Devlog: 0.9 Progress Update
Hi there!
To make up for the lack of weekly patches while I'm coding the 0.9 update, here's a devlog instead (I know, technically, I did patch ATC a couple times to address random/rare issues found by people but still, nothing major).
Oh before i start. I know it's unusual, but i'd like to advertise Piecewise, a chat-bot making tool made by a friend of mine who also did a lot of work on ATC, including the Steam workshop integration. If you're enjoying ATC mods it's in great part thanks to her. It would mean a lot to me if you gave a follow or considered buying it if it's something you'd be interested in.
Anyway, to summarize, progress toward 0.9 is going well, several of the features I talked about in the previous devlog are fully or at least "mostly" implemented, and the rest is being actively worked on. There are a few technical problems and bugs I had to deal with, but nothing really major.
So, let's see what I have done so far. Comments are welcome, obviously :)
[h2]Assign survivors to a specific job[/h2]
This was one system that ATC didn't have until now. While 9 times out of 10, it really didn't matter who was working on what station, it still made it more difficult than it should to assign someone competent to a particular task. It also limited what I could do with the game. This is fixed.
I'm still feeling ambivalent about this feature. On one hand, it makes it a lot easier to assign the correct person to the research station and it gives more control to the player. On the other hand, 9 times out of 10, work stations being public is way more effective (when a worker takes care of their needs, their job can be resumed by someone else). And I fully expect to get forum posts complaining about inefficiency, production not being executed (because assigned worker is sleeping/sick), or settlers not working (because the work station has no job it can complete). But welp, it's the price of progress, i guess.
To counterbalance that risk, the feature is going to be put in an advanced sub menu (as shown in the screenshot) alongside the "high priority" checkbox, and where additional "non newbie friendly" filters like "minimum skill" will likely be added in the future.
[h2]Patrol Zones[/h2]
The menu is still very "beta" looking, but it's complete feature-wise. Simply put, it allows you to assign settlers to guard a particular location (like the entrance of your base).
It comes with a lot of useful settings. The most important one being that you can select if you want the people assigned to the patrol zone to guard it at all time (they'll still leave to eat/sleep/.. unless you specify otherwise) or only when combat mode is toggled on.
This is super useful as you can pretty much automatize your base's defense using this system. Setup a few patrol zones in non permanent mode, assign your soldiers, disable military skill on everyone else, and poof, the second you press the "combat mode" button, your militia will automatically move to their designated defensive position and deal with the incoming threat.
It goes without saying that this will replace the cumbersome "save/load patrol point" system we had before. There's a few more settings to talk about but they aren't written in stone yet, and I still need to have something to write about in the release post :D
[h2]Mental Breakdown[/h2]
This one, I didn't talk about in the devlog, but it felt like a necessary addition. This is an entirely optional feature, and can be tuned up/down/disabled in the difficulty settings.
I've noticed over the years that new players with a doomed first (or second) base will often continue to play a very depressing game instead of restarting a new base, not because of the challenge but because the fact it's doomed hasn't been communicated very well.
Mental breakdowns can be seen is pretty much all base builders in a form or another because they address this very problem, they accelerate the process hopefully in an entertaining way.
I'm still tuning the system, but right now the rule is as follow. Each survivor has an invisible "mental breakdown" gauge. Each day, the survivor counts for how long they've been depressed (very low morale), and for how long they've been happy (very high morale). If they've been depressed more than happy, the gauge increases proportionally. Same thing in reverse for happiness. If they've been neither of those things, it doesn't move.
When the gauge is full, the settler will enter a "mental breakdown" state. They won't respond to any commands and will perform one (or a few) detrimental action(s). This action can be anything from deciding to leave the base, to punch furniture, turn hostile, attack someone they hate, mop in a corner for a few hours, burn down something, ... Not every action has been written yet, and it's fairly adaptive, i can easily add more. Assuming they survive and do not leave the base, this will reset the gauge.
It's not meant to be something you really have to manage, the gauge increases very slowly. Right now, on default settings, it takes 4-5 days of 24/24 misery for a survivor to have a breakdown.
