HAIL ATMOSIA!
Man, this game and your screenshots are making me itch towards getting it. Just how complex is it? Is the programming neccesary? Or is it just if-then sentences? Can you cheat and make sure you get more out of your resources like in games like Ark?
It looks VERY interesting!
It can be very complex if you want it to be. Or you can keep it simple and live in a tin can. It’s up to you. Don’t feel like you have to make the crazy stuff I’m showing off the first day you play the game. I’ve been at it a couple weeks. You learn the basics and build something crappy and learn from it and build something slightly less crappy and then redo it five times and learn more and then build something even less crappy, etc etc. I’ve just been through that cycle enough times that some of my creations are starting to look crazier. But trust me, I could go into all the design changes I’d make to that atmospherics setup if I knew then what I know now :P
The programming is necessary if you want an efficient solar setup at the very least. It seems intimidating at first, but I found a tutorial someone made of how to get a basic auto tracking solar setup going and then have figured out the rest from there. It’s simple stuff when you really get down to it. Like my atmospheric setup reads a pressure value from a gas sensor, compares it to the desired pressure value I have set in a memory chip that I can adjust, and if it’s lower than the memory chip’s value it kicks a pump on to push air into the base until it isn’t. Once you figure out the nuts and bolts of how the game handles those things it’s just a matter of coming up with crazier and crazier logic designs to do what you want.
You can’t cheat to make iron give you more iron or anything like that that I know of. But you can edit your save game. And there’s a creative mode that lets you just spawn in whatever you want.
Thanks Eric - Thats both immensely interesting, and somewhat off-putting :-D
I think I’ll check back on this thread, and the games steam page over the next few months.
So, beyond the builder aspects and surviving in the void of space, are there external threats in the game (like Minecraft had nighttime as a dangerous time to be out, or things wanting to break in)?
Another way to ask is: Is there tension and how is the tension built?
Just survival for now. They have guns you can build apparently but I don’t know if they even work.
It’s pretty easy, you will only feel rushed while starting for the first time due to pure ignorance. Once you start to understand the game and it’s systems (which 100% requires lots of youtube/wiki but is otherwise fairly consistent and logical) then the time limit of running out of oxygen is very generous. Especially since they give you a whole new tank to start refilling canisters.
I got to the point where I had my solar panels automated, which massively ups your energy production unless you sit there and rotate them constantly yourself. I started in on the atmosphere but then failed to find anything past that I would want to do. So a whole lot more content is needed and work on the UI before I would start recommending it but if the detailed system building looks cool now you will probably like it.
I just typed that last sentence before happening to glance at the new subject title. Thanks, nearly spit my coffee out.
Extended rambling on UI - One big point of concern is the direction it’s moving, which is very much like modded minecraft but with little to no external UI, it’s all built into the game world. This would be awesome except I don’t know how they are going to search for items. For example mid/late game minecraft is only playable for me with mods like Applied Energistics 2 and Refined Storage, which all have interfaces you can type search terms in to find what you wanted. Stationeers already needs something like this for the fabricator, and I think it’s only going to get a lot worse. Hopefully he comes up with a way to capture the keyboard so you can search for things.
Base Mk3 is under construction. Only have the workshop going so far but it’s the best one I’ve designed yet.
Furnace is a lot more complicated/capable than my last one too.
Power!
I’m working on a short tutorial video for logic circuits. I should have it out in the next few days, for anyone that’s playing and might be confused.
“How’s the station coming along?” I hear you ask. Well, let me show it to you.
She’s not all finished on the outside yet, but there aren’t any neighbors to look over and judge you on the moon.
12 solar panels charge 3 large batteries, that are then wired into the various power controllers throughout the station. Easily expandable as needs grow.
Pressurizing the main airlock
Fresh air on your face feels nice after hours outside in your suit
Gotta store your suit somewhere
Atmospherics is a complex beast full of wires, pipes and tanks. Here is where all the air gets filtered, separated, heated/cooled, mixed to the appropriate ratio and then pumped back out to the rest of the base.
