Hello everyone,
we’re proud to announce that we’ve just released a new public version for Interstellar Space: Genesis, Pre-Alpha 9.
This release was a big leap forward, we think, in terms of providing better usability and appeal. The entire UI was revamped to what will be close to the final UI style we envisage for the game. The game should also look much better in higher resolutions now, since the UI now scales with the screen size.
Along with the major UI overhaul, we also added a new ship selection mode, and several other quality of life improvements like the possibility to execute pending actions through the Turn Button directly or the new togglable layer to show all the star system’s scanning levels quickly. We also made several balance changes, added music tracks and fixed many bugs.
Thanks as always to our VIPs for their feedback and insight on how to improve the game going forward.
If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, you can do so here. Every contribution is much appreciated and will help the project move forward!
Current Status
With the UI revamp done, we’re going to focus on implementing all the remaining features of the game that are still not in.
The plan is to add the bulk of the missing features till the end of 2017. Major features still to implement include: ground combat, bombardment, planetary defenses, starbases, ship refit, espionage, race customization, events and a tutorial system. Most of this should be doable still for 2017, but some will have to be dealt with in 2018.
We’ll also be including more content, namely 3 new playable races, more wonders, weapons (and weapon modifications), more ship system specials, victory conditions. More leaders with more skills, traits, desires, more buildings, more techs, among many other things.
There’s also modding, and we need to complete some of the major systems (e.g. diplomacy), and the AI will be completed and enhanced.
Then, there’s many graphics that will be added, enhanced or replaced. Ship models, buildings in the colony screen, race portraits, cutscenes.
As you can see, there’s still plenty left to do.
We’re technically still in Pre-Alpha (Pre-Alpha 9 is now the current version). We plan to enter Alpha when all the major features are in. This should happen somewhere between Q1 and Q2 2018. After we enter Alpha we should be entering Steam Early Access, or so is the plan at the moment. The release is targeted for Q4 2018, on Steam and other DRM-free source, possibly Humble Bundle, GOG and others.
By the way, an IndieGoGo campaign in the meantime (before Steam Early Access) is a possibility (we can’t do Kickstarter because Portugal is not supported).
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Now please enjoy the new release and let us know what you think. As always, please remember to post bug reports related to this build in the “Bug Reports” subforum, and let us know your impressions and suggestions on the “Geneal Discussion” subforum.
Note: The save games from the previous version (Pre-Alpha 8) will not work on this new version.
To update to this latest version, just use your existing download link from humble bundle. If anybody has trouble finding the email with the link you can use the order resender and Humble Bundle will send you a list of your download pages.
Here’s the full change log (from Pre-Alpha 8 to Pre-Alpha 9):
NEW
- Major UI graphical revamp across the entire game. And, now the entire UI scales with the screen size, allowing for better results on higher resolutions/bigger screens
- New ship selection mode: Clicking on a ship in the fleet panel selects the ship instead of deselecting it (it’s now the default ship selection mode, configurable on the game settings)
- New planet special: Powerful Creatures, provides bonus to ground combat (ground combat is currently being implemented)
- New layer added that allows to see all the system’s scanning levels quickly and universally (useful for when wanting to know where to send your survey ships!)
- The “Next Turn” button is now linked with any pending action to be fulfilled (e.g. if a new tech needs to be picked, clicking on the button will open up the tech tree so a next tech can be picked)
BALANCE
- Terraforming techs now less expensive (around half the amount of research points required)
- The Planetary Engineering boosting techs (Atmospheric Bio Agents, Planetary Ecosynthesis and Space Mirror Array) bonuses were buffed from +10%/+25%/+50% to +25%/+50%/+75% respectively.
- Space Mirror Array production bonus doubled.
- Enhanced Ecology tech made cheaper. It’s a level 1 tech now, and Advanced Ecology is level 2 (they were level 2 and 3 respectively)
- Infrastructure specialization bonus to ship construction reverted to +25/+50/+100% as in the original version (was +10/+25/+50% before)
- Pressurized dome now more expensive to maintain, it costs 6 maintenance now instead of previous 4
- Asteroid Archaeology space culture perk now grants +5RP per research asteroid exploitation instead of previous +3RP
- Exceptional Fossils planet special now more exceptional. The bonuses were doubled.