But, beside accelerating the downfall of a base in an entertaining fashion, it's also meant to prevent experienced players from completely ignoring mood. As much as it's a common complaint from new players, the depressed state ain't really that bad. And once you've figured that out and start stacking up laws which reduce mood but improve everything else, it can even be beneficial (if you don't mind people punching each other all the time). Now, you can still do it, but a survivor might decide to burn down the barracks in protest. :D
This also introduces a concept of criminality to the game. To answer the obvious "can i arrest those people?", well not really right now. There will likely be a "convert to prisoner" button for the offenders, but that'll be it initially. I have post 1.0 plans to introduce special roles like sheriff and leader (think royalty in Dwarf fortress, but somewhat useful) to deal with those problems in interesting ways, but we're not there yet.
[h2]World Map: Animal herds, infected hordes, ...[/h2]
For simplicity sake i'm going to call this system a "horde" no matter if it's zombies, animals or a group of bandits, as it's the name used internally anyway.
That's the big feature I'm working on right now. In principle, this is self explanatory: growing hordes of hostiles roaming the map. If they come across your base, it triggers a raid-type event (assuming they are hostile toward you). If they come across a point of interest they might attack it if defended, or take over it if it's empty.
They can be intercepted by expeditions. and can be attacked before they become a problem, or lured toward your base if you are itching for a fight. More contextual interactions will likely be added, as they'll be able to use the interactive event/quest system.
I'm quite happy with my implementation. And, due to the way they are written, the manual vs auto combat options are a lot more balanced. Manual combat generally being the less risky option, as it should (if you know what you're doing, ofc).
Last devlog, I wasn't sure if i could make AI faction use this system instead of using teleportation to do everything. Now I'm pretty sure that they'll be able to use it to capture production centers or send raiding parties. Maybe not on 0.9.0 proper, but soon after that. This will add a lot of mid/late game gameplay options, like the ability to intercept enemy hordes before they reach their destination so you can fight them in the open.
I'm still experimenting with the system, but so far so good.
[h2]World Map: Infection & spawners[/h2]
That's part 2 of the above system. Probably won't be in the initial 0.9.0 release in any meaningful way, but i'm working on having the ability for a horde to "convert" a map location into something else that can spawn a configurable amount of additional hordes until it's cleared by another AI faction or the player.
It's a system i might use for abominations in the standard game, and for the zombies in a heavily reworked zombie survival scenario. Basically a horde comes across, let's say a farm and conquers it. The farm is morphed into an "infected building" that will spawn another horde every day until it has like 2 or 3 under its control. Those hordes will move toward other buildings, attack them, and if victorious, convert them. This is a situation that will need to be dealt with or it might spiral into something very bad for everyone else.
This should make for a way more interesting end game threat than the current version of the abominations. Might also give a strong incentive to keep other main factions alive as they might help against the threat.
[h2]Map/Building Editor[/h2]
Okay, not going to lie. I'm struggling with this one. It's extremely time consuming to write (and boring, so... incredibly... boring...) and there's a lot of things I do while generating the map that aren't really easy to translate into an editor. I mean, yes, i do have the basics of placing walls, furniture and terrain in there and the ability to save/load the map itself. But it's peanuts compared to spawn points, hidden zones, faction attribution and many other systems.
I still need this as a feature, at least for me to use, but it is going to cannibalize a lot of time, and I can't say I'm happy about it. As I'm not entirely sure how long it's going to take me, and that it ain't exactly a key feature, the rest of the to-do list takes priority over it. What time left I have after the rest is done will be for the editor.
[h2]Random Stuff[/h2]
As usual i just mentioned the big features. I've added/fixed/altered plenty of things. The game has a proper splash/load screen now, so people don't get confused by that white screen (in fullscreen mode) or the big delay (in borderless mode). Expeditions vehicles have their own HP pool, terrain and events can damage a vehicle forcing people to go back home for repairs. UI get tweaked, bugs get fixed, content get added. The usual :)
All things considered, it's going pretty well. Editor aside, for once, I'm quite ahead of schedule. This might give me some time to add some content I never got around to, like fertilizer for farms, additional mobs (and variants), training facilities, sprinklers to get rid of fires and/or take care of farms. Don't assume i'm going to do all that, the to-do list takes priority as always, but it's on the table :)
Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Comments and ideas are welcome, just understand that I'm not going to alter things much at this point until I'm done with that whole 1.0 release thing.
