itch.io

Intro fixed to 12fps. Still keeps my 90s video game feel without it seeming to janky. Cheers!

Also grozworr please feel free to join our Discord. Identify yourself there and I'll add you to playtesters. https://discord.gg/eVuYzUVKX

Great feedback! The intro animation was purposely cut woth fewer frames to mimic early 90s games. If it seems too jarring maybe I should rethink it. 

Hi Joerg,

Thank you so much for this. Four playthroughs, the Signal ending, detailed notes on the UI pain points — this is exactly the kind of feedback that makes a solo dev feel like they're building something real.

The comparisons to Seedship and Beyond the Chiron Gate genuinely mean a lot. Those are touchstones for me too, and knowing Dead Reckoning is landing in that neighbourhood (but with its own characer) is encouraging.

I wanted to share some news: based on some publisher outreach and recommendations I've received, I'll be moving Dead Reckoning to Steam in the near future. Anyone who bought on itch will get a Steam key — I'm not yet sure of the exact mechanics but that's a firm commitment regardless of how it plays out.

Your feedback on the Operations tab, the Technology screen readability, and the probe workflow is going straight into the backlog. The toggle-to-enable thing trips almost everyone up and you've articulated exactly why.

A couple of things I'd love to offer you, as a thank-you for the support:

1. Would you like to join the Discord and help shape the game further? There's a small but enthusiastic community forming and I think players like you are a big part of what makes a game like this worthwhile.

2. Would you be open to having your name added to the colonist bank — the pool of named crew members who appear in the ship's personnel record across runs? It's a small thing, but it felt like the right gesture.

On the title — the horror read is intentional, in a way. Dead Reckoning is a navigation term: estimating your position from known speed and heading, with no external reference. It felt right for a ship that left all its landmarks behind. But the horror is retroactive. You don't realize how frightening the name is until you've seen an ending where the colonists reach a planet and have no idea what to do with it — worshipping the ship as a god because three generations of drift have made the surface incomprehensible to them. I always wanted the title to glance at that. Sounds like the Signal ending got you there anyway.

Thanks again! This kind of engagement means a lot.

— Garan Lorn

Bug reported and should be pushed within minutes! Sorry about that; I'm realizing I have a problem with scope creep during sessions and then go to bed thinking everything is okay...and then wake up to this! Hahaha. Really appreciate the report.

BUG-1 — Ship Condition tab clips text at top and hides Advance Year buttons at bottom. Other tabs unaffected. Possibly font-size related.

BUG-2 — Colonist Status screen becomes unreadable mid-game when corruption is active. Needs investigation: intentional effect gone too far, or layout bug?

BUG-3 — SHOW ALL button on ending screen has no clear purpose. Needs tooltip or label change.

BUG-4 — Raw placeholder text {they} did not make it back... appearing unsubstituted in event log.

BUG-5 — No way to speed up typewriter text rendering. Click-to-skip only partially works.

BUG-6 — First ship-born adult event fires around year 43. Should fire around year 20 given normal aging.

BUG-7 — Educational mandate event depicts a "third-generation ship-born" child at year 21 with no births recorded. Impossible timeline framing.

BUG-8 (CRITICAL) — Pending event choice is permanently lost after navigating away, saving, quitting to menu, and continuing. On reload the event is gone and unresolvable.

That actuary view actually blocked a few views. My panel game in Godot is....not the best. Bug filed. ETA tomorrow night for a fix. 
Thanks again!

Good log. I've been adding some more text but got lost in the logic. I've been paying attention to unit tests, but it's been hard keeping track of conditionals. Added to the list. Will expect a patched version by tomorrow evening (Sorry life chores getting in the way tonight/tomorrow).

Cheers on filing the bug! Thank you! 

This got a bit narrative/logging what happens part way through, but hopefully it’s still useful to you ;-) Really that’s just a mark of me enjoying my experience with the game, so thanks for sharing it!

