It’s taken 9,507 commits, twelve physical events, four years, and a baby… but Adaptory is finally HERE! I hope that you enjoy Adaptory. <3

Please also consider leaving an honest review of Adaptory on Steam. Each review makes a massive difference to the game’s visibility – especially any review made in the next two hours. Thank you!

Please consider leaving an honest review of Adaptory on Steam <3

We’ve added LOTS of new content and systems for you to play with in Early Access, and full patch notes from the demo have been listed below. We’re excited for everyone to experience all the new content we’ve been keeping under wraps!

Early Access is the next step in Adaptory’s journey to v1.0. I still have a lot more content and systems and development work planned for future updates, now that there’s a really rock-solid foundation for the game, and I want to hear your ideas and feedback going forwards. We’ve just posted the roadmap for Adaptory’s next three updates on the Steam page!

Adaptory's post-EA roadmap has been announced!

But quickly, a personal note: I’d really like to share my heartfelt gratitude for all the support I’ve had over these four years.

To my partner for their endless support, patience, and helping me embrace this wild idea while going on long walks during lockdown; to my friends and family, who have tolerated so many rambling conversations about video games; to the Wellington musical theatre community, watching my prototype videos in the green room with awe and enthusiasm; to Care, Cass, Evan, Kat, indie.io, Mika, Ruby, and Sabrina, for working with me so patiently and professionally to help me create the game that’s been living in my head; to NZ CODE and Vee, who helped me massively level up my gamedev, made me write an actual business plan, and brought me halfway around the world – twice!; to the NZ gamedev scene for being so welcoming to someone who’s never done this before; to the hundreds of lovely new friends, fans, press, and content creators I’ve had the pleasure to meet in person at Armageddon, NZGDC, PAX, Gamescom, and others; and to our fantastically supportive Discord community, who have tested the demo so thoroughly and passionately – thank you all so, so much.

And please, let me know what you think! If you happen across any bugs, or if anything is confusing – please let us know ASAP (either on Discord or in the Steam Community) so we can patch them today. If you end up streaming the game, please also let me or Ruby know so we can pop in and say hi :D

…

…

Oh yeah, and I’m also thrilled to announce that we’re also releasing the official Adaptory soundtrack today!! Surprise!

Adaptory's official soundtrack is now available!

I feel incredibly lucky to have worked with Sai on his amazing soundtrack, and I’m thrilled that Sai has compiled it into a full OST. You can buy the album on Bandcamp, and it will become available on Steam soon!

The full patch notes for Early Access are listed below.

Release notes for Adaptory 0.16 (Early Access)

New features

(Spoilers ahead!)

