Here's the monthly progress update regarding After The Collapse and the studio in general. There are a few important announcements you should read, notably about our pricing policy. As usual, it's available on our official website.
Here's a new update for you to consume before 0.6 get released. It's content heavy, featuring a few community requests and the ability to start the game in an underground vault.
+ AI: Settlers are a bit better at handling basic needs
+ Balance: Tweaked some weapons and armors values (minor)
+ Balance: Moved some recipes and unlocks between technologies (minor)
+ Balance: Masonry Tech required to build stairs to access the underground/overworld
+ Content: Player built doors can now be locked/unlocked
+ Content: Ability to start underground in a bunker (survivor tab in the new game settings)
+ Content: 4 new pieces of armor (spec-ops helmet, medic vest, firefighter helmet, firefighter vest)
+ Content: 6 new ranged weapons (grenade launcher, hunting rifle, sniper rifle, heavy sniper rifle, desert eagle, gauss rifle)
+ Content: 4 new melee weapons/tools (combat knife, knife, pickaxe, shovel)
+ Content: 2 new ammo types (grenade rounds, energy cells)
+ Content: New recipes to repair the new guns and armors
+ Content: New technology to build tools (pickaxe, shovel, metal axe)
+ Content: New technology to research the ability to produce explosive ammo (grenade rounds and rockets)
+ Content: Added traits to some armors and weapons (sniper rifles give "visor" increasing perception, medic vest increases "medical" skill, shovel gives better farming...)
+ Content: New mid/late game events - Crazed military robots
+ Content: New late game event - Dangerous raid by former soldiers
+ Content: Heat Wave game event - Increase water consumption of plants of settlers
+ Engine: Ability for weapons to use lobbed trajectories bypassing cover and landing at a specific position
+ Engine: Seed based map generation (both at the world and the custom map level)
+ Engine: Loot tables (expeditions only for now) are more fine grained and future proofed
+ Engine: Creatures' movement at maximum game speed should look less "jumpy" now (not perfect, but getting there)
+ Engine: Ability for creatures to spawn an animation on death (blood splatters, explosion..)
+ Engine: Combat mode overlay is taking less GPU/CPU
+ Engine: Preliminary changes to handle temperature, influencing water needs of plants
+ Graphics: Ambush mobs get random rotation so their starting position doesn't look too artificial
+ Graphics: Tweaked some buttons and panels
+ Graphics: Size of smoke effect (when an object is destroyed) now proportional to the object
+ Graphics: Improved a few more inventory textures (ammunition mostly)
+ Graphics: A few additional explosion and blood splatter animations for when things go dead
+ Graphics: Nicer looking (and better layering) of combat mode overlay
+ UI: Added "Map Seed" option to the custom map menu to be able to replay/share a level
+ UI: Added tab to the exploration manager to show the rewards from the previous expedition
+ UI: Added button to access world map
+ UI: Top part of the storage menu displays amount of food and drinks for easy access instead of electronics and canned food
+ UI: Double clicking an item in the trade menu will set amount to buy/sell to the max. available
+ UI: Standardized how item quantity is shown in the UI (over the sprites like ammo for weapons)
+ UI: Farming menu's crop selection panel display how many seeds you have in stock
+ UI: Added trait giving information to armor and weapon info panels
+ UI: Less invasive game log
+ UI: Added weapon overlay for enemies in combat mode
+ Fixed: Settlers occasionally ignoring "equip weapon/armor" orders
+ Fixed: Semi rare bug causing some building jobs to be put back into the public queue despite being completed
+ Fixed: A bug doing a reroll of living creatures' attributes each time a save is loaded
+ Fixed: Survivors occasionally going one tile in the wrong direction before moving to a specific location
+ Fixed: Animals initially spawning with misplaced limbs
+ Fixed: Some animations are below objects instead of above
+ Fixed: Rocket and grenade launcher "hit" explosion not being played in some cases
+ Fixed: Potential/extremely rare crash in pathing
+ Fixed: Case where a survivor could potentially starve itself to death because it cannot satisfy another need
+ Fixed: Survivors ignoring newly created walls (or other path blocking items) if they picked their path before the wall is built
+ Fixed: Issue where destroyed a window wouldn't "update" the region map, causing small issues with pathing
Hotpatch 1 - Fixed: crash when loading a save-game which has a raid event in progress.
