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Offline Asid

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Atomic Society
« on: October 21, 2018, 01:40:40 PM »


Society is dead. So remake it. Build and rule your own post-apocalyptic society. Decide the laws and morals of the survivors. Overcome challenges and threats from the wasteland. What kind of society will you make?


Homepage: Here
Official forum: Here
Steam: Here
YouTube: Here


Single Player


Steam Launch Trailer






About



SOCIETY IS DEAD.

SO REMAKE IT.

What kind of society will you make? After nuclear war destroyed civilization, the time has come to rebuild.

What will you legalize, and what will you forbid?

Run society the way you want, good or bad, and create a successful settlement.

Keep hundreds of survivors alive in a dangerous wasteland where life is always hard.




CURRENT FEATURES (More Will Be Added in Future Updates)

•   CRIME. Citizens who commit crimes and a wide range of social issues as you play.
•   JUDGMENT. Act as judge over a range of social issues including abortion, murder, vegetarianism, drug use, cannibalism, and several other controversial topics.
•   PUNISHMENT. Choose between execute, long or short prison sentences, tolerate and even encourage for all the issues that happen in your town. Be whatever kind of leader you want.
•   BELIEF. Pick what you believe in and share that with others through violence, exile or education so that your laws are listened to.



•   OUTSIDERS. Build defences to keep raiders out of your town for good. Or make deals with them so they won't attack you.
•   CONTROL. Create and name your own leader character. Use this person to help build your town, or explore the world for salvage and special upgrades. Walk around your town.
•   SURVIVE. Starting out with nothing, slowly build a large settlement that can keep hundreds of people fed, watered, healthy, housed and entertained, if you can. Convert ruined houses and offices into useful buildings or loot them for supplies!




OTHER FEATURES

•   Custom difficulty mode lets you tweak the experience to be as brutal or gentle as you like.
•   Play just for fun, as a sandbox simulation, or complete set challenges to build the ultimate settlement.
•   Over 33 types of structure to consider building, each with a unique appearance and use.
•   9 huge, handcrafted environments to try and build a town in ranging from deserts, to tropical islands, to snowy mountains.
•   A large degree of randomisation to make replaying and building a different society challenging and rewarding.
•   Face up to the problems of poor sanitation, plague and how to treat the elderly.




Mature Content Description
Atomic Society involves judging controversial real-life social and political issues, including abortion, sexuality, murder and several others. It also allows players to set laws and punishments in ways some players might find disturbing or offensive, though you are free to build society the way you believe.











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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2018, 01:42:20 PM »
48 hours since launch, slowly recovering!
17 October - Far Road Games   

I cannot believe it's only been 2 days since we clicked the magic green button and launched on Steam. I've probably aged a 100 years since then.

We'd been selling the pre-alpha version of this game on our website before, and had found a really nice, little community of players who gave us feedback.

Then we came here.

And we've sold more in the past 2 days than we have over the last 2.5 years put together... That's a lot of feedback to take in!

It'll be a long while until that money gets to us though, so for the time being, we still had to go to work today (while trying not to daydream about AS all day long in a daze). But soon, maybe, we can start hoping about becoming full-time devs. All thanks to the people who have bought and supported us already, even at the very start of our Early Access journey.

Truly, thank you to every single person who has bought the game, even if you hated it and refunded it - you at least took a chance on us. And super special thanks to everybody who took the time to write (polite) feedback, or write us a good review, or just tell their friends about it. And all the streamers who have made vids of the game. We'll watch them all when time allows.

We're not done with this game by a long shot.

If you'd played the pre-alpha a year ago, and then played it today, you'd see a huge difference. Expect a similar huge leap forward to be there 12 months from now as well. That's what we're working towards anyway.

Bugs

Thanks to our players contacting me (this is why Early Access is awesome) we now know of 4 big bugs in the game that we're already working on fixes for.

I'm not sure when that bug-fixing patch will be out, as we don't want to accidentally make new bugs fixing old ones, but we'll update as soon as is realistically possible. Work is being done on them as I write this.

We always focus on serious bugs ahead of gameplay. I used to be a tester many years ago and I can't break old habits. ;)

Thank You To the Helpful Early Access Community

Atomic Society is going to keep existing because of you. I'm going to have to learn how to cope with a much bigger community of post-apocalyptic town builders (who seem to hate vegetarians?!) but hopefully I can work it all out. :)

To be honest, I'm still in a state of mild shock, and I'll cope with it.

Nobody wants this game to better than us, and the vast majority of feedback I react like "Tell me about it!" but I'm also so thrilled that people can have fun with what's there so far.

I'll be in touch regularly on the forums, at least where people can keep their cool, and you'll be hearing a lot from me in future. :)
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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2018, 10:50:45 AM »
Update 1.0.1.2 - Bug Fixes
Atomic Society - Far Road Games

A small update has just been released that fixes a handful of the most common bugs that cropped up since we launched a week ago. Our testing audience increased from just 4 people to thousands, so I'm not surprised a few things slipped through the net!

Thanks all the bug reports people took time to make around the place, it really helped us track down some of these issues. It’s been a manic week, but work hasn’t slowed down on the game.

Atomic Society 0.1.0.2:

-   Fixed a rare crash that could sometimes occur on saving (it would look as if the save bar had got stuck).
-   Fixed a bug where the salvage menu option for the town leader sometimes disappeared.
-   Fixed a bug where you could sometimes get stuck on the menu following a raid.
-   Fixed a bug where you could sometimes get stuck on the menu following a religious exile.
-   Fixed an issue with the save game name entry box appearing on the title screen.
-   A few typos fixed.

There are still other bugs in the game of course, but we'll include them in a bigger patch. Our priority is now gameplay changes and bigger system changes. That’s going to take a while, but I’ll post regular updates so you can see how things are progressing.

Once again, thanks to everybody who took a chance on us and bought and supported the game so far. We did not expect (or even hope) the game would find an audience as big as it has so soon. I know Atomic Society isn’t for everybody, but if you like what’s there already, you’re probably going to love it by the time we’re finished.

I'll be in touch on the forums and things in the meanwhile.
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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2018, 12:08:28 AM »
Dev Blog #32: First Big Update In The Works + Launch Reflections



It’s been a hectic 2 weeks since we began our Early Access journey. In that time collected and sorted through hundreds and hundreds of comments, released a necessary bug-fixing patch, and we’re hard at work on the first big content update for Atomic Society, which will address some of that feedback.

For those who are new to Atomic Society and don't know, every month I release a dev blog about what it’s like making your first ever indie game (this month I've written 2). These blogs also cover new stuff we’re working on. I’ve been doing this ever since the game was a few words in a notebook.

If you don’t care about the behind-the-scenes stuff/personal ramblings and just want to find out about the new content coming to the game, skip about halfway down to the new content section (the title is in caps).

October 2018: The Craziest Month So Far

Last time I wrote a blog, we were a few days away from launching, and had no idea at all what the future held. Of course I hoped the game would find a a sustainable audience, but every indie dev wants that, and the odds of standing out in such a crowded marketplace are tiny, especially without a publisher. I literally had no idea if we would be noticed at all.