  • Complete the distress transmission to continue the story
  • Dig deeper to discover some discovered ruins and some other mysterious objects…
  • CHARLI
    • Key gameplay milestones, such as supplying the distress transmitter, now persist until completed
    • Added guide for dealing with buildings blocked by high pressure
    • Added guide to build a source of oxygen generation once oxygen candles are running low
    • Added guide introducing explorers and how they do things autonomously
    • Added guide for building your first power generator
    • Added notification for discovering alien ruins
    • Added new CHARLI dialog art, both normal and fullscreen
    • Added guide for liquid networks, triggered when trying to build an oxygen generator or liquid pump for the first time
    • Added guide for building a research desk and unlocking your first research node
    • Added guide for gas networks, triggered when trying to build a gas pump for the first time
    • Added notification for low food
    • The guide for “stranded” will now automatically hide itself once the explorer is no longer stranded
    • Previously viewed CHARLI guides can now be re-opened at any time by clicking on the “…” button within CHARLI
    • Replaced “building wires” CHARLI guide with the more comprehensive “power network” guide
  • Added new explorer traits, and updated existing ones, with new buffs and effects:
    • Annoying: -5% happiness for any explorer who is around them too long
    • Archaeologist: +10% happiness when near alien ruins
    • Builder: +5% building and deconstructing speed
    • Brainy: +10% working speed when researching
    • Chatty: More eager to start conversations
    • Cheerful: +5% happiness for any explorer who is around them for a short period
    • Creative: +10% happiness for 2 hours after writing in their diary
    • Curious: +10% happiness for 4 hours after doing research
    • Diligent: +10% working speed
    • Early bird: +10% happiness during the morning (6h-12h)
    • Electrician: Skilled at working with electrical systems
    • Empathetic: Doesn’t get irritated by annoying explorers
    • Fit: -10% movement speed
    • Forgetful: Sometimes forgets what they’re doing
    • Frazzled: -10% happiness when there are more than 20 pending tile errands
    • Gardener: Skilled at working with plants
    • Gruff: -10% happiness when near chatty explorers
    • Hates building: -5% happiness for one hour after building or deconstructing
    • Kind-hearted: Doesn’t get irritated by whiny explorers
    • Lazy: -5% working speed
    • Nature lover: +5% happiness when near plants or alive trees
    • Neat freak: -10% happiness when around items not stored in storage boxes
    • Night owl: +10% happiness during the night (0h-6h)
    • Obsessive: Gets carried away with work and forgets to sleep
    • Optimist: +10% happiness
    • Organised: +10% movement speed when working on a supply errand
    • People person: -20% happiness when lonely, but +20% happiness when having a conversation
    • Pessimist: -10% happiness
    • Plumber: Skilled at working with liquid and gas networks
    • Restless: Takes longer to get a good night’s sleep
    • Self-controlled: Less likely to throw a tantrum if upset
    • Smug: Sad explorers become more sad when this explorer is happy
    • Soft: More upset when sleeping on the ground or hungry
    • Stoic: Doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor and can go hungry for longer.
    • Strict: -10% happiness when near lazy explorers
    • Suspicious: -10% happiness when near optimist explorers
    • Taciturn: Waits longer before wanting to start a conversation
    • Unfit: +10% movement speed
    • Whiny: -5% happiness to nearby explorers when sad
  • Added new explorer buffs:
    • Best friend: +5% happiness after spending a lot of time with their best friend
    • Lonely: -10% happiness when social levels are low
    • High pressure: -10% happiness when in high pressure gas or liquids
    • Near relic: +5% happiness when next to an alien relic
  • Explorers might now throw tantrums and refuse to work if their mood is below 20%
    • The chance of a tantrum being triggered increases as their mood decreases
  • Research!
    • Added research desk building where explorers can do long-term research errands
    • Added mainframe building which consumes power to enable more advanced research
    • Added research analyser building which allows explorers to do artefact research
    • Added “lights” research node, which includes the ability to change the colour of lights in your base
    • Added the writing desk, which boosts nearby research speed by 20%
    • Newly-unlocked buildings from research are highlighted with an icon
  • Automation!
    • Added circuit wires and bridges which form circuit networks
    • Circuit networks do not require power to read signals
    • Added the automation overlay which shows the circuit network
  • Automation buildings
    • Pressure plate, which sends a true signal when an explorer is standing on top of it
    • Circuit switches, which sends a true signal whenever the switch is turned on by an explorer, and false otherwise
    • Circuit ANDs, ORs, and NOTs, which send true based on the relevant boolean operation
  • Automation sensors
    • Element sensors, which send true when the ambient element matches the target element
    • Light sensors, which send true when the ambient light level is above or below the target level
    • Mass sensors, which send true when the ambient pressure is above or below the target mass
    • Power sensors, which send true when the amount of power stored in the connected network is above or below the target level
    • Temperature sensors, which send true when the ambient temperature is above or below the target temperature
    • Time sensors, which send true if the current day time is within the target range
  • Updated existing buildings to support automation
    • Lights now automatically turn off if the circuit network signal is false
    • Doors now automatically stay open when the circuit network is true, and lock when false
    • Coal generators, lights, liquid pumps, and oxygen generators now automatically turn off if the circuit network signal is false
    • Liquid and gas vents close if the circuit network signal is false
  • Gas networks!
    • Added gas pumps, vents, and pipes that can suck up and transport gases into the gas network
    • Added the gas network overlay (default keyboard shortcut = F7 which shows the gas network, inputs, outputs, and valves
  • New buildings
    • Big storage boxes, which are four times larger than storage boxes, but hold ten times more
    • Cryochambers, which store passed-out explorers until they can be revived with crushed glowrose
    • Display stands, which can hold individual alien relics to give nearby explorers a buff to their mood
    • Hatches, which act as vertical doors, allowing your explorers easier access to the ship roof
    • Liquid and gas one-way valves, which prevent liquids from going in any other direction in the pipe it’s attached to
    • Liquid and gas bridges, which connect two liquid or gas pipes over gaps or other pipes, bidirectionally
    • Liquid and gas filters, which filters out a specific liquid or gas into two different output pipes
    • Planter boxes, which can hold seeds and grow specific plants
    • Salt lamps, which emit a weak glow but can be placed on the floor
  • Added light level overlay (default keyboard shortcut = F8)
  • New plants and food
    • Yam-yams, which are harder to grow but provide more nutrition
    • Manaberries, which are difficult to grow but improve explorers’ mood
    • Glowrose plants, which can be used to revive explorers in cryochambers
    • Coralite, which can be used as a source of fuel in coal generators
    • Oddberries, which grow on the ceiling and are delicious
    • Oxybells, which continually emit low levels of oxygen
  • Natural springs
    • Water and magma springs can generate in the world, continually emitting a small amount of mass into the environment
  • New random events
    • Aurora, which can only happen during the night
    • Cargo pod
    • Natural spring in flood
    • Natural spring in drought
    • New natural spring appeared
    • Seed self-planted
    • Solar eclipse, which can only happen during the day
  • Polished and improved explorers
    • Added new explorer homeland, Azagana
    • Added six new explorer hair colour options, and three new explorer shirt options
    • Added more explorer diary entries, conversations, and new idle thoughts
    • Explorers do more jumping and climbing now, with new animations
    • Added two new explorer voices, and cleaned up existing voices
  • Added seven new music tracks by Sai Natarajan
  • All biomes now have ambient soundtracks

