Maia 0.67 is here! This huge update is all about polish. Check out this quick video of me showing off the major changes:

 

Polished.. floors.

Fine dust in a humid underground base quickly turns to sticky, sticky dirt. Colonists will inevitably traipse it all around the base, making everyone intensely miserable at the state of it all.

Thankfully there is now a floor cleaning robot ready to remove dirt and polish scuffs off the floor! Just build it and watch it methodically work its way around the base. Or maybe take it for a spin in first person?

[Seedyness Intensifies]

The propagator adds a new level of depth and interaction to your hydroponics room. The systems grow seedlings in a carefully controlled environment to maximise yield from the colony’s seed stocks from earth.

IMProvements

The IMP robot can now pick up items (and creatures) in first person, manipulate them and carry them about. This new level of interaction gives you more control over the little things in life (such as chickens).

The repair bot has also been upgraded with new first person user interface systems to help identify items requiring immediate repair.

What are they plotting?

The colony’s wall screens are now able to show useful base data graphed. See real time feeds of room temperature and atmosphere, grid status, storage amounts of rations, materials and minerals and even receive advanced notice of earthquakes using the accurately generated seismograph.

Inbox Zeros

Colonist emails are now more detailed and varied and will focus on core issues in the base. They also include profile pictures for the colonists sending them to help you identify the sender and grow closer to them before they inevitably die in a fire.

Mist opportunities

Exterior rendering has been improved substantially with new detail in snow and ground water. A new volumetric effect outside will render fog, dust and smoke with realistic movement depth and shadows.

It must be f/8

The user interface has had a lot of tweaks and improvements. The game camera is now smoothed and can also zoom into rooms and will adjust its height automatically when moving around the base.

Placing rooms is now easier with new icons for each room type. Many of the UI modes are more responsive or have been tweaked for clarity. More text has shadowing, and mouse over info tips have been clarified and shortened to make them easier to skim.

 

Other notable changes:

• AI player added. Type “aiPlayer” in the console to activate a basic self-playing base AI that can construct rooms, items and manage basic functions.
• Tutorial reworked for new items and to give the player more time to digest information.
• Cassiopeia mission lengthened, made easier.
• Colonist stockpiling needs tweaked.
• Other misc colonist AI needs balancing.
• Colonists will no longer interrupt social interactions between others.
• Colonists are less (intentionally) suicidal.
• Breakdown rates for many items tweaked.
• IMPs are less grumpy and won’t smash everything now.
• Ground overlay info no longer comes up if emails are open.
• Game meta-progress now saved.
• Finished mission names now shown in blue.
• Fix for flywheel sound when locked.
• Click interactions added for more objects.
• Building geothermal power equipment underground no longer requires airlock proximity.
• Tape drive infotip added.
• Tape drive power use increased, disks spin down during blackout.
• Atmosphere generator, smelter and nanoprinter infotips update slower.
• Megacephalagia creature attacks on wind turbines are now more dramatic with extra animation and pfx.
• Vox Nocturnis creature territorial need increased.
• Game will now push new players to try a tutorial.
• Wait added to dogs and robots when clicked on to give player more time to give a move order.
• Dogs place a higher priority on patrol orders given by a player.
• Chicken breath amount slightly randomised.
• Colonist diseases added to save files.
• Shader generation info now goes into log.
• Shader fix for MSAA not showing lines in IMP first person vision.
• Fix for IMP vision masking out text due to sky mask.
• Removal of log terminal on Windows builds.
• Text renderer bugs fixed.
• First person mode labels now have shadows for easier reading.
• Width fix for border for colonist names on selection panel.
• Numerous shader optimisations.
• Fix for potential crash caused by colonist memories.
• More code modernisation to C++14 standards.

If you want to see more changes to the game as they go live. Get on the Development branch on Steam. You can also watch as I update the repository on the development site.

0.68 is already in the works and will again be focused on improving the AI and feedback from the game, rounding off some of the sharper edges.

Please let me know if you find any big bugs or issues. If you appreciate the effort going into the game, don’t forget to leave a Steam review!