Thank you all for the amazing support. I mentioned in my previous developer log that my father was in the hospital after having a heart attack. He is now post heart surgery and recovery is going well.

This has understandably slowed down development a bit, but I’m still working on some new features as well.

Job Role Success Chance

I’m currently adding an action success chance to job roles. This will add more challenge and variety as each job role, and it’s relevant actions, will have a chance to succeed or fail. Success chance is based on the jobs level as well as colonist attributes. A colonist with a low success chance for a job will be slower at that job as they will fail more. Each time a colonist fails there is also a small chance for them to critically fail.

Critical failure will result in various bad things happening depending on the action. For example, if a colonist critically fails at construction then the object being constructed is destroyed, losing the materials put into it in the process.

New positive and negative icons will appear above the colonist as they perform actions. This helps to show their work speed as well as how often they succeed or fail.

Colonist success chance will also be affected by stress. Higher stress will decrease their over all success chance.

Support & Follow Mercury Fallen On
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I’ve been listening to your feedback and working on a smaller update to add and improve various things. Thanks for the great feedback and bug reports. Be sure to check out the Update 17 survey if you haven’t already.

Facility Minimap

A highly requested feature has been the addition of a minimap. A new minimap will be added to the lower right side of the screen. Speed and overlay controls have been updated and shifted to accommodate the new minimap interface. The minimap shows your facility, camera view area, colonists and you can click it to quickly move the camera to a location on the map.

Robot Recycler

The robot recycler will finally let you scrap robots you no longer need when you want to get some resources back. The robot info panel will now have a recycle button which will instruct the robot to be recycled. The robot will seek out the first available robot recycler and be recycled.

Saved Games

A new save game interface has been added that allows you to create a new save game, overwrite an existing game and name your saved games. A new auto save feature is being added. By default it will auto save every 10 minutes, but this can be adjusted or turned off in settings.

UI Tweaks

I’ve made minor tweaks to various UI elements, but the most notable are the changes to the color picker and main menu interface. The color picker has a new look and many more colors. The main menu has been updated and now has a Continue button which will load the latest saved game.

Fixes

Thanks to your support I’ve been able to hunt down and fix various bugs that affect colonist behavior and more. Keep those bug reports coming! 🙂

In Development

I’m developing more surface content, but it won’t be ready by Update 18. Some of my future plans include vehicle automation, surface expeditions for colonists, surface construction and more.

Update 18 is well underway and should be available in the Test Build branch on Steam soon. Thank you all for the great support!

Follow Mercury Fallen development on:

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

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

Howdy Pioneers!

This week, I started working on something slightly unexpected. While it is on the to-do list, it wasn’t originally planned for the next content update. But it rose up quickly on the priority list, as it was required in order to do some of the other planned features.

Updated Wall Graphics

When I started developing Mercury Fallen, the art style was a bit more simple. As I’ve added new objects, however, that art style has become more detailed. This has left some of the early art in the game looking out of place. Updating the walls required updating the base model, remapping all the pieces and creating completely new art for each room wall type. This took a few days to do, but I’m very happy with the result.

Wall Objects

The other reason for updating the walls is to allow for objects that can be placed on a wall. The previous wall models used a collision box that encapsulated the entire wall tile. This meant that anything attached to the wall couldn’t be selected, as it was inside the collision boundaries of the wall itself. All the wall models have been updated with a custom collider, so that objects placed on a wall can be easily selected.

An additional challenge was coming up with an intuitive placement system for wall objects. The final result is an object snapping system that allows you to hover the wall object over a wall side, and the object automatically rotates itself to the proper side.

The first new wall object is the wall light. These are a great way to add light without taking up floor space. Additional wall objects are also in development.

Colonist Hunger

In addition to the graphics and decoration updates, I’m also working on various fixes. One big issue is that colonists can get into an endless loop of eating raw potatoes in some instances. To combat this, and generally improve on how colonists eat, colonists will now grab and eat multiple food items at a time to reduce their hunger below the threshold of being hungry enough to eat. This should improve colonists’ overall efficiency, and ensure they aren’t constantly eating.

Thanks for all the great feedback and support!

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

Howdy Pioneers!

A huge thanks for all the support and feedback. There are a lot of things on my to-do list, but I wanted to go over some of the targeted content for the next update and beyond.

Discovery Interface

The discoveries interface is undergoing a bit of a face lift. I added quite a few new discovery items in Alpha 0.15, and I plan to add quite a few more. I’m updating the interface to be a bit cleaner and more functional.

Discovery items will be listed on the left, grouped by category. Categories can be opened and closed to more easily find discovery items you’re looking for. New discoveries will be highlighted in yellow so they are also easier to find. Category headers will show the category’s completion percentage, as discovery items will no longer show until they’ve been found. The category percentage will indicate whether more discoveries are available, or if the category is completed.

