Happy... Tuesday? Sorry, I meant to publish this on Sunday, but life got in the way. =)
The 0.9.3.5 update is now live! And it introduces a raft of new research projects which will unlock new upgraded versions of the game's buildings. I've also refactored how the game handles narrative events, and fleshed out the writing in the game's objectives and dialogues.
Also of note: certain research projects now have prerequisites -- things which you must do before the research is possible. Domesticating alien creatures, for instance, will require that you actually have a lab on the world that creature is native to.
Also, also: It is now possible to reroute trade ships to new planets, after you've constructed and assigned them. Hopefully this make building an extensive trade network 95% less cumbersome.
And, of course, a bunch of smaller usability tweaks and bug fixes have gone in:
- Inventory for the current planet fits the screen better now.
- Ship construction menu tells you what resources are missing, if any are missing.
- Research menu UI is improved (though there's still plenty more work to do on UI...)
- Health and Happiness are now hard limits on a planets growth, instead of tedious modifiers to how _quickly_ the planet grows.
- ...but happiness producing buildings can be upgraded now, so you have that going for you. =)
- Fixed some mistakes in the dialogues where the characters don't accurately describe your next objective.
- Fixed a bug where new settlers on a world would sometimes refuse to work.
- Colonization menus now show how much is packed on this ship, so you have an idea of what still needs to be done before it launches.
- Fixed some stray exceptions in the UI for resource-producing buildings.
- Fixed the mission objectives pop-up to not appear over the buttons for placing buildings.
Building upgrades are purely functional at the moment, so the upgraded version will still have the physical appearance of an un-upgraded one, at least until you mouse over it at which point the tooltip will explain that the building is upgraded. That's not great, I know! So my mission now is to create new building art and improve the old models, as well. More on that in the next update!