Developer Log #59

Howdy Folks!

Hope you all are staying safe out there. I’m hunkered down inside working on update 26. I had hoped to shift it over to the experimental branch by now, but there is a bit to do yet. Here are some of the things being worked on.

Doors

A minor change to doors will allow them to be locked and unlocked. This will allow you to keep colonists from exploring or lock them in a room to see what happens.

Sleeping Mats

Sleeping bags or a sleep spots have been highly requested and I couldn’t agree more. Sleeping mats don’t require any research and allow your colonists to sleep on something slightly better than dirt before you’re able to construct bedrooms.

Points Of Interest

As mentioned in the previous developer log, POI locations on the surface map are getting a big overhaul. A lot more POI types are being added to help provide more variety as well as more specific rewards.

Instead of the dense population of repeatable POI locations, there will be less over all POI locations, but with far more unique locations to visit.

Additional POI location icons are being added as well. The above image shows some of the new icons in progress, but does not accurately depict POI density as not all of the new POIs have been added yet.

Surface Mining

New surface mining mechanics are still under development and coming along nicely. The new system, as covered in the previous developer log, will generate mining locations on the map. This means no more infinite mining on any tile. The new mining sites will be finite deposits that have different depths: Surface, Sub-Surface and Deep.

Expedition parties will now have the ability mine, but can only mine resources at surface depth.

Mining vehicles will be able to mine up to sub-surface depth and in order to mine deep deposits a mining platform will have to be constructed.

Surface mining will also see some automation mechanics added. The mine action now requires that a target mining site be selected. After selection a mining vehicle or expedition party will mine the resource and take resources back to the closest resource depot. They will continue to do this until they’ve gathered all the resources they can.

The resource depot shown above (artwork not final) is a new surface construction that miners or resource transports can use to drop off and pickup materials. The resource depot acts as an extension to the shipping/receiving inventories available in the facility.

There are still a lot of loose ends I need to tie up before I can push Update 26 to the experimental branch for feedback. I’ll have more information as development progresses.

Thanks for all of the great feedback on the game. Certainly stop by the Mercury Fallen Discord and leave some feedback/suggestions.

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