Oct 17, 2018

RimWorld - Tynan

It's finally here! I just hit the button to release RimWorld 1.0. Thank you to everyone! I have many people to be grateful to (many of whom I mentioned in the last update).

There's a juicy new trailer you can watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDrxOASUog
Some logistical details (I also mentioned last time):

If you're playing an unmodded game, just keep playing. Version 1.0 will be compatible with un-modded savegames from Beta 19 and Beta 18.

If you're playing a modded game, you should follow these two steps now:

1. In Steam Library, right-click on RimWorld, select Properties, go to the Betas tab and select the "beta19" beta.
2. Back up your mod files.
----2a. Copy all the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100
----2b. Paste them all in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods

I'm recommending modders don't update in-place to prevent the above problem, but can't guarantee everyone will get the message.

1.0 is mostly the same as Beta 19, with a lot of bugfixes. The only significant new feature is a new food restriction system that allows you to determine what your colonists and prisoners are allowed to eat.

Time to celebrate over here! Thanks again everyone.

Oct 17, 2018

Now Available on Steam - RimWorld

RimWorld - Valve

RimWorld is Now Available on Steam!

A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Inspired by Dwarf Fortress and Firefly. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.

Oct 8, 2018

After five years of early access, RimWorld finally has a release date

RimWorld

It's hard to believe, but RimWorld has been in early access for over five years - so long, in fact, I'd forgotten it was technically still a work in progress.

But this won't be the case for much longer.

According to a blog post by developer Ludeon Studios, the space colony sim will soon be released in full. On October 17th, players will be able to download RimWorld 1.0, which brings bugfixes and a new "food restriction system" allowing players to "determine what [their] colonists and prisoners are allowed to eat". I guess that's one way to stop someone pinching all the donuts - if only that worked in the office.

Oct 7, 2018

Space crash management sim RimWorld releases October 17th

RimWorld

After five and a half years, Ludeon Studios will finally release the 1.0 version of RimWorld on October 17th. Originally scheduled for much earlier this year, version 1.0 saw delays based on what the developer called “the 90/10 principle, where the first 90% of development takes 90% of the time, and the final 10% takes another 90% of the time.” The developer has not committed to further updates for the game other than supporting fan translations and a bug-fixing patch. However, the announcement post does say that they can think of “a variety of interesting directions to go with the game.”

Here’s what’s in the update:

“1.0 is mostly the same as Beta 19, with a lot of bugfixes. The only significant new feature is a new food restriction system that allows you to determine what your colonists and prisoners are allowed to eat.”

RimWorld is a survival or colony management game set in a far future where players manage a burgeoning colony of starship crash survivors. Beta 19, released in late August, added a handful of changes including bridges, water mills, a message history, and a slew of new and murderous automated turrets. It also added a survival gauntlet to the end game spaceship escape event, requiring heavy defenses and a large weapons stockpile to make it through.

You can read the full details, including what to do with all your mods, on the Ludeon website.

Oct 7, 2018

RimWorld s 1.0 release date announced

RimWorld - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Jay Castello)

Sci-fi colony simulator RimWorld is getting its official 1.0 release date on Wednesday 17th October, the developers announced today. The game s been in early access for five years, generating stories about crash-landed space explorers trying to survive and thrive on strange planets.

(more…)

Oct 6, 2018

RimWorld 1.0 will be released October 17

RimWorld - Tynan

RimWorld 1.0 will be released on Wednesday, October 17!

After five and a half years of development we're coming to the close of this chapter of RimWorld. Thanks to everyone who got involved on the forums, posting bugs, chatted on Reddit, offered mods on Workshop and the forums, to those who are doing translations, to everyone who contributed to the RimWorld Wiki, and to Piotr Walczak, Ben Rog-Wilhelm, Alistair Lindsay, Rhopunzel, and others who collaborated with me on making the game. Thank you everyone.

If you're playing an unmodded game, just keep playing. Version 1.0 will be compatible with un-modded savegames from Beta 19 and Beta 18.

If you're playing a modded game, you should follow these two steps now:

In Steam Library, right-click on RimWorld, select Properties, go to the Betas tab and select the "beta19" beta.
Back up your mod files.
- Copy all the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100
- Paste them all in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods

I'm recommending modders don't update in-place to prevent the above problem, but can't guarantee everyone will get the message.

1.0 is mostly the same as Beta 19, with a lot of bugfixes. The only significant new feature is a new food restriction system that allows you to determine what your colonists and prisoners are allowed to eat.

