How do you pause?

[Selva]

When playing single player, which is a seperate option from multi player so there is absolutely no reason not to have a pause function, how do you pause the game? I just lost my colony that I have been working on for 2 days because I had to leave it for a while. Real life. Should be 'nuf said. I ASSUMED for some reason that if the game menu (settings, quit to desktop etc) was up the game was paused. Dunno why. So. Where, please, is the pause button?

[Dcethe]

1.Never said i was a developer, i play multiplayer and people there tell me how easy it is, have plenty of screens of their base if interested.
2.Zombies increase as you increase your colonist, had my colony up for 3 real days with no problems while offline and did not increase my population.
3+4.I was telling you the minimal requirements, i don't tell you how to build your base, its your creativity that does it. i only told you the bare results you need to get started.


Its useless as is to talk to you as you have no intrest in this game itself but rather waste time arguing with random people and complaining about mundane mechanics. As such this will be my last reply. GL wtih your colony if you do actually show intrest in this game.

[Selva]

Good riddance to you and your rubbish.

[Zun]

Well, this escalated quickly.

"I have to womnder, actually... If basically "The singleplayer works exactly the same as multiplayer - the game starts a server in the background (on your computer) and joins that." Why bother having a "single player" start up button? Why not just have the number of "max players on server" be one?"

Just to be clear again - singleplayer does not do anything with internet. The server-client split is a choice we've made so we don't have to maintain 2 'servers': one inside the client game, and a seperate dedicated server. That'd slow development rate more, with our limited amount of time available etc.

About your comment of more games becoming multiplayer focused with no proper singleplayer - I believe that to be the case so that the game has to run through a central server. With a model based around a centralized server you can add various things like microtransactions, lootboxes, item trading etc. These are not as viable for singleplayer games - they'll get hacked. It's also the reason for multiplayer games not to allow modding and dedicated servers, not having them gives more control to the developer.

And my personal opinion on this: It is inconvenient and counter intuitive that the escape menu doesn't pause the game. However, if you're gone for only a little while (say 2 minutes) it's most likely safe to leave. If you're gone longer, the 10-30 seconds loading time isn't too punishing.

[Selva]

@Zun (Specifically)

Firstly, my apologies for the problems with Dcethe. I have encountered him (or someone who acts exactly like him and has a very similar name) before. I knew where the conversation was headed and simply didn't have the patience for his passive aggressive BS this time around.

I fully understand that it is very difficult to add a pause function, or any major unplanned function, to a game past a certain point in it's development. That's why I had asked for a refund. No hard feelings. It's just my specific situation makes it very difficult to deal with the no pause thing. I otherwise very much enjoy your game.

I might advise to add some sort of notification to the single player pause menu... excuse me, escape menu... to the effect that it is not paused on single player. If you are expecting it, it can be easy to miss that it is not paused. I would not expect adding a notice to a menu would be particularly time or resource consuming.

[Brandthacker]

Lol, from developers to egotistical drama.

I'm just popping in with my two sense really quickly as someone else who is a little dismayed that there isn't a pause.
As other people have said, you can exit to the main screen. I find this annoying, but i've just been having to deal with that inconvience. Also, believe it or not, what Dcethe said was partially true. I've tried to keep my colony self suffiecent while i tabbed out, but i hate donig this cause it makes me feel nervous. So, thats as close as i get to pausing

[djcassar]

For me this has become part of the challenge as I often play these types of games while doing other stuff.

It is most difficult while your colony is still young and undergoing fast growth as it is hard to make sure you constantly have everything covered when you often step out of the room. I have had to change the way I approach expansion and take a more slower systematic approach.

Loading times are not bad, I can quickly exit to the main menu if I am not confident when I need to AFK. Other times I just cross my fingers :)