Hi everyone,
This post is about all the new stuff that will be in the 0.9 update (the first with the new engine).
Steppe
In the old code base you may have noticed me adding the Ephedra shrub. In the new engine you will no longer find this shrub in the jungle biome but instead in the new steppe biome. Besides the ephedra shrub, this biome has very little vegetation. In the 0.10 update however, you will be able find the new evaporite rocks which are the source of two new resources. One of them is potassium nitrate which can be used to manufacture a number of chemicals, fertilizer and even explosives while the other is iodine (new ingredient for methamphetamine). I won‘t give more info on these resources until in the coming dev diaries.
Grapevine & Wine
We‘re also finally readding the grapevines and with it wine. As some of you may know, these were briefly in the demo but had a lot of issues so I removed them again later. You can now put grapes into a keg to let it slowly process into wine. You can then fill that wine into wine bottles to get an optimal return of investment when selling. The grapes can also be used as a food source.
The grapevines themselves grow similar to hops, except they don't need vertical growth support but rather horizontal so that vines can grow on them and yield grapes (that can be picked up without a container).
Here's a screenshot from the older version:
New Clothing Slot system
The clothing slots are now also tetris-like. This means you have to do strategic decisions on what apparel you're going to wear. For example, you can do different combinations of armor, clothing and work protection equipment for your NPCs. Or, in the future you could choose to wear a full-face gas mask which protects your eyes and breathing or instead decide to wear just a half-face gas mask and wear night-vision goggles instead (though those items haven't been added yet).
That's it for this post already though. Next week, I'll start showing the first things planned for the 0.10 update (chickens and butchering).
-Gigicom