💎 PREMIUM: App//allnews - High Quality

(This is a post about the sequel to Evolved, known as Phoenix : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1038080 )

So, let’s start with the bad news and then unpack it a bit. Managing expectations is one of the most important things you can do with games; and I know I said I’d be doing regular posts, but I’m always worried about annoying people with constant popups. And then people ask me what’s going on, so... here we go!

As I’m beginning to plan the last few months before Early Acess release, I’m quite sure these things won’t be done!

• Replacement networking won’t be done.

  • Old networking will still be in place, and will slowly be replaced piecemeal with Steam Lobbies and Networking

• Full visual revamp of the UI won’t be done

  • The behaviour of the UI has continued to iterate and there’s plenty of new QoL features, but the visual atlas hasn’t changed out.

• Progression will be hard-clamped at OET charge.

  • I’m limiting the scope so I can ensure I’m focussing improvements and polish where they’re needed.

• No remappable controls

  • Yet!

• Quit To Title isn’t complete yet

  • I said implementing this was significantly harder than you might think and I was sadly right.

• Dynamic downloading of handbook entries

• Dynamic loading of high resolution world textures using Texture Arrays.

  • I’ve prototyped this, and it’s great, but hasn’t happened yet. It’ll mean dead-easy swapping out of individual textures for modders, as well as improved loading speeds!

• Tesselated FarField Rendering

  • The system is about 90% working, but doesn’t visually hit the target I want. The goal is that everyone will have a 1km draw distance!

A long, long time ago, I decided -  foolishly - to ship the game into Early Access on the 10th anniversary of Evolved’s launch onto Steam. That date’s just a few short months away now, and I’m not going to many anywhere near as much as I’d hoped!

So, my focus from now until Early Access release is just to polish the New Player experience, ensure that the onboarding process, initial base setup, tutorial, internal base readouts and everything associated with that is as good as I can get it. 

Performance has also been a constant on-going battle. Part of the goal with Phoenix is to have a title I can continue to work on and expand for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years; to that end, the rendering and visual target is very high - for 2025. 

Your computer you have today is the slowest one you’ll ever have! I’m allowing users to switch off most of the high-end visuals, but how that looks isn’t something I’ll be spending a lot of time on. I want thick, swirling fog, choking, oppressive underground dirt and dust, sharp, alien sunrays through massive towers of resin. 

Much as I’d love to be able to support both volumetric and non-volumetric lighting, it should be made clear (once again) that I am the only developer on this game. Getting endlessly compared to the huge teams and powerhouses that are Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program is very flattering, but it’s literally just me and my cat here, and quite frankly she’s not as much help as she could be.

So, if the game doesn’t run as well as you’d like, turn the detail down, and come back when you’ve gotten your next video card!

Balance is another tricky one to get right. I’ve been aiming to have the game much much too hard and too slow at launch, as opposed to making everything too easy. One thing I’ve found over the many years is that nerfing something - no matter how justified or necessary - just gets people really complaining. For those of you who have been around long enough, you’ll remember that Evolved launched with Scarce/Scarce as the only difficulty!

Making the game easier and more granular in progression as time goes on is something I’ll be doing with the feedback from testers and EarlyAccessnauts™.

(Is it worth pointing out that the many Early Access posts I see, slamming the game for being unfinished, ending up with “I’ll come back to this review when the game is patched!” - and never coming back - aren’t useful for anyone?)

I am hoping that the Early Access launch goes smoothly - Phoenix is built on the last patch released for Evolved, and as such has hundreds (or thousands!) of hours of gameplay at launch. The initial plan is for a 12 month dev cycle in Early Access, and focussing entirely on the New Player through to Hive Mind eradication. 

I will probably not allow players to progress past here during Early Access; everything past then won’t have been particularly looked at, or balanced.

Once we’re out of Early Access, I’ll be doing 1-2 month runs at each successive Chapter, working with Patreons and brave Bleeding Edge players to implement, balance and polish that section of the game before releasing it.

I’ll try and do more of these posts; just to repeat myself from earlier, I’m a 1-man dev, so I need to balance social media posts, development, promotional stuff, discord, forums and sometimes ‘tidying up my office’. I’m swamped!

As ever, the best place (by far!) to keep up to date and to chat with me directly is Discord:

https://discord.gg/wB2UWXa

Come say hi.

Absolute TL;DR - Phoenix will launch in a far, far FAR better state than Evolved did, but it’s just the beginning on a very long and very slow road.

• Mynocks can no longer spawn below +32m when on Sky Islands
  
• Freighters now reject items for assigned station needs that they can't serve
  
• some smaller Handbook updates and additions to entries.
  
• Fix to Falcor lockup when returning with a null item.
  
• Fixed exploit with stacked Grommets
  
• Updated WFE clearlist
  
• Fix for turret lasers getting stuck on
  
• Fixed 'Mobs killed' spam
  
• SpiderBot should no longer fly away
  
• Fixed link to correct DLC page for TAP
  
• Ensures Patreons get research access to TAP DLC scan
  
• Carts with no accessible destination that have an assigned station now properly set their error state
  
• Fixes NRE unity thread crash with ForcedInduction on modded smelters
  
• Fixes to All-Ore mode to make it a bit more playable
  
• serveroverrides.ini now has the autopause and listpublic in the example file
• MissionManager has the superbuild mission hooked up to translation support some new Chevron handbook files
  
• updated the master_language_data.xml to have more stuff ...
  
