lowest morale on the HUD (previously it was an average of all 3 morale values)

[ 2021-08-10 13:41:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

So, weve made it to Early Access! Its been a wild journey across several years and were excited to continue towards 1.0 of Starmancer. Were genuinely thankful to all our players, especially our backers for the continued feedback and support as we spend Early Access developing Starmancer with your input and thoughts. Youd better be playing the heck out of the game now Weve included a Starmancer Early Access Starmap below. As expected, things may change during development and based on input from the community (which were already compiling and working on) but initially were focusing on quality-of-life improvements and bug fixing. To reiterate, were a 2-man team so please be patient as we work on addressing your feedback.
Once again, thanks for being awesome and blasting off with us into Early Access Like the fires that break out in your space stations, youre the oxygen we use to blaze on If you havent already, be sure to follow us on Discord, Facebook and Twitter so you can stay up-to-date with Starmancer Early Access. Toodles

[ 2021-08-06 15:17:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Disabled multi-threaded loading. This will fix issues where certain playyers couldn't reliably load - Fixed a save crash from saving while a door is open - Fixed a crash in window population (this could occur while playing)

[ 2021-08-06 14:10:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a quality of life thing that was driving me crazy

[ 2021-08-05 22:38:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed a bug where the corsair dll couldn't be found. I'm not sure what caused it, but at least you can play the game now. - Also squeezed in a fix to a loading bug from saving the game while any menu was open (like in an autosave)

[ 2021-08-05 22:21:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

With a week to go until the exciting launch of Starmancer, we wanted to answer some frequently asked questions. Lets get started! Where can I buy Starmancer and for how much? Starmancer will launch on August 5th here on Steam at 16.99/19.99/$19.99 or your regional equivalent. Will Starmancer be localised in ? For Early Access, were sticking with English for quicker and more flexible build updates. Were keen to offer more language options so please let us know what languages youd like to see Starmancer in and we can re-evaluate closer to 1.0. Where can I submit feedback and bug reports for Starmancer? While developing Starmancer during Early Access, we encourage feedback from the community, including any bug reports. Players can report a bug in-game by selecting the Give Feedback option (this is the preferred option as it includes meta data and logs). Players can also submit bug reports through our Official Discord and Steam forums.
Will Starmancer be coming to ? Were currently focusing on developing and improving the game further for PC, Linux and Mac. Well keep an eye on community feedback for any potential future platform considerations. What will be added during Early Access? Weve got plenty of ideas of what to add during Early Access. Initially, well be focusing on quality-of-life improvements for a better overall experience, with content following shortly after. This gives the community time to get deeper into the game and share suggestions/ideas. Will the game support mods? Yes! We look forward to seeing what our talented community comes up with. Were also looking into Steamworks integration - stay tuned. Can I stream Starmancer? For sure! Were excited to see how our community tackles the challenges of running their own space station. CORSAIR iCUE Integration Were excited to announce a partnership with CORSAIR where Starmancer will feature iCUE dynamic RGB lighting integration for CORSAIR hardware to enhance your immersion while exploring deep space in Starmancer. Keep an eye out on CORSAIRs and Chucklefishs social media for game keys and hardware giveaways. Here's a sneak preview: [previewyoutube=v60qAOHY1Ow;full][/previewyoutube] Content Creators If youre a content creator thats interested in covering Starmancer, complete this form to request a key. We hope this helps clear up some of the more common questions out there but for further queries, reach out to us on our social media. You can find us on Discord, Facebook and Twitter. Until next time

[ 2021-07-29 17:34:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're releasing into Early Access on August 5th 2021! (It's a Thursday.) Heres the announcement trailer that was just shown during the Future Games Show E3 2021 showcase: [previewyoutube=mRcb_ypY1Uw;full][/previewyoutube] You can still pre-order for a discounted price, to get a Steam (or GoG) key automatically on release day. If you like the look of our game and want to hear more, wishlist on Steam and join our Discord community. Wishlisting also boosts our visibility and gives us better metrics for which languages to look into translating in the future! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062000/Starmancer/

