PDX Con Remixed: Surviving Mars Schedule

[Portable Grump]

Hello Survivors, welcome to PDX Con Remixed!
We have some exciting events and activities scheduled, you can view the full Surviving Mars event list here:

Friday May 21st
22:00 CEST - Reviving Mars: Meet the New Team - Discord
Get your ass to Discord and meet the folks at Abstraction Games, the new developers of Surviving Mars! Find out what it takes to bring a breath of fresh air to the red planet and ask your questions!

Saturday May 22nd
10:50 CEST - Meet the New Mars: Abstraction - Twitch
Welcome back to Surviving Mars! We’ve got the team from Abstraction here to discuss what it’s been like working with your favorite interplanetary survival game. Join us for a look at where the game has been, and where it’s headed next!

11:55 CEST - Is there life on Mars? Surviving Mars Quiz - Discord
Are you a true Survivor? Challenge yourself with this quiz about Mars, Survival, and Surviving Mars, and win prizes!

We hope to see you there!

 

[mrmajkl]

I can't wait

 

[DominusNovus]

The teaser image from PDXCo makes me hope its about colonizing lava tubes.

 

[Ixal]

The teaser image from PDXCo makes me hope its about colonizing lava tubes.

Speaking of which, is that posted somewhere?

 

[DominusNovus]

Speaking of which, is that posted somewhere?

I have no idea. I'm sure it will be shortly. Just checked twitter, nothing there yet.

 

[mrmajkl]

I have no idea. I'm sure it will be shortly. Just checked twitter, nothing there yet.

 

[DominusNovus]

View attachment 721715

There we go! I’m guessing the shooting stars in the background are meant to suggest some of the danger of living above the surface, rather than in tubes.

If I’m being very optimistic, it could allow for earlier human settlement, before domes.

 

[Jon_Smith]

You are being waaaay to optimistic in my opinion

Creating an underground building mechanic would be a huuuuuge undertaking and quite franking, the game is pretty much maxed out on threads as it is and couldn't handle an update like that.

If that artwork is anything more than just, artwork, then perhaps linked to a mystery with some underground stuff going on. There is already a mystery involving sinkholes, and these new devs it seems are fond of copying and pasting existing code (The RC safari for example, which has some bugs and strange behaviour because it was a copy paste of the RC Transport I think). I can see them re-using the sinkholes code for a new mystery.

 

[Morbus Bubbonicus]

Anothey map layer, underground domes, tunnels, sinkholes. Could be anything

 

[Jon_Smith]

Anothey map layer, underground domes, tunnels, sinkholes. Could be anything

Like I said, extremely unlikely. With all the stuff Green Planet added the engine is pretty much maxed out. Adding another map layer, no that won't be happening.

Underground tunnels, well we already have them, sinkholes, we already have them. So those would both just be a rehash of existing functionality.

 

[DominusNovus]

Like I said, extremely unlikely. With all the stuff Green Planet added the engine is pretty much maxed out. Adding another map layer, no that won't be happening.

Underground tunnels, well we already have them, sinkholes, we already have them. So those would both just be a rehash of existing functionality.

We have underground tunnels?

 

[Jon_Smith]

We have underground tunnels?

Yes, its in the infrastructure section. Its been in the vanilla game for years and can be built immediately upon landing. Before the Green Planet DLC when you could do any landscaping it was the only way to get from one 'level' to another.

 

[DominusNovus]

Yes, its in the infrastructure section. Its been in the vanilla game for years and can be built immediately upon landing. Before the Green Planet DLC when you could do any landscaping it was the only way to get from one 'level' to another.

Oh, those. Thats not actually underground, thats just a point to point transportation system.

 

[Jon_Smith]

Oh, those. Thats not actually underground, thats just a point to point transportation system.

And what exactly do you consider to be 'underground' then......? If they make 'tunnels' to say transport colonists they'll just work in the same way.

 

[DominusNovus]

And what exactly do you consider to be 'underground' then......? If they make 'tunnels' to say transport colonists they'll just work in the same way.

An actual underground layer, like in city building games such as Sim City and Cities Skylines.

