For this week, my focus was mostly on interface and ease-of-use for new players entering the game. This means mostly adding prompts and notifications to let the player know there are things that need attention. One of the things that has been on my list for a while was the fact that you can’t really see where the new things in your inventory can be found. Especially when there is just a lot of things happening and you’re picking up various items at once,  it might leave new players clueless on what they actually gained!

Inventory now shows you red-dots near all the items that are new/unseen by you during the game session. They will disappear as soon as you read the description of the item.

I’ve also improved the little twirly-notification signals which were mostly found above devices. They are now more colorful, so they stick out a bit more, and they are also placed above “unidentified resources” on the planet. So metal, deuterium, echonium, etc. they will all show this sign above them until the player analyzes one of those rock types.

Hopefully all these little changes will help ease new players into the world of Residual! – Besides those improvements I worked some more on devices and resource-handling, improving the code and removing some bugs left and right. The EDP (printer) in your spaceship now also has an improved interface, which is really just the inventory screen but for devices and gadgets. All in all, I think it makes the game more userfriendly!

Make sure to last Thursdays video, as we dive into the whole setup of connecting devices to other devices, and silo’s, and all that funky stuff I introduced last week:

Full changes list:

• added: Grab items from a Silo
• added: notification dot for “new/unseen” items in your inventory
• added: “twirl sign” above new and unidentified resources
• added: Silo devices now unlocked as soon as you create a deployment device
• added: more resources to planet-scanner (including Technology)
• added: game-tips on loading screen
• added: Solar charging now only during the day
• added: Dilithium crystals
• added: Nanobot-creation in EDP (using Graphite)
• added: EDP Printer now needs nanobots to create devices
• added: “required amount of nanobots” on device-selection screen
• changed: Device-selection screen now runs on Inventory code (much cleaner code-wise and interface-wise)
• changed: Ooze won’t appear above ground (“at the start”)
• fixed: Silo showing -1 as “resource count”
• fixed: Silo can now be packed up (when empty)
• fixed: Device information is now instant pop-up
• fixed: campfires that finish burning will now be gone (burned up)
• fixed: silo will disconnect from furnace if it changes it’s input/output
• fixed: spit-plant rendering issue (small black lines)
• fixed: made hologram speech more loud
• fixed: graphite isn’t “auto-pickup”
• fixed: some leaves dropping from trees are white (wrong images)