Version 0.5.8 Released
After The Collapse 0.5.8
This is the latest release for our base building game. Apologies for the delay, it took a bit longer than expected to produce.
+ AI: Ambush AI (passive mobs in hidden areas who activate when said area is revealed)
+ AI: Much better pathfinder, settlers should no longer occasionally take weird and complicated paths toward their destination
+ Balance: Increased turrets' HP and damage resistance significantly
+ Balance: Cattle can die of old age + tweaked some values
+ Content: Trapped rooms/buildings (optional)
+ Content: Optional fog of war giving the ability to hide buildings' content until they have been visited by your survivors
+ Content: Ability for the proc gen to add items outside of buildings (trashcans in the garden, and so on)
+ Engine: Improved map generation speed (massively, especially noticeable on larger maps)
+ Engine: Better rendering performances on large maps
+ Engine: Performance and stability improvements
+ Engine: A *lot* of behind-the-scene improvements to keep the code compact(ish) and easy to maintain
+ Graphics: Better looking and more frequent blood during combat
+ Graphics: Much better layering of rendered items: grass properly under everything, chairs under tables, trees and walls over everything. (doesn't apply on saves from previous versions)
+ Graphics: Blood splatters and debris from destroyed objects fade out instead of disappearing immediately
+ Graphics: Added spider webs to caverns and sewers
+ Graphics: Traders' jeep is a tad bigger
+ Graphics: Added large old blood splatters in some rooms (the more decay on the map, the more blood, generally)
+ Graphics: New sprites for most inventory items (weapons, armors, food, materials and so on)
+ Graphics: More road details (cracks and car wrecks)
+ Tutorial: Removed disassembling job from Teddy, so he can do the farming tutorial faster.
+ UI: You no longer need to remove small grass or wait for destroyed items to disappear before being able to build over it.
+ UI: Added a menu for the butcher shop
+ UI: In Combat mode, the weapons equipped by your militia is shown as an overlay (replacing the crossed swords)
+ UI: New game / difficulty settings to toggle infested and hidden rooms on/off
+ Fixed: Pasture Menu's list isn't registering mouse scroll properly
+ Fixed: Kitchen shelves facing the wrong way
+ Fixed: Houses' kitchens only featuring shelves instead of a mix of items
+ Fixed: Issue in the music/sound player that could remove music in modded games (with custom music themes)
+ Fixed: Typos in loading screen
+ Fixed: Freeze if settings are changed and saved before the game has finished loading in the background
+ Fixed: Issue if tutorial is started before the game has finished loading in the background
+ Fixed: Switching to underground view for the first time while the game is paused would show non-connected walls
+ Fixed: A few small memory leaks
+ Fixed: Bug report triggered when closing the game at title screen before it finishes loading stuff in the background
+ Fixed: Sprites randomly jumping over each other when multiple items are on the same tiles (doesn't apply on saves from previous versions)
+ Fixed: Sewer generator's clutter slider was broken
+ Fixed: More missing french translation strings (as usual)
+ Fixed: Missing vegetation/rocks over yellowish grass
+ Fixed: Map generation producing overlapping rocks and vegation that shouldn't be overlapping
+ Fixed: Roadside map generator was buggy due to wrong road settings
Hot-patch 1
- Fixed crash at the very end of the tutorial (sigh)
- Added by accident a grenade launcher that might or might not work as expected.
Hot-patch 2
- Added: Border/Edge mouse scrolling (optional, request)
- Slightly improved speed/memory usage of saving and loading operations
- Fixed: Rare issue with save-games
- Fixed: Couldn't build walls directly over decorations (blood/cracks/debris)
May Progress Update
Here's our (semi) regular progress update regarding After The Collapse and our studio in general. There are a few important announcements you should read.
