After the Collapse News

Hello!

It's probably not a secret that the 0.8.3 content update was released in a bit of a rough shape. My apologies for that. As the feature set expands, it gets increasingly time consuming for me to test for every single possible case. So, here's a much improved version. It fixes most (if not all) reported issues while improving or adding many little things. The changelog is nearly as long as for 0.8.3 :)

Beside the extensive bug fixing, there are a few important changes that will definitely make a lot of you very happy, starting with:

[h2]No More Lemmings[/h2]

Survivors had a bad habit of trying to retrieve absolutely everything (dead bodies included) that has been dropped on the ground with no regard for their own safety. In some situations, it could easily lead to their death, causing even more people to get killed trying to retrieve all the shiny loot. Basically this:



Well, no more.

First, as long as you're in combat mode, civilians will automatically ignore any dead body or dropped loot. The game will assume that if you're in combat, it's probably not a good moment for your peons to retrieve loot.

Secondly, 2 checkboxes have been added in the faction menu, as shown in this screenshot:



They are kind of self-explanatory. If unticked, survivors will no longer try to retrieve dead bodies or loot coming from dead things, globally. When the situation is resolved, you can tick those checkboxes and they'll start doing it again. Tiles with "forbidden loot" have a distinctive icon.

Of course, items dropped by factories, raze orders and so on will still be collected.

Also, knowing that there are some cases when you'd want to prevent dead people's loot from being retrieved globally, but still want a specific tile to be collected. Well, it's also possible! Just "raze" the tile you want your settlers to collect nonetheless, the "no collect" icon will disappear and your guys will consider the location safe.

I think it's a slightly more elegant system than adding zones everywhere. At least I want to give this system a trial run. If it's not satisfactory, it won't be a problem to switch to something more involved.

[h2]Ease of Use[/h2]

If you're continuing a save, this will only apply to newly spawned agents, but from now on all dead bodies will decay no matter if they are in a in corpse disposal or not. They still decay faster in a corpse disposal (and won't make nearby people sick). This change is mostly there to make the Last Stand scenario less of a pain. Given that it's generally not possible to clean up dead bodies in the kill zone before the next wave, corpses would pile up indefinitely (or you'd be forced to make a corpse disposal in the kill zone, which, sure, works, but is kind of an "exploit") .

No accidental deletion of staircases anymore: You can now safely "raze" a whole room without having to be super careful, the stairs will be ignored if there are multiple objects in the selection. If you want to raze one, it must be the only object in your selection. The message log will inform you of that fact if you try to raze a whole room with stairs inside.

Farms no longer require purified water. They will still accept it, but if dirty water is available, they will generally favor it.

Repair Zones can overlap with other zones. Anyone who tried to defend a closed off base against wall eating shamblers will appreciate. Zones in general are less visually obnoxious: I made them a lot more transparent with a solid border.

[h2]Expeditions[/h2]

Having to disband an expedition each time you want to retrieve its cargo was kind of annoying. A new button has been added to just "unload cargo", so they are ready to go back on the job pretty much immediately.



The menu to remove items from their inventory is nicer to look at, and more importantly it will inform you of the space you're about to free. In the same spirit of simplicity, looting duration is defaulted to "until full".

Finally, when an expedition is not doing anything, its members will heal passively.

[h2]General Notes[/h2]

Not all the above systems are perfect, and I'm sure some tweaks will be needed. I also still have a couple things to add and tweak before getting to the second part of the overhaul, but nothing major.

Cheers!

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: Survivors will automatically ignore jobs to retrieve dead bodies (and loot dropped from them) while you're in combat mode
  
• Balance: Razing spider webs (the decoration) will give spider web (the item) when disassembled (might only work on a new game)
  
• Balance: Stairs can only be destroyed when they are the ONLY item in the selection (to make the clearing of rooms with stairs less "risky")
  
• Balance: Expedition members will slowly heal damage when not receiving/executing orders
  
• Balance: Expedition loot order duration defaulted to "Until Full" (it just makes more sense given that the job can be interrupted)
  
• Balance: Farms will favor dirty water over cleaned water whenever available
  
• Balance: Fixed exploit where shooting down some of the animals (cows, sheep) would yield the same as butchering them
  
