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Oxygen Not Included Roadmap


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Hello everyone!

With the release of our latest major update and moving on to the next one coming on October 5, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the roadmap for the game.

The Outbreak Upgrade was a bit rough. Given the feedback, it was clear that we misbalanced the early game difficulty of disease, and we worked hard to identify that and improve things as soon as possible. Additionally, while we agree that a new system was not the most requested feature in the game, we felt strongly that we needed to bite the bullet and work on building out the base systems before digging deeper into those systems.

At its core, Oxygen Not Included is about building a thriving colony on an unforgiving asteroid. The game is a huge simulation, with tons of layers that are constantly being simulated at all times. The interaction of these systems is both what creates challenges for the players and the opportunities to exploit it.

In order for us to build such a system, it requires that we build a solid foundation to work on. With the latest update, we believe the core systems are now in place, and are now building deeper into the tech tree. 

The following is a broad view of what you can expect as we fill out the rest of the game:

More variety in the world
We will continually be expanding what the world holds for the players. This means more biomes, more elements to manipulate, more creatures, and so on.

The exploration of the world is a key part of the discovery process.

Deeper Tech Tree
If the variety in the world creates the ingredients, then the tech tree is the way players can manipulate it. We will continue to advance the tech tree to allow greater use of the materials and systems in the world. This includes advanced refinement techniques, building protective suits for Duplicants, better resource extraction, improved logistics to increase efficiency, and so on.

One of the core principles of the game is that everything you do creates externalities. Want to breathe some oxygen? It produces CO2. Want to electrolyze the water to create O2? It also creates Hydrogen. Want to go to the toilet? Better have a place to put the waste product. 

The tech tree will continue to push players to manipulate the systems to handle these externalities, and even use them to your advantage. 

More Duplicant interactions
Currently, Duplicants mostly interact in solitary ways. Over time, we will be adding more ways that the Duplicants will notice the presence of each other. Loud sleepers or duplicants helping to heal each other are examples of such interactions, but many more are possible.

We have many ideas for this, and will expand on it as we get closer to implementing them.

Lore Discovery
The reason why Duplicants are stuck on this Asteroid and the background of the world will slowly be revealed.

--

In the final phases of the game, we expect the tech tree to be much deeper than it is now, extending to what we would call “space tech”. During that phase, the Duplicants will discover why they are trapped on an asteroid, and what they can do about it.

During Early Access the game will evolve. As the team builds upon the game sometimes it may be too easy, sometimes it may be too difficult, and sometimes it could just be wrong. The process of Early Access helps us land exactly where we want the game to be, and we’re thankful for your feedback as a community helping us to achieve that. We truly think the game is better because of your involvement.

This is our 6th Early Access title, but the process is never simple. What you can be sure of is that we always put our full effort to complete our games -- since we launched on Steam the team has grown, and we will continue to build and support it fully to the end.

Thanks so much for your support of our game, we hope you enjoy your journey with us as we continue to develop it!

And that’s it! With all that said, here is a sneak peak image from the upcoming update:

Spoiler

polymerizer.gif

Best,
Jamie.


 

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"First" ...it had been up like an hour, but still.

I see in the assignments info screen of any given dupe a thing called "leisure area" ... can't help but think this may include expanding the decor branch of the research tree. ;)

I think perhaps some sort of device which can help late-coming dupes increase their learning skill would be nice - Kind of help mend the gap between new and old dupes - that way when I reach the point where I want to take on more dupes I won't have to worry about how far behind they'll be or how long they take to catch up to everyone. What I usually do is assign my low level learners to research after I have gotten the few key topics I need out of the way. This is so that everyone gets at least to level 3 learning or so and can very quickly level other skills evenly with the rest of the colony - I find I'm harboring high level everything by cycle 60 or so. When I do this carefully, I can get the most awesome spread of purple on my jobs screen. But I also stop taking dupes if food becomes scarce or unreliable because I'm more focused on building or resource control. Late coming dupes are rather stunted in their stats and require too much job manipulation, but I do work with them.

Screen shot of my most awesome dupe ever and the jobs screen for the first 5 dupes - got lucky with 'Maxine' one on the brain machine. Diver's lung + deep Diver's lung. Makes me wonder If I stuck her in again and Deep diver's lung came up, if she would start producing oxygen. :shock:

I started taking on more dupes when I began having more food than I knew what to do with.20170831213938_1.thumb.jpg.658222874e8b7ed65178d6815a9d763c.jpg

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Per tradition, first!!!!11!!! (edit: well 2nd!!! I was just seconds away :(

Omg, is that sneak peak image suggesting that metal refining is actually coming soon?!!?

I appreciate Klei's update as to what the game's direction is heading. This game is a dream come true to me, science + simulation + survival all-in-one. While player feedback is useful, it's also good to note that too much (bad quality) feedback is no good either. I hope you guys continually weigh in good (and bad) feedback and design accordingly. Making certain things too easy (and non-inventively boring) or too tedious takes away: FUN. Yes, fun.

Nonetheless, I LOVE THIS GAME!!!

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I love you guys and love how you've done Early Access games. You've developed a great method of doing it, and do it right! There are other companies that do it well, too, but I think Klei does it best. And if I can ever get my will up to actually work on any of the many ideas I've had, this is the process I'd want to follow.

