Hello! It’s been a while since the last update – we’re still focusing on adding new content for the Early Access version, but we’re excited to release a brand new update for the Adaptory Demo today as part of TactiCon 2024!

This is a major release that adds food and hunger to the game, that has rewritten explorer priorities to be more flexible and intelligent, and also includes lots of small improvements and quality of life fixes. The full patch notes are listed below.

You can download your copy on itch.io, play the demo on Steam, or by using the embedded link below:

TactiCon

Alpha 10 is being released exclusively as part of TactiCon 2024 and we are thrilled to be a part of this incredible event. TactiCon is a celebration of strategy games on Steam with demos, discounts, exclusive announcements, and developer panels, and is running 18-22 July this year.

We feel very lucky to be listed with some incredible games – including Dwarf Fortress, Timberborn, and Rimworld. Three games that have been a massive inspiration for Adaptory. 🥹

Jevon is also one of the speakers on the panel Inclusion and Diversity in Strategy Games, along with some of her new best friends at Balancing Monkey Games. We had a fantastic chat and yarn about diversity, accessibility, parenting, and all sorts of important topics. You can catch our talk on 8pm CEST, Saturday 20 July (RSVP here).

Please check out all of the TactiCon selected games, watch some panels, download some free demos, and have a great TactiCon!

Hunger

We’ve added the new hunger mechanic that you’ll need to manage to look after your crew. Your explorers will get hungry over time, and you’ll need to discover, farm, or otherwise create food in order to keep them happy and working at peak efficiency.

Explorers now seek out food when they get hungry. Om nom nom nom

Luckily your ship had a healthy supply of emergency ration packs before it crash landed, but many of them got scattered across the world on impact.

Plants

We’ve added wild plants to the game as a long-term source of food for your explorers, and in the demo, we’ve added the brown bernie as the first wild plant.

Each plant type has specific growth requirements (temperature, atmosphere, pressure, light etc.), and they will only grow if all of their growth requirements are being met. Fully grown plants can then be harvested by your explorers with the new “harvest” errand.

Different types of plants have different growth requirements

Goals and priorities

In this release, we’ve completely rewritten explorer priorities, based on your feedback. Explorers now have more flexibility in choosing which task or errand they’ll choose to do and when, and are a bit more intelligent too – they’ll prioritise doing urgent, high-priority, and nearby errands. (They’ll also stop trying to write diary entries while underwater or in the vacuum of space.)

We’ve also added a new screen to manage your explorers and optimise your base. Do you have an explorer that hates digging? Now you can control how often, if at all, they’re subjected to doing the one job they dislike more than anything.

You can now configure task priorities for individual explorers

And a lot more

Along with the usual batch of bug and balance fixes, we’ve also added in some frequently-requested quality of life changes to the demo – such as being able to build wires and pipes around corners with a single drag, regenerating individual explorers when starting a new game, and automatically disconnecting neighbouring connections when deconstructing wires and pipes.

The full patch notes are listed below.

Release notes for Adaptory 0.12 (Alpha 10)

