This is a massive update, comprising more than two months of DDA backports as well as updates and improvements of our own.
Hordes 2.0 is here! Zombie hordes can now react to sounds and other stimuli at a range of up to 2 kilometers, and will actually check each map tile they path through for legitimate passability, meaning if you build a big wall, they'll clump up around the outside, unable to get in, even if it's way outside the reality bubble. This adds a new level of danger to using guns and explosives, but also opens new avenues for stealth and distraction.
Driving over large, sharp, or heavy objects (including corpses) has a chance to damage your tires. This system is different from the one DDA implemented in that it is MUCH more forgiving. You stand a far lower chance of having your wheel actually contact an obstacle as you drive over its tile. Driving skill, perception, and vision help, and of course armored wheels are more resistant to damage. Metal fragments, chunks, scrap, and rocks are too small to harm your wheels, and autodrive will do its best to path around them, so this will hopefully make maneuvering in combat a bit trickier while giving you a reason to loot tires, which seems like a pretty apocalypse-y thing to be doing.
A ton of improvements to the simplified Chinese translation were submitted by @CN-Xuan and @Wumn-g. Thank you!
Added a weapon light, which is a flashlight that can be stuck on guns and crossbows as a mod.
Added Kevlar leggings. These are craftable SKINTIGHT pants that offer a couple of points of cut, stab, and bullet protection.
5.56 and 300 Blackout clips are now compatible with STANAG mags with ranger plates.
Started overhauling the military armory itemgroups, which should show immediate results if you happen to visit a Military Outpost, Military Bunker, or FEMA camp. You should expect to get a nice haul of 5.56, 7.62, 9x19mm from places like these (provided your camp had the military tent and you didn't roll really badly), but not so much that it just makes you never need more ammo again. neThis is far from done, but it's a start.
Foxes now have a tile in MSX again.
Fixed some various tile rotation issues in MSX.
Made various improvements to the inventory UI.
Gun stats in the item info panel now read more clearly.
It's now possible to trade stuff directly from your vehicle.
Purifying water, tanning hides/pelts, and soaking spear shafts and long poles now automatically update to their completed form once enough time has passed. The crafting time for the spear shaft and long pole has been reduced accordingly. Shillelaghs and war clubs have been given a similar treatment, NOTE: The purifying water thing might have some issues until the next update. Shouldn't be anything too wild, but if you're using the tablets and it acts funny, that's why.
Updated the farming system to warn you if it's too late in the year to be planting.
Zombie soldiers have a somewhat better chance of dropping guns, helmets, and helmet attachments, which can rarely include NVGs.
It is now slightly less easy to accidentally overkill small animals so much that you ruin the carcass. There is little to no change re: bigger creatures such as zombies.
Butchery yields are now far more affected by the damage level of the remains.
Butchery now uses the lower of your perception and dexterity, rather than just your dexterity.
Skills and stats no longer raise the minimum yield from butchery. Long story short, you can get just as much meat as before, but it's now easier to get less.
Jackhammers can no longer tunnel horizontally through walls. This was neither realistic nor was it good for gameplay, as it just sort of negated all challenge related to actually exploring interior locations at almost no cost and made skills like hacking and lockpicking much more worthless. If you want to destroy terrain to get through stuff, I recommend C-4, dynamite, or .50 BMG.
Jabberwocks now have three grab attacks, like star vampires. They do not suck blood, but they are a lot more dangerous.
Added a variant mass grave with some new enemy types. You'll know it when you see it.
Monsters moving through sharp terrain (broken windows, rosebushes) will occasionally do damage to it.
Various fishing fixes.
Overmap/mapgen improvments.
Fixed a bug that was causing single-tile vehicles to be undriveable.
Fixed a bug that was causing furniture to spawn in the walls of a specific house.
Alcohol now uses the vitamin system, which is a tremendous step toward making drugs much more usable. Its overall effects and associated addiction have not changed yet.
More or less the full set of updates for regions and traveling to other "worlds" have been made. This is mostly under the hood for now, but will enable us to send your character to different save files with completely different world gen rules. These can be big or small, opening the door to a New Game+ system, pocket dimensions for dungeon exploration or even setting up your own little extradimensional hideout, exploring the Nether, you name it. It also has tremendous modding capabilities, and will be essential to making Sky Island as good as it can be. I am really looking forward to messing with this.