Improved Craft Queue

Something that has been on my to-do list for a while is improving the craft queue system. The current system doesn’t offer much control, and its operation is confusing to some new users. The updated craft queue system will allow you to manage item orders.

Item orders can be setup to craft a certain number of items, or only to craft the item if there are fewer than a certain number of the item available. Instead of setting an item to infinite quantity, as in the previous system, you can set how many you want to keep in stock. If there are more items than the desired number you’ve set, the colonists won’t craft the item again until the inventory drops below the set number. Item orders can also be paused and resumed at any time.

The sequence that items are crafted in still uses the round-robin method. Colonists will craft one of the first item, then one of the second item, and so on, until all item orders are complete.

Equipment Items

While working on the vehicle system for planetary exploration, I had planned to add vehicle upgrades. While that plan has not changed, the scope of it has increased to allow for a wider range of upgrade items. This new system will allow the creation and discovery of equipment items that can be installed into vehicles, colonists and machines to affect them in various ways. Machine equipment, for example, can’t be equipped by a colonist.

Vehicle equipment will offer improvements such as faster movement speed, faster mining, the ability to cross water/mountains and more. Equipment for objects will affect power consumption, decor rating, double output for craft stations and more. Colonist equipment will improve various attributes.

I’m still hammering out the details of how this system will integrate into the game. I’ve made some good progress and this will add many more items to craft and find.

Surface Map Points Of Interest

A big item on the to-do list is to add more exploration opportunities to the surface map. Points of interest, or POIs, will be locations on the map that can be further investigated. POIs will need to be scanned by a DOGE and, in various cases, will need to be further investigated by an expedition party of colonists. POI investigations will function as mini stories/events that will offer the player a choice about how to handle them. The results will be positive or negative, depending on the player’s expedition party and choices.

This is a system I’m very excited about, as it will add more story content, as well as more ways to get rare loot and discoveries.

Game Events

Game events will add more flavor with positive and negative colonist and world events that are randomly triggered. This is something I’ve been wanting to add to the game for a long time, but I wanted to avoid completely random events that they player may find frustrating. Events can affect the world, such as crop disease, or affect a specific colonist, such as a stress reduction for a given time.

I’m very excited about the new content in development. Some of the features mentioned above won’t make it into Alpha 0.17, but there is some great content coming. Be sure to let me know what you think of the new content in development.

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

Alpha 0.15 was a big update and, now that I’ve fixed its critical issues, I’ve hit the ground running on more content. Various additions, changes and improvements are on the way. Let’s take a look.

Geothermal Generator

Thermal vents have been added to the underground map and can be tapped for power. The new Geothermal Generator can be placed on top of a thermal vent and will generate 2,000W of power without requiring fuel. There are a limited amount of thermal vents, depending on map size.

Thermal vents will be spawned in existing saved games as well.

UI Changes

A new research progress meter has been added to the HUD next to the power/water meters. Now you’ll see at a glance what is being researched and its progress. This new meter is also a button to open the research tree.

Various tool-tips have been updated to provide more information and clarity. The job tool-tip, for example, will show the work speed bonus provided to each job based on the job level.

Vehicle Drop Off Items Action

The beetle miner will get a new drop off items action. This allows you to drop off materials, to the adjacent facility, from the miner’s inventory without having to dock the vehicle.

AI Improvements

I’ve taken a deep dive into the AI code to improve various behaviors and optimize how colonists determine actions. Builders will now collect and deliver items to multiple objects before performing construction. This greatly improves construction efficiency as it reduces colonists going back and forth collecting construction materials for each object.

Fixes

In addition to adding new content, I’m always working to resolve existing issues. Many fixes are already in place for the next update, such as the missing wheat thorn discovery, vehicles still moving despite being out of power, vehicle camera tracking and more.

Thank you all for the awesome feedback and support!

Be sure to 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

Hope everyone is doing great. I had a vacation a couple weeks ago and hit the ground running upon my return. There has been a lot progress made on the upcoming content update. I’m currently in the final private testing phase and finishing up minor tweaks and features before it hits the Test Build branch for public testing. Here are some of the things you can look forward to.

Planet Exploration

The big-ticket item for the next update is the planet exploration content. In the next update you will be able to scan biomes and mine new resources using remote surface vehicles. Colonists still don’t get a chance to leave the facility quite yet, but that is planned for a future expeditions update. A lot of work was required to get the foundation set up for planet exploration. This is the main reason this update has taken longer than I would have preferred.
Several new resources have been added that can only be gathered on the surface. Additionally, all alien flora/fauna must now be discovered on the surface, and researched, before they can be grown and harvested. New and existing resources can be mined on the surface. This will resolve issues with running out of resources for power or construction as resources are not depleted on the surface.

Discoveries & Research

Many new discoveries and research projects have also been added. The research project tree has been updated so that some research now requires additional surface discoveries.

Misc

Several new resources and recipes are available for advanced crafting. A couple of ambient music tracks have also been added.