It's almost an addiction jumping into new games with you now (though not sure I'll be "jumping" into the 'Lava' game). Keep up the great work, and this loyal customer certainly won't stray away.

 

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8 minutes ago, brummbar7 said:

It's got a translucent tank attached.  So I'm going to say we'll get gas bottler, and that thing will compress chlorine gas into bleachstone.  Still wish it'd require liquid chlorine though.

I'm assuming it's white because it hasn't gotten textured yet (placeholder spoiler prevention). If it could turn chlorine into bleach stone, then I wouldn't mind getting O2 into abyssalite for some manual temporary placement of an o2 source. This aside, if it's an ore refiner, the it makes sense considering that cuprite/copper, just truns into copper for the dupes, we have all these metals and minerals, it would only make sense that the machine combines metal ores and minerals to produce the refined substance. ( this might allow for better tuning the building materials for balance.)

Right now it just looks like you cab build anything out of anything (with a few exceptions) and it all looks the same regardless of the materials you made it out of.

I have no idea what this is though - looks like it's dealing with gasses when it comes to the baffle/billow thing.

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30 minutes ago, Risu said:

Wasn't expecting to see the plastic extruder being added any time soon. Wonder what will be the raw material.
 

I was came to a similar conclusion as brummbar7, but I have to assume if it is not for creating bleachstone, it still really looks like its raw material is a gas.

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34 minutes ago, Whispershade said:

I was came to a similar conclusion as brummbar7, but I have to assume if it is not for creating bleachstone, it still really looks like its raw material is a gas.

Well, it most looks like a barrel of oil.  And oil would be the logical resource.  I was just assuming that liquids would use the same bottle style as in-game, so maybe different container style meant gas.  But if the 'oil drum' is more part of the machine, then I guess it would make sense for it to look different.  It'd be great if we got an 'oil biome'.  I suppose it'd come with an oil geyser as well.

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I have a funny feeling it could be a machine which does multiple things with a bottled liquid, Since that is the same bottle used for Liquids whilst gas using the new canister.

Like the Microbe musher where you can select the output etc, I think if you put in Liquid Chlorine it will give you a compressed solid.....BLEACH STONE, if you put in oil, you get Plastic.

 

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4 hours ago, AlexRou said:

Am I the only one that thinks it's making dry ice from CO2 gas?

It would have to use up a fair amount of energy if it is going to compress it to the point of dry ice, or the machine would have to heat up since heat cannot really be destroyed

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28 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

It would have to use up a fair amount of energy if it is going to compress it to the point of dry ice, or the machine would have to heat up since heat cannot really be destroyed

You can't compress CO2 into a solid. You compress and cool it to make a liquid.

The industrial way of making dry ice is taking liquid CO2 and then simply releasing it into a container. They only compress it again to make it a solid block instead of being snow. So all the power usage would go to shaping dry ice instead of making it, assuming it is already in liquid form.

But yeah it's still a pretty high consumption.

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We have one of those in my work XD Just not that brand. But in the ways of ONI we would still use either a lot of electricity or generate a lot of surrounding heat....because ONI

Edit - Its not the exact same but its similar since we transport adhesives etc and some need dry ice.

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1 minute ago, BlueLance said:

We have one of those in my work XD Just not that brand. But in the ways of ONI we would still use either a lot of electricity or generate a lot of surrounding heat....because ONI

Bet you guys have loads of fun with the excess.

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1 minute ago, AlexRou said:

Bet you guys have loads of fun with the excess.

I honestly have no idea what they do with it XD we have like 7 different freezers for different temperatures as well so maybe they chuck it in there? Health and safety in my country is pretty bonkers so they probably cant play pranks....I so would

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1 minute ago, BlueLance said:

I honestly have no idea what they do with it XD we have like 7 different freezers for different temperatures as well so maybe they chuck it in there? Health and safety in my country is pretty bonkers so they probably cant play pranks....I so would

You could make carbonated ice cream/drinks with it. Or dump it in water and do stuff with the fog :p

If you mix it with alcohol you get the poor man's liquid nitrogen so you can freeze stuff to break them.

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2 minutes ago, AlexRou said:

You could make carbonated ice cream/drinks with it. Or dump it in water and do stuff with the fog :p

If you mix it with alcohol you get the poor man's liquid nitrogen so you can freeze stuff to break them.

Haha I think we would get fired XD although we do put ice cream in the one freezer XD

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4 minutes ago, Michi01 said:

Yeah I think I've seen someone post this somewhere before and it was called "plastic refinery"

Risu does a lot of data mining so we can safely assume it does plastic, I just hope it can put out different materials dependant on what is inputted

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The file in Jamie's post is called "polymerizer", so that definitely implies that it's used to make plastic (@RemyG pointed that out on the Discord server and allowed me to post it). Natural gas, propane and crude oil are materials in the game (not all implemented) that could all technically be used as raw materials for polymers. Natural gas and crude oil couldn't be used directly though, at least in real life. It'd be cool if we actually had to build a refinery for crude oil and would get different materials out of it, some that can be used for power production and some to make polymers.

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