Main menu
- Added a new tab called “world controls”. This lets you tweak various aspects of the simulation including solar heat, day/night speed, plant growth rate, and more. Several people have suggested this and I wanted to get it done before 1.4 (animals) since that update will greatly benefit from more control.
- Removed 6 buttons since their functionality has been integrated into the new tab
- Removed the “zombie invasion” and “more clouds” buttons since I never used them and don’t think they were very interesting. Zombies still happen randomly.
- Added a new button called “Snap”. If pressed it randomly eliminates half of all living people. Doesn’t affect zombies since they aren’t alive.
- Added a new button that toggles displaying the sun and moon.
Changes to immortals
- Increased the chance for a person who just died to resurrect as an immortal from 0.06% to 0.5%. This can trigger after any form of death excluding old age.
- At the time of resurrection the new immortal gets a one-time heal to full HP, nutrition, and stamina; loses all negative health effects like drowning or being on fire; stops aging; and gains permanent immunity to disease and the zombie virus. Previously they only got full HP, so they’d often just die again from whatever killed them the first time.
- Added a visual indicator in the form of a faint white glow. It goes away when they sleep but comes back when they wake up. It increases in size as long as they live. Thanks to Unifirst for the suggestion.
Minor simulation changes
- Slowed down the day/night cycle by 30%
- Reduced chance for natural disasters by 40%
- Tried to make weather a little more dynamic to compensate for slower days and fewer random events
- Ground water is now limited by elevation, ie a cliff beside a lake won’t receive as much ground water as land on the same level as the lake.
- Dune formation is now affected by elevation and existing dunes. Previously dunes formed anywhere windy and dry. Now they tend to appear near existing dunes and in valleys
- Various code optimizations resulting in about 2% performance increase
Changes to farm drawing
- Got rid of the wheat sprite I was using to indicate crop progress. I think it was distracting and not obvious enough what it was.
- Farms are now represented by rectangles (fields) that turn green as crops grow.
Save system
- Lots of changes to how data is stored and retrieved. Save files are about 90% smaller but recreate saved maps more accurately. Now a normal save file is around 1 MB instead of 10 MB.
- Unfortunately existing save files won’t load with the new system. I’m going to try very hard to maintain backwards compatibility from this point on. I want all future versions to be able to load save files starting here, at version 1.32.