After the Collapse News

Warning: This update breaks save-game compatibility with previous versions.

Here's a fairly major update for 0.5. It introduces a new farming system with new crops, more efficient food & water production and an improved AI. We'll go over those changes in details, but, for those who want a TL;DR here it is:

• Your survivors and the economy are more efficient at doing most tasks
  
• Farms produce more but require water and lighting (at least underground)
  
• Expeditions can be sent to recruit new survivors
  
• Bugs introduced with 0.5 should all be fixed now
  

This is the big new feature in this update. Simply put, food production is more efficient. Probably too much at the moment, as it still need balancing. Generally speaking recipes give more bang for your buck with a lesser time investment.

Additionally farms are no longer magical things. Plants will require water and (generally) lighting to stay alive. Your farmers will automatically supply the farms with purified water whenever necessary, and rain will also help.



As this screenshot demonstrates, underground farms will require proper lighting for the plants to survive, unless you decide to grow our new edible mushrooms there. Those can't grow above ground and are awfully inefficient but don't require any lighting. We also added rice as a new crop, it requires a lot of water but also produces a lot of food.

A new water purification building has been added too (construction tech). It's way more efficient than using camp fires and doesn't require a survivor to work at the station for the work to be done.

Lettuce and lettuce related recipes have been removed and replaced by hops for beer production only. Speaking of alcohol, vodka has been introduced. Alcohol fixes the need for 'fun' but might render your survivors drunk for a few hours (slower, less likely to work).

Right now, we're producing way too much food and water, even with large bases. Which, I'm sure, is a nice change for many, but it's not going to last forever either. While it's not part of this update, pests and farm related events will be introduced later down the line.

We also have more changes planned for the food production, as we'll soon be introducing generic recipes based not on specific ingredients but on their category (for instance: meat + vegetable = medium meal) instead.



It's only a few changes but it makes a world of difference.

Firstly, assuming that a crafting station is adjacent to a storage building, and that said storage building accepts its production, anything built in the crafting station will be automatically put into the container. For instance, if you put a container accepting consumable items next to a water collector, the process will be entirely automated, the container will get automatically filled with dirty water.

Secondly, when disassembling/razing stuff, settlers will look for nearby similar and unclaimed jobs, massively reducing back & forth between the area being destroyed and your base in the process. They also regularly look around them for stuff dropped on the ground, no matter what they are currently doing, and will pick it up if they have the storage capacity.

There are a few other minor tweaks, but generally speaking much less time is being wasted by your survivors.



Another much requested feature. It's still a bit experimental, but you can set expeditions to focus on rescuing other survivors. It will not guarantee that the expedition will find new survivors (especially if it's a short one) but with this focus, there's a 60% chance per successful search you'll find someone.
You won't know anything about the rescued survivors until the expeditions is back home. When back, the same menu you get during recruitment event will appear, and you'll be allowed to review them before taking them in (or banishing them).

Also, you can (finally) click on a queued item in the crafting station menu to remove it from the list. No need to clear the whole list each time you need something removed anymore!

• AI: Farmers will take care of plants, providing water
  
• AI: Factories (including water collectors) will auto drop their production in a container if they can find an appropriate one adjacent to them
  
• AI: Survivors will look for nearby "disassembling" jobs when done disassembling something (same we do for collecting stuff from the ground)
  
• AI: Tweaked "satisfy needs" AI logic (they will, sometimes, use vodka or beer to amuse themselves even if a card/pool table is built)
  
• AI: Settlers will (generally) pickup stuff from the ground if they are walking by those items while doing something else
  
• Balance: Water well and collector production increased significantly
  
• Content: Added water, light and location requirements to seeds/crops for farming purpose
  
• Content: Added rice farms and food production chain
  
• Content: Added mushroom farms and food production chain
  
• Content: Added water purification building (more efficient and hands off than other methods) in the construction tech
  
• Content: Removed lettuce & related recipes, replaced by common hop which is used exclusively for beer production
  
• Content: Added vodka and recipes (at a still). Vodka nullifies the need for fun, but will get someone drunk)
  
• Content: Expeditions can now look for new survivors to recruit!
  
• Engine: Another performance & stability pass
  
• Modding: Added ability to disable speech bubbles and mood handling in npc data files
  
• Modding: Building locations can use any item category as building materials (was previously limited to, well, materials)
  
• Modding: Crops/plants can grow into any item category instead of just ingredients (yes, you can mod in a bullet-growing farm)
  
• Modding: Ingredients are their own item type with specific properties
  
• UI: You can click on a crafting station's queued order to remove it (so you don't have to clear the whole list each time)
  
• UI: The Farm menu adds a lot of info about crops and the farm's health
  
• UI: Added overlay to see plant health
  
• UI: Renamed "Ethics" to "Work Ethics" for clarity
  
• UI: Pressing shift and a movement key will double camera speed
  
• UI: In the custom game menu, added tooltips with description over inventory items
  
• Fixed: Zombies, animals and cars no longer get mood swings
  
• Fixed: Regression bug in 0.5.0 causing all survivors to look alike after loading a savegame
  
• Fixed: Regression bug in 0.5.1 allowing to place some structures over each other
  
• Fixed: Clicking on a survivor in an expedition (in the population menu) will teleport you to a fake map you're not supposed to access
  
• Fixed: Pathing issue related to the underground layer occasionally preventing people from reaching something in the opposite map layer
  
• Fixed: Potential crash tied to underground spider migration event
  
• Fixed: Region manager wouldn't count windows as walls causing walled off people not to notice they are walled off.
  
