stationmaster

Stationmaster 2 0.10 Draft Design: The Rest of the Character Engine

Now that 0.9 is stable, it's time to announce the next patch. I wasn't happy with the characters, but I needed a lot more time to think and research. Thankfully, the (very long) last patch gave me plenty. It's already a massive improvement, and I think this is going to bring the whole system up to what I had hoped it could be. This should be faster than the last two patches, because it's mainly tweaks to what was already there.

Design

New Faces

Faces have ...

Stationmaster 2 0.9.8: Quality of Life, Bugfixes, and Balance Now Available for Citizens

This update addresses most of bug reports and feedback from the last one (particularly around the rules assistant, balance, and slave list). It's save-compatible, but the early game has been re-balanced quite a bit.

Download

Windows

Changelog

Quality of life

• Painkillers no longer reduce obedience over time.

• Breast size is now visi...

  2025-01-16 12:32:53 +0000 UTC View Post

Download Stationmaster 2 0.9: The Update too Big to Title

Thanks all for your patience. This was a really long time coming, but sometimes you have to break everything at once to get things into a good state. I had to re-architect pretty much everything, but it's set now. This is definitely the most complex single update I've ever done for a game. I hope it's worth the wait.

TL;DR:

• A complete rewrite and redesign of almost everything on the station.

• A ton of fixes and improvements to the galaxy map.

• ...

  2025-01-09 23:00:37 +0000 UTC View Post

Servitor's Deck NSFW

Here you can see most of the new structures in the servitor's deck, along with how they're used (with hairless mannequins, but only temporarily).

Progress Update: Servitor's Deck (SFW)

Such a gentle euphemism. It sounds like somewhere one might choose to live. A respectable district for the working class.

It is none of those things.

It is a machine made to cut wild trees into subservient planks. Whose prisons will push you to the brink, but never further. Whose drugs and schools will give you health and knowledge, but warp what it is to be healthy and knowledgeable. Whose laws are enforced by machines as cold and inevitable as gravity. A system so perfect that r...

Sneak Peek: The Industrial Deck

You will hear the industrial deck before you see it. As the elevator descends into the depths of the station, no feat of engineering could mask the sound of the Imperial Fleet being birthed from its pools.

It is here that the heart of the Empire is laid bare. There is no reason for edifice or propaganda. Nobody in this place is worth indoctrinating. Here, there is only the brutal pragmatism of war and industry. Machines making machines to make money and corpses.

Nestled between th...

Progress Update: Administration Deck

I've been playing around with a lot of looks for this one, but finally settled on something I'm happy with.

The administration deck is where your citizens will live and work. It contains updated versions of the apartments, as well as the Ministry of Thought and Ministry of Freedom offices. It starts as a single small block, and can be expanded to a cavernous city encased in a concrete shell.

A central promenade between the two wings will give your people the open space they need t...

Poll: New Event Types

I'm probably going to be adding at least a few more events to each patch going forward, and want to get a sense of which types I should be focusing on.

What do y'all want to see more of?

0.8.2: Hotfix Release

This update fixes a couple annoyances reported by early players. A special thanks to everyone who reports bugs in the Discord channel.

Download

Windows

Changelog

• Added a new storyline and concubine.

• The concubine button should no longer glow for repeated events.

• Fixed a bug that caused the rules assistant to give drugs to eve...

  2024-04-10 13:37:50 +0000 UTC View Post

0.9 Draft Design: Rethinking the Station

Now that the character engine is working, it's time to take another look at the mechanics. I've never been happy with how station construction worked, but only recently came up with what I think is the answer:

This update will replace most of the construction system. The new one will start with less space, reduce micromanagement, and make your station important after the early game. It will also do away with the entire concept of "rooms," replacing them with "decks," which will have to ...

Stationmaster 0.8.2: New Character Engine, Event Remakes Now available for Citizens

It's finally ready! Like I mentioned in the last progress post, I ended up reworking most of the "visual novel" side of the game in addition to adding the new character engine. I'm finally happy with it (for the time being).

