Patch Merging Part 11

Dev-Com

Welcome, members of the Accord!

Today, we are releasing a large content-focused patch following the completion of Penkura’s main technical and core systems.

This update introduces two new buildings, a new branch of medical production, 22 new items, the Achievement System, a major expansion of player status effects, and the first collection of Crystal Tome stories scattered throughout the world.

Let’s go through the new additions.

Two New Buildings

This patch introduces two new buildings: the Infirmary and the Biomass Powder Processor.

Both structures are connected to the expansion of Penkura’s medical and biological production systems, although they serve very different purposes.

The Infirmary

The Infirmary introduces the Medical M.M.C., a specialized version of the standard M.M.C. designed for the production of medicine and other medical supplies.

While the standard M.M.C. is already used throughout the game for general material production, the Medical M.M.C. provides a separate production environment dedicated entirely to healthcare.

The Infirmary will gradually become one of the most important buildings for survival as we introduce more injuries, illnesses, environmental conditions, medications, and medical procedures.

For now, its production options are still limited, but this patch establishes the foundation required for a much larger medical system.

The Biomass Powder Processor

The second new building is the Biomass Powder Processor.

This structure allows players to process biological materials gathered from Penkura’s flora and fauna into different types of Bio-Powder.

Bio-Powders currently have a relatively small number of uses and are primarily required for medicine production. However, their importance will increase significantly in future updates.

We plan to introduce many additional medications, biological compounds, food products, and other recipes that will rely on a combination of Bio-Powders and Bio-Chemical components.

This also gives players another reason to examine the biological resources found throughout the world. Plants, organic remains, and other biological materials will gradually become an important part of production rather than resources with only one immediate purpose.

22 New Items

This patch adds 22 new items connected to the new buildings, medical production, biological processing, player effects, and world exploration.

Some of these items can already be used in production, while others establish resources and components that will receive additional uses as the medical and biological systems continue to expand.

As with many of Penkura’s systems, we prefer to build a functional foundation first and then gradually increase its depth with each new content update.

Achievement System

We are also introducing the first version of the Achievement System.

At the moment, the game includes eight achievements connected to exploration, story progression, discoveries, and important moments during the player’s journey.

We want to test how achievements are detected, stored, and unlocked before adding a much larger number of them. Once we are confident that everything works correctly, future patches will introduce additional achievements for new locations, hidden discoveries, unusual actions, automation, construction, and other parts of the game.

Some achievements will be clearly connected to progression, while others may require players to pay closer attention to the world around them.

Player Stats and Status Effects

The player statistics system has received a significant update.

Every effect now has its own icon, name, description, duration, and method of influencing the player. We have also changed how these effects are calculated and applied, making it much easier for us to introduce more complex conditions in the future.

The system will require additional balancing, particularly around effect duration, severity, and the strength of different medications. However, it gives us the framework needed to introduce many more medical conditions without having to put more work into the system.

Whenever we introduce a major new negative effect, we also want to provide players with an appropriate method of resisting, treating, or preventing it. New dangers should create additional preparation and survival decisions, not conditions that the player has no meaningful way to counter.

This is why the expansion of status effects is being introduced alongside the Infirmary, Medical M.M.C., and Bio-Powders.

Crystal Tomes and Short Stories

This patch also introduces Crystal Tomes containing short stories, records, and fragments of information about the world of Penkura.

These stories are intended to explain parts of the setting, provide context for certain locations, and occasionally clarify why some technologies, systems, or procedures work the way they do.

We wanted to reduce the amount of long dialogue in the game for some time. Unfortunately, an unexpected situation involving our partnership with the voice-acting team resulted in the end of our cooperation. Because of this, we had to remove a large portion of the dialogue originally planned for this patch.

Recasting the roles and recording all of that material again would have required a lot of time and resources. More importantly, it made us reconsider whether long conversations were always the best way to present this information.

Rather than forcing players through extended dialogue whenever we want to explain part of the world, we decided that much of this information would work better as something discovered through exploration and personal curiosity.

The goal is not to remove dialogue entirely. Important conversations and character interactions will remain part of Penkura. However, optional history, personal accounts, technical information, and smaller stories can now be discovered naturally without interrupting the player.