There will be a shiny new trailer on release day.

As for the future, I plan to continue updating the fan-made translations and creative content. There will also likely be a bug-fixing patch. Beyond that, though I won't promise anything and nothing's decided, I can think of a variety of interesting directions to go with the game. For today, though, I'm just celebrating.

Thanks again everyone.

Sep 5, 2018

Unstable version testing and a call for translators

RimWorld - Tynan

A new build is up on the unstable branch.

If you are playing with mods but were on the unstable branch from an earlier testing phase, change back to default branch now. The code for this update should be 99% mod-compatible, but the mods won't work until they're recompiled because the binary API for the translation system changed.

The game content is exactly the same as Beta 19. There are some bugfixes, but the most important thing is the new localization system. It'll help translators more accurately translate the game into non-English languages, with issues like grammatical gender (e.g. le/la in French) respected and better automatic handling of grammar for a variety of languages.

Below is a forum post from Piotr Walczak, who implemented the latest improvements, explaining what translators can do to take advantage of the new functionality.

Forum post: New keyed translations format

For anyone interested in helping translate, now would be a great time! The game content is stable, the grammar code is in, and we're on the final push to get things set for the 1.0 release. Potential translators should please take a look the forum post below to learn how to contribute. Thanks in advance.

Forum post: How to contribute to translations

Forum post: Help check the language workers

Sep 5, 2018

Early access price and final price

RimWorld - Tynan

So, RimWorld's early access price has been $30 USD since we first started selling the game in 2013.

Buying an early access game is risky compared to buying a finished game. Also, RimWorld's value in content (and the time players tend to play it) have gone up a lot since those early days. There's also the matter of simple financial inflation. Because of these factors, the final price will be higher than the early access price.

The early access price will remain the same for the rest of the early access period - this change will only occur when 1.0 is released. And of course, anyone who bought during Early Access will get the final version for no additional cost.

I wanted to let everyone know about this ahead of time so people have time to make an informed purchasing decision without surprises.

As of now there's no announced release date for 1.0 yet - still working on filling in all those final details!

Discussion on the Ludeon forums.

Aug 28, 2018

RimWorld beta 19 out now, adding bridges and new turrets

RimWorld - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

The “Ah c’mon don’t pretend the possibility of cannibalism isn’t part of why you were interested in spacelife in the first place” colony simulator RimWorld has launched a big early access update focused on expanding the most important thing in life: being near water. Beta update 19 lets players build bridges and build light buildings atop them, and baselords can also build power-generating watermills and run power cables under rivers. Let us abandon this terrible landlife. The update also adds new turrets, lets you rename animals, and lets your beloved Cow spot get diseases. Happy days.

(more…)

Aug 27, 2018

RimWorld Beta 19 – Polish the Cannons released!

RimWorld - Tynan

RimWorld Beta 19 - Polish the Cannons is released!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH5tLLJXbg8
If you want to keep playing Beta 18 on Steam: Right click RimWorld in the Library list -> Properties -> Betas -> Choose beta18 from the drop-down menu.

You can play savegames from Beta 18 (and probably before), though some details will change upon loading.

I did want this build to be 1.0 for a while, but it became apparent the game would benefit from one more refinement round, so we're doing Beta 19 first. I very much want the 1.0 version to be worthy of its version number, which means not rushing it.

You can discuss this post in this forum thread on the Ludeon forums or in comments below.

Below is a list of notable changes. If anything below seems to change game balance, you can bet that related variables were adjusted to maintain roughly the same challenge as before - I just don't write down every single change because otherwise this list would be way too long. This list also does not including a ton of more behind-the-scenes optimization, refactoring, fixing, and adjustments we did.

