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Author Topic: Atomic Society: Post-Apocalyptic City Builder With a Moral Choice System  (Read 11995 times)

ScottFarRoad

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Been a few quiet months over here but I'm pleased to say Atomic Society has just had it's 5th big pre-alpha update as we slowly travel towards Steam.

Here's some of the features that have been included lately for those who are buying it at this early point (which is available here).

Our post-apocalyptic town building simulation now has the following...

Prison System
Joining the existing execution solution, players now have a choice about how to handle crimes. Choose to kill them or lock them up. But how long will you lock them up for? Each choice impacts the success of your town in a different way.

Execution System Expanded
The execution ethical solution has been made more complex. Picking it now reduces the rates that all crimes occur, but also allows innocent citizens, who never hurt a fly, to be wrongfully accused and executed from time to time. It should add a bit more food for thought…

New Map
A new environment has been added to the game. You can now try and build a settlement upon a frozen hunk of ice in the middle of the ocean if you want a more remote setting.

Difficulty Settings
3 difficulty modes have been implemented, catering to those who just want to chill and see their population climb, and those who want a real survival challenge. Hard mode on a hard map gives me nightmares.

Culture Critic Effect
The morale building system has been remixed. Citizens now have personal preferences. No longer will everybody will enjoy going to taverns or chapels or theatres for example. Keep your morale buildings mixed or you’ll have unhappy citizens.

Cosmetic Buildings
3 cosmetic buildings have been added (with more to come in the future), including flaming torches and scrap metal statues. This version also lets you build much compact towns meaning you can now fill any spare spot in your settlement with these structures to add atmosphere.

Latrines and Sanitation System
Citizens now need a place to relieve themselves and a new building has been added to cater to their natural needs. Faecal based diseases will now come to strike down your people unless you keep on top of the latrine situation.

Completely Re-Designed and Improved UI
The entire UI has been rebuilt from top to the bottom. It is now faster, slicker and a lot more reliable. The amount of changes made to the UI would need an essay to cover, but existing players of the game should notice a lot of "quality of life" improvements.

Many Bug Fixes
No update is complete without a ton of bug fixes. We test, refine and polish every single update to the death and we’re quietly confident Update 6 will resolve a lot of issues players were having.

I look forward to any comments or feedback folks have. You can check out the full patch notes over here on our forum.

Some Pics:







For Those Who Are Interested, Ways To Track the Game:

Upcoming Steam Store Page
Our Website
On Reddit
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On Twitter

« Last Edit: April 14, 2017, 07:09:12 pm by ScottFarRoad »
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ZebioLizard2

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Quote
The execution ethical solution has been made more complex. Picking it now reduces the rates that all crimes occur, but also allows innocent citizens, who never hurt a fly, to be wrongfully accused and executed from time to time. It should add a bit more food for thought…

Does this happen with imprisoning as well?
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Xinvoker

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I sure am intrigued.
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ScottFarRoad

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Quote
The execution ethical solution has been made more complex. Picking it now reduces the rates that all crimes occur, but also allows innocent citizens, who never hurt a fly, to be wrongfully accused and executed from time to time. It should add a bit more food for thought…

Does this happen with imprisoning as well?

Imprisonment will have its own downside, to give the game a wider mix of sociological problems. Whatever you pick is going to have some kind of problem as there isn't a perfect form of justice. Prison will be a bit more refined depending if you lock people up for a long time or short time. We're working on that this month.  :)
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Majestic7

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A little nitpick regarding capital punishment - there is no research showing that it actually deters crime at all based on empirical evidence. I think more interesting choice would be spending scarce resources on prisoners versus getting rid of them either through execution or exile. Or alternatively, bloodthirsty citizens requesting people to be executed, possibly spiraling into lynchings.
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Vorbicon

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Sure, but a gone primitive post-apocalyptic society probably isn't too interested in empirical evidence. They probably care more about the cathartic sense of revenge and the spectacle of the execution.
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thegoatgod_pan

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Sure, but a gone primitive post-apocalyptic society probably isn't too interested in empirical evidence. They probably care more about the cathartic sense of revenge and the spectacle of the execution.

