The Universim update for 1 April 2019

All of us have been exhausting ourselves lately in pursuit of the truth. We have invested excessive amounts of time and funds into a new update for the game that makes it a little more representative of the real world.

As you know, planets in The Universim are spherical in nature, and it was planned as such from the beginning. It has been an enormous challenge to create systems that account for spherical worlds, from complex new AI solutions to completely rewritten physics systems. We basically had to hack the engine to redefine the difference between up and down. Considering the difficulties we faced, and all that have arisen since, we began to question if we were really doing things the right way. Surely if the brilliant engineers who built the engine were working with the intention for games to be created on a flat plane, then perhaps it was us who were wrong.

After everything we have done to create spherical worlds, we had to be absolutely certain of the truth before changing our vision. Thus began a long period of research and experimentation. First of all, we stepped outside into the sunshine, something that many of our team members haven’t experienced for months. There was no mistaking it, the ground seemed as flat as can be, save for natural formations. We even went on a company hiking trip up a mountain. To our surprise, the earth was flat for miles around. However, this was not enough to confirm our suspicions. We needed more evidence. After all, there’s no way that major organizations like NASA would hide the truth, right?

The next step was hiring a hot air balloon for a day. Every team member had a turn, and every single one of them confirmed that there was no sign of planetary curvature. Things started to get serious. Many meetings were conducted in which we discussed the future of the project. Would we have to throw away years of work? Would it be worth the trouble? If we didn’t model planets after scientific fact, would we become the laughing stock of the gaming industry?

Unfortunately, we could not come to a decision. There were still skeptics among us, even after everything we had seen. It seemed as though the only way to be certain would be to view the planet from orbit. However, we simply could not afford such a thing. We had stretched the game’s budget too thin already with all of this research. The best we could do was a plane trip to Europe, which we could only manage by cutting our weather-based animal testicle simulation budget. It was a tough call, but we feel that it is a sacrifice that had to be made.

Our findings were shocking. Even in the plane, there was flat ground beneath us, as far as the eye could see. The answer was clear: we as a species have been lied to. The world is indeed flat. We would like to apologize to the community for misleading you, but it was only because we were misled ourselves. Who could have possibly guessed that we have been clinging to a giant frisbee in space all this time?

As a result, over the past few months, we have secretly been rewriting systems yet again to account for the new manner in which planets will work. Every celestial body will henceforth be as flat as a pancake. Gravitational calculations will be far simpler, and the Nuggets will perform navigation as nature intended. We hope you can forgive us for perpetuating falsehoods all this time.

The latest version of The Universim is available for download now with a whole host of changes, additions, and improvements. We hope you like them.

Shiny new content

Meteor Strike

It looks like rain but it hurts like hell. The meteor strike is now available for all of your impact based pleasure. This is probably the most amazing Meteor strike you have or will ever see in any video game. Prove us wrong in the comments... if you dare!

Protection Dome

Since we added burning stones falling from the sky at random intervals (And the less random ones caused by you) we thought it would be prudent to give your nuggets a small chance of survival when the universe throws everything against you. To that end, we’ve given you the protection dome, to snuggle your civilization in a blanket of impenetrable material of ambiguous origin. It will stop tornados and heavy winds from getting in and give your nuggets skies prettier than an Acid trip.

Expandable Resource Panel

Since we now have a lot of resources to mine and produce, we decided to make it easier for you to track all that madness. Now you can Expand the resource panel to see all the resources your civilization has at the moment. Since it’s brand new, give us your thoughts on ways we can improve it.

Electronic Components Factory

Beep beep bop! Electronic components can now be produced to enable future technologies. You’ll need these bad boys to fly to the moon and beyond.

Medieval Roads

This is just a visual adjustment to the road system we have. Modern roads are coming soon, with mighty vehicles traversing them in record times!

[b]
Steel Factory[/b]

This is the place where Nuggaboys become Nuggamen. Let the greatest balls of steel production begin!

Modern age residential blocks

There’s a reason they’re called “SkyScrapers”. Tons of cement, steel and glass is used to build these titans. But be careful, their fall is deafening and sends up clouds of poisonous dust. They’re another reminder, that day by day the nuggets march closer to the stars. It’s only a

Auto research switch (on/off)

Small but nifty. Now you can disable Auto research and prevent those nuggets from trying to learn on their own. This is for the Gods that think they’re smarter than Nuggets! Now you’ll have only yourself to blame when things go wrong.

