Work continues on Alpha 3, and we don’t have anything exciting to show from it quiiite yet. So check out these fantastic base layouts made by players on our forum! The sophistication with which people are building bases has really risen since our first player-created base feature and we’ve got a few bases that have over 100 inhabitants, which is seriously impressive. Each of the screenshots above has a caption with the creator’s forum handle. (If you made an impressive base but don’t see yours: sorry, our blog backend only lets us post 10 images in one post!)
Alephred’s base uses two techniques pioneered by forum users Cactus_Punch and shikushiku, respectively: building bases into asteroids to guard against hostile docking operations, and building airlocks in the middle of bases with small exterior pockets so that citizens can enter and exit the base more efficiently. We love that people are figuring this stuff out… keep up the amazing work, folks!
Hi there. I noticed your game is written in Lua! My first question is: what game engine do you use? I've seen a lot of games written in Lua that are on steam, but I can never seem to find a good engine. (Or did you write your own native wrapper?) And secondly, as it is written in Lua, do you have a problem with me modding your game? Thanks.
Spacebase DF-9 is built on the open-source Moai engine, which we also used in Middle Manager of Justice, Dropchord, and the upcoming Broken Age. We’ve put a lot of additional work into it, including creating an internal development tool called 2HB—our IDE/debugger. For Spacebase we also added a lot of features, including support for 3D characters (the game’s environments are 2D and characters are 3D) and our lighting system.
We have no problem with you modding the game! For a variety of reasons, mainly including our own development bandwidth, we didn’t ship the game with standalone mod tools, but we also haven’t made any attempt to lock off the game to modders. Go for it!
In the screenshot above, a small improvement I made to the UI recently: the Citizen Inspector now shows a dead citizen’s cause of death. Handy for figuring out what ghastly fate befell someone while you weren’t looking!
I updated the dev plans page recently with some things we’re considering for Alpha 3. This update likely won’t bring any major feature updates on the scale of the food/hunger mechanics we introduced in Alpha 2; rather we’ll focus on fixes and improvements to balance, plus some smaller new features.
A lot of these changes are based on the great feedback we’ve been seeing from our forums. If you haven’t checked them out, there’s a lot of friendly and knowledgable people there!
The team is down to just Matt and Jeremy and I for this month, so we have to set goals we know for sure we can accomplish. Here are some of the issues we’ve identified, plus solutions that address them using the resources we’ve got:
Issue: After you explore a derelict, technicians try to split their time between maintaining machines on it and on your base, which often causes both to suffer.
Solution: Players need to be able to flag rooms in derelicts as unimportant. We’ll introduce a concept of claiming and disclaming rooms so that players can tell their citizens to ignore a derelict. Down the road (ie not for Alpha 3) we’ll also make it possible for players to assign citizens to particular rooms so they’ll prioritize working there.
Issue: A few people dying can send all the citizens on a base into a downward spiral of bad morale.
Solution: Morale loss on death should be based on a citizen’s affinity for and familiarity with the deceased. So if a newcomer to the base dies, most citizens will only be a bit bummed; whereas if someone’s best friend - someone they’ve known since the base’s founding - dies, they’ll become deeply sad. We’ll model familiarity more accurately to make this work well.
Issue: Docking messes up some players’ attempts to build a base exactly how they want it.
Solution: This is a complex issue, and we don’t want to “fix” it completely because we always want the game to throw curveballs at players. However, we also want to support creative, expressive base building, so here are our solutions:
- Hostile immigrants from shuttles - instead of always needing to have hostiles (raiders, monsters, killbots) show up via docking ship, we’ll have some of them show up in the small shuttle craft that currently only bring friendly immigrants. This might raise some questions about how the hostiles will get into your base to invade it; we’re thinking about that right now.
- More variety in “base events” - this will make docking happen less frequently, proportionally. We’re hoping to add the Meteor Strike disaster for Alpha 3, so that will be a new type of challenge that means we don’t have to lean as hard on docking.
- "Tetris-like" placement of docking ships. This is definitely not happening for Alpha 3, but we discussed it months ago and it’s absolutely how we envision docking to work in a future update. Being able to choose where a friendly or hostile ship docks makes the decision more strategic and a more welcome part of the base building process.