Simulation

  • Improved explorer behaviour with supply errands
    • Pending supply errands will now prefer to use new resources that become available wherever possible
    • Changed the default priority of supply errands to be lower than the priority of building errands
    • Supply errands are now satisfied with resources in errand priority order
    • Supplying a storage box is now less urgent than supplying a building
    • These changes should help stop explorers insisting on using far-away resources to build new buildings
  • Changed non-urgent explorer personal errands (such as going to sleep or eating) to be a lower priority than the default priority of errands
    • For example, a tired explorer (<= 15% stamina) will prefer to continue digging rather than going to bed
    • Once exhausted (<= 10% stamina), going to bed will become urgent, and more important than digging
    • Non-urgent personal errands will still be more more important than errands set to priority 4 (lowest)
  • Explorers will now start doing errands as soon as they get to a tile that can do that errand, rather than to the position that was closest to them when they wanted to start doing it
  • Buildings improvements
    • Most buildings that are empty or blocked no longer consume power
    • Hatches will now stay open while explorers are present in the tile immediately below the hatch
    • Explorers can now be assigned to more than one bed, and will prefer to use their nearest assigned bed when they get tired
    • An explorer without a bed will now automatically assign themselves to the first bed that they finish building
    • Beds can no longer be used when inoperable (such as buried or without a foundation)
  • Liquid and gas network improvements
    • Networks can now have multiple connections in a row, and will continue to work as expected beyond the first sink
    • Switching to liquid networks in the middle of simulation frames should no longer cause visual jumps while the renderer catches up
    • The maximum distance from a pipe network source to a sink has been increased from 100 to 1000
    • Fixed a bug where vents would only emit at 50% of the defined maximum emission rate
  • Many buildings can now also be marked as “urgent”, which will make all errands created by that building urgent as well
    • Buildings can be made urgent if they can be supplied, locked, or toggled
  • Increased item and explorer falling speed from 5 tiles/second to 6.67 tiles/second
  • The resouce counter now includes mass and items being carried by explorers
  • Explorers can now access a 1x1 gap immediately below an open door
  • Liquid and gas mass in space exposure tiles on the borders of the playable world now rapidly lose mass (50% per second) to emulate the infinite expanse of space