Well, to cut a long story short, the Early Access launch went better than anybody on the team could've dreamed about (albeit we had low expectations!). We know there’s a long way to go with this game, but thanks to all the players who took a chance on the game already, we’ll soon be able to dedicate more time and money to making Atomic Society than we’ve ever been able to do so before. We can now consider going part-time with our day jobs and afford all the essential things we need to finish the game.



The Build Up

Launching this game on Early Access was probably the most stressful moment of my entire life.

The stress really began a few days before. Putting the final touches to the launch trailer, then endless hours writing emails to press, while working late into the night doing the final testing took a heavy toll as I knew it would. The last improvement to the game (a fix by Nick that improved save game times over 90%) went into the game at 3am on launch day. After that we couldn’t physically do anything else. We just had to sit back and hope. If we’d missed something in that tired blur of work, our entire career might be sunk before it had started. At least that’s how it felt.

We had one sign of hope when Keralis made a positive video about the game before launch, and our wishlist numbers went up by about 4-5k (we were averaging about 100 new wishlists a week before then). Maybe things were going to be okay? It was really hard to tell what the word of mouth about the game would be.

After about 1 hour of sleep, the 3 of us gathered at my home for that clichéd indie dev team launch moment. It felt like we should be together. Unfortunately Adam (our second part-time coder) lives in the US, so he couldn’t join us but he was there in spirit. We ate pizza. We waited. We tried to make jokes. Nick coped with stress by falling asleep. Nani wanted to fight. I felt physically ill. With about 60 minutes to go, my heart rate was literally racing around 180bpm while I was just sitting down. We chose to launch at 4pm, which is when we felt America would be waking up - and because Nani had to work nights at her day job. After counting down the final seconds we hit the magic green button.

Outcome Equals

There is that weird period after launching. Everything goes silent and you’re just waiting for random internet people to either rant at you because it doesn’t work and/or they hate it… Or you find out it does work (for most people) and lots of people quite like what you’re doing. We were extremely relieved to be in the second camp and got to see our little game on the front page of Steam. Seeing a game you've made at home on a shoestring budget outsell Assassin's Creed even for a tiny moment in history was fun.

Extremely relieved probably doesn’t cut it. I’ve wanted to create games ever since I was a kid. It was the first proper career I ever went for as an adult. But things didn’t work out for me in the AAA business. I didn't want to crunch for years making games I didn't believe in, and ended up drifting around in a dozen other blue collar jobs until I finally stumbled across the right opportunity and people to turn a game idea of mine into reality. It's been a rough road. However, seeing a childhood dream become reality this month with any degree of success feels like weight off my shoulders. I've finally proved to myself I can make an okay game (even in its present rough state) and maybe we’ll even be able to afford to keep doing this. It's really humbling. Life doesn't always work out this way.

It hasn't been easy or fast. Nobody recommends making a game like this as their first ever full software project. Experienced indie devs have warned us to stop on more than one occasion, but we wanted to make Atomic Society. So what else could we do?



Aftermath

The weeks after the launch were comparatively easy, but still tense and emotional. There was one surreal night to celebrate, but work had to go on. We really wanted to get a bug-fixing patch released within a week to show we take problems with the game seriously, and fortunately Nick was able to solve the last remaining serious glitches in that space of time and we've released our first small update already.

While that was going on, we had to work out if great launch week would translate into a sustainable income. Obviously the vast majority of sales come within the first week or 2. Afterwards the sales curve goes down and down and you just sit there hoping it’ll going to level out somewhere sustainable that you can get by on. So far I think we're going to manage, but we're not taking anything for granted.

And lastly, in the weeks after I launch, I had to face some personal challenges. Being a shy, overly people-pleasing kind of guy, I had to cope with a much, much bigger audience on Steam and the obvious fact not everybody can like the game. Most people are great even if they have big problems with AS, they want to help the game better and they phrase it that way. And some people just want to personally insult me and the game. Bad reviews happen, and rightly or wrongly I read them. If I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I even read the refund comments. I know this happens to every game, and I didn't expect our review score to be as high as it is, but I've had to stop being so sensitive.

​I’m actually finding it therapeutic in a shock-therapy sort of way. I’m still anxious every single time I check our Steam discussion forum, and wince when I open certain threads, but it's getting easier each day. Maybe I'll finally get some thicker skin at long last!

And on the plus side, the community around the game continues to be really level-headed around the political/social side of AS. I thought I might have to be moderating comments, but people from all walks of life seem to be enjoying it for what it is and living out the post-apocalyptic fantasy.



NEW CONTENT PROGRESS

There has been so much feedback on the game since we launched that it took me weeks just to process it all and turn it into concrete steps we can work on. I still have hours and hours of YouTube footage to go through and study, but we’ll get there. It’s been eye-opening finding out what so many different types of people want, and I’m glad we’re on Early Access so we can do something about it.

The next content update is going to be a mixture of things. Some of it will be tweaking and adjusting things that players have (quite rightly) suggested and requested. And the rest will be adding in more of the features we really want to add to flesh out the experience.

Here’s some of the things that we’ve been working right now. Rest assured this is not the full list of what’s coming in the next update by a long shot, it’s just the things we’re working on over the last week as we put it together. We tend to release big, chunky updates that hopefully make it worthwhile for existing players to restart the game. ​

Unlimited Population & Respawning Loot Ruin

I guess the "story" of Atomic Society is about creating a little township and society that could be the seed of a new nation. Each update we make should increase the time it takes to get that little township going and make it a more epic journey. However, we understand there's still a lot of content missing, and some players just want to keep building and growing their town forever, so this week Adam has been working on making migration to your town essentially infinite. In the next update you'll be able to keep growing and build a town of 1000s if that's what you want. There will still be a "story" goal to get about 350 people and build that small settlement (and we'll expand the things you need to do to get there), but after that you can keep growing. Be warned though the game is not optimised yet and it is going to take a beefy PC to build a huge town with all those people in it!

Letting players build mega-towns obviously means changing how loot works in the game too, because right now each map only has so much salvage on it. Therefore Adam is also busy tweaking the ruins so they respawn with loot. We're balancing it so you’ll still have to venture deeper into the wasteland as the game goes by, but eventually the ruins nearest you will get their loot back. We’re also adding in a few extra ruins in spaces where we think players need to travel too far to get them.

We have some early plans for alternate ways to get salvage coming in future updates as well, but respawning loot is the first step.

Day/Night Cycle

This has been on our to-do list for ages and Nick is finally working on this. It’s just a cosmetic feature obviously but it should add some atmosphere to the game in the next update. Don’t worry, it will be optional. We’re going to let you pause the sun if you don’t like playing at night, or you want to freeze the game with a cool sunset, etc. It should be fun seeing the sun and shadows move around your town though.



Rebindable Controls

Nick has just finished this feature in the past few days, and it will be included in the next update. It's one of those things we just ran out of time to put into the launch version. You’ll soon be able to assign anything to whatever you want. I’m hoping this will solve a few people’s issues with our own choice of controls.

