Hi everyone. It’s been a hectic first month after release! We planned September to be only bugfixes and OH MAN were there bugs. Nevertheless we managed to reach our Alpha 1 milestone. Here’s a monthly recap of what we’ve been up to.

Bug Fixes, Bug Fixes, Bug Fixes

Kobey, Zomawia

We’ve been working tirelessly fixing bugs and improving the stability of Buoyancy. We made a lot of good progress this month and are starting to become happy with the stability of Buoyancy. But there will always be bugs and we encourage you to report them on our Steam boards.

Soon we can start working on improving the performance of Buoyancy. We are aware of the performance with large cities, which we didn’t think people would get that big so soon. Our ultimate goal is to have populations of nearly 1,000 to run as smoothly as possible, but this will take time.

Localization Support

Zomawia

The game can be translated to most languages now. Currently we are relying on a community effort for translations.

If you would like to help out, request access to one of the Google sheets here: https://buoyancygame.com/localization/.

Priority Systems

Kobey

Priority systems are a key feature in most City Builders that Buoyancy was lacking. We are still looking to add more priority systems with regards to Construction and Input buildings, but for now we have included Quota systems, Resource Priorities, and Task Priorities.

Resource Priorities

One big issue we’ve found with managing your city is the fact that once a resource has been made a villager needs to come pick it up and bring it to a storehouse. The order in which resources get picked up has always been First come, First serve. That can prove to be a pitfall when your city is struggling because you need a lot of one resource that is ready to be picked up, and there are a lot of tasks in the way before you get them.

You can now set Priority for which resources get picked up first. Whatever resource has the highest priority will be picked up first, and any resource with no priority will still follow the rule of First come, First serve after the resource with a priority has been retrieved.

Quota Systems

Large cities with lots of production going are getting stuck with too many resources that we have not provided proper “sinks” to. With the new Quota system you can set a maximum of amount of a resource type that would like to have in the entire city. Once a quota has been met the building will pause production and maintain its worker, unless it is a resource that has multiple resource it creates. In that case any extra resource will be “thrown out”. If a “multiple resource generating” building has all of its resources meeting their quotas, than it will pause its production and maintain its worker. Once a resource no longer meets the quota the building will begin producing again.

Task Priorities

This system will be more for advanced players that already have a good understanding of task priorities. It will allow you re-organize what tasks are sent out first when a new worker is available to complete a task. It is possible to cripple your city by modifying these priorities too much, but that can be useful in a pinch and you can always revert them back to their defaults if you find your city crippled.

Custom Controls

Shawn

An overlooked feature during development has been added to the game thanks to the feedback from the playerbase. We hope this will help left hand players and others play using their preferred control scheme.



Other Improvements

We’ve added the ability to rotate the camera with the mouse when the button is pressed.

The boat AI has received some improvements and fail-safes.

Recycler asset

Elliott

This is the current version of a building we been wanting to re do for quite some time, That being the Recycler. The old design was very underwhelming with noticeable texture bugs. We wanted to make the building more noticeable as a place a villager would work at for recycling loot.

Motor concept

Kevin

Water Cannon building

Zomawia

I started work on that Water Cannon building. Should be in for next update.

Pirate Invasions

Zomawia

The pirates had a lot of balancing done although far from complete. The controls from City Invasions were also incorporated with the Pirate Invasions. So now you can defend with your villagers, control your military, and try to end a battle with resource demands.

The pirate invasions are also now a toggle when you start a new game. We don’t really recommend playing the game that way, but it’s there for the people that want a more peaceful game.

Underwater Peak

Zomawia

A node for the deep divers out in this world. The deep diver production rates were slowed and to get Dirt quickly you need to find these peaks. They are hard to see but usually spawn with Fish or Kelp.

QOL

Zomawia

A lot of things that people asked for, and they received.

Keep track of your total storage amounts.

Range indicators and popups to let the player know if the building will suffer from efficiency drops.

Range indicators for towers during placement, hover, and click.