Developer Log #62

Howdy Folks!

The Spatial Awareness update added functional rooms and new stress affects. The, in development, Stressed Out update will continue to focus on colonists with a re-work of the quirks system as well as new reactions to high and low stress.

Quirks

The quirk system was originally designed as an extension to colonist attributes and attribute effects. Attribute effects are applied to attributes and modify the attribute values such as hunger rate, max health, max athletics etc..

Quirks were a special type of attribute effect. While this worked, it meant that quirks were limited to only having an affect on attributes and needs. I wanted the ability to have some more interesting and varied quirks, which meant a bit of a re-work to how quirks were defined.

The new quirk system will be a bit more robust and allow for a much wider array of quirk types. While the existing quirks will remain, new quirks are being added that will provide more individuality to colonists.

Examples of some of the possible new quirks:

• Loved/Hated Food – Stress reduction/increase from eating specific food item
• Loved/Hated Job – Stress reduction/increase from performing specific job
• Charming – Chance to add stress reduction to nearby colonists
• Annoying – Chance to add stress increase to nearby colonists
• Light Sleeper – Stress increase from sleeping in a room with other colonists
• Aquaphobia – Won’t cross water tiles

There are more planned quirks and be sure to let me know if you have some fun ideas for new quirks.

The colonist management screen is also getting an update to make quirks more visible.

Stress

While colonists have been able to gain and reduce stress for a while now, there hasn’t been much penalty or reward from it. I’m reviewing the stress system over all to better balance how stress is generated and add reactions to high and low stress.

This means colonists will have negative reactions to high stress as well as some benefits for keeping stress low.

Some new objects in development that will help colonists reduce stress.

While the primary focus is on quirks and stress, there are some various other tweaks, fixes and changes in development. One useful new feature is an eye dropper tool. Holding shift and clicking on placed/constructed objects will allow you to easily place down more of that object for construction.

I’m currently planning to release a testing version of the update to the Experimental Branch on Steam later this week. I look forward to your feedback on the new quirks and stress content.

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