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Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
New features
Added volumetric clouds to replace the old clouds rendering.
Changes
Adjustments in dust remover tool.
Adjustments in terrain modifier tool.
Decreased the probability of disasters based on Core Heat.
Shake screen only in closer zooms and when the location is visible. No more shaking when a meteor or earthquake happens in the other side of the planet.
Bug fixes
Fixed dust percentage not counting properly.
Fixed stats screen not showing values properly.
Hi everyone!
After some few updates and making the game compatible with Steam Deck, I returned back to my regular work on Civilizations update.
This time I would like to show you things.
First, I changed how population work in cities, from a single overall population number into something a bit more complex based on ages and groups of demography.
If we have creatures with different ages, why not the same for cities?
We will have three groups of age: young, adult and elder.
Each of them will have different properties, for example in this image you can see that only adults and elder people can be workers and used in the city production.
Also, there is a graph showing how demography is distributed per age.
For now, I will try to keep it simple, but this will allow some more flexibility for future features.
I shouldn't add more scope to the update, but anyway... I think this was needed!
I added a full vehicle editor to the game.
The way it works is similar but a bit different to another very familiar game.
Here, you don't have 3 slots for 3 different types of vehicles (land, water and air). Instead, you have 3 slots for any kind of vehicle.
When you design a vehicle, first you have to add a base component, this will define if the vehicle is for land, water or air. This means, you can create a civilization where all vehicles are ships because the whole planet is a water world.
Also, the base will provide energy for the rest of the components, where each of them will add life, defense and attack power properties to the vehicle.
I hope you like this new additions!
The update is starting to look good and I probably after this everything is going to start progressing faster. So, soon, you will start seeing devlogs more frequently!
See you!
I know everyone was expecting Civilizations update to be the next, but as you can see, and unexpectedly, Planetary Life is on Steam's Daily Deal so an update was needed to follow this big day!
Also, by popular demand Japanese language is being added.
About Civilizations update, don't worry, this was just a little break to do some changes and additions, but I keep working hard.
Soon, I will upload a new devlog about it.
For now, enjoy this new update and welcome to all Japanese players :-)
いらっしゃいませ！New features
Added Japanese language.
Added individual logs for creatures and plants.
Added button to find creatures/plants/fungi from the encyclopedia.
Added new tooltips explaining gases and fertile land.
Added total population for plants and fungi in the encyclopedia.
Added new simplified time display system for some screens to avoid visually huge numbers breaking the UI.
Changes
Increased fungi reproduction rate.
Increased soil moisture propagation from coast.
Change some texts to provide a bit more information to the players.
Added falloff effect to temperature and humidity artifacts.
Bug fixes
Fixed bug showing elder creatures with the size of a child.
Fixed the fertile land calculation causing to throw smaller percentage than expected.
Hi everyone!
It's been a while since the last update.
Civilizations is hard to implement, it's almost like adding a new game inside the current game. But I'm getting there!
I think I have (now yes!) all system on place and I'm happy with the current state of the systems, so moving forward it will be about adding the content, assets and polishing.
Sadly, despite of the time lapse since the last devlog, I cannot show you too much :(
Not because of lack of content, but because I want to keep few things for myself until they are in better state to show.
OK, now, let's talk about main the changes since the previous devlog!
The new production system it's a bit more complex than before, so I will explain column by column:
1- Base production per worker: In the example, 1 worker will produce 0.8 of food.
2- Nature potential: based on natural resources around the city, this value will go from 0% (nothing available) to 150% (abundance) and get multiplied by base production.
3- Flat production bonus: adds to the base production. You get this from buildings or technologies.
4- Percentage production bonus: multiplies the base production. You get this from buildings or technologies.
5- Maintenance cost: Population, some buildings, military resources, etc... will have maintenance cost. In the example, population consumes food.
6- Total production: the calculation of all previous minus maintenance cost. If positive, the resources gets added to city storages. If negative, subtracted.
7- Assigned workers to the resource. Total population * allocated percentage.
8- Percentage allocated to that resource.
I did some major changes to military menu.
Now, you can recruit new units from this screen (bottom down). Also, you can set a recruitment queue.
On the left menu, you can see the current status of all your civilization units. Nothing new here.
But, the major change is in the control.
In the right menu, you have 4 buttons, after select one you will be able to set some flags with numbers in the world. These flags work as calling points, depending on type and assigned amount, units will move there automatically.
Differently to previous version, where you must select and give movement to all units one by one, this new version of the controls is more macro and less micro.
As you can see, most of the changes I did recently are about moving the management of the cities into a macro based gameplay style. Before it was too micro, and maybe too close to a RTS game, which is not the intent of the game, specially because it gets quite hard to have everything under control when you need to do too much micro management.
And hopefully, now yes, I'm done with adding new system and I can start the next stage of the development: adding content and polishing!
See you soon!
It's been a while since the last time. And I understand that people is getting worried about when the next update is coming, I would be too if I were in your shoes.
