Hello all!

I've just uploaded 0.8.20.1 to the beta branch. This fixes a bunch of issues related to combat but also adds a new UI feature, health bars. The default has health bars display when in combat, below full health, or when SHIFT is held. There are some handy settings in the settings menu for you to change how and when health bars are displayed. Check it out.

As well, enemies will try to get to your settlers if there's no immediate open path by digging or breaking down obstacles such as doors and walls. Should make things a bit more interesting!

OH, and before I forget, dehydration/starving will now not immediately kill your settler but degrade their health. It's only when they reach 0 hp that they will die.

Here are the notes:
-Fixed a bug where entities may not attack when given an attack order.
-Fixed a bug where hold position orders could only be applied on the same z level as the camera.
-Fixed a bug where issuing a tame order would not disable the hold position order.
-Fixed a bug where projectile attacks were not being loaded properly in mid-flight.
-Tuned down Wool and Cloth toughness.
-Added health bars.
-Fixed a bug where animals could form inter-faction unions.
-Updated some of the terrain art.
-Starvation and dehydration will now remove health rather than kill an entity immediately. It's not until the entity reaches 0 HP that they will then die of dehydration or starvation.
-Added ways for hostile entities to reach the player if they do not occupy the same room. They will now try to dig or deconstruct their way to the closest settler.
-When children become adults, they will no longer auto choose a profession.
-Fixed a bug where some blueprint jobs were not starting.

If this build doesn't have any serious issues, I'll push it on over to production in the next day or so. :)

Thanks!


Waylon

Hi!

I've just uploaded today's new update featuring some cool critters. The build also contains a ton of extra items in addition to a handy entity highlighting tool which outlines all entities and shows their profession icon above them.

Entities should now appear on the map every few days whereas before you'd only get a few early on in the game. Keep in mind they will also leave after a certain amount of time if you don't tame them.

Speaking of taming, you can now tame every animal in the game and all entities can now fight. Want a Crab army? Sounds good to me. Want Rats to be your legion? Rad.

Here are some quick notes on the behaviours/benefits of the five new animals:
Dogs - Will seek out stealthed baddies in your settlement.
Sheep - Produce Wool daily.
Rats - If not tamed, will eat food and seeds in the settlement.
Snoots - Haven't given them anything special yet, but they will apply a poison once I add alchemy as a profession.
Gully - Like their real-life inspiration, they are just useless birds.
Cats - Cats will hunt down rats that have not been tamed.







Here are the patch notes for the build:

-Added Rats.
-Added Rat Hide item.
-Added Rat Remains item.
-Added Rat Raw/Cooked Meat items.
-Added Sheep.
-Added Sheep Raw/Cooked Meat items.
-Added Sheep Remains item.
-Added Gully.
-Added Gully Raw/Cooked Meat items.
-Added Gully Remains item.
-Added Snoot.
-Added Snoot Raw/Cooked Meat items.
-Added Snoot Remains item.
-Added Snoot Skin item.
-Added Dog.
-Added Dog Remains item.
-All critters can now be tamed.
-Added melee attack anims for remaining critters.
-Added Wool Cloth item.
-Added Wool Hat item.
-Added Wool Boots item.
-New rooms will now use unpurified water instead of purified water as the default beverage designation.
-Added global highlight hotkey which highlights all entities and show's their professions.
-Added hotkey for camera zoom toggle. i.e., holding left-alt to change camera zoom.
-Entity indicators will now not be obscured by lighting.
-Stoneleaf blueprints now require clothwork instead of metalwork.
-Fixed a bug where settlers would wait 1 frame before doing the pathing calculation.
-Settlers issued a move order will now stay at the target location for a brief amount of time.
-Entities will now pop up instead of down when they fill a block they stand in. This should help some issues where settlers could bury themselves in graves.
-Brightened up unlit blocks so they aren't so dark.
-Hold position is now designated much like an attack or tame order so that you can specify the exact position.
-Added additional text prediction for entity spawn command.
-Added 'migration' command for migration tests.
-Updated bird behaviour to fly around the sky more often.
-Animals will now migrate into the player's map at various intervals.
-Fixed a bug where settlers weren't properly dying of old age.
-Tuned entity health to be higher.

Thanks, friends. Have a fantastic day.

Waylon

Hello! Happy Friday.

Just a quick announcement that I've moved the changes from the beta branch to production. Again, this update is not backwards compatible. Apologies for that! Working on mitigating the amount of times I have to push a non-backwards compatible build out.