v. 0.1.264

1. The options menu feels cramped and overly narrow; visually it looks like the middle third of the previous middle‑third main menu.
2. I appreciate the instant tool‑tips for “Initiate Launch”, “Watch”, and “Fast”.
3. The pre‑launch phase reminds me of Oregon Trail—in a positive way.
4. The label “Research” under Ship Condition is confusing. It functions more like character traits or options during “character creation”. When I see “Research” in a game I normally expect long‑term goals that are pursued by spending resources.
5. When selecting research before departure, it would be very helpful to be able to “unselect” or toggle the chosen options so I can experiment with different builds and see total resource usage before committing.
6. Under Ship Condition → Systems, the order of the three entries should match the summary above. The summary lists “Food / Power / Hull”, but the Systems section lists them as “Hull / Power / Food”.
7. I liked the hidden‑room ship event that offered choices to force entry, hide it, or disclose it. I chose to disclose to everyone, but I was hoping for follow‑up events that branch from this decision rather than a single, isolated occurrence.
8. Bug: Year 35, Sensors offline, arrived at original destination. After surveying two of three worlds (ice world and volcanic; I skipped the gas giant), the UI kept showing the three survey options while text was still being audibly typed in the background. Selecting “Reject all and keep looking” then presented a separate reject‑menu for each world, forcing me to reject each one individually before I could proceed. A better approach would be a greyed‑out option at the bottom that says something like “You may only move on after rejecting each option individually” - and a choice of order to reject them in or something.
9. Bonus bug: After picking a new destination, the log reported the habitability of the “Gas Giant Moon” as 43 % even though I never probed it, so I should not have learned that value.
10. Confusion: In year 36, immediately after plotting a course to a new system, I received a “33‑deaths, Crisis‑level attrition – all life‑support systems reviewed” message with no directive or event. The status read Food 28 %, Power 35 %, Hull 42 % and all drifts ≤ 20 % except AI 46 %. Advancing another year gave another 32 deaths, still crisis‑level and still no event. Switching the ship to Cryo priority and advancing again resulted in 24 deaths. Hull decreased by 0.1 %/yr, Power by 0.6 %/yr, Food by 0.3 %/yr; population was 876 with an actuarial projection of a 2.5 % annual loss, which would be about 22 people per year, yet I was only losing 1 person per year. This inconsistency suggests a possible bug in the loss calculation. Earlier, the pre‑launch projection estimated about 600 survivors, which does not match the actual outcome.
11. I actually lost 36 people that year, not 22. After launching a probe, Power fell to 24 % and the actuarial projection changed to a 4 % loss per year, which aligns with the observed loss. This appears to be a direct result of the probe rather than a projection.
12. I lost 34 people during a “Voluntary Skills Census” event; there was no clear reason to avoid the full reallocation, so the outcome felt arbitrary.
13. Deaths have settled to roughly 18 people per year. Power is now 26 % and an event called “Power Rationing Debate” appears. I must choose between increasing AI (currently 47 %) or accepting a power reduction. I opted for the equal‑ration path (communist‑style), which had no negative side effects and reduced Power to 22 %.
14. Again I am confused: I lost 27 people, but Hull suddenly started regenerating at +2.9 %/yr and Power at +7.4 %/yr, while Food continued to decline at ‑0.3 %/yr. This coincided with an event titled “Shared Dream Phenomenon → Investigation”, which yielded no benefits except a reduction in AI. The following year Hull and Power returned to their prior slow decline rates.
15. Before departure, the initial habitability estimate was ≈27 % for the second system, but upon arrival, yet the system contained only three barren rocks with ≤ 3 % habitability. We moved on to the next system, (15 years with an estimated 20‑something % habitability) as obviously we cannot survive on a rock, so we must continue the journey.
16. Year 048: 27 deaths and a “Suspected Cause: Food Shortage” (Food at 23 %). I triggered the emergency intervention “Ration Proto”, but deaths remain around 20 people per year.
17. Year 051: 24 deaths, now the “Suspected Cause” is listed as “Life‑Support Stress”. Cryo remains active, Life‑Support system is nominal at 83 % Power, but Power is low at 13 % (mostly due to Cryo). The decline rate is ‑0.6 %/yr with an estimated 22 ‑year remaining.
18. Ship Condition reads “Critical; Cryo: Compromised” with no clear explanation. I formally recognized a spiritual practice, raising Ideology to 56 % for no reason except to see what happens.
19. Bug: “Notable Congregation Member Deceased – Very Quintero was a Scientist (Founder) who served on this vessel for 59 years. She was present at 0 recorded incidents during the voyage. She once said she just wanted to make sure the congregation survived the hard years. She was only there for 0.” Funny bug, but not reasonable numbers.
20. Arriving at the second system, the Ice World showed 18 % habitability. With Food 27 %, Power 6 %, Hull 46 % and a loss rate of ≈ 20 people per year (population ≈ 320), I landed. Surface conditions: Atmosphere 40 %, Water 40 %, Temperature 12 °, Resources 17, Biohazard 12. No accessible surface resources led to a construction crisis and extreme cold, prompting the Founding Directive “Shelter”. I also selected “Open Assembly”. The result is “Desperate Landing” with Pop 320, Diversity 95.1 %, Regression 8, Class Drift 0, Hull 42 %, Planets rejected 6. Key decisions (not mentioned above): Landing Protocol – AI‑Managed; Vessel Contact – Arrange Formal Meeting. (The next year we arrived at the final system and the other ship vanished from events, so I’m unsure how consequential that decision was.)
21. Description issue: the game claimed that ship‑born people outnumbered the original launch crew, which is false. The mission record shows 1,000 departed, 320 arrived, 21 ship‑born recorded, and 219 named deaths.