• Balance: All bodies will decay no matter if inside or outside of a corpse disposal (just a lot slower when not) to make some scenarios less of a pain
  
• Content: The retrieval of dead bodies (and/or their loot) can be disabled globally in the Faction menu
  
• Content: Loot disabled that way can selectively be retrieved using the raze order
  
• Content: Added standard pickup to suburbs and city center loot tables (slightly better than the one you can 'research')
  
• Content: Added order to "drop cargo and get back to work" to expeditions (so you don't have to rebuild an expedition each time you drop cargo at base)
  
• Engine: Regular code and data cleanup to keep the rot away
  
• Engine: Reduced CPU usage of farms (not that it was high to begin with)
  
• Graphics: Zones and rooms are a lot more transparent but with visible border lines, making them less intrusive graphically
  
• UI: Better looking "drop item" menu for expeditions' inventory which also show the weight being dropped
  
• UI: Slightly reorganized the Faction menu (settlement tab is shown first as it became the most useful now)
  
• UI: More information in game log when razing something as a way to indirectly document the changes about stairs and loot
  
• UI: In the encyclopedia, techs which can only be looted will appear as such instead of showing a "research difficulty" rating
  
• UI: In the depot menu, items are sorted alphabetically
  
• UI: Minor graphical improvements, text alignment in various menus
  
• Fixed: Some mob types (under rare circumstances) could be incorrectly be flagged as neutral in the user interface
  
• Fixed: Animals found by expeditions wouldn't be converted into proper agent when loot is being dropped in the base
  
• Fixed: Rare pathfinder issues (on very narrow/long paths) caused by a change in 0.8.2.4
  
• Fixed: Animals from expeditions spawning as civilian instead of player owned
  
• Fixed: Debris (from clutter having been shot at) would resurrect themselves if the game is saved/loaded before the debris disappear
  
• Fixed: Dead NPC and settlers would emit a dying sound when a savegame is loaded
  
• Fixed: Multiple minor issues with dead things not always staying dead and other similar oddities caused by the new savegame format
  
• Fixed: Repair zones couldn't intersect with other zones (or each other) making them very annoying to setup
  
• Fixed: Gun turrets placed on the map during map generation could spawn "decayed" (without the shooting part)
  
• Fixed: "Salvaged Ambulance" and "Salvaged Sports Car" technologies had missing icons
  
• Fixed: If a survivor has part of what is needed for a construction, but the rest is not accessible (locked door or something), they could freeze
  
• Fixed: It was not possible to loot a place you've taken over (regression bug in 0.8.4)
  
• Fixed: Minor issue when closing the Garage menu if the settler selection panel is still open
  
• Fixed: Many potential issues when trying to setup 2 expeditions at the same time (the same settlers or items could be added to both, locking them in a non working state)
  
• Fixed: Wooden trailer was altering people capacity instead of cargo capacity
  
• Fixed: Performance loss in 0.8.3 and semi regular micro freeze in very largely populated bases (>50 people)
  
• Fixed: Job manager wouldn't notice if incapacitated people died before being move, keeping the jobs stored for longer than necessary
  
• Fixed: Issue with dead body disposal job that could cause settler to "move" already deleted bodies
  
  

Welcome to the 0.8.3 update!

As explained in my previous devlog, this update (and the next) is focusing on the expeditions. A very short summary would be that we can now manage multiple expeditions at once. Of course, as with all major updates, it runs a lot deeper than that. As usual, this article will focus on the main changes while you can find a complete changelog at the very end. Without further ado let's get to it.

Enjoy!

[h2]Expedition Overhaul[/h2]

The city map and expeditions are no longer completely abstracted. Both became tangible things connected to the game world. To explain that in simpler terms, you are now able to given direct orders to your expeditions, tell them to move to wherever you want them to, and change you mind mid travel. You can move them on the world map like you would move a survivor in combat mode. You can loot or attack multiple locations with the same expedition and decide when you want them to come back home.



