Hey all!
It sure has been a while since the last update. We’ve been hard at work to tailor a new experience to the game. Originally, I wanted TC:WA to be a semi-free roaming game, with side mini games that can be found throughout the world. However, due to some doubt on how long I could fund this game, I went with the mini games first (survival mode), just in case the day came along where I’d financially have no choice but to stop. If that was the case, then at least there would be somewhat of a finished game, with three levels, instead of an incomplete open world with nothing to do.
Fast forward to today, and now we’ve established the basic foundation of the base building system, and a couple of traversable levels to explore, I’m now comfortable with releasing this new mode to all to try out, and to further expand it from there.
Without further delay, let’s go over the new additions. There’s plenty of them.
Let’s start off with what you’ll see first after hitting Play.
The Tutorial.
I’ve been a long-time gamer. After about 26 years of playing all kinds of games and different types genres, jumping on a brand new game is pretty trivial. Obviously this isn’t the case for everyone. What’s common sense to me may not be so for someone who doesn’t play games. Since my game is free, I didn’t realise that a lot of brand new players, who are either new to PC games, or just don’t play games in general, won’t realise that WASD is the universal way to play most games. This is what this tutorial level is for.
Once you’ve finished this introductory level, you will then move onto the main game. Where most of the time and effort has been pumped into.
Safezone, and base building.
So far, as of now, you can build a small camp with some surrounding fences, and other miscellaneous items. What is currently in the game is small, but the foundation and the formula has been set. This means that further development of constructing more buildings, and having visitors are implimented, and will be easily added on in the future.
In the safezone, there are two modes you’ll be able to toggle. One is live mode, where you’ll be able to roam around, and interact with the world. Second is build mode, where you’ll notice four new landmark icons, with a fifth one that will be bought in later. Each icon represents what type of building it will be.
Orange = Settlement building
Green = Defensive buildings
Blue = Upgrade building
Yellow = Edit building decoration
Red (coming soon) = offensive building
These are where you can inspect what the item is and then build it if you have the required materials.
There are 4 building materials that you can collect. Wood, metal, cloth, and tech (as of now, tech has no buildings associated with it just yet, but it will be used to build items that require electricity.)
When you’re happy with the look of your safezone, or are running out of materials, you can go and venture out into the wasteland by pressing 3 in live mode, and slowly uncover new items and secrets that have been long forgotten. So far, there are 2 locations that you can explore as of now, more are currently in development. On the map, you’ll also notice the three survival levels that are still present to play. If you wish to test your metal, and want to be on the top of the leaderboard, you can travel to this game mode just like before. If you wish to initiate nightmare mode, sleep in your shelter, and between the hours of 9pm to 4am, you’ll be able to travel to these levels with a noticeable difficulty spike.
Keep in mind, if you wish to find the second location, remember to build the watch tower, and press 4 when you’re standing in it. This is further explained in the tutorial anyway.
New character: The Anomaly.
I wanted a mysterious character that is the introductory person / thing to play as during the base building tutorial. It comes with the usual 5 changeable colours, and a long history to flesh out its background story. If you wish to play as someone else that was in previous builds, that is still an option. The idea is that further down the line, these characters will be in some kind of strife, that you’ll have to help in order to unlock, and play as them. Eventually, every character will be different, and will have their own melee weapon, and skill to unlock later on.
Besides that, this update comes with a lot of other smaller fixes, some new achievements, along with a new main menu. Depending on how things go, it may change some more in the future. But for now, we’ve gone with a more lonely layout for now. With time, the wasteland will be further populated with odd characters, and new creatures.
Known issues that will be fixes this upcoming week.
The blueprints to build a custom post isn’t appearing to loot where it should be, voiding the achievement.
The 5 colour choices for the original 3 characters are a bit all over the place right now. Their original default colours should be fine.
Most resolutions should work, but ultra-widescreen users may need some UI tweaking.
Some items to loot require two different keys to activate. We’ll make it so only E is activate and loot. F will be melee in the future.
You will also notice that pressing 1 will not turn on the radio. As of now, I’m still recording lines and am implementing music. By the next content update, this will be properly functional.
Please let me know if you encounter anything else that I haven’t found. Thank you.
Anyway, as of now, I’m a tiny bit sick (drank too much during Christmas) and all of this typing is tightening my head. I’ll leave it at that for now.
Thanks everyone for the support that as been shown. I can’t wait to further develop this game into something larger.
A belated Merry Christmas, and have a happy new year.
-Mr. Ox