Major Update 0.5.6: Animal husbandry, balance & performances
Update 0.5.6
This is quite a major update, and it goes with a new trailer as the old one was getting embarrassingly dated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOmtvJ-0Pjs
We'll go over the major changes below, but here are the main points for those who want the TL;DR version first:
Animal Husbandry has been implemented
Added the butcher shop, tanner, and pastures
10 to 20% better performances overall, with reduced RAM consumption
Wall placements using zoning method instead of one by one
Balance tweaks
Animal Husbandry
You can now pasture pigs and sheep for meat, wool, and animal hides which can be in turn converted into food, cloth and leather at specific new or existing crafting stations. To that effect, I added a reproductive system and those animals will age. Kids and old animals can't reproduce, but can still be butchered.
Domesticated animals require a pasture (zone) and food (wheat, a new easy to grow, crop). Animal food production won't be efficient at first, you'll need to hit a large enough group for those to make enough children for that to work out. As such it's probably best for mid to late game bases.
You can find those animals in the forest (which is a new destination for the exploration planner) or get them from the new merchant.
Reproduction
As explained above, domesticated animals gained the ability to reproduce. There's a soft cap of 60 alive animals per species per game. This is a feature I will be introducing for underground critters too in future updates once we've figured out a couple issues.
For 2 animals to reproduce, they need to both be adults (animals reach adulthood after an in-game week or so) and be in close proximity. There's no animation or special behavior for now, it just "happens". Pregnancy last also around a week. Children individually take either the traits of the mother or the father, and children' stats are re-rolled close to one of their parents.
As this is a new feature, I am preventing them from dying of old age, but that will be included in future versions.
New Crafting Stations
All animals (hostiles or domesticated) are now dropping animal hides instead of leather. A tanner has been added to convert such hides into proper leather.
The new butcher shop might be a bit confusing as it doesn't come with its own menu. Instead, when you click on a domesticated animal or change the settings of a pasture you can order animals to get butchered. This is where your settlers with the animal husbandry skill will make burgers out of your cattle. I'll likely add its own menu (listing ALL your animals for instance) in a coming update.
The pasture is, well, a pasture. Domesticated animals you bought or found will be parked there. This is also where they will eat. Don't forget that you will need to provide them with wheat if you don't want them to starve.
Balance
Leather requirements for many recipes have been increased thanks to that new renewable source. Additionally, while making the trailer I couldn't help but notice that making large buildings was taking an ungodly amount of time, as such, wall building time has been halved, and tile placement is 5 to 10 times faster (for a settler with average construction skill, at least). HP of defensive structures (sandbags, and barbed wires) has been increased as well.
UI
The game got a proper loading screen when starting a new game, with bonus random tips. Walls are now placed like zones, with a specific renderer giving you a preview of what your construction will look like. I also smoothed the mouse cursor and reduced its size a tiny bit so it doesn't look all "pixely" anymore.
Performances
I went on a fairly extensive performance pass, leading to on average 10 to 20% better performances. The time spent between launching the game and getting to the menu has been reduced (it continues to load when you're in the starting menu now). It should also consume a bit less memory and save/load a bit faster. There's still room for many more improvements, but nothing that I can really touch at this stage of development.
Closing Words
While this is "technically" compatible with previous save-games, everything that was dropped on the ground will be lost and many changes will only impact newly created structures or won't be present (animal trader) until you start a new game.
There's a LOT of additional changes and tweaks in this version, but I'll have to refer you to the changelog below for that.
Cheers!
Full Changelog
+ AI: Added Cattle AI module
+ AI: Added reproductive component (for pigs and sheeps only right now)
+ Balance: Increased leather requirements for multiple recipes (armor, some clutter)
+ Balance: Reduced build time for floors (massively) and walls (halved)
+ Balance: Updated default equipment pack (more food stuff and wood. removed spears, renamed to quick start). Leave just enough room to add basic weapons or 2 techs.