They aren't disputing this, they are saying capital punishment shouldn't reduce the rate at which crime occurs (why would it? if it doesn't work this way in a functional society, it wouldn't be a deterrent in a kill and steal or be killed environment)

I like Majestic's suggestion that capital punishment be cheaper (no need to feed prisoners) but have more negative consequences (revenge raids, etc)
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More ridiculous than reindeer?  Where you think you supercool and is you things the girls where I honestly like I is then why are humans on their as my people or what would you?

( Tchey )

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Linux too, i will wait until a proper support is done. I keep it on my radar, it seems intriguing enough.
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Retropunch

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Sure, but a gone primitive post-apocalyptic society probably isn't too interested in empirical evidence. They probably care more about the cathartic sense of revenge and the spectacle of the execution.

They aren't disputing this, they are saying capital punishment shouldn't reduce the rate at which crime occurs (why would it? if it doesn't work this way in a functional society, it wouldn't be a deterrent in a kill and steal or be killed environment)

I like Majestic's suggestion that capital punishment be cheaper (no need to feed prisoners) but have more negative consequences (revenge raids, etc)

It's difficult to know how capital punishment really effects crime rates, especially in specific cases. The studies done on it are pretty poor, because there are extremely few recent examples of a crime which wasn't a capital crime, and then capital punishment was introduced, and then taken away again.

So you're basically in a situation where all you can say is 'there was no increase in this kinda crime after capital punishment was taken away' but you've got a whole host of other factors to take into account, and most of those crimes had a lot of slackening in sentencing before capital punishment was officially gotten rid of. 

More than that, recidivism rates are about 60-70% (UK/US stats), and more for serious criminals - and it's kinda obvious that you're not going to get re-offending if they're dead. This is more of an issue in a post-apocalypse, where if someone's justified crime to themselves, they won't have many controlling factors to stop them re-offending.

All that to say, I think it's fare to say it'd have a reduction in crime (even just due to falling re-offending rates) so I think it's fine to keep it in, but as has been said - more negative consequences would be interesting and realistic.
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Altivera

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So how are you going to deal with the turn to generic city builder that plagued banished.
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ScottFarRoad

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Of course I can’t even pretend Atomic Society can scratch the surface of all these deeply political issues. We're dealing with heavy issues that people can't agree on real-life, let alone videogames. And above all, we've got to make a game that is fun and challenging to play, no matter what path you take. That requires taking some dramatic license.

If we get it right, Atomic Society is (hopefully) a fun little indie city-builder that lets you roleplay as a tyrant or a saint (or somewhere between). It will take a few liberties with the truth for the sake of making a fun game, but it will still touch upon issues other games don’t, and allow a wide-range of player expression. 

Your goal is to make a self-sustaining settlement that can support enough genetic diversity for repopulation. That’s your mission. The survivors who turn up at your town were fighting to survive each day until they found sanctuary in the form of your town. That gives you a bit more dominance. There’s nowhere else for them to go. 

Lynching, revenge, etc is being worked on alongside one of the other ethical solutions. There should be a wide mix of problems spread out across the game by the end. Obviously in the real world all downsides would combine. We can’t replicate that in gameplay form realistically but I think we can make a few dilemmas alongside the fun of building a settlement in difficult circumstances.

The game is ultimately going to give you an intensified and simplified simulation of running a post-apocalyptic city where the laws are up for grabs. So execution might not cover every possible political outcome, for example, but it will give a decent challenge gameplay-wise and help tell a good story.

So how are you going to deal with the turn to generic city builder that plagued banished.

