I'm again a little late to prepare what is supposed to be a *monthly* development update, because time flies too quickly. It has been a very busy period! For some time now, I've been managing two tasks concurrently: fixing reported bugs and implementing small enhancements to the current version, while also putting significant effort into a new major update.
I want to finish and polish the new major update sooner, so I will be focusing primarily on this for the upcoming couple of months. As a result, the frequency and size of updates will decrease. Rest assured, any critical bugs, especially ones reported in the Steam forums, will still be addressed within one day, as they usually were.
This development update is your peek into what's coming next. I'm excited about it and will share more details as the work progresses. Thanks for your understanding, your support, and your patience as I forge ahead with these improvements.
But before looking into what's coming next, let's take a glance at the ongoing UI overhaul.
UI Overhaul
Stardeus UI was designed with a developer-first philosophy, I wanted it to be easy to build and control through C# code, so both myself and the modders could create the UI by stitching little building blocks together. That meant that almost no parts of the UI were hand crafted like in many other games.
However, the developer-first UI had many flaws and usability problems. After a very useful consultation with an expert in the UI/UX field, I ended up with a plan on how to improve things. It will take a lot of time to go through it completely, but the process has already begun, and the results are wonderful. Here are some more notable changes to the UI that are already there:
Item grouping
The top-left info panel and mass selected items are now grouped into logical categories.
Split and reorganized overlay buttons
The cluster of ~30 overlay buttons was broken down into 4 logical sectors - visual overlays, information views, system controls and special group for important views like Research and Starmap.
Events cleanup
The event list used to contain too many notifications, many of them weren't important enough to take up that valuable space. Many of the notifications were removed and placed into the new Log panel.
Log Panel
This tiny box contains a detailed timestamped flow of events ranging from Asteroid impacts to Bob taking 3 physical damage from stubbing a toe on a mini heater.
Fanfare Message
When something really important happens, you don't want to miss it. That's why a large message will show up in the center of the screen when that happens. It will remain there for 10 seconds, giving you enough time to notice it.
New Trade UI
Old trade UI was clunky and quite confusing. This new UI will save you a lot of clicking and will make trading a much more pleasant experience.
I'm not done with the UI overhaul yet, but if you have any suggestions or feedback regarding what is happening with the UI, please share it in the comments or on Stardeus Discord - I'd love to know what you think!
Now let's move onto the main meat of this post - the sneak peek at the next major update.
Coming Soon: New Research System
The next big thing is going to be a brand new research system! It is probably the biggest change to the way the game will be played compared to previous major updates - derelict ships and complex planets.
But before I reveal how the new system works, let me explain why the current research system had to change.
Problems with the current Research System
The research system that is in the current v0.9 version has been around since the very beginning of the project. It is complex in a bad way and has a plethora of problems:
- Research tree is not arranged in a logical way.
- It unlocks by consuming increasingly large amounts of electricity and waiting for a progress bar to go to 100%. This doesn't feel rewarding.
- Research does not use all available electricity, only Ship Computers and Research Stations with a human operator can contribute their energy to move the research progress forward. This is not obvious.
- There is a slider in the Ship Computer and Research Station UI that allows changing the amount of electricity contributed to research. It was added out of necessity, but it brought more complexity and confusion.
- You have to build a server farm full of disk and memory modules to be able to run research. I personally find this fun, but not everyone does.
- With proper infrastructure in place, any research node can be unlocked in 1 in-game day, and parallel research could work towards unlocking multiple research nodes simultaneously. Not everyone is aware of this.
- Experienced players who know the game well are able to unlock everything very quickly. This makes the progression too easy after you find the optimal strategy.
- Many would get frustrated waiting for research to slowly crawl for way too long often without understanding that they could make it go much faster.
- Some wouldn't even start a research because they thought that the full amount of electricity is required to run the research. And it is definitely not their fault - it is bad system design, which is my fault.
All this is about to change, because I have killed this research system with fire, and a brand new system is already in the final stages of development. It changed the game so much that I had to throw away the tutorial (a new set of better tutorials are coming) and I'm looking at several hundred broken integration tests that may require a full rewrite. This will keep me busy for a while.
How does the New Research System work?
Here are the main concepts behind the new research system:
- Rather than time + electricity based, it is resource based and somewhat inspired by Factorio research with Science Packs. It gives the player an incentive to establish a resource processing pipeline and hunt for required materials.
- To unlock research nodes, you have to produce special materials called "Datoids". There are about 10 types of them right now.
- Datoids are crafted from mostly common materials in specialized devices called "Data Harvesters". There will be several different types of Data Harvesters, each capable of producing specific types of Datoids.
- You cannot buy or sell Datoids, but in addition to crafting them, you may get some by completing quests and possibly through some story events.
- One you have enough Datoids of the right type, you can unlock the research nodes instantly. This will create situations where you will go "shopping" for the available tech in the research tree, choosing which items you need the most right away.
- Disk space is still required to store the research data, but the disk costs are much smaller than before. Disk modules are also pre-unlocked, making it impossible to lock yourself out of continuing the research.
- Research Queue was replaced with Bookmarks. You can bookmark research nodes and when you have enough Datoids to unlock something that you have bookmarked, you will get a notification.
- If you don't have any bookmarked items or none are unlockable, but you can unlock something else, you will be notified about that as well.
The research tree structure is also brand new, split into more sub-trees and much more logical. Big thanks to our community member lysixa for designing a prototype of the new research tree structure. This was exactly the push I needed to start working on the new research system.
The New Research System is available for public testing
If you're still reading, here comes the good part. You can try this new research system right now if you switch to v0_10_rc in Steam BETAS. I recommend this to experienced players only for now, because the tutorial has been removed and the new tutorials aren't ready yet. It's still rough around the edges and may be unbalanced, but if you are brave enough, you are welcome to try it out.
As much as I wish to be able to playtest it all myself with multiple play styles, time is my biggest enemy, and I really appreciate your feedback!
There is a #stardeus-new-reserach channel on Stardeus Discord, or you can use the in-game "Report a bug" button and Steam Forums to submit your feedback.
Development Streams are back!
I was working quietly for several months, but now the regular development streams are back! You are welcome to catch them on both Twitch and YouTube, drop in to say hello and I will be happy to answer any questions about Stardeus, game development, meaning of life and other topics.
That's it for this update, see you in the next one!
- spajus
Follow the Development
- Official Website: https://stardeusgame.com
- Join Stardeus Discord
- /r/stardeus on Reddit
- @StardeusGame on Twitter
- @dev_spajus on Twitter
- @KodoLinija on YouTube (devlogs)
- dev_spajus on Twitch (live development streams)
Get Stardeus
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1380910/Stardeus/