The changes for this new build include:

Patch 0.8.19.0 Beta - Search Feature, Tailoring, Butchery, and Leatherworking

Patch 0.8.19.1 Beta - Fixes

Thanks,

Waylon

Hey everyone!

This is a quick announcement that I've uploaded version 0.8.19.1 to the beta branch which fixes a few bugs that have been found from last week's update.

Note: This update has not been uploaded for OSX users yet. Apple has a new notarizing process that I'm currently figuring out. Hopefully this won't permanently slow down OSX builds but this is my first experience with this added step. Will try to upload that build as soon as I can.

Here are the notes:
-Fixed a bug where the loom, spinning wheel, and tanning rack could be rotated.
-Fixed a bug where props weren't being tagged properly. This caused certain scenarios to not replace names in dialogue.
-Only archers and warriors will train at the barracks now.
-Fixed a bug where destroyed training dummies weren't rebuilt.
-Fixed a bug where tiles were appearing as not visible black squares.
-Fixed a bug where the stone carpenter's table wasn't working as a requirement for the work shop.

Thanks to those reporting these bugs. Helps me a lot.

Cheers,

Waylon

Hello fam!

I've uploaded the latest beta build which has a bunch of cool new additions. Sadly, I goofed and made a coding mistake which makes it so this build isn't backwards compatible AGAIN. Ugh. Apologies. I know losing your settlements sucks. Next time I'll be more careful about backwards compatibility.

As for what's new, I've added Tailoring and Leathworking as professions/skills. And you can also now build the Clothier and Tannery rooms which open up some jobs related to those. As well, you can now butcher animals using the Survival skill. This will collect meat, bone, and hide (if the animal has a hide) from the corpses of entities. I'm going to work on migrating animal herds for the next patch to help make butchering/leatherworking more of a viable resource.

Also, I've added in a new function to the build/plant menus which lets you filter blueprints by name/room. To use it, hold SHIFT and type out either the name of the blueprint you'd like to see or the room. i.e., SHIFT+Smithy will show all blueprints that would be required by the Smithy room. Or, type SHIFT+Wood and you'll see all items that have wood in their name. This should help with finding blueprints when building. :)

Anyway, here are the notes for today's build:
-Added Search feature for blueprints.
-Added Tannery room.
-Added Clothier room.
-Added Leatherwork profession.
-Added Clothier profession.
-Added Remains item category.
-Added Clothwork skill.
-Added Leatherwork skill.
-Added Wood loom.
-Added Stone loom.
-Added Wood spinning wheel.
-Added Stone spinning wheel.
-Added Wood coffin.
-Added Stone coffin.
-Settlers will now hold position even if they are hungry/thirsty.
-Fixed a bug where some plants couldn't be cut down.
-Added Linen Cloth item.
-Added Light Leather item.
-Added Light Leather gear.
-Added Remains item for all entities.
-Added Remains zone.
-Fixed a bug where items entities were carrying weren't put into a lootable bag.
-Added decay times to items.
-Containers now show their decay buff.
-When Settlers fall in love with an enemy, that enemy will join the player faction.
-Fixed a bug where deconstruct tasks would corrupt a save file.
-Fixed an error with crabs having their overlay window stuck open.
-Fixed a bug where the tooltip overlapped some of the buttons when the build menu was open.
-Fixed a bug where scenario which were only supposed to play once were being played multiple times.
-Fixed a bug where tooltips would stop showing up.
-Fixed a bug where elders could only mine, carry, and fight.
-Fixed a bug where settlers wouldn't sleep in their beds... again... for the hundredth time.
-Fixed a bug where, if a workstation job was interrupted, the job wouldn't be restarted.
-Fixed a bug where Humans could select Void Imps and Void Woken as custom animals.

That's it for now. Have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Waylon

Hello from the frozen northern wasteland of Canada.

Version 0.8.18.1 has been pushed to the production branch and you can get all the goodies from the last several beta updates. Warning that, unfortunately, the new version is NOT backwards compatible. So you will lose saved progress. There was no way for me to avoid this as I had to re-write some core systems for the game to make improvements. I'm hoping this is a rare case and apologize for the loss of your progress.

Here is a list of all the stuff that's in this build since 0.8.14.0:

0.8.15.0 - New Props and New Lighting
0.8.16.0 - Zone Priorities and Tons of Bug Fixes
0.8.17.0 - New Font, Performance Improvements, and New Currency
0.8.18.0 - New 'Starting Settlement' Window Upgrades

Hope you like all the things that have been added. I'll be uploading the next beta build tomorrow. This one includes two new professions and two new rooms that I'll reveal then. :)

Talk to you later!

Waylon

Hello!

