We need some help choosing the top 3 for Plotapalooza 2, if you click the link, you should see all the entries and be able to give them stars.
https://www.simsettlements.com/home/p-a-p2/
5 Stars for your favorite,
3 Stars for 2nd favorite
1 Star for 3rd
Patch 3.4.0 ended up with so much content, it deserved its own trailer!
Please don't share this, as the patch isn't out yet, but should be very, very soon!
As part of our first Starfield project, you earn a new Jetpack. Due to the nature of the little story surrounding this, it needed to be something extremely unique and stylish, so our wonderful concept artist Cynical_Bounce came up with the idea for a winged jetpack which is now fully realized and playable in-game!
Coming soon to a Creation near you!
As part of the next major patch (3.4.0), we've got some new quests for you!
These ended up needing a pretty significant amount of level design - thought you guys might like to see some of the work and speculate on what we've got cooking.
Still no date on the patch, but we're pushing for August/September!
I've mentioned this idea in the past, and it's almost here - faction outfits!
Throughout Chapter 3, we have you establishing a Faction - choosing a name, setting up an ideology, building an HQ and army - but we don't have much in the way of a visual identity yet.
We've always wanted to have a system where you could choose an emblem and color set, and have that appear both as a flag, and a unique outfit you could equip your departments and soldiers with.
Sometime between now and the summer patch, we'll be introducing a new optional companion mod that introduces these faction outfits as well as a customizable flag system. With this you'll be able to choose a base color, an emblem, and an emblem color - and it will update your Faction Flag and Faction Uniform to show those!
The outfit above's white parts will be dynamically recolored to show your faction identity based on what you chose!
Even further, we're setting up special versions of each outfit for the various departments with little extra accessories so you can quickly identify which department your staff is in from those elements.
2024-05-02 06:02:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Now that the audience choice award has been selected on the forums, our dev team is voting - but there's not enough of us to make a decisive cut. So we need your help to select the best!
2024-04-07 01:20:52 +0000 UTC View Post
It's time for me to take a leap.
I wish I could have shared it sooner, but the news involved a much bigger fish than me making an announcement first.
I invite you all to a private Q&A tonight at 9PM Central so we can discuss the future! If you'd like to be a part, please join our new Discord: https://discord.gg/drfSKPVf77
Currently on a mission to get some footage for all of our talented voice actors so they can add their performances to their demo reels.
If any of you has a system powerful enough to run OBS and would be up for recording a few play sessions, we could use the assist! I posted on the forums with some more specific details: https://www.simsettlements.com/site/index.php?threads/chapter-3-footage-needed.28478/
One of the things I knew we were lacking is an immersive way for people to see the results of a battle. While I absolutely love the arcade-y post battle screen in cinematic mode, it's not for everyone.
When Patch 3.1.0 drops next month, this new note based report system will offer an alternate way to view results!
In addition, this will allow players to see battles that were resolved off-screen from raids, as well as cycle back through the history of all battles their empire was involved in - both Player-led Assaults, and Raids where enemies attacked the player's settlements/territories (system will record up to 128 battles).
As part of our post-launch plans, we're preparing a series of major patches that will introduce new features and story content. Thought I'd start sharing some of these with you all as we get them closer!
First up is the Uniform system. You'll be able to establish a standard underarmor set for all your troops so everyone can have a sort of themed look under their various armor sets!
As you guys know, we like to have an epic graphic for each Chapter to use in all of our thumbnails and marketing materials.
Thanks to our amazing artist CynicalBounce, I think we've got the best one yet for C3!
Please don't share this yet! Want it to be revealed to non-patrons when we finally drop the trailer (I promise its soon, we got a little ambitious with this trailer and its now closer to Machinima... so taking a while).
2023-07-27 18:49:05 +0000 UTC View PostAnimator just finished work on the logo portion of our upcoming trailer!
(I removed the sound as it will feel off without the rest of the trailer)
Citizens, Leaders, Managers, and Companions: We need your help in deciding the finalists!
To vote, head here: https://www.simsettlements.com/home/may-2023/
Give 5 stars to your first choice, 3 to your second choice, and 1 star to your third choice!
Imagine this with 30 color options and dozens of emblems (hundreds after addon authors get their hands on it)!
Ignore my poor color palette for this prototype, one of our artists is on the case to bring you a great set of color and emblem options.
Hey City Leaders - I'm looking for some alpha testers!
We're starting a new round of testing of all the new mechanics coming to C3! Test will start in the next day or two.
Anyone who would like to be a part, please DM me here with the following and I'll get you access ASAP.
- Discord username
- Github.com username
- gmail address
Once I get all three, I can get you invited to the necessary places so you're ready for testing!
One of the things I love about the plot gameplay, is that you can actually use it without ever reacting to a pop-up message by default. Just place a plot, and it will do it's thing eventually. (Obviously we have menus via the ASAM Sensor - but if you don't activate it ever, the plot will still eventually be assigned and build something).
