Nov 3, 2022

Urban Strife - Halloween 2022 Development Update

Urban Strife - USG_Omucupixu

When can we play the game?

Let’s start with the elephant in the room - release date. No, we cannot set a precise day yet, as much as we wish that day was upon us. But we can have a fair estimate that work on the game will be in pretty good shape at the end of Q1 2023 so around that time we can have a chat about the big day coming. But wait, so when do we get to play, you ask?

Well, since we’re entering the end stretch of this marathon, we will try to be about everywhere you, our players, might be. We’ll have a combat demo this December, if our friends from Turn Based Lovers will pick us for their #TurnBasedFest event. We hear there are already 300 plus submissions so the company will be awesome. Come January, we have another event lined up at the end of the month where we hope to showcase the shelter mechanics and the economy. And no later than February, for the grand finale, we’ll be at Spring NextFest (this one is 100% confirmed), with what we hope will be a demo that will give you a taste of all critical features and give us a lot of essential feedback for the final bugfix before release. So don’t worry, the horde is coming!

New factional groups

Work will focus now on mid to late game campaign, but until we have something worthy to showcase from there, we have prepared a quick sneak peek into the factional groups you will encounter when exploring the sectors closer to home base.

In no particular order, meet the Courthouse Police, trying to maintain order in a sector where the local brewery is way more popular than the volunteer hospital and triage. Although morale is low, mostly due to the Army not delivering promised supplies and reinforcements, they are still a force to be reckoned with, boasting snipers, dangerous marshals and shotgun toting troopers.

Travel into the more suburban parts of the city and you’ll meet a lovely group of bounty hunters, visiting the Whitepond Supermarket neighborhood in search of a family of cultists, the Saint brothers. Once supermarket owners, the Saint family has discovered new abilities in working with the undead and are slowly training them into a loyal army. But there are people in Urban less than delighted with the existence of the zombie cult on the premises, hence the visit of the aforementioned bounty hunters.

Move down White River and you’ll eventually meet the Devilsons, a biker clan and a family business centered around turning scrap metal into badass choppers. The patriarch, Rick Devilson, has reached an age where he is hoping his twin sons, Brad and Hawk, will take over the shop. Instead the two dimwits have decided it is better to go to war against each other over a shared love interest. Without spoiling the story here's a couple of friendly local union workers who decided to take advantage of the moment and “renegotiate” their contract with Rick Devilson, with one of his sons as collateral. A fun bunch, guaranteed.

Finally, the local FBI office will be very much interested in what goes on in the Devilson Scrapyard, but meeting them is an experience in itself so we won’t give out too many spoilers. Their fancy black jeeps are all gassed up and ready for the upcoming raids on the criminal underworld. Only there’s a small problem with the assault team having their entire inventory of body protection gear stolen by some mysterious local thieves. No more cavalry coming to help anyone, unless you decide to help the federal investigation and make some kevlar vests “magically” turn up.

Looting improvements - special “looted” state for containers

In the same effort to make looting less of a chore and more of a hint of opening Christmas presents, we decided to stick to a library of lootable containers, places where common sense would tell you that loot can be. Also these containers will have a special asset blueprint with a looted state that will visibly indicate you don’t need to bother checking them, so less carpal nerve damage for you. In this respect we’ve modified our vehicles so now they have trunks/bonnets that open after you loot them and we’ll be going through the furniture assets too with the same plan.

Interface Upgrades

We have redesigned stealth indicators to be clearly visible in dangerous places. The red “no access” tiles, enemy sight and hearing ranges are now clearly visible on mouse hover. We have kept the effect discrete though in order not to disturb your immersion. Another area we’re looking for serious upgrades into is the inventory management interface, but it's too WIP to show anything yet.

Other improvements in progress

We’re looking to improve the game experience with an immersive new soundtrack. Will have more details as we progress further with this. Animations are still being upgraded and, in case you didn’t notice, we have new 2D art for our Steam page and social media platforms.

Nov 3, 2022

Multiple updates for 1.4 and Biotech

RimWorld - Mal

Hi everyone!

We’ve been pushing updates with hotfixes and improvements for 1.4 and Biotech over the last week. We tweaked fixes to make them more mod-friendly and have been collaborating with modders to make updates more seamless for everyone. I’ve added a cumulative changelog below for your enjoyment that covers aaaall of those updates.

