More information about the next steps of development below today's changes. But let's start with what's changed!
Today's changes
- Reduced the default automation unlock requirement by 20% (500 > 400 for jobs, 10 > 8 for constructions/explorations). Actions with specific requirements have been tuned accordingly. New game plus scaling remains the same percentage, but the result is 20% lower by effect (subject to rounding)
- Added two options that allow for accumulations of offline time when a menu is open, or the reincarnation screen is shown. Similar to when the game is closed, this causes the game to fast-forward to catch up on time that would have progressed if it was running normally, up until a paused state is reached. Aiming to support less attentive playstyles, if desired
- Local saves are now also stored in , as a third save-loss prevention layer. For the very rare edge cases where Steam Cloud could fail, and a local disk-cleaner could remove the local file from the temp folder at the same time
- Added an auto-backup feature with a frequency setting, allowing you to configure when the game should automatically create a save backup to . The setting defaults to new completions of current content, but can be configured up to every reincarnation. Only works for milestones after downloading this update, because this data wasn't stored before
- Added a chapter completions tab to the generation history, to provide more in-depth information about how your playthrough compares (either to your own new game plus runs, or to flex to friends)
- Automations that have their requirements reduced by completing another action, now mention which action that is. If that action has been encountered at least once
- When automations are unlocked because their alternative was completed, even if it wasn't completed during the generation itself, it now explains that in the tooltip. To clarify a fairly common confusion
- Fixed a bug that could cause the "prevent auto-refill" priority setting to prevent refilling during combat-stalling when something manual was available, resulting in unintended pauses
- Automated explorations that can fail and use "stop before completion" through the setting now re-apply that setting when they fail
- Chapter five tools now reduce the automation unlock requirement of their alternatives, since obtaining them all isn't really an option until well after automation is unlocked
- Three constructions in chapter seven now also appear when their requirement is missing (but can't be built). To make the effect of an earlier pathing choice harder to miss
- Those same three chapter seven constructions now reduce their automation unlock requirement when completing the required fourth construction. Similar to how some other optional things handle automation unlock requirements
- The first optional exploration in chapter two now also reduces its automation unlock requirement when moving on
- Lowered the automation unlock requirement of a chapter nine job
- An early chapter five exploration now also reduces its automation unlock requirement when moving on
- One chapter five exploration that requires a resource no longer halts filling-up automation with the setting, if the exploration itself as well as the resource are automated. To require less of a specific automation setup to proceed
- Fixed a bug that caused passive jobs to remove the active job when running out of the required resource, if they shared a resource requirement but weren't the same job. It now causes resource automation for the active action to trigger similar to when it's normally started
- Fixed a bug in the completion-damage exploration safety-check that caused it to not include decay increases, and potentially considering completion "safe" too soon. This affected one exploration in current content
- Fixed a bug that caused queuing the same action as run-once before a fill-up to remove the fill-up from the queue on activation
- Added a textual hint to the new game+ screen, indicating that right-clicking perks allows you to freely reallocate dna between playthroughs, to make that harder to miss
- Slightly adjusted the order of warning messages when actions can't be ran, to make them a little more accurate to what's most relevant when notifying you
- Added additional logic to the tooltip-rendering to ensure they're updated when available actions change, aiming to prevent tooltips of actions that are no longer available from remaining visible until moving the cursor
- Added another safety-check to the launch process to verify that the connection to Steam succeeded. Aiming to prevent save-loss when the Steam API failed to connect
So what's next?
It has been three months since the last four chapters launched. And it has been quite refreshing to work on quality of life and player feedback for a while. And even though there's still plenty of work left to do in that regard, inspiration is guiding me back to content-creation! That also means this will most likely be the last smaller update for a while (bug-fixes aside), so that I can fully focus on content creation for the foreseeable future.
Details of the next content segment have yet to fully flesh out, but I currently expect it to be roughly two chapters. I do want to experiment with a new feature in one of those, which makes an ETA tricky as it's very much an iterative process that isn't done until I'm fully satisfied with it for release. A rough guess would be between two and four months, but it's highly subject to change. For those of you that are interested in development status updates, I'll be using the development diary as development proceeds. As it gets closer to completion I'll be able to provide some more detail until it's ready to be released. The development diary can be read on either the Steam Community or Discord, whichever is most convenient to you. Both use a read-only format, so you can subscribe to be notified when something new is posted without getting notified about responses. You're welcome to discuss/speculate on all of it in separate topics though!
Of course, once the next content-segment has been completed I'll continue to work on quality of life features and player feedback again too. Early Access isn't even half-way of the ambition!