After the Collapse News

Hello!

Here's the 1.0.1 update. Namely, the version which probably should have been released initially, but well, hindsight is always 20/20.

On top of the usual improvements, tweaks and fixes, there are 2 main arcs for this update: a proper balance pass at the story mode while fixing its remaining problems, and the much requested job management tools.

Enjoy!

[h2]Story Mode[/h2]

The main change in this story-line is that there's a soft cap to the maximum amount of people you can control. This includes expeditions and workers at production center. The cap increases in each act. It's 25 people in the first act, 50 in act 2, 75 in act 3 and 150 in act 4. This is unique to story mode, the other scenarios and sandbox modes are still uncapped, obviously.

The rational for this change is pretty simple, it's to make this mode more difficult for veterans (limiting their ability to grind the whole world-map before moving to the next chapter) without complicating things for newcomers.

Additionally, you'll start the first act with an additional soldier-type settler, pushing your initial population to 8 survivors and giving you more than enough firepower to deal with literally anything the game can throw at you in the first few in-game weeks.

There are many more tweaks and fixes to the story stuff. Most will only apply when you switch to the next act (that's kind of a structural issue with the quest system) or start again.

[h2]Job Priority Menu[/h2]

As shown in the previous devlog, I reworked the job priority menu to include the list of currently queued jobs. There's not much to add, the menu is self explanatory enough.



[h2]Job Manager[/h2]

Here's the new job manager. It should be a lot more useful than its previous iteration. It's also much easier to read. I might still modify the UI further, because it's nowhere near as compact as I'd like it to be, but that will have to do for now.



So, you can select which jobs you want it to handle, while before it was kind of a all-or-nothing affair.

You can also tell it to make some of the entries "exclusive". Meaning that the people selected for a particular skill will only have this skill enabled. This is basically for the "Science" field. Enable it, set it to keep only the one best survivor, and check it to be exclusive. This way, your scientist will do science, and science only.

If you check the "Maintain Settings Automatically" checkbox, settings will be automatically reapplied each time you get a new survivor, or one dies, leaves, come back from an expedition, and so on. Basically, it does what it says on the box :)

But what if you want to set manual job settings on one (or multiple) of your survivors? Well you can do that too now!



See that check box at the bottom of the survivor's job menu? This is its purpose. Check it, and the job manager will completely ignore this survivor.

I can't stress this enough, though. There's no magic combination of jobs settings that will beat a base designed with proper depot and factory placement. Nine times out of ten, outside of farmers, scientists and medics, you'll just make things worse.

[h2]Notable Stuff[/h2]

I decreased the trade value of things like poison and tree seeds, as those were practically free money printing machines. I also halved the silk/poison production rate of tamed spiders/scorpions.

I also added a new booze with limited anti-sickness properties (I know, I know). It has a decent trade value, and can be made for relatively cheap with alcohol and poison (why not).

There's a lot more in the following changelog, which I encourage regulars to look at.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

[h3]Artificial Intelligence[/h3]

• Survivors usually look for a nearby job before looking at the global list, now they'll only pick the nearby job if there's nothing else tagged as more urgent in the list. This should fix issues where you set a whole building to be razed, but a doctor is urgently needed elsewhere. They should pickup the urgent job instead of queuing more nearby demolition ones. At least that's the idea and it's assume you use global job priorities.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• In Story Mode, each Act has a maximal amount of population you can manage (25, 50, 75, and 150, respectively)
  
• In Act 1 of story mode, heavily reduced the total quantity of loot which can be found in military bases and police stations
  
• In Act 1 of story mode, removed special underground biomes from the world map
  
• In Story mode's first 2 acts (and outside of Act 1's ending), back-to-back events will no longer occur
  
• Added a second soldier type survivor to act 1's start to put it on par with a standard game start
  
• Halved production speed of poison and web from spiders and scorpions (from once every 12h to once a day)
  
• Slightly decreased reproduction rate of tamed giant spiders
  
• Heavily reduced buying/selling price of poison and tree sprouts
  
• Some of the least used/rare food (cooked meal, MRE) provide slight anti-sickness benefits on consumption
  
• Added "plot armor" to mutant horde's HQ in act 2 to prevent players from skipping the whole mission
  
• Added "plot armor" to most friendly factions' HQ in story mode to prevent players from getting soft-locked
  
• Increased rarity of spec ops armor, military armor, and some advanced rifles (both damaged and working variants)

[h3]Game Content[/h3]

• Added an alcoholic beverage which can be made from alcohol and poison, decent trade value, some health benefits
  
• Job Manager overhaul, easier to use, more functionalities and can detect people leaving/joining/dying to reapply your settings on its own when set to auto.
  