There are of course other, more objectively broken issues - things like “citizens use or maintain items marked for deconstruction” - that we’ll definitely be fixing for Alpha 3.
As you can see, a lot of these issues have multi-part solutions. Causes and effects are often messily entangled in a simulation-driven game like this, so sometimes there is no single “silver bullet”. Hopefully this gives you a window into our decision-making process. As I said above, your feedback and continued support help immensely!
Spacebase DF-9 recoups investment
We’re trying to be as transparent as possible with the development of Spacebase DF-9, a goal which is closely tied to the game being in early access alpha, as well as practices like sharing our rolling dev plan.
It’s a little harder to be transparent with financial issues, because various concerns of contracts and tact often prevent it. But we have been very lucky to develop Spacebase with the financial assistance of Indie Fund and a bevy of other partners, and they are also committed to transparency.
Together, the funding partners invested around $400,000 into Spacebase, and Indie Fund today announced that the game recouped that investment in its first two weeks of early access!
This is great news for us, for Indie Fund, and for the ongoing development of Spacebase. As explained on the Indie Fund blog, it’s also great news for other potential Indie Fund investments of all sizes, including smaller games,
We hope you’re all enjoying Alpha 2!
Spacebase DF-9 Alpha 2a released
Our first minor update for Alpha 2 has been released. Details:
- Botanists have been rebalanced. They should be more effective now.
- Fixed: Citizens sometimes teleport when hit in combat.
- Fixed: Some hints trigger for breached/dangerous rooms where they’re not necessarily relevant.
- Fixed: Citizens will attempt to eat from replicators in dangerous rooms.
- Fixed: an uncommon crash bug.
We’re going to start calling builds like this “minor updates” instead of “hotfixes”, which has an established meaning in software development that doesn’t necessarily apply to our process here.
Keep the feedback coming, we’re listening!
Spacebase DF-9 Alpha 2: “Taste Oddity”, has been released! See the patch notes for a detailed list of changes.
This is our first major monthly update. It adds some significant new features to the game, and also fixes and improves many smaller things. The video above features Chris and me playing through the new build with commentary.
We hope you enjoy this update, and we think it gives an idea of how the game will improve in future alpha updates.
We’ve not yet finalized what Alpha 3 will entail, but you can expect it sometime next month and until then we’ll keep you posted on our progress towards it. Thanks for playing!
(Edit: There’s also already a new minor update out! Check out the changelog here.)
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Spacebase DF-9 Alpha 2: "Taste Oddity" released
- Citizens can eat food to satiate their hunger. Food can come from Food Replicators, crops in Garden Zones, or Cooked Meals.
- Citizens become hungry and starve to death if they go too long without eating.
- Food Replicators can be built in any zone, and consume a small amount of Matter when used.
- Citizens assigned to Botanist duty will plant seeds in Hydroponic Cultures, tend the crops that grow, harvest the crops and carry them to Refrigerators in Pub Zones. Botanist skill determines efficacy of upkeep and crop yield.
- Bartenders will take raw food from a Refrigerator and use a Stove to prepare a Cooked Meal, then serve it to customers waiting at tables.
- Diner satisfaction is based on their affinity for the dish and the skill of the cook.
- Killbots will now appear in derelicts and boarding ships. Killbots show no mercy.
- Tooltips now show health and morale, with color-coded icons.
- The Stats tab of the inspector now shows a citizen’s Inventory and any objects that are in a container.
- Many small fixes and improvements to Demolish tool. It should now be possible (if a bit time-consuming) to fully deconstruct a derelict.
- When Matter is expended or gained, the HUD counter value and color change over time.
- Citizens remove their Duty-specific gear when they’re not on duty.
- Objects can now be marked for demolition via a button in the inspector.
- Redesigned Duty tab of citizen inspector. Display now shows their star rating for each duty instead of a number.
- Word bubbles that appear when citizens chat now properly reflects the conversation flow.
- New icons for zones and inspector stats tab.
- Broken objects now spark to indicate the fire risk they pose.
- Bartenders now stand behind their bar while they serve drinks. Citizens walk up to the bar to order a drink.