New features

  • Explorer goal selection has been rewritten
    • Explorers no longer prefer tile errands over supply errands; they will always start whatever errand is closest to them
    • When explorers arrive at a tile errand, they now immediately start the errand, rather than turning forward and then back to the side
    • Added experimental “errands” tab to the selected explorer panel, showing all errands that they can do, in priority order
  • Explorer priorities!
    • You can now manually change the priorities of different categories of explorer actions!
    • Explorers will prioritise the errands that are highest priority and closest to them first
    • You can prevent an explorer from doing an entire category of actions, if needed
    • The list of actions will be expanded as we get closer to Early Access
  • You can now force explorers to drop what they’re carrying in one of their inventory slots
  • Added buttons in the new game panel to regenerate individual explorers before starting out
  • Explorers now get hungry!
    • When explorers’ hunger hits 0%, they will work a lot slower
    • Explorers will automatically eat food when they’re idle and hungry
    • Added the emergency ration pack item as an early source of food
    • Some ration packs are available when you crash land, and are also scattered throughout the world
  • Plants!
    • Added wild plants to the game, which can be harvested with the new “harvest” errand
    • Plants have growth requirements (temperature, atmosphere, pressure, light etc.) and will only grow if all of their requirements are being met
    • Fully grown plants can be harvested for food, or may automatically drop their fruit if they get too overgrown
    • Added the “brown bernie” plant to the demo, which requires low light and warm conditions to grow
    • World generation now generates some brown bernie plants as a slow-growing wild food source
  • Redesigned building overlay icons
    • Added tooltips to building overlay icons when hovered over
    • Added “no foundation” overlay icon to buildings that require foundations
    • Added “no ceiling” overlay icon to buildings that require a ceiling
    • Added “no connection” overlay icons to buildings that require a connection to a power network
  • Added a conversation log to explorers, so you can see what they’ve recently been chatting about

Quality of life

  • Explorers will try to give each other a bit more space, by sometimes moving when there is another explorer in the same tile
  • When an explorer deconstructs a wire or liquid pipe, neighbouring connected wires/pipes will now also be disconnected
  • Wire and liquid pipe corners can now be built with a single drag, rather than needing to drag two straight lines
  • The game can now change fullscreen/windowed mode with F5 or Alt+Enter while it is still starting up

Internal

  • Rewrote the liquid network flow resolver, so that networks split with multiple sinks (e.g. vents or oxygen generators) should now be equally split across the network, rather than all packets preferring the nearest sink
  • The gas layer is now rendered behind “foreground” buildings and characters, but in front of “background” buildings
  • Added gas texture to gas layer
  • Tweaked breathability layer to better represent lower levels of oxygen
  • Personal explorer errands such as diary-writing now show progress in pink, not yellow, so it’s clearer they’re not interacting with a tile errand
  • Explorer oxygen level bars now render above all other progress bars
  • Explorers will no longer try to write diary entries in water or the vacuum of space, or on ladders
  • Changed debug info keyboard shortcut from F8 to shift+F8
  • Added keyboard shortcut Alt+Enter to change fullscreen/windowed mode
  • Tweaked the packet renderer to render moving packets more smoothly in-between world ticks
  • Updated liquid network overlay icons to be a bit clearer
  • Updated in-game database text for all buildings
  • The in-game database list of buildings for each building category is now sorted in alphabetical order
  • Added more conversation texts between explorers
  • Explorer conversation reply popups have been moved down so they’re easier to read
  • Added an open source licenses dialog in the Credits panel

Balance

  • Made battery charge/discharge units consistent with power generation units – all are now measured in W (watts), allowing batteries to charge and discharge faster
  • Batteries now require a foundation to charge and discharge
  • Liquid pumps now require a foundation to consume electricity and operate
  • The transmitter now requires a foundation to transmit the distress signal
  • Lights now require a ceiling to consume electricity and operate
  • If explorers have an assigned bed, they will no longer work until they pass out

Fixes

  • Explorers no longer obsess supplying a coal generator over other errands
  • Explorers will no longer take dirt or oxycans to bed when sleepy
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when a liquid network loop was connected to a vent with no liquid pump
  • Fixed a crash if “none” was selected for any dropdown in the sandbox tools
  • Fixed UntranslatedString in resource counter tooltips for items
  • Fixed a crash if a build errand was cancelled while an explorer was supplying it with a resource
  • Explorers can no longer build buildings behind dirt or other solid tiles
  • Fixed 3D sound spatialization imbalance
  • Fixed a number of issues with windowed fullscreen mode not being captured correctly by Windows, OBS, or other capture tools
  • Fixed build panel layout issue at 80% UI scale
  • Fixed a slight text alignment bug in the credits panel
  • Fixed some save files not loading