• Fog/cloud texture size increased. It's also "stuck" to the map instead of using parallax scrolling as it was visually annoying when zoomed out.

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• Game will look for installed mods before starting a Story Mode game and warn you
  
• Study Zones can be "paused" so you can tell students/teachers to go do something else without having to clear the list
  
• Fully reworked Job Manager menu and functions. You can also set individuals to be ignored by said Job Manager by using a check box in their individual job sub-menu
  
• Redesigned Job Priority menu with additional job queue information
  
• Added total population counter to your faction's summary which includes expeditions and people working at the production centers
  
• Added tooltips to Settle Info Menu (when selecting a location for your base) to explain the various terms like decay, water access, danger and so on
  
• You no longer have to press the surrender button when defeated during a manual expedition battle

[h3]Modding[/h3]

• Scenarios can set a maximum quantity of survivors the player is allowed to manage
  
• Ratio of special underground biomes can be altered (see act 1 map)
  
• Ability for a consumable to have a need modifier that the AI will not detect but still function. Like a food which slightly lessen sickness but you don't want to be used JUST to reduce sickness because it'd imply using way too many units. (see drink_devil, meal_mre, and meal_cooked)

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Farm could spam plant-seed jobs uncontrollably (regression bug from 1.0.0.4's AI improvement)
  
• Clicking on a log entry about a map battle you've left would try to teleport your camera to a target who doesn't exist anymore (often leading to a crash)
  
• Multiple event related issues in story mode (won't fix itself in whatever act you're in)
  
• People currently in an expedition wouldn't be included when relocating your base
  
• In sandbox mode, moving the base somewhere else could duplicate survivors if you customized your starting list
  
• Selection from the Population menu was unreliable (the menu can no longer be dragged around as it was partially the reason why)
  
• Issue where a stair could be blocked by a 2x2 (or larger) furniture during map generation
  
• The previous fix to the minor "copy/paste recipe" bug wasn't taking single item factories (like water collectors) into account
  
• Act 4 would normally finish when a specific item you've just produced is put into a container, it'll now be finished as soon as it's produced to avoid confusion.
  
• Hordes would not spawn any loot when defeated in automated combat
  
• Some issues with loot distribution when defeating grown hordes (then which have been on the map for a long time)
  
• Defensive battles would not use the proper gear for your workers
  

Hi there!

After those first few hectic weeks, I think it would be a good time to take a breather with an article summarizing how everything went, my future plans, and so on and so forth. We didn't have a proper devlog in months, after all.

I first want to welcome all the new players! I know the initial 1.0 release was a bit rough (especially in story mode), and I'm very sorry about that. Still, most of the major bugs got fixed quickly thanks to everyone's prompt and detailed feedback.

[h2]1.0 Release Status[/h2]

All things considered, 1.0 was a relatively solid release. It had 3 major "Day 1" bugs which tripped people over in a way I'd rather have avoided. All were literal typos in the code base. It's not bad code, it was just a case of coding fatigue after the last few months. They were all caught and quickly dispatched.

It doesn't mean that 1.0 ain't without faults. We wouldn't be at the 4th hot-patch otherwise, but considering it was the largest content update I published in quite a while (if ever), well, it's not all that bad. Act 1 and 2 in story mode could probably have been a tad nicer to newcomers, and many issues could have been avoided with a couple more weeks of testing. But overall, and given the circumstances, it was fine.

I'll get to the commercial side of things later, for those who care about it. But, let's move to more important topics first.

[h2]Game Content[/h2]

ATC has a plenty of content to go around, and I'm pretty sure that some sub-systems are still unknown to most new players (did you know that you can breed your cattle/pets for specific traits? traits are inheritable). Still, many of the active community members burnt through content a LOT faster than I could have ever imagined.