• Freight handbook update
  
• Corrects icon display of freight stations in the system monitor
  
• Several Freight bug fixes
  
• Minor freight UI polish and fix for carts not entering reserved station
  
• Turn off FreightCartStation mbWaitForFullLoad...
  
• Fix to Carts Idling on world restart
  
• CCW and CW fixed/switched on recipe descriptions for conveyor curves
  
• Canvas now says it made form paste and not Rought hew rock
  
• Fix to make "Collect Research" button appear if research finished while the machine window is open (no more having to close and re open it)
  
• Calling player.TeleportTo on host no longer causes the host to teleport regardless of the player object
  
• Fix for hosted player hotbar getting items added to it when client player picks up new items.
  
• Fix for hosted player hotbar getting items added to it when client player picks up new items.
  
• prevent the creation of orphaned Unity objects of drop items when the segment drop item queue is full (dropped cubes stuck floating in air problem).
  
• Adv Teleporter now tells clients about removed machine deleted destinations so they get taken off the list.
  
• Fix belt re-facing distortion against a different face (first belt against Y second against wall)
  
• Prevent a workshop mod with a bad mod.config id and/or name from blowing up the mod panel script.
  
• Fixed basic ore smelter handook
  
• Barkeeper now knows about its placement blocks WFEMK2 and MK3 now have the correct amount of power usage in the handbook. All changes requested by Madvandal
  
• Fixed GPS unlock
  
• LPTs can now fire through Energy Grommets
  
• Fixed NRE in FreightCartMob caused by HopperInterface OfferItem being dropped on update
  
• Fixed error flashing on FreightCartStation to correctly error only when there are less than 3 nodes in the network... again...
  
• Lidgren changes for IPV6
  
• changed decriptions for the Ore carts as the capacity is different from the Handbook. (may have missed one or two) Chevron renaming if different files
  
• Madvandal fixes to conveyors

• Slightly reworked Ore spawns on Sky Island to be wider and more reliable:
  
• 450-530 - Nickel
  
• 380-450 - Gold
  
• 280-350 Titanium
  
• 220-270 Crystal
  
• Previously Nickel was very-likely to overwrite Gold - they now exist in separate band.
  
• Altered T4 spawn density

• T4 ores now spawn separately to T2, meaning it's possible to progress
  
• T2 ores have improved spawns

• Added Adventurer's Garb skin for TAP owners
  
• Added ADAPTable skin for ADAPTR owners

• SpiderBot's knees should no longer go wrong.
  
• If SpiderBot's knees DO go wrong, they should fix themselves in short order

• You should now be able to enable multiple new mods and not worry about the security confirmation dialogue failing. (thank you MV)
  
• Mods now support Tags - just add <Tags>Cats,Dogs,Mass Hysteria</Tags/ to your Mod.Config (Thanks PC)
  
• Added IPV6 Support (Thanks to TechPizza and Zebra). This does not support IPV6-only setups - the server can still only transmit and receive on IPV4. NAT should take care of this. The other situation that will not work is an dual-stack IP server where the client on a LAN attempts to connect via IPV6. Utilising Name Resolution on LANs should work, as it will default to IPV4. Internet IPV6 resolution where NAT is available should work fine. IPV6 VPNs won't work, but they wouldn't have worked before either.

• 'Fix' for incorrect Conveyor ReadyForConvey flag for network clients
  
• Fix for corner Conveyors for network clients.
  
• Fixed MFP preview not correctly removing hurtboxes/lights under all circumstances.
  
• Mass Storage now correctly culls inside Rooms
  
• Mobs should now correctly cull on raycast blocks
  
• Fixed Main menu text issues, added ADAPTR link
  
• Added catch for Recipes with CraftData with 0 entries needed
  
• Fixed Patreon-URL when user attempts to build Adventures Mode block
  
• Minecarts are now recoloured to match Freight carts, with the colour order being Green,Blue, Purple, Orange
  
• Icons have been recoloured to match
  Thank you Mad Vandal for the Corner conveyyor fixes.
  
• Make carry objects added through AddItem on basic/regular curved belts start at 0.5 offset and facing the input direction.
  
• Slows carry object turn speed on basic belts to 0.8 so animation turn speed meshes better with the forward speed and more real.
  
• Added curved and sloped belts to those subject to cold/toxic penalties.
  
• Working MFPs now have text to show you that they've completed their work. (SP only)
  
• Fixed issue where network clients would not use up power when teleporting via Advanced Teleporters.
  
• MK4 guns now use ExceptionalOrganicLens, not PerfectFacetedEye
  
• Organic PSB now uses Lense, not Eye.
  
• Potential fix for bad timing when teleporting into and out of and between Rooms.
  
• CPH tutorial should no longer be around for Network Clients.
  
• Fixed Airlock rendering, easily turning this game into GOTY.
  
• Developed final Bootstrap screen :-(
  
• Added Adventures Pack signs to Main menu
  
• Fixed issue with ConstructoBot permissions
  
• GPS no longer shows coords when CPH is offline.
  
• GPS works for Patreons.
  
• The Adventures Pack is no longer referred to as 'Forthcoming'
  
• MFP should no longer disallow building under odd circumstances when network clients
  
• Freight Filter Window should now correctly work as a network client
  
• ARTHER disconnect should no longer transmit a NULL Station segment under some circumstances
  
• ARTHER will now automatically disconnect from Docks when he's more than 96 metres away, for network clients. This avoids a situation where ARTHER 'dangles' as can no longer see the segment he's in!
  
• Freight Carts permission is now correct for all owners
  
• Rail Gun permission is now correct for all owners
  
• Robots permission is now correct for all owners