Early Access

So, why Early Access? Our plan has always been to release Starmancer and continue adding new, free content for a long time (until way after it's responsible). We have high level plans for post launch (e.g. weapons, livestock, bots, genetic augmentation), but our most important goal is to be as flexible as possible and address the least fun areas of the game. The element of fun adds a constant, unknowable cost. It's not easy to play your own game and figure out what's fun and whats not, especially as a 2 person dev-team. Thats why we need your help. We want you to show us what you like about Starmancer (we'll add more of it), but also tell us what you don't like. If another game does something better, we want to know about it! Maybe they solved the same problem were havinggoodeveryone benefits from a great solution. On a more personal note: we want to make something that's fun. There's a person out there having a bad day, and we want to make something that makes their day slightly less bad. We're not trying to make a game with a profound message, or to prove how "creative" we are. It's a game. Games should be fun. There's extra info, and a more in-depth report on what we've recently added to Starmancer on our website) and well be posting an update back here soon. Starmancer is releasing into Early Access on August 5th, and I hope to see you there! (Don't forget to tell your friends) -Tyler Discord: discord.gg/starmancer Twitter: @StarmancerGame Reddit: r/playstarmancer YouTube: Ominux Games

[ 2021-06-13 23:38:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta is launching Wednesday March 31st for Windows, Mac, and Linux! Once Beta launches, well be removing it from the pre-order store, so if you want Beta access, youll have to buy it before then. Please dont view this as a fear-of-missing-out tactic. If you want to wait until release, thats totally fine. Here is a link to the pre-order page. On Wednesday, youll receive an email with a Steam code. It will be sent to the email you provided during the Kickstarter or through pre-order. If you need to change the email, contact us right away. You can send a Discord private message or email us at ominuxgames@gmail.com If you want to upgrade your pre-order to Beta, contact us

Video

Here's me talking about the Beta (the content is about the same as this post), and also 90 minutes of raw gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Yp8kBOppY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38WxyoppuBQ

Beta Purpose

Beta will last from now until release, so if you have Beta its sort of like the game is releasing, but in a less fun state. During Beta were going to fix bugs, add features and do a lot of balance changes over time. Things like: how frequently fire spawns, sell price of ice, morale penalties, hunger drain rate, etc. We might add some new content, but primarily we want to take what already exists, and make it more funimproving the sandbox. Quality of life is also very important to us at this stage. Please keep in mind that were a 2-person team, so it can be difficult to do QA, playtesting, community management, and add new stuff at the same time.

Discord

Here is a link to our Discord server. @Tyler with whatever you want, and Ill go into unnecessary detail about the atmosphere system and colonist limbs.

In-Game Feedback

You can submit feedback directly in-game, by opening the escape menu.
You can also write feedback directly on the Discord. It all gets read, so do whatever is easier for you. If your game crashes, it will automatically be sent to us, so no further action required on your part (except for uninstalling)!

New Stuff

Thats the meat of Beta. Now heres some new stuff that weve added since the Steam demo, in no particular order. You may already know some of it. Im skipping minor things, bug fixes, quality of life, etc.

New UI

We completely overhauled the UI in Starmancer. The new UI is a bit less obtrusive and allows for way more information to be displayed in a cleaner way.

Build Menu

The Build Menu now looks like this:
Categories that havent been unlocked are now hidden (health is a category, for example, and includes the Incubation Tank). You can right click objects to view aesthetic variations, this removes a tremendous amount of redundant entries.

Object Windows

Object windows are now docked to the lower left corner of the screen, with hidetable tabs. This means you can only select 1 thing at a time, but playtesters almost never deliberately selected multiple thingsthe old UI was a pop-up nightmare!
The previously selected tab is remembered for the next time you open a window for the same object. So if the health tab is selected, it will be the default tab for all colonists (until you select something else). You can also rename colonists and rooms now.

Flavor Stats

We added some fun things to the hud, like a death tracker and day counter.

Production Order UI

The production order UI was improved. The amount of information displayed was reduced, and you can now view all assigned colonists, and their respective success chances.
You can assign and unassign colonists directly from this menu. Clicking a colonist will open their object window.

Moving Objects

Objects can now be moved after theyre built (I talked about this in more depth in a previous post).
Movement is free and instant, and could definitely be cheesed to trap colonists. Do what you will with this information.

Tech Tree

We completely removed the old unlock system and added a Tech Tree as most people didnt like the arbitrary nature of the previous system. In this new tech tree, you can focus on whatever you want in whatever order you want
Research has no requirements, except for Colonist Ego level (explained below) and Colonists perform research as a job task, at the Research Station.

Colonist Changes

Colonists received many changes - to the point that theyre hardly even the same thing that that they used to be.

