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Author Topic: Outer Colony  (Read 64443 times)

Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #60 on: August 30, 2017, 09:37:23 am »


I think that is a bit...excessive considering the original equipment manufacturing station was quality 65. So far in my new game I've gotten data terminals up by hour 17 and so far no one has used them.

I had several of those artifact machines. Also chemistry toys with 350 learning value (or whatever it's called).^^

I had the terminal problem as well. No idea what causes it. Maybe there is just nobody able to create media in your group.
If I understood that correctly, a person does need creativity and high intellect to create media. Could be wrong with that though.
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ollobrains

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #61 on: August 30, 2017, 07:22:22 pm »

so fleshing out of the creativity and media skill trees and associated content might be ago
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se5a

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #62 on: September 03, 2017, 08:42:32 pm »

This looks pretty interesting, keen for a Linux build when you get around to that. going to see if the current demo will run in wine...

Unsuccessful. it crashed on installj4
« Last Edit: September 03, 2017, 09:37:01 pm by se5a »
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VoyagerGames

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #63 on: September 04, 2017, 09:41:46 am »

Alright! This will be the September update for Outer Colony, since my work situation is about to get a bit hectic for the next few weeks. Development is chugging away in the evenings, and I think I'm settling into a bit of a rhythm with continued work on the project. I'm going to try to stick to the plan of posting at least one update here each month, so with any kind of luck, the next release and update should come by Halloween! I might even try to add something fun to Outer Colony for the holiday, so keep your eyes peeled for something neat in the next build.

Of course, you can check in on our forums (found here: http://forums.outercolony.com/index.php) for more frequent and specific discussion.

New Release (0.5.51):

With that said, version 0.5.51 was published last night, and it contains a bunch of fixes for issues identified mostly by users here, including TheScout, etgfrog, and Asgarus, plus some semi-generalized improvements from the feedback of Madman and ollobrains. Huge thanks to you guys for contributing to this release! The time and effort you all donate to helping me improve the game is what makes this release and future ones possible.

You can see the release notes for 0.5.51, which includes a few critical bug fixes (the butchery issue found by TheScout and the gravity anomaly found by Asgarus are probably the two biggest):


The biggest outstanding bug right now is an issue with human burial that I haven't quite worked through, but it should be fixed in the next release.

What's coming next?
With the decision made to overhaul our graphics style, I'm going to continue work on this process. The basics of an isometric renderer are in place, and much of the programming effort in the next month will focus on improving its efficiency and functionality.

I'm also going to need to start producing the isometric pixel art, which is going to be a 1+ year effort. With paychecks starting to hit my bank account, it now makes sense to identify a contractor to add to our team! I'm going to try to reach out to the people involved in Stonesense, since I'm crazy about the way those graphics look, and I'd love it if OC could take on a similar look and feel. I know Stonesense is a labor of love, and I'm not sure if any of those artists would be willing to work for money, but I'd be thrilled if I could recruit one of them to our team and to start churning out the thousands of sprites we're going to need.

My goal is to have a new team member added by the end of October, and maybe we'll even have a few isometric sprites to show by then!

Finally, I just want to highlight a couple of awesome colonies that people have built over the course of the last month. I'm really impressed by how well many of you guys have come to understand the game, and the emails / DMs you've sent have demonstrated a level of insight into the game's mechanics and greater purpose that I've found immensely encouraging. To see you guys playing the game and having some fun, even with Outer Colony in its bug-riddled, primordial state - it gives me some hope that we're on the right path, and that with another couple years of work, maybe it can turn into something really fun!

First, check out Tchey's colony, described on his website, here.





Excellent work, man. I'm always stoked to see people figuring out the game so readily!

Forum user Asgarus has managed to build a monster colony! He's been diving into some of the deeper gameplay mechanics, and much of the next release will be addressing his feature requests and bug reports. Check this colony out:





Excluding colonies built by members of the team, I think this might be the most highly populated colony ever constructed by an end user. Way to raise the bar, man! I'm impressed!

If anyone else has built any solid colonies lately or done anything interesting in-game, feel free to share here or on the OC forums, of course.

Addressing Questions
Finally, I'll address a few replies in this thread since my last one.

Unsuccessful. it crashed on installj4
Total bummer, man! I had hoped it'd run normally in Wine, but I see that we've got no such luck.

We do have two Linux users right now, including Tchey, but it requires a bit of Java expertise to run at the moment. As you've seen, there is no installer / auto-updater for Linux presently. You can download the executable .jar for Outer Colony at this link:

http://outercolony.com/beta/OuterColony.jar

Then make sure you've installed Java 1.8, at least update 101 and making sure you have a 64 bit version. Then from the command line, you can run Outer Colony with the following, once you've changed directories to the one containing OuterColony.jar:

java -jar OuterColony.jar -Xmx8192M

It's a bit of a pain, but if you'd like to try it, that should work.

Quote
This sounds silly but this game's name isn't doing it any favors given how many "colony" games there are.
It's funny you bring this up, Neonivek! Many years ago, the project was actually called, "The Far Reaches", but after tons of thought and discussion, we renamed it to Outer Colony. You'll still see some remnants of TFR if you look back into the project's ancient history, but we changed the name specifically because people seemed not to be able to tell anything about the game from its title. "Outer Colony" is certainly a bit more generic, but it's also more descriptive than "The Far Reaches".