Other recent changes for 1.4:

Update 1.4.3525 hotfixes some issues
Recent patches for 1.4
[Edit] We're working on a 1.4 content update!

Here are some highlights:

- Mechanoids: Labor mechanoids have more work types, are more accessible, and tunnelers have more armor. Fabricors now know how to butcher and cook, and they’ll be serving up hot meals for your colonists in no time. You can also leave body disposal to your lifters who can work the crematorium themselves. Cleansweeper mechanoids are available through “basic mechtech” research instead of “standard mechtech”, and tunneler mechanoids are beefier to help with melee combat.

- Genes: The time required to extract genes and regrow genes was reduced - your mad scientist efforts should be a lot faster. Temperature genes were also adjusted to be more impactful, for example, heat tolerance was increased, but so was heat weakness.

- Royalty: Wearing mechlord armor from Biotech satisfies the Royalty royal title requirement. (King of fashion and robots.)

- Miscellaneous: We added more clarification and feedback to certain menus and alerts for things like xenogerms, buildings that summon mechanoid bosses, and subcore scanners. Lots of various fixes as well.

Have you found a bug or issue? Please report it on the RimWorld Official Development Discord. We really appreciate all the reports and we’re constantly checking our forums, Discord, and Reddit for issues that pop up. Thanks to everyone who has helped us squash those bugs! 🪲💚

Want your colony featured on the Ludeon Studios Twitter? Tweet us a screenshot @ludeonstudios!

- Tia

1.4.3527, released Oct 24, 2022

- Updated tutorial end message to point players to the correct place for changing storyteller settings.
- Flamebow now triggers "pyromaniac has incendiary weapon" thought.
- Growth moment flavor text no longer appears when a baby becomes a child.
- Ensure severityPerDay doesn't become 0 between save/load cycles.
- Tox gas research requires machining instead of electricity.
- Reduced mechanitor ship combat points by half.
- Remove the option to close the birth letter if the player has not yet named the baby and it's the last tick available to do so.
- Babies born outside the player faction are given a real name instead of just "Baby". Players may still change the name if they adopt the NPC baby within a day of their birth.
- Add a new icon texture for the circle which shows the current color on the copy/paste/change color widget icons.
- Fix: Using reimplant ability doesn't give the recipient the correct xenotype icon for custom xenotypes.
- Fix: Embryo implant float menu options missing pawn icon.
- Fix: AbilityOnCooldown key missing Resolve() call.
- Fix: If a downed enemy is teleported using farskip they will be drafted upon entering the destination map despite being downed.
- Fix: Never sleep xenohumans still rest when caravanning alone.
- Fix: Scenario text cut off if tiny text is disabled.
- Fix: Genetic metabolism doesn't actually affect hunger rate.
- Fix: Double slab bed is not next to single slab bed in the architect menu.
- Fix: Abandoning colony pawns text doesn't mention mechs.
- Fix: Control Sublink (high) can take up the lower 3 sublink levels preventing use of the normal sublinks.
- Fix: Can train shooting and melee on colony mechanoids.
- Fix: Abandoning a colony with mechs in it and making new a base will cause a mech control group error and show mechs are still active.
- Fix: Non-grouped control groups have their label pluralized.
- Fix: Hostile pawns try to path to destroyed structures.

1.4.3528, released Oct 25, 2022

- "My child is happy" and related thoughts can now trigger if a pawn is being carried.
- Fix: Charity-believing pawns will get negative thought from "rejecting" refugees when the quest hasn't even been accepted yet.
- Fix: Letting a pawn die on the world map with wastepacks will not pollute terrain.
- Fix: Eye cut out graphics are misaligned.
- Fix: Ancient exostrider remains are failing to generate in swamp maps.
- Fix: Diabolus has two 'first' body rings.
- Fix: Mechs not entering transport pods.
- Fix: Lifters can try to haul themselves to a transport pod.
- Fix: Bossgroup drop pods don't use mechanoid drop pods.
- Fix: Mech gestator draw size.
- Fix: Mech charger exceeding 100% full of waste if partially emptied.
- Fix: Do a better job of displaying hulk body types in the pawn portrait in the rename UI.
- Fix: Psychic drone now properly triggers for colonists being carried.
- Fix: Held babies/children will now have thoughts about how their parents are happy.
- Fix: NRE when right clicking on prisoner being carried.
- Fix: Mod requirements wrapping instead of truncating
- Fix: Save modlist saving the filtered mod list.