Lots of UI Tweaks

Nani has been really busy this week tinkering with the UI. As people requested it, we have made the text size bigger throughout the game, making it more comfortable to read no matter what your monitor size, and various elements of the UI has been made more visually interesting and we’re rewording things that didn’t make sense. All these little changes add up. We know there's a lot of polish to add.

Rebalancing Work

Every version we adjust and improve the balance of the game. So far medicine has been made stronger, as it didn’t last long enough, and some of the side-effects of picking certain laws (such as innocent execution) have been toned down. We have some new buildings in mind as well which will create new challenges.

Other Feedback

As I mentioned there's a lot more planned for this update, and several more updates to come. We’ve been hearing a lot from players that they’d like to see the religion system in the game expanded, and they’d like the laws and social issues feature to be deepened as well. All I can say about this right now is we totally agree and we'll do what we can. We also hear you about the camera, and that you’d like more info on what your buildings are producing and doing and who’s working where, etc.

Conclusion

Expect this first major update to arrive in December, in time for Christmas. I know that’s a 2 month wait since launch, but it takes 2 months to get in the big changes we really want to make and to give people a substantial leap forward in the game. I will be posting here in the meantime though so you can see how progress is continuing. If something happens and we can release it sooner, I'll obviously let people know.

Thanks again to those who decided to support development and offer their time to make a review, give feedback and constructive criticism. We have more enthusiasm and resources to make the game than we've ever had before, and we're going to keep pouring all the love and time we've got into expanding this game.

I'll be in touch, and if you want even more up to date news on development try our Discord[discord.gg] or Twitter as I'm around there on a daily basis.

Thanks for reading.

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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #4 on: November 28, 2018, 02:04:27 PM »
Update 0.1.0.3 Released (Endless population, loot changes, bug fixes more)
Atomic Society - Far Road Games

It's been a busy month and we're pleased to say the first of many coming content updates is now available for Atomic Society. Your game should update automatically.

Major Changes:
•   Unlimited city population sizes. You can now build a huge settlement if you want. There is still an in-game “story” goal to achieve 350 citizens, but you are free to have as many people as you can keep alive and your computer can handle! Please note the game is not properly optimised yet and building a huge settlement of 1000s will require a powerful PC and increase save times considerably, but you can now expand forever.
•   Ruins now slowly (after 3 in-game years) can be salvaged again. This means you can never totally run out of loot totally and can a build a huge settlement forever if you wish, although you will still have to keep searching deeper and deeper into the wasteland until they’re ready to salvage again. This change allows players to keep build gigantic towns.
•   New custom difficulty option added that lets you decide how quickly ruins should respawn with loot. If you set this difficulty slider to its lowest, as soon as a ruin is empty it will refill with loot in a matter of days – essentially letting you play with infinite nearby resources if you want to build to your heart’s content.
•   You can now (provided you have built at least 1 guard tower) stop migrants from coming to your town. A button has been added to main the UI panel (bottom left) to do this. Feel free to use this feature if you feel overwhelmed with dead bodies, or just think you’ve grown large enough. Be wary though, it will take time for word to spread that your town is open/closed for strangers, so plan ahead.
•   Rebindable controls. All the main controls in the game can now be fully rebound to whatever you want. The tutorial will also now automatically adapt to the keys you’ve picked.
•   There is now a new third method for handling raiders called “Ignore”. If choose this option you will simply refuse to speak to the raiders again until they actually manage to do some damage to your settlement. If they do damage you, their demand menu will pop up again. This will prevent the raiding text boxes from popping up when you’re fully safe and defended.

Other Changes:

•   The max zoom out distance of the camera has been greatly increased on all maps letting you see a lot further.
•   A new interface option has been added to hide the “You exiled believers!” text box if it bothers you. The duration between exiles has also been increased so it happens once per in-game month.
•   The font size has been increased throughout the game, to make it easier to read on smaller screens.
•   Medicine (both salvaged and homemade) now lasts twice as long, so you need less of it to keep your medical buildings stocked.
•   Various menus have had visual improvements to make them more visually pleasing/understandable and certain icons have been re-made to make their functions more understandable.
•   The “Mormon” religion has been re-named to “Church of Jesus Christ” as per latest information.
•   Some new ruins have been added in certain places on various maps where we felt it was too hard to get specific resources.
•   The chance of all side-effects occurring (such as innocent execution) has been toned down slightly.
•   The chance of terrorism if you torture people into converting has been reduced.
•   Certain aspects of the belief system feature have been re-worded to make it more logical/understandable.
•   Adjusted the belief menu so you can see all 5 religions without having to scroll down.
•   A warning has been added to the frozen island map description to warn players you should only pick this one if you’re an experienced player.
•   Improved a ground texture on the Iceberg map.
•   Citizens no longer clip inside of each other when they exit a building but find a clear space instead.
•   Corrected various typos.

Bug Fixes:

•   Fixed a bug where the Town Leader could get permanently stuck underground if a building collapsed on them just as they entered it.
•   Fixed a bug where the camera was still snapping to the leader when you chose to educate/torture people, even if you had disabled this option.
•   Fixed a bug where custom difficulty settings did not always persist through a save and load. This fix will not apply to existing save games unfortunately, only to new custom games.
•   Fixed an issue where goals could sometimes stay ticked off if you completed them and then started a new game.
•   Fixed a bug with the cooldown timer for changing your belief decisions looking odd after loading a save game.
•   Fixed text elements being truncated on citizen’s bios, such as long song titles.

---

Thanks to everybody who took the time to tell us of bug reports or gameplay feedback during our first month on Steam. It's been really helpful.

I'm hopeful we can put out another update on this scale around Christmas time, and then early next year we will take a little longer to work on some bigger changes/features for the game such as new buildings/social choices.

Best wishes & happy playing,

Scott & The Team

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Offline Selva

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2018, 06:09:04 PM »
I didn't feel confortable with the game. It looked much raw and the UI was very crude and simplistic. Also, besides these considerations, it felt somewhat too much mechanic, with no "atmosferic feeling" at all. I would give it 4/10.
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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2018, 02:28:09 PM »
I didn't feel confortable with the game. It looked much raw and the UI was very crude and simplistic. Also, besides these considerations, it felt somewhat too much mechanic, with no "atmosferic feeling" at all. I would give it 4/10.

Hi Selva

Thanks for your feedback  :thumbsup

The game is in early access and a lot is to come. Maybe try it in a few months? Let me know if you have any more thoughts on the game.

Regards
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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2018, 02:17:42 AM »
New Update 1.0.1.4 Released! (Patch Notes)
22 December - Far Road Games

It's been another month and here's another update of refinements and small improvements. There's a lot of little changes in this patch but they should add up to create a smoother and more enjoyable game.

We're continuing to work on much bigger gameplay features which are keeping us busy and will be released throughout next year. Our main focus for now is to increase the replayability and length of the core gameplay experience.

