After the Collapse News

Hi there!

Here's the third weekly maintenance patch. It's fixing reported issues (and non reported ones). It's also adding a few tweaks and improvements. Save-games and mods are compatible as usual.

Expect a proper devlog detailing my plans for the next major update either at the end of this week-end or during the next week.

Cheers!

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: Improved efficiency of crafting stations by trying to give the work job to whoever brought the required goods
  
• Balance: Added weight to some items which had none (ammunition, basically)
  
• Balance: Increased the amount of ammo people will take with them (mostly with rifles and handguns)
  
• UI: Added tooltips to resource panel at the top (naming what's up there), it can also be right clicked to show detailed info about the item
  
• UI: Jobs/Skills can be sorted by competence in the individual survivor menu
  
• UI: Added clickable "assigned" field to factories, showing who is working at a given factory or if it's queued
  
• UI: Color code for the queue in factories: green (ok), orange (condition not met), red (no resources)
  
• UI: Main menus (encyclopedia, save, settings, stats, mods) can be closed with [Esc] like any other in-game menus
  
• UI: Added DPS info to weapon tooltip
  
• Fixed: Some of the weapon "turrets" on enemies (scorpion & spider queen, and several low tier enemies) were not working
  
• Fixed: The "small gun turret" was available (and free) in the "new game - customize equipment" menu
  
• Fixed: After the generation of some uncommon types of map, bonus deposits would no longer drop from mountain/cavern walls until the game is restarted
  
• Fixed: Faction logo selector not behaving correctly when the UI scale is not set to default
  
• Fixed: Farmers not clearing wild plants, small rocks and other decorative clutter when building a farm
  
• Fixed: People could rarely path to (0,0) instead of the correct destination, generally when trying to work on cattle
  
• Fixed: Game spamming incorrect "I can't find a depot to unload [item] ([quantity])"
  
• Fixed: Weightless items would interfere with inventory clearing tasks
  
• Fixed: Problems where a keyboard shortcut would interfere with a text box (rename things, depot presets)
  
• Fixed: If someone scheduled for an expedition dies before the expedition is launched, the garage would end up being stuck
  
• Fixed: Prisoners would try to sleep outside of their cells
  
• Fixed: People still trying (only on some map types) to use non faction beds
  
• Fixed: Minor logic issue when checking if a need can be satisfied
  
• Fixed: If for some reason someone was dedicated enough to stay in the tutorial until electricity tech, the game would likely crash
  
• Fixed: More random typos
  

This is a relatively small maintenance patch, it won't interfere with existing saves or mods.

While hunting for that elusive teleport bug, I came across several issues which are now fixed. I also tweaked a few things and further improved performances on very large / gigantic maps.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: If a survivor has their inventory full before trying to eat, they'll try to clear some space (either by dropping in a depot or, if unable, on the ground)
  
• Balance: Pastures' auto butchering setting will skip old animals while they are pregnant (and until they are not anymore)
  
• Balance: Standard beds fill the "sleep" need faster than tribal beds and sleeping bags (might only apply to newly constructed beds if continuing from save)
  
• Engine: Very slightly improved performances when loading a save-game
  
• Engine: More improvements to general performances (economic and general pathing/region calculations)
  
• UI: Double click on an outpost in the faction menu will open/center map on outpost
  
• UI: Locations on the map which have been fully looted are shown in red
  
• UI: Made it clearer that you can click on loot left (in map location menu) to see what the location can drop
  
• Fixed: Small display glitch in the expedition's "members" panel where health was written 2 times
  
• Fixed: Issue in the people selector when assigning people to a production center
  
• Fixed: A problem, possibly tied to the teleportation bug, that could cause people not to recognize walls in extremely specific situations
  
• Fixed: AI logic issue with pickup jobs, which could prevent people from grabbing food (when hungry) directly from the ground
  
• Fixed: Logic issue when loading save which was the underlying cause for the inventory sometimes going into the negative
  
• Fixed: When a savegame doesn't have an associated screenshot, and oversized icon would be displayed
  
• Fixed: A survivor could (again, super rare) get stuck in place despite being marked as moving toward a target
  
• Fixed: (modding) "Leash" field for spawners had no effect, they would always spawn as leashed to the spawner
  
• Fixed: If a creature following a spawner (like baby/mother spider) is separated by impassible terrain, it would freeze and waste CPU cycles (it'll just remove the leash now)
  
• Fixed: Newborn animals spawn (or after loading a save) full size for a few seconds
  
• Fixed: Requested traders from other faction aren't announced in the log or via sound
  
• Fixed: If the game UI somehow displays characters not handled by the font, it would become very laggy
  

Hey, I hope you enjoyed the scenario released for Halloween :)

This new update goes over a lot of reported problems, while improving the UI and the game's economy, rebalancing a few things in the process. It's not a very large patch but it's featuring improvements which should have been made a long time ago.