• Fixed: Changing layer while the game is paused wouldn't update wall or lighting data
  

We just got alerted that the game would crash on systems that are not using the international date format or at least a Latin-based date or time system. This is now fixed. Apologies for the inconvenience!

Our next agricultural patch should be available in about a week.

Cheers!

It took a bit more time than anticipated, but I think I got most, if not all, of the 0.5 bugs under control and added some of the most requested features. I've been playing a 10h game with this patch (with multi-threading enabled) and it's stable. I've also fixed the path-finding issue that was preventing players from having multiple separate underground areas. We're also back to pre-0.5 performances after another code optimization pass.

While i could speak about bug fixing for a while, let's get to the more interesting parts:

Lasso Selection

Firstly, lasso selection during combat has finally been implemented. You can lasso select your units (in combat mode) to move them in group. No more awkward 1 by 1 unit selection. It however makes most encounters trivial to deal with. I might need to re-balance events or prevent settlers from shooting & moving at the same time when under player control. I'll leave it as is for now.

Weapon Strength vs Material Integrity

That's something I have explained in multiple locations already. Simply put, the general idea is that a weak attack like a punch or an arrow shot shouldn't do the same amount of damage to a soft body and to a metal wall.

To that effect, each weapon has a "strength" value and each armor/object/target has an "integrity" value, both ranging from 1 (very low) to 5 (very high). The bigger the difference between the 2, the higher the damage reduction (by 20% increments).

For instance a very low strength (punch) attack versus a very high (metal wall) integrity target will lead to a 80% reduction in damage. The opposite isn't true. High strength vs low integrity won't increase the damage.

It's still a bit experimental, but all in all it's working. Strong doors last much longer, but they aren't going to hold off a horde of shamblers indefinitely either.

Tool-tip System

I slightly extended the tool-tip system. Clicking an object will no longer show that cumbersome center-top panel. Instead it will display a transparent popup providing more information and less visual noise. It also has the handy side effect of showing the content of your containers / storage buildings with a single click.

I will continue to improve that system, replacing some of the large menus by more dynamic tool-tips when it makes sense.





Balance

• Collecting water from well is 33% faster
  
• Purifying water at a camp fire is 25% faster
  
• Reduced wall and tile building time by about 33%
  

Combat

• Lasso selection for multi-unit selection during combat
  
• Ability to give move and attack orders to whole groups of survivors
  
• Weapons, objects, armors have a strength and integrity variable influencing damage (low strength vs high integrity lowering damages)
  

Engine

• More code optimizations, which should put us back to pre 0.5 performances, give or take
  
• Job Dispatcher is now thread-safe which should make the multi-threading option safe'ish now
  

User Interface

• Slightly tweaked panels so menus look a bit better
  
• Replaced the top panel for furniture, walls and player owned constructions by the new tooltip system
  
• Tooltips look better and deliver more information
  
• Added weapon strength and armor/object integrity info to contextual right click menus
  
• Updated tooltip and tutorial to account or multi unit selection in combat mode
  
• Added keyboard shortcut info to main menu button tooltips
  

Bug Fixes

• It was possible to build (buggy) stairs over blackened walls when the intented behavior is "only above empty cavern"
  
• Potential crash when the colony collapses
  
• Weird french sentence in exploration monitor menu (me deplace vers)
  
• In caverns (invisible) walls marked for deletion could keep the tile colored in red after being deleted
  
• Survivors would appear near a stair instead of on top of it when changing scene, potentially blocking them into a wall
  
• Combat mode circles showing even when in the wrong floor
  
• Bug that could teleport someone in the wrong floor
  
• Regression bug (0.5.0) preventing job priority settings to be restored when loading a savegame
  
• Pathing errors when having multiple and separated underground locations
  
• Damaged palisades would show the default wall damage sprite that's larger than the palisade
  
• Epidemics are not checking for faction, causing spiders and lizards to catch the flu
  
• Camera centering via menus would not switch to the proper scene
  
• Automatic change of layer (events, menus, etc.) would not always properly update the lighting
  
• Traders could appear in the underground (and stuck to boot)
  
• Repair job not working properly
  
• RaiderAI could take forever to start if the majority of the base is underground
  

As promised, and only a week late, here's the Underground update for After The Collapse. This is quite a massive update including both the promised underground layer and multiple new features.

