Development ·
Under Another Sky
October's work is in the testers' hands: dangerous nights, power, survival and fifty remodelled machines. Next comes the real night sky as seen from Nova Eridani, a compass that will not settle, and a map of the whole land.
Development update. The first half is in the current test build. The second half is built in the development branch and coming in the next test build. Details will change.
In the test build now
Everything that was "coming in the next test build" a week ago has arrived, and a good deal more with it.
The nights are dangerous. Something native hunts in the dark, and light keeps it away: the drop pod's landing lights, or a ring of street lights running on solar arrays and batteries. Buildings come down from the Meridian under parachutes, and a freight container stays as the colony's store.
Survival is in too. The sea is salt, so a solar still turns sea water into about three litres of drinking water a day. Crop beds, a greenhouse, a composter and an algae photobioreactor keep you fed once the rations run out.
Crafting now reaches from coal to titanium. Recipes open up as you find things: pick up a rock you have not seen before, and Melanie tells you what it makes possible and puts the machines for it on the build list. Coke and iron make steel. The rivers give up tin and gold. Aluminium, nickel and titanium come later.
Every one of the colony's fifty machines has been rebuilt from scratch and shows its work, with moving parts, smoke, steam, lights and sound. Every one of the 135 items you can carry has its own model and picture.
Smaller things came from our playtesters' notes:
- longer days: an hour of daylight and half an hour of night, with almost a full hour after landing before the first night;
- stone and clay a short walk from the landing;
- a checklist for your first steps aboard;
- loot windows that show what everything weighs, with items you can drag across;
- rivers that run in their beds;
- a rebuilt city in the prologue.
Coming next: another sky
In developmentLook up on a clear night in the next test build and the stars are the real ones. We took the Hipparcos catalogue, the European Space Agency's survey of more than a hundred thousand of the brightest stars, and moved every star to where it stands as seen from Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light years from the Sun.
Most of the sky barely changes, because most stars are far away. The near ones move. Sirius is a little brighter than from Earth, Alpha Centauri is much fainter, and the Sun is just one more star, in Serpens. Nova Eridani's orbit lies in the plane of Epsilon Eridani's real dust ring, and from the landing site that puts the brightest part of the Milky Way almost overhead.
The two moons cross that sky with their own phases. After dusk, the Meridian herself passes over: a bright moving point on her orbit, until she slips into the planet's shadow and goes out.
A compass that will not settle
A compass is no use here. Nova Eridani's magnetic field is weak, and its poles are nowhere near the axis the planet turns on, so the needle just swings round. Melanie has a better idea: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and your visor has been following it since you landed. Once she has set your compass from it, north is where the sun says.
And the whole land is now on one map: north up, from all sixteen kilometres down to a hundred metres, with the distance and bearing from you to anywhere you point. Between the two, you can finally find your own way back.
Thank you, testers
The playtesters' notes shaped most of this month. Their names are on the new credits page, and the game's own credits. Testers can now send reports straight from this site with their own key, on the tester feedback page.
