Hello everyone!
The demo of Shipolis has been out for two weeks already, and it got some nice attention. Thanks to all of you for giving it a try, and for sharing very useful feedback too. It helps me a lot to stay motivated, work on new content for the full version, and polish the existing mechanics and UI. Speaking of UI, I am happy to release today a patch for the demo that adds a bunch of quality of life improvements!
These additions are mostly related to the city menu. Let's do a quick review!
You can now directly replace buildings without having to delete them first, this saves a few clicks. But this also means you can now replace docks too, which was not a thing before!
About saving clicks: you can now also directly disable or enable production from the city view without having to select the tile first. Just hover the tile button and use the shortcut displayed.
About saving clicks again: you can skip the building carousel and use the new quick select menu to directly select what you want. The list is sorted by alphabetic order, and it shows the category icons from the previous filtering feature.
I reworked the local productions panel in the city menu too. Now, hovering the icons will overlay some information on the tiles to show where the resource is produced or consumed, whether instantly or in a given amount per cycle. Also, the icon itself will show a new lightning indicator if it is used instantly somewhere. This is particularly useful when creating routes: you don't want to select such resources most of the time because they won't accumulate in the city inventory. Previously, it was not obvious because the icon was only normal or disabled. Now this is clearer!
Also, a new toggleable button has appeared in the game menu to control whether you want to allow or forbid cities to take resources from your ship. They won't steal your precious wood anymore!
Finally, I added ultrawide support. I did my best to check everything was working fine in all menus, but don't hesitate to let me know if you find something weird when playing on ultrawide monitors.
I have been working on new sectors for the full game, and also a new tool to help me balance buildings costs and production values more easily. But this is a story for another time! You can join the Discord server if you are curious about these, I share screenshots and bits of my development progress there much more often!
Anyway, thanks for your support, and I'll see you next time!
-Radiant Sloth
Changelog Demo v0.4m:
Added a button to directly replace buildings instead of first deleting them. This also means the first building of the city, which could not be deleted, can now be replaced this way
Added a toggleable button in the Inventory tab of the game menu to globally allow/forbid cities to take resources from the ship inventory
Added a new quick select menu when building. It lists all names in alphabetic order, and replaces the filter options button
Added a shortcut to enable/disable production directly from the city view when hovering the tiles
Improved the "Local productions" panel in the city menu:
Added a third state for the icons: pink highlight/lightning overlay to show that this resource is consumed by another building and is unlikely to accumulate in the city inventory
Hovering the icons will show production information over the city layout to visualize where the resource is consumed or produced
Added LB/RB support to quickly move between options when building on Controllers/Deck
Added support for ultrawide (21:9) resolutions
Fixed English localization to use "Maximum" instead of "Maximal"
Fixed the Cancel shortcut: when creating a route, will cancel only the route creation instead of closing the whole menu