This latest update introduces changes to saving, the settings menu, new items, new research perks, vast improvements to the object and room placement system as well as complex creature and ecosystem simulation changes.

Here’s Simon’s video of the latest build:

New Objects and Equipment

Portable Solar Panels

Quick to build, these additional new solar panels will provide less energy but are more convenient for a starting base. The existing solar arrays now require a full workshop to build and provide a higher output.

Flares

Flares will appear in the area a capsule will land. This helps the new colonists navigate their way to Maia and lets the player know that something will happen in that spot soon. Colonists will also be able to place them to distract animals.

New Decorative Items

New aesthetic items have been added. Cypress and Dracaena plants can be placed to make the base feel a lot more like home.

Multiple Save Files and Options

 

Players can now save their game to several slots along with the existing f5 quicksave. Allowing for you to have multiple bases on the go with zero hassle.

Save and load buttons have also been placed on the pause menu and an option has been added for those wanting to quickly abort their missions and return to the main menu.

By going into the settings, players can create different key bindings which allow players to customise the controls to their liking and also enables people using alternate keyboard layouts, such as AZERTY, to play. The bindings are saved in human readable xml so can be modified by third party programs and shared between machines.

Improvements to Object Placement

When placing a blueprint of an object it may turn amber, to indicate a sub-optimal placement. This might make it more difficult to build or might indicate that the objects function will be impaired.

Colonists are now better at considering whether a complex chain of actions can be fully completed, leading to less time wasted by the colonists on jobs they give up on half way through.

Players are now also able to place priority orders for their colonists. Do this by double clicking a blueprint you have placed. These orders with be prioritised over most tasks, but will upset colonists by going against their own judgement and freewill.

Players may also notice that when placing a room the blueprint appears as a grid, this visual improvement makes it easier to understand how objects are placed.

Creature Updates

There has been various updates to the creatures on Maia including improvements to animation and AI. Also, some creatures are now able to breed.

Voxnocturnus

The Voxnocturnus that travels Maia’s plains at night will now find and create burrows to sleep in during the day.

Proto Birds

The unknown proto birds food sources have changed. This will encourage when to invade bases more and to eat other dead creatures.

Megacephalalgia

Megacephalalgia will now have migration patterns which means new packs will appear on the map. They also have new reactions to each other and idle actions.

Emails and Announcements!

The emails have been updated to relate to colonist skills. Your inhabitants will complain for even more reasons such as lack of robots, need for equipment and give unsolicited feedback on the base you have created.
The emails will have a lot more personality so you can get to know your doomed colonists. In addition to this, the announcer will now alert you on even more issues and events.

Research Changes

Overall the researching in Maia is more balanced, new perks will be unlocked at different times dependent on what kind of research is being collected. Several interesting new research perks have been added to the game that provide the player with more options and choices on how to run their base. Colonists will discover new ways to create stable energy, how to capture animals and treat infections faster. Research advancements in computer technology and social compliance are also possible. The full list of research perks can be found on maiawiki.com

Also, probes can be found outside on the planet’s surface. These can be selected and used to gain research.
The research perks are also now tiered so players will not be able to unlock certain research perks until they have done the related one before.

Other Changes

• When walking or running or waiting with no idle animation, colonists turn their heads to look at what is interesting them.
• Outdoor wind directions on smoke and other effects balanced and corrected.
• Drift added to many effects such as snow, dust, ash and embers to cause the particles to float about naturally.
• Bum scooting animations for megacephalalgias are now more satisfying.
• Better hypothermia emails
• Repair bot works faster, smarter.
• Trees grow in group to create forests.
• Plants grow more naturally, maxing out at over fifty thousand individual entities.
• IMP can now destroy plants in first person mode.
• Less poetry emails.
• UI sounds added for several interactions.
• Sound balancing on many items.
• Necropsy table visibility fixed.
• Meteorites are now easier to select.
• Build priorities and needs tweaked.
• Fix for ambient occlusion pass not being used.
• Colour bleeding added to the SSAO effect and increased.
• The Bloom system reduced in scale to save memory.
• Lights are now individually scaled for different rooms.
• Internal reflection threshold increased. To give more interesting lens flares.
• Graphics update and optimisations.
• SSAO is now working with AA and without it
• Spinning turret bug fixed
• Fix for corrupted files.
• Typos fixed in several descriptions. New descriptions added.
• Colonist’s now think about base design
• Colonists now think about alarms
• Keybinding saved to XML
• More consistent code for warnings and problem status on all sub objects.
• Tree sample priority has been raised.
• Workshop table no longer missing on Linux builds.
• Save file changes
• Room updating optimised
• Several loading issues fixed
• Various code cleanups
• Particle FX now on less threads, and updated more optimally.
• Linux graphics fixes for Intel and ATI machines. Game now build against up to date libraries and tested on Ubuntu 16.04
• Cave-ins will now spawn at the centre of the screen when using debug cavein command.

We’re looking forward to update 0.56 which we’re already hard at work on. To see live development head over to dev.maiagame.com.

Simon has been live streaming development every Friday over on Twitch. Make sure to follow him to be notified when he goes live.

We hope you enjoy this update, please let us know what you think over on the Maia forums or on Twitter.