Ego Level

Colonists now have an ego levelbasically their overall intelligence. This can be upgraded by spending DNA Fragments. Ive covered this before, but the system has now been simplified into: [olist]

Drones

Autonomous

Supreme [/olist] Drones receive almost no morale penalties, but they never socialize, have low competence, are incapable of most free-time activities, and their skills are capped at level 3. Drones will eat the same food every day and never complain, but it might take them a few tries to do basic tasks. Autonomous colonists can be thought of as normal humans. Theyre neither good or bad at anything, but they get upset if they eat Biowaste. Theyre also creeped out by Drones, because Drones are creepy. Autonomous colonists can socialize and form friendships and enemies. Supreme colonists are the best. They have a boost to both research time and skill experience gained. Their success chance at everything is much higher. But they will not stand for any sub-standard station conditions. They also despise all lower Egos and will never positively interact with anyone beneath them.

Buying Colonists (and selling)

Colonists can now be directly bought. The player can buy as many as they want, but the active colonist count is limited based on Player Level. At the start, the player can have 3 active colonists. Every colonist has a unique cost, based on their perks and task preferences.
You can reroll the colonists as many times as you like, but you only get 1 free roll per day. After that, the cost is 10 DNA Fragments. All rerolls are free before you buy your first 3 colonists. Colonists can be sold at any time for a 100% refund. Youll receive extra DNA Fragments and Credits if the colonist has earned any skills.

Job Tasks (and preferences)

The old job system is gone. Colonists are now assigned tasks. Each task can be prioritized for every colonist. Certain colonists love, hate, or outright refuse specific tasks
We decided to do this style instead of the grid layout that many similar games use (where all workers have numbers for priorities and you can see all of them at the same time). I always get super overwhelmed by that style. You lose the ability to get a broad overview of all task priorities, though

Job Schedule

You can now create custom job schedules and assign colonists to whatever shift you want.
Internally, this removes some burden from us. If your colonists arent spending enough time eating or if they need more free time, its now more of your fault (although still mostly our fault).

Go To Floor (and return to source)

Once colonists are Autonomous, you can order them to walk to any floor. Use this to keep colonists away from fire or to force them to fight a monster. Its also very useful for the times that your colonists get stuck doing something, because you can rescue them (technically you could always rescue them by venting atmosphere and regrowing them).
This is not a draft mode (but were not opposed to adding draft mode). We also added a Return to Source button, which is handy for when you want to grow a different colonist. Colonists must have positive morale for both orders to work.

Uniforms

You can now change the uniform color of colonists.
Use whatever color convention you want. Maybe you change uniform based on assigned tasks, ego level, or how much you like each colonist.

New Perks

Since the player can now buy colonists, they consent to whatever weird traits everyone has. This gives us way more perk freedom (previously, it wasnt fun if your random colonists had really bad perks). Here are some of the new perks: [olist]

Average Joe This is their only perk

Blue Skin Skin is blue

Faint Hearted Extra morale penalties from seeing blood

Germaphobe Extra morale penalties from Biowaste. Refuses to sleep on floor

Incontinent Randomly poops, even in space

Potty Mouth Randomly swears

Multiple Personality Acquires a random perk each day

Nyctophobia Sleeps with the lights on [/olist]

New Systems

There are a few new systems in the game. We think of Starmancer (and games like it) as more of sandboxes in which interesting things happen and less as games. The sandbox should have enough interesting systems in it that the player can do whatever weird things they want to do.

Hygiene

Biowaste now creates germs. Colonists track germs around the station. The sanitizer removes germs, but must be stocked with Cleaning Solution, created at the Chemistry Table. If colonists are on a dirty floor they can get sick. The current diseases are: [olist]

The Runs Its gonna get messy

Fever Colonist is very hot, and must be put into a cold room

The Chills Colonist is very cold, and must be put into a warm room [/olist] Food will decay faster in the presence of germs. Rotten food also creates germs.
Colonists have a chance to get sick if they eat either rotten food or Biowaste. Germs wont spread in cold rooms, and theyll be completely destroyed if you heat up a room.

Noise

Machines now emit noise while production is occurring. Colonists have reduced morale in noisy rooms. Sleep is also less effective in noisy areas. Noise doesnt spread to separate rooms (unless they share the same atmosphere), so place machinery away from bedrooms and common areas. If colonists are in a loud room for too long, theyll go deaf.

Beauty

Objects now have a beauty rating. Some are ugly, like Bedrolls and Fungus Collectors. Others, like posters and toilets are pretty. Colonist morale and competence is affected by area beauty. Decorate your station to keep everyone happy.
Most cosmetics have the same rating, so place whatever you like best.

Floor Storage

Items are now stored on floors, and item filters are room-wide. So once you set the items that are stored in a room, all shelves and floors placed in that room will automatically store whatever you specify.