I wanted to bring this same smooth experience to the assault system and eliminate the need for any menus.
Now you can mark your target, and call in an assault automatically! This video shows doing so with the Flare gun, but we'll also have a radio option.
In addition, you can still do so from the War Planner's Desk to get precise control over who shows up and other details about the assault. So for the grand strategists among you, you can still go deep!
(In the video you'll notice my marked targets weren't part of the completion conditions for the assault, that will be addressed in a future build - this was just a proof of concept video I wanted to share)
With the 3.0.0 patch, you'll be able to treat patients yourself if you have Medic perks!
In addition, even those of you without Medic perks will be able to do this so long as your settlement has a medical plot (ie. Clinic, Hospital, or Field Medics)
This Treatment bypasses recovery timers, plot limits, and known cures!
We'll also be tapping into this system for the upcoming Injury system which I'll show you guys soon.
This trailer may actually drop publicly tonight - waiting for our graphic artist to send me the thumbnail. For now - this is a sneak peek for Patreon City Leaders+!
Would have loved to get it to you guys a little sooner but I've been all over the place for the holidays.
One of my dream features for Conqueror is becoming a reality- capturing strategic locations!
We're still working out the mechanic specifics, but the basic idea is we want to allow you to secure various locations with your soldiers to provide bonuses to your empire.
This is one of those mechanics that once we started exploring it, realized there is in an infinite potential directions and depth we can go with it. So what you see in the video is just the tip of the iceberg of what will be possible in the long-run.
This was on my wishlist through Conqueror's development, but I didn't know how to do it back then- so glad we finally get to add it for SS2!
2022-10-18 05:03:21 +0000 UTC View PostLast week I posted an idea for an experiment for next patch and it's going well! You guys have some great ideas for me to put to the community for vote, and have put some bugs on my radar that weren't in the queue.
It is taking a little longer to line up schedules with the folks participating than I had hoped, so the ideas will be part of patch 2.2.4 or 2.2.5, rather than immediately as I had hoped.
Still on target for a standard patch the Friday after this one though! Some great bug fixes coming!
For next patch, I'm going to do an experiment.
Before I explain it, I want to lay out the current SS2 bug handling pipeline so we're all on the same page. Also, this will act as a filter - as if you're not willing to read this wall of text, you're probably not going to want to be part of the experiment anyway!
This mod is incredibly complex, built on top of an already complex game, and so bugs are going to be something we're chasing forever. My hope is that we can get it down to where the only remaining bugs are mod conflicts (which could presumably be patched away), or things that are happening due to engine limitations that can be worked around by players being careful (for example, script lag is something we can't fix, but being aware of it you can play around it).
I've found reports come in several flavors for SS2, and I sort of file them away in my head in these categories:
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Mod Conflicts: Something in SS2 breaks, and we know it's because another mod is doing something that conflicts with what we're doing - either because it edits some content we're expecting to be vanilla, or because it adds in some new variable that SS2 isn't prepared for. These end up being extremely low priority, as often the best solution would be in changing the other mod, which introduces patches - which can be a nightmare to maintain.
Quest Fragility Issues: This is different than a quest bug. By this I mean, that many of our quests are designed to be done in a particular way, and doing them out of sequence, or in ways we didn't anticipate can cause them to get stuck. These are something I would love to address, we are playing an open-ended RPG - you should be able to complete quests however you like and feel free to experiment. The reality is, with time available, these end up being pretty low priority, unless I'm shown ways this can easily happen by accident - for example, if we have an unclear quest objective, or things positioned in a way where lots of folks are intuitively doing things in the wrong order. My favorite source of the versions of these bugs that need action are Let's Plays, as I can see where the person went wrong, or hear them talk out their train of thought that lead to trying it that way.
When someone intentionally tries to break the quest, for example, murdering an NPC mid conversation - it's not likely those are going to be addressed anytime soon.
Quest Bugs: When a quest just isn't working correctly. We obviously have plenty of those as I just finished an entire patch around these! These could be objective markers not showing up, NPCs dialogue trees not doing what they are supposed to, stages not being set correctly. The difference between these and "Quest Fragility Issues", is that these occur no matter what you do.
System Bugs: These are bugs related to anything outside of quests, such as issues with plots, resources, city plans, HQ, etc. These bugs are extremely challenging to lock down for a number of reasons: 1. It's not always clear what's a bug, versus what's a mechanic for those that aren't deeply familiar with all the systems (and sometimes even those of us familiar get it wrong!). 2. Verifying these issues often requires a mostly vanilla save file, as trying to isolate what events happened from other mods is nearly impossible, and not many of you are playing small load orders. 3. Digging into some system code can take literal hours for one of us coders just to get reacquainted with how the code all works together before we can begin really experimenting to recreate an issue - and given that this is a hobby, finding blocks of multiple consecutive hours to do that is tough!