More importantly, you are no longer permanently limited to run a single expedition at a time. Unlocking specific technologies will increase the maximum amount of expeditions you can run simultaneously to a maximum of 4 in a vanilla game.

I made a lot of adjustments to the UI and help screens to make the transition as smooth as possible. For instance, you can track the status of each expedition in the optional panel on the right side of the screen (can be toggled on/off in the filters), clicking one panel will center the screen on the expedition or its garage if it's not off map.

[h2]The Garage building[/h2]

This new building is pretty much the heart of this update. Your first garage is unlocked with the Exploration technology and will allow you to setup and manage one expedition. Other technologies will permit you to build more garages for more simultaneous expeditions (radio, logistics and garage maintenance).



Garages have to be built on the surface, in a spot from which a vehicle can path to the border of the game map. This is where you can assign a vehicle, people and items to a specific expedition. New vehicles can be found by exploring specific location on the map and from research. Items, right now, can only be found while exploring the city. Vehicles and items will determine how many people you can bring with you, your movement speed and can also influence how good will be your group at given tasks.

Once satisfied with your choices, you can launch the expedition. The selected survivors will hop in the car, leaving any useless cargo behind (and releasing their claim on any personal bedroom or pet). The car will exit the game map and will then be available on the world map. From there, you'll be able to order it around, tell the expedition to path to any point of interest, attack hostile locations, loot or take control of others.

[h2]Loot Management[/h2]

It's now possible to order your expeditions to loot a location until it's empty or until their cargo hold is full. If you change your mind, you can order your expedition to stop the looting session at any time. To recover the cargo found during your looting session(s), you'll have to manually bring the expedition back home.



You can also decide to get rid of loot you don't want to make room for more useful stuff. It means that don't need to go back home each time you collected too many stones. To do so, simply open the expedition's cargo screen, click on the item you don't want and a menu will appear allowing you to select how many units you want to get rid of. The menu is still a bit ugly, but I'll get that fixed soon.

[h2]Important Changes[/h2]

Of course I had to tweak some features to work with this new system. Here are the most important points you should be made aware of:

• The whole expedition tech tree has been changed. Techs to increase movement speed, range or capacity have been scrapped. Instead you'll get techs to repair better vehicles than your default car. The best cars can only be found by exploring specific locations.
  
• Expeditions can be renamed like you would for a survivor: by clicking on their name in their associated panel.
  
• People you rescue while looting a location will automatically be sent to you base. You no longer need to wait for your expedition to come back home, instead a "recruitment" event will popup roughly 12 hours after your expedition is done with the looting.
  
• There is no longer a limit to how far an expedition can travel to. Once you can send your first expedition, the whole map is available to you. It might just take a while for your guys to travel, especially with the default car. In the same spirit, the amount of people you can bring is only determined by the vehicle you'll be using. Same goes for the cargo space.
  
• Taking over a production center will no longer "consume" the expedition. Instead, you'll be asked to select people who are still in your base. Once the repairs are over, the expedition will be available again and ready to go do something else.
  
• It is now possible to conduct diplomacy with other factions early (before Radio) by sending an expedition to their headquarter and opening diplomatic channels.

[h2]Interactive Events[/h2]

I'm particularly proud of this one and you'll see a lot more of it in the future. While traveling, expeditions will occasionally encounter situations requiring your input. They might have found  something worth investigating, been attacked by bandits, and so on.



You'll be offered different options with different outcomes. Each option will generally be testing a particular statistic tied to the expedition. A positive outcome might give you loot or a bonus while a failure might damage or even kill some of your people. Once the situation has been resolved in a way or another, the group will continue on its merry way.

This system replaces the old non-interactive travel events completely.

[h2]AI Tweaks and Fixes[/h2]

I also fixed several minor issues with the survivors' AI. Most notably, there was a problem that if something is being constructed next to a depot, it could temporarily prevent people from accessing it, causing any survivor trying to do so to freeze in place.

Survivors are also much better at recognizing that an order has been canceled or is not longer possible to complete: instead of pathing all the way toward the no-longer-relevant-destination they will switch to something more productive.