It also adds a bunch of quality of life stuff, because this is still ostensibly a strategy game. The next patch will focus on the station-building gameplay. I promise.

Special thanks to the alpha testers, who found some bugs so you don't have to.

And ...

Another Progress Update

Thanks for your patience on this update. Things are going well! I got a bit carried away with the writing, which has delayed the patch some, but there is a pretty big silver lining: 

In addition to the half-a-novel's worth of new events for people on your station (tied to both training status and the new backgrounds system), I've also rewritten most of the random events to be more dialog-focused like the faction leader dates. Many of them also use the new character engine, and I'm ...

Progress Update: New Character Engine

Thanks for your patience all! This update has a lot of AI techniques that I haven't seen anywhere else, which means it has involved a ton of trips back to the drawing board. It's coming together now though, enough that these screenshots should be pretty close to what goes into the final game. Part combination, character animation, and facial expressions are working the way they will in the final build (though my task list still has something like thirty tweaks to images and rigging that need ...

Progress Update: New Character Engine

The research since the last patch has paid off!

I finally have the approach for the new AI-based character engine figured out (though there is still some cleanup to do).  You can swap face parts (with expressions), body parts, clothing, and hairstyles, all while using seamless sliders for skin and hair color. That means that diversity should be as good or better than before, but with characters that look like this instead of my laughable attempts at 3D.

I'll be posting a NSFW...

New Free Build and Next Steps

There is a new free build available! It is exactly like the patron build, but without some of the new faction leader events. That means that it has all of the quality-of-life features, optimizations, and of the new events from the last patch, plus a peek at the new diplomacy and concubine systems. You can get it through the Discord (Patreon won't let me link NSFW content directly in a public post).

Now that the factio...

Stationmaster 0.7.3: Bugfixes, Optimizations, and More Quality of Life: Now available for Citizens

Thanks everyone who reported their issues with the last build (and once again to the beta testers for their patience with my 10GB spam files). I made a hotfix that should take care of the important stuff.

Download:

Windows (Pixeldrain)
Mega Mirror

2023-10-18 22:07:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Stationmaster 0.7.1: Faction Leaders and Quality of Life

This is the most significant patch so far. It adds so much that it's hard to sum up quickly, but it's meant to bring Stationmaster 2 from "proof of concept" to "truly playable game." There's always more to do, of course, but this covers a lot more of the basics.

Special thanks to the QA volunteers, including Arkan Ascantii, Twisted Metal (and others who prefer to be anonymous), who agreed to play through an early build of this. They saved everyone else from some pretty major bugs, and ...

Progress Update: Faction Leaders

The faction leader stories are mostly written and art-ed, though I still have a few more to wrap up. This is shaping up to be the biggest patch in a while, both in terms of content (something like 80 new events), and code (whole new systems like the harem screen, implants, planets, and civilian upgrades, as well as a lot of smaller tweaks). 

I'm nearing the finish line, but still have more to do.

There are still seven factions in all, and each leader has at least two ways the...

Call for Feedback on the Galaxy Map

I've heard the results loud and clear, and am working on making the new map more like the old one (and generally improving the design). The big changes so far are:

• A new button sets all of your armies to rally at a given system so that you don't have to micromanage them. This will make all of your factories work together to build the death ball you know and love from SM1.
• Rebalanced the difficulty so you don't have to wait for so long before attacking.
• Brought ba...
  2023-08-06 23:29:17 +0000 UTC View Post

Galaxy Map Thoughts

This patch is going to be about conquest, which means that the mechanics of the galaxy map are going to be a lot more important.

Which did you like better? The old one or the new one? That'll help me figure out which way to develop this.

Next Patch: Faction Leaders

It's time for a new patch, and I'm making an executive decision again, because I'm feeling mad with power. 0.8 is going to add the new Faction Leaders!

SM2 is is a whole separate galaxy from SM1, which means all new factions. Each will have diplomatic and post-conquest event chains in the style of the new 2D events.

The Eden Coalition

Ivy Sun leads her people in harmony with the environment. Her carefully-crafted charm masks the Machiavellian instincts neces...