It's a double edged sword. Watching people unlock exoskeleton production, rocking those armors even in story mode barely a week after release was awesome. It's also a tad scary from my perspective. It's forcing my hand into focusing the next big content update into adding more late game quests and world map content. Which, don't get me wrong, I'll be more than happy to provide. It's just that, now, I have a much better understanding of what MMO developers have to go through :D

[h2]1.0.1 Update[/h2]

So, this will be the next update and it should arrive in a few days to a week, depending on reports. This is nothing major, obviously.

it'll include a reworked job manager in the faction menu. This one should be a lot more functional than the previous iteration. As usual, like ALL job management features, this is purely optional. If you build a base correctly, with input/output depots next to your crafting stations and rooms placed in an effective fashion, you can definitely do without.



The much more crucial job priority menu is also being reworked to include a list of all jobs being queued, updated in real time. As such, you'll be able to see how changing the priority of a particular task is going to influence the queue.



After discussing it with people on the forums, and noticing a trend in the save-games I received, each chapter in story mode will get a soft population cap. As much as it's fascinating to see someone make a base with 200+ survivors before the end of the first act, it's going to ruin their experience and the overall balance in the following chapters. Limits will still be fairly generous.

Scenarios and sandbox mode, obviously, will stay untouched in that regard.

It'll also include a bunch of QoL requests from the community (automatically getting traders from friendly factions for instance) and balance changes.

[h2]Mods[/h2]

I'm going through a process of manually validating already published mods. Mods that I know to be compatible with 1.0 are tagged as "1.0 (Verified)". This doesn't mean that said mod doesn't have internal bugs, it just means that it's not overwriting 1.0 files with outdated versions.

Mods without this tag may still be compatible with 1.0, it's just that I haven't tested them yet.

Mods tagged as "Deprecated" are, either plain incompatible with 1.0, or are downgrading vanilla features back to the stone age. Don't use deprecated mods.

And to new potential modders, I'll be more than happy to answer any question you have, and help you go through your first release. The best place for that is on the discord channel.

[h2]Burnt Out[/h2]

People who've followed me for a while (or those who read my posts in general), already know this. After several months of crunch time to get 1.0 out of the door while dealing with family related issues in parallel, I am completely burnt out.

If I was going to count, 90% of the bugs I fixed post 1.0 are due to typos and rogue lines of code left behind after a bad copy/paste. While bugs are bound to happen in every new major releases, there's normally a proper reason for most of them to exist beside pure exhaustion.

So, I give myself another month (until the end of October) to deal with the remaining obvious bugs, deal with the 1.0.1 update and possible follow-up patches. After that, I'll take one to two months off. I'll still be around on the forums and discord most of the time, but I won't process requests or bug reports unless I deem them absolutely critical.

I am fully aware that newcomers might see this as a bad sign. Stories about game developers going on "vacations" just after release and not coming back are all too common. But after over 6 years running this company, not even mentioning my modding days, and sustaining my first game way after it's was viable to do so, I hope I earned at least enough credits to be trusted on that front. Heck, if you don't believe me, feel free to ask what other people think on the forum ;)

[h2]Then what?[/h2]

When I said that 1.0 wasn't the end of the road, I wasn't lying. Next step is 1.1, and then 1.2, and so on and so forth until 2.0 (hopefully).

There are a few areas I'd like to explore. And that's entirely parallel to the whole "make procedural generation, UI, and AI better", those go without saying.

First one is regarding the late game and map exploration content. If I learned something from writing story mode, it's how powerful the quest system can be. I'd love to add a series of well hidden bunkers. Some might unlock a high-tech gadget, some might unleash a plague or a new faction, others would just deliver a bit of lore. All tied to chains of events and text-based quests.

Secondly, I dislike the current mercenary system used to defend your outposts. The overall concept ain't bad per say. It's just way too basic at the moment. An ideal system would replace that "buy button" by a list of mercenaries, the more factions you're friendly with, the more different layouts. And you'd be able to pick mercenaries with specific loadouts, said loadout would impact on the buying price.

I'd also like to work with the faction archetype system. If you played the game beyond story mode, you already know how radically different it is to plays mutants compared to those puny humans. It's an area I'd love to develop more. It's also a very good candidate for DLC content later down the line as faction archetypes can come with their own custom quest-line.

There's also the base building aspect. I could (and should) add a bunch of decorations, furniture, and additional buildings. While it's true that we have pretty much all that's really required, there's very little decorative and mood related fluff for people to make pretty looking bases. And one shouldn't underestimate the appeal of a good screenshot.