[h2]Savegame & Mod Compatibility[/h2]

This version is not compatible with previous save-games. If you want to finish your game, you can roll back to the previous version as usual (right click on ATC in steam, properties / beta tab). Most existing mods should be compatible, including those adding or altering city locations. Mods altering expeditions or adding travel events are not compatible but shouldn't cause any major issue.

[h2]Closing Words[/h2]

This is the first part of the expedition overhaul. It's setting up solid foundations for the more content oriented "Part 2". Switching to a proper "scene" to handle the city as a whole instead of relying on smokes & mirrors took a while, and made me rewrite things I never thought I would need to, but I'm pretty happy with the end result. A lot and I really mean A LOT of new content can now be added to this part of the game.

Speaking of adding new content, Part 2 will do just that by adding the optional ability to manually handle most combat related stuff during expeditions. It'll also add new things to interact with on the map like travelers, merchants, other factions' expeditions and roaming beasts. It will also add new terrains (rivers, lakes, chokepoints) alongside new items and events to form a more interesting and cohesive experience.

In any case I hope you'll enjoy this update, because it was a real pain to write :D

Cheers!

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: People are better at detecting that their job target has been destroyed and will no longer travel all the way over something that no longer exists
  
• AI: People are better at detecting that a raze order has been canceled and will stop earlier
  
• AI: Minor optimizations to the job dispatcher
  
• Balance: Marked clothing items as rare to make them less common during trading
  
• Balance: Due to the more permanent nature of expeditions, members will 'unclaim' their private room(s) when leaving
  
• Balance: Radio and Logistic techs both allow you to build an additional garage (see below)
  
• Balance: Made sure that city locations with high tier loot (military base, police station) are always at least somewhat defended
  
• Content: First part of the expedition overhaul (multiple groups, new UI, equipment and transports)
  
• Content: New garage building to manage individual expedition settings
  
• Content: Added several new "travel items" which are used to improve an expeditions' performances
  
• Content: Loot in an expedition's cargo space can be destroyed to make room for more important stuff
  
• Content: New trade/loot tables and technologies to integrate those new items into the game
  
• Content: New transports for expeditions can be found through technologies, some of which can only be found during expeditions.
  
• Content: Reworked the expedition tech tree to accomodate the new changes
  
• Content: Looting action for expeditions can be run "until the cargo is full / place is empty"
  
• Content: Diplomacy can be conducted before the radio technology by sending an expedition to another faction's main base
  
• Content: Random events during expeditions are interactive now, giving you control on how to deal with the situation
  
• Content: Added "Police Station" to the list of explorable map locations
  
• Engine: Added ability to cap the spawn of hostiles with RaiderAI, especially useful in Last Stand scenario (settings.json -> RaiderAICap = max number)
  
• Engine: Reworked the save/load logic and format to accommodate the changes (+ some future proofing)
  
• Engine: Initial loading time very slightly reduced (moar parallelism)
  
• Engine: Switch from/to world map is now instant
  
• Modding: Removed "CanDrop" and "Tradable" from item data, as it was a duplicate of the "DontDrop" and "NeverTrade" tags. Adjusted all items accordingly.
  
• Modding: Cleaned up base files of outdated fields
  
• Modding: Clutter with a MaxCount per map, can have that count changed via techs (see garage & expedition tech tree)
  
• Modding: Techs are used to unlock new transports for expeditions (see garage & expedition tech tree)
  
• Modding: Filters used for expeditions loot (and pharmacy) got the new WantedName field: overrides all Allow/Deny. Used to force a particular item in the loot table.
  
• Modding: Added "ForceHostility" field to map POIs (the mapgen will use this to override the tile's hostility if it's lower than the value)
  
• Modding: New interactive travel events can added/customized (see files data/travelevents)
  
• UI: Right clicking items' checkbox in the depot menu will display their associated info screen
  
• UI: Added new menus to handle the expeditions from the world map
  
• UI: Expedition message log is kept when saving/loading a savegame
  
• UI: Added scrollbar to the optional 'research completed' panel
  
• UI: Added widget to the right side of the screen to display the status of each active expedition/garage (can be toggled on/off in Filters)
  
• UI: Title and text in the recruitment menu is context sensitive (recognizing if from an expedition, escaped prisoners or simple visitors)
  
• UI: Added specific item info screen for the new expedition related items
  
• UI: Updated help screens and the encyclopedia article about expeditions
  
• UI: Pressing the "go to map layer X" shortcuts is now working even from the world map
  
• Fixed: Bow from tribals, if used, could propagate pandemonium infection to unintented target. The bow can no longer drop.
  