You can expect at least one or two more before the next devlog explaining my plans for the future.

As usual, saves & mods are compatible, and the full changelog is at the end.

[h2]Production and Economy[/h2]

First, a new setting has been added to all crafting stations (and water collectors) recipes, it allows you to produce a given recipe until adjacent (compatible) depots are full.



While this work for everything, this is especially useful with dirty water production/collection. You can now set your collectors and well(s) to produce only until your adjacent dedicated depot for dirty water is full, which is a lot easier than micro managing it or setting a global limit.

Regarding cattle management, butchering stations can now be paused and will detect adjacent compatible depots and the products will automatically be moved there, saving some travel time in well designed bases.

Additionally, animals can individually be moved from a pasture to another. Click on a pastured animal, and using the new "Relocate" button.



While this is not particularly useful when handling food or work cattle, anyone who has used sand crabs as a defense system will appreciate. It can also be used to separate "good" animals from "bad" ones when trying to do selective breeding.

Oh, and if you've played through the new scenario (or done any cannibal run), you probably would have loved a way to mass-assign dead bodies to butchering jobs. This is now possible! A keyboard shortcut has been added to btcher everything in the selection (which you place like a zone after pressing the shortcut). As usual with keyboard shortcuts, it can be changed in the settings.

[h2]Fire[/h2]

Fire's effectiveness at ruining you day has been tuned down.



First, rain, on top of dousing the flames, prevents fire from spreading through grassy and other non constructed terrain. This should make it a lot more effective at killing large fires.

Secondly, survivors on low health (
Finally, and this is what I suspect to be the crux of the issue: fires will no longer be able to incapacitate whoever they hurt. I think that's what happened to players who got too many deaths or heavily injured people when dealing with fire. Due to the way fire damage is applied, very small damage but in a repeating pattern, it made wildfires the most effective way to incapacitate someone.

[h2]User Interface[/h2]

A few nice QoL improvements.

First, those barebone popups shown during game events (raids, traders...) or weather changes are a lot nicer to look at now. Some of them are more informative or/and have additional functionalities.



This is also working when clicking events and weather changes in the log.



Additionally, HP information has been added to the "settler/animal selector" panel used in a lot of menus. This is especially useful when selecting people to send in an expeditions so you can make sure you don't send people with next to no HP.

The multi-survivor panel displayed when you have multiple people selected at once (generally in combat mode) now show who is using what weapon. This should make it a lot more useful.

[h2]Bug Fixing: Savegame Failure[/h2]

Simply put, on very rare occasions, an auto/quick save would fail and give you a message. The game does not crash, and saving again would work as normal, but it would still rotate the quick/auto slots, making you lose the older version.

After looking at this bug for a few days, there's no real way for me to fix the failure entirely and definitely at this point without massively tanking performances during those saves. Given how uncommon it is and the fact it has no real impact on the game, it's not worth that cost.

So, I did the next best things:
1. I heavily reduced the likelihood of it happening at all.
2. If an auto/quick save operation still happen to fail, it won't erase any previous file anymore.

I really hate to leave a technical bug standing, but it's the closest I can get here. I might still be able to completely fix it later granted it triggers again in front of me while I am debugging the game, but that will have to do for now.

[h2]Bugs Fixed and Bugs Remaining[/h2]

As usual there's a small list of reported bugs being fixed. Most notably, custom player-made equipment presets in the new game menu wouldn't always be displayed, some inconsistent / non working settings, nothing really game breaking or major.

This leaves us with one last remaining long standing bug I consider "major". The dreaded settler teleport bug. And I'm not talking about settlers walling themselves off when placing objects or a settler being force-pushed outside of a wall not exactly where it should, while annoying, it's just inherent to colony-sims. I'm talking about a survivor flat out "teleported" into the middle of nowhere in the underground.