 

[Jon_Smith]

An actual underground layer, like in city building games such as Sim City and Cities Skylines.

I already pointed out that its incredibly unlikely they could add another map layer given the engine is at its limits.
The best you could hope for is more tunnels in the same way the current ones work, which basically teleport things. That being said I don't think that would be a good addition to the game,

 

[Walshicus]

I already pointed out that its incredibly unlikely they could add another map layer given the engine is at its limits.
The best you could hope for is more tunnels in the same way the current ones work, which basically teleport things. That being said I don't think that would be a good addition to the game,

Yeah, but you don't really seem to be basing that opinion on anything tangible.

 

[Jon_Smith]

Yeah, but you don't really seem to be basing that opinion on anything tangible.

Ok, well rather than just dismissing it you can ask me how I come to that conclusion?

Since you seem skeptical I'll explain. I am part of the modding community which includes modders like ChoGGI and SkiRich who are arguably the biggest modders for Surviving Mars and also used to frequently discuss these things with the original developers. These modders also fixed most of the bugs introduced by the new devs after the tourism patch broke a bunch of things, this is testament to how well they know the code.

I am basing my statement on information and opinions from them, including discussions on the modding Discord (regarding the engine at its limits) which was also discussed by the original dev team with these modders. I think thats a strong basis for my opinion, the words of the original developers and the two modders who know the game code better than anyone else.

My skepticism towards the new devs comes from their new work and seeing how sloppy to coding is, I have both seen this myself first hand and seen how frustrated some of the older modders are with the new code.

I'll give you a tangible example, the RC rover, there are so many issues with this and issues that stem off it. One issue recently discussed on the discord was related to how colonist collision has started acting weird in some places and they have been seen walking through dome walls. The RC Safari was coded without an entrance so colonists walk through the side of the vehicle, reach the center and are erased until the journey is over. Its also a copy and paste of the RC Transport with also of redundant code left over from that vehicle, it has no asset for either damaged or destroyed (I cannot remember which) so it reverts it looking like an RC Transport if it is in that state.

The Nursery bug is an example of the sloppy coding, there is no clear reason why they took out the checks in the code to check the age of a colonist before assigning them. We have access to the old source code and the new so can see that they did infact deliberately remove that functionality. They also arbitrarily removed code the old devs introduced called I think SaveGameFixup which was intended to correct any issues with an existing save file after a patch was installed after, years ago, they broke some saves with their new patch. The new devs, removing this, broke existing saves with their tourism patch, I can only guess why they removed it as to make their coding simpler/easier.

This all paints the picture of sloppy coding or rushed work with little care for detail or continuity so combine that with a maxed out engine (based on the original devs and prolific modders opinions) I think the liklihood of these devs making a new, more powerful engine, which is a massive undertaking, is really really unlikely, especially since it would probably change the running specs of the game and maybe make it no longer work on a bunch of players machines.

 

[Private Prinny]

So is there anywhere a small recap of noteworthy news? Updates on planned content, Roadmap, etc?

 

[Jon_Smith]

So is there anywhere a small recap of noteworthy news? Updates on planned content, Roadmap, etc?

Well, I'll just get more negative feedback as you guys don't like what I tell you, but if you look at the code in the Tito (Tourism) patch you can see a few things such as the addition of PreciousMinerals, these are distinct from PreciousMetals (rare metals) which don't occur as surface deposits. Precious Minerals is a new resource. You see it all over the code elsewhere including places like the ResourcePreset.lua, this contains the various levels of resources a map might have, basically a weighting for each kind of underground deposit (high, low, average etc). So in it there is presets for Water, Concrete, Metals, Precious Metals, Polymers (although these are just surface deposits so look abit different) and now precious Minerals.

So there will be a new resource that can be extracted from Underground deposits.
Here is some code examples, including Polymers to compare.

