Developer Log #17 :: Performance

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.

(more…)

Mercury Fallen development never stops and I’ve been working on adding robot workers and other new features. Robot worker have always been part of the original plan for Mercury Fallen and I’m excited to finally start adding them in.

 

Robot Workers

Robot workers are cute and cuddly mechanized workers that will do your bidding while your human colonists focus on more important tasks. Worker robots function similar to human colonists, but are not able to do all the tasks a human colonist can.

Mercury Fallen - Robot Worker

I’m still working on implementation, but the plan is for robots to consume power at charge stations. They don’t require food or happiness, but make for great miners and builders.

Job Roles

A highly requested feature and something I’ve been working on is the ability to choose multiple professions instead of just one per colonist. Professions are being replaced with Job Roles which function similar to professions, but you can now select multiple job roles such as having a colonist that can do both mining and building.

A new job role also comes in to play with hauling. This allows you to toggle on/off the ability for colonists to haul items to storage that are left on the floor. This may be a task best suited for your new robot workers.

Colonist Colors

Since professions are being replaced and professions previously had unique colonist outfits I’ve switched control over to the player. Manage job roles and set custom colonist colors to manage your colonists how you want.

Mercury Fallen - Custom Colonist Colors

 

 

 

I’ve been developing Mercury Fallen for a little over a year now and while there is a lot more development to come I’m excited to announce that Mercury Fallen has reached Alpha! For those wanting to get in early and join the development of the game it is now available for purchase on Itch.IO.

(more…)

We’re getting closer and closer to the alpha release of the game, but it’s taking a little longer than expected. I’m working to ensure there are solid core features of the game in place before releasing the alpha. There has been a lot of testing and I’m working on some final features and bug fixes.

 

Saving The Game

One feature that has been highly requested from the demo feedback is the ability to save/load your game progress. This is currently being worked on and should be ready for alpha release. Saving progress is certainly important and ensuring that it does so reliably takes some time. The core features of save/load is in place and I’m just working out the bugs.

 

Stasis Capsules

One exciting new feature are the stasis capsules. Your colonists now start in stasis capsules which can be opened by selecting them and clicking open. Additional capsules have been lost and are scattered across the map for you to find while expanding the facility. This provides another means to get colonists.

Stasis Capsules In Mercury Fallen

 

There has been a lot of changes in the game related to resource requirements for construction projects as well as speeding up some of the early mining/construction in general. Stay tuned for more updates.

 

The alpha version is coming along very well and will be available very soon!

 

With the latest release of Mercury Fallen I believe I’ve stabilized many of the core issues players had with the game. Creating a completely new colonist behavior system may have been overkill, but I wanted to ensure that the system would expand well as I continue to add new content and colonist interactions.

I’ve been working on Mercury Fallen for over a year now, and it has only recently reached a point where players can start to enjoy the game. I’m very excited to hear about player experiences and feedback as it provides me with good motivation. There is more content and updates coming for Mercury Fallen as I transition over to an early access alpha release.

(more…)

It took longer than expected, but I’m happy to say that the 1.2 update is now available on Itch.IO! The biggest amount of time was spent on a complete rebuild of the colonist behavior system to fix up existing issues and ensure expand-ability as I continue to add new content and colonist actions.

There are a lot of other great fixes and improvements including storage containers can now be placed anywhere, better profession leveling, better hauling and a lot more. Check out the release notes below for a full list of updates and fixes.

Release Notes

Updates

  • Colonist movement speed now based on athletics attribute
  • Colonist profession level now affects productivity for some professions.
  • Completely new colonist behavior system to allow for better behaviors as well as resolve issues with colonists getting stuck
  • Builders now collect all items required to build an object before going to the object to build it.
  • Builders will only collect items for a build project if all items required to build it are available
  • Colonists moving items to storage will now pickup multiple adjacent items on the ground
  • Changes to base profession productivity speed
  • Profession level progress is now scaled. Higher levels require more experience/work in that profession.
  • Items on the ground can be selected and will now show internal inventory with quantities.
  • Deconstructed structures now drop the materials required to create it
  • Deconstructed storage containers drop their content on the ground
  • Deconstructing action now takes time to do based on structure durability
  • Added deconstruction animation and effects
  • Game starts with four colonists instead of three
  • Added Feedback form to main menu and in game menu
  • Colonists now have hair with random starting color.
  • Darker lighting
  • Minor graphic tweaks to Fog Of War and tile selection
  • Minor UI tweaks
  • Storage containers can now be placed anywhere
  • Removed Storage Room Floor
  • Storage Container inventory size increased

Fixes

  • Colonists will no longer favor moving items to storage over their chosen profession
  • Colonists should no longer get stuck in various situations
  • Profession level progress should update with colonist info window open
  • Colonists now correctly find and eat food items.
  • Global Storage Facility Storage section should now show items stored in storage containers.
  • Colonists profession level properly capped at 10

The new colonist behavior system has been a lot more work then I originally thought it would be. I’m not entirely sure why I thought I could rebuild the entire behavior system in a short amount of time, but I tend to be a bit too critical of my own abilities. The new system is coming along great and I wanted to share a bit more information about it.

(more…)

After receiving quite a bit of great feedback from the alpha demo I’ve been focusing on resolving issues with the colonist behavior system. This is a daunting task as I believe it will require a re-write of the current system, but thankfully most of the core systems in the game are fairly modular so it should be straight forward once I have a solid plan.

(more…)

I’m very excited to announce a new version of the Mercury Fallen Alpha Demo. This update should hopefully resolve a lot of the game breaking bugs as well as add several new features/improvements to the game. Please contact me and let me know if you find any bugs, have some suggestions or just want to say hi.

Download At Itch.IO

(more…)

A lot of work has been poured in to Mercury Fallen and there is a lot more to come, but I’m certainly at a stage where I need feedback on the game to see what people think. I released an alpha demo on itch.io and the feedback so far has been overwhelming.

Alpha Demo

Play The Alpha Demo On Itch.IO

(more…)

Archive Content