Added bridges. You can build bridges over rivers and non-deep lake/ocean water. Bridges support all but the heaviest structures, can burn, and collapse under damage.
Added new "Messages" section of the History tab. This section shows the last 200 messages and letters you've received.
Added low-tech plate armor.
New scenario: Naked Brutality - Start naked with no items.
New main tab: Wildlife. Allows easy counting, finding, and designating of wild animals.
Ship end sequence: Starting up the ship reactor now takes 15 days, during which you will be attacked constantly by desperadoes and mechanoids.
New raid arrival mode: Multiple groups.
New raid arrival mode: Enemy pods scattered all over the map.
Split mechanoid scyther into scyther (close combat specialist) and lancer (fast sniper)
Split tribal warrior into warrior (mid-range melee) and penitent (poverty melee, similar to drifter)
Faction relations are now categorized as hostile/neutral/ally instead of just hostile/neutral. Allies will randomly send military aid and will respond to certain special requests.
You can now offer gifts to improve faction relations by using transport pods, sending caravans, or giving gifts to their traders. Gifts can be silver, items, or slaves. No more magical teleporting silver gifts.
Visitors of allied factions will now occasionally leave gifts before leaving.
New buildings:
- Watermill generator: Generate power from moving water.
- Autocannon turret: Heavy medium-range turret.
- Uranium slug turret: Armor-penetrating long-range turret.
- Fabrication bench: Craft advanced components and some advanced tech items.
- Waterproof conduit: Transmit power under water for bases on both sides of a river.
- Butcher spot: Butcher without building a bench, at an efficiency penalty.
- Double sleeping spot: Sleep with your partner, even in crushing poverty.
New traits:
- Undergrounder: Don't mind never seeing the sky, don't mind being in darkness.
- Great memory: Slower skill decay.
- Tough: Take less damage.
- Gourmand: Eat a lot, random eating binges, cooking skill bonus.
- Sickly: Get sick often.
- Quick sleeper: Take less time to sleep.
New items:
- Flak pants
- Prosthetic heart
- Bionic spine/heart/stomach
- Archotech eye/arm/leg
- Tornado generator
- Patchleather: Poor-quality leather made from any combination of other leather
New incident: "Wild man wanders in”.
New terrain: Soft sand - doesn't allow building medium or heavy structures.
New designators: Mass-forbid and unforbid.
Infestations now begin with the insects tunneling towards the colony, which gives the player time to respond.
You can now write job titles for your colonists.
New type of attack: Kick sand/water in eyes.
Condensed leathers together into fewer types. Instead of a separate type for each animal, there are categories.
You can now smooth natural rough rock walls into high-quality walls.
Trained animal skills and tameness now decay over time. Animals can revert to the wild, depending on their natural wildness.
Deep drill use will now sometimes cause insect attacks (by tunneling through the ground near the drill, with a warning).
New edge shader for blueprints looks much nicer and more visible than before.
Workbench bills can now be assigned to specific colonists.
Added "Show what will buy" window which shows all items a trader will buy.
Trees’ color now depends on the current season.
Added tainted-apparel thing filter.
Increased prisoner recruitment chance and added a resistance which must be reduced to zero before recruitment can begin.
Animals can now be renamed.
Animals can now get diseases.
Added an automatic destroyed building replacement toggle. When active, a destroyed building will leave behind a blueprint and be automatically rebuilt.
Added translation report tool: Generates a report about the currently-loaded language data stating which translations are missing, which are unnecessary, and lots of other useful information.
Added translation cleaner tool: Corrects many common problems in translation files and adds/updates English language reference for every string in the game.
You can mass-toggle various checkboxes and drop-down selections by clicking and dragging the mouse over them.
Workbench bills can now be copied and pasted.
Colonists now opportunistically haul items while working if their current target is roughly in the same direction.
The player can now request AI-core quests from allies.
It's now possible to craft prosthetic and bionic body parts, grenades, and molotovs.
It's now possible to mass-cancel all designations with a designator's right-click menu.
It's now possible to forbid/unforbid all items and rearm all traps with a designator's right-click menu.
You can now drag and reorder colonists in the colonist bar.
Social interaction log now has flavorful randomized text instead of the same repeated interaction text every time.
Mods page now has a search bar so you can easily find one mod in your list of hundreds.
In some very bad situations, a mysterious Man in Black may arrive. Can he set things right in these parts?
Armor system reworked into a 3-outcome system with armor penetration. The armor penetration of the weapon is subtracted from the armor value of the armor. This gives an effective armor rating, measured as a percent. We roll a RNG out of 100%. If the result is under half the effective AR, the hit is totally deflected. If the result is over half the effective AR, but under the effective AR, the hit is mitigated - damage is reduced by half and sharp hits are converted to bruise. If the result is over the effective AR, the hit passes the armor and applies normally. As before, armor is applied in sequence from the outside in. AR maxes out at 200%. Default armor penetration is 1.5% per point of damage, but some weapons vary from this.