+ Balance: Reduced value of very basic weapons (removing a trading exploit)
+ Balance: Increased HP of barbed wires and sandbags
+ Balance: Edited (and added) jobs to take the new activities (brewing & animal husbandry) into account
+ Content: Domesticated pigs can be raised for meat and leather production
+ Content: Domesticated sheeps can be raised for meat and wool
+ Content: Added animal trader event
+ Content: The new butcher shop is used to process cattle into meat
+ Content: The new tanner can process animal hides into leather
+ Content: Loom can convert wool into cloth
+ Content: Replaced leather drops from animals by animal hides
+ Content: Added pasture zones to feed and care for the cattle
+ Content: Added wheat farming (fodder for the cattle)
+ Content: Survivors got a new skill, "husbandry" for everything animal related (butchering, pasture management)
+ Content: Added the "Forest" to exploration destination table, ability to find animals
+ Engine: Ability for agents to reproduce
+ Engine: NPC can produce sounds at semi random intervals (pigs and sheeps for now, will be added for more stuff along the way)
+ Engine: Ability to convert items into animals (for expeditions & trading purpose)
+ Engine: Reduced RAM consumption, incidentally increasing save/load speed
+ Engine: Multiple CPU optimizations (Fauna, and UI being the biggest targets, more stuff to come) giving 10 to 20% better performances on average
+ Engine: Heavily reduced wait time between launch and start menu
+ Engine: Improved Discord integration
+ Graphics: Added yellow grass to all terrain presets for smoother transitions between terrain types
+ Graphics: Better looking mouse cursor
+ Graphics: Wall placement using the zoning method show actual walls instead of the usual transparent rectangle
+ UI: Added settings menu for pasture
+ UI: Added cattle specific NPC panel
+ UI: Wall placement now done like zones instead of a wall-per-wall basis
+ UI: Zoom/Unzoom via mousewheel is smoother and more consistent
+ UI: Optional zoom to cursor option in the settings (still needs some work)
+ UI: Added "game is loading" panel when starting a new game (so people don't assume it crashed)
+ Fixed: Missing UI text for some orders
+ Fixed: Giant crabs would still get needs related problems (other animals were already fixed)
+ Fixed: Animal Husbandry skill was disabled by default
+ Fixed: Small bug that might have caused some issues with queued jobs
+ Fixed: Some additional cases where a builder would try to build something they don't have access to
+ Fixed: Stone statues available in start menu despite being useless outside of trading purposes
+ Fixed: Bug that was delaying most events from happening for way too long
+ Fixed: Trade jeep teleporting from tile to tile in trading zone instead of being immobile
+ Fixed: People with the hauling skill disabled would still pickup stuff from the ground
As we're gearing up for more content centric updates, this patch's main goal was to clear most of the remaining bugs and annoyances, improve usability and finish our sewer procedural generator.
Sewers
The sewer generator is fully usable now. It's a slightly more dangerous area than the caverns (with default settings) as it's harder to find areas that are safe from roaming creatures. On the other hand, you'll find plenty of metal and stones inside. Note that the impassible water tiles can be covered by floor tiles.
Usability
After making a base dedicated to booze production, I noticed that large amount of booze production facilities would interfere with the cooking jobs (as it's the same activity), as such, I added the Brewing skill for everything booze related. Also, I added the ability to copy/paste queues from stations to other (similar) stations.
Additionally, I added a much needed keyboard shortcut (M by default, rebindable) to select all military ready units when you're in alert mode. Several menus and tool-tips also got minor tweaks, a right click when no menu is open will also trigger to content tool-tip (disassembling content and cargo info have been separated for player owned stuff as you can see in the screenshot).
Last but not least, unharmed settlers get a small passive healing buff while sleeping and power generators will send "do it now" jobs when they are about to run out of fuel.
Performances & Fixes
I increased performances during large mining and wall building/disassembling operations. This is especially noticeable on very large maps (and yes, more performance fixes will come for large maps).
And finally there's a bunch of bug fixes, most notably a rare & random crash when multithreading is enabled, several cases where creatures would get stuck into a wall when saving & loading a save-game, and the game not warning you when a trait morph into something else (like a laceration getting infected).
Notes about savegames
This is save compatible with the previous version, but some of the changes will only apply to newly built crafting stations. Additionally, and if and only if you're loading an old save-game, the brewing job is disabled by default on all of your settlers. Beside that, you should be good to go.