Cheers.
To make up for the lack of weekly patches while I'm coding the 0.9 update, here's a devlog instead (I know, technically, I did patch ATC a couple times to address random/rare issues found by people but still, nothing major).
Oh before i start. I know it's unusual, but i'd like to advertise Piecewise, a chat-bot making tool made by a friend of mine who also did a lot of work on ATC, including the Steam workshop integration. If you're enjoying ATC mods it's in great part thanks to her. It would mean a lot to me if you gave a follow or considered buying it if it's something you'd be interested in.
Anyway, to summarize, progress toward 0.9 is going well, several of the features I talked about in the previous devlog are fully or at least "mostly" implemented, and the rest is being actively worked on. There are a few technical problems and bugs I had to deal with, but nothing really major.
So, let's see what I have done so far. Comments are welcome, obviously :)
[h2]Assign survivors to a specific job[/h2]
This was one system that ATC didn't have until now. While 9 times out of 10, it really didn't matter who was working on what station, it still made it more difficult than it should to assign someone competent to a particular task. It also limited what I could do with the game. This is fixed.
I'm still feeling ambivalent about this feature. On one hand, it makes it a lot easier to assign the correct person to the research station and it gives more control to the player. On the other hand, 9 times out of 10, work stations being public is way more effective (when a worker takes care of their needs, their job can be resumed by someone else). And I fully expect to get forum posts complaining about inefficiency, production not being executed (because assigned worker is sleeping/sick), or settlers not working (because the work station has no job it can complete). But welp, it's the price of progress, i guess.
To counterbalance that risk, the feature is going to be put in an advanced sub menu (as shown in the screenshot) alongside the "high priority" checkbox, and where additional "non newbie friendly" filters like "minimum skill" will likely be added in the future.
[h2]Patrol Zones[/h2]
The menu is still very "beta" looking, but it's complete feature-wise. Simply put, it allows you to assign settlers to guard a particular location (like the entrance of your base).
It comes with a lot of useful settings. The most important one being that you can select if you want the people assigned to the patrol zone to guard it at all time (they'll still leave to eat/sleep/.. unless you specify otherwise) or only when combat mode is toggled on.
This is super useful as you can pretty much automatize your base's defense using this system. Setup a few patrol zones in non permanent mode, assign your soldiers, disable military skill on everyone else, and poof, the second you press the "combat mode" button, your militia will automatically move to their designated defensive position and deal with the incoming threat.
It goes without saying that this will replace the cumbersome "save/load patrol point" system we had before. There's a few more settings to talk about but they aren't written in stone yet, and I still need to have something to write about in the release post :D
[h2]Mental Breakdown[/h2]
This one, I didn't talk about in the devlog, but it felt like a necessary addition. This is an entirely optional feature, and can be tuned up/down/disabled in the difficulty settings.
I've noticed over the years that new players with a doomed first (or second) base will often continue to play a very depressing game instead of restarting a new base, not because of the challenge but because the fact it's doomed hasn't been communicated very well.
Mental breakdowns can be seen is pretty much all base builders in a form or another because they address this very problem, they accelerate the process hopefully in an entertaining way.
I'm still tuning the system, but right now the rule is as follow. Each survivor has an invisible "mental breakdown" gauge. Each day, the survivor counts for how long they've been depressed (very low morale), and for how long they've been happy (very high morale). If they've been depressed more than happy, the gauge increases proportionally. Same thing in reverse for happiness. If they've been neither of those things, it doesn't move.
When the gauge is full, the settler will enter a "mental breakdown" state. They won't respond to any commands and will perform one (or a few) detrimental action(s). This action can be anything from deciding to leave the base, to punch furniture, turn hostile, attack someone they hate, mop in a corner for a few hours, burn down something, ... Not every action has been written yet, and it's fairly adaptive, i can easily add more. Assuming they survive and do not leave the base, this will reset the gauge.
It's not meant to be something you really have to manage, the gauge increases very slowly. Right now, on default settings, it takes 4-5 days of 24/24 misery for a survivor to have a breakdown.