We would also like to thank the community members who helped proofread these stories, identify mistakes, improve their wording, and most of all translate parts of them from Polish into English (as nearly all lore of the game was written in full some time ago, in Polish). Their assistance helped us preserve the intended meaning while making the final text much more natural to read.

We plan to add many more Crystal Tome stories in the future. However, writing them properly takes time and requires careful consideration of the world, its history, and the people who lived within it.

Because of this, larger collections of Crystal Tomes will mainly be introduced alongside major patches that open new locations or expand existing areas. We do not want to scatter them throughout the world merely to increase the number of collectible objects.

Content-Focused Development

Just as we mention in the previous Technical Patch, this patch is primarily about content, and future regular and major updates will follow the same direction.

Penkura’s main technical and core systems are complete. Programming work will, of course, continue through bug fixes, improvements, balancing, and the smaller systems required by new features, but it is no longer the main obstacle preventing us from expanding the game.

New locations, buildings, items, enemies, medical conditions, medications, stories, achievements, automation options, and improvements to the existing world will now form the majority of our development work.

As always, some of these systems will require adjustment after players begin using them in situations we may not have anticipated. Over the coming days, we will monitor feedback, fix any problems that appear, and continue balancing the new medical effects and production recipes.

Thank you all for your patience, your feedback, and your continued support.

As always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates, please join our Discord Community.

LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm

Till the next Dev-Com over and out.

Penkura Main Branch Adjustment

--------------------- ⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞ ---------------------

◈ Fixed an issue where picking up items from a Growbed or extracting ore using the P.G.E. caused the item-gather indicator to display the information twice.

◈ Fixed an issue where moving items within the player’s own inventory triggered the item-gather indicator.

◈ Fixed a visual issue in the mission Eyes, Ears, and Mind where additional mission information was not displayed correctly.

◈ Fixed an issue where lights in some buildings could still be turned on while power flow was set to OFF.

◈ Fixed minor spelling errors.

◈ Fixed hand animations at high frame rates.

◈ Fixed the player’s position when using the C.C.C. station.

◈ Fixed an issue where newly built Med-bays and Small Habitation Modules did not allow their windows to be opened.

◈ Fixed an issue where all non-player-built buildings near Givinx City automatically had their Hydrogel storage refilled when loading a game.

◈ Fixed an issue where the code-locked door at the Archeological Station did not properly save its state.

◈ Fixed a minor visual issue where the autosave timer displayed its value in seconds while labelling it as minutes, which caused confusion.

◈ Fixed an issue where, if the player’s mouse cursor was set to “off-screen” while disabling the 3D UI, it remained in that state after switching to the 2D UI.

◈ Fixed the Manufacture Platform not appearing in the Power Input/Output Details panel.

◈ Fixed an issue where the Small Habitation Module did not properly save the name assigned to it by the player.

◈ Fixed an issue where lock interfaces did not properly refresh after loading a game.

◈ Added a fix for the Construction Bot’s looping sound remaining active. This still requires additional testing.

◈ Fixed an issue where the item details window covered part of the Ore Refinery interface when inspecting items.

------------------------------------------------- ⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞ -------------------------------------------------

◈ Added two new buildings to the game:

• Biomass Powder Processor

• Infirmary

◈ Added the Medical M.M.C. to the game.

◈ The Med-bay is now equipped with a Medical M.M.C.

◈ The Med-bay is no longer available by default at every base. It must now be installed through the Blueprint Repository.

◈ Added the Infirmary to the building options of the second and third bases.

◈ Added the Biomass Powder Processor to the building options of all bases.

◈ Added 22 new items to the game:

• Bio-Powder Blufloir

• Bio-Powder Arachnorex

• Bio-Powder Golden Malok

• Bio-Powder Camubron

• Bio-Powder Bulbella

• Bio-Powder Subincar

• Bio-Powder Gracheri

• Bio-Powder Voluvine

• Bio-Powder Thornmine

• Data Storage Med-bay

• Crystal Tome - Maintenance Advice Nobody Reads Until It Is Too Late

• Crystal Tome - Practical Safety for Atmospheric Habitats

• Crystal Tome - Construction Safety for People Who Still Have Feet

• Crystal Tome - Household Energy Discipline for Young Colonies

• Crystal Tome - Agricultural Pride in Sealed Habitats

• Crystal Tome - Personal Safety Devices and Other Things People Ignore

• Crystal Tome - Fragments of the First Calendar

• Crystal Tome - Early Records of the Great Scattering

• Crystal Tome - Survival Rites of the Long Exodus

• Crystal Tome - Collected Domestic Grievances of Early Colonies

• Crystal Tome - Meditations on Continuity and the Self

• Crystal Tome - Donor Preparation and Mnemonic Resolution Standards

◈ Based on player feedback, we added alternative syntax to several PRAWIA code chunks:

• loot = >take

• deposit = >put

• scan = >search

• ping = >find

• loop = >repeat

• log = >print

◈ Added a new sound effect when activating the PDS.