1.4.3529, released Oct 26, 2022

- Added missing fill percent for gene and mech buildings.
- Update go to bed float menu option if pawn is waiting for surgery and no doctors can do it.
- Fix: Comms console float menu options error.
- Fix exploit: Unwaveringly loyal can be bypassed by enslaving prisoners.
- Fix exploit: Capture>Enslave>Imprison>Release recruits pawns immediately.
- Fix: Some Biotech buildings can have unreachable fires in the center cell.
- Fix: Clicking drums without Royalty installed produces a missing Royalty message.
- Fix: Some mechs cannot load into a shuttle.
- Fix: Highmates can create bonds with quest visitors and vice versa.
- Fix: Error if clicking a mech booster blueprint.
- Fix: Hemogen extraction can get "stuck" on.
- Fix: Babies can carry items in caravans.
- Fix: Deathrest buildings use hemogen when not in use.
- Fix: Some randomly chosen genes not overridden properly.
- Fix: Growth tier gizmo displays incorrect percent value on bar.
- Fix: Giving a pawn xeno and germline hemogenic genes results in two hemogen gizmos.

1.4.3530, released Oct 27, 2022

- "Genes regrowing" hediff from gene extraction lasts 12-20 days. (Down from 25)
- Gene extractor takes 12 hours to extract genes. (Down from 24)
- Remove addictions when adding chemical dependency genes.
- Added a toggle to the hemogen gizmo which allows configuration of whether or not a pawn can ingest hemogen packs to satisfy the desired hemogen level.
- Reduce growth points of generated children by ~25%.
- Fertility stat is no longer capped at 100%.
- Deathrest buildings only drain hemogen while in use. A fully loaded deathrest building supplies 10 days of deathrest.
- Don't display pick up options for drugs that the pawn will drop immediately anyways.
- Re-cache CachedTextures on ResetStaticData() calls.
- Minor adjustments to pigskin and impid pawn kinds. Force them to use faction xenotype set.
- Babies that have fallen asleep in someone's arms no longer immediately wake up.
- Fix: With toxic fallout active, inspecting items from trade ships causes errors.
- Fix: Children gain growth points in cryptosleep.
- Fix: Errors if bossgroups are called with the mechanoid faction disabled.
- Fix: Comms console diabolus threat cannot be called by mechanitors if mech faction is disabled.
- Fix: Paramedic not counted as doctor in solo mechanitor run.
- Fix: Archonexus quest allows taking mechanoid weapons with you to a new colony.
- Fix: Psychically bonded pawns in the same caravan still get "psychic bond distance" mood malus in some circumstances.
- Fix: Removing passion-adding genes doesn't revert the effect.
- Fix: Update steel tile description to match them having 0 beauty.

1.4.3531, released Oct 28, 2022

- Increase the tunneler's armor stats.
- Allow children to wear shield belts.
- Increase the radius of the pollution pump by 1 so it can reach the edge of the map.
- Increase the effect of the temperature genes.
- Clarify that the implanted genes’ ability overwrites the target's xenogenes in the tooltip.
- Update the comms console spawned message to give more info on mech bosses.
- Slightly reduce damage and increase ranged cooldown for militor's mini-shotgun.
- Signal chips reduced to 0 flammability given how much fire the diabolus makes.
- Increased EMP resistance for mech bosses.
- Children can now do basic work at age 3.
- Added alert for incoming bossgroup.
- Adjust prevalence of nicknames among pigskins.
- Add null check to StyleForThingDef.
- Updated player name-in-game content.
- Fix: Some hemogenic abilities can be queued without enough hemogen.
- Fix: AI sanguophages can use longjump without any remaining hemogen.
- Fix: Atomizer is backwards by default.
- Fix: War urchins are not newborn when created by a war queen.
- Fix: Pawns won't haul wastepacks to an atomizer unless there's 10 wastepacks on the map.
- Fix: Bossgroup mechs do not attack if mechanoid faction is disabled.