Quality of Life Issues: These are those little things that you wish you had to make things simpler or faster. These are some of my favorite things to add, because they make the mod more enjoyable moment to moment, inevitably lead to the mod being more intuitive and less prone to mechanics being mistaken for bugs. In fact, many of them are born from enough people being confused or irritated by the same thing.
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Currently, there are more posts, DMs, comments, and other forms of bug reports that come to me every day than I can possibly manage. I could literally spend 8 hours a day responding to messages and trying to help folks with all the reports. This is not me trying to garner pity, or damn the situation - I love that we have such an active community - but it means I have to create some sort of filter in order to actually proceed with tackling bugs. Primarily, I'm interested in getting verified Quest and System bugs brought to me, as those tend to be universal - ie. fixing them will impact every single person's game. The "filter system" we have now is as follows:
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Level 1. On the team, we have several dedicated beta testers (would love to have more of you - need folks with ample free-time and willingness to play a mostly vanilla game!), they tend to be my first filter. They have direct contact with me all the time on Discord, and since they have learned about how to troubleshoot in a way that eliminates as many variables as possible - they often send me bug reports directly and I either act on them immediately, or ask them to document them on our bug tracker.
Level 2. Folks on the development team obviously get some priority. If they can't play through the mod, it makes it very difficult for them to proceed with generating more content - so I generally prioritize their DMs pretty highly.
Level 3. Community Rockstars and other helpful folks that have proven to be thorough in their troubleshooting are the next source of bug reports for me. They have access to post directly to our bug tracker and often will cite forum posts and provide me save files so I have enough information to make some progress. Many of these folks are gracious enough to commit a lot of time going through the Help section to try and assist others, they often will even try and reproduce issues to get me details on the problem.
Level 4. Public Beta threads. When I post Public Beta threads, I tend to pay a ton of attention to the comments coming in, as I *absolutely hate* releasing a patch note, only to find out I didn't actually fix what I claimed.
Level 5. Let's Plays, including my own, end up being a fantastic source of bug fixes, as I can watch what happened step-by-step. I also find that generally the folks trying to keep the playthrough moving for their audience are happy to send me save files and do experiments so I can fix the issues quickly.
Level 6. Random comments in various channels that I happen to read. I don't like relying 100% on filters and periodically will dive into various comment sections. (I have to do this sparingly as reading the really nasty comments can put me in a bad place - and so it's like stepping into a minefield). This is the part where the experiment comes into play.
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You'll notice I don't list the Help Section, Youtube Comments, Twitter, Nexus Comments, or any the other locations folks are likely posting issues as regular sources for me to get bug reports - that's because the first 5 levels keep my schedule absolutely full. There are still over 100 reports to address on our bug tracker!
Something I've always wanted to do, was start partnering up with random folks in the community and just have a chat with them and find out all the pain points in SS2, and work with them to see where we can improve SS2 in some of those other categories. While Quest Fragility, Mod Conflicts, and Quality of Life tend to be lower priority due to this filtering, it doesn't mean they aren't important! (They are just sort of a sacrifice to the fact that I only have so many hours per day to mod)
So here's the experiment I'm going to run for this patch (if it goes well, I may keep it up):
If you are interested in sitting down with me for an hour to talk about SS2, show me issues you're having in your save, talk about things you found confusing or unintuitive, and bring me your ideas for improving the mod in general - reply to this post and I'll start picking some of you over the next two weeks to meet up with.
Then I will start compiling all of those ideas into polls and posting them up for vote to see what I should tackle next.
This should help keep me focused on things that matter to the most people, and also hear some personal stories of playing the mod, as you guys have a much better perspective on what actually playing the mod feels like than I do.
So glad to have Patrols back! For those of you who missed Conqueror, you'll basically be allowed to setup people to patrol between two settlements to help protect both of them!
2022-08-12 05:05:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Lot going on in this video, first off it's showing the simple Conscription system whereby you'll be able to bring settlers into your army - much like you can bring them to HQ... but obviously the aggressiveness of the player has to leave you scratching your head.
One of the systems coming in Chapter 3 is an ideology system, where the player will choose how their faction operates in the world. As part of this, we'll have certain elements that change to reflect the direction the player's choices are taking the faction.
One of those is in how the player speaks to their soldiers which will get very aggressive if the player starts leaning towards a darker path. Raider lovers - this one's for you!
As part of the upcoming disaster system, you'll be able to help out if you like!
2022-06-08 05:24:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe new HQ update is well underway, but given the amount of new content and complexity - I'd like to get some more eyeballs on it.
If you are interested in helping test the new features, please message me here or on the Discord!
Notes about testing:
- There will be several builds over the next couple weeks with different groups of features
- You'll want to make a backup of your save files, and should plan on rolling back to that save when the patch eventually goes live.
2022-06-07 17:07:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Facilities department preparing for your arrival to the HQ 2.0 patch.
2022-05-31 17:15:55 +0000 UTC View Post