Performance

  • Significantly increased simulation performance
    • Significantly improved performance of explorer simulation, especially in larger worlds, by caching pathfinding where possible, and optimising when to recalculate accessibility networks
    • Changed errand and item accessibility calculations to be asynchronous, significantly improving performance in larger bases
    • Explorer activity calculations are now done asynchronously, improving UPS performance
    • Significantly improved performance of supply errand tests, especially in larger worlds
    • Also improved performance of almost every other simulation (element, building, item, plants)
  • Significantly increased rendering performance
    • Improved rendering performance of all user interfaces, network overlays, and overlay layers
    • Updated gas and liquid shaders with new art, higher performance, and smoother movement
    • Improved rendering performance of all solid element renderers
    • Improved rendering performance of liquid, gas, solid, and space renderers by optimising when data needed to be recalculated
    • Increased resolution and improved performance of background stars parallax
  • Improved user interface performance
    • Improved the performance of the selected character dialog while an explorer was selected
    • The initial loading screen now takes less time to load
  • Rewrote the method used to interpolate between moving characters (explorers, items, and mass packets) again, so rendering should be much smoother at a wider range of FPS and UPS

Balance

  • Random events (meteor, solar flare, etc.)
    • Random events will no longer begin until the tutorial is either finished or skipped
    • Increased random event budget when creating a new world to 0.5 (was 0), so the first random event will start earlier
  • World generation
    • When starting a new game, the crashed ship will be surrounded by carbon dioxide, providing more immersion and movement
    • Increased the number of plants, world features, and artefacts created during world generation
    • Reduced the number of buildings created during world generation
    • Added an uncovered data chip in the initial crashed ship during world generation
    • Added another 4kg of ration packs in the initial crashed ship
    • Increased the amount of oxygen generated in the initial crashed ship
  • Explorers
    • Explorers will now want to urgently go to bed below 10% stamina (was 7.5%)
    • Reduced explorer base happiness from 80% to 75%
    • Increased the building speed of wires from 200% to 300%
    • Increased the building speed of pipes from 100% to 200%
    • Increased explorer food consumption rate from 30g/sec to 100g/sec
    • Starving explorers will now urgently seek out food instead of continuing to work
    • Increased the maximum food that can be picked up from one unit to two units
    • (Demo only) Reduced effect of starving buff from -50% happiness to -40% happiness, as it’s very difficult to grow food in the demo
  • Buildings
    • Reduced coal generator and oxycan holder maximum emit pressure (same element) to 100kg (was 1000kg)
    • Decreased liquid vent maximum emit pressure (same element) from 10000kg to 2000kg
    • Increased liquid vent maximum emit pressure (different element) from 25kg to 100kg
    • Reduced liquid vent maximum output rate from 50 kg/sec to 2 kg/sec (the same as the capacity of a liquid network)
    • Reduced solar panel maximum power generation from 100 W to 85 W
    • Reduced light power consumption from 25 W to 15 W

Accessibility

  • Custom keybindings are now supported!
  • The world camera will no longer move when the game window has lost focus
  • The middle mouse button can now be used to move the camera – same as the right mouse button
  • Highlighted UI elements (e.g. in the tutorial) are animated and more clearly visible
  • Added “ambience volume” option to options panel
  • Added keyboard shortcuts for “urgent priority” (P), “normal priority” (Shift+P), and “harvest” (H)
  • Added “return camera home” (Ctrl+H) keyboard shortcut to move the camera back to the starting position and zoom
  • Added fixed “zoom in”/”zoom out” (Shift+., Shift+,) keyboard shortcuts to zoom the camera in and out by fixed amounts
  • Added a slight shadow to pending tile errands to stand out more on some tiles (such as sand in sunlight)
  • CHARLI messages can be closed by pressing Escape
  • Inaccessible errands (such as dig and build) are now rendered in yellow, making them more visually distinct to accessible errands
  • Added a new “not accessible” overlay icon to highlight buildings that could never be used by an explorer
  • The font size of inline feedback messages are now scaled by UI scale %
  • Conversations between explorers are now scaled by UI scale %
  • Increased the size of dials on storage boxes
  • Changed all checkboxes from red crosses to blue ticks
  • Added experimental support for changing the mass and temperature units used in the game
    • Mass and temperature units are now formatted more consistently throughout the game