Full Changelog
+ AI: Power generators will send "high priority" resupply orders when critically low on fuel
+ Content: People who are neither ill or wounded get a (very slow) passive heal effect while sleeping
+ Content: Brewing job has been added for everything alcohol related (as a base dedicated to alcohol production/trading was difficult to maintain without it)
+ Content: Sewers' dark zones are now made of cavern-type walls instead of more concrete/cement walls
+ Content: Completed the sewer generator
+ Engine: Massively reduced CPU spikes during large mining or wall building operations
+ Engine: Made the multithreading system a bit more robust (should help prevent and, more importantly, catch rare crashes)
+ Engine: Reduced CPU cost of the user interface
+ UI: Right click on something when no menu is open also triggers the content tooltip (so you don't have to show the menu to quickly browse one of your containers)
+ UI: Separated cargo and disassembling info in the tooltip for player owned buildings
+ UI: Removed inventory tab from crafting stations' menu (as it's now handled by the tooltip and was rarely useful)
+ UI: Removed inventory tab from research station and increased the list's length
+ UI: You can copy/paste similar crafting stations' queued orders from one to the other
+ UI: Replaced generic "got trait" message by "is wounded" or "got sick" when survivors get sick/wounded
+ UI: Added "Select All Military Units" keyboard shortcut in military mode (M by default)
+ UI: Added settings for sewer generator and removed warning
+ UI: You no longer need to scroll in the exploration's planner dropdown to select the "find survivor" focus
+ Fixed: Settlers not picking up some of the stuff dropped on the ground
+ Fixed: Another case where a settler would get stuck into a wall or other construction
+ Fixed: Enabling Alert Mode could cause military units to attack the last targeted object (bed they are sleeping in, patients being fixed by doctors, that fun stuff)
+ Fixed: People would occasionally try to pickup items dropped in areas they don't have access to
+ Fixed: Animals & raiders could get stuck into terrain after saving/loading a game
+ Fixed: Cave digging improperly set as "disassembling" instead of "mining"
+ Fixed: Game doesn't warn when a wound or sickness morph into something else (laceration to infection for instance)
+ Fixed: Missing shroom recipe in electric kitchen
+ Fixed: The game was allowing multiple research and exploration stations
+ Fixed: Disassembling "smoke" animation always displayed in the current layer even when happening in the other one
+ Fixed: Loot setting in "new game" menu was inverted (regression bug 0.5.3)
+ Fixed: Another rare multithreading-related crash
+ Fixed: Sewer generator would always have the same layout
+ Fixed: More missing french translation strings
Update 0.5.3 Released! (+hotfixes)
Update 0.5.3: Summary
This version was released a bit in a hurry to fix a crash in 0.5.2 caused by the advanced kitchen. This fix should apply to existing save-games as well. As such it contains some partially implemented features (which are optional and marked as such in game).
Procedural Generation
I've mostly been working on the procedural generation and began to make the necessary changes for the soon to be implemented world map.
But more visibly for the user, there's now an "underground" tab in the custom game menu. It allows you to change the settings for the underground layer. There's 2 different cavern generators, all completed. There's a sewer generator, which is a work in progress (layout & terrain are ok, but there's no clutter yet), and a bunker generator which is in very early stage and which is definitely not recommended to play with (as it's completely empty).
Internally, there's a lot of new options for the surface as well (arid terrain has a sandy ground noise compared to the other terrains) and it will ensure a more varied procedural generation in the near future.
Custom Game Settings
The menu got cleaned up a bit. Some of the options moved to the difficulty tab (no hostiles, unlimited points). A 'technology' tab was added too, it allows you to give your group some starting technologies to quick-start your game.
Equipment presets can now be saved for later use, so it's no longer necessary to go through the trouble of editing one of the presets each time you start a new game.
Oh, and unlimited points really mean unlimited points now. It will disable achievements, though.
Misc Changes
It is now possible to set containers to ONLY accept input from adjacent factories (you'll still have to make sure it's set to the correct filters), further facilitating automation.
Something a bit more controversial. Our latest changes to combat and group selection made any encounter trivial to deal with. The option for your fighters to move & attack at the same time basically meant that you were immortal. As such, it is no longer possible for people under your direct command to use a ranged weapon while executing a move order. This is theoretically making some melee weapon a bit more viable while making enemy encounters more tense.
