Maia 0.44 is out! Here’s a quick video of me giving the new build a go.

Catastrophic earthquakes! Poorly constructed bases are now vulnerable to chain reaction collapses. Digging out large areas will cause structural weaknesses to build in the rock above. Strong earthquakes can cause the rock to give way, destroying anything unlucky enough to be caught underneath. Build rooms and bulkheads to strengthen areas and avert disaster.

Reworked research! Secure new technologies with an improved research system. Collect animal remains and fossils to generate data on the planets ecosystem. Colonists with free time and rest will turn their minds to invention and generate data on their own.

Creepy herbivorous underground dwellers. A new creature to destroy your solar panels and ruin your day!

AI improvements. The AI now has a greater understanding of the world around them. Colonists now track over fifty individual and group needs and will make smarter decisions on what tasks to carry out.

Even more Haikus! With many more topics to explore and a more detailed understanding of their environment, the colonists can now write one million different procedural poems. They can also write useful reports, which is probably more important that poems.

Save games. Detailed additions to the save system now track far more aspects of the simulation. Allowing you to carry forward every aspect of your base

Engine performance upgrades. With some careful profiling and optimisation I have managed to increase performance by up to 15% for low end users. Further upgrades in the game code have levelled CPU usage, which should reduce frame-rate stutter and similar issues.

Medical treatment. Your colonists can now rest up in the medical room to overcome their injuries and ailments. Injuries will are now more obvious and shown through the characters movements.

Game code improvement. A massive rewrite of the core game code has eradicated the stability issues and allowed for more aggressive use of system memory. It also opens up the path towards extensive scripting support for modders.

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We’ve just released the latest alpha build of Maia.

Here’s a few things to look out for:

Brand new IMP AI. The IMPs will now be more useful and plan and execute orders better. They can now run and will manage water barrels and the storage room better.

Core AI rewrite. Lots of small AI bugs sorted. The code for the core AI components has been unified and as a result is faster and less buggy.

Pathfinding and multithreading optimisations: Smoother game-play with a 15% increase in performance on some machines and a noticeable reduction in stuttering.

Casualty reports: When a colonist dies, you’ll be presented with information about their injuries. The data obtained from their loss can be fed back into your research program.

Snap rotations are more responsive and tweakable. Hold control when rotating an object to have it move to the nearest 45 degree angle.

Crew drops have been polished. Expect your new charges to arrive with style.

Beds are now usable from both sides and colonists will sleep for longer to reduce their fatigue.

Graphics glitches on the edge of the map and many other small glitches smoothed out.

Megacephalalgia is better balanced, will come inspect things you leave outside. It will also groom itself and perform other animal like behaviours.

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