I was not a fan of Banished, but I respect how it was made and shook up the genre. Hopefully the thing that will keep us fresh is that in Atomic Society you have a target – get your population to the destined number. There is an endpoint and we can therefore sculpt the challenge to make it fun from start to victory because we know where you’re going. Replay value will come from the random elements in every city, the different behaviours that crop up each time. 
« Last Edit: April 16, 2017, 08:04:35 pm by ScottFarRoad »
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ScottFarRoad

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Dev Blog #19: New Pre-Alpha Updates & Behind the Scenes Battles


It's only been a short time since we released the latest big update to Atomic Society, so this month's blog will focus on behind-the-scenes stuff. Next month we can start to show off the new content. However, there's still plenty to talk about...
 
Update 6 Launched

The 6th big update to our fledgling pre-alpha version is now available if you missed it. Existing customers will need to re-download the game. The latest patch notes are here. I hope everyone enjoys testing it as we keep shooting for that Early Access release in the 4th quarter of the year.
 
Discord Server Now Available

If you fancy a relaxed and friendly place to hang out with the devs and any other people interested in Atomic Society, there is now a Discord server (aka a glorified chat room) for the game here. Feel free to pop by and say hello. We'll see if it gets used or not.


One Year of Being on Sale

April 20th marked 1 year since we started selling our pre-alpha to the public. It's been a hell of a year.
 
We hadn't intended to go public with the game until about now, but coming off a failed Kickstarter in early 2016 we were left with 3 choices: try Kickstarter again, give up development, or sell what we had and hope it would keep the lights on. Believing it was better to live by what we were able to produce than rely on Kickstarter hype, we of course put the game up for sale way earlier than intended.

That marked the moment Atomic Society moved from being a dream to a reality, where money was on the line and people could actually judge what we were doing.

Out of all the decisions we’ve made, selling early still ranks as one of the best. Player feedback has produced good ideas and helped us focus on problem areas with no downsides (aside from the time it takes to replying to messages). And of course the tiny bit of money AS brings in each month covers basic expenses, like replacement PC parts and bills that would otherwise put us in personal debt - or kill the project entirely.
 
A lot has been added to the game in the past year, more than I could list here. Big things like 3 new maps, execution and prison systems, improvements to citizen behaviour, new buildings and ruins, many more new UI elements, tweaks and gameplay improvements, more music, and most gruelling of all – the damn saving and loading system.

Saving and loading is the crucible for a lot of indie games in this genre I think. If a team can manage that, they’re probably going to make it.


Last Minute Stress

The last tweak for Update 6 was actually added to the game a few minutes before it was uploaded. Not being on Steam yet with its superior systems, it isn't simple for us to just release a hotfix or micro-patch. Any update we release has to be the final. And being a perfectionist, I was tweaking the lighting on our new Iceberg map right up to limit. It's tense as games are essentially a house of cards, a single change can knock everything over.
 
After I'd successfully uploaded the new pre-alpha version, I was about to announce it when I realised we had a problem. One of the big new features in Update 6 wasn't triggering. I'd totally missed it. Innocent citizens were supposed to be killed for crimes they haven’t committed if you choose execution but it wasn't happening. The police force in our game is one of the most complex, and fragile systems in the game and this flaw had gone unseen.

The new version was already online at this moment. Thank God the programmers were still conscious and online (working long-distance that's not something you take for granted). However, Nick and Adam were able to fix the bug at once and then I had about 90 minutes to test it and balance it. Mariana was stuck in front of the computer, recording on a notepad how often the effect occurred. She crunched the numbers. I trusted my feelings, uploaded the now-fixed version again and collapsed in a heap.

Coming at the end of an exhausting final sprint to get the version ready, this wasn't easy on the emotions. The game is getting big now, and there's so much to check.

Testing Vs Making

To be fair, despite the pressure and exhaustion of the testing period, it does pay off. To date we have never needed to release a fix for a released version. When it's out, it's out and we can start working on new stuff. There are lots of moderate bugs in the game of course, we have a huge list, but nothing game-breaking for the vast majority of players. This could change though as more and more people try the game out and we face more and more obscure hardware configurations. We'll see.
 
