6/28/2020 - devlog
Set your reminders now: Asteroid Day 2020 is tomorrow. Keep your eyes out for our post tomorrow for your chance to win a PrUn T-Shirt (there will be multiple winners)! Plus Michi details how you will know how much the governor has contributed to those all too important Population Projects and Fabian has a few more ship building tidbits to share.
Michi (molp)
I finished the upgrade mechanism of population infrastructure projects this week. In last week's devlog I detailed how these projects work and how they can be managed. The screenshots I provided were rough work-in-progress shots which were missing the whole upgrade and upkeep part. At least I managed to get the upgrade mechanism done this week :) Take a look at the video below:
As you can see I am opening the details of the safety station project. The current upgrade costs (which depend on the level of the project) are shown in the Upgrade section. The controls work similar to the CoGC and other contribution controls. Since I am testing the upgrade cost is only one MCG. When all the necessary materials have been contributed the level of the project increases from 7 to 8 and all inhabitants get a notification about the change.
Below the Upgrade section is the section Recent contributions. In the past we just displayed a list of all contributions sorted by time. With the infrastructures I want to try something else. Since it is most likely that the local government (ie the elected governors) will at least handle some of the upgrade and upkeep costs the inhabitants of that planet might be interested if they really do so and how high their contributions are. So the contributions are sorted by contributor and aggregate all contributions of the last 30 days. The contributor with the most contributions is on top of the list.
Fabian (Counterpoint)
Last week's continued central topic for me was ship building. While it's still a "high concept" at this point, I re-organized the update's content based on the priorities we discussed in our design call the week before and specified a few more details. At this point we have a pretty good idea of what we want the feature to encompass initially, so I can start delving into the actual meat, i.e. spreadsheets on our changes to flight performance, the new ship damage model (yes, it'll be a thing), and of course the different ship features depending on which parts are installed on them. Expect more details soon-ish! :)
And a smaller topic I'd like to mention since it's comes up in the Discord quite often: automation. I've been collecting some potential pros and cons of a few different methods of getting around the daily production chores (such as frequently having to refill your queue, especially once you have lots of large bases). We're not 100% decided on which option to implement first yet, but we're planning to get something into the game pretty soon, probably in a post-Populous maintenance update.
Nick
Asteroid Day is almost upon us! Tomorrow June 30, be on the look out for posts on our social media platforms for your chance to win a Prosperous Universe T-Shirt. I've seen the mock-up design and I think you guys will really be pleased with the design. The goal of this campaign is to spread awareness for both Asteroid Day and the game. We would really appreciate your support even if you don't care much about getting a T-shirt. We would like you to share the post across your social media accounts to help us get the word out. Also, there will be multiple winners so be excited!
Aside from preparing for Asteroid Day, I have been discussing video content and how we can grow our YouTube content with something both current players will enjoy as well as potential new players. Look for some new videos around the Populous release to see what we've been up to. I also have been newly invigorated with finding more influencers that can showcase our game and help with expanding our reach. Fingers crossed that some will be interested!
As always: We'd love to hear what you think. Join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!