• Fixed: The panel shown when you research a tech, find it in an expedition, or find it in loot always had the same title, which might have been confusing
  
• Fixed: Texture for settlers in some menus could be outdated (still wearing an armor they no longer have and so on)
  
• Fixed: When renaming a survivor or animal (or expedition, now) pressing the WASD would still move the camera around
  
• Fixed: Potential crash if one of the survivors is exiting the map (for an expedition) while still being selected
  
• Fixed: Potential crash on the save/load screen if a savegame from a NEWER version is present in the folder
  
• Fixed: In some underground scenarios, "surface events" could still happen before the player breaches the surface (for good this time, my bad)
  
• Fixed: Multiple uncommon/rare issues on the world map
  
• Fixed: Filter menu panel was slightly too short to fit all elements
  
• Fixed: the 'Escaped Prisoners' event would display an useless dialog box below the message from the faction.
  
• Fixed: Annoying bug where settlers would seem locked trying to get to a depot when something is being built at the spot they'd use to drop items in said depot
  
• Fixed: Minor fixes & tweaks
  

Hi there!

Here's a post about the new expedition system, with a video showcasing some of the progress :)

Not gonna lie, it took a while to get things rolling (so to speak).

My approach to code tends to be very "top-down". Meaning that I rarely have something to show until late in the development of a specific feature. The upside is that as soon I reach this stage, progress happens at a very fast pace.

As such, most of my time since last patch was spent figuring out a new way to handle the world map, making a more powerful save system able to digest the changes (and future ones) without the need for me to edit it constantly. And "mapping out" the required structure for all the planned content. Basically, the kind of stuff which ain't really fun to code or to talk about.

[h2]What's done so far[/h2]

With that out of the way, I can work on the features proper and I even have a very early preview of the new system. Please note that everything in the following video is very alpha, played in debug mode, with hastily made menus (and sprites). It should still put into video format most of what I explained in the previous article.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So expeditions are launched from the garage buildings (1 group per garage). An expedition is comprised of an obligatory transport (you start with a default one, the old car) and 2 slots for optional items.

- The car/transport determines the maximum amount of people you can send, the cargo capacity and the movement speed of the expedition. It can modify other stats like offense, scavenging or defense too.

- The optional items can modify each of those variables. For instance in this demo, the detailed maps will slightly increase movement speed, the metal detector improves scavenging. Of course the released version will feature a lot more items (and probably an additional slot).

Anyway, once satisfied with the settings, you can assign people to the expedition and launch it. People will move the required items (and, weirdly enough, the car too) from storage to the garage. As soon as it's done, the selected group will get into the car and exit the map.

Then, from the world map, you can move expeditions individually (like you would with people in combat mode). Move a car to a point of interest, and its menu will adapt to show your available options. If it's defended, you can attack it, and if not you can loot or claim it.

Note that destinations can now be looted until they are empty or the cargo hold is full, whichever come first. If a (or multiple) survivor(s) is found, they will be sent to the base through a delayed recruit event (scheduled to happen a few hours after the search is over). You don't need to bring them back manually. However, you'll have to bring back the expedition to deliver its loot.

Oh, and it'll be possible to discard loot you don't want, so you don't have to come back each time you find 40 stones :)

That's the gist of it for now.

[h2]Current To-Do List[/h2]

I will definitely have to make this stuff a 2 part overhaul if I want to publish the next update in a timely manner. First, most of the map stuff (basically what you've just seen, but you know, completed). Second, the combat layer, roaming hostiles/neutral groups, and polish.

Regarding this first part, I want to have more interesting 'travel events' (you know, the 2 headed cow, snipers, caches,...) by making at least some of them interactive. For instance the group could come across some booby-trapped loot. You're given a choice to try your luck (or the skill of whoever is the most skilled in electronics, with a visible success chance) or to ignore it and go on your merry way. I just need to figure out a format that won't be too much of a hassle to use for modders.

