Unity Completed Stationmaster [v1.1] [StationmasterDev]

[Harabec]

Update on this: I put it to a vote among my patrons, and it's overwhelmingly looking like I will be wrapping up Exalted here soon and starting work on Stationmaster 2.

Given that this is probably the most active community for this game, it seems important to ask here. What do you all think the biggest opportunities for improvement are? The code will be mostly new, so this is the time to make big decisions about how it works. As always, I really appreciate your input. It helps me focus on the right things during development.

So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:

• Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes probably won't be in 0.1.
• Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia).
• Time controls.
• More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
• For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).

Things I think should stay the same are:

• The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the exact main plot).
• The station building UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same.
• The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
• Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.

OK so I know my comments on this game in the past have been mostly negative. That's only because I could see how much promise it had and was always so disappointed by the poor performance. The key I feel is performance. It needs to run smoothly on an average PC. No memory leaks. No bizarre, funky, misshapened animations. I totally agree on those things you stay should stay the same. Absolutely keep those as the focus. More please in fact.

I welcome this announcement and find my hopes raising once more in hope of what could be!

 

[AdamJohn36]

Update on this: I put it to a vote among my patrons, and it's overwhelmingly looking like I will be wrapping up Exalted here soon and starting work on Stationmaster 2.

Given that this is probably the most active community for this game, it seems important to ask here. What do you all think the biggest opportunities for improvement are? The code will be mostly new, so this is the time to make big decisions about how it works. As always, I really appreciate your input. It helps me focus on the right things during development.

So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:

• Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes probably won't be in 0.1.
• Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia).
• Time controls.
• More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
• For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).

Things I think should stay the same are:

• The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the exact main plot).
• The station building UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same.
• The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
• Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.

Any chance in this next iteration of Stationmaster that we can control what the incubators teach instead of it being random? Like for example i wouldn't mind the daughters knowing that the main character is their father. heh

 

[idontknowass]

Update on this: I put it to a vote among my patrons, and it's overwhelmingly looking like I will be wrapping up Exalted here soon and starting work on Stationmaster 2.

Given that this is probably the most active community for this game, it seems important to ask here. What do you all think the biggest opportunities for improvement are? The code will be mostly new, so this is the time to make big decisions about how it works. As always, I really appreciate your input. It helps me focus on the right things during development.

So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:

• Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes probably won't be in 0.1.
• Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia).
• Time controls.
• More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
• For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).

Things I think should stay the same are:

• The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the exact main plot).
• The station building UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same.
• The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
• Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.

Things that are really need to be fixed

*Better optimisation
*while fucking tourist the game crashes fix it
* the models start becoming flowing in air
* sometimes the mc fuck himself up

 

[Gizmo1206]

so when starting a new game and finishing the character creator i seem to be stuck on the loading screen,the music still plays and when clicking a few times it makes a door(?) opening noise then other noises then nothing. But i left it for a half an hour(as run as admin) and its still on the loading screen.

 

[StationmasterDev]

so when starting a new game and finishing the character creator i seem to be stuck on the loading screen,the music still plays and when clicking a few times it makes a door(?) opening noise then other noises then nothing. But i left it for a half an hour(as run as admin) and its still on the loading screen.

Try moving the game data to the desktop. This can happen if UAC is stopping you from writing your save data to the installation directory.

 

[Gizmo1206]

Try moving the game data to the desktop. This can happen if UAC is stopping you from writing your save data to the installation directory.

sadly same result but moving it to my other harddrive worked though

 

[Gizmo1206]

is there a way to customize your appearance?(not slaves the player character)

 

[AdamJohn36]

is there a way to customize your appearance?(not slaves the player character)

Yes you gotta click on your character and you can customize them.

 

[alex2011]

Update on this: I put it to a vote among my patrons, and it's overwhelmingly looking like I will be wrapping up Exalted here soon and starting work on Stationmaster 2.

Given that this is probably the most active community for this game, it seems important to ask here. What do you all think the biggest opportunities for improvement are? The code will be mostly new, so this is the time to make big decisions about how it works. As always, I really appreciate your input. It helps me focus on the right things during development.