Closing Words
Expect a much larger update in the coming month :)
Full Changelog
+ Balance: Military units under the player's direct control can no longer move & shoot at the same time with ranged weapons
+ Balance: Changed costs to embark with armor (400->250) and weapons (200->250)
+ Content: Preliminary sewer generator (still very much in process, right now the layout is ok, but no proper textures & content is applied yet)
+ Content: You can now setup depots so they only accept input from nearby factories
+ Content: Option to start a game with some of the specific technologies
+ Engine: Made the game more robust when meeting bad data (factories with missing or faulty recipes)
+ Modding: Tile data can set if over or below ground noise
+ Modding: Terrain data can change ground noise color & intensity and be set for outside or underground layer
+ ProcGen: Procedural map generator handles ground noise color for each biome
+ UI: Removed "close" button from depot menu (use a right-click like everywhere else)
+ UI: New Game menu overhaul
+ UI: Added the 'cavern' tab to the "new game" menu where you can tweak the underground generator
+ UI: Starting equipment presets can be saved for later use
+ Fixed: Disassembling pool tables (from the procedurally generated map) would never give fabric
+ Fixed: Giving unlimited points on startup wasn't cancelling achievements
+ Fixed: The 'unlimited setup points' option now properly gives unlimited points instead of a very large number
+ Fixed: Fixed crash caused by the change in data format implemented in 0.5.2 (modern kitchen)
Hotfix 1
+ AI: Settlers will more often drop stuff in containers instead of hoarding
+ Engine: Added a "previous autosave" to the auto save system (last autosave will be renamed previous-autosave instead of being erased by a new one)
+ Fixed: Crash if the game encounters a corrupted zip file (as in the zip itself, not the savegame inside)
+ Fixed: People would try put stuff into "factory only" containers, causing their AI to freeze (0.5.3 bug)
+ Fixed: Potential crash in Storage Screen (not happening in-game, but future proofing)
Hotfix 2
+ Fixed: Potential crash in PathTo job if trying to access something outside of the game's location (potential issue with spider spawn)
+ Fixed: Crash in armor calculations under specific conditions
+ Fixed: Under very sound intensive combat (lots of smg and turrets), the game could queue so much sfx that the fight would continue to play long after being over
+ Fixed: Multithreading settings not properly applied at game start (enabled by default even if manually disabled)
+ Fixed: Rare crash related to bullet and explosions
+ Fixed: Logic issue that could cause agents to be placed outside of the map
+ Fixed: Secondary and minor issues
Update 0.5.2: Efficiency and Farming
Update 0.5.2 Summary
Warning: This update breaks save-game compatibility with previous versions.
Here's a fairly major update for 0.5. It introduces a new farming system with new crops, more efficient food & water production and an improved AI. We'll go over those changes in details, but, for those who want a TL;DR here it is:
Your survivors and the economy are more efficient at doing most tasks
Farms produce more but require water and lighting (at least underground)
Expeditions can be sent to recruit new survivors
Bugs introduced with 0.5 should all be fixed now
Food production & Farming
This is the big new feature in this update. Simply put, food production is more efficient. Probably too much at the moment, as it still need balancing. Generally speaking recipes give more bang for your buck with a lesser time investment.
Additionally farms are no longer magical things. Plants will require water and (generally) lighting to stay alive. Your farmers will automatically supply the farms with purified water whenever necessary, and rain will also help.
As this screenshot demonstrates, underground farms will require proper lighting for the plants to survive, unless you decide to grow our new edible mushrooms there. Those can't grow above ground and are awfully inefficient but don't require any lighting. We also added rice as a new crop, it requires a lot of water but also produces a lot of food.
A new water purification building has been added too (construction tech). It's way more efficient than using camp fires and doesn't require a survivor to work at the station for the work to be done.
Lettuce and lettuce related recipes have been removed and replaced by hops for beer production only. Speaking of alcohol, vodka has been introduced. Alcohol fixes the need for 'fun' but might render your survivors drunk for a few hours (slower, less likely to work).
Right now, we're producing way too much food and water, even with large bases. Which, I'm sure, is a nice change for many, but it's not going to last forever either. While it's not part of this update, pests and farm related events will be introduced later down the line.