Comparatively to the overwhelming majority of bugs I had to deal with, this one is really annoying to locate for due to its nature. Player reports are, understandably, way after the fact and can't really provide useful or reliable information (not your fault, it's just not that kind of bug). Even if I see it happen in one of my playthroughs, it's after the fact. And, of course, it's rare and irregular enough that brute forcing things doesn't seem to work.

My point for this long rambling is that I'm going to dedicate some more time trying to get rid of it, but it's going to be a pain and it might take a while. :)

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: People on low health (
• Balance: Rain prevents fire from spreading through grassy and other non constructed terrain (on top of the droplets dousing the flames)
  
• Balance: Animal hide from butchering mutants & humans (only apply to newly spawned ones if loading from old save)
  
• Balance: Manual combat maps no longer drop any loot to prevent farming and flee/attack loop exploits
  
• Balance: Fire damage can no longer incapacitate targets (so people don't fall "asleep" in the middle of a fire)
  
• Balance: The game makes sure that the spawn location selected by default when starting a new game is not in a very hostile biome (or a location you can't settle into)
  
• Content: Animals can be assigned/relocated to specific pastures via new button in their info panel
  
• Content: Like factories, if there's an adjacent compatible depot next to a butchering station, the products will automatically be moved there
  
• Content: Added option for crafting stations and water collectors to produce until adjacent container is full (in the recipe selection menu)
  
• Content: Specific butchering tables can be disabled/paused
  
• Engine: Heavily reduced likelihood of an autosave to fail (a bug that cannot be completely removed at this point without massively tanking save performances)
  
• Graphics: Added some light randomization of water droplets placement during rain so they don't always fall at the right center of a tile
  
• Modding: Added TexturePath to both Events and Weather effect, adds a specific image for their new improved panel shown when clicked (or when set to auto pop)
  
• UI: Added weapon icons to the panel shown when multiple survivors are selected (making sub selection easier)
  
• UI: Added HP information to settler/animal selector used in many menus (garage, room, prison cell, pet attribution)
  
• UI: Added hotkey to butcher everything in a zone (U by default, rebindable)
  
• UI: Queue in Factory screen is color coded to show which recipe can complete
  
• UI: Nicer looking weather change and game event menus (for those who popup on screen, or when clicking them in the log)
  
• UI: Events spawning map locations have a window showing an option to center & select the location on the map
  
• Fixed: Quick and auto save wouldn't recognize when a save is already in progress. The game will now properly recognize it and skip the second attempt
  
• Fixed: Auto/quick save file rotation would still be done on failure, deleting the oldest instance
  
• Fixed: Reset speed settings in game options was inconsistent (both for raids and traders)
  
• Fixed: In the RotM scenario it was possible for the "Leadership Change" event to fire for (the perma-hostile) Neo Roma, causing minor relation glitches
  
• Fixed: Traders stuck in houses will self delete after a while, this ain't very elegant but it will serve as a temporary solution until i figure out the cause
  
• Fixed: Clicking on events on the short log panel and the expanded window wasn't consistent
  
• Fixed: Remove Tile job and Fire wouldn't update the game's internal map when destroying a bridge or other tiles allowing passage between 2 areas
  
• Fixed: Disappearing player-made equipment presets in the "new game" menu
  
• Fixed: Rare failure in "drop items" job
  
• Fixed: A couple minor typos and glitches
  

Hello!

This was supposed to be a small and fun scenario for Halloween, but I might have been carried away. Just you know, a bit. So, here is both a new scenario and a fairly chunky update for you to enjoy!

As usual, full changelog at the end, save-games and mods compatible.


[h2]Rise of the Mutants[/h2]

Let's start with the main attraction. RotM is a new scenario for ATC where you play as a group of mutants in search of their origin. It's not just a quick reskin, this scenario is designed to showcase what can be done in a week of work (and testing) with my engine.



(a note before we start: this scenario features cannibalism and a quest with some non-kid friendly content, nothing that's out of character in a fallout-ish game, but I'd rather mention it.)

The scenario features:

• A customized tech tree
  
• A decently sized quest mixing research, combat, exploration and text based adventure
  
• A playable race with unique mechanics (more on that below)
  
• New and altered game events
  
• A few new weapons, armors and items

So, the mutants, which are not inspired by any other mutant from any other franchise, definitely not, are big, green and mean. On the plus side, they have super human strength and endurance, an immunity to scorched biome and acid rain debuffs, increased melee damage, HP, and have a natural resistance to damage. They are excellent fighters and can one-on-one most mobs in the game even without fancy armors or guns. Oh, and they have no philosophical problem with eating humans, on the contrary.