Quality of life

  • Adaptory now has so many different options, we’ve split them into separate tabs
  • Added loading screen tips to the start of the game – and I’m looking for more!
  • Added “jump to position” link in CHARLI text for incoming meteors
  • Building a light will now automatically change the layer to the power overlay
  • Overlay icons (e.g. “no power”, “blocked”) can now be clicked, selecting the building it’s attached to
  • Tiles can now be built directly on top of ladders as well, without having to deconstruct the ladder first
  • Clicking on an explorer’s name in a CHARLI dialog will now also select the explorer while moving to them
  • Changing a volume slider in Options is now immediately previewed while dragging the slider

Internal

  • CHARLI
    • Added steps to learn about game pausing/unpausing to the initial CHARLI tutorial
    • The “no beds” guide now displays once an explorer is sleeping on the floor, rather than only feeling sleepy
    • The “diary entry” guide will now highlight the explorer that’s written a diary entry
    • The “oxygen tutorial” guide will now trigger earlier – when your explorers are starting to run low on oxygen (less than 10kg accessible), and hopefully before they start constantly running out of oxygen to breathe
  • Improved visuals
    • Slightly tweaked rendering gamma of all fonts to improve the quality of rendered text
    • Added biome background textures to all tiles not affected by space exposure
    • Improved light level renderer to better distinguish between super bright (e.g. solar) and moderately bright (e.g. light) levels
    • Explorer sleeping zzz’s are now rendered above buildings and solid tiles, so it’s more obvious when they’re sleeping
    • Added a nice little fade-in effect when starting or loading a world, while any assets are being loaded
    • Added particle when an explorer finishes building or deconstructing a building
    • Added occasional sparks particles from broken equipment in your starting ship
    • Added a subtle darkness shader to add a little bit more visual depth and ambience to large element regions
    • Rewrote explorers’ laser shader
    • Updated loading splash screens
  • Polished the selected explorer panel
    • Explorer traits are now listed in the Properties tab
    • Now displays their stamina, hunger, and social values as bars
    • Rather than always displaying a fixed “working at” (which was tied to their movement speed), the dialog now displays their most relevant speed; for example, “digging at”, “moving at”, “building at” and others
    • The selected explorer About tab now always shows all buffs modifying happiness
    • Carrying and lungs has been moved into the Properties tab
    • The game now keeps track of which explorers have spent the most time around other explorers; this is visible in the “Social” tab
    • Selecting an explorer will now play different sounds (using their voices!) if they’re happy or sad
    • Multiplicative buffs are now displayed with their effective impact rather than the multiplier; for example, sleeping is now listed as +2%/sec rather than x -400%
  • Polished explorer traits
    • Explorers are now generated with two traits based on their personality type; one generally positive, and one generally negative
    • Added tooltips for each explorer trait
    • Renamed “archaeology lover” trait to “archaeologist”, “goth” to “loner”
  • The game no longer allows full game save files to be loaded in the demo
  • The load/save game dialog now only shows the 100 most recently modified save files
  • Updated global user interface to be more anchored to the screen
  • Tile information, preview selections, and preview building types are no longer rendered if the mouse cursor is captured by another UI
  • Added a physics simulation to explorers’ hair when moving
  • Added looping sounds for dragging other pipes and wires when building
  • Improved language and icons for liquid and gas network connections
    • “Network input” is now “Network source”
    • “Network output” is now “Network sink”
  • Tweaked the layout of the research tree panel
  • Changed lux tooltip from 2dp to 0dp
  • Added space exposure (blocked) to tiles that have space exposure, but are blocked by something like a panel
  • Removed selected buildings’ empty “errands” tab
  • You can now assign explorers to specific beds, and change assignments at any time
  • The supply panel for storage boxes and planter boxes now only shows item types and elements that have been discovered
    • “(any solids)” and “(any items)” will still select all elements and items, even those that haven’t been discovered yet
  • Randomly-generated explorers now have a 3% chance to be a predefined or custom explorer
  • Renamed “oxygen candles” to “oxycans” throughout the game
  • Diary entries are now timestamped as “Day 12”, not “Day 12.1”
  • Loading a save file will now restore the paused, speed, and overlay layer at the time of save
  • Changed default Mac launch option on Steam from x64 to arm64
  • Updated Spine runtimes to 4.2
  • Updated Htmlunit library to 4.17