We also have more changes planned for the food production, as we'll soon be introducing generic recipes based not on specific ingredients but on their category (for instance: meat + vegetable = medium meal) instead.
AI & Efficiency
It's only a few changes but it makes a world of difference.
Firstly, assuming that a crafting station is adjacent to a storage building, and that said storage building accepts its production, anything built in the crafting station will be automatically put into the container. For instance, if you put a container accepting consumable items next to a water collector, the process will be entirely automated, the container will get automatically filled with dirty water.
Secondly, when disassembling/razing stuff, settlers will look for nearby similar and unclaimed jobs, massively reducing back & forth between the area being destroyed and your base in the process. They also regularly look around them for stuff dropped on the ground, no matter what they are currently doing, and will pick it up if they have the storage capacity.
There are a few other minor tweaks, but generally speaking much less time is being wasted by your survivors.
More Cool Stuff
Another much requested feature. It's still a bit experimental, but you can set expeditions to focus on rescuing other survivors. It will not guarantee that the expedition will find new survivors (especially if it's a short one) but with this focus, there's a 60% chance per successful search you'll find someone.
You won't know anything about the rescued survivors until the expeditions is back home. When back, the same menu you get during recruitment event will appear, and you'll be allowed to review them before taking them in (or banishing them).
Also, you can (finally) click on a queued item in the crafting station menu to remove it from the list. No need to clear the whole list each time you need something removed anymore!
Full Changelog
AI: Farmers will take care of plants, providing water
AI: Factories (including water collectors) will auto drop their production in a container if they can find an appropriate one adjacent to them
AI: Survivors will look for nearby "disassembling" jobs when done disassembling something (same we do for collecting stuff from the ground)
AI: Tweaked "satisfy needs" AI logic (they will, sometimes, use vodka or beer to amuse themselves even if a card/pool table is built)
AI: Settlers will (generally) pickup stuff from the ground if they are walking by those items while doing something else
Balance: Water well and collector production increased significantly
Content: Added water, light and location requirements to seeds/crops for farming purpose
Content: Added rice farms and food production chain
Content: Added mushroom farms and food production chain
Content: Added water purification building (more efficient and hands off than other methods) in the construction tech
Content: Removed lettuce & related recipes, replaced by common hop which is used exclusively for beer production
Content: Added vodka and recipes (at a still). Vodka nullifies the need for fun, but will get someone drunk)
Content: Expeditions can now look for new survivors to recruit!
Engine: Another performance & stability pass
Modding: Added ability to disable speech bubbles and mood handling in npc data files
Modding: Building locations can use any item category as building materials (was previously limited to, well, materials)
Modding: Crops/plants can grow into any item category instead of just ingredients (yes, you can mod in a bullet-growing farm)
Modding: Ingredients are their own item type with specific properties
UI: You can click on a crafting station's queued order to remove it (so you don't have to clear the whole list each time)
UI: The Farm menu adds a lot of info about crops and the farm's health
UI: Added overlay to see plant health
UI: Renamed "Ethics" to "Work Ethics" for clarity
UI: Pressing shift and a movement key will double camera speed
UI: In the custom game menu, added tooltips with description over inventory items
Fixed: Zombies, animals and cars no longer get mood swings
Fixed: Regression bug in 0.5.0 causing all survivors to look alike after loading a savegame
Fixed: Regression bug in 0.5.1 allowing to place some structures over each other
Fixed: Clicking on a survivor in an expedition (in the population menu) will teleport you to a fake map you're not supposed to access
Fixed: Pathing issue related to the underground layer occasionally preventing people from reaching something in the opposite map layer
Fixed: Potential crash tied to underground spider migration event
Fixed: Region manager wouldn't count windows as walls causing walled off people not to notice they are walled off.
Fixed: Changing layer while the game is paused wouldn't update wall or lighting data
Hotpatch 0.5.1b
We just got alerted that the game would crash on systems that are not using the international date format or at least a Latin-based date or time system. This is now fixed. Apologies for the inconvenience!
Our next agricultural patch should be available in about a week.