Sadly, as usual, this is taking more time than expected :-(
On one hand, because Christmas is a terrible period for productivity: celebrations, family stuff, etc...
But also because... I decided to rebuild some systems again (sorry!).
Last time I showed you the building menu, the culture menu, negotiation screen and religion & politics.
Do you remember that building menu? Well... it has been changed again ːsteamfacepalmː
Before, it was a circular grid with fixed positions for all buildings, limited to around 40 building slots around the city center.
But now, it's tiled based!
This means, you will be free to choose adjacent tiles an expand your city in any direction, adding up to three buildings per tile.
This allows more organic cities and some creativity and a bit of more freedom when creating cities.
Also, there is no technical limitation on how much you can expand, so the idea of ecumenopolis, proposed by a fan, could be a thing.
Also, this has changed from previous devlogs.
Before, there was a system where you have to assign resource collection per tile.
I found this was tedious and maybe too much micro management.
So, I removed that and created the new production menu, where you will see a table with the following:
Current production.
Production limit based on your technology or buildings.
Production limit based on available resources provided by nature (food, wood, stone...).
Percentage of work force applied on that resource.
This way you don't need to continuously pay attention that all available population is assigned to a resource. In a more macro-way you will be able to assign your city production levels, that will grow up along with your tech and buildings. But, also, you can increase or stop the production of specific resources to adapt to any situation.
This is new!
Not much to explain here, the usual stuff.
You will be able to produce military units for defending or attacking other civilizations.
There will be few military types with their advantages and disadvantages.
Another new thing to the game.
As everyone was expecting, there will be a building editor!
But with some limitations... because of the amount of different types of buildings the game will include, having an editor for each one of them was adding too much complexity to the game, and also it could be very tedious for the players to need to build all of them individually, the editor will work as a template.
This means that you will create one design, and it will be applied to all buildings. Of course, to identify different buildings, each type of building will add some predefined details to the template (e.g. some blades for a windmill).
And after all this, combined with all previous devlogs, all systems for Civilizations are implemented and ready to be all connected. Then, it's all about adding content, replacing placeholders and polishing.
See you soon!
Bug fixes
Fixed potential crash when playing the game in a non-supported language (thanks to Svardmastaren for finding it!).
Fixed error causing to no recovery settings from the backup.
I continue working on Civilizations update, and this is taking some time, more than expected, but well... we can say that the usual in game development.
Meanwhile, I will try, time to time, to upload some updates about other stuff.
In terms of development, currently, the most difficult part is the design of the system.
How everything it should work? How to fit Civilizations with the current game? How many options and menus?
Previously, I uploaded another devlog showing an screen of the progress, today you will see that screen doesn't exist anymore. This is because of the continuous cycle of doing and redoing everything after testing some stuff or realizing that maybe it wasn't good enough or not in the expected direction.
I would like to share with all of you some information and screenshots, and explain what is my plan and how I'm designing everything.
As usual, everything you will see here, in terms of visuals, it's a mockup, a draft or a placeholder.
Let's go!
This is the Main Menu of the cities.
Here you can see an overall picture of the city.
In the left side you can find the population of the city. They will grew up if we have enough housing and food resources. New citizens will be on idle state, until you assign them to work, investigate, collect resources, etc...
On top of that, it's the current temperature of the city. This is important because our species will tolerate specific max and min temperatures. So keeping the city in the right temperature is important, otherwise the population will die little by little.
On the bottom menu, you can see the name of the civilization and the city (I will improve the name generator later) and the current properties and resources stored in the city.
Also, two buttons on both sides: one in the left for buildings in the city, and the one in the right to investigate new technologies (unique per civilization).
Also, you can see the building menu is open. Here you can start a new building in the chosen location or select one of the existing ones to demolish.
There is a building amount limitation per city, and the location of the buildings, for now, it won't have any effect apart of the aesthetics. I will think about this in a future.
If you click in the Culture Menu, the following screen will open:
Here you can see the Civilization or Culture details. This is a common screen for all cities.
You can see the current specie of this civilization, the architecture, politics, religion, current technology under investigation, and flag design.
Also, in the bottom, a list of cities of this civilization, and a list of other civilizations/cultures in this planet.
About architecture... Yes, I will add a building editor, but... because the amount of buildings is going to be big, I cannot add an editor to custom every each of the buildings, so the idea is to edit a base template that will be applied to all buildings, then each type of building will add some extra elements to look different within them. Maybe this is not the best solution, but the more reasonable.
For Religion & Politics I decided to take a different approach than the usual one, and that menu will look like this:
Here, you have a list of rules that you can pick and combine them as you wish (very WIP screen).
Of course, there will be rules that are the opposite to other rules, so you won't be able to pick both of them at the same time.
You will need to discover new rules by investigating them in the technology tree.
Also, when you have a specific set of rules unlocked, a template in the left side will appear were you can click a traditional human politic or religion and apply their pack of rules. This is just to make things a bit easier for some players.
This screenshot is about politics, but exactly the same will be available for religion.
Finally, you can name your new government or religion as you wish.
