Dev Blog #17: Update 6 Progress, 2 Years in the Making, News Since Last Patch...
Another year done, another begins. 2017 should be one of the most hectic but rewarding years as Atomic Society gets ready for Early Access in the late summer (until then the pre-alpha on our website is still going well). But there's a lot to do first before the game gets a wider release.
Aftermath of Version 0.0.5
Before Christmas we released the 5th chunky update for the pre-alpha version, the one that finally brought saving and loading and various other stuff that I've talked about in previous blogs. After it was out I decided to bite the bullet and do a marketing splurge to announce it, which is always a fight against shyness. Showing off that trailer wherever I could think to post it without seeming rude. I’m not sure how I managed to do it all in hindsight as we were all so busy. But, like it or hate it, the marketing paid off (pun intended), enough cover a few small bills at least.
2 Years in the Making
Looking back, it's astonishing to me that it's 2 years since we started work on Atomic Society, even longer since the planning stages began. I’m not sure where all the months went. So much happened, from learning how to use Unity, to forming a company, to recruiting, to putting the pre-alpha on sale and updating it. And that's just half the lessons learnt! One step at a time.
Taking time estimates for anything in game dev and doubling them still proves to be a good rule. I thought we'd have the game in its present state after a year of development. Not that we’re slacking, I just was clueless about how time-consuming it all is. Would I have made a simpler game now, looking back? Probably not. If you're going to spend years of your life making a game, for practically no pay, with no idea of whether it will succeed, make something you love! AS deserves to be finished.
...But game 2 might be a tic-tac-toe simulator.
Work on Version 0.0.6 Has Begun
There’s a lot planned for Version 0.0.6, over 20 features of various shapes and sizes. Perhaps too much! I won’t share all of it here, as I don’t want to disappoint if features get delayed. Everything mentioned below has already been added. All in all, I'd say we're about 1/3 of the way done with the new version.
Latrines and Diarrhoea
Back in December, we designed and coded a neat little virus system with different infection rates, and origin points. This month we've expanded and altered it so we can have multiple, different diseases on the go. Atomic Society now features another killer - poor sanitation.
We've implemented a new building to cope with it though, latrines are now buildable. Each latrine provides “sanitation coverage” . The bigger the population, the more toilets you need. You'll have to use your imagination for what happens inside. We considered making citizens physically visit the loo but it just slowed the game down too much. For now, you just need to build them, if you don’t have enough, there is a chance citizens will get stomach bugs and diarrhoea, one of the biggest killers in the third-world. On top of corpse-related diseases it's a big problem.
Gameplay wise I'm happy with this new structure, even though it wasn't in the plan (players wanted it). The way we've done it makes it a new challenge, and the way it scales with the population size keeps it interesting.
New Cosmetic Buildings
We've also put in (or rather returned them after they bugged out) 3 new “cosmetic” buildings for players to make. They’re "cosmetic" in the sense that they don’t affect gameplay (although there are ideas on the table). At the moment they're just for players who want to make their own settlement more unique/more atmospheric.
Currently we've added a post-apocalyptic statue, public artwork, and a burning torch that casts a little light on gloomy maps. We’ll add in more of these over time as they’re relatively easy to make so if you’ve got any wishes for props let me know!
With the new latrine, that brings the total number of unique, buildable structures into the pre-alpha version up to 22 and there might be more coming soon.
Difficulty Settings
Nick’s total reconstruction of the game last year paved the way for difficulty settings this month. In Update 6 you’ll be able to start picking how challenging you want the game to be. Some people want a real survival experience where hundreds of lives can be lost if you run out of food. Others want a more chilled building experience where messing up isn’t so fatal. At the moment our 3 difficulty settings affect how much loot you start with, and how weak your survivors and new migrants are. We'll add more flexibility as the game gets settled.
New Map
It's not a new version without a new map. Update 6 brings the second snowy map to the game, "Iceberg". It’s a circular map with 2 levels so you’ll end up building ring shaped cities if you last long enough. The plot it is that the mainland was just too violent and/or radioactive so survivors commandeered a ship to the ruins of an island fishing village. Desperate migrants presumably follow in boats.
New UI
This huge task is taking up most of Nick’s time so far in 0.0.6. We've had to remake it from scratch. The look of it was fine, but it was the system behind it that sucked. The old way was essentially to make a custom menu item for everything, which was time consuming, and if you wanted to change the way a button looked, you’d have to go and replace it on every single UI element. It wasn't flexible, slick, and it caused a lot of glitches.
Nick's big rebuild means Update 6 will have a snappier, faster and hopefully bug-free UI. E.g. clicking on things and nothing happening, stuff like that, will be gone. There are also some cool animations you’ll see. It's just generally better to use.
Fingers crossed this is the last big “make it all over from scratch” thing we’ll have to do after the huge rebuild required for saving and loading. There are elements of the game that need a lot of TLC but nothing that needs to be smashed up and started again. I think.
Other Tweaks for Update 6 So Far...
These changes were mostly based on a lot of playtesting and were easy enough to do:
- We've made the storehouse tell you when it’s full of junk.
- You can now build your structures 33.3% closer to each other than before, down to a couple of meters apart. Some people complained that our towns looked too spread out when they saw the trailer. That shouldn't be a problem anymore.
- We've changed how shelter works. It used to be the case that citizens stuck to the first house they were assigned to. This was fine, until the citizen had a job on the far side of town and then had to hike all the way back just to sleep. We’ve found a solution for that which removes the tedium so you should find the game flows a bit better.
- Clouds are back (again!). We at last had breathing space to upgrade our game engine to the latest version and it fixed the glitch with our moving cloud system so you’ll now have a more atmosphere in your towns. The engine upgrade may also boost performance for certain players.
The next 2 imminent things on the list are making citizens age up properly, evolving from kids to adults, and finishing off the execution solution so that the society-wide problems it creates are working.
Steam Store Going Well
In late December's blog I mentioned that we'd created a Steam Store page in readiness for Early Access this summer. I should’ve done it ages ago, but maybe it was best to wait until the game was looking more like a game.
Anyway, in case you missed it, you can now track us and follow easily all the updates and dev blogs and stuff that gets posted over there. You can also wishlist us and make us happy.
It is fun seeing wishlist numbers climb each week despite us not doing any marketing. Whether any of them lead to sales we shall have to see!
Next Month
As I said, we're about 1/3 of the way through version 6, so maybe 1-2 more dev blogs before it’s out?
In next month’s blog things will have progressed enough I can share more info on what's in store. There are much bigger features planned for this version but it all depends on how the UI rebuild goes.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Here's to another year of hard work and successful updates.
