Dev Update: Tech tree revamp, Synergies & Improvements, Weapon Tier Balance

devupdate

In last month’s dev update, I discussed the new ship crew XP and salvage system, Temporal Rift investigations, diplomacy AI improvements, and details of a complete overhaul of the galaxy generation code and planet distributions. A lot has happened since that patch went live, and overall it’s definitely been a productive month. We had some disappointment when Predestination was unfortunately rejected by GOG.com, but we made great progress on the tech trees, iterated on several features based on feedback, and laid the ground work for victory conditions. We also had some internal discussions about the increased competition in the 4X genre and spent some time writing a report on Predestination for NI Screen (a company who gave us a small business loan last year). And there was some really happy news too as our Project Manager Tina Lauro and our Art Director Steven Pollock got married (to each other!).

Read on for a preview of the tech trees as they will be in the next major update and details of new weapons technologies in addition to changes to terraforming, shield facing, weapon mods, and more. We’ll also take a brief look at work on the start sequence and victory screen that will let us tell the story of Predestination.

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Announcement: Predestination will not be on GOG.com

drmfree

Ever since our original Kickstarter campaign, many of you have told us that you would prefer to get Predestination on a 100% DRM-free platform and that your platform of choice would be GOG.com. When GOG recently launched its new In Development section (similar to Steam’s Early Access), we received a number of emails and messages with renewed interest asking if we had heard of this development and whether we would be releasing on it. Troy from 4X community site eXplorminate even wrote an article last year titled “Devs, Want More Money?” in which he expressed bafflement that indies aren’t queueing up to get on GOG:

“What I’m talking about is the tendency of small developers to fixate on Steam while ignoring other perfectly viable downloading services like GOG (formerly known as GoodOldGames.com). I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many devs ignore this outlet for their games.” — eXplorminate

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