Greetings, Magnates! It's been 5 months since the last devlog, but that doesn't mean the game is abandoned. Oh no. My absense is explained by the simple fact that I needed a break. Being an indie game developer isn't easy; it comes with a lot of stress and concern. The actual coding is the least of it all. It's more about living up to expectations, not failing super hard when it releases, worrying that noone will notice and buy the game, that not enough effort was put into marketing and so on and so on. And I just needed to get away from all of that. I'm still dead set on finishing and releasing this game, don't worry. In the mean time, I've been working with an artist. First of all, there are new assets for everything. Tiles, buildings, items, visual effects. This is a great step forward in terms of more broad visual appeal. The new assets are double the resolution they used to be, and with an actual artist on board most of the buildings now resemble what they actually are. Miners looking like miners, smelters looking like smelters etc. Very happy about that. Following that, we worked on new Steam assets (screenshots excluded; they still need to be updated). They look much better now and should hopefully start to drive a bit more traffic to the store page for the game. I present the latest changelog below, which is a list of changes that happened before I went on a break. I'm allowing myself to continue this break until the new year. Come January I expect to be back in the groove.

Changelog

• New assets for everything.
• Changed world generation; rocks are gone, replaced by stone deposits instead. Water has rocky shorelines now. Water isn't surrounded by sand/beach anymore, instead sand generates in deposits. Flowers are gone, they didn't serve any purpose anyway.
• Water tiles are animated now.
• Pumps will now work on moist soil (dark dirt). That should make pipelines less annoying.
• Redid the liquid distribution system; liquid volume will now try to distribute evenly between all connected supported buildings.
• Had to undo a previous design choice; distributors and intersections can no longer feed into each other.
• Started work on visual effects for buildings.

Core Gameplay

• Make landfall on planets and moons and set up factory sites.
  
• Build factories to best utilize the resources available.
  
• Enter into short and long term contracts, committing to deliver a steady supply of products.
  
• Build relations with the inhabitants of the solar system, affecting trade prices and opportunities.
  
• Navigate the Interplanetary Central Market, looking for the best trades.
  
• Compete against AI companies.
  
• Hire scientists and product specialists for your Research & Development department, allowing you to unlock factory unit upgrades and new product lines.

Development Status

Mod Support

• A procedurally generated solar system. Each playthrough will create a unique solar system, offering good longevity and replayability.
  
• Procedurally generated factory sites, in which you'll be building your factories.
  
• 3 starting resources (ores).
  
• A starting range of factory units - a lot more to come..

• Fully simulated trade and economy system.
  
• Multiple market sectors each with their own range of products.
  
• Company AI.
  
• Relationship system that enables all entities in the game to have a rating or standing with eachother.
  
• Tech tree with unlockable branches of factory unit upgrades as well as entire production lines.
  
• Various difficulty modes and starting conditions.
  
• More natural resources, aiming for around 10-12 of them with different uses and characteristics.
  
• A lot more factory units! Counting a lot on community feedback and ideas here.
  
• Tileset variations. Intuitive UI components. Factory animations. And much more.

• OS: Ubuntu 12 or newer
• Processor: 2.0 ghz Dual CoreMemory: 2 GB RAM
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD3000 or higher with OpenGL 2.1 support
• Storage: 200 MB available space