GAMEPLAY
- Default weapon fire arc in ship design is now 90º front (was 270º front before)
- Races now always offer the same tech exchange deal, irrespective of how many times the player leaves the diplomacy screen and enters again (was changing the tech deal previously)
- Subsurface Vault building now costs 2 maintenance instead of previous 3
- Strategic resources on accretion disks of black holes, neutron stars and boson stars now more varied (numbers were too fixed before), and chance of zero strategic resources decreased
- Shield Emitter planet special removed from the game since ground combat (currently being implemented) already offers planetary shields improvements
- Revenue from trade treaties was too powerful. The leaders bonus percentage from the Trader skill is now applied to the income that is generated from trade and not added to the percentage number that is applied to the lowest production value from the two parties (i.e. if the lowest production from the two empires is 200, and if the trade percentage is 10%, then the revenue from trade is 20. If leaders give a 10% boost to trade the revenue is now 22 (20 + 2) were before it was 40 (20% of 200)
- Ion Discharger super weapon (only found in ruins searching) parameters changed: occupies less space and inflicts more damage
UI
- Resolutions above 1920×1080 now available natively (UI now scales with the screen size)
- The list of possible buildings position/scroll now keeps its place in the colony screen
- Research and space culture buttons on the top right now show little ETA numbers, like was the case for the remote exploration button already
- Progress bars added for research and space culture progress in the empire info panel on the top left
- Treaty proposal options in diplomacy now have tooltips explaining what each treaty does
- Added comprehensive tooltips to the overview panel to gravity, mineral richness and planet special in the planet view
- Leader level notification now highlights the colonies of the system the leader is assigned to in the overview panel
- The population tooltip on the main colony screen panel now shows information on population growth as well
- Tooltip added for wormhole icons shown around stars in the starmap
- Text is now bigger on the Colony, Research and Ship design screens to ease readability on small screens.
- Tweaks made to the colony screen so that it would be easier to grasp the information presented (e.g. Morale is now above the Population).
- Fixed a glitch where the “OK” button was being rendered outside the leaders panel when a leader learned a new skill
- Note added to Navigator skill to clarify that only the best, most advanced navigator leader counts for the starmap speed bonus (i.e. bonus is non-cumulative)
- Ship design information on space, cost and ship attack and ship defense was re-arranged for better readability
AUDIO
- Music ON/OFF status and volume are now kept the same until changed again
- Turning off the music on the main menu now also turns the music off for space combat battles, “new technology researched” screen and diplomacy instead of just switching off the starmap background music
- New space combat music tracks added (all the old ones were removed)
- One starmap background music track removed, another added
- New music on the main menu, which we think reflects the tone we envisage for the game nicely (space is cold, hostile and lonely, but also full of wonder, mystery and opportunities)
BUGS
- Fixed a bug where the leader bonuses on level up were being shown incorrectly when the leader had fulfilled desires that affected the primary skill level in question
- Fixed an issue where the colony notifications (e.g. population crease) for a recently conquered colony would still appear in the previous owner player instead of the new one
- Fixed an issue where multiple ready Planetary Construction and Wormhole Stabilizer projects would sometimes trigger for planets/wormholes where it was not possible to produce an effect anymore
- Fixed a bug where clicking on the right secondary skill button for uncreative leaders was being allowed which would corrupt the leader leveling up process
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the game state could get corrupted when the AI was leveling up their infrastructure on a colony
- Fixed a bug where the research progress bar was overflowing when more RPs were being produced than needed to breakthrough the next tech (RP spill)
- Fixed an issue where Barren worlds were being generated with ecological level above zero (Barren worlds cannot have more than minimal – i.e zero – ecological value)
- Fixed an issue where sometimes the blur effect was not reaching the edge of the screen by a pixel or two
- Reworded Planetary Supercomputer effect to say the bonus is on Colony, and not on Empire-level as could be assumed)
- Fixed a bug where due to precision errors it was not possible to hire a leader with a hire fee of 100 BC when the treasury had 100 BC.
- Fixed a bug where the colonization status of planets was not being shown correctly on the system view when building an outpost
- Fixed a bug where the Heavy Mount modification tooltip was not showing the correct information, which is half damage lost to range dissipation, +50% damage and double weapon range.
- Fixed a bug where the engine was always being shown as broken in the space combat.
- Fixed an issue where the rename highlight area was not showing in the correct location on the colony screen
- Fixed an issue where the finished construction panel was being shown on a colony that was just conquered
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the AI ships could be seen in the starmap even without scanning range for those areas
- Fixed a rare bug where the homeworld could start hostile due to an issue on the “balanced start” starmap generation algorithm
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the construction ETA shown on a “finished construction” was slightly different from the construction ETA of a “to be built” construction
- Fixed a bug where the “+” tax button could not always be pressed when it should
- Fixed an issue where the buttons for: setting the music ON/OFF, dismissing a leader, unassigning a leader and choosing the leader’s primary skill and secondary skill level up were all accepting mouse right-clicks, when only left-click should be allowed
- Fixed an issue where when renaming a ship or planet, the active panel of the overview panel was not refreshing, showing the old information
- Fixed a bug in the Ecological Restoration project (Terraforming reversion) where the ETA would sometimes report 1 turn to finish but would actually take 2
- Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes offer a tech that we already had
- Fixed a bug where the Navigator skill displayed +1 parsec speed on starmap per level when the correct value is +0.5 per level
- Fixed an issue where the default empire name was being used in the diplomacy dialog instead of the player’s defined one