On the negative side, they eat and drink more (20%), they are god awful at medicine and science. Most of the tech tree beyond electronics is closed to them. No robotics, no drones, automated kitchen, advanced turrets or modern weapon/armor repairs. They however start with exploration and animal care unlocked immediately and have access to unique bone melee weapons and armors. The weapons have a very high chance to incapacitate a target, and the armor is very good for its cost (better than the metal armor).



They also are quite asocial and will brawl and fight each other a lot. Keeping them content is quite difficult but it is not as bad as it sounds. The "depressed" mood doesn't apply to mutants. Instead, they become "agitated". An agitated mutant will brawl even more, but will also be stronger, get a military skill boost, and will be better at all jobs involving razing something, however they'll be slower builders in this state.



With a very slow research rate and no easy access to the high-end tier, they are meant to be played as a low tech faction relying on numbers and animals to defend themselves against raiders and other factions (speaking of which, Neo Roma is perma-hostile to you here, it's a feature, not a bug).

A few words of advice:

• I would suggest to start on a large desert river/oasis village map, preferably with a special underground biome and/or bunker. It's not necessary, but it's a nice change of pace from the less interesting city maps.
  
• Mutants need a lot of food and water, better make sure you have more farms and kitchens than normally. It is also a very good idea to allow them (Faction menu) to butcher sentient beings.
  
• Take advantage of the fact that you can collect and grow giant eggs right from the start. Just make sure you have a wheat farm and access to animal food before growing them.
  
• To start the quest, you'll have to complete the "Remembering The Past" research, which is just after Masonry. Pay attention to your (clickable) message log after researching it as it will reveal a world map location.
  
• This is a combat heavy scenario, you'll be raided slightly more often than usual and you will lose people, especially when dealing with raids from other factions.

I hope you'll enjoy this scenario and quest, it's still a bit clunky and the writing is, well.. mine (who isn't a native English speaker), but it should still give you a window to what will be done in the future. :)

[h2]AI, Balance and Content[/h2]

Of course, it wouldn't be an update without the usual list of changes and improvements. I will list a few of the most notable ones here.

Previously, it was notably difficult to keep incapacitated enemies alive. I made that a tad easier: your survivors should be a lot faster at noticing they shouldn't shoot at their target anymore (assuming they aren't blood-thirsty) and newly incapacitated people get a few seconds of invulnerability so they can soak up bullets that were still flying at them (only if your faction menu is set NOT to attack incapacitated people).

Fire will also properly stop at walls now, no matter which tile those walls are built upon. It does make very large fires a bit more taxing on the CPU, though. Nothing dramatic, but it was the reason why it didn't work that way before. Speaking of fire, sand crabs are now immune so they stop burning themselves to death.

Oh, fun little fact, animals now get an unique name (well, from a list) the first time they get adopted by a survivor. Mutants also have their own name generator.

And as usual, I also included many new UI improvements and fixed a bunch of bugs.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: Hospital patients will no longer starve themselves if a doctor doesn't come to visit for a long time
  
• AI: Fighters under your control are better at not shooting at incapacitated targets (if incapacitate is set in faction menu)
  
• AI: Survivors can detect when they can no longer pickup something from storage and will cancel their movement instead of traveling all the distance
  
• Balance: Strengthened all active factions and increased their maximum range
  
• Balance: Factions' main HQ have a minimal amount of enemies to kill an exploit where it would be way too easy to attack them in manual combat
  
• Balance: Tweaked event frequency (reduced cough, increased some raiders, removed some technology gating for late game raids)
  
• Balance: Fire will stop at walls, independently of the type of tile it's built upon
  
• Balance: Incapacitated people, assuming your faction settings are set to keep them alive, get a few seconds of invulnerability after going down
  
• Balance: Slightly reduced the time it takes to boil water at camp fire
  
• Balance: Sand crabs are now immune to fire damage, because they really need to for their own sake
  
• Balance: Most animals/people yield more bones when butchered and/or dying
  
• Content: New unique "Rise Of The Mutants" scenario, see post for details
  
• Content: Unique name generator for mutants
  
• Content: Bone equipment (bone axe, club, armor and face mask)
  
• Content: Added recipes to armor forge and crafting station for bone weapons (mutant scenario only)
  