Modern eatery Upgrade

Pork chops and bacon, Nuggets two favorite animals can now be cooked faster and they taste even better! Mm-Mmmmm for that grease!

Modern fishermen hut Upgrade

Give a Nugg a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a Nugg to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Too bad their lifetime is so short!

Lighthouse

This thing glows! And rotates!

Guns!

Oooff, be careful with these things. The first time a Nugget saw one, she thought these were binoculars and that she was able to look into it two times, with her left eye and then with her right eye.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed: IDLE AI was called too often when there was not enough food (23645)
• Fixed: demand generated by warehouses, making Nuggets ignore existing piles
• Fixed: shifts stopping stats on AI start
• Fixed: students can become exiled
• Fixed: Nugget icons viewable through customizer panel
• Fixed: Modern Building collapse sound was ending too early
• Fixed: Issue when Nuggets despite being on the shifts still had all their stats ticking
• Fixed: Missing Building config produced an NRE which was slowing down the performance
• Fixed: Students were auto assigned to different buildings, preventing them from finishing their education
• Fixed: Certains references in the code to removes were missing, which produced warning
• Fixed: NRE which did not clear students spots after they left the University
• Fixed: Engineers were disappearing after they entered the engineering hut
• Fixed: NRE when you were selecting a building to place due to some parts of the code being executed prior to the building update code
• Fixed: Nuggets icons were viewable through the Clone Panel
• Fixed: Changing a Nugget shift would cause them to get stuck inside a building
• Fixed: Opening a building panel at a certain timeframe would cause NRE which would produce an issue where the building panel would be stuck on the screen
• Fixed: Sometimes all whales were located in just one lake instead of being spread out based on the size of the lake
• Fixed: Resources panel showed 0 resources for certain resources despite having those resources
• Fixed: Selecting creator powers in the creator mode would cause NRE
• Fixed: Issue when Nuggets would refuse to visit parks
• Fixed: Cupidon marriage issue. If Nuggets already have a family and the cupidon creator power is being used in order to connect married Nugget and another unmarried Nugget, but unmarried Nugget had a family previously, would lead to an issue where both Nuggets will go to different houses and will endlessly wait for each other inside the house.
• Fixed: Save file issues. Previously all saves files were allowed to be loaded, which caused a lot of issues and NRE due to the content change in the newest patches.
• Fixed: Building panels were missing new resources that were needed for building construction
• Fixed: Resources held in local storage (Wood refinery, cemetery) are displayed as available

[b]
General balance changes / Improvements:[/b]

• Hiding Nuggets when entering modern construction site
• Adjusted warehouse demand factor in order to improve the transportation requests
• Adjusted shifts timer in order to compensate the travel time
• Reworked the University and school work. Currently students won’t be auto assigned unless they manually assigned to a job. When students leave the school / university to eat / drink etc., they will reserve their spot at school. With the shifts on, students will reserve their spot. After their shift is done, they will continue their learning progress.
• School / University learning points were adjusted in order to provide faster education for Nuggets.

Art:

• Modern Eatery
• Lighthouse Model
• Modern Fishing Pier
• Electronic Components Factory
• Powder Rifle
• Electronic Components stockpile
• Medieval roads texture update
• Modern debris have decals now
• Modern Steel Factory
• Modern Residential Buildings
• Residential Buildings Accessories

UI Design:

• Electronic Components, Lighthouse, Steel factory construction menu icons and renders
• Update Archive panels
• Added icons for electronic components resource, 3d and white
• Added status icon - going to electronic factory
• Added new icons for perks
• New icons for Nugget customizer traits
• Research screen added auto research on/off toggle.
• New god power icons added: protective dome and meteor rain - 3d and white versions.

Optimization:

• Pathfinder performance boost

[b]
Known Issues:[/b]

• Long loading time when you start a new game. We are still investigating the issue that some users experience on their machines. Current solution to resolve the issue of a long loading time when you start a new game is: Turning off the grass in the settings of the game.

P.S. Our next endeavour will be to prove that the sun isn’t as hot as everyone makes it out to be. However, because it is an unproven hypothesis, we will go at night just to be safe.

All the best,
Crytivo