TLDR:
Game has a new UI
And a new 3D renderer for city areas
All AI art redone
Save system updated: autosaves, multiple save slots, infinite saves difficulty
NOW-vs BEFORE:
So, the game has a new look, both UI and city streets view. Ages ago (probably somewhere around 2015) I did these gray squares personally using Gimp, all the while intending to find something better. Well, 12 years later I finally did and now the game looks like an actual game, not like something a student would do for their assignment. I couldn't find anything satisfying in 2D so I bit the bullet and now we have a neat low-poly look to build upon. I didn't have the time to rework all the locations so with the exception of the streets (there are three different types like it should be, btw), the office, research lab, sewers, etc, are all the same 2D for now. BTW, military base STILL has gray squares if anyone is feeling saddened by their passing, here's your chance to visit. I'll redo them one by one, indoors will mostly stay the same, apart from walls, doors and some of the decoration, outdoors will have more 3D objects decoration here and there in addition to street lamps. The streets are permanently at night for now but I'll do the night and day cycle, too. The basis is there, now it's a question of adding and tweaking. I really hate these 2D doors actually, I'll be happy to see them go. They just look WRONG, period. While I was at it, I redid AI icons into 128x128 up from 64x64 and added white and dark skin color variants. Yellow just doesn't look that good with lighting.
Space key in 3D will now toggle tactical mode - camera moves up and glowing outlines of buildings and tile markers appear. Objects are also outlined, with a different color. In general, it's a great way to get your bearings if the view is too dark or crowded with buildings.
Another thing you'll notice as soon as you start the game is the new UI. All UI was completely redone from the old bitmaps into CSS. That fixes some of the long-standing issues like blurriness and slight holes in the borders that you could see if you knew where to look. It is also now way more compact, the prime examples are body and evolution windows where you can now see more improvements taking the full screen. Tooltips were redesigned as well. Moreover, there are now subtle animations everywhere to liven it up. I'm particularly proud of the difficulty selection window, now it looks really nice. Oh yeah, I forgot to say, 3D is all animated, too. AI and player do not jerk from tile to tile, they do it smoothly which is probably one of these things that people don't tolerate much nowadays. Host/Parasite info HUD can now be collapsed into a much smaller state which is also helpful for smaller screens. I couldn't think of anything better to do with actions list but I might split it up in two later on. Apart from that, each and every window was rethought from the old basic pattern of "info" + "actions list" into something that looks and reads much better. One exception is the cult info. Firstly, it's in development, I didn't even finish the work on the cult base (which will require its own UI) and secondly, there's a lot that you can do there, a full action tree, ordeals, BazaarNet, members, etc. Not sure whether I should replace that with something else or not, I'll get back to it later on.
All the hated AI art images were redone, all 115 of them. They're still AI art, of course, but hopefully people will hate them much less now because they're way closer to what humans paint, hehe. Now they have different filters on them to separate the area they're used in: difficulty selection, pedia articles, scenario, etc, etc. I have warm feels for the original AI art and to the people calling it slop, that implies there's a ton of it on the Net available somewhere. Well, I beg to differ. Good luck finding another game with art like I had before anywhere. Not only it's impossible to find because not a lot of people could even bother to do that, it's also now impossible to generate because it was produced by a very specific combination of models which are now retired. And humans just don't draw like that. Anyway, now in addition to hating the new AI event art, you can also hate the 3D view textures and 3D models, each and every one was generated and new ones will also be generated by AI. Cheers.
Small things: save system had some updates from feedback. Firstly, save difficulty selection now has a noob difficulty, which gives you infinite saves. Yeah, there is the spoon option but people just want infinite saves right here and now so here you go (back in my day roguelikes used to have a single save slot. you played ironman on a single char or you played something else). Secondly, there are now multiple save slots. There are scenario A and sandbox and there will be scenario C so it's understandable if you want to try out various modes in parallel. Thirdly, there is now an autosave slot which saves automatically every time you leave the area, every set number of turns and when you quit the game. Autosave does not spend your save count and is deleted on load so you can now safely close a long game and continue later.
Full changelog:
3d: chat mode animated bubbles
3d: green slime trail behind the parasite
3d: initial implementation, support for three street areas, downtown/medium/slums
3d: path preview, becomes more wavy and changes color with less host control
3d: tactical mode (toggled by Space key)
art: AI dark and white skin color variants
console: `debug colors` to list all colors in the game, useful for modding
console: `learn improvement `, `info improvements|timeline` (rework of old shortcuts since we now have tab completion anyway)
console: `learn npcs` command to fully learn some timeline npcs
console: `perf turn|street` to toggle performance metrics
cult: slum combat ordeal targets now cluster around burning barrels
game: area<->region transition fade-to-black + eased camera intro/outro
game: autosaves, noob save difficulty and multiple save slots
game: if a tile has multiple items, there is now a single action opening get sub-menu instead
game: targeting mode will now select closest target first
mods: all mods were updated to support the new look and 3D view
mods: api.registerAI, surface game/soundsID/onStateChange, console AI spawn hint
mods: area-action hook (registerAreaAction) + type Inventory iterator, _Point finders, ArmorInfo
mods: pickpocket and chainsaw updated for 3d, soviet mod updated for the new ui
mods: workshop publish tool manifest tags support
options: fps counter (plus other render stats)
options: video options group: fps cap, render scale, msaa, ambient occlusion, lamp lights count, bloom, brightness
region: district names and districts
region: palette slightly updated
sound: fire from burning barrel
ui: all ui windows and hud fully redone, old ui gone
ui: debug hud panel can now be collapsed too
ui: main menu 3d background updated
ui: show AI effects in tooltip normally
Fixes:
fix: anti-repeat sound variant selection
fix: cap team backup at team.size (count group units, not law)
fix: decouple host job reveal from name on brain probe
fix: paralyzed AI can no longer call law/backup, call postponed until effect ends
fix: quick-menu window open no longer also triggers key's gameplay bind (targeting)
fix: serve font mime types (ttf/otf/woff/woff2) for mod:// assets
fix: there was a full world generation on the background when the game started