Overall, and that's a running thing with ATC, the game's code-base has a ton of fairly intricate systems, but I barely scratched the surface of what they can do, and I'd love to spend some time digging deeper.

At least that's for my immediate thoughts. I'm not longer duty bound to a massive list of promises I made years ago. Last thing I want to do right now, is to bound myself to another list instead of going with what I actually want to work on. When I have a proper plan for 1.1, you'll know.

In any case, there are a ton of things to look forward to and I hope you'll stick around :)

[h2]So, how the release went?[/h2]

Overall, it went well enough. ATC is not in any danger of being dropped due to a lack of money or interest anytime soon. And, like with my previous game, I'll publish a proper post-mortem when I feel the time is right. Now is way too early to do so. I can share a couple things, though.

Sales for this first crucial month are half of my "noice!" estimate but are way above my "sad face" estimate. It's comparable to my first game's release, and it'll likely beat it over the next month. It is sorta surprising to me because, contrary to that first game, ATC has been selling copies for 4 years (and at a much cheaper price) before 1.0 was released. So, hey. Not bad :)

Public feedback has been great. I was certain the reviews would get a nose dive into mixed territory due to being shown to a much more "general" audience, but overall, even if the score took a slight hit, we're still at a very positive rating at the moment of this writing. And after my first game's bugfest, you have no idea how happy I am about this.

The one thing I'm actually surprised by are the wish-lists. In 3 weeks I nearly doubled my pre-1.0 amount. I expected the number to fall, not to grow. I assume it has something to do with the fact that I refused to go below $10 on release. No regrets there, and it basically means that I have a security cushion of potential sales if things get rough financially in the future.

ATC got pretty much no coverage in any major publication despite trying to ping them. It's not a surprise in the slightest, and a few yt/twitch channels covered me anyway. I'm not going to complain about it, I did the bare minimum when it come to advertisement.

--

Well, I guess that's all for now.

1.0.1 coming soon, with the final batch of bug fixes accompanied by a few new features :)

Cheers!

Hi people!

Here's the 4th bug fixing patch for the 1.0 release. As usual, it's fixing most of the reported issues and includes a few user requests. A larger update will follow soon, unless enough bug reports pile up to justify another hot-patch.

I will post an article about the 1.0 release, my future plans and everything else in a few days.

People who are in the middle of a game, especially in Story Mode, should pay close attention to this changelog as, when loading your game, some of your production centers might be automatically abandoned and you might want to know why.

Cheers.

[h3]Artificial Intelligence[/h3]

• Farmers will no longer try to plant seeds in an outdoor farm if the current weather is damaging the plants (blood rains, acid rains and cold waves), they will continue to care for the rest of the farm, though.
  
• I added a toggle in the Faction menu to globally prevent or allow survivors to extinguish fires on their own (user request; use at your own risks)

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• In the production center tab of the faction menu, locations are now sorted alphabetically, and added an indicator to highlight places which are currently under attack.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Gold Ingots could not be sold to traders. This was silently fixed a few days ago.
  
• A crash when someone is trying to get food, but have a full inventory and can't access any valid depot. They'd normally drop some stuff on the ground, but it could cause a crash instead. This was patched immediately after the bug was reported.
  
• In defensive battles on the world map, it wasn't possible to "[ctrl] + right click" on items to attack them in order to clear a path in an uncooperative building.
  
• The intro sequence in Story Mode would count toward some of the achievements' progress. I didn't reset the achievements, though. If you got them for free, well, good on you :)
  
• The main menu's button to change layer was not updated when events or other menus would move the camera to a different layer.
  
• Going back to the main menu from a story mode save, and then directly launching a new story mode campaign could have negative consequences for the new game, effectively making that second game unplayable. We're getting in super situational bug territory here, but a bug's a bug.
  
• Faction screen wouldn't grey out the button to recall survivors from production centers like the normal menu does when it's under attack
  
• Minor UI glitch which could prevent the "do you want to defend this production menu" from appearing when multiple locations are attacked simultaneously
  
• An issue where one of your production centers would defeat an invader but all the workers would die, only leaving mercenaries. Putting the location is a state where you couldn't evacuate it, but it would still produce resources. They will now properly be abandoned, and you'll be warned when it happens.
  
