Greetings, Creators!





When the air begins to smell like the first rains of the season within a majestic pine forest, complete with the faint aroma of a polar bear giving birth, that’s when you know a new patch is coming for The Universim. As always, our devs have been working tirelessly to ensure you have some new content to enjoy. We are excited to see so many new fans joining us as the latest updates have rolled out. Welcome!





Also, today we hosted a live stream to show off our latest Twitch integrations and it was a blast. Hundreds of fans tuned in to check out the latest features and throw their questions at Alex Koshelkov, the creator of The Universim. We got a lot of great ideas from your input and we had a really good time. If you missed out on the fun you can catch the recorded stream here in this link.













We are also so thankful for the positive Steam reviews you have all been leaving to show your love for the game. It helps us so much, and it’s an excellent motivator for the team! More importantly, every positive review we receive gives our developers exactly 1 minute to see their families before they go back in the cage. If you love The Universim and touching reunions, please leave us a review here.









From this point on, we will be spending a lot more time on the overall quality of The Universim, revisiting and reworking systems that aren’t intuitive enough or really tank the fun factor. Please let us know which systems you’d like us to take a look at! We have a few on our list already, but your feedback is crucial to find out where the biggest problems are hiding (or even tiny things you’d like addressed).





We are well aware of the most annoying issue at the moment, the infamous “Nuggets doing nothing” AI bug. This happens when a Nugget’s pathfinding system can’t find an endpoint, which causes the system to hang. We are already working on a solution and we hope to have it out in our next BIG update.





Let’s move on to what’s new!





Locust Swarm





When the sound of buzzing approaches from the wild, you will know true fear. They do not come for blood, no. They come for something far more precious. They want your food! A swarm of hangry locusts will occasionally invade your civilization. Thankfully, you can fight them off with your Creator Powers. At the moment, this attack will be considered a random disaster like any other, but later on locust swarms will be triggered by climate change. Increasing temperatures, reduced air quality, and overall planetary pollution will drive locusts toward your civilization in search of new food sources.









Education System Update





Based on your feedback, we have decided to merge Schools and Universities together. There will now only be Educated and Uneducated Nuggets. Educated Nuggets are required for high-level buildings like Factories, Space Control Centers, and so on. Uneducated Nuggets can no longer be assigned to these buildings. As a result of this change, buildings will no longer catch on fire because an under-qualified Nugget made an oops. We will continue to improve this system as we go, so please let us know your thoughts and suggestions on Discord or down below!









































New Quest: Gone Green

Your civilization’s progress comes with a deadly cost. As Nuggets create fancier technology that requires more resources and energy, Mother Planet takes a serious hit. As Factories rise up, the air quality plummets, and trees are ripped down to feed the ravenous belly of industry. Nuggets need a helping hand to guide them toward a more sustainable future. We’d prefer someone wiser, but you, Creator, will have to do.









When oxygen levels drop low enough, a new quest will become available that might just reveal the only way to save the planet. Doing so will not only improve conditions for your civilization, it will also earn you new believers. Keep an eye out!





New Occupation-Specific Vehicles

Beep beep! The city just got a whole lot noisier. Police Cars, Fire Trucks, Government Limos, Science Trucks, Ambulances, and Engineer Trucks have been added to the game. Nuggets in the Modern Age who are assigned to certain jobs will now drive some sort of vehicle. We probably should have taught them how, but they’ll learn fast enough.









Windmills

The latest Windmill tech has arrived! It’s now at least an acceptable percentage better than the old one. As a bonus feature, they’re quieter, meaning Nuggets can finally enjoy home entertainment without the need for noise-cancelling headphones.









Kinetic Generators

Great news! Kinetic Generators now burn even more calories than ever before. That statement is both true and a great addition to the recruitment posters. This also means they generate more electricity. Unfortunately, some Nuggets’ hearts can’t handle the increased intensity, but at least those old enough to have retired can enjoy uninterrupted daytime television.





















Twitch





We’ve added a new panel to help streamers keep track of chat members who have created Nuggets in their game. This panel will notify you when a chat member enters the birth queue, donates bits, commits a crime, and is born or dies. A chat member’s action point balance is displayed beneath their portrait, and you can click on a Nugget’s portrait to fly to their position. You can always hide this panel by pausing the game and unticking Twitch->show Nugget info panel.





The twitch nugget info panel





This panel is the big new Twitch feature this month, but we’ve added a number of smaller improvements.





We’ve added the #Invent command, which allows a chat member to spend action points to complete your current research item.





We’ve changed the way #Explode works, so now chat members can target a specific building type to blow up. For example, if they type #Explode Archive their Nugget will grab a bomb and run towards the streamer’s Archive, blowing themselves up when they get near it. If they type #Explode without a building modifier, then the Nugget will target a building at random. This change gives you time to pick up the bomber and throw them elsewhere if you are quick enough.