Just wanted to let you folks know I've uploaded a hotfix for a couple bugs. As well, the build includes Some extra settings options. Here are the notes:

-Option to invert mouse scroll for the camera.
-Option to set max frame rate for the game. Helpful if you are trying to preserve laptop battery or don't want your laptop getting too hot (no guarantee!).
-Fix for plants disappearing at the end of each season (not including winter - winter will still remove all plants).
-Fix for a lag spike which would happen for certain games.
-Fix for a tooltip bug which occurred after equipping an item to a settler.

That's it!

Thanks!

Waylon

Hey fam!

I've uploaded version 0.8.18.0 to the beta branch. This is for sure the build that will be moved onto the production branch. I'm going to let it soak until Friday to see if there are any major issues before moving it to production.

Tons of fixes and polish went into this build. Namely, a big update to the 'New Settlement' overlay. I've added the ability to spend money there to choose custom loadouts. As well, you can now take in some companions like chickens or cows. Additionally, the list of items will show all the items in the game that aren't unique event items. You'll probably see quite a few new items because, in the past, they weren't accessible naturally. You'll notice a currency on each loadout option. This is the starting currency and I still need to do a bit of work to make it clearer that that's what it is, rather than looking like it costs that amount to be selected.



Aside from that main addition, I did a lot of work fixes smaller bugs I had been neglecting. The music jump-scare volume bug when quitting out of a game is a good example. I also made some tuning changes. Food and seeds will now drop at higher rates but settlers get hungrier quicker. As well, I've made it a bit easier to mine some of the surface level blocks.

Here are the patch notes:
-Fixed a bug where Well jobs couldn't be started.
-Removed the font selector for the settings menu.
-Fixed a bug where settlers wouldn't stock up a zone for an animal enclosure.
-Added fodder item which can be made from plant fiber and fed to animals.
-Food troughs can now hold raw or cooked food.
-Animal enclosure can now have cooked food as a feed item.
-Rooms that create their own zones will now clear them when they are removed.
-Fixed a bug where not all items showed their benefits on the tooltip.
-Fixed a bug where uniforms would double down on buffs for 2h items.
-Workstations will now show up at the top of the list if they are ready to use.
-The workstation list will now update when a new room is added.
-Polished the workstation room to be a bit clearer.
-The inventory panel item should now show buffs on the tooltip.
-Fixed a bug where inefficient attacks were still utilizing the damage of the weapon/tool being used.
-Tuned crops to produce more food/seeds when harvested.
-Tuned entities to become hungry faster.
-Added animals to the settlement loadout screen.
-Tuned/updated the settlement loadout look.
-Added currency to settlement loadouts.
-Currency can now be used in the custom loadout screen to purchase items/animals. Unused currency is taken into the game for use at merchants.
-Tuned item merchant values.
-Hovering the pointer over a notification will keep it from disappearing.
-Merchants can now show (randomly drawn) all non-legendary items in the game.
-Music will now start up if 'always play day/night music is turned on'
-Fixed a bug where audio (music usually) would become super load when leaving a game.
-Fixed a bug where audio wasn't being 100% muted when putting the slider to 0.
-Tuned kalite, void stone, sandstone to be a bit easier to mine.
-Added some sfx for removing blocks like dirt, stone, sand, and ore.
-Fixed a bug where building certain props on a platform would remove the platform.
-The game will now pause when a discovery is found.
-Fixed a bug where settlers couldn't be given an attack order if they were holding a position.
-Fixed a bug where entities would run by each other when they are supposed to attack.
-Fixed a visual issue where the overworld map grid selector wasn't animating correctly.
-Fixed a visual issue where grass fx would fly out way too far.
-Build size should be a bit smaller due to some audio file compression.

After I've pushed this build to production I'm going to focus on content creation again. I'll still improve screens and polish various features but it won't be my main focus like the last several builds have been. I'm going to keep what content I'm adding a surprise. >:)

That's all for today.

Have a lovely day!

Waylon

Glad tidings to you and yours!

I've uploaded a new beta build. I'm really excited about this one because it has two huge changes which have haunted me for ages.

The first is a new font which, is not only easier to read, but is a higher resolution meaning it can support localization in the future. I'm still a ways out from any localization changes but with the old font localization was a never-going-to-happen situation. You will notice that your old font selection is no longer in effect. I had to remove all those older fonts because they don't all support localization and, I think, aren't that easy to read. I did, however, forget to remove the font selection from the settings because I'm silly. This will be gone in the next patch.

The second big change is how builds are made. I won't get into too many technical details because it's probably not that interesting but you should notice a significant performance increase for the game in general because of this change.

