Alpha 5 is finally here!
Seasons
Each map will now transition between the 4 different seasons depending on the latitude of the map. This also brings a few new mechanics into game.
Aprimark (Spring)
In Aprimark, trees will start growing their leaves back and grass will once again regrow as the snow covering the map slowly thaws out.
Junely (Summer)
On maps closer to the equator, Junely can be a real pain. Temperatures will rise above 30*C (86F). Your mind will start playing tricks on you.
Octosept (Fall)
In early Octosept, tree foliage will slowly start transitioning from green to an assortment of yellow, red and orange colors. Temperatures will start dropping, so you better start collecting your crops. You might even see some snow on maps closer to the planet's North.
Jacember (Winter)
In Jacember, temperatures can drop to below -30*C(-22F) depending on the map. Most trees will lose their leaves, grass will die out and most veggies, including your own crops, will disappear. Snow will accumulate over the map based on how much of it is falling from the sky and won't go away until temperatures start rising above freezing temperature. That means you could have some long, hard winters on Northern maps.
Z level building support
The sky's the limit. You can now build as many floors as you want. In order to build a second floor, you need your flooring set, ceilings with pillar support, then flooring on top of the ceilings and a staircase to connect everything and voila. With this comes a mechanic that prevents the player from destroying structures which depend on others, so as to avoid floating structures.
General improvements
World map
You can now choose the map you wish to play in a more visual way. Previously you'd just pick from a drop down menu. Now you have a whole new planet to choose from. This new menu brings out some more information, such as average temperatures in a given season. You can also pick your starting season and your landing spot.
Firestation
You can now defend against wild fires by building the fire station. The fire station comes with 4 drones which will automatically put out fires within a certain range of itself.
Adjusted fire mechanics
Consequently, fires can now spread over much larger distances than before. Fires used to spread on a 3 by 3 grid square, which translated to around 30m^2 area. Now, it can spread over a 24 by 24 grid square from the spawn point (the fire tornado), which means a total area of around 250m^2! If you weren't using defensive walls to defend yourself against fires before, well you better do now OR at least get some fire stations going.
World lighting
Adjusted world lighting to be more realistic. This also means the world got darker, especially at night. Take a look at the before/after pics below:
Veggies
All veggie seeds now have a new stat showing the needed minimum temperature for them to survive and grow. If the temperature outside is lower than this stat, the veggie will start withering away and you'll lose your crop.
Furniture merchant
There is now a new merchant in town who buys and sells furniture, A.K.A. almost any type of prefab.
Revamped trading mechanics
Item prices are now dictated by a formula that's based on the price of the item's most basic components. The more an item is complex in manufacturing, the more it will cost. This means that you can now buy raw materials, turn them into manufactured ones and sell those for a profit.
Anomaly
The anomaly event now lasts forever or until dealt with.
Beacons
The rover and mech now have a beacon attached to them so that you can easily locate them if you get lost.
Compass
Speaking of getting lost, there is now a compass in game to help you orient yourself.
Tutorial improvements
The tutorial is now enabled by default. After 2 hours of gameplay, it will automatically turn itself off when you want to start a new game or when you yourself turn it off.
Disaster events such as raids and fire tornadoes are turned off while doing the tutorial and are re-enabled once you complete it. At the step where it tells you to kill an animal, some people used to choose to kill King scorpions and other high level predators and therefore die in the process. Now, almost every step has a visual indicator. For the killing step for example, a cow will spawn behind you along with a visual indicator. Everyone should be able to deal with a cow.
Astral improvements
Astral now warns you about an unfinished deal and its potential consequences. She is also involved in the game a bit more. For example, she'll talk about ancient technology when you discover it or she'll give you a warning when constructing the ship assembler.
Respawn point
For non-ironman mode games, you can now choose at which bed you wish to respawn.
Lamp
Since the world is now more realistically lit, you'll need some light sources you can place on the ground. This is where the lamp comes in.
Patch notes
This is going to be a long list, so you should get some hot chocolate first if you decide to read through all of this.
* The mech now has a few new sound effects, though it could use more.