New Objects

We added a bunch of new objects too
[olist]

Gun Range Free-Time object right now

Target Dummy Reduces aggression

Jukebox Free-Time

Arcade Machine Free-Time

Casino Table Free-Time

TV Free-Time

Cryptominer Passively generates credits

Sanitizer Removes germs

Water Purifier Converts Dirty Water into Clean Water [/olist] Heres the movie that plays on the TV, because its pretty neat:

Visitors

The world felt a bit empty, so we added some visitors. Were still finishing up the art for some of them (so enjoy the placeholder art during Beta). Most visitors drop DNA Fragments, Upgrade Modules, or Recipe Caches if you kill them. Most visitors can be farmed for items. [olist]

Zombie Infects colonists. Eats dead colonists. Will die in high heat

Power Moth (this name is tentative) Seeks an active wire. Drains a lot of power. Once the drain is finished, it drops loots and vanishes

Cuddler Infects colonists. A mysterious egg erupts from their chest, killing them. Repeat. Mysterious eggs now have a chance to randomly hatch. Warm rooms greatly increase the hatch chance

Malfunctioning Robot Overheating. Moves to any room thats cold. Is harmless if in a cold room. Otherwise very hostile. Will fight zombies. Drops silicon randomly while alive. Drops moonshine on death

Slime Aggressive while hungry. If fed anything it will be passive until it gets hungry again. Drops Goolerium randomly (this is a new item that is used at the Chemistry Table. Also added a Goolerium asteroid)

Shambler Colonists turn into this if theyre outside during a system warp. Its some sort of aggressive monster. [/olist]
Visitors spawn on external floors, and prefer floors near Trade Pods (to prevent cheesing) Right now the spawns are completely random. A visitor spawns every 5 to 10 days. Were looking for ways to make this less random, but its not super easy, because theres no terrain/floor around the outside of the station. The player also shouldnt have to do something to make visitors spawn. The gameplay intent is something like, Oh no, there are zombies at the front door. I better keep everyone inside or send out some colonists to fight the monsters. So in that sense it should be randomish, and definitely not an opt-in system. Were fine with the player increasing spawn chance by placing lots of raw meat outside or something.

Rules of Engagement

We added a Rules of Engagement (RoE) UI. Use it to set creatures to either kill-on-sight or ignore. Monster combat follows the same rules as colonist combat. Pacifists will never fight monsters. Upset colonists will attack creatures regardless of RoE settings. We also implemented the turret. It requires bullets crafted at the workbench. Turrets have low accuracy, and have a chance of damaging anything in the vicinity of the targetmachines or colonists.

Contracts

We made a first pass at a Quest system, called Contracts. Every system has a random amount of contracts. Contracts award Upgrade Modules, Money, DNA Fragements, Recipe Caches, and Player Experience (as you level up you can have more colonists active at the same time)
The required item is totally random, but its gated based on highest skill level of your colonists. So if you have a high level chemist, youll start to see high level chemistry items. The intent is to provide variety, and to occasionally encourage the player to try something new. If you dont like the contracts, just go to a new system

Warp Drive

We simplified the warp system into a pick 1 of 3 systems, with no going back. Theres really no reason for the player to ever return to a system and theres a performance hit from never despawning systems. Right now everything is saved into 1 big folder, and then loaded indiscriminately. Fixing it would take time, but we only have 1 programmer (me).
Systems have random conditions, like cold and radioactive. They also have a dominant faction. The dominant faction increases the sell price of certain items. Eventually this might influence visitor spawn rates or something. If we have time, we want to convert this into an FTL style selection, where you get a simple map and can see 1 or 2 choices into the future

Thanks for all the fish

Everything has an opportunity cost. Do we delay release, cut this content, or cut some other content. Theres no end to what we want to add to the game. The hard part is prioritizing and working on whatever makes the game the most fun. Its not easy. We dont always choose correctly. Sometimes you try something and its just not fun. But we always try. I dont know what other devs do. Were human, doing our best. We dont delay for insidious reasons or marketing reasons (were 2 people, it barely needs to sell for us to keep working). Thanks for sticking through with us. We dont always communicate but weve never stopped working. Beta starts next week, which is March 31st, and will continue forever (you wont lose access before or after release). So if you have Beta its sort of like the game is releasing, but in a less fun state. Thanks!

