Stellar Colony Wiki

**Welcome to the official Wiki/Website for Stellar Colony**

## Introduction

Stellar Colony is a first-person perspective base/colony building game, made by solo developer Scott 'I work alone' Hather on a zero budget, no kickstarter or funding. It's being developed using free software.

The game is **free\*** and runs on Linux, Mac and Windows, no plans for game consoles..maybe an Android version. I've worked on this particular iteration since 2019, but there were other similar versions before that, that went in a different direction.

The game is **NOT open-source** and I'm currently not looking for any one to help...I work alone 😀

Although as it's still 'Early-access', you're all beta-testers, many thanks for that!
**You-Tubers:** Feel free to make "Let's plays" and tutorials. I may be watching, so be kind!

## Game information

The game is a first-person perspective base/colony building game, where you play an engineer tasked with building habitats, space taverns, cinemas, greenhouses and many other buildings to support a colony on an alien planet. It's not a simulation, but there's a lot of physics and chemistry used in the game that is more or less accurate including temperature, air pressure, atmospheric content and chemical reactions.

Pretty Screenshots here!

You start out on an alien planet randomly generated. It's approximately 200 sq. kilometres in size and made up of various biomes. At the beginning of the game you've crashed onto the planet and your spaceship has suffered an "unplanned rapid deconstruction" (it's exploded).

The atmosphere of the planet it 100% Nitrogen, but your space suit recycles the carbon-dioxide back into oxygen, scrubbing the carbon and depositing in your inventory. You will need to eat and drink, so the first part of the game is survival.

Once you've done that, you can then start building factories using alien-tech 4D modules. Each module will do different things such as smelt ores, mix and create chemicals. You can then proceed to build colonist buildings, the first one should probably be a Habitat. You'll need to put oxygen in the building, provide it with power for the life-support and drop some drinking water and food in there. At which point you can send a signal to send the first colonists, which will arrive within a day by rocket.

It's set in the future, and you as the Earth engineer have a host of machines and bots at your disposal to automate the entire colony. The colonists themselves don't even need to work, so It's just a matter of keeping them fed and watered, entertained and educated.

Resources such as Iron, prefab panels etc show up as small cubes. The cube is a 4 dimensional container (Alien-Tech) that contains the item itself. You can transport these resource cube in various ways, holo-conveyors using the logistics system is ideal for short-distances. Cargo shuttles are better for moving resources long distances, such as a remote coal mine. These shuttles can be automated to wait a certain amount of time, or for another condition such as coal > 100 units. If you want to move things manually long distances, if you save up enough coins, you can buy a Helicopter.

### Game Features

* Random procedurally generated planet (200 sq Km)
* 3D first-person perspective
* Semi-realistic chemistry & physics
* Simple & complex production chains
* Manage production of Food, Oxygen and drinks
* Colonists have needs to be met (not just Oxygen and water, they need entertainment, exercise, social interaction and culture)
* Hand mining, semi-auto mining and deep core mining
* Farming outside or in dedicated greenhouses
* Holo-conveyors for short range transport of resources using a logistics system
* Cargo shuttle for long-range transport of resources and the player too
* Buy and sell resources with the local aliens
* Interactive wildlife (cows, sheep, ducks, bees, chickens)
* Free-to-play donation-supported
* Runs on Linux and other Operating systems such as Windows. 😉

## Links

* Buy me a coffee over on Ko-Fi or tip via PayPal
* Scotts main website for non-Stellar Colony stuff and things
* Scotts You-Tube Channel a Playlist of Stellar colony tutorials, new features and that sort of thing
* Scotts Peer-Tube Channel alternative, backup if Youtube breaks
* Follow Scott on Mastodon (Social media network that is **not** run by a sociopath/corporation)

## The Game is Free?!

Here's what I mean by free\*:

* If you cannot afford to buy games because you need the money to pay rent and buy food then please play this game for free, maybe mention it to your friends on social media to help spread the word or make YouTube videos to entice others here.
* If you don't like the game, delete it and go about your day, you've not lost any money.
* If you **DO** like the game and can spare a few dollars/pounds/euros (other Earth currencies are available), them please buy me a coffee over on Ko-fi You can do a one-off donation or monthly one.

