Now that we have some better ways to manage colonist jobs roles I wanted to start working on expanding the colonist attributes and how they effect game play. What slows me down most is usually how best to show the underlying data to the player. I’ve made some good progress on better colonist status info.

Info Tabs

When selecting a colonist you get the info window which has a break down of all of the info and options for that colonist. The system works very well, but as more content gets added the list of UI elements keeps getting longer and longer. To help resolve that issue I’ve added tabbed sections to the colonist info panel for better organization of information.

A big reason for this was I wanted a better break down of colonist stats information and with the existing layout, that would have meant more scrolling for relevant data.

Stats Section

The new section is called Stats (name may change) and offers a full break down of colonist needs, attributes and a new feature called Quirks. The new stats display shows all the information on what is going on with a given colonist and with this new break down I can add in a lot more options for attribute effects. Each need has any active effects listed under it and hovering over one will show how long that effect will last in game time.

Quirks

Quirks are permanent attribute effects and are added randomly when a new colonist is created. These quirks can have either a positive or negative effect on a given attribute. For example the paranoid quirk decreases the max stress of a colonist. Hovering over the various elements in the stats will display a tool tip with further information.

With this new breakdown of information and new quirks related to stress I’m working on new stress reduction furniture items. Some fun new stuff is in the works including the possible addition of new needs.

Another week and another update for Mercury Fallen. After the big fixes in the last update I wanted to focus back on new content. New in 0.05 is the colonist management screen and the ability to rename colonists.

Colonist Management

A highly requested feature has been the ability to better manage the job roles for the colonists. With the new management screen you can now manage all of your colonists from one place. The new interface can be accessed by pressing the ‘Tab’ which is rebind-able in the settings.

Rename Colonists

Change colonist job names in both the new management screen as well as the existing info panel.

Facility Renaming

Also available in the new management interface is the ability to rename your facility. The facility name will be used for save game names.

There are, of course, some additional minor changes and bug fixes. Take a look at the release notes below for the full list of changes.

Release Notes

Updates

• New management interface for managing colonist job roles. New interface additionally shows population information as well overall population percentage on core attributes. Toggle colonist management with ‘Tab’ key.
• Can now rename your colonists in both the info window and new colonist management screen
• Can now rename your facility in the new management screen.
• Save game names use the facility name
• Resource requirements increased for various buildable objects
• Colonists sleep for longer periods. Sleeping on the floor is longer than sleeping in a bed.
• Minor decrease to how long a colonist can go without sleep
• Additional UI sounds
• Minor UI text changes

Fixes

• Colonist will no longer eat at a table that hasn’t been constructed yet
• Fixed issue with starting stasis capsules facing structures
• Colonists no longer show carried items when performing other actions such as sleeping
• Fixed issue with some wall corners showing the wrong room material
• Power/Water consumption on game HUD now correctly shows if you are over capacity
• Selected object info window will now properly show when clicking an object for a second time after pressing escape to close the window

The 0.04b update for Mercury Fallen largely resolves the reported performance issues that players were having with the game which means I can return my attention to content updates. Better facility/colonist management is now back on the priority list and I’ve made some great progress this week.

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0.04b is a small, but rather important, patch release that addresses the large majority of lag spikes and overall performance in the game. This version should be the final version focusing just on performance related issues, which means I can now focus on adding in great new content.

I’ve completely removed and replaced the path finding system to optimize the path finding behavior. The biggest performance issue in the game so far had been the path finding system because there are various checks that need to happen to ensure a colonist can get from one place to another. The new path finding system runs much more smoothly and greatly reduces lag spikes and hiccups on all map sizes.

0.04b available now in Itch.IO

Release Notes

Updates

• New path finding system to improve overall performance
• Robot starting age adjusted
• Reduced the amount of scattered stasis capsules and damaged robots on new maps
• Colonists should walk a bit more directly to a work position

Fixes

• Additional fixes to resolve issues with colonist getting stuck while hauling items
• Minor UI optimizations to improve performance
• Colonists should no longer get stuck in beds
• Colonists should walk through closed doors less frequently
• Mining/deconstruction tool canceled when clicking a build category
• Mining/deconstruction tool canceled when clicking global storage
• Placing a new object no longer opens the info window for the floor below it
• Colonists stuck in walls should automatically get unstuck.
• Colonist will stop data recovery if computer station loses power or is disabled

After yesterdays release it was reported that there was a game breaking bug with the deconstruction tool. 0.04a has just been released to resolve this issue.

Release Notes

• Fixed critical issue with structure removal/deconstruction causing the game to break

A huge thank you for all the support and great feedback. I’ve managed to fix up various issues as well as further improve performance. This is the first batch of fixes to help improve performance and overall stability in the game. While this is mostly a bug fix release there are a couple of new features and improvements. Alpha 0.04 now available over on Itch.IO.

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There have been a lot of new people playing Mercury Fallen over the last week which has lead to some great feedback. The core concern most users have, at the moment, is performance related issues and crashing.

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