Just the suggestions from above, for your convenience:

• Expand the options menu width to avoid the cramped “middle‑third” appearance.
• Rename “Research” under Ship Condition to a term that means selected technologies, not long‑term progress.
• Allow toggling/un‑selecting research choices before departure so players can experiment with builds and see total resource costs.
• Align the order of entries in Ship Condition → Systems with the summary order (Food → Power → Hull).
• Expand more on branching follow‑up events after major decisions (e.g., the hidden‑room ship event). Only have one‑off outcomes for simple closed-ended scenarios.
• Fix the survey/reject UI so worlds can be rejected individually without repeated menus.
• Prevent undisclosed information (e.g., habitability of un‑probed worlds when sensors offline) from appearing in the log.
• Offer clearer feedback on attrition events: show why deaths occur, or always provide options to intervene. OR if those death rates are typical, fix the bug of attrition being too low at mission start.
• Clarify and correct event descriptions that contain nonsensical data (e.g., “Notable Congregation Member Deceased” stats).

What: Actuary table cannot be closed once opened

When: When you click on actuary table

Time box: 10 minutes

Marking as fixed. Immediate push happening. Marked for posterity. Reminder to add unit test on UI panels and boxes for closed loops.

Bug: After changing the panel, all directives have disappeared

When: Right away...

Time to fix: 1 hour, but there was a broken game all night. Sorry all!

Version 1.23

Where: Tutorial and during drift.

Fix: Edit card files and drift files.

Time box: 1-2 hours. Fixing now.

v0.1.9 — Crash Fix

If you hit a silent freeze or crash between years 18–24, this update is for you.

What was happening

The event log panel used a RichTextLabel with fit_content = true. That sounds innocuous, but it meant every character the typewriter animation drew triggered update_minimum_size(), which cascaded up through the entire UI tree — scroll container, events panel, main layout, all five tab panels, 200+ nodes. At 60 FPS in watch mode, that's roughly 30 full-tree layout recalculations per year. Over a 20-year run, the engine's internal message queue filled up and died with Container::_sort_children — Message queue out of memory.

A secondary culprit: the drift threshold glitch effect was calling add_theme_stylebox_override() with varying content margins, which kicked off the same cascade 8 more times per threshold event.

What was fixed

• fit_content = false on the event log label. Text changes now call queue_redraw() — a cheap repaint with no layout impact. The label fills its container via size flags instead.
• Glitch effect rewritten to use modulate tinting only. No style overrides, no margin changes, no cascade.
• Choice button removal is now properly deferred. The previous free() call was causing signal-emission crashes during decision handling.
• Message queue ceiling raised to 256MB as a secondary safety net.

Minor layout change

The decision choices panel now sits below the event log rather than scrolling inside it. Choices are always visible without scrolling — which is an improvement regardless.

Thanks to Efflixi and waterSticksToMyBalls for the reports.

Crash log:

handle_crash: Program crashed with signal 11 Engine version: Godot Engine v4.6.1.stable.official Still crashing year 18

Summary

The game freezes (indefinite hang, not a hard crash) when pressing Advance Year somewhere between years 18 and 20. The window remains open but becomes unresponsive. This is distinct from the CPU-spike issue addressed in 0.1.7, which was a gradual slowdown over a longer run — this one is sudden and reproducible at a consistent point in the timeline.

Steps to reproduce

1. Start a new game (or load a save — see notes below)
2. Advance through years normally
3. At approximately year 18–20, press Advance Year
4. Game hangs — no further output, window does not close

Expected behaviour

Year advances normally; event for that year is processed and displayed.

Actual behaviour

Game freezes. Based on the output captured during the session, the freeze appears to be an infinite loop rather than a crash, which is why the window stays open.

What: Users reporting freeze in game with spiked CPU still occurring between Year 18-22. Confirmed myself on Mint machine 4x.

Root Cause: Most likely something with the colonist system. Checking current loop errors.

Fix: Check certain event scripts designed before more dynamic scripting.

Estimate: 3-4 hours.

Update: Done and pushed in 1.6. See release notes.

Spike: Gamepad Input Feasibility for Dead Reckoning

Goal: Confirm that Godot 4's input system can support controller navigation for a menu-driven terminal UI, and identify any rough edges before we commit to it.

Questions to answer:

1. Can InputEventJoypadButton / InputMap actions coexist cleanly with the existing keyboard bindings, or do they conflict?
2. Does Godot's built-in Control focus system (d-pad → ui_up/down/left/right) work well enough for navigating our terminal screens, or do we need custom focus logic?
3. How reliable is hot-plug detection (Input.joy_connection_changed)? Does it behave on Windows, Mac, and Linux without extra configuration?
4. Does Input.start_joy_vibration work on common controllers (Xbox, DualSense) without a plugin?
5. Can we detect "last input device used" reliably enough to swap keyboard vs. gamepad prompt glyphs at runtime?

Definition of done: A throwaway scene with two focusable buttons and a label. Plugging in a controller navigates between them, A confirms, B cancels, prompts update to show gamepad glyphs, and a short rumble fires on confirm. Hot-plugging during the scene doesn't crash or freeze.

Time-box: 2 hours.

I'm new to this, so I've just installed Butler for better bumping and changelog information. Thanks again for this community's patience while I work out the kinks for playtesting. Once again, any feedback is useful.

And it should be fixed! Version numbers didn't change but it should now be fully playable. Tear it apart. Enjoy!

Signal 11 bug...crashing as soon as the tutorial is done. I'm on it....for anyone out there :D