Thanks to everybody who's supported us since we launched back in mid-October. This is our first ever game, and it's a labour of love, and we're very excited to keep building on what exists now, polishing and expanding the game in 2019. Thanks to you all we're able to finish this game and make it the best post-apocalyptic simulation we can, within our means.

I'll be in touch soon with a new dev blog, outlining what's in store for 2019 and as always I'll check in on the forums regularly in case anybody has questions/feedback.

Happy Christmas everybody, and I hope new players enjoy the little Christmas discount currently on offer.

VERSION 1.0.1.4 PATCH NOTES:

Changes:

•   A new 6th goal has been added to have 60% of the town convert to your belief system (this new goal will only appear in new games, it won’t appear in old save games).
•   When your leader’s inventory is full, a button now appear over all storehouses in your town so you can easily click on it and send your leader back home.
•   When you open the menu for any workplace the game will now highlight its workers and incoming users.
•   A smoke effect has been added to scrap mounds, to help you more easily spot them when a building collapses.
•   A progress bar now appears when you are torturing or educating believers so you can see how long it will take.
•   A periodic reminder message now appears whenever your latrine coverage gets too low.
•   A “?” icon now appears over the hidden story skeletons when you get close to one, to make them slightly easier to find.
•   Various messages in the news feed have been made less spammy so it’s easier to follow what’s going on in big towns.
•   The “Made in Unity” splash screen has been removed so the game starts up faster.
•   Tooltips have been added to the options screen explaining what the various things do.
•   The various belief systems in your town are now sorted from most amount of believers to least amount.
•   Added a text alert when you enable or disable migration.
•   Added a text alert when you achieve the population count.
•   Moved up the “Core Issues” section of the stats up nearer the top as it is more important to see.
•   The default chance of women having an abortion has been increased.
•   Raiders now demand fewer supplies to make this request somewhat more tempting.
•   Storehouses are now at slightly greater risk of being destroyed by raiders if left undefended (they are now more in-line with other buildings).



Bug Fixes:
•   Fixed a bug where the game was sometimes incorrectly reporting how many unemployed citizens you had available, and idle citizens weren’t always getting jobs.
•   Fixed a bug where the stats screen still showed you had undefended buildings even when your town was fully protected. This was caused by those buildings were being protected by a garrison (not a guard tower).
•   Fixed a bug where the game speed number did not show up at the specific resolution 2560X1080
•   Fixed a bug where the cooldown timer for changing your belief decisions looked broken after saving and loading.
•   Fixed a bug where certain one-off text messages appeared again after loading a save game, e.g. “you executed your first citizen!”
•   Fixed a bug where certain text messages inviting you to change your laws were did always appear.
•   Fixed a bug with breeding rates decreased dramatically after all goals had been completed.



I'll see you next year with plenty more to come. Happy Christmas!

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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2019, 02:31:17 PM »
Dev Blog #33: Atomic Society in 2019
15 January - Far Road Games




Welcome to the first dev blog of 2019, which will look at what’s in next store for Atomic Society, and how things are going on behind-the-scenes as we make the slow journey through Early Access.

What's Up Next?

Right now we are hard at work on another little content patch for the game. It's going quite well and I guess it's about 2-3 weeks away from being released.

Update 4 will bring a couple of features we didn't have time to finish before the Christmas break, including an (optional) day/night cycle feature, which makes the game world feel more alive and realistic, and the much-requested employee priority panel - so you can decide for yourself what buildings get staffed ahead of the others - and a bunch of other tweaks and bug fixes that players have told us about (thanks to all our volunteer bug reporters!) It's another small step forward for the game.

After that we plan to dig in and start making some really big changes...




Picking Goals For 2019

One problem was working out what those big changes should be.

We're not short of ideas. We have at least 300 of them sitting in our database, waiting until we have time to work on them. And that's not including the suggestions players give us. We could just keep adding them and it would improve the game, but it wouldn't go far enough. It would pad out the game, but it wouldn't fix it. We need to go deeper...

I have spent the last 2 weeks just studying game design again. It's not a topic you can stop learning about. It's why this blog is late. I've actually had re-write this whole thing as I keep learning new things.

Sometimes my brain decides it's ready to level up and I have these learning phases. We've never made a game before, and what you're seeing or playing is the product of gut instinct. Occasionally, I have to retreat and do some homework. This usually involves taking great games and pulling them apart to see how they work, writing down what I've learnt, and then starting all over because the learning doesn't stop.

Fortunately, I think see what the problem is now and it is treatable...

It's the Economy, Stupid

I know Atomic Society isn't deep enough, and adding more stuff isn't going to fix it.

The problem lies within the 3 pillars of the game aka the gameplay loop. I've really neglected one aspect of it, which is the resource-gathering side (the others being keeping people alive, and keeping your town running efficiently). For example, we have about 10 buildings that involve keeping people alive and happy. We have... 1 resource building (scavenger's hut). Oops.

Realising things like this slaps you in the face, and you wonder how you never noticed it before, but that's what learning on the job is like. Sometimes you feel pretty dumb, but it's rewarding at the same time, gaining expertise.

So, for the time being (or until I make more discoveries) our plan is to get the next little patch I mentioned already out (hopefully this month), and then go away and make a considerably larger patch that will expand and improve the resource production/gathering branch of the game. It would also be a fine time to introduce the barter/trade system I've been thinking of.

Hopefully a patch solely devoted to the resource aspect of the game will make it a lot more fun. There's only one way to find out...

I've still got so much to learn and time is always against us. We'll do what we can to make this game a lot better by the end of 2019. It's a relief to me anybody likes what we've made so far. I just tend to see the flaws and get depressed. Onwards and upwards!




3 months Since Launch

It's been (almost) 3 months since I pressed the big green button and found out if there's anybody in the world who wants to buy our unfinished game. It then took us another month to get paid. That was a nice day. We did well for a bunch of first-timers and for the first time, we can actually pay ourselves on a regular basis. I still don't think anybody on the team has absorbed the fact we're getting paid to make games until the money runs out. We've been doing this as a glorified hobby for so long that it won't sink in. I keep expecting to find out it's all been a practical joke.

Earning some money forced us to do some basic chores, which slowed us down a bit in December. For example, Nick desperately needed new hardware, and Nani had to handle a lot of boring paperwork that goes with running a company while not being arrested.

Still, we managed to put out a patch before Christmas, and I can't even remember what was in it now it feels so long ago https://steamcommunity.com/games/514500/announcements/detail/1716333469329964775

Then we took a break for Christmas, which was nice, because we could actually afford to survive Christmas this year. And now we're back at work again, like nothing's changed.

I don't feel a professional game developer, even though I guess I am now. I literally have my dream job, but everything is the same. I still kept my day job as a janitor because surviving off Steam sales is scary. The money train could stop at any time. We do have enough money to finish the game now though. Work-wise things are just going to be the same as they were, but with less fear and stress. I'm very grateful, it just all feels like a dream still, and ultimately the only thing that matters to me is making a game I'm proud of.




