Devlog 8 - Another Milestone bites the dust!

Hello there! It’s been some time since my last dev log, but development on Synthaar has been continuing steadily. Most of what has been under development have been systems and features that have not been the most exciting to display, but all have a considerable importance to the game feel of Synthaar. It is with great excitement that I announce that the second milestone, “Building Your Legacy” has been accomplished!

This milestone has been entirely about the connections and the growth of your legacy through lineage, featuring children, growing up, meeting new people, making memories, and tracking your family tree as time goes on. These are core tenants in following and building your lineage, which is critically important as time marches forward, having some characters grow old while passing the torch to the young. This is the foundation of Synthaar as a whole, as everything you’ll do is in the name of furthering that legacy, giving your children the tools to succeed higher than you did, and making change to the galaxy over long periods of time and effort. 

Exploring the family tree of a fourth generation Thauxan

Moving forward with Synthaar development, I’ve made the call to do some re-arrangement on the Roadmap with this new milestone accomplishment. With a year of public development now behind me, I’ve come to realize that there are certain aspects of the game that are more important to focus on than others, in order to deliver the core gameplay and fun as soon as possible. Nothing has been removed from the roadmap, however a few milestones have been added to try and balance the amount of content that each milestone covers, to help with focusing development each step of the way. The new roadmap prioritizes combat, economics, and crafting, before we tackle more lofty goals like politics and other large scale efforts. This new roadmap will assure that the most common gameplay elements of managing your characters and properties take precedence over long term gameplay goals. 

Check out the updated Synthaar Roadmap here!

You can now adopt an orphan to join your family as one of your own

As we begin to creep into 2025, my goal for Synthaar is to get a very competent core gameplay loop with the fundamentals of the gameplay finished, and then releasing into early access on Steam. Once Synthaar is in Early Access, the demo will become limited by the amount of days you can play, but will remain available as I think demos are invaluable for games. I also plan to increase the price of the game as more milestones are completed, but I’ll detail this in a future dev log. For now, what I can say is that I intend for the game to be very fairly priced in comparison to games like Synthaar. 

Local community lots are a great way to socialize and meet new people

Stay tuned in the future for a new Devlog regarding the development of Synthaar! I’ll be making Devlogs as I have updates and content available for them rather than try to aim for a scheduled thing. You can follow me on BlueSky, where I post screenshots, development updates, and my current challenge of creating a new item every day. Thank you so much to those who have been interested in my game. If you'd like to keep in touch, consider checking out our Discord server, and be sure to wishlist Synthaar on Steam!

V0.2.0 PATCH NOTES

ADDED

• Characters can now gain memories
• You can now adopt children from the local academy
• The galaxy can now generate pre-made lots onto the map on creation
• You can now shop at the local market and buy items (such as food)
• Coolers now have inventories
• Food now takes food resources in order to cook a meal
• Various objects now have informative tooltips
• You can now toggle the grid in legacyless build mode
• You can increase your social skills with mirrors
• Using City Utilities costs credits based on usage every 3 days
• Relationships decay toward 0 every day
• New Path Renderer for planet map travel
• Custom logging system for easier debugging
• You can now go into debt (yay?)

CHANGED

• The distance a character needs to be to open a door is shortened
• Preset Planet maps are now static when generated, to help with randomization errors.

FIXED

• Cooking items should no longer delete themselves under certain circumstances
• Windmills now generate power based on the speed of the wind
• Solar panels now generate power only in the day
• Item transfer is no longer as wonky as it used to be
• Doors no longer open when a stranger walks by it
• Water visual effects on the ocean will now move in the top menu
• Arms no longer slowly drift away from the character over time
• Arms now correctly alter their height when a character sits down
• Lighting of windows should be on the appropriate side
• Greatly improved character pathing when exiting a lot
• Multi-tile structures now register all tiles as belonging to them
• Fixed framerate dependent issues with certain animations