- Citizens post to Spaceface about drinking. Randomly generated drink examples: Smashy Gargle Blaster, Red Scumm, Sticky Frobnabulator.
- Balance: Duty failure logic changed. Technicians cause fires far less frequently.
- Balance: Duty experience gain rate is now more balanced across the different duties. Citizens who spend time doing something should gain experience and become better at a reasonable rate.
- Balance: Bed condition no longer degrades. Don’t worry, we’ll figure out other, more legitimate ways to make beds catch fire in a future update.
- Balance: Citizen morale is more stable. Fewer things cause it to dip up and down drastically, though lots of citizens dying still makes people (understandably) bummed.
- Balance: New derelicts won’t show up if you haven’t been exploring the ones already out there.
- Balance: Citizens won’t post as much on Spaceface about unmet needs; they’ll only post about their most pressing need.
- Fixed: Various bugs relating to citizens/raiders/monsters fighting in vacuum.
- Fixed: Different portraits now appear in the docking/immigration request dialog.
- Fixed: Spaceface display didn’t show most recent update.
- Fixed: The user is not reimbursed when they lose planned objects during a re-zoning.
- Fixed: < and > no longer let you select enemy / hidden characters.
We’re on the new Humble Store!
Yes, the folks behind the excellent Humble Bundle (and the Humble widgets we use to sell Spacebase from our own website) have launched a standalone storefront, and we’re there, along with a whole bunch of games from other great developers.
Check it out! Spacebase DF-9 is 15% off for today only, so if you’ve been waiting to jump in, you can pick it up at a discount before the impending Alpha 2 update releases.
Alpha 2 is almost here! For a taste, peep the screenshot above.
That giant box you see enveloping that starchicken’s head is a “food” bar, dispensed from the replicator on the left. It’s supposed to be about 1/100th its current size. That’s the problem with nanotechnology. (Don’t worry, we’ll fix that before Alpha 2 is released.)
In addition to the new food and hunger simulation discussed in my last update, Alpha 2 also contains many smaller fixes and improvements. Technicians are no longer the leading cause of base death, tooltips have more useful info, you can order an object’s demolition from its Inspect panel… did I mention KILLBOTS? There might be Killbots.
One of the fun parts of making the music for Spacebase DF-9 was getting to write and record “The Settler,” a short ballad that closes out the game’s standalone official soundtrack. (The isolated guitar track from this song is actually the music you hear at the beginning of the game, when choosing to what sector of the galaxy you’ll send your base seed.)
I originally wrote The Settler for a totally different Spacebase-related idea that didn’t come to fruition. When we were discussing how to announce the game, JP had an idea for an animated trailer—the animated tribulations of a lone space citizen bouncing from doomed spacebase to doomed spacebase.
It would be a lighthearted take on some of the terrible things that can happen to Spacebase DF-9 characters, stylized to get around the difficulties of trying to show off complex gameplay in a short-form trailer.
I liked the idea of contrasting those planned visuals with a fairly “straight” piece of music, inspired by wistful space ballads like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Elton John’s “Rocketman,” so after JP explained his idea, that evening I write a few lines of lyrics, and recorded a basic version of the song with just guitar and vocals.
Eventually, for various reasons, we determined that the trailer idea wasn’t the right direction, and that it made more sense to show the gameplay off directly. And when we came up with the sector selection screen concept, I repurposed the guitar track, to suggest the idea of a bored bureaucrat sitting at his desk, poring over a galactic map while tinny radio music plays in the background.
Then, when it came time to compile the final soundtrack, I figured I might as well just “finish” the song and toss it into the album as a bit of an easter egg. I liked the idea of it being both an indirect route to content that actually shipped in the game, as well as a nod to the funny tradition of movie soundtracks often including additional tracks “inspired by”—but not actually present in—the film itself.
Hope you enjoy! The soundtrack is included in several purchase tiers on the Spacebase DF-9 site, as well as in standalone form on Bandcamp.
P.S. The other day, I re-recorded The Settler’s bass track with bass guitar, because I wasn’t 100% happy with the original synth bass. If you bought the album on Bandcamp, feel free to redownload to get the newer version.