So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:

• Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes probably won't be in 0.1.
• Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia).
• Time controls.
• More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
• For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).

Things I think should stay the same are:

• The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the exact main plot).
• The station building UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same.
• The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
• Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.

Definitely animations, I suggest not repeating the decisions that led to what Stationmaster 1 has now. I also agree with the JSON save system you listed and decoupling animations from macros. Performance and animation issues were the two biggest problems in the first game with some pesky bugs in the low poly models for station view being third.

 

[QuickBob]

Update on this: I put it to a vote among my patrons, and it's overwhelmingly looking like I will be wrapping up Exalted here soon and starting work on Stationmaster 2.

Given that this is probably the most active community for this game, it seems important to ask here. What do you all think the biggest opportunities for improvement are? The code will be mostly new, so this is the time to make big decisions about how it works. As always, I really appreciate your input. It helps me focus on the right things during development.

So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:

• Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes probably won't be in 0.1.
• Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia).
• Time controls.
• More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
• For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).

Things I think should stay the same are:

• The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the exact main plot).
• The station building UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same.
• The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
• Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.

I know I'm a couple days late, but this is literally making my day. I've been looking forward to Exalted gaining more progress, but I never imagined we'd actually get a sequel to Stationmaster. Hell yeah.

I agree 100% with everything you said here as well as everything Harabec and the others said as well. It really would be kinda nice to be able to upgrade the incubators to improve chances of certain outcomes. For the most part, honest to god, keep it the same. It was practically perfect, it just needed better animations and to be less buggy. Assuming that you're planning on fixing animations and memory leaks and avoiding all the other bugs from the first game, though, I've got a few other improvement suggestions.

1. I'd love to see some major improvements to arena fights. Maybe some weapons you can gain and equip to your favorite slaves. Having the ability to schedule fights yourself so that fights that are more even and between more skilled fighters generate more interest and income. Obviously not all the time, since automation is one of the best parts of the game, but having the ability to get in there and micromanage would be great.
2. Animations outside of the sex room. Specifically, watching your slaves in the brothel, arena, room service, and the like having sex would be a great addition. Right now there's nothing to it, because of the obvious issues, but since the animations are being improved, that would be a hell of a good change. Also, the actual arena fights. They're decent right now compared to the rest of the game, but actually being able to tell who's fighting whom would be great as well.
3. Major UI changes in the slave list, though. Forgetting bugs, since we're assuming those will be fixed, being able to sort by family relations, planet of origin, and virginity would be great features. Actually being able to see all the stats from the list, since some of them are hidden in the actual slave menu.
4. Explaining planet policies, etc. It's taken the entire community to put together a list of what the planet policies do and it's still not a sure thing. Some of them you can figure out from culture references, like Modest Proposal, but most of them you just have to try them and then guess what the actual effect was.
5. Also explaining artifacts. I think most of them just increase appeal? Though I never noticed appeal being that important. More features for the artifacts would be good, too.
6. I'm always going to suggest more races. The aliens were great, if they were a bit odd looking with the old graphics, but I'm just a fan of variety. Honestly a few kinda standard fantasy races wouldn't be too out of place here. You've basically got orcs, beast people, demons, and angels already. Adding elves, goblins, gnomes, vampires, etc. would be a pretty good fit.
7. I think someone else mentioned an autobreed option. That would be fantastic. Either breeding your slaves yourself or setting up couples to breed. Since the sex shouldn't be so janky, "autobreed" may not be as important, especially with impregnation implants, but I do recommend adding an option to order slaves to breed with each other outside of the arena.
8. More options/information in some of the events. Not looking for a vn or anything, but some of the events gave you no options. Like, yes I want to capture a cowgirl, but do I have to rape her on the planet? Or murder these campers and not choose who to take? Stuff like that.
9. Thematic planets? I know they're 'technically' fire planets, jungle planets, urban planets, etc. But they all feel exactly the same to me. Some differences between them so it feels like you're actually gaining a new resource/slave world rather than an extra body for "demand tribute" would be amazing. Plus, depending on licenses, some reference planets would be great. Conquer a world and find out their leaders are a bit familiar? Maybe get some more familiar faces from tribute? Kinda like the SCP and Doctor Who references among others. Otherwise a bunch of prewritten "cultures" with favorite planet types. Like, here's a desert planet with a warrior culture. This world used to be a prison planet. This is a water planet that's like a giant Hawaii. Kinda like the cowboy planet, or the tribal planet, etc. but you actually get a whole planet of thematic tribute instead of one random event.
10. Biggest thing for me. I paid for the whole harem, I want to use the whole harem. Please add group sex options. I know that leads to a lot more animation issues, but from what I've seen in Exalted so far, it's definitely doable.