In case of you contact another civilization, the following Negotiation Menu will appear:
Here you have a set of resources and actions you can use.
First, you will need to set what you propose to offer and what you request, then by clicking the blue button you can propose this to the other negotiator.
If they agree, the deal can be accepted and resources and actions be transferred or applied.
Otherwise, they can do changes in the proposals by asking for more or removing some of the requested items, and launch the proposal back to the player.
Now, again, the player can modify the proposal or accept it.
The negotiation will run in this cycle until someone accepts the offer or 5 proposals are made with no success.
OK! This is everything for today.
Maybe it doesn't look like too much, but it took me a while to design all these systems.
As mentioned, all you have seen here are mockups and they need a lot of polishing in terms of UI and visuals, but the system and gameplay design is already there.
Now, I will start working in military related stuff: recruiting units, managing them and simulating battles.
Then, building and flag editor, and after that, when are systems are in place, I will start adding the content and overall polishing.
As you can see there is still a lot of work to do, but now I have a clear idea of what I want to build for Civilizations update, so everything should go faster without does and redoes.
I will see you all in the next devlog and have a Happy Christmas!
Improved tidally locked hot/cold areas:
Improved tidally locked hot/cold areas:
Perhaps it's too bold to do this in a year full of great games, but... why not?
Planetary Life will participate in the Steam Awards in the category Sit back and relax.
The chances are slim, but it will be fun to participate :-)
While I continue working on civilizations, here is a small fix that resolves some issues related to rendering.
Changes - Improved health bar rendering performance. - Improved creature’s 2D sprite rendering performance. Bug fixes - Fixed error not loading plant models. - Fixed error not loading creature 2D sprites.
Probably many of you noticed that the daily updates stopped for the last weeks!
No! The game is not abandoned, it's just getting bigger!
As a solo developer, I have to prioritize my tasks, so after a period of daily minor updates fixing issues and adding improvements based on your suggestions, I needed to stop that and start getting focused on the next major update: the early ages of Civilizations!
I think the current state of the game is OK for now, so it was time to put my hand into the next big thing.
Sadly, I cannot give an estimation for this update, there is still a lot of work to create all these new systems, then add all the content, and then some testing period. But it's progressing well!
The update will include civilizations up to "bronze age" or something similar.
Then, I will release the update and gather all your feedback and opinions.
From there, I will iterate and do multiple updates to the systems until we are all happy.
After that, I will work again into the next big major update, which could be two things:
Keep going with civilizations until modern age.
Work on all your suggestions and improve creatures and plants.
For now, I will show you some screenshots, but you need to have in mind that I'm currently building the systems and their integrations with the current game, so any assets or graphical stuff is just a placeholder.
By popular request, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian have been added to the game!
I have also made multiple improvements and fixes based on suggestions and bug reports.
After this update, I will focus on the Civilizations update, releasing only minor patches to fix any critical bugs.
The plan is to release a major update with the Civilization's Early Ages, gather player feedback, make fixes and changes, and when the Civilizations implementation looks good, release another update including the Modern Ages.
New features
Added Brazilian Portuguese translation.
Added Russian translation.
Added temperature scale selector between Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin.
Added key binding menu.
Added shortcuts to open all main menus.
Added taxonomy for plants and fungi names.
Now, you can switch views using TAB.
Changes
Trees will only be completely devoured by huge creatures (other creatures can eat trees, but they will not destroy them).
Tiny creatures will not destroy plants when they eat them.
Volcanoes generate CO2 now.
Bug fixes
Fixed bug in water movement simulation that was making the sea not be leveled.
Fixed bug allowing to delete components that are dependencies of others, allowing an exploit for unexpected combinations.
Fixed water and terrain borders forming strange shapes.
Fixed some bad elevation positioning of elements in the terrain.
Fixed bug causing exoskeleton to be excluded from random mutations.
Fixed star system configuration preview not showing.
Fixed fins positioning wrong, specially after devolve from legs.
Improved grass pop-up in walking camera.
Improved Steam connection errors.
Bug fixes - Fixed some rendering issues with creature skin. Changes - Improved feather skin. - Showing fungi population in the planet zoom. - Now you can export creatures from the editor. - Added import/export systems for plants. - Added possibility to rename plants. - Added import/export systems for fungi. - Added possibility to rename fungi. - Added button, in the import screen, to open the Window’s creature/plant/fungi cards folder.
Developer notes
After this release, I need time to plan and introduce the next features, so next updates won't be just focused on bug fixing but also about adding more content.
Because of this, the pace of daily new patches will slow down a bit.
The demo has received a huge update to match the current state of art of the main game.
This was done because the old demo was too outdated including performance issues, bugs and glitches that will not representing well the actual state of the game.
The new demo is closer to the current game.
However, compared to the old demo, few things new were added but some others were removed such as the option to play the unlimited mode.
On the other hand, you can expect similar experience with limited amount of components, tools, task and also doesn't include a save/load system.
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Planetary Life, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Planetary Life statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.
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