Hi, guys, just a quick update this weekend! I had some free time last night to start properly working on the general colonist management interfaces. Some of the screenshots of Dwarf Therapist look tremendous, so much of my functional design draws on that. This is extremely early look at what I'm doing, but I've built a primordial version of an activity management screen:
You can flip on and off activities here for all your colonists' work shifts. Right now, turning the activities on will just set them at the default priority, but I'm going to make it so that you can specify priorities from this screen, too. I also have a plan for it to provide color-coded recommendations for which colonists should do what. Finally, if you don't want to manage any of it, I'll include a button that'll auto-optimize everything, just like the minister of labor does when he works. When you hit the button, everyone's activities and priorities will be algorithmically optimized.
I would've liked to have gotten further this weekend, but my girlfriend had a meltdown today about not spending enough time with her. My Sunday was spent shopping for autumn house decorations. A wreath was purchased. Disaster averted. Hopefully I'll get further along with this during the nights this week.
So you said this was inspired by sim earth? You mean the graphics? Otherwise I see fairly little relationship?
You're certainly right that the gameplay in SimEarth is quite different from Outer Colony! The inspiration I've drawn from it is much more conceptual. When I played SimEarth as a kid, it was really the first software I ever saw that attempted to comprehensively model a world. It just made me think about computer programs in a different way, and that's how it helped inspire Outer Colony. It might've even helped prompt my career as a software engineer. SimEarth and Will Wright's ideas were decades ahead of their time, and I think it's one of the most underrated games out there.
With any luck, I'll be able to post more screenshots of an improved colonist management interface next weekend. I'm hoping to have the update ready within a few weeks, and I really hope it makes the mechanics of playing Outer Colony much easier.