◈ Added “building” as a new argument for the >go code chunk.

Example: go(Building)(D411)

◈ Added the Achievement System to the game.

◈ Added 8 Steam Achievements.

◈ Added a Crystal Tome text-size setting to Options > Game & UI.

◈ Health changes caused by positive or negative effects now display the source of the change.

◈ Added a new visual effect to the Exhausted status that intensifies with the status level.

◈ The Tired negative effect now becomes stronger as Fatigue decreases. Upon reaching 100% strength, it changes into Exhausted, which continues increasing until it reaches its maximum strength.

◈ Added a new error message to the Disassembly Machine. Scan-restricted items can no longer be dematerialized.

◈ Improved the bot recovery system when the player moves between levels. This still requires additional testing, but it should fix the issue of bots occasionally loading on top of mountains.

◈ Added micro-path creation based on a self-regenerating beacon-point connection system.

◈ Added two new sound effects for picking up Bio-Containers.

◈ Added a thunder volume slider to Options > Sound.

◈ The C.A.T. Storage and T-1 Storage 3D interfaces now update while the player interacts with the storage, rather than only after it is closed.

◈ Added a rain volume slider to Options > Sound.

◈ Changed the “Move Ore” button in the Ore Refinery to “Insert Ore.”

◈ The Overburden effect now displays its current strength as a percentage.

◈ Added a dedicated “Insert Ore” input to Options > Key Bindings. The default key is Y.

◈ Turning off power flow now stops the I.M.M.C. and Object Disassembly Unit from operating.

◈ Added medical information to the Med-bay computer.

◈ The Basic M.M.C. and Industrial M.M.C. now automatically hide unused item types when no corresponding blueprints have been installed.

◈ Added opening and closing sound effects to the hatches of both the M.M.C. and I.M.M.C.

◈ Reduced the Bio-Recycler’s minimum processing time from 60 seconds to 30 seconds when processing a small amount of biomatter.

◈ Improved the sharpness of the PDS interface.

◈ Improved and adjusted Dr. Romek’s logs in the Givinx Med-bay.

◈ Added new medical bed.

◈ Improved the camera zoom effect on 3D user interfaces by adding a small border margin that remains approximately the same size regardless of the player’s field of view, screen resolution, or aspect ratio, with a margin of error of up to 5%.

◈ Made minor adjustments to the Bio-Recycler description.

◈ Reversed the Fatigue progress bar to better represent the player’s wakefulness.

◈ Changed the name of the positive effect “Stuffed” to “Nutrient Saturation.”

◈ Changed the name of the negative effect “Affected by Strong Medication” to “High Medication Load.”

◈ Improved the border of the Dying Forest, to better indicate that crossing it, will only lead to player death.

◈ Recipe changes:

• Neuro Stimulant

(Removed: 1 Normite Bar) / (Added: 5 Bio-Powder Blufloir)

• Stimpak

(Removed: 1 Normite Bar) / (Added: 15 Bio-Powder Blufloir and 30 Bio-Powder Subincar) Energy cost increased from 300 to 400. Hydrogel cost increased from 200 to 300. The Stimpak can now only be produced in the Medical M.M.C.

• Neuclir

(Removed: 1 Normite Bar) / (Added: 3 Bio-Powder Arachnorex and 5 Bio-Powder Subincar) Neuclir can now only be produced in the Medical M.M.C.

• Med-Spray

(Removed: 1 Normite Bar) / (Added: 20 Bio-Powder Blufloir) Med-Spray can now only be produced in the Medical M.M.C.

• Med-Adhesive

(Removed: 1 Normite Bar) / (Added: 2 Bio-Powder Subincar)