When I started the development of Ostriv alone back in 2014, my country was experiencing quite an uneasy time in its history. But this project managed to change my life and, judging by the enormous amount of feedback I was getting, it gave a lot of hope to a lot of folks around the world.
In the course of these years I went from a part-time solo development to full-time with a team of 3 helping me out. All thanks to 20 thousands awesome people who believed in the project and purchased the early alpha.
I also want to thank everyone who spread the word on Youtube, Twitch, and (occasionally) gaming press. Without you I'd never reach those thousands of people! I have to say, just a few years ago, I wouldn't even imagine seeing videos of someone in Thailand or Japan building their own Ukrainian villages.
I hope this game will bring you some joy and calmness (of course if you're lucky enough to run it without crashes) during this time, uneasy for the whole world, or at least a good reason to stay at home.
Take care and please don't buy any more toilet paper!
Now to what's new in Alpha 3:
Added/changed:
- New building: Wagon shed
- New building: Stable
- New building: Saddlery
- New building: Limeworks
- New building: Lime kiln
- There are now stone and limestone deposits on maps
- New building: Mining camp
- New building: Church
- Significantly optimized performance, especially in big towns on faster game speeds (When porting old saves it may need some time on 1x speed to improve)
- Can now produce horseshoes at the smithy
- Now showing current field status in farm's field list
- Raised the metal parts selling price by 5x
- Name of workplace in citizen's properties and family tree is now clickable
- Animal death of starvation and thirst are now more sparsely spaced in time
- Added an icon to tell the crop harvest from processed resource
- Threshing is now evenly distributed between crops
- Now showing how much more resources required for construction
- A bit more color variety for autumn leaves
- Showing warning when trying to buy animals before there's a place to keep them
- Granary workers will now supply to nearby shops if no other work
- Now showing how many resources required for a carpentry order
- Thatchers are now using multiple points to gather reeds, also being smarter about newly accessible points (after bridges built) and obstructed points (less teleporting)
- Windmill now uses the same supply options as other buildings
- Added animation and sound for chopping trees
- Citizens are now smarter about finding shortest distances. A is now closer than B
- Zooming out to fit the focused object on a screen (following mode, searching buildings)
- Added clay digging animation
- Improved model for horses with texture variation
- Hay barracks are now being built just like other buildings
- Added a minimal bridge height over water level
- Added a button for quick access to the town hall building
- Now using a current user's Documents folder for saves and settings
Fixed:
- Tannery batch size slider didn't work properly
- Pigs didn't reproduce when livestock = limit
- Could store unprocessed buckwheat harvest in the warehouse
- Sometimes it was impossible to demolish a fallow field
- Windmills stopped rotating in older towns
- Uneven terrain restriction didn't work in several recent patches
- Carts had visual glitches on bridges
- Wife's parents didn't have their own last name (works for new games only)
- Weird navigation around field and village house entries
- Female fertility wasn't limited by old age
- Trade deal slider showed wrong numbers when switching between deals
- Starting camp placement had unwanted offset applied
- In some cases it was possible to stack multiple constructions on top of each other
- Planted trees were removed instantly when built on (even the old ones)
- Foresters ignored trees accessible by built bridges
- Couldn't copy buckwheat field with eyedropper tool
- Cows left on the field if trying to relocate at the end of pasture season
- Memory overflow (crash or glitches farm fields) when playing for a long time straight
- Entering big numbers in text field made them negative
- Workers avoided moving resources to trading posts when emptying buildings
- Demolishing and then cancelling on windmill created navigational anomalies leading to walking through buildings around it
- Crash once winter starts in some games
- Multiple cowsheds could use a same pasture, breaking several game mechanics
- Farm workers needlessly visited field entry when harvesting
- Two coastal buildings being constructed on opposite sides of the river created a breach for water-walking
- Crash when demolishing a bench waiting for trees to be removed
- Boatyards used too small amounts of wood for boat construction/repair
- Chicken relocation had several issues (like dead locks)
- It was sometimes possible to start construction on the other side of the river before the bridge has been built (thus teleporting and other issues)
- Some bridge builders decided to live underground
- Navigation around windmill was a bit broken if game saved while turning its body
- Bridge construction ignored trees
- Could duplicate resources in trading posts and warehouses leading to weird behavior
- Various small UI fixes
To port your old saves to Alpha 3, run the updated game at least once. Then copy "save" folder from your game's directory to Ostriv subdirectory of your documents (usually in c:/Users/USERNAME/Documents/Ostriv). You can do the same with the file "settings.data" to port your settings.
Regarding the Steam keys to early purchasers from ostrivgame.com, I'm still waiting for Valve to send me the requested keys. Will inform you as soon as I can!