I’m in the home stretch and Alpha 0.15 should be available in the Test Build branch soon. Thanks for your support and patience.

A lot of work has gone into the planetary exploration update and I wanted to cover some of the expected new content.

Vehicles

Since the last developer log, vehicle construction has undergone some design changes. Vehicle construction now uses predefined vehicle types instead of a modular vehicle template system. This felt like a better fit for the game and more consistent with existing systems. I do still plan to have separate vehicle tiers and the ability to find and equip upgrades to vehicles, but these features won’t make it into the next update.

Two vehicle types will be available in the next update for exploration and mining. D.O.G.E., Distant Operated Geo Explorer, and the Miner, proper name pending. The D.O.G.E. is used to explore the map and scan various biomes to uncover resources and make discoveries. Once resources are known for a given biome they can be ripped from the ground using the Miner.

Biome Scanning

After uncovering new biomes, they will need to be scanned. Once scanned by D.O.G.E. you’ll discover information about that biome including potential flora, fauna and what resources can be mined.

Biome Resources

Each biome will offer different ore resources and potential discoveries.  Mined resource amounts will also depend on a given tiles elevation and are shown in percent. When a Miner works a given tile it has a random chance of getting one of the shown resources each time it mines up an item. Once a miner vehicle inventory is full it can be sent back to dock with the facility to drop of what it gathered.

Discoveries

A lot of additional discoveries are being added. Existing alien flora and fauna will now have to be discovered on the surface before they can be grown in the facility. Each biome is also a discovery item to provide additional information about the various alien biomes.

Expeditions

Expeditions that include the colonists is being pushed back and won’t be part of the next update. There is a more work I want to put into the POI system to make colonist expeditions more interesting and varied. The next update is just the start of more surface content to come and will serve as a solid foundation for further expansion.

Vacation

On a more personal note I’ll be on vacation next week to Washington D.C. to explore the various museums. This is the first real vacation I’ve had in over 10 years so I figured I was past due. I’ll still be checking in on things here and via email/twitter/discord, but I won’t be able to do any development until I return.

As always be sure to follow along with the latest screenshots and info:

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

As many of you know, my current focus is to build the foundations for planetary exploration. In the last two developer logs, I covered how the planet surface is generated and a bit about vehicles and resource discovery. There has been a lot more progress on vehicle construction which I will cover here.

Vehicles

Surface exploration will require vehicles that need to be researched and constructed. Vehicle templates are created using the vehicle designer.

There are different vehicle types that determine various base attributes of a vehicle, such as its speed, cargo space, battery capacity, the number of passengers it can accomodate, and more. Additionally, you can apply various equipment and upgrades which will further increase the capabilities of your vehicle.
Different types of vehicles, equipment and upgrades will need to be discovered/researched before they can be used. Different parts will determine the build/upgrade cost of your vehicle.

Engine
The engine affects the vehicle speed and power drain.

Sensors
Sensors affect both analyzing speed as well as visibility range. Visibility range is the number of tiles around the vehicle that will be uncovered when the vehicle is moving.

Exterior
While I plan for various uses for exterior equipment, the initial release will allow for mining lasers to be attached so that ore resources can be mined on the surface.

Upgrade Modules
Each vehicle type has a fixed amount of upgrade slots. Many different types of upgrades will become available to increase various vehicle attributes.

Once a vehicle template is created, it’s available for construction in the vehicle assembler, which is built in the assembly room. After the vehicle has been constructed it’s visible in the vehicle bay. Vehicle templates can later be updated in the vehicle designer allowing for existing vehicles to be upgraded based on its template.

Vehicle Bay & Embarking

You can access the vehicle bay by clicking your primary facility on the planet map. You can then embark a vehicle from your list of created vehicles. This involves choosing the colonists that will ride in the vehicle as well as any items you want to take with you. Once the vehicle is ready, you can select it and choose where it will go. Vehicles will uncover parts of the map as they move around.

While some details are still in development, and may change, the current plan is that vehicle distance will be limited by food and power. Each vehicle has solar panels, which allow the vehicle to recharge should it run out of battery power. When transporting human colonists, you will need to bring food, which will denote how much time, in days, the vehicle can be out before colonists will start dying of starvation. I do plan to allow for robots as passengers, which will not require food. Robots, however, are not able to do all the things a human colonist can.

Exploring The Surface

The initial release of surface exploration is expected to include uncovering your surroundings, analyzing and harvesting resources. Analyzing resources will take time and better sensors/upgrades added to your vehicle will decrease this time.

While there is still a lot of work left to do, development is coming along very well. I can’t provide a definite timeline, but I will say that there are at least several more weeks’ worth of development work ahead to build up the content for the next update. I greatly appreciate your patience, as this update will take longer than the previous ones that I’ve released. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on vehicles and planetary exploration? I look forward to hearing your feedback.