Totally reworked how plants grow; they now grow everywhere at once instead of reproducing plant-by-plant. Wild plants after several in-game years should now look more or less as good as at the beginning.
Long-range mineral scanner can now be tuned to seek specific minerals, and must be worked by a researcher.
Battles in the Combat tab are now named.
Items of the same type in the Items tab are now grouped together.
Items in the Items tab can now be sorted by mass, market value, etc.
Instead of shooting them, hunters now execute downed creatures with a neck cut (except explosive creatures).
When placing or selecting work stations where pawns can sit while working, the spot where the pawn goes is indicated by a chair outline so the player realizes that a chair can be built there.
Removed tornado incident.
Improved caravaning:
- Redesigned how world movement speed is fed back per-world tile.
- Pack animals now follow colonists to speed up the packing process.
- Added Caravan tab with caravan loading progress.
- Redesigned "Form caravan" window: stats like carried mass, caravan speed, days worth of food, and visibility are now explained better.
- Caravans now automatically forage for food while traveling.
- Added "Remove from caravan" command: remove people or animals from the caravan even if it hasn't left the map yet.
- Added "Load into caravan" right-click option: designate extra items to be picked up by the caravan before leaving.
- Caravan speed now depends on the carried weight.
- Caravan members now slowly gain social recreation when the caravan is not moving.
- Caravan visibility is now explicitly expressed and better explained than the old caravan stealth. This makes small caravans more relevant.
- Quest prompts now give much more information about what kinds of challenges to expect.
- When reforming a caravan, we now list colonists' inventory separately so the player can choose what to take and what to leave.
- Caravans who are not moving now have a lower chance of being attacked.
Transport pods now have a contents list which allows removing things from the pod.
Blunt weapons now have a chance to stun the target.
Joy is renamed to 'recreation'.
Using deep drills can cause insect attacks.
Changed deep moving water to chest-deep moving water: walkable but slower than shallow water.
Turrets are cheaper and more powerful, but now consume steel/uranium for maintenance after firing a lot.
Character log now integrates log messages from combat and social interactions.
Deadfall trap redesigned to Spike trap: Much more powerful with a 100% chance to spring on targets, and has armor penetration (depending on what it's made of) but requires resources to replace.
Insects will now go into an insect-specific "hypothermic slowdown" instead of getting hypothermia and dying on the first winter.
Alphabeavers incident now only occurs in biomes with sparse plants so they're not meaningless.
The refugee from the "downed refugee" world quest can be instantly recruited by offering help.
Removed scyther blade.
Mechanoids now always die on downed.
Doing passionate work now affects mood instead of recreation.
Deep drills now yield stone chunks if no resource is below.
Firefoam poppers will now pop whenever there's a fire in a 3-cell radius, instead of only when the fire touches them.
Food poisoning now has three stages it moves through over the course of a day.
Pawns hit by ranged attacks now stagger the same way as pawns hit by melee attacks. This effect only happens if the weapon's stopping power stat is equal or greater than the target's body size.
Most crafting benches are now uninstallable and reinstallable.
Removed shiv since it's basically a low-quality knife.
It's now possible to craft knives at crafting spots.
"autostart.rws" is now automatically loaded on start in dev mode, for faster testing.
Techprof subpersona core now completes current research instead of random research.
Combined rib body parts into rib cage.
Reworked the "advanced map options" dialog layout, extreme game-breaking map sizes are now disabled by default and must be enabled in the options.
Tribal factions can now do sapper raids.
Added medical care column to the Assign tab.
Removed shoddy and superior item qualities.
Rebalanced and refactored quality generation. Masterwork/legendary level items never generate on enemies, traders, bases. Masterwork items are extra hard to craft, and legendary requires an inspiration.
Removed the distinction between allowed areas and animal areas.
Wearing new apparel now takes time. Colonists now take off the colliding apparel first (which takes time) before wearing the new one.
Added minimum crafting skill to various weapon and apparel crafting recipes.
Removed the requirement to pay fee to initiate the item stash quest.
Various floors now require research.
Settling very near another faction base will now cause faction relations loss every quadrum because of anger due to territorial encroachment.
Fulfilling trade requests now gives goodwill.
Destroying a faction base of a mutual enemy now gives goodwill.
All traders are now unwilling to buy tainted apparel and short-life meals.
Improved animal fleeing behavior
No human enemies spawn with weapons above industrial tech.
Charge lance is now craftable and usable by humans.
Explosive weapons now explode when set on fire.
Wood-powered fires and coolers no longer vanish when fuel is exhausted; they wait to be refueled.
Tons of art has been redone and adjusted.
Many, many other bugfixes, interface and balance adjustments