First Steam Sale

Speaking of money, we decided to try our first Steam sale over Christmas. We weren't sure about doing it. It felt a bit soon, but we had to find out if they're as good as people say. I can confirm they are. Our sales went up a lot and I discovered a ton of people buy games on Christmas Day, which is funny because that's exactly what I do as a treat to myself. We will probably do little discounts during the big sale events from now on if people are waiting. I don't want to go and do big discounts now until the game is finished. We still have a long way to go.

Other Plans for 2019

I've already mentioned the core focus of improving the resource side of the game. There needs to be a resource production flow before you can build and expand your town.

After that it's hard to say because the game will be different in 3-4 months and I'll have to review our plans then.

Some things are guaranteed. There will always be be bug-fixes coming. We could spend months just fixing bugs.

We also definitely need to translate the game, or at least enable people to translate it for us (depending on what we can afford). We have started preparing for this at least. We have to move every single piece of text into the game online so it can be edited easily and then downloaded back into the game, which is boring work but almost done now.

My concern is that we're still in Early Access and the text in the game is changing all the time. So a translation will be out of date all the time. We'll figure something out. I'm sorry it can't be sooner but we will get there one day.

Apart from that, as I mentioned we have 300+ ideas to review. That sounds like a lot, but 90% of them are probably awful. In terms of big changes I've started thinking about a campaign mode to go along with the sandbox mode we have currently. I'd like there to be a little mini-story on each map with some moral dilemmas. That won't be for a while though, if at all.




Looking Back At Crazy 2018

Beginning a new year is also a time to look back at the last one.

First up, I just want to thank everybody who decided to buy our game. I'll probably never get to meet anybody who's actually bought our game but I don't take it for granted. Every sale is a surprise.

​I have no regrets about last year, thank God. We had to get on Steam because we were going mad just thinking about it. If releasing a game is like giving birth, we'd been pregnant for over 2 years. It needed to come out.

I think we did quite well with our Steam launch considering marketing is evil voodoo. We don't have any marketing budget or knowledge, but YouTube took care of everything. There were enough big, positive YouTube videos of the game and that is, apparently, all you need.

Being on Steam has not been much fun for someone like me with really thin skin and a hobby for worrying about things that don't matter. I knew it was going to be tough. I don't really have a solution for it except ignore it all, and if you feel brave, visit the forums. Maybe that's the best outcome. Would I be happier if more people like the game? I don't think so. I'd be smugger. Make games because you love making games.

I am glad we didn't go with a publisher. Aside from the money involved, I don't think having a huge spotlight shining on an unfinished game is necessarily a good thing. We made the right choices, for us at least.

I'm okay with the time everything is taking because I know how hard it's been for the team at times. We are a bunch of oddballs and there is a reason Atomic Society is a game about persevering against the odds to create something that ends up looking like a shanty town. It will probably be a 5 year project by the time we're done (2 more than I planned) but making games is hard and running a company is quite hard too, especially when it started as a random post by me on Reddit asking if anybody knew how to code.

Conclusion

The thing I'm looking forward to now is finishing the game, which I'm hoping we can do by around this time next year, at least in terms of content. Polishing and bug-fixing will take longer no doubt. I have no plans beyond that except perhaps to apply the heaps and heaps of knowledge we've gained making this game to a new project. We'll have to see how it goes.

The nice thing is I love making games, more than ever. I love games more than ever. I always have this fear that I'll get bored of something and move on, but I never get bored of this. Even after all these years.

I'll do my best to make a new blog next month. The next update will come first.

​Thanks for reading.

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #9 on: February 25, 2019, 11:25:24 AM »
Mini Update – New Version Progress
24 Feb - Far Road Games


Hi everyone. The next update for Atomic Society is now in the last stages of development. Apologies for lack of contact. I'd been hoping the new version could’ve been released a few weeks ago (hence holding off on making any announcements) but we hit the usual bug explosion at the end of a version. However, the fixes are going well, and as soon as we're sure we’ve caught the last few bugs, we’ll upload everything to Steam. Thanks to everybody for their patience. If we hit any more unexpected snags I’ll let you know.

Everything you see below in the patch notes below has already been finished by us, it’s a just a case of ironing out the last few bugs with it so we can safely release it. The patch notes will probably grow a little bit as well because new things are still being added.

Meanwhile, aside from this update, we've also finished a lot of the design work for future improvements to the resource/economy side of the game, and other more substantial gameplay changes, which has also taken a lot of careful planning, but is now done. We’ll start working on that as soon as this next patch is out. We're not going anywhere. :)

We'll get the new goodies to you as soon as possible.

Upcoming Patch Notes Preview:

• Flogging solution added. The final ethical solution has now been added to the game and you can choose to flog your citizens for their crimes if that sounds right to you. Flogging is a quick but violent solution that will greatly reduce the health and morale of the punished person.



• Gateway building added. A new building has been added. The Gateway acts as an optional gathering spot for new migrants to your town, rather than them all gathering at the first storehouse you make. This will make it much easier to create multiple small towns and to spread out where people arrive.



• Worker priority panel added. A new panel is now available at the Town Hall once you have built one. This panel shows you every building currently in your town, how many workers it has, and how many it needs. You can tick boxes beside the workplaces and any unemployed people you have will go and work in those structures first.



• New (optional) day/night cycle feature added. The sun now slowly moves around the sky on each map, causing the lighting and shadows to change realistically and creating moody nights. If you don't like the lighting changing, you can pause the sun’s rotation, or even adjust it manually using a slider to get it just the way you want it. This helps the world feel more alive.







Bug Fixes

- Fixed: A rare bug where the need bars of your could appear to crash to zero suddenly and people would randomly die of thirst.
- Fixed: A bug where sometimes the raiders would stop interacting with you entirely if you saved and loaded after ignoring them.
- Fixed: A potential memory leak problem that could cause the game to slow down slightly over time.

Other Changes

- New building placement guides added. You can now see the range and radius of more buildings when placing them, such as repair shacks, prisons, etc. This should help you see if your buildings are in range of repair workers...



- The optional camera mode is now the default camera mode. The camera no longer automatically snaps to the town leader when giving orders and you can boss the leader around like an RTS unit. If you prefer the old way, you can switch to it in the options. (We have already started the work on a much bigger camera overhaul as well - coming in a future update).

- (This change will only appear in new games, not old saves) The missing side-effects for picking punishments/laws have now all been implemented. We tried to make this backwards compatible with old saves but sadly it wasn't possible technically.

- Several new help messages have been added the first time you place certain structures if they have unique gameplay features that new players need to know about.

- Enforcer/execution status text improvements

- New sound effects added in certain places.

- Various buildings have had their prices and performance somewhat adjusted. In general food and drink production has been slowed down slightly to make it harder to get a surplus.

- The raiders now come at 250 citizens (up 50).

- Migration speed has been slowed down slightly to avoid too many unemployed.

- (This change will only appear in new games, not old saves) The demands of the raiders have been reduced greatly to make building guard towers less important. It should now be possible to have a “peaceful” life surrendering to them now, if you want to give in. We felt it should be possible to complete the game being a vassal state of the raiders if you want to avoid building defences.

- Buildings now have a slightly longer durability before they need repairs. In addition to that scavenger huts no longer need repairs at all.