Now chat members can define the gender of their Nugget Avatar with a gender modifier, e.g. #CreateNugget Male or #CreateNugget Female.





We’ve improved the behaviour of our integration when used in very large streams. Twitch has a message rate-limit, which is 100 messages per 30 seconds for mods/streamers. To circumvent this rate limitation, if our system detects a large volume of messages it will batch them together into a single message, separating each message with the Ã°Å¸“Â¨ emoji. Messages can only be 500 characters long, so we will batch them until we’ve used up as many characters as possible, without truncating a message. On top of this, we’ve added a buffer to ensure that messages above 100/30 seconds will wait until there is enough free space to send themselves.





Message batching only happens when chat load is high





We’ve also fixed many Twitch-related bugs. The most notable bug could occur if you loaded a game and then enabled Twitch. This could cause a variety of issues including chat members being unable to issue commands or create Nuggets. We’ve also fixed a bug that prevented chat member bit donations from being recognized by the game. Now all bit donations should be accurately recorded so long as you are connected to Twitch. We also fixed several other smaller bugs.





Bit donations now work correctly





You can find full list of Features and Commands for Twitch Here





Bug Fixes:





Fixed certain event messages had some words cut off at the end

Fixed an issue where the construction menu did not display all the resources on the resource panel

Fixed an issue where the building cloud panel was missing new resources

Fixed an issue where Satellites were removing too much oxygen when flying

Fixed an issue where the quest panel displayed the incorrect number of pages

Fixed an issue with multiple sounds that were extremely loud (windstorm, thunder, etc.)

Fixed a bug that prevented packs of animals from being spawned

Fixed an issue with displaying long numbers for water and electricity. Now, once you reach the millions, it will display “1m”, etc.

Fixed the sacrifice icon above the Temple. Previously, text on the icon was overlapping.

Fixed a bug where the University increased crime dramatically

Fixed an issue where small parks had incorrect seating areas

Fixed an issue where news messages were disappearing

Fixed an issue where dead Nuggets were not unregistered properly, causing an error to appear and break the game

Fixed an issue where an infection message from other sources was triggering an infection from drinking message

Fixed multiple audio issues in the game where certain sounds would be dropped

Fixed an issue where dead animals were clipping through the ground

Fixed an issue where Bits donations did not work

Fixed an issue where the dotted representation of distance in the Cosmodrome incorrectly displayed the prediction for the travel distance

Fixed an issue where news messages text and event text was not scrolling

Fixed an issue where the trickle effect power could have been used on pause without any creator point cost

Fixed an issue where in some cases Nugget status icon were always visible on the screen with the ESC menu open

Fixed an issue with shifts that prevented Nuggets from constructing buildings, freezing them

Fixed an issue where Nuggets created without hair in clone center would cause AI problems

Fixed an issue where multiple modern buildings were missing lights during night time

Multiple missing localization fixes





General balance changes / Improvements





Pressing ESC during intro scene now skips the intro scene immediately

Save button was added to the ESC menu, but you still need to build an Archive to save the game.

Construction panel received major changes. All building categories were reworked and reorganized in order to provide a better experience.

Nuggets are more likely to become believers due to high happiness. You can also lose believers if your civilization remains unhappy for a long period of time

Batteries were removed from large buildings. Now, similar to Pumps and Reservoirs, in order to store excess electricity, you will need to build batteries.

Schools and Universities got merged. Now schools will be upgraded into Universities.

Reworked Education System. You will no longer be able to assign Uneducated Nuggets to buildings that require higher education. The Nugget panel will also be sorted based on their education level when you click on the assignment slot.

Disasters due to education were removed.

Wind system was tweaked and improved once again. Now wind won’t stay in critical conditions (extremely strong or none at all) for longer than 10 game minutes.

Using the alarm will cause Nuggets to rush toward the bunker without actually waiting to finish other tasks.

Nuggets will now run to Bunkers instead of just walking there

Increased angle tolerance for solar panels. They should now produce electricity 100% more efficiently. However, it still depends on where you place your solar panels. On the planet’s "poles", they might generate less output.





Art:





Locust Swarm

Occupation Vehicles

Nuggets Monks

Windmills

Kinetic Generators

Solar Panels Updated









UI Design:





We have redesigned the Construction Menu buttons and restructured the various categories. Buildings are now placed in more suitable categories that better represent their function. This may take a little while to get used to, but we hope you’ll eventually find it far more intuitive than before. However, newcomers will certainly be less confused.





That’s it for now! We have more awesome stuff coming your way in the next couple of patches. If you’ve been following us on Twitter or keeping track on Discord, you’ve likely seen the cool things we have going on in the background. We like throwing a few teasers up on our social channels, so don’t miss out! As always, leave your thoughts and feedback on Discord and down below. If you’re enjoying the game, don’t forget to leave a review on Steam. Have fun with the new stuff!









With love,

The Crytivo Crew