I think that's everything, if I come up with anything else I'll put together another list. All in all, I'm looking forward to both more Exalted and this sequel and I thank you for all your hard work. You're a legend.

 

[StationmasterDev]

Extremely heard. I made a Patreon post about this too, but AI performance has been priority 1.

With the new design, I managed to get the economic system working at 120FPS for 10,000 NPC's on the station (individually tracked using basically the same rules as SM1, but much more optimized). The graphics still aren't implemented, but the new design means that most of your station won't be rendering most of the time, so I'm pretty optimistic about the final numbers (it wouldn't surprise me if you could actually run smoothly with 10,000 people on your station in the final game).

I've learned a lot since starting SM1, and it's great to finally be able to use it without being hamstrung by that dumpster fire of a codebase. Right now, I'm mostly focusing on getting the core graphics and gameplay working with the engine updates, but feature requests are always appreciated.

 

[DrLizardman]

thats amazing, I would love to have an improvement to this game as there is really nothing like it. I want a non renpy harem game lol

 

[Fikedever]

Other than being able to edit the save file using any text editor, I don't see a reason to use JSON over SQLite for save data. JSON/XML are primarily designed for exchanging data, not storing data.

JSON

1. Pro: Stored human readable, so can edit save with any text editor.
2. Pro: Low overhead, which is good for smaller pieces of data that do not need to worry about scaling issues.
3. Pro: Integrates easily into version control systems (VCS) like git.
4. Con: Performance may not scale as well as SQLite for large save files.
5. Con: Human readable means reduced storage efficiency.

SQLite

1. Con: Not human readable, but it is not difficult to edit a save file with SQLite editors.
2. Con: May be overkill for smaller files. I wouldn't recommend using it for a few line config file in a simple program.
3. Con: Does not integrate easily into VCS.
4. Pro: Better performance scaling.
5. Pro: Better storage scaling.
6. Pro: You get SQL.

I would say JSON isn't suited for save files. No VCS benefit, the save file size is likely large enough to benefit from scaling, and the overhead of the rest of the game overshadows SQLite's potential overhead.

 

[StationmasterDev]

Good news then: I've already switched to SQLite (I also realized that you can use it to store bulk data about the game and people on your station in a DB on disk to save memory). Save/Load is a lot more elegant now.

That also means that you'll be able to use SQL queries in the rules assistant and slave list, which I think is pretty awesome (I think I'm going to run a poll to see if people are OK with just ditching the checkboxes). With this, you'll be able to do shit like "Sterilize anyone whose maternal great grandmother is named Susie" using joins.

That does mean you'll be able to do SQL injection attacks against the working game data from the rules assistant, but I actually think that's a feature, not a bug.

 

[t727]

Joins? Will there be more than one table?

Anyhow, to answer your question.

First and most important:
The rule assistant
The current ignores ranges and fixing this by splitting the rules in different steps in order for them to work is tedious if you have a station with a lot of slaves which should be assigned to different jobs depending on stats.
It also needs to be more granular, the low, mid, high 33,66,99(100) respectively doesn't match the set titles for any of the attributes.
Either the rule assistant work, if it doesn't the whole game is ruined because it's too complex to micromanage.

