Friday Blog 255 - The Explosive Update - 0.13.0 Is Live Right Now!

The new update is live on Steam! The biggest changes are “rubble” and bombs. When you or a colonist destroys a block, small chunks of rubble will appear and fall to the ground. Bombs take advantage of this new system by instantly removing large amounts of blocks and blasting the rubble away.

There’s also a complex fuse system that allows you to detonate the bombs remotely. The fuse system supports junctions, “elevators” to go up a level and special fuse blocks that introduce a delay to the system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9mLnbCWU18

You don’t have to wait until you’ve unlocked and produced gunpowder to try the new system. Fairly early in the game, you can unlock them in the merchant, where they can be purchased for Colony Points. (Which is the currency you earn in-game, not some microtransaction nonsense)

The rubble system automatically limits the amount of rubble generated when large amounts of blocks disappear simultaneously. It's also affected by the "particle effects" setting, so it can be tweaked to your preference.

We added some smoke with the explosions, and that smoke is also visible when you or guards use the grenade launcher. The area-of-effect damage of the grenade launcher didn’t work when the player used it manually in the past, but that has been fixed with 0.13.0 as well!


The previous update added the transparent green outline that shows up before you place certain items. Some items, like fences, adapt their shape depending on the surroundings when placed. The old system couldn’t properly predict that.

The fuses can be stacked to create a “fuse elevator” that allows the fuse to go up a level. This is a bit of a unique system so we want to make absolutely clear how it works. But the green preview couldn’t properly show that transformation. There was a pretty technical problem here regarding the communication between the server and client, but Zun completely overhauled that.

This means that the green preview now exactly shows how the fuse will adapt to the surroundings when it’s placed, and this improvement has been applied to other items as well, like the fence.


A noticeable other change concerns “scribe-type-colonists” - they can now pick items from high shelves, to a maximum of five stacked shelves. 0.13.0 contains a bunch of other small tweaks, improvements and bug fixes - see the in-game changelog for the full list!

We hope the number 13 won’t bring us bad luck. Let us know how you feel about the changes, and please report any issues!


Veel plezier met de update :D

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