I've also added a new currency to the game which allows for micro-transactions. For $100 you get 10 ODD DUBLOONS. HA. I kid. I did add a new currency but this is used to buy/sell when trading with merchants. As I will be adding a merchant room in the future, I wanted to add this new currency in first. The old bartering system was clunky and a bit complicated.



The new currency has many names, depending on the race you are playing. Humans call it, 'Ren'. Ancients call it, 'Gibaren'. Tomek call it, 'Shinies'. Ardyn call it, 'Shin'. Gwdir call it, 'Tal' or 'Talos'. The coin is the main form of currency because of its unique quality that it can't be destroyed or altered. The coins are actually relics from the past, created by an unknown civilization. On the coin is the portrait of some creature that doesn't appear to exist any more and it reads, "Shin-Ghirinan (26000 F.E. - 4500 F.E.)". Maybe you'll come across someone in your travels that can tell you the history of the coin.

Ok, enough of my yammering. Here are the notes:

-Fixed a bug where names were being truncated in the permissions window.
-Fixed a bug where you could hover over the notification ui and get a tooltip when it was just barely off-screen.
-Laborers will now only level up carrying (excluding the level up to all skills from perks).
-Entities now only get xp for favored skills. This also fixes an issue where children could level up.
-Fixed a memory leak bug.
-Swapped out old font for new font that has a higher resolution, improving legibility and providing the ability to localize in the future.
-Fixed a bug where logs weren't being removed when cut down by a forester.
-Fixed popping cloud bug on the overworld map.
-Added ren/gibaren currency to the game.
-Added buff and output info to merchant overlay.
-Fixed a visual bug where proper price wasn't displayed in the merchant screen.
-Added 'add all' button to merchant item entries.
-Fixed a bug where stasis crystals weren't spawning an Ancient when looted.
-Fixed a bug where water wasn't being collected at the well.
-Fixed a crash which occurred after a game over.
-Fixed a bug where moving down into the ladder/stairs block wasn't providing a speed bonus.
-Added better error handling for when save files don't load.
-Made the SFX sliders bigger.
-Fixed a bug where you could place a floor blueprint inside a solid block.

This build is going to be the basis for the merge into production. So, please do let me know if you find any severe issues. For this next version I'll mostly focus on fixing those bugs and adding small things.

Thanks and have a great week!

Waylon

Hey there! Just wanted to let you folks know I've uploaded a new beta build.

Unfortunately, this update is not backwards compatible because I re-wrote a lot of the core code, making it impossible to do so. Sorry if you lose saved progress!

It has these changes:

-Fixed a bug where fishing and water collect jobs were not being started.
-Fixed some tooltip bugs related to jobs and visible blocks.
-Fixed a bug where training dummies weren't being attacked.
-Added z level to random texture generation to help distinguish the change of layers.
-Fixed a bug where Void Woken weren't dying from running out of energy.
-Added an expired death notification.
-Fixed a bug where void imps were allowed to do skills other than mine, carry, and melee attack.
-Fixed a bug where grass and other platform textures could show graphical artifacts.
-Fixed a bug where plants weren't showing their proper stage when a floor blueprint was placed on them.
-Fixed a bug where incorrectly zoned items in containers weren't being removed.
-Fixed a bug where entities were dropping items on filled containers.
-Fixed a bug where you could accidentally place blueprints through the toolbar when selecting a blueprint.
-Fixed a bug where destroying containers wouldn't drop container items.
-Blueprints will no longer clear zones and rooms. They will only clear the zone if the completed blueprint block/prop doesn't allow zones or rooms. i.e., wall blocks.
-Settlers now carry items based on their skill level and can carry from multiple item points.
-Placing a blueprint on a previously built prop or room requirement will no longer disable the room.
-You can now mix blueprints. i.e., place a prop blueprint on a floor blueprint and vice-versa.
-Fixed a bug where items weren't tracking if they were being carried
-Fixed a bug where settlers would not do workstation tasks when hungry/thirsty.
-Fixed a bug where the log job would not remove a tree when loaded from a saved file.
-Added progress bars for several jobs.
-Fixed a bug where settlers would get stuck... mating.
-Stone pickaxe, sickle, hammer, and axe now have correct stone item art.
-Settlers will no longer try to fill a zone if it's removed before they reach the zone.
-Added ability to set deposit priority for zones.
-Fixed a bug where tooltips would say prop or item rather than object's name.
-Fixed a bug where animating textures could be seen when a block is supposed to not be visible.

Thanks!

Waylon