For the first time in many months, we're not doing a weekly update! Before anyone posts about the project being abandoned, let's talk though the good news about why that is!
Upgrading our Engine to latest version
Most importantly, and most significantly, we are making a major upgrade in the engine. We have made the game using Unity. We locked the unity version a month or so out from our initial launch which means we haven't continued to upgrade the engine since then. Why is this? Well, engine version changes can cause a lot of headaches. While they do contain lots of bugfixes (good!) they often necessitate changes in how things work (bad!).
There was also a significant change in pricing for Unity which was going to have some pretty huge ramification for the cost of our project. This is a very niche title, that's likely to run very close to only break even. We have to buy licenses for not only the people developing the game, but even our build servers! So it adds up pretty quick.
In the end, the benefits of this project being like others in our studio (which had moved to Unity 2018), and the fixes and new features of 2018, meant that we needed to upgrade. And so we have. Heightmare did the initial test, porting over and changing what was needed. Then we started migrating all the team, and our build servers. We've got all the hard parts of that working to the point some in the community are actually testing versions of the game running in the updated engine. Now we're just finishing the upgrades to our automated build and deployment system so it works with the new Unity version.
What are the results? Well, quite staggering really. Load times for a community provided large map were reduced from 5-10 minutes to seconds. There are other areas we'll have significant improvements in that will be more appreciable over time.
Trading and AI missions
If you've played RimWorld, you know how well trading can factor into to these kinds of game. So we wanted to start looking at what trading could look like in Stationeers. A form of trading is also key in our inspiration, SS13, so we felt it was a necessary component before we could replicate round-based play of Stationeers as well.
The initial groundwork has been done, the models have been made, which means we can begin the implementation in the coming weeks. It will involve placing down a landing pad. Placing landing "beacons" which would guide AI aircraft in, and then placing a communications relay which allows you to talk to these traders. You need to make sure the path you set is clear, or the AI craft will crash and not want to trade.
Initially it will just be trading, once that works out, we'll look at how the mission system (already implemented) can be extended to include people coming in via these ships. Perhaps you need to escort a scientist out to a remote area, or find someone lost and then recover them to a rescue ship, and so on.
Surgery and Medical
The medical system seems very basic. You get hurt, you take a pill. The reality is the system behind it is actually well fleshed out - it's just the "healing" that is simplified. You have organs, they take damage. So we want to expand this and surgery is seen as a key component.
It's a good chance for to examine: how do we get key mechanics into the game? Well, simply put - we play games! For me, SS13 in particular Paradise Station has been a surgery system I really enjoy. I play on that server as a Surgeon often; so I'm very familiar with how fun it can be. We discuss those ideas in an open forum, and often break out to a whiteboard to discuss the implementation. Then it gets captured on an internal intranet, tasks get assigned, and the work begins in earnest.
When will we see this in? Good question! The answer is really "it depends". Really what affects it most is how stable the build is, how well the engine upgrade has gone, and how bad stuttering is in the game.
Some weeks, people complain about us having new content coming when there are still bugs - assuming this new content takes people away from fixing bugs. That's seldom the case, we prioritize bugfixing over new features. New features and content get implemented because: the programmer doing it needs a break (something fun), implementing it takes a very short amount of time (variations of existing things can take only 10-30mins to implement), others are working on core aspects of the game so the programmer isn't able to do bugfixes till they're finished.
So how are we doing?
We're pretty upbeat actually! The project is in a good place, it's fun for us to add new things because we've ended up refactoring most of the really troublesome things. We are left with a few hard ones: such as stuttering and whether we completely replace Unity's networking API with our own solution. We also have big design decisions to make, some community suggested such as how much more "science" we model with things like pressure and temperature.
What is most fun, at least for me, is going into the game and adding new stuff and then seeing people play with it. And with a good foundation, we're able to do that much easier. We got some rough feedback early in the project, and updates were a lot slower. But that's just because we took on the biggest tasks first. And that's a tough part of early access, consumers aren't really ever exposed to these realities and as a developer: you can be rewarded for having a short time "more content" focus rather than a long term "better architecture" approach.
Please consider leaving a review on the project! It's really good to get feedback and review score makes a tremendous difference. Whatever review you leave but especially if it is not recommended, please leave some constructive thoughts. There is, for example, a recent negative review saying that the game doesn't run on Linux for them. We think that's a bit unfair, as the game isn't listed as supporting Linux. We see significant drops in sales based on even a few negative reviews. Some people do change their reviews, if they listed specific things and we go in and address them
Conclusion
So that is a pretty good overview of where we are at, and where we are heading for the next few weeks and months. Please let us know your thoughts, and get involved on the forums and discord!