I still have to finish up some menus, add some widgets to track the expeditions from the base, add some items, alter the tech tree, and test all that in a full game. But it nothing too complicated.

I don't have a precise ETA for the first part, but unless something exceptionally unlikely happens, it should be there within a few weeks :)

Thanks for your support!

Hi there!

With me working on the next big update, it's a good time to go into more details about the planned expedition overhaul. Of course, as with all my "design" articles, everything I'm going to write is subject to change depending on how things go during the implementation and testing phases.

[h2]Identifying the problems[/h2]

Before replacing a perfectly functional feature, it's a good idea to know why. It's especially important when it's the second time you're doing it, as there definitely won't be a third full rewrite. So let's look at the different problems with our current system. Of course, your mileage may vary. Not all points will have the same weight to everyone.

[h3]1) Only one expedition at a time[/h3]
This is probably the most obvious problem. No matter how large is your base, no matter your tech level, only one expedition can run at the same time. This is especially annoying when you have to clear a location before looting/claiming it. In the current system, it means that you need to run at least 2 expeditions in a row. Also, due to this limitation, there's only so many things I can do on the world map before things become too cumbersome.

[h3]2) The world map is too static[/h3]
In other words, the city is a pretty boring place to look at. This is, at least partially, a result of the first problem. The places you can go to are set in stones. Outside of one late game special event, there's no destinations being added, removed, changed or moved over the duration of the game. For instance, someone mentioned to me recently that "rare traders" (trading artifacts and such) were too rare. With a different system, such traders could instead spawn in the city for a specific duration, and one of your expeditions could try to reach them. In the same spirit, herds of creatures could move around the map for hunting purpose. Bandit lairs could periodically spawn and make some areas more dangerous until they are dealt with.

[h3]3) The current system feels disconnected from the main game[/h3]
This is of course a matter of opinion. Still, expeditions are entirely menu driven and visible on the city map only. Outside of production centers, expeditions are pretty much a separate minigame running within the main game. The removal of the "expedition planning table" from the very first version, while necessary at the time, was probably a step in the wrong direction in that regard.

[h3]4) Very limited "exploration"[/h3]
For something called "expedition" in a survival post-apocalypse game, there's very little exploration going on here. Of course, with the current system, it's literally impossible to "explore" the city map. I don't think that having to launch an expedition just to "uncover" terrain would be well received. I don't think that adding a complete fog of war over the city would make much sense either. It's safe to assume that people would have a map or some mental image of the city they live in. On the other hand, it feels weird to have perfect knowledge of the city from the get go (every location you can repair, every faction and their HQ..).

[h3]5) Hands-off battles[/h3]
Last but not least, off map battles, to clear a location or wipe out bandits, are done through dice rolls. While it's a perfectly okay choice for most encounters, it's a bit of a missed opportunity. Especially in specific situations like attacking a faction HQ, getting rid of the late game Abominations, etc. having the option to go through a real combat would be a lot more impactful.

[h2]Planned Changes[/h2]

Assuming everything goes according to plan, the way expeditions are handled will be scrapped pretty much entirely and replaced by a system closer to what can be seen in games like Frostpunk or Surviving the Aftermath. In short, expeditions will become tangible agents you can move around the city map pretty much freely.

[h3]Setup and Settings[/h3]

The general idea is to add a "garage" building to the game. One garage equals one expedition/group. Said building will be where you assign people to your group. But more interestingly, it's also where you'll be able to customize it. I'll add a new item category dedicated to improving the efficiency of your expeditions. As an example, a car would improve movement speed and cargo space but would make the group more likely to be ambushed. A metal detector would improve loot chances. You get the idea. Once the group is setup correctly, press the launch button on the menu associated with the building. Selected survivors will exit the base and appear on the map as a new group for you to command.