- (This change will only appear in new games, not old saves) The text and impact of some of the side-effects when you change your laws has been improved somewhat.

- Various small UI tweaks have been made here and there to tidy things up, new graphics, icons, etc.

- And we have now finished all the behind-the-scenes work on getting the game text files ready to translate (which was a huge task) and can move onto the next step of actually translating the words in upcoming versions. Stay tuned.

Looking forward to sharing all this with you soon. :)
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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #10 on: March 26, 2019, 12:16:13 PM »
Dev Blog #34: About Recent Delays…
26 MAR - FAR ROAD GAMES


Firstly, I want to apologise for the slowness of updates.

We are quite behind schedule at the moment due to some significant health issues with one of our team (we’re 4 part-time friends in total making the game) that has essentially brought all work to a halt at the moment. We are currently sitting on a 98% complete update to the game but can’t fix the last few issues with it until our partner (who is an extremely vital part of the team) recovers and is able to pick up where they left off.

I’m really sorry for this delay. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of anything to do, but releasing the current new update in its present state would simply break the game for everybody.

The patch notes in last month’s update represent the work that is 98% finished and ready to go. I desperately want to get it out as soon as possible, but unfortunately we can’t do anything except wait and hope for our friend’s recovery.

We are fully committed to finishing Atomic Society, all of us. We were actually just getting to the fun part of adding new content and buildings, etc, and now this has issue has happened. Obviously it’s not great for our little business at all - which we depend on - but there’s nothing we can do and nobody’s to blame. This has come out of nowhere.

As soon as we’re able, we will put out the now almost-finished new update and then hopefully get stuck into a larger, game-changing update with numerous improvements to the economy/resource side of the game and more late-game stuff to make. These features are all designed and ready to enter production. We’ve been trying to do what we can here and there around the edges, but we’re pretty limited in what we can do.

It’s a tough situation, especially for the sick person on our team. You can imagine how they feel being the cause of this delay. Our first priority is to support them and aid their recovery, because this game wouldn’t exist without them. But we can only wait and see what happens right now. It’s not in our hands for now.

I don’t really have much more to say in this dev blog, making the shortest I’ve ever written since we started, but it’s important people know we’ve hit this health snag and hopefully things can get back to normal in a week or two and because we’ve got a lot more post-apocalyptic goodness to come!

I’ll keep everybody informed and I’m always around on our Discord server if people have questions.

Thanks for your patience and support. This isn't a "we're done" post by any measure, it's just the state of things at the moment, and the problem we're facing. We'll do the best we can.
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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #11 on: April 27, 2019, 02:25:17 AM »
Version 1.0.1.5 Released!
26 Apr @ 6:45pm - Far Road Games


After a long, difficult start to the year featuring some serious illness on the team, I’m pleased to say things are back to normal again and we’ve been able to finish off the next update to the game.

Version 1.0.1.5 is now available to play. Full patch notes are below.

This version is the last of the “polish” updates, I suppose you could call it, but we have already started on much bigger changes to the game, including more brand new buildings and challenges. The next version is going to be 90% new content/things to do, which should be fun (if you like the game already). We hope you enjoy all this update has to offer though in the meantime though.

Fingers crossed the next update will be out a lot sooner than this one took (assuming nobody on the team dies or gets sick again). I shall write a dev blog about talking about our plans for the next version in more detail, and what a crazy year it’s been so far.

Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoy the new version!

Scott & The Team



VERSION 1.0.1.5 PATCH NOTES (FINAL)

Note: Due to many code changes behind the scenes, this version is not compatible with existing saves. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Major New Content:

•   Flogging added. The final ethical solution has now been added to the game and you can choose to flog your citizens for their crimes at the Punishment Centre. Flogging is a quick and cheap but violent solution that will greatly reduce the health and morale of the punished person.
•   Gateway building added. A new building has been added. The Gateway acts as an optional gathering spot for new migrants to your town, rather than them all going to the first storehouse you make. This will make it much easier to create multiple small towns or to spread out where people arrive.
•   Worker priority panel added. A new panel is now available at the Town Hall once you have built one. This panel shows you every building in your town, and how many workers it has and how many it needs. You can tick boxes beside the workplaces and any unemployed people you have will go and work in those structures first.
•   New optional day/night cycle feature has been added. The sun now moves around the sky on each map causing the lighting and shadows to change and things get dark at night. The night length is a lot shorter than the day. A new button has been added to the top left information panel that lets players pause the sun’s rotation, and also lets you manually choose what time of day to play at using a slider so you can adjust the game’s appearance to your heart’s content.

Other New Content & Changes

•   Building placement graphics added. You can now see the range and radius of several more buildings when placing them, such as repair shacks, prisons, artwork, etc, making it easier to arrange the town the way you want it.
•   The optional camera mode is now the default camera mode. The camera no longer automatically snaps to the town leader when giving orders, making controlling the leader smoother and easier. If you prefer the old way, you can switch to it in the options.
•   The missing social side-effects for picking certain punishments have now all been implemented.
•   Several balance/difficulty changes. Various buildings have had their prices and performance somewhat adjusted. In general food and drink production has been slowed down greatly to make it much harder to get a surplus until the end-game. This also means you need more workers to make food, so there a far fewer unemployed people hanging around. Also migration speed has been slowed slightly so you have to be more careful about how many staff you use at each workplace.
•   The raiders now come at 250 citizens (up 50).
•   The 3 different demands of the raiders have been softened greatly to make building guard towers less important. In theory, it should now be possible to have a “peaceful” life surrendering to them for a while if you want to.
•   All town hall stats now have a glowing border whenever a number changes, making it easier to spot what’s changing.
•   Several new help messages have been added the first time you place certain structures if they have unique gameplay features.
•   Citizens now choose a random bit of ground to stand in when they leave a building rather than all standing inside each other.
•   Enforcer and arrested citizen’s status text has been improved showing you what they’re doing in more detail. You can now also mouse over the icon of someone after they’ve been hung and it will tell you what crime they died for as well.
•   New sound effects added in certain places.
•   Buildings now have a slightly longer durability before they need repairs. In addition to that scavenger huts no longer need repairs at all so you can place them wherever you want.
•   The text and impact of some of the side-effects when you change your laws has been rewritten and improved somewhat.
•   Various small UI tweaks have been made here and there to tidy things up. For example, star icons are now used to show stock levels at certain buildings.
•   This will not appear in game, but we have now finished all the behind-the-scenes work on getting the game text files ready to translate and can move onto the next step of actually translating the words in future versions. Stay tuned.