Bug-fixing is essential. I used to be a tester at Rare, so it's drilled into my brain, but bugs damage a game's reputation more than anything else (over-promising in marketing aside). There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a player unable to enjoy the game - not because the gameplay is bad - but because a stupid issue got in the way.


The Youtubers Are Coming...
 
We receive quite a few emails a month from Youtubers who want free codes for the game. That's fine, but I have to keep telling them all we're not marketing the game yet in a big way (I'll save the limelight for Steam). Sometimes that doesn't put them off though. So this month, 2 little Youtubers decided to make videos of the game. They bought the game out of their own pocket so I can’t control what happens after that!

Video series by British Curmudgeon (Part 1) and Merric Gaming (Part 1) here.
 
I feel like a patient expecting bad news from his doctor when I watch strangers play our game. Are they going to understand it? Will it bug out? What unexpected thing will they try to do that I would never think of? But both the Youtubers seem to ultimately come away with positive things to say. 

Early User Reviews

As the game slowly spreads to new players, I've been collecting positive comments that people post about the game in various places. They're a great motivator and I find it absolutely amazing some people enjoy playing a game we made. Making videogames is still magic to me, so that we're creating a thing people can enjoy is freaky. You can read the latest ones here.


Making and Selling an Indie Game With Anxiety
 
This might seem like a weird topic to talk about here, but it does affect the making of Atomic Society on a daily basis, so I thought I'd bring it up. Like plenty of others out there, I personally suffer from social anxiety. I'm speaking broadly here, but social interactions, online or otherwise - even with good friends - can cause me to literally pass out with panic. It's rarely ever that bad, but it's often unpleasant. My whole body feels as if something terrible is coming to kill it.

Like most long-term mental illnesses, you learn how to cope with it. Get good at it, and people will even think you are relaxed, when on the inside you're terrified. Making an indie startup has been a huge challenge with this condition. I had to find strangers to work with, work out contracts and make tough business decisions, have daily discussions, including giving negative feedback and disagreeing. I have to reach out and do "networking". I have to be constantly talking to customers on social media.

All of that scares the crap out of me, to point sometimes I just can't function. But I also gladly volunteer to do a lot of the social stuff because as game designer, I understand the vision of what we're doing better than anybody, and I have occasional quiet periods where there's little to do - unlike a programmer who is always overburdened with tasks.

Social anxiety does hold us back. There have been opportunities that I have turned down because I can't face talking to strangers and I market the game sparingly for fear of "bothering people". I also assume everything I write or do is going to be mocked.

Yet here we are, still making and promoting the game. We soldier on. Anxiety slows us down but it can't stop us. And though it might cause us to miss out on opportunities, it can't control if we make a good or bad game. And that's ultimately all that matters. Anxiety might win a few battles, but it can't win the war.


Forum News & Stories

Our website forum was busy this month. A few chatty folks bought the game evidently. There should be plenty of new threads and feedback if you haven’t checked it out for a while, so take a peek if you're curious. In a strange coincidence two recent users happened to be writers and posted their post-apocalyptic fiction. It was quite surreal.

We also had a bit of random publicity because of the new update, which is always pleasant, with a small sites covering it and IndieDB tweeting about us, making us at the time the 2nd most popular game on their entire site! It's always surprising when stuff like that happens.

In Conclusion...

We're hard at work on Update 7 and the first few elements of it have been added, but there's a long way to go. We'll share the first fruits next month. If it all works out, Update 7 (or 8 at worst) could, in theory, be the final one before Early Access. But we'll see how stupidly misguided I was in saying that later in the year.

See you next month!
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Gwolfski

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this game looks nice. i might get it next week
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Parsely

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Great post. The bit about social anxiety hits close to home. Keep up the great work!
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ScottFarRoad

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Great post. The bit about social anxiety hits close to home. Keep up the great work!

Thanks, it was unsurprisingly the bit I questioned most about even including in the blog! :)

In other news, if all goes well I should be posting another dev update end of this week. Been an absolutely insane month making Atomic Society, but also a pretty productive one despite all that...
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