[h3]City Map[/h3]

The newly created group will appear on the city map screen. From there, you'll be able to move it around like you would with a combat unit. Moving around the city will, obviously take time, which is when the "random" events can appear (one chance per tile, with a long per tile cooldown). Assuming you move one of your group to a point of interest, a context menu would appear. Basically the same as the current "Attack", "Loot" and "Takeover" options. The main difference being that when the action is over, your group will stay in place ready for more orders. If your cargo is full of loot, you might want to bring them back home, otherwise, you'll be able to move on to a another location.

[h3]Combat[/h3]

The "Attack" option, available when a point of interest is occupied by hostiles (or when dealing with other factions) will get, on top of the usual "auto-resolve", the option to generate a small combat oriented map. If a player is willing to fight off a bunch of soldiers, abomination or mercenaries by themselves, more power to them. Such encounters will be self-contained "time bubbles". For simplicity sake (and my own sanity), the rest of the world will be paused until the situation is dealt with and ammo consumption will be ignored.

Don't expect good combat maps in the first few releases, though. There's a lot of things to do already, mapping will come, just not until all of this is working properly.

[h3]Benefits[/h3]

There are a lot of benefits to this system. Obviously, multiple expeditions to be managed at once. You can chain multiple "missions" without having to go back and forth. With the dedicated equipment / items, you can customize each group for a particular task. More to the point, with this system, there's a lot more things that can be added in the future. For instance, groups could have a limited field of vision, so you can uncover special locations by exploring the map. Biomes can have an impact now as well. Places like the scorched biome could need a specific car type or special suits for your group to explore.

Later on, I could add rivers to the city which you can only pass-through via one of the few remaining bridges. AI factions would start to use this system as well: instead of "teleporting" assault teams to your base (or one of your production centers), they'd send groups you could potentially intercept with one of yours. Same could go for bandits, or even the larger animal migrations.

[h3]Other Changes[/h3]

To keep things smooth, survivors you find during exploration will likely travel to your base on their own. I'm not entirely sure how to fill production centers with workers yet, probably similarly to what I do now: once the location is clear, your group will be able to call home and ask you who to send. It'll just "teleport" your workers there (well, timed teleport to simulate travel time for immersion purpose).

I'll have to modify the "Exploration" branch. I'll remove radio, range and movement related techs, as they will be obsolete in that context. New ones will be added to control the max number of groups you can run simultaneously. Same goes for the equipment, which will likely be a mix of tech and loot you can find.

And, of course, I will need to edit the UI to take all that into account. Outside of the obvious new menu for the garage building, we'll need to keep track of our expeditions from the main UI. It would be too bothersome to switch between the game and the map just to keep track of each group. This is what the vertical space under the mini-map will be for. Each group will be represented by its own icon and subtext. Subtext will be something like "awaiting order", "resting", "looting"... Clicking on the icon will of course switch to the world map and center the screen on the associated group.

[h2]Conclusions[/h2]

So, that's the general plan. Not gonna lie, it's going to take me a few weeks (at least) to get close to all that. I'll probably need a few more weeks for bug fixing and polishing. Depending how long it takes in total, I might divide the overhaul into 2 releases. The surface (groups, garage, items) stuff first. Details (combat, biome impact, FoV, etc.) second. I'd rather not, but Valve's metrics tend to go down the shitter when you don't release anything for too long.

Once this feature is completed, it'll be time to schedule the next price increase for the game. It'll be moved from $11.99 to $12.99. For reference, the 1.0 (first version out of EA) should be released at 14.99. This is half of Rimworld's price, which sounds more than fair to me.

[h2]The Future[/h2]

After we're done, it'll be time to work on a building and map editor, so players (and me) can make and exchange hand-crafted content via the workshop. Not entirely sure how things will go yet, but the idea is to offer more varied spawn locations, and make it synergize with the combat stuff mentioned above, again, to offer more interesting maps than what the generator can make on its own.

This should conclude the 0.8x branch feature set. We'll talk about 0.9x later :)

Cheers!

Hi there!

This technically shouldn't be called a "hot-patch" given there are structural changes that people need to be made aware of, but it's a bit too late for me to change my version system. :)

[h2]Pathing Changes[/h2]

The main reason for this update was to address a old bug which was causing settlers and animals to, sometimes, be teleported to the wrong side of a wall. Basically it would happen when something is pathing around a corner and gets worsened when a game is saved right when this happens. For barely half a second, the peon was technically "in the wall" which could force the engine to forcefully push it outside, not always on the correct side.

