Howdy Pioneers,

Update 17 is now available and there are many additions, changes and fixes. A huge thanks for the great feedback from all of you who checked out the Test Build!

So much has changed that it was time for a new Mercury Fallen trailer.

Updated Graphics

Walls, doors and dirt have been updated to add more detail and better match the rest of the game. There have been additional tweaks to color balance and a reduction in the screen bloom effect.

Craft Queue System

The craft queue system has been overhauled and there is a new option to “Craft If below X amount” when adding items to the craft queue. This will ensure colonists are only crafting new materials if below the specified amount.

Equipment

Colonists, machines and vehicles can now have equipment items installed/equipped to improve them in various ways. The new equipment items can be crafted, but some advanced equipment items can only be found in item chests. New research projects have been added to unlock equipment items that can be crafted at the tech printer. A new guide topic for equipment has been added under the basics section.

New Vehicles

Two new vehicles have been added that allow for travel over water. The Whale Miner and Wasp are improved versions of the D.O.G.E and Beetle Miner with increased base stats.

Discoveries Interface

The discovery interface has been updated and now shows discovery items as a list. Discoveries will no longer show until they are found and new discoveries will be highlighted until clicked. The discovery group headers show the percentage of items found so that you know if you’ve completed a group.

Wall Objects

A new system for place-able wall objects is being introduced. The first new item is the wall light with more to follow in later updates.

Resource Balancing

There are various changes to resource gathering and usage. Item chests have increased resource loot. Mineral chests have a chance to include Rutile and Unrefined Gold. Surface biome ore generation has been tweaked to increase Rutile chance. Less Green Algae is needed in recipes that require it.

Let me know what you think of the new content in the General Discussion Forum.

Found a bug or reporting an issue? Please post in the Bug Reports Forum.

Follow Mercury Fallen development on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mercuryfall
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mercfall/
Website: http://www.mercuryfallen.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/WdndeXx

Check out the all the additions, changes and fixes in the release notes below.

Additions

• New placeable wall lights
• New Utility Equipment research project
• New Vehicle Equipment research project
• New Colonist Gear research project
• New Hover Tech research project
• New UI sound effects
• Added: Equipment slots to objects, colonists and vehicles
• Added: Craftable equipment that can be installed/equipped to improve objects, vehicles and colonists.
• Added: 30+ equipment item recipes
• Added: Equipment guide topic
• Added: Day and time now displayed at top left of planet map
• Added: New input keys for select next colonist and select previous colonist. Defaulted to left and right bracket keys.
• Added: Camera Move Speed setting to adjust camera pan and edge scroll speed.
• Added rubber item and recipe. Rubber is made using lumen bulbus.
• Added Wasp vehicle
• Added Whale Miner vehicle

UI Changes

• Colonist Info section renamed to Details
• Colonist attribute meters now have more detailed tool-tip
• Crafting notifications will now show the item that has been completed.
• Removed separate section for colonist outfit colors and added color buttons to details section.
• Craft queues have been completely overhauled to allow more control and visual feedback.
• Changed: When loading a save game from before alpha 0.17 any craft queue items set to craft infinite have been set to craft if below 10. This can be changed by clicking the icon for an item in the craft queue.
• Discovery groups and items now shown as a list on the left side of the Discovery interface.
• Discoveries will not appear in the list until they’ve been discovered.
• Discovery group headers show percentage complete for that group.
• New discoveries highlighted in yellow until clicked in discovery list.
• Updated look of guide topic buttons
• Vehicle speed now shows in mph or kph if unit type set to metric in settings
• Changed: Vehicle drop down in vehicle assembly station now shows vehicle icons
• Increased font size of HUD inventory list items and headers

More Changes

• Wall model
• Mouse collision detection on walls to accommodate placeable wall objects
• Updated look of room walls and doors
• Updated look of floor dirt and wall textures
• Reduced screen bloom effect
• Minor change to tone mapping to adjust brightness/contrast
• Changed how attributes work for colonists to allow a more generic attribute system that works for all objects. This was done to support installed equipment on objects and vehicles.
• Starting supply chest now contains a random selection of equipment items
• Increased inventory capacity of beetle miner
• Decreased size of beetle miner graphic
• Updated look of Beetle Miner mining effect
• Vehicle mining/scanning actions now consume power
• Vehicle actions will consume power at a steady rate even while charging.
• Vehicle action power consumption has been decreased to compensate for new recharging mechanics. This ensures power recharge rate is above action consumption rate during the day.
• Colonists will now pick up and eat multiple food items in order to reduce hunger below the action threshold. This removes instances of colonists getting stuck in an infinite loop of eating raw potatoes.
• Increased loot quantities from item chests.
• Titanium ore now has a chance to spawn in mineral chests.
• Unrefined gold now has a chance to spawn in mineral chests.
• Sand now has a chance to spawn in organics chests.
• Increased chance of rutile in Scorched biome
• Increased chance of rutile in Tendril Forest biome
• Rutile now available in Desert Scrubland biome
• Random equipment items can now be found in tech chests. This is the only way to get some rare equipment items.
• Colonists now properly reserve target items when picking them up. This resolves issues with colonists attempting to pick up the same items from the same inventory and there isn’t enough for both colonists.