We've found more success in getting people to initially click on things bearing the "Outer Colony" title, so we've stuck with it. Ironically, it seems like 80% of the battle in being a successful game developer is getting people to initially click on your thing. As an industry, it's probably driven more by hype and marketing than actual content. I suppose that's a whole separate conversation, but we're sorta' in a groove with the project's current name, so it would be rather hard to change again at this point.

Quote
I think that is a bit...excessive considering the original equipment manufacturing station was quality 65. So far in my new game I've gotten data terminals up by hour 17 and so far no one has used them.

On another note...why isn't nickel or cobalt a ferros metal when they both are ferromagnetic?
Etgfrog is right again - exceptional item calculations are a bit out of whack in the quality of goods they're yielding. They're going to have to be adjusted to yield more sane results, since right now, certain types of exceptional items have effects that are way too powerful. A single exceptional chemistry set can turn all the children in your colony into DaVincis. It's like a monolith from 2001, A Space Odyssey.

Forum user Torvus was the first to discover this on a world of his called Erkloro 8. He chronicled this journey here, on the forums.

You're also right that Nickel and Cobalt are ferromagnetic, but my classification of ferrous metals here are limited to those that contain iron. Elemental iron, steel, and iron-bearing alloys should be ferromagnetic. Actually, I can see now that I've bungled even my own definition, as iron-bearing SMAs are classified as non-ferrous. Regrettably, my expertise in material science is highly limited, and I may have to revisit all this at some point.

Quote
so fleshing out of the creativity and media skill trees and associated content might be ago
Ollobrains is actually right here. I never thought about this, but if all your colonists are below a certain intellectual and creativity threshold, no one will produce media. I might have to do something about this, or I might have to make it so that the default stats for starting colonists includes one who's smart and creative enough to function in this capacity.

Huge thanks to everyone once again for all your testing and feedback!
« Last Edit: September 04, 2017, 09:45:37 am by VoyagerGames »
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Madman198237

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #64 on: September 04, 2017, 09:48:28 am »

It's cool to see progress being made. I actually need to go ahead and get the game again, I'm working from a laptop for the foreseeable future... Maybe I can find some fun bugs for you to squash.

Hopefully it can scratch the space itch, since Aurora 4X won't work on laptop-sized screens (Resolution's too small...).


Anyway, again: Great job, cool seeing progress, and yes oh yes please to regular/almost regular progress reports!


EDIT:
Getting a weird install error. The installer is telling me that it can't create java.exe for some reason. It worked once, but then it tried to update from .5.5.0 or whatever to .5.5.1, and now it always hits the "can't create java.exe, would you like me to try again?" error.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2017, 10:38:54 am by Madman198237 »
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Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #65 on: September 04, 2017, 11:59:41 am »

Yay, my colony :)

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ollobrains

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #66 on: September 04, 2017, 06:03:20 pm »

ill get the update and get playing today, good effort and it sounds like youre on the right track, the changes look solid, and i see from many gaming / solo or small team dev indie projects that consistant progress over time (allowing for real life and not getting in to deep either) can be a good way to keep a good project progressing over the long term.

The media / character skill development idea just seemed like a good fit, and a good way to flesh it down, ill play this update from scratch for a while and give some feedback in coming weeks
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Paxiecrunchle

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #67 on: September 04, 2017, 06:27:57 pm »

This seems fun, if only I had had more time for stuff like this.

The Scout

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #68 on: September 05, 2017, 06:08:37 am »

I didn't realize floors and the like were made in batches, so I ended up making several thousand. Having it say how many a 'unit' produces would be nice,
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etgfrog

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #69 on: September 05, 2017, 07:22:51 am »

I didn't realize floors and the like were made in batches, so I ended up making several thousand. Having it say how many a 'unit' produces would be nice,
You can always trade them away.
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Zangi

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #70 on: September 05, 2017, 12:54:15 pm »

This game needs a better worker shift management UI.  As in one where I don't have to wait around hoping I'd ambush the right colonist that looks vaguely similar to every other colonist.  And if there is a better way, please enlighten.

(Skipped Tutorial.)
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Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #71 on: September 05, 2017, 05:08:56 pm »

This game needs a better worker shift management UI.  As in one where I don't have to wait around hoping I'd ambush the right colonist that looks vaguely similar to every other colonist.  And if there is a better way, please enlighten.

(Skipped Tutorial.)

Yeah, a proper overview for colonists is definitely missing.
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Zangi

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #72 on: September 06, 2017, 02:30:11 am »

My peasants stopped doing things after I set up a bureaucracy to get into the autostuff.  (Still only the 8 original colonists working.)  Also set-up an agricultural zone and office space with table/chair.
EDIT: Apparently they got stuck on some incompleteable jobs?


And... it also kinda annoys me that even trying for underground city, there are places I cannot set-up light structures.  'Cannot build on uneven ground.'  ... I should look into using the freeform construction thing shouldn't I?  Whole thing is a lot to read up on.
« Last Edit: September 06, 2017, 03:08:29 am by Zangi »
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ollobrains

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #73 on: September 06, 2017, 03:09:23 am »

do you need to dig down a bit deeper to enable lighting at those underground levels ?
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( Tchey )

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #74 on: September 06, 2017, 07:49:06 am »

I'm quoted, i'm famous now, yeah !

Ahm...

Is it possible for a roof to collapse, if the room is too big ? Same question about caves ?
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