Tag: spaceslog mods

DevSlog

Early Access week retrospective and other information.

Produno

Retrospective

Hey everyone!

Its been a little over a week since we launched into early access here, so I want to share a few numbers and some information regarding our next update. We sold roughly 800 copies with a refund rate of around 11%. Whilst we have sold much less than I had hoped, I’m confident with more updates, more people will decide to jump in and play. Our refund rate is around average for an early access title and actually much lower than average for this particular genre. This tells me those that have purchased the game are relatively happy with it, or understanding of its current release state. source

I’ve seen the reviews stating there is nothing in the game, or this seems more of a tech demo. I do feel that’s a bit of an unfair representation and may be due to a lack of onboarding, which I will continue to work on and improve in order to show what content we do have.

Of course, we did only release into early access here Friday, meaning there will be much less content than other similar titles in the same genre. So please do keep this in mind when deciding to buy this game or not.

Our next update

I have already released a couple of smaller updates and I’m now working on the next larger update. I will try and prioritise the things asked for the most, which currently includes cooking, fuel production and crafting.

Lots of people have also been posting various bugs and issues which I am also working on fixing. This is the first time a large amount of people have played the game, so naturally there will be lots of extra issues that I or the other testers have not found leading up to this point. So please be patient whilst I try and get through them all. I am only one person and there is only so much I can do at a time.

I will be opening the experimental branch here within the next couple of days for people to play on and test if they wish to do so. Though keep in mind, there may be bugs and issues which could ruin saves etc. You can find more info about this over on our Discord.

Community Updates

Amazingly we already have a few mods in the Steam workshop!

User Kolcio138 has created a Healwort mod:

Grow and harvest the Healwort plant which can be used to heal your crew’s injuries

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3713849263

User TinyPanda has created the Training Dummy mod. And what’s even more amazing is this uses injected GDScript code, injected using his own SpaceSlog mod loader app he has already created

Place down a training dummy your crew members can use during entertainment time to practice combat skills

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3715005281

Over on our Discord we already have users with several in game year playthroughs. Here’s a screenshot of user BloodStarOfficials ship!

We will continue to feature ship designs and mods so please come post yours over on our discord or forums.

That is it for today. Don’t forget that if you want to help us you can;

  • Post a review
  • Write a guide for those that may be struggling
  • Or even ask your favourite steamer to play the game

And remember, you may only be one person, as am I, but together is when great things are made. That is why every little helps.

Thanks

Marcus (Produno)

DevSlog

Modability

Produno

My background in gamedev comes from modding games, which i’ve been doing for the past decade. With over half a million unique downloads the most popular modification being A World of Ice and Fire for Mount and Blade Warband. I could only dream for SpaceSlog to reach a similar amount of popularity. I do of course realise there are many factors as to why the mod was and still is so popular. Having been set within the Game of Thrones world being one of them and being created for an already well established game another.

But i didn’t write this post to talk about mods in other games. I wrote this post to talk specifically about mod support in SpaceSlog.

JSON

I decided to use JSON to hold all external data which is then imported into internal data structures on initial game load. All of the games data is contained in a folder aptly named DATA and can be accessed and changed by anyone brave enough to do so. You can also copy any data here and paste it into your own MODULES folder. Once this mod has been ticked in the ingame mod menu, you will be prompted to restart the game where all these files will be added to that internal data structure we previously mentioned.

Below you can see the current ingame module menu. I still need to add a few things here – an image preview the modder can add plus the ability to adjust mod load order. This will allow the player to decide which mods should or can overwrite other mods if they contain objects with the same ID’s.

Modification select menu

I wont go into the specifics on how modding actually works in this post. That will be for another time but here is a quick example of an item in SpaceSlog and how it looks like in the JSON file. It’s also worth noting that everything here can still change dramatically, though i think i have the basic architecture down for this now.

    "CryoPod": {
        "object_class": "Furniture",
        "object_name": "Cryo Pod",
        "description": "Freezes creatures in time, allowing them to rest for as long as this item has power.",
        "movement_cost": 0,
        "deterioration_rate": 10,
        "flammability": 40,
        "market_value": 200,
        "comfort": 1,
        "material_types": {
        	"primary_mats": ["Titanium", "Gold"],
        	"primary_mats_amount": 3,
        	"secondary_mats": ["Silicon"],
        	"secondary_mats_amount": 2,
        },
        "engineering_skill_required": 3,
        "work_to_build": 1,
        "work_to_uninstall": 1,
        "rotatable": true,
        "draw_width": 1,
        "draw_height": 2,
        "width": 1,
        "height": 2,
        "health": {
            "max_health": 100,
        },
        "graphics": {
            "graphics_class": "GraphicsMultiple",
            "shader_type": "ColourMask",
            "textures": {
                "texture_path": "Textures/Entities/Building/Furniture/CryoPod",
            },
        },
        "component_nodes": {
        	"PowerReceiver": {
        		"power_required": 50,
        	},
        	"Light": {
            	        "light_map_path": null,
        	},
        },
    },

You can see above there are lots of options for the modder to change, including being able to add any pre-built components to any object in the game. I hope to eventually allow the possibility to create new components too. This could mean endless possibilities for mod creation.

Conclusion

Mod support is something i am very passionate about and i have spent a lot of extra time to ensure good mod compatibility for SpaceSlog. I cannot wait to get the game out there and see what weird and wonderful things people can come up with. I expect to see strange new worlds and unthinkable alien races among other things! If you want to discuss further or have ideas for mod support, then please either head on over to our Forums or join our Discord.