[ 2021-03-26 16:09:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello folks! We wanted to provide a quick update on the upcoming space simulation game, Starmancer. Ominux have been hard at work on developing the game, and Alpha backers have been receiving regular Steam updates throughout the year and providing the team with valuable feedback to make Starmancer the best it can possibly be! The Steam Demo event in June this year was the first chance for non-backers to get their hands on a slice of the action. The demo gave players 60 minutes to create and manage a ship with most of the games systems open to explore (as deeply as you can within an hour). Having a rush of first time players meant the team got lots of fresh voices coming in, and after reviewing player feedback, the team have decided to make some pretty big and exciting changes! You can follow all the latest information from the latest DevBlog from the team -- heres some highlights theyve shared recently:

New Cosmetics and objects!

Players can now build beautiful green-spaces for their colonists to enjoy when they have some time off from their duties keeping the ship running smoothly! Build a spaceship garden to offer your colonists a peaceful retreat, or create a more natural environment to grow crops in!
In addition to new cosmetics and functional machines, theres also a fun new method of generating power early in the game - treadmills! Colonists can use these to store electricity inside an attached battery which can then be distributed to the rest of the station. This allows colonists to get a little more directly involved in collecting power as a resource (but dont worry, you can still build those powerful power generators later game).

Ship Upgrades

Sending your colonists on missions just became a whole lot more interesting! In addition to some exciting map upgrades, players can now upgrade their ships with improvements such as increased capacity and a mining drill to get the most out of their missions! This allows ships to have a lot more options and character - the appearance of your ship will also change with each new upgrade so you can see it develop!

Ego level & upgrades

Colonists now have an attribute called Ego Level. Every colonist starts a level 1drone. A drone doesnt care about anything. If it eats Biowaste and sleeps on the floor foreverit doesnt care. As colonists level to higher ego levels, they desire increasingly better station conditions. If a high level colonist sees a dead body, theyll have a much more severe reaction than a low level colonist.
To unlock each level colonists must meet unique requirements, like Sleep in a bed. The intent is to force the player to become familiar with game mechanics more gradually before survival becomes more complicated. The game would direct you to first establish that you can place a bed, and then you can start to focus about growing crops. (You can still grow crops before placing a bed, but you wont be morale penalized for it). At every level, you can select 1 permanent upgrade for your colonist, like: reduced hunger, increased sell prices, and decreased fight chance. Theyll also gain random attributes as they level up which could change how they like to work or interact socially.

Galaxy and Starmap updates

Players can now travel between Star Systems, using Star Fuel. Each Star System is randomly generated, but it permanently has whatever is inside it in game. Some systems are better than others. If youre looking for a good seed, just travel around until you find one.
New pop-up window for traveling to distant stars and objects There are a few different types of star systems, each with a unique spawn pool. Infested Star Systems have a way higher count of Infested Stations, for example. Inside each star on the galaxy map is the systems starmap. This shows all the local objects and planets that a station ship can travel to. Once a station has moved into a system colonists can collect resources using ship missions. The background color in both the Starmap and the skybox is based on the system stars color.
A blue star solar system The team is next planning to move into a beta for early backers, and after that will be the public release! Its being very actively worked on, and approaching readiness - we cant wait to share more in 2021! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062000/Starmancer/ To keep up to date with the latest news for Starmancer you can check out the team on twitter, the games devblog, or the official discord channel!

[ 2020-12-16 14:59:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Play through, play through again, play through some more... Myself and the team at Ominux Games will be around for a Q&A over on the Chucklefish Discord on Friday 19th June at 19.00 BST / 21.00 MSK / 11.00 PDT / 14.00 EDT / 20.00 CST where well discuss all things Starmancer!

[ 2020-06-17 10:50:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Great news! For a limited time between June 16th and 22nd youll be able play through a free Starmancer demo experience as part of the Steam Game Festival! It can be difficult to create a demo for a sandbox game like Starmancer, so we're just giving you the (mostly) full game with a 60 minute timer which you can restart as many times as you want. Each playthrough has randomly-generated colonists so every game will feel different. Youll start with some extra cash, all cosmetics unlocked, and most of the base game is free for you to enjoy (Slimes, Fires, Memory-Erasing Nanobots), so you should get a good feel of what the complete game will be like. You can craft some Mutagens by incubating Mysterious Eggs in Infested Stations, discover the pizza recipe and throw a party, or just relax and spend your hour decorating with posters, paints, and carpets. If you have any feedback for us or want to report a bug, feel free to let us know in this thread here. Also, we'll be having a Q&A on Friday 19th June at 19.00 BST / 21.00 MSK / 11.00 PDT / 14.00 EDT / 20.00 CST over on the Chucklefish Discord. Also, were always giving updates, sharing screenshots and releasing news over on Twitter and in our Discord, so come join us! Tell your friends, coworkers, and mail handlers!

[ 2020-06-15 14:29:59 CET ] [ Original post ]