Fringe Planet - a survival simulator game inspired by Dwarf Fortress & Rimworld

[Jubal]

How're things going on the Fringe?

[beebug_nic]

Thanks for the question :-) I should keep this thread updated when I do the weekly blog posts :-)

Game wise, this has been an interesting and mysterious week, the peons have started building what appear to be bird houses for no apparent reason:



The strange thing is, after a while they seem to start glowing:



And even more strangely, these lines have started showing up in weird places:



I can't help but wonder if these two things are related :-) Some of the theories have been close, but no one has quite worked out what is happening yet :-)

Spoiler

I'll be blogging about it tomorrow :-)

Business wise, I've been accepted into the Indietopia accelerator program - which is incredibly exciting news. They will be assisting me with bringing the game to commercial release. I had my first meeting with them yesterday and it went incredibly well :-) Very excited at what will be coming from this relationship :-) So, overall, things are going fantastically on the Fringe :-)

[beebug_nic]

So I wrote a fairly detailed blog post about what was happening with the strange bird houses and lines - you can read it here: https://fringeplanetgame.com/blog/2018/09/14/dev-blog-13/. I've also added a silly but fun section to the website - every week I take suggestions for names of the peons from twitter, and thought it would be a nice idea to immortalize these folks.

In other news, I'm off to the Netherlands next week to preach the good word of Fringe Planet - greatly looking forward to it :-)

[Tusky]

In other news, I'm off to the Netherlands next week to preach the good word of Fringe Planet - greatly looking forward to it :-)

Awesome! Do you have a booth or something like that?

Or will you just be having a wander rubbing shoulders with the great and the good

Liked the blog update - lots of depth with all the different spirits etc. Noticed the new fallen peons page as well. Nice touch

[beebug_nic]

Thanks for the nice words about the fallen peons and blog post :-) I'm trying to limit the length of the blog posts (they way in at about 800-900 words each which is a wee bit too long alas) but there is so much to talk about :-)

Not at the booth stage yet alas :-) This will be networking and learning, so a lot of shoulder rubbing :-)

[beebug_nic]

Just put together a new blog post, talking about how, well talking works in the game :-) How the peons think about conversations and how they dream. I've also tried a different format for this blog post with a lot more headings - I'd be interested to get feedback on that :-)

https://fringeplanetgame.com/blog/2018/09/21/dev-blog-14/

[beebug_nic]

So I spent a productive few days in Groningen last week, meeting up with my Accelerator as well as pitching Fringe Planet to a panel of very talented folks. Got some incredible feedback on not only the game, but myself as a business, which was awesome.

If you are in the Netherlands - I would 100% recommend going to explore this city - it's stunning :-) I wrote a blog post about both the city, and what I was up to there as well :

https://fringeplanetgame.com/blog/2018/09/28/dev-blog-15/

[Jubal]

Yeah, the low countries generally are high on my list of places to go to

I just finally got time to read the blogpost on thoughts etc too - is knowledge separate to thoughts? You mention peons discovering stuff - if all your peons happened to fail to think about, say, cherries for five days, will they no longer think to go and pick cherries when hungry, or is there a mechanic that allows them to regain active thoughts when they have a corresponding need?

[beebug_nic]

Thanks for reading the blog post, and thanks for the insightful question :-)

Knowledge is separate to thoughts - so in this scenario, then they would still pick cherries but wouldn't actively think about it. Though there is a chance while doing a cherry related task (eating raw/using as an ingredient, planting or harvesting) that they will start thinking/talking about cherries again. And there is always a chance of a cherry related dream :-)

[Jubal]

Ah, OK - so they can do things by need without incorporating them necessarily into their active thoughts. That makes sense

[Tusky]

Notice you sneaked a new blog post up :p

Liked seeing some of the furniture models you've come up with - I think I missed you sharing some of those on the twits.

The doors have a heat trap rating... does this combine with a wall's heat trap rating or do walls not count towards heating?

I'm looking forward to how the hp value comes into effect in terms of things like chairs. I am imaging that peons sometimes have rock star style "blow outs" where they drink too much and try to smash the room up

New UI is looking nice as well

[Jubal]

Any news from hereabouts? I'm not on the tweeter much lately so I feel I'm missing out on stuff!

[beebug_nic]

Hehe, sorry for the slow response guys, things are fairly hectic :-)

To answer the question about doors and walls, walls will act to keep heat trapped inside a room, and different wall materials will keep heat trapped at different rates, but there will always be some seepage. Doors are a necessary evil, as you want peons to be able to get inside a room but all doors will let out heat at a much faster rate than walls. Also doors help complete a room - for a room to be counted as "inside" it must be sealed by voxels and have a door. Peons prefer to be inside :-) And yes the HP should be fun (to play with, not necessarily balance!) - all items will have wear and tear associated with them, and peons can get moody as well as other "things" do damage. Generally the first tier (wood items) are things you should consider as temporary as they are incredibly flimsy - but they are useful for quickly changing peon moods in bad situations.

And yup, there has been quite a lot :-) I've been focusing a lot on the UI - (which has taken a long time, as I have very little aesthetic sense!) - and been getting some awesome responses about it. I've changed the very generic and boring dark grey into a more paper based UI - think an ancient magical tome of esoteric knowledge








And just for fun, a gif showing the evolution of the UI :-)



It's all very much still a WIP, but it has drastically altered the feel of the game (for the better!) :-)

[beebug_nic]

And just pushed another blog post live - this one is a bit different, and talks about some of the more amusing bugs I've encountered while developing the game. (warning, long read!)

https://fringeplanetgame.com/blog/2018/10/26/dev-blog-19/

[beebug_nic]

Thanks for the mention in the newsletter! totally made my day :-)



Last week I wrote a blog post all about the various machines available in Fringe Planet. They've been in the game for quite a while, but I hadn't talked about them much, so thought they deserved their own blog post :-) Let me know what you think! :-)