• Content: Lot of additional content added to the mutant scenario only
  
• Content: Pets get baptized the first time they get adopted by a settler (only apply to newly created animals if loading from pre update save)
  
• Engine: Many improvements to the interactive travel event system, allowing for much more complex quests to be built
  
• Graphics: Additional leader faces for some of the factions
  
• Graphics: Reduced the scale of survivors' footprints to be more on par with their actual size
  
• Modding: Added "EventOnDiscovery" (string) field to tech files, will automatically launch the specified game event whenever the tech is discovered/researched
  
• Modding: Ability for scenarios to override "happy" and "depressed" traits (see mutant scenario for all the new/recent scenario related features)
  
• Modding: Added "EventTextDump" game event type, does pretty much what's written on the tin (seen events/scen_rotm_mutagen for example)
  
• Modding: Travel events can set, increment, decrement and test global and persistant variables (GetVar Validator, SetVar/IncVar/DecVar Effects)
  
• Modding: Added MinHostileCount to POI files (defines a minimal number of opponents in manual combat mode, assuming there is actual any opposition)
  
• Modding: Footprint scale is moddable
  
• UI: Minor tweak to faction list, longer descriptions, font the same size as the rest of the UI.
  
• UI: More space in Population menu for settlers' names (so long names don't wrap into the text)
  
• UI: Made sure the recruitment menu cannot be canceled by a misclick outside of it
  
• UI: Added "required techs" to individual tech info panels/encyclopedia entries
  
• UI: Minor improvements to the UI of the interactive travel events' menu
  
• UI: Animal Nursery's menu got improved, species field can be clicked for info, and the egg selector menu got a facelift
  
• UI: Added "Recruit All" button to recruit menu
  
• UI: More minor changes not worth bloating a changelog with
  
• ProcGen: Village maps can feature some surface mountains
  
• Steam: Replaced the pictures of many of the older achievements
  
• Steam: Added achievement for completing the 'Rise of the Mutants' storyline
  
• Fixed: After loading a save, wild plants marked for deletion wouldn't be highlighted in red like they should (0.8.6.0 regression bug)
  
• Fixed: Last stage of pandemonium would turn people into the hostile faction instead of the infected one
  
• Fixed: Text being cut in farms' crop selection panel
  
• Fixed: Sound effects coming from other layers would still be played
  
• Fixed: A few of the debris/clutter already on the map could still be used by your survivors which goes against lore and gameplay
  
• Fixed: Enemies waiting in ambush in building wouldn't fight back against anyone but the player
  
• Fixed: Apple trees are invisible for a few days after being planted
  
• Fixed: Fauna had a tendency to stare forever at doors they encounter (since 0.8.6.2)
  
• Fixed: Plants would die in pastures and in other zone types where this effect wasn't intended (only apply to new zones if continuing from old save)
  
• Fixed: (modding) Interactive event validators for Tech and NoTech were non functional
  
• Fixed: (modding) Issue with traits causing npc to morph into another one if KeepTrait is not set
  
• Fixed: Doors would "push" people who stay on the tile for too long, which could lead to unwanted teleportation
  
• Fixed: Ordering soldiers to move on a tile with a door wasn't working as it should
  
• Fixed: Recruited prisoners wouldn't have the law and job settings applied
  
• Fixed: Minor rendering issue with doors copied using the shortcut

One day, I will remember to never ever write something about the lack of bugs or crash in an update :)

Anyway, this small update fixes a crash with manual battles, which was a side effect on the recent optimizations. It also fixes several minor problems with the AI which when combined on a struggling base could lead to a death spiral.

Cheers.

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

• AI: Starving settlers who are cooking something can no longer have this task interrupted by any other AI process
  
• AI: Tweaked logic to make sure that someone with 0 work ethics will still do something productive, sometimes
  
• Balance: Depressed trait no longer cancel the ability to do expeditions as it was sorta confusing
  
• Fixed: Negative value inventory
  
• Fixed: Crash in manual combat expeditions (regression bug due to optimization pass)
  
• Fixed: Minor problem with factory logic due to saturday's optimization pass
  
• Fixed: When food is lacking and people are looking for stuff on the ground, they would incorrectly identify fodder as proper food, throwing their AI in a disarray
  
• Fixed: Some tests done when looking to grab something left on the ground wouldn't check if the tile is accessible or not