New job blocks, work in progress! From left to right: bloomery, anvil, kiln
In the most recent content update, 0.3.0, we added scientists and technologists. They produce Science Bags and you can use them to unlock health upgrades. Some people were disappointed because they had expected more and different 'researchables'. Well, 0.4.0 is going to add a lot of new science! It's partly used as some kind of tutorial, to prevent new players from having to choose between lots of job blocks that aren't useful for them yet. Its other purpose is to give big colonies a purpose to work towards to. We made a tech tree to visualize how science will work in 0.4.0. The tech tree simplifies things and is liable to change!
At the start, you can choose between unlocking the anvil (required to craft a lot of metal items) and increasing the colonist limit. This will also add items like clothing, a bronze knife or silver coins to the colonist recruitment cost. There will be roughly 10 steps in the colonist limit tech tree, going from 50 to 250, to 1000, to infinite.
When the technologist is unlocked, you can unlock Basic Science Bags, Life Science Bags and Military Science Bags. Military Science Bags are required to extend the safe range around banners. Life Science Bags are necessary for the health upgrades. Basic Science Bags are used to unlock the bloomery (to smelt iron), crossbows, the finery forge (to forge steel) and muskets.
Items like gunpowder and muskets are part of the recipe of Advanced Science Bags and Colony Science Bags. They are required to unlock the highest level health upgrades, colonist limits and banner range upgrades.
In 0.3.0, science was added to extend gameplay when people had explored most of the content. In 0.4.0, science is going to be important at the start of the game. This means we had to update the inventory at the start of the game.
New player inventory in 0.4.0
Players will now start with a slinger and stones instead of a bow and arrows. Flax seeds will be available at the start. Iron ingots have been removed from the inventory. You'll spawn with a science lab. Pickaxes have finally received a proper icon :)
Improved pathfinding
Since the release of the game, we've received reports of wonky pathfinding. A great example happens here in ConflictNerd's video. While working on the new monster spawning in 0.4.0, we took a good look at the pathfinding code and found some significant errors.
Wonky pathfinding
Fixed pathfinding
We've fixed the errors and improved the performance. In 0.4.0, your colonists should behave a lot better and the game should run better!
Paperwork
Two weeks ago, we wrote that our "general partnership" has been turned into a private limited liability company. We'd been waiting for that moment for months and had been looking forward to it.
It turns out that properly setting up a private limited liability company comes with a lot of complex paperwork. Everything is more complicated. Setting up a bank account is more difficult now. Taxes are more complicated. Administration is more work. We've been printing, signing, scanning and mailing a lot of forms this week! We've also run into some legal trouble.
It's been a tough week, but once everything is up and running it should have a lot of benefits!
Last but not least, we've chosen a pretty definitive release date for 0.4.0. Unforeseen disasters might cause delays, but we believe we can release the update Tuesday the 31st of October! 0.4.0 is centered around mining new ores and unlocking new weapons to fight new monsters. What is more appropriate than releasing new monsters during Halloween? :)
Bedankt voor het lezen!