• Another issue could cause a production center to lose its workers when targeted by another faction's raiding party. Yes, before the actual attack, and yes, it was a nasty one.
  

Hi there!

Here's a new hot-patch, fixing the majority of the reported issues. There are still a couple problems that I'm actively investigating. Those will be subject of a follow-up patch before the end of the week.

Feedback and suggestions are taken into account and will be subject of their own minor update very soon, but right now, I'm mostly focusing on fixing issues.

Thank you for your understanding :)


[h3]Balance[/h3]

• The options to prevent survivors from gathering dead bodies and dropped loot are now the default ones when starting a new game. Made it so to prevent suicidal runs.
  
• Slightly tuned down abomination raid's strength in act 3 and 4 (It's still meant to kill an undefended base).

[h3]Content[/h3]

• You can finish exploring production centers that you own, no need to abandon/reclaim them anymore. Yes, you can still find recruits there, I know it doesn't make a LOT of sense, but it's better than the alternative.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Survivors could incorrectly think that the "pandemonium toxin" item would cure them, leading to all sorts of fun
  
• Problem with specific items tied to Act 4 dropping before you're supposed to get them (game will fix itself in act 4 if the problem is present in your save)
  
• Results of certain events could be re-rolled when leaving the interactive event menu at a specific time (camping scientist stealing all your monies is the big one)
  
• Tentative fix for the rain weather slowing down the game on specific computers/systems
  
• On its first run, the game would detect some 4K/ultrawide displays incorrectly, causing a variety of issues. Detection and scaling should be better now. I can't guarantee it's fool-proof but tweaking graphical settings yourself will work anyway.
  
• Extremely situational crash which I'm not going to try to translate in plain words.
  
• Issue when transitioning from Act 1 to Act 2, causing random events to happen too often with good/bad selection being disabled
  
• Stability issue when browsing workshop mods from the game's interface
  
• In the ingame mod manager, deprecated mods were hidden when browsing the subscribed ones, preventing you from unsubbing directly from the game
  
• Minor issue with the command to copy of factory's queue (changes to the copy would impact the original until game is saved/reloaded)
  
• German sheperd's death animation was incorrectly using the pitbull's one
  
• Disassembling a garage wouldn't give back the vehicle's equipment
  

Hi there!

Here's the obligatory hot-patch for 1.0. Normally I would have waited until the week-end to have time to make sure I was just fixing bugs, not adding more, but the changes were pretty straightforward.

I'm aware of a few other issues, but those will take a bit more time to investigate.

Thank you :)

edit: this is an edited post because i'm not going to spam you with messages each time i change something in this hectic first week.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• The ability for a military raid event to spawn was pushed back (grace period extended, increased minimum population). And it was removed completely from Act 1 of Story Mode (assuming you're not already in act 1)
  
• In Act 1, some map locations will spawn with no mobs at all to make things easier for new players.

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• Hidden "Updgrade To" button if the necessary tech is blacklisted to avoid confusion in story mode.
  
• Clarified the weapons/armor equip menu by replacing depot name by item category with ammo type when relevant
  
• Added performance options to disable rain soundscape in the audio settings (it will also reduce the amount of rain drops), only use if necessary.

[h3]Tutorial[/h3]

• Accidentally building a stone/metal container instead of a wooden one will still work in the related stages.
  
• Altered water production part to clarify what you're supposed to do

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Your money could go into the negative (still investigating the reason why it happened in the first place)
  
• Issue in Act 3 where it wasn't possible to access the bottom layer of the robotic research lab due to pathing issue
  
• The "Army Remnants" raider faction was not always included, causing raids of soldier to be counted as fauna and preventing them to spawn in the world map.
  
• Typo in the intro sequence (oops)
  
• Typo in Act 2 map file, causing a crash when trying to attack some of the map locations
  
• The "weird scientist camping nearby" event could fire in Act 2. It will no longer spawn. If you're already in act 2 as the time of this patch, it still can happen, just don't go through that event if it appears in story mode.
  
• Act 1's ending raid spam could continue in act 2/3/4, this has been fixed, but won't be updated until you move to a new act.
  
• Act 3 could get stuck if you did go through the (now fixed) "scientist camping nearby" event. It'll just skip the quest, given you technically already did it.