As such, instead of pathing diagonally through a the corner of a house, they'll path around it. It gives a more natural looking movement. There's a downside to this change, though. One movement type that was possible in previous versions is not anymore. Best way to illustrate is with a picture:



Moving between corner-adjacent obstacles is no longer possible. Settlers will go the long way around. If parts of your base is relying on people moving diagonally through a bunch of depots/walls, those parts have to be redesigned to allow access.



I know this fix is going to be slightly annoying to some of you. But at this point in time, it's the only valid choice I have to fix the issue.

There's an upside, some fairly frequent calculations (flood fill) done by the game are now a lot less CPU intensive, which should help with performances on very large maps.

[h2]Build in Combat Mode[/h2]

Build mode keyboard shortcuts are now working in combat mode. As such, and assuming you know your shortcuts, it's possible to build, cancel and raze stuff from the combat UI now.

This should be especially useful with "special projects" that require active guards, like walling off parts of the sewers or securing a spawner to make a food or giant egg generator. You won't have to switch between build & combat mode nearly as often.

This is still a bit experimental, but so far my testing hasn't found any deal breaker.

[h2]Biome Specific Weather[/h2]

Biomes can have their own weather patterns, and even weathers which are unique to them. For instance, in the scorched biome, "acid rains" have been replaced by a way deadlier "blood rain" version and cold waves can no longer happen.

In the same spirit, arid biomes no longer have cold waves, and rain is much less frequent. Swamps have no heat waves and it's raining more often. Most other biomes are left unchanged for now.

[h2]Notes[/h2]

This is still a hot-patch, technically. As such, there's no compatibility problem to expect. Just keep aware of the changes in pathing.

Beside that, devlog about 0.8.3 incoming sunday :)

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• Balance: Given all animals a very slow (only outside combat) health regen ability to compensate for the fact they can't heal on their own otherwise
  
• Change: It is no longer possible for agents to path through diagonally-adjacent walls/obstables
  
• Content: Weather patterns depend on the biome you spawn in (swamps get more rain and coldwaves, arid less rain and more heatwaves, scorched is hellish)
  
• Content: Scorched biome: acid rain replaced by blood rain (local mobs are generally immune to its effects) and the water there is now red.
  
• Engine: Slightly improved overall performances on large maps
  
• Engine: Switching to/from the world map is now near immediate instead of freezing the game for a good second
  
• Modding: Some mapgen/terrains files have a new "WeatherPatterns" field (see arid.json or humid.json)
  
• Modding: Weather pattern files have a "CanUseInProcGen" true/false setting, if set to false, this pattern will only show up if it's included in the terrain's data
  
• Modding: Added "CanSocial" true/false to npc files (to enable/disable relation tab/funcs on relevant npc types)
  
• UI: Updated some of the tutorial and game-tip messages with more accurate/useful information
  
• UI: Right clicking zones in the build menu will display a detailed info menu like it does for other objects
  
• UI: Added "Zones" category to the encyclopedia
  
• UI: Most of the build mode keyboard shortcuts are now working in combat mode (building, razing, cancelling and most menus)
  
• Fixed: Messages about brawls would incorrectly indicate that all brawls are from your survivors (even if it's between hostile people in a bunker)
  
• Fixed: The biome dropdown in custom game / underground menu was clipped incorrectly
  
• Fixed: Basements could spawn on the surface in some scenarios
  
• Fixed: Frenglish "recolt" changed to "harvest", and corrected other outdated information in the tutorial
  
• Fixed: On rare/specific occasions, agents could end up on the wrong side of a wall (after loading a save, especially), this
• should* be fixed
  
• Fixed: Animals, zombies and robots spawning with the "social" module, unnecessarily consuming CPU cycles (not many, but hey)
  
• Fixed: Zombies weren't immune to the heavy version of acid rains.
  
• Fixed: In some underground scenarios, "surface events" (new recruits, traders...) could still happen before the player breaches the surface