Important Bug Fixes:

(Thanks to everybody who contacted us to let us know about any bugs!)
•   Fixed: A rare bug where the need bars of your town could appear to crash to zero suddenly and people would randomly die of thirst.
•   Fixed: A bug where sometimes the raiders would stop interacting with you entirely if you saved and loaded after ignoring them.
•   Fixed: A potential memory leak problem that could cause the game to slow down slightly over time.
•   Fixed: A bug where it said “building is too far away” and stopped you building at max camera zoom.
•   Fixed: A bug where engineers and citizen builders sometimes became stuck and stopped working if they exited a structure at the exact time as the leader.
•   Fixed: A bug where sometimes the leader would get stuck within a building’s structure after exiting it.
•   Fixed: Several issues where information on the Town Halls stats screen wasn’t accurate, or wasn’t being preserved correctly after saving and loading.
•   Fixed: A bug where submitting to the raiders could reset the cooldown timer for setting laws unnecessarily.
•   Fixed: A bug where sometimes the town leader would stop going back to the nearest storehouse to drop off items.

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #12 on: May 19, 2019, 01:15:15 AM »
Dev Blog #35: New Version Progress…
18 May @ 5:24pm - Far Road Games   




Back On Track

After a very rough start to the year, full of illness and delays, things have got a bit better lately since we released patch 1.0.1.5 last month. We still aren’t at 100% speed but we’re making slow and steady progress. A new patch is already well underway as this dev blog will show.

The crisis earlier in the year was terrible at the time. I even begun to wonder if we could finish the game. We couldn’t do anything except wait. However, in the long run, this proved to a great thing for me, personally. I finally overcame my fears of delays and the public... Because we were stuffed. Sometimes when you hit rock bottom its easier than trying to keep afloat. You realise nothing that bad actually happened. It is only a video game after all.

I’ve been able to relax and enjoy making the game without worrying about the business aspects since then. If it stresses me out, I don’t do it. A lot of our success is down to good fortune. I’m not going to risk my health and sanity over making a game (or money).

If we ever make a game afterwards, I hope I shall be a lot more chilled about it. This has meant withdrawing a bit, ignoring social media, and gaming news but peace of heart is priceless. Things work out.

I’m really happy how the team handled the delays. We’re doing this for the fun of it mostly (any minimum wage day job would pay better) and everybody stuck together and supported each other during the delays even though things looked uncertain occasionally. Some of us didn’t even know each other before starting this game (we’ve still never met the whole team in person) but there’s a team spirit and faith in the project that keeps us going. I don’t think there’s ever been a day of drama team-wise since we started.

It’s good to be making games and realising that all that nonsense people say about the business side of things really doesn’t matter, provided you’re not in it to get rich.


New Features

The next update to the game is going to bring a heap of new features. We haven’t been able to really deepen the city-building side of the game for a while but we can finally get around to it now. Here’s some of the things we are working on right now, which will be coming in the next patch.



Wind Turbine & Electricity

This is now already in the game and working (on our end). The new turbine building will be one of the most advanced things you can build. It will charge up batteries that can be used to supply power to your buildings. (The building model is still being worked on).

It’s up to you what building to give power to, one by one. Each building now has an upgrade. We’re in the process of adding in lots of them. Each upgrade costs a battery. Batteries might be hard to come by and charge (we’ll see when I balance it) so you’ll have to pick carefully. Generally the game will be a bit harder at the start until you upgrade.

Restoring power to your shanty town is a sign it is becoming more advanced, more like how life was before the war.

The upgrades for each building vary, but there are some player requested ones like bigger storehouse capacity, longer repair duration, and scavengers will get a boost that makes them less likely to die in the middle of nowhere.


Night Lighting

This is related to the wind turbine. When you upgrade a building, a light will appear on it. This lets you know it’s got power but it also makes your town look really cool when it gets dark outside (using the day/night feature from last version). By the end of the game most of your town could be lit up, showing how you’ve restored civilization.



Barter System

Adam has been really busy holding the fort lately through the sickness we’ve suffered and I’m really happy to say he’s added another new building this version.

You can now invite an independent trader to come and live in your town by building a certain structure. This will unlock the barter system. Essentially you trade what you have an excess of for whatever you need. No more having to destroy goods!

This is balanced at the moment so that it’s a last resort because the trader will rip you off, but if you can’t face another salvage trip, or you want medicine in a hurry, this is one way to get it.

(The UI is still a work in progress and will be prettier!)



Camera 2.0

Nick has been busy redoing the camera system in this version. Hopefully this is the last thing we need to fix up as we’d much rather make new content, but the camera was really cranky.

He has made it practically impossible to get stuck in scenery now and has smoothed it out so it feels a lot nicer even if your PC is chugging a lot with the game.

In addition to that, we have added in some player requests like edge-scrolling and sensitivity options.


Work in Progress Buildings

The above is stuff we’ve added in the last few weeks but there’s a lot more I’d like to put in this patch content-wise. Nani has been busy making models...



This picture above shows the in-development Water Boiling Facility, Courthouse and Refrigeration Unit buildings. All 3 should hopefully be coming to the next version. I’ll explain more about their use in the next blog. Certain buildings (like the fridge) will need electricity to even work. (We’re still working on the models.)


​Other Plans For This Version

Depending how things go, we also have plans to introduce a basic research system so you can unlock buildings, which will add some extra planning to the game.

We also are going to slightly complicate the resources so that more advanced buildings need more advanced materials, which requires some processing. It won’t be anything that complex but just an extra element of strategy.

It’d be nice to also add in another social issue to deal with.

I’ve heard players’ request a nice, big flat-map to play on so we might add that in as well (we actually use one for testing so could just add it!)


Release Plans

We are still recovering a bit with doctors and medical problems to deal with but my goal would be to get this version out over the summer. I really don’t have a firm plan for it yet. When it’s ready, it’ll be out and I will try to keep people informed via blogs. There’s a lot of content like this coming to the game. Nothing amazingly game-changing but just more and more to do.

The best way to reach me is on our Discord [discord.gg]server. I generally check it each day.



Thanks To Our Players

I just want to say an extra thanks to all the players and supporters of the game who left us a nice message or a word of support during the delay. The vast majority of people on Steam are actually very cool and really get what the game is about. That aspect didn’t change when we stopped being a pre-alpha. Players do have a role to play in helping get a game out and knowing the audience was behind us certainly sped up the recovery process. Thank you from everybody on the team!

​I will see you in the next blog, whenever that might be.
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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #13 on: June 30, 2019, 12:00:47 PM »
New Version Update (Patch Notes Preview)
29 Jun @ 3:58pm - Far Road Games

New Version Almost Finished...

Just a little update to tell you how the next version is coming along. We’ve only got 1 feature left to finish off and some bugs to squash, so I’m pretty confident it’ll be released next month, in July.

90% of what you see in the patch notes below is finished, we’re just finishing up what's left at the moment.

One good bit of news for us is that we’ve now completely finished all the behind-the-scene coding aspects of the game - boring stuff like having to make databases, or redo cameras, and things that don’t create new fun content but are very necessary to keep everything working. This means Nick, our main coder, can focus now on adding new stuff like new buildings, features etc and not have to spend weeks finishing the framework of the game.

I’m pretty excited we’re at this point at long, long last. This is more or less like gaining a whole new programmer, so that should speed things up for us. It also means we're on the downward slope...