PlaceObj("ResourcePreset", {
  "name",
  "PreciousMinerals_VeryHigh",
  "resource",
  "PreciousMinerals",
  "RepulseSame",
  6400,
  "RepulseSameLayer",
  6400,
  "Subs1Count",
  range(10, 12),
  "Subs1Volume",
  range(300, 600),
  "Subs1WeightVery Low",
  10,
  "Subs1WeightLow",
  20,
  "Subs1WeightAverage",
  40,
  "Subs1WeightHigh",
  20,
  "Subs1WeightVery High",
  10,
  "Subs2Count",
  range(4, 6),
  "Subs2Volume",
  range(1800, 2400),
  "Subs2WeightVery Low",
  5,
  "Subs2WeightLow",
  10,
  "Subs2WeightAverage",
  25,
  "Subs2WeightHigh",
  40,
  "Subs2WeightVery High",
  20
})
PlaceObj("ResourcePreset", {
  "name",
  "PreciousMetals_VeryHigh",
  "resource",
  "PreciousMetals",
  "RepulseSame",
  6400,
  "RepulseSameLayer",
  6400,
  "Subs1Count",
  range(10, 12),
  "Subs1Volume",
  range(300, 600),
  "Subs1WeightVery Low",
  10,
  "Subs1WeightLow",
  20,
  "Subs1WeightAverage",
  40,
  "Subs1WeightHigh",
  20,
  "Subs1WeightVery High",
  10,
  "Subs2Count",
  range(4, 6),
  "Subs2Volume",
  range(1800, 2400),
  "Subs2WeightVery Low",
  5,
  "Subs2WeightLow",
  10,
  "Subs2WeightAverage",
  25,
  "Subs2WeightHigh",
  40,
  "Subs2WeightVery High",
  20
})
PlaceObj("ResourcePreset", {
  "name",
  "Polymers_VeryHigh",
  "resource",
  "Polymers",
  "SmallClusterDeposits",
  range(2, 4),
  "BigClusterDeposits",
  range(8, 12),
  "SmallClustersCount",
  range(2, 6),
  "BigClustersCount",
  range(1, 2)
})

Precious minerals are also a resource the RCDriller can extract.
There is code for construction cost in rare minerals, however there was also code for rare metals and as far as I know no building is constructed with rare metals so maybe its just there incase. There is also code for Black Cubes construction cost etc (which makes sense for that mystery).
Automated depots have code to deal with Precious Minerals however so I think its safe to guess they aren't a mystery resource like Black Cubes (which can only be stored in regular depots.

There is code to show the total Precious Minerals you have in your colony in the Planetary View (when you click on your colony icon), they are in the 'Other Resources' section along with Seeds and Waste Rock. Like those resources they don't seem to appear for the AI colonies.
Elsewhere its included under the 'Basic Resource' grouping such as in the Universal depot code.

The description for them is 'Precious minerals are new and shiny, please enjoy'.
There is an icon referenced in the code, but no icon was yet included with the Tito patch. Interestingly however they did include the DLC items of SmartApartments and SchoolSpire, odd considering that is a paid for separate DLC. Thats not surprising however considering they broke the new Hotel by giving it doors only available in a DLC so it seems they don't have very clear distinction between these things.

There also appears to be a new building or something called 'ReconCenter'. This currently appears only in one place but has a condition based on the 'Picard' DLC being present (Picard is the codename for the next DLC). I cannot comment further what this is but I guess it will be tied to precious minerals in some way.



So based on all of that. Here is my guess, downvote me here if you haven't already people who think there will be a new map layer or other crazy changes...

A new resource is added to maps to be used for ???? maybe money again....
The Recon Centre can be used to find these deposits which appear as a sinkhole, as sinkholes are already in the base game and it would explain the artwork we got.
Based on the RC Driller having the ability to extract rare minerals it is logical that these will be mined in some way (perhaps this is the actual job of the recon center?

There is zero evidence of anything related to underground stuff like tunnels or a new map layer.
Honestly, the best I think you can realistically hope for is, on top of this new resource, they flesh out expedititons.
Its kind of pie in the sky thinking but perhaps the Recon Center has nothing to do with rare minerals and instead is related to planetary anomalies where you use it to scout for them, and once found, instead of a mission automatically completing you can go to a new map and complete a mini challenge there of some sort.
It would likely get tedious after a while, but might add abit of fun to an otherwise dull game mechanic (load the rocket, send it off, get reward).