I wrote a long article detailing the changes on our official website. I strongly urge you to read it, especially the last part regarding performances and known issues.

Thank you!



AI

• New semi passive animal AI (move around designated area unless hostiles go near it)
  
• Settlers are better at not getting stuck inside building locations (they get teleported out if need be)
  

Content

• Procedural map generator for underground caverns
  
• Stairs building to access the underground
  
• Ability for your base to be built underground
  
• New weather patterns, some of which might apply special traits
  
• New underground (hostile, nasty) critters
  
• Integrated the cotton mod (loom + cotton seeds for fabric production)
  
• Ability to convert giant spiders' webs into cloth using the loom
  
• Underground critters spawn meat on death that you can cook (preliminary step toward taming and meat production)
  
• Stone chairs, tables, doors (masonry)
  
• Added "Damaged Gear" item category for all damaged weapons, armors and headgear
  
• Stone 'statue' crafting for trading purpose (Valuable item category)
  
• Underground contains randomly generated loot crates
  
• Underground specific events
  
• Added Death sound for most creatures (giant animals)
  

Engine

• Ability to understand walled off maps: different groups of settlers can now live separated from each other
  
• A lot of "future proofing", standardizing the code, removing duplicate, etc. it's not sexy, but still necessary
  
• Reduced CPU cost of main UI and other functions. Should compensate a bit for generally more complex code
  

User Interface

• In building mode, when you can't build something (placement blocked by another object), the dummy cursor is highlight in red
  
• Added a red warning icon on top of depots you can't path to, and economical logic will ignore them until it's fixed
  
• Added a red warning icon on top of paused factories and power relays
  
• Added button and hotkeys (up/down) to toggle between overworld and underground
  
• Clicking some clutter/object will display what you'll get when razing it
  

Settings

• Menu option to enable/disabled experimental scene multithreading
  
• Option to enable/disable underground critters
  

Combat

• People with high military skill more likely to hit the less armored part of an enemy (head for instance)
  
• People gain military skill points hitting weak points
  
• Armors provide a percentage based protection against damage types instead of a flat number.
  
• Max armor protection capped at 90%
  
• Minimum damage from hit capped at 2 points instead of 1 to compensate for generally higher armor values
  
• Strength influences melee damage [base damage + (str-50)/10].
  

Balance

• Removed pacifist trait (until overhaul)
  
• Depressed trait no longer prevent people from hauling or fighting (as it leads to a downward spiral)
  
• Some items can only be built in the outside (solar generators, rain collectors, that kind of things)
  
• Tweaked skill gain for building and razing
  
• metal smelting: increased stone cost from 1 to 2 to account for all the undeground stone
  
• Hostile animals from raids no longer beeline toward your base, they'll use the less "active" FaunaAI module instead
  
• Given the semi passive animal AI, the event system won't wait for them to be killed them before resuming activities
  
• Water collector building time halved
  

Modding

• Raid event files can select which AI module raiders are supposed to run (should normally be RaiderAI or FaunaAI)
  
• Raid event files can select in which layer they want to spawn (overworld, underworld, any)
  
• Windows, blood, and some proc gen data can be overwritten by data mods (wasn't the case until now)
  
• Ability to set if an object can be built outside, underground or both (default)
  
• Weather patterns can be altered/added/removed
  
• NPC definition files contain new options: slight/full/no randomization of stats, and ability to generate traits or use those provided, etc.
  
• Body data files (limbs sprite and placement) are now properly accessible through data modding
  

Bug Fixes

• Disassembling some types of objects wouldn't properly clear the associated path, leading to blocked objects
  
• Sealing off a part of the map (walling off a storage zone for instance) no longer blocks the AI
  
• Multiple issues preventing a much higher use of multithreading (still experimental)
  
• Cars, fauna, shamblers having randomized stats (leading to "fast" shamblers, weak giant crabs, etc.)
  
• Cars and fauna having a "profession" (not visible to the user, but still a bug)
  
• Setting up building locations for things that wouldn't normally block path (beds), would still block path until the item is built.
  
• The same (wound type) trait could be applied over and over instead of being refreshed (causing people to have 20 broken arms for instance)
  
• Engine not fully understanding ranged weapons that don't use or need ammo
  
• Crabs and other animals could get depressed due to needs they should normally ignore
  
• Dozens of barely significant bugs that were made obvious when adding the underground layer
  
• Potential expedition + doctor related crash
  
• Some more missing french translation strings
  

Just a quick post to tell you that the Underground Update (0.5) will be released shortly after Christmas. As the name implies, it'll include underground caverns to mine, explore and colonize, among other surprises.



Additionally, as we previously announced, we'll be increasing our standard price to $9.99 as soon as the Steam Winter Sale ends. It means that our (currently discounted) price is the lowest at which you'll be able to acquire the game in the foreseeable future.

Cheers.