* There is now a brightness slider in game
* Player is now forced to either choose ironman mode or reload mode instead of having ironman on by default
* The controls menu has been moved out of the options menu because some players could not find it in that huge list of 20 something options
* Reduced some prices to encourage trading
* You can now split stacks of items in your inventory by holding down shift and right clicking on them
* There is now a confirmation screen whenever you overwrite or delete a save file
* Every scrollable menu now has an invisible scroll bar that becomes visible when needed
* When dragging an item with a huge stack into the players inventory and it doesn’t have enough space for the stack, the inventory will now fill up with as much as it can fit instead of refusing to move the stack altogether
* The punishment for stealing from traders now depends on the amount of stuff stolen. That is, the more the player steals, the more raids and orbital strikes occur over a certain period of time.
* Creating and loading games should now take less time than before.
* The rover consumes 3 times less fuel than before.
* Hydrazine now has a higher stack limit, from 100 to 200
* Empty bottles have now been removed from the game, though they still appear in the test mode panel for nostalgia purposes
* Minigun turrets can now be placed on floor panels, meaning you could theoretically place them on second/third floors of your house
* It will now be much harder to clip inside your own body when resting in First person view
* When creatures flee from damage from the player's weapon the damage indicators are reversed for any hits that occur while the creature is fleeing. No longer
* Shooting AI caused dirt effects to appear instead of blood effects. No more
* Dying underwater removes the underwater special effects during the death screen. Again no more
* Dying under water makes the player fall to the ground as if there was no water resistance. No more.
* If you press Escape while in the death screen and then press it again, Amanda shows as revived for a split second. (Lazy) Fixed by preventing player from going to menu while the death screen is playing
* All sounds should now be properly handled when transitioning underwater with the help of a lowpass filter
* When the trade ship leaves, the entry point effects is now turned off
* The trade pod beacon has been slightly re-adjusted
* If you mouse click while resting, amanda gets up but only halfway, quite weird. No more
* Dying makes Amanda immune to radiation while nox event is active. No more.
* Birds used to stutter
* Ancient turrets used to be invincible
* Many bugs concerning the mech were fixed, such as animals walking under it when they want to attack, ancient guns not doing any damage to it, mech seemingly not affected by gravity when running off cliffs and others
* There was an issue with the mech shotgun and the flamethrower
* Can fly through vertical obstacles. Can also fly through ceilings or cave ceilings. No longer
* Flying into a slightly sloped obstacle automatically stops the flying action. No longer.
* Some resources, even jenu, can spawn inside trees. No longer.
* When inside the rover or mech, you can move the camera around so that the menu that should only appear when you're outside the vehicle appears. If you interact with that menu while inside the vehicle, lots of bugs happen. Fixed
* Most buildable objects now have their normal textures set to the original ones after being constructed instead of keeping the 'assembling' effect. This should help with visuals and performance
* Bumping into the rover after being built but before entering it causes it to act like a non kinematic physics object, meaning it can be tossed around like a ball.
* Cabinets sometimes refuse to be placed side by side. No more.
* Player can get melee damaged when flying above melee AI. No more
* Climbing onto a rock while underwater causes a weird bug. This was (lazy) fixed by preventing any item from spawning underwater. Will have to come back to this one when the water Alpha comes out.
* Some resources had their physics enabled when they shouldn't
* Ancient Assembler piece #2 used to respawn for no reason
* Sink doesn’t align with wall. Fixed
* Toilet doesn’t align with wall. Fixed
* Turrets used to not be able to acquire harpies
* When jumping out of water; character could sometimes get stuck in jumping animation. Sometimes also gets stuck in other animations when doing crazy things near water and so enabled the player to literally fly around while playing the swimming animation. Although that's a pretty funny bug, it had to be patched
* The wealth of items now has a similar formula to the formula of the price of items
* Some veggie seeds used to not show all the needed information
* Hydrazine no longer requires a tech unlock
* activating Test Mode after tutorial is done and then deactivating test mode makes the tutorial panel appear. No more
Forethought
Alpha 5 was supposed to be all about patching the game out and eliminating every little bug ever reported. There weren't supposed to be any major new additions. However, it did come with something unplanned: seasons. (The truth is, I was going crazy over spending my time doing just bug fixes) Though seasons do affect some things in the game, they don't affect everything. I want seasons to affect your character, fauna, water surfaces and more. However, I can't yet implement these things because there is no clothing system in the game yet, and there is also no water gameplay yet. This stuff will be released later and everything will be linked together!
If you find any new bugs related to these new features, let me know and I'll be rolling out some hotfixes asap.
Please let me know what you think about this update and also start suggesting what the next Alpha should be about! I was thinking it would be high time to bring some equipment (weapons, clothes, gadgets) into the game for example.
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