Optimization
The game runs poorly even though either the CPU, GPU nor memory is being overused.
On my system they go out to about 60% but for an hour or so of play the game grinds to an halt which forces me to relaunch the game.
This also have a strange impact on the UI, reading the text and screens when events triggers are hopeless to navigate through

3D model alignment
I've taken numerous screenshots of the models being put in the most peculiar places.
The leaders sitting backwards on chairs, sitting under tables or just seeing the to of the hair above the floor.
Also the sex animation setup is hilarious. The dick bouncing off and on a woman drawn beneath the floor.

The game screen
When unlocking the galaxy the station is drawn on the same screen as the planets, making for odd scenes when zooming in.
This also impacts the performance negatively.

Clothes
They look hideous, skin poking out it's like they belong to a different character.

So basically the whole game needs to be tended for.

Happy to hear that you are planning a second version of the game as the concept is awesome and I really like management games!
Good luck in your endeavour!

If you want testing and feedback you know where to turn

 

[StationmasterDev]

You can join against the People table to traverse family trees.

As for the flexibility, it seems like just being able to write SQL into the rules assistant would satisfy that need.

Basically everything about Stationmaster 2 is rewritten from the ground up, which means that old bugs likely won't exist anymore, and will be replaced by a whole new (and hopefully smaller) set of bugs.

By my benchmarks though, it's considerably easier on your computer in every category, even as stations get bigger (multiple floors cut down on rendering, massive optimizations to the economy cut down on CPU/Memory, and lazy loading means that memory should barely increase as more people are added).

Clothing is a bear. It probably won't be in 0.1 at all, but it will be a priority for the next couple versions. I'll probably end up prioritizing quality over variety for that, because the poke-through is a real pain to solve properly.

 

[Bobabod]

I liked getting exo and start hybridizing them, like mixing the Ascendant with a kort or a fae with a nova.

 

[pdpdpd]

Do the slave to be able to work two jobs (part time) at the same time, and make alien skins for the guests optional (not only human and fur) and add cheats

 

[alex2011]

Do the slave to be able to work two jobs (part time) at the same time, and make alien skins for the guests optional (not only human and fur) and add cheats

The two jobs one would get real inefficient real fast. Remember that the more time spent on a task in one work cycle, the more that gets done with it. Sending them to two jobs in one work cycle would be cutting the time spent on each by 50%. Say you needed a military research item, like battleships, done as soon as possible because one of the other groups is coming after you, a situation I actually did have happen to myself in the first game. You would be setting yourself to be destroyed as it will now take twice as long to get the battleship research than if they were set up on one job, giving, in my case the Australian Cooperative, extra time to build up and attack you while you still don't have the forces needed to defend from that attack.

Now, in my case, I DID have the forces I needed, but only because I had like 20 slaves on research and was already working on the entire military research tree by the time she came for my head. I then had a vast armada of dreadnoughts to defend me as it was those I was working on in my case. I also did not even have the option to split my researchers' work cycle, though I could have assigned some of them elsewhere for the same effect.

 

[LOchar]

I am glad to hear of a sequel.

I would love to see a better rules assistant. Currently I have 10 rules just for clothes alone. Would like to see stacked commands. Like for training slaves. If INT below 100 , school, if 100 and other skills <100 then ship to diff area for training.

Custom clothing was a pain, had to view in slave viewer to get name and then with ruleset find name, wasnt even alphabetical or easy way to sort.

Female MC wasnt fun is tried Lesbian playthru, because limited positions. In future strapons should be a thing. Not to mention artificial insemination if wanted to breed slaves.

Grooming. I like this feature in Patronus and also Cost of survival. Bedraggled vs Clean look has a nice touch to it, and always cool the before after affects.

Enchanced viewer speadsheet. Current 1 doesnt even have option to support quickness but also a small note section.

Better notification options - being able to tell game to pause or alert me better when certain things happen. Right now I sometimes miss someone has completed training when a spam comes thru and didnt notice. I cant remember if their are any logs for this game.

Ways to fix any mental conditions, whether researched or purchaseable. I don't like MB slaves.

Better guide or tooltips! I dont mind figuring things out but would have been helpful to find out some things before hrs into game and finding a tip that just made life easier.

I am happy for the announcement and cant wait to try it. SM was one of the best type of brothel game I played to date, at least for me.