But, beside accelerating the downfall of a base in an entertaining fashion, it's also meant to prevent experienced players from completely ignoring mood. As much as it's a common complaint from new players, the depressed state ain't really that bad. And once you've figured that out and start stacking up laws which reduce mood but improve everything else, it can even be beneficial (if you don't mind people punching each other all the time). Now, you can still do it, but a survivor might decide to burn down the barracks in protest. :D
This also introduces a concept of criminality to the game. To answer the obvious "can i arrest those people?", well not really right now. There will likely be a "convert to prisoner" button for the offenders, but that'll be it initially. I have post 1.0 plans to introduce special roles like sheriff and leader (think royalty in Dwarf fortress, but somewhat useful) to deal with those problems in interesting ways, but we're not there yet.
[h2]World Map: Animal herds, infected hordes, ...[/h2]
For simplicity sake i'm going to call this system a "horde" no matter if it's zombies, animals or a group of bandits, as it's the name used internally anyway.
That's the big feature I'm working on right now. In principle, this is self explanatory: growing hordes of hostiles roaming the map. If they come across your base, it triggers a raid-type event (assuming they are hostile toward you). If they come across a point of interest they might attack it if defended, or take over it if it's empty.
They can be intercepted by expeditions. and can be attacked before they become a problem, or lured toward your base if you are itching for a fight. More contextual interactions will likely be added, as they'll be able to use the interactive event/quest system.
I'm quite happy with my implementation. And, due to the way they are written, the manual vs auto combat options are a lot more balanced. Manual combat generally being the less risky option, as it should (if you know what you're doing, ofc).
Last devlog, I wasn't sure if i could make AI faction use this system instead of using teleportation to do everything. Now I'm pretty sure that they'll be able to use it to capture production centers or send raiding parties. Maybe not on 0.9.0 proper, but soon after that. This will add a lot of mid/late game gameplay options, like the ability to intercept enemy hordes before they reach their destination so you can fight them in the open.
I'm still experimenting with the system, but so far so good.
[h2]World Map: Infection & spawners[/h2]
That's part 2 of the above system. Probably won't be in the initial 0.9.0 release in any meaningful way, but i'm working on having the ability for a horde to "convert" a map location into something else that can spawn a configurable amount of additional hordes until it's cleared by another AI faction or the player.
It's a system i might use for abominations in the standard game, and for the zombies in a heavily reworked zombie survival scenario. Basically a horde comes across, let's say a farm and conquers it. The farm is morphed into an "infected building" that will spawn another horde every day until it has like 2 or 3 under its control. Those hordes will move toward other buildings, attack them, and if victorious, convert them. This is a situation that will need to be dealt with or it might spiral into something very bad for everyone else.
This should make for a way more interesting end game threat than the current version of the abominations. Might also give a strong incentive to keep other main factions alive as they might help against the threat.
[h2]Map/Building Editor[/h2]
Okay, not going to lie. I'm struggling with this one. It's extremely time consuming to write (and boring, so... incredibly... boring...) and there's a lot of things I do while generating the map that aren't really easy to translate into an editor. I mean, yes, i do have the basics of placing walls, furniture and terrain in there and the ability to save/load the map itself. But it's peanuts compared to spawn points, hidden zones, faction attribution and many other systems.
I still need this as a feature, at least for me to use, but it is going to cannibalize a lot of time, and I can't say I'm happy about it. As I'm not entirely sure how long it's going to take me, and that it ain't exactly a key feature, the rest of the to-do list takes priority over it. What time left I have after the rest is done will be for the editor.
[h2]Random Stuff[/h2]
As usual i just mentioned the big features. I've added/fixed/altered plenty of things. The game has a proper splash/load screen now, so people don't get confused by that white screen (in fullscreen mode) or the big delay (in borderless mode). Expeditions vehicles have their own HP pool, terrain and events can damage a vehicle forcing people to go back home for repairs. UI get tweaked, bugs get fixed, content get added. The usual :)
All things considered, it's going pretty well. Editor aside, for once, I'm quite ahead of schedule. This might give me some time to add some content I never got around to, like fertilizer for farms, additional mobs (and variants), training facilities, sprinklers to get rid of fires and/or take care of farms. Don't assume i'm going to do all that, the to-do list takes priority as always, but it's on the table :)
Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Comments and ideas are welcome, just understand that I'm not going to alter things much at this point until I'm done with that whole 1.0 release thing.
Cheers.