There are six gases in the game currently. Each is separated into its own tank for later use. They’re separated behind glass/doors so that they can be temperature controlled separately from the room. Basically there’s a heating/cooling loop that goes up into a small structure on the roof. One half of the loop goes out to radiators on the roof that will cool the water I’ve filled the loop with. The other half goes into a room filled with heated, pressurized pollutant that I had no other use for. Logic circuits monitor the temperature of that room and turn on electrical heaters as needed to keep it to the temperature I have set. This is basically a heat exchanger. It comes down through the roof and branches off into the two sides where the tanks are. You can see the yellow pipe with the radiators at the top of the tank room. That will heat that room if the tanks are too cold, and absorb/radiate off extra heat if they’re too warm. This means all of my breathing air is pre heated/cooled before it’s mixed and sent throughout the base, meaning I don’t have to mess with localized heaters/coolers and the associated logic circuitry in every single room :)
These displays show the temperature of the coolant loop (upper) and the heated room (lower) in kelvin. I can adjust the desired value by prying off the wall plating there and adjusting a memory chip embedded back there. I ought to be able to wire it up to a more easily accessible switch/dial/etc but I haven’t figured those out yet. Similar setups allow me to set the desired pressure for each room of the base.
Specialized tank attachments come off of each of the main storage tanks for various purposes. For example, here on the left the yellow tank connector in the floor can have large portable tanks attached to it to flush their contents into the filtration system. This way I can scavenge exhaust from my furnace, for example, and separate it back out into usable gases. Just remember to turn off the intake valves or you’ll likely leak flammable/poisonous gas back into the rest of the base. I learned that one the hard way. Atmosphere was about 60% oxygen, 10% hydrogen from a valve misconfiguration, turned on a wall heater and WHOOSH. D: The smaller scuba style tank connector on the right allows me to fill the propellant tanks on the space suits with compressed CO2 for jetpacking purposes. Another way I’m turning something that would otherwise be waste into a useful product.
The main workshop. All the machines you need to make stuff. Lockers contain ingots ready to be used for manufacturing, and spare parts/leftover construction supplies for later use.
Furnace room. Here’s Ol’ Sparky.
And Hot Mama. Complete with custom fuel mixture intake that I can set to whatever pressure I like, a backpressure regulator to keep the furnace around the pressure I need during smelting, and an emergency release valve that will vent the contents of the furnace through some radiators to cool it and then into a storage tank if things go bad.
This room also has blast doors (in case things go wrong) and its own contained filtration system to suck out the pollutants that all the smelting/refining puts into the air. It helps cut down on it spreading to other parts of the base. Red light when in use ;)
Sunrise from the observation deck ;)
Another view
Thanks for all of the writeups and pictures, looks cool.
That’s an impressive base, especially so after I spent all that time fiddling with gases and came up with nothing even close to as functional.
Wow that looks strikingly familiar to Subnautica’s architectural style (from the inside).
This game is calling to me. I love the emphasis on experimentation and learning that made Kerbal such a joy. I think I should wait till it’s further along the development cycle, I just need to resist temptation until subnautica comes out next week.
I see a couple of (I suspect small) patches have come out for this. Is anyone still enjoying this?
I still play and put out videos! I like the game a lot.
Yeah, I was just watching the last two latest ones. Do you set goals for yourself when you start? (Like I want to build this, etc).
I try to, yeah. With my latest games, I’ve been trying to be more efficient. I really need to spend more time on managing gases. I made a chamber to try to separate gases into different tanks and I don’t think I understand the tanks very well. Or maybe I just don’t understand plumbing. Something is amiss! I know @Eric_Majkut streams it a good bit as well.
Big update today and it’s a pretty cool one! You have to grow food and stuff now. I’m gonna stream the crap out of this tonight.
Thanks for letting us know.
I don’t own the game, but I check the steam page every week to see if there is a new update. It’s been a few weeks since the last one and I was worried it meant they were slowing down, glad that isn’t true!
EDIT: I love the sound of the Mars scenario, maybe that’s when I will jump in.
I can’t freaking wait.