I'm not making it free because I'm rich, quite the opposite, I live in a backward, third-world country (post-Brexit England), so any donation, however small is very much welcome. Also, it's nice to make a product available to those who can't afford it. Yes, I'm a Socialist and not a fan of Capitalism, but still have to take part in it for now, until it's imminent collapse... any day now. 😉

### Buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi

Just a few dollars/euros/pounds helps buy coffee, which is developer fuel. I may buy other things with your tips too, like new shoes so that I can go walking outside in the 'real' world... might need some sun-glasses too, it's bright outdoors. Oh, and clothes, I'll need those too. Humans tend to get upset if I go outdoors without clothes.

**Alternatively, send a tip via PayPal** if you prefer (you can usually tip in your own Earth currency, rather than British pounds)

The game doesn't expire or throw adverts at you if you don't send a tip, but you'll sleep better at night knowing that you contributed and supported this game 😀

## Parental guidance

The game may not be suitable for your little ones, as it contains drug references (Cannabis) and mild swear-words (cr\*\* and sh\*\*). So if those words offend you, you probably shouldn't be on the internet in the first place 😜

## **Downloads**

Latest version 0.1.0 (Abandon-Ware) - No longer in development

* Download for Linux
* Download for Mac
* Download for Windows

There is no installer, simply unzip wherever you want to keep the game and run it, or create a shortcut.

The game has been abandoned due to lack of interest shown and even a little hostility for making the game free for people who can't afford to buy games. (Evil Socialism bordering on communism)

In 2023 I will be developing a few other games and see how that goes, see my main website if you think that may be something of interest to you.

#### New: Video Tutorial series playlist

See Changelog for all additions, changes and removals of features and bugs.

## System requirements

You don't need a high-end gaming PC, one less than 10 years old **should** work, a low to mid-range Graphics card would help, I have an Nvidia Quadro K2200 (from 2014) and that works just fine and 8GB of RAM or more will help too. If your graphics card is not up to the job, you'll see rendering and texture issues or a very slow frame-rate.

Integrated Intel graphics may not work at all or have a slow frame-rate, I'd recommend an AMD or Nvidia basic gaming card, which you can pick up second-hand or new on Ebay for reasonable prices.

I have a lot of faith in the Godot Game Engine that I've used to make this game, the user experience across all three platforms SHOULD be identical.

* **Linux** - It should work fine on most popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Mint and Manjaro. The game download contains everything needed as far as I know. You will probably be best if you install the proprietary graphics driver, rather than "X-server" (open-source) driver as it probably won't work at all. The three distros I mentioned will do this for you with a couple of mouse-clicks, you don't even need to visit the Nvidia site.
* **Windows** - It should work fine on Windows 7 and higher. I'll provide help and support where I can for Windows users, but I haven't used it in years, so I may be unfamiliar with any problems you encounter. .
* **Windows continued**: If you want to stick with Windows, but 'dip your toe' into Linux to see how awesome it is, you can dual-boot your PC, with modern software it's quite simple and you don't need to be a geek, here's a nice person who's made a video walking you through the entire process BACKUP your stuff first!
* **MacOS**, It's been about 10 years since I owned a Mac Mini, so not that familiar, so I will try to help you get the game running as best I can.

## Index

* Screenshots
* Colony Buildings
* Using Modules
* Native alien interactions
* Videos
* Farming
* Logistics
* Mining

Stellar Colony is copyright © 2022 Scott Hather

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

## Thank you

A little thank you to the developers of free programs that I use to make "Stellar Colony", proving that you don't need funding to make your own game, all the tools you need are freely available to all. You do need time and patience though, something you can't just download.

* Godot - Game Engine for 2D and 3D games
* Audacity - Sound design and general multi-track audio editor
* Blender - 3D Modelling/texturing/sculpting
* MonoDevelop - IDE/writing the code (24,000+ lines of C# code so far)
* Geany - viewing/editing save-game files and doing quick edits to code as it starts up quickly
* GIMP - Texture and image manipulation
* OBS Studio - Recording game footage, also can stream live to popular sites
* Shotcut - Video Editing, titles, effects
* Linux Mint - The operating system, alternative to using Windows.