Fixes

• Fixed: Deep Driller bot can level past 10
• Fixed: Incorrect description text for Crimson Bloom discovery
• Fixed: Crimson Bloom research missing Xenobotany as a requirement
• Fixed: Incorrect description text for construct vehicle action
• Fixed: Crop fields allocating additional memory every time it calculates it’s output items
• Fixed: Incorrect selection hit box for Vehicle Assembly Station
• Fixed: Incorrect selection hit box for Robot Assembler
• Fixed: Colonist going to crafting station without enough ingredients to craft item in some instances
• Fixed: Colonist inventory capacity not correctly calculated based on attributes in some instances.
• Fixed: Vehicle action button not enabled after clicking to stop active action.
• Fixed: Vehicle action bar not showing if loading a save game more than once after opening the game.
• Fixed: UI tooltips still showing after related UI element has been destroyed
• Fixed: Colonist miner not always mining the next closest tile in line.
• Fixed: Selecting multiple objects for deconstruction not selecting/removing objects in some instances.
• Fixed: Items the colonist is carrying not being saved/loaded
• Fixed: Vehicle move action not working if player stopped action while movement action was waiting for power recharge.
• Fixed: Vehicle name doesn’t update in vehicle list after changing vehicle name.
• Fixed: Aquarium lights are on before aquarium is built
• Fixed: Game not returning to correct game speed when closing in game menu.
• Fixed: Wasteland surface biome shows copper ingot instead of copper ore as a mineable material.
• Fixed: Gold ore not mineable in polar wasteland biome
• Fixed: Various performance improvements

Howdy Pioneers!

Alpha 0.17 development is in the internal testing stage, before it heads over to the Test Build branch. Aside from all the other new content discussed in the previous developer logs, I wanted to show the new vehicles that are coming as well.

New Vehicles

Two new vehicles are being added that can travel over water. The Wasp and Whale Miner are improved versions of the D.O.G.E and Beetle Miner. Their base stats have been boosted, and with the coming equipment system, can be further increased to speed up mining, scanning, movement speed and more.

Alpha 0.17 is scheduled to come to the Test Build branch next week for those interested in helping test the latest version.

Follow Mercury Fallen development on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mercuryfall
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mercfall/
Website: http://www.mercuryfallen.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/WdndeXx

The next update is progressing very well and I wanted to cover some additional details of what to expect in Alpha 0.17.

Updated Attribute System

As mentioned in a previous developer log, I’ve been working on adding equipment that can be installed/equipped to affect colonists, machines and vehicles. This has taken a bit longer then expected, but the end result will offer a wide range of upgrade possibilities. Originally, equipment was planned for vehicles, but with improvements to some core systems, I’m able to add equipment items that can also affect vehicles, colonists and objects.

Some time ago, I created an attribute system for colonists. Attributes function as a container for a data value and effects. An effect object modifies the attribute data value, such as quirks, ailments and general positive/negative effects. Attributes were later tacked on to vehicles in a less than ideal way. Objects/machinery didn’t use attributes at all.

I have now revamped this system to allow colonists, vehicles and objects to use attributes in a more consistent manner. This means that equipment can target these attributes to allow for boosts to everything, instead of just vehicles.

Equipment Items

Many types of equipment will be made available in Alpha 0.17, with more planned for future updates. Objects, vehicles and colonists will now have equipment slots. Equipment items must be found, or crafted, and then installed. In the case of objects/machines, the equipment will be picked up and installed by a builder after it’s been assigned. Vehicle equipment will require that the vehicle is docked and, once assigned, will be installed by an engineer at the vehicle assembly station.

Equipment selection will only show available equipment for the selected target. For example, a Power Efficiency item can’t be equipped by a human colonist.

New Vehicles

Hover vehicles are being added which allow for traversal over water. These new vehicles will need some additional research and surface materials.

Alpha 0.17 is coming along very well and I hope to release it into the Test Build branch soon. A huge thanks for all the support and feedback!

Follow Mercury Fallen development on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mercuryfall
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mercfall/
Website: http://www.mercuryfallen.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/WdndeXx