Maia 0.45 is ready for playing. Here’s a quick look video!

A problem shared! New AI interaction code allowing your colonists to communicate with each other and delegate tasks to the most able. Your colony will now run like a well lubricated Morris Minor.

Research! Many new technology perks based on real science have been added. Improve your wind turbines with electrodynamic bearings and coat your bulkhead doors with carbon-carbon to make them stronger than ever!

A new room. The living area provides an insulated, safe and quiet environment for your colonists to rest and recuperate in, improving their health and sanity.

Many optimisations. Lower end CPUs will see a big improvement in framerate thanks to a new pathing system for locked doors and inaccessible rooms.

• Key bindings reworked and interchangeable. 1..9 can cycle objects in a build list and q+e can cycle rooms.
• Doors are no longer in build lists, are context sensitive when walls are moused over (not perfect yet, can be finicky)
• Starvation is now more accurately tracked. Colonists will die much quicker without food.
• Imp now is more responsive to cancelled jobs.
• Reflections are now lit and are looking quite pretty.
• Some new meshes for upgraded items.
• All crash bugs nailed (he says).
• Earthquakes are slightly gentler.
• A whole bunch of Linux issues nailed down.
• Better performance for Mac users.
• Imp no longer recycles full water barrels like some sort of crazy eco warrior.
• Colonists no longer leave empty barrels by the solar still.
• Imp can destroy plants outside and uproot grasses.
• The ecosystem is balanced and you can see some cool battles between the plant species play out over the weeks.
• Pressing y during the tutorial no longer spawns earthquakes that make the game unplayable.
• AI needs have been tweaked to make mature bases more manageable.
• OCD placement mode (ctrl) no longer offsets everything randomly by 1 degree. 😉

There are a few features that had to be missed for the milestone such as loading direct from the menu and on-map meteor strikes – due to me taking a few days off with the flu. I’ll drop these into the game in a week or so when they are tested.

Thanks for all the feedback on 0.44!

There’s been a lot of talk about alpha funded games getting into deep water recently so I thought it would be interesting to post a blog discussing the future of Maia and of Machine Studios LTD, the business I have now formed to develop it and future games.

First some context. On Steam alone, over it’s lifetime and including sales, Maia has averaged $1,515 a day. That number is massively skewed by the release sale and subsequent coverage, but a good base point to work from. A month with no big releases or coverage sits closer to half that amount. These numbers are currently increasing as the game matures and could increase by a lot more. I, perhaps optimistically, hope to see a day where we stay in the charts without being on sale.

In short, things are very healthy.

At our current burn rate, running off cash reserves, with no further sales of the game, development can easily continue for about five years. That said, current development has a few bottlenecks I would like to hammer out of the pipeline, which will push up costs by a few thousand.

So at the rate I would like to be developing at, it is closer to three years. Still a very long time in the industry… and certainly far more than I need for Maia and the free expansions that I plan to release for it.

In the next month I will finally be securing a dedicated serviced office space and finding a few fulltime employees to work on-site for the company. I see this adding an extra five to twelve thousand pounds overhead a month. Reducing our safe space considerably, but still leaving us in a very solid position with a year of breathing room if sales took a sudden nose dive. With further tax breaks that could be increased up to about a year and a quarter.

To spread the risk of the fixed overheads I plan to better use company’s resources and have other team members working on other projects or games during their down time on Maia. I have no fixed plans on that yet, but from a business sense it would be dangerous not to diversify into a second product while the company is healthy. Of course I’d still be on Maia full time until it’s done, but if they make something good I’d at least be able to take all the credit!

The key to Machine Studios’ survival will lay in this flexibility. In the long term I have no interest in empire building or mega-money. Staying small and agile will allow us to keep punching way above our weight long into the future!