1.4.3534, released Oct 31, 2022

- Mechlord armor satisfies royal title requirements.
- Added more allowed work types to lifter and fabricor mechs.
- Cleansweepers are now 'basic' mechs.
- Reduced volume and frequency of yttakin sounds.
- Added more feedback to subcore scanners.
- Added 'humans only' option for bills.
- Ensure GeneDefs don't have null icons on incorrect iconPath.
- Fix: Working combat mechs will attack berserk colonists.
- Fix: Forced lowercase in prisoner tab.
- Fix: Abandoning home doesn't unlink deathrest buildings.
- Fix: Deathrest buildings not unlinked on starting new colony for archonexus quest.
- Fix: Melanin genes can be extracted by gene extractor.
- Fix: Cannot build some things without ideoligions active (with Ideology installed)
- Fix: Diabolus' fire burst shoots fuel through the walls.
- Fix: Deathrest bonuses are not removed if deathrest gene is removed.
- Fix: Mechanitor buildings are considered "natural" by natural meditation sources.
- Fix: Error on drafting pawn with hemogenic ability gene with no hemogen gene.
- Fix: Pawns will continue to create a xenogerm until they pass out.
- Fix: Yttakin settlements can have mortars manned by animals.
- Fix: Thrall reinforcements can be passive in certain circumstances.
- Fix: Same pawn listed twice as owner of bedroom if they have a deathrest casket and bed in the same room.
- Fix: Genes can be given to children who do not have prerequisite gene.
- Fix: Unwaveringly loyal sanguophages will offer to join your colony after the quest.
- Fix: Ranged enemies come into melee range consistently when shooting positions are available.
- Fix: Spacedrone hack quest can spawn a spacedrone with an interaction spot in an inaccessible spot.

1.4.3535, released Nov 1, 2022

- Adjusted gene set generation. The first gene added to a set is not restricted by metabolism limits.
- Potential fix for mod-created meat defs with no source causing errors on hemogenic pawns consuming it.
- Fix: Food poisoning chance is 100% for fabricors.
- Fix: Pawn capacities are still affected by overridden genes.
- Fix: Pawns get thoughts from overridden genes.
- Fix: Exception viewing info card of things in orbital trader inventory with noxious haze active.
- Fix: Lactation hediff explanation displays after gene factors on stats page.
- Fix: 'Any mech' bill config not copied when copying and pasting bills.
- Fix: Mechs sometimes not getting into transporters.
- Fix: Rain rate displays as deterioration reason even with a roof above.

1.4.3536, released Nov 2, 2022

- Potential fix: Modded terrain randomly has far more value than it should.
- Fix: Players can bypass metabolism limit of implanting xenogerms by implanting via surgery bill menu.
- Fix: Firefoam poppers can trigger wastepack dissolutions even though no damage is done to them.
- Fix: Fully formed combat mechs in a gestator have 10% energy fall per day.
- Fix: Mechs with human makeable weapons spawn with varying quality.
- Fix: Gestating mechs can be drafted from the mech table.

1.4.3537, released Nov 3, 2022

- Remove "Flesh purity" meme from waster pirate ideo choices.
- Send a message to the player if a pawn is taking a baby to a safe place.
- Mechs can be multi-selected from the mechanitor's control group gizmo by shift-clicking.
- Added some missing [MustTranslate] and [NoTranslate] attributes to FactionDef.
- Send a message notifying when a subscore softscan has completed.
- Display "deathrest connection limit" and "deathrest effectiveness" stats for non-built deathrest buildings.
- "Fertilize" float menu option displays whose ovum it is.
- Reduced "got some lovin'" thought stacked effect multiplier from 0.75 -> 0.6.
- Updated player name-in-game content.
- Fix: Typo in "kind instict" gene description.
- Fix: Wind turbine auto-cut toggle not working.
- Fix: Multiple deathrest gizmos from having both inactive germline and active xenogene deathrest genes.
- Fix: Genes losing pawn references after death->save->load->resurrect.
- Fix: Players can create xenogerms missing prerequisite genes.
- Fix: Drafted colony mechs remain drafted after their mechanitor develops a mental state.