Fixes

  • Fixed explorers trying to move into a 1-tile high gap above a door, and immediately being pushed out
  • Fixed a rare crash where an item could have slightly more reserved mass than the item itself
  • Fixed load/save game dialog crashing if there were more than 100 save files to list
  • Fixed a rare bug where CHARLI could open fullscreen but then not display any content
  • Fixed a bug where CHARLI could crash if CHARLI was talking about the transmitter while the transmission was being sent
  • Fixed the first active event’s tooltip text being sometimes hidden by the “Hide CHARLI” tooltip
  • Fixed alien ruins from being immediately visible when generating a new world
  • Fixed a rare crash that could occur when trying to render a texture region initialised or reset by another thread
  • Fixed a rare bug where an uninitialised world could be saved to disk
  • Fixed CHARLI tutorial displaying “your explorers have dug out a pile of dirt” before any dig errand had ever been placed
  • Fixed CHARLI tutorial for uncovering an artefact sometimes not triggering
  • You can no longer try to issue a move command for an explorer that is dead
  • Fixed a bug where some later explorer traits might not be selected in explorer generation
  • Fixed a liquid drop turning into two splash particles when impacting a solid or liquid surface
  • Fixed items and explorers falling at different speeds
  • Fixed a rare concurrency crash that could occur when starting up a new game
  • Fixed rotate left/right buttons in build panel not displaying their keyboard shortcuts (R and Shift+R by default)
  • Fixed a crash that could occur if an errand was cancelled but already removed by another thread
  • Fixed a pathfinding bug where explorers running out of oxygen may try to access a point through a solid wall but within the same accessibility network
  • Explorers will no longer try to idly wander to tiles hidden by fog of war
  • Fixed some dropdowns from not correctly displaying selected options
  • Fixed layer icons (e.g. ‘pending power network connection’, ‘network input’) getting in the way of trying to place new building blueprints
  • Fixed keyboard shortcuts for world actions (dig, deconstruct, etc.) and systems (escape menu, priorities, etc.) not playing a sound when used
  • Fixed “light” building being listed in the elements in-game database
  • Fixed CHARLI text and buttons sometimes being cut off or incorrectly placed at non-100% UI scales
  • Fixed some areas of the main menu screen being clickable and making noise
  • Fixed the selected explorer tab (such as “Social” or “Errands”) resetting back to “About” when another explorer is selected
  • Fixed explorer panels saying “supplying dirt” when they’re actually supplying items
  • Fixed inline feedback messages (e.g. “requires foundation”) always rendering in the center of the screen
  • Fixed highlighted user interface elements still being highlighted when the containing dialog was closed
  • Fixed highlighted user interface elements and world areas still being highlighted when CHARLI was minimised
  • Fixed a memory leak that could occur with complex user interfaces over long play sessions while a dialog was left open
  • Fixed a memory leak in the liquid pipe network simulation
  • Fixed the resource counter collapse icon pointing in the wrong direction
  • Fixed a crash if trying to view an explorer diary with hundreds of entries
  • Fixed a crash if trying to build a liquid pipe network that was longer than 100 pipes
  • Fixed a very rare race condition where an autosave could be made while leaving a game
  • Fixed an explorer being able to get stuck in the floor of a door and not getting pushed out
  • Fixed “locking a door” and “unlocking a door” being the wrong way around in the selected explorer panel