Meanwhile, over the last month, Adam has more or less has finished the electricity and building upgrade feature that I mentioned in the last blog. This was a huge task as now practically every building has an upgrade of some kind and there are 11 unique types of upgrade. It’ll be down to you to decide what building is most important to upgrade first. I’m still re-balancing the game so it feels more difficult until you upgrade the buildings.

We also finished the night-lighting feature, so your town comes alive after sunset if you’ve upgraded it. The lights are real-time and cast shadows so it does look quite cool (but still post-apocalyptic).

Nick has now totally finished the big camera redo completely (a task that took 2 months!). If we’d known what we were doing at the start, we would’ve made our camera this way in the first place, but making your first ever game has been nothing if not a learning experience! It doesn’t help the game has a real-time strategy game style camera and a third-person camera. Getting them both to work nicely without getting stuck in scenery on very hilly maps has taken some head-scratching, but it’s all done now. Finally.

The one feature we’re still finishing off is the new Research Centre (one of 3 new buildings coming to this update) where your citizens study pre-war objects to work out new plans. This means in the new version not every building will be open from the start. You’ll have to pick and plan what to unlock based on what you think is most important. It adds an extra layer of strategy.

I’m hoping the combination of trade, upgrade and research systems to the game will add a nice extra level of depth.

Other News

Our big focus in general now for Atomic Society is just to add a bunch of new buildings (and challenges that demand those buildings) and new moral/social issues to deal with until it feels like there’s plenty to do. That and fixing bugs and (eventually) translating the game.

We’re happy with the way the game keeps selling, given that we didn’t expect so many people to check out our first ever attempt at making a game, and we’re just continuing to make the game with the least stress possible. It helps to have fun when you’ve spent 4+ years working on a single project day after day. Team-wise, we’re doing well. We’re still having to juggle day-jobs and serious health issues (not as bad as earlier in the year), but work keeps happening. Thanks to all our players for their patience. All being well we’ve crossed the hardest part of development.

Here’s a look at what’s coming in the next version. Obviously it isn’t finished yet, but most of what you see here should be in it unless something goes badly wrong. As I say, we’re aiming for July with all this.


Atomic Society Version 1.0.1.6 Patch Notes

(Preview, Work In Progress)

New Content Coming…

• Trader Shack Building Added. You can now build a new trade building. This will invite an trader to come and setup an outpost at your town. You can then barter with this person for various goods you may want. It will be down to you to try and find the best deal.

• Wind Turbine Building Added. The wind turbine has been added. The wind turbine is expensive to make but will produce charged batteries that can be used to upgrade various buildings around your town.

• Research Centre Building Added. Several buildings in the game now need to be researched before you can build them. This requires you to build a research centre and unlock buildings via its menu. This adds an extra level of strategy in how you go about expanding your town as you need to decide what structure you most need in advance.

• Building Upgrades Feature Added. Almost every building in the game now has an upgrade panel. There are lots of different types of upgrades, so it is up to you to decide what building to upgrade and when. Each upgrade costs a charged battery, which the wind turbine can make, or you might find one by salvaging. The game has been rebalanced to make upgrading feel important. Scavengers can also be upgraded now to become more effective.

• Night-Lighting Feature Added. When you upgrade a building with electricity, it switches on a light, allowing you bit by bit to visually restore electricity to your wasteland settlement. Is a cosmetic feature that lets your town really stand out as you improve it, at night.

• Camera Completely Redone. We have completely remade the game camera from scratch in order to make it smoother and easier to control at all framerates. It should also be much harder to get it stuck in hills and mountains. In addition you can now scroll the screen by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen and camera sensitivity options have been added.

• Cloud saving support added.

Other Changes & Bug Fixes:

• The avatar now decides to drop off good based on how far away he/she is from the storehouse by walking distance, not in a straight line. Should prevent some very unusual routes!
• Citizens now fade out when they enter a building, which looks a lot better than just disappearing.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes you could not destroy the Punishment Centre manually.
• Fixed a bug where the Town Hall radius effect graphic was incorrectly appearing when you opened the Town Hall outpost.
• Condensed the storehouse menu slightly, removing some outdated resources. This may help with an issue where players at 4k+ resolutions were having trouble with it.
• Changed the forum link button so that when you report a bug it goes to the new Steam forums, not the old pre-alpha ones.
• Fixed a missing title on the video options panel.
• Fixed some spacing issues with text in a few places where things could get cut-off at certain resolutions.
• Fixed the missing tooltip and icon for garrisons in the jobs priority list if you make a ruin into a garrison.

(And more bug fixes that are too arcane to mention here!)


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Offline Asid

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Re: Atomic Society
« Reply #14 on: August 19, 2019, 01:56:08 PM »
New Version Almost Ready...
18 AUG @ 9:47PM   - FAR ROAD GAMES


Hi. Just checking in to say that the newest big update to Atomic Society is nearly, almost ready and should be out quite soon if all goes well. The content is all done, we’re just fixing the remaining bugs as quickly as we can.

I'm hoping it'll be out in the next 7 days, but I can't promise the code will behave.

As mentioned before, big new features in this update include...

- A brand new research system adding more strategy
- Trade/barter system to boost the economy side of things
- Night lighting feature for moody nocturnal towns
- Wind turbine and building upgrades feature to let you plan what to improve.
- A completely redone/improved camera system that works a lot better
- And a ton of little tweaks and fixes to various things that I'll cover in the final patch notes.

It adds up to quite a substantial improvement to the game and I'm having fun with it again, and I've played it to the point of insanity many times.

I had been personally hoping it would be ready by now, hence I delayed writing any kind of blog. I wanted my next post to be "it's out!". But it isn't. Just when I thought we were getting there, some new bug emerges. This weekend has been a bit annoying because just when we think it's all ready to ship, a new mini-disaster shows up. Oh well.

Our current crisis is that adding a trade/barter system to the game creates a whole heap of unexpected glitches that only emerge when you play the game for a long time. They’re mostly related to the UI side of things (for example citizens taking out stuff you were trading, numbers not updating correctly, prices becoming incorrect if you swap and change the deal, etc). In theory I suppose we could release right now, but I'd rather give you an update you can play without stressing that something is going to break.

The good news is that the changes in this version really do beef up the game in my view, to the point where I’ve had to extend the in-game goals just because it just takes longer to finish building a settlement now. I think we've made the right choices...

Aside from that, while I've been waiting for bugs to be fixed, I’ve also been designing the version after this one which is really aimed at improving the resource-management side of the game. I think when that side of the game is deeper we’re really going to be onto something with AS and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year. I am proud of this game even though sometimes I want to tear my (remaining) hair out with how long things take to make. But we're doing the best we can on the budget/team-size we've got.

I just want to keep adding new content (as fast as we can) until this game is the best we can make it, no matter how long that takes. Making a good game is the best reward.

Thanks to our players who the support, telling us to relax, etc and for your feedback and suggestions. It genuinely helps!

All being well version 1.0.1.6 will be with you before August is out, and if not, I'll... I don't want to think about it. It will be out in August! :D

I'll be in touch and I'm always around on Discord (see forums for a link) if you want to pester me directly!

Best wishes,

Scott & The Team

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    Atomic Heart

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