FULL CHANGELOG
Video devlog for this update is probably coming in a few days!
This update is NOT compatible with old savegames!
Major glitches and bugs may occur if you try to load a previous save.
Settings expanded:
One thing that always bothered me (and, I guess, most players) is the setting menu: it was only accessible from the game, not the main menu, and any change in the individual options were saved for that specific game, not remembered for new games globally.
This is changed in v0.53! Settings can now be set from the main menu and when starting a new game, it will no longer prompt you with the setting screen, and settings will be applied for any saved game, past or present.
Other than that, new settings have been added, especially for performance scalability, benchmarking and new game generation:
There is a "Preset" option that allows to quickly select the best map creation parameters according to your needs.
Also, you can see an "Asteroid" option, which is just a place holder now (but the feature is going to be added soon).
New Stomach and interface improvements:
The Stomach icon in Survival mode has been replaced with a new one, you may think it doesn't look that much better (or even worse) than the old one, but the point is that it works better. The reason is that the "content" now varies gradually, instead of "jumping" from a filling stage to the next.
There are also some tweaks to the interface layout, for both the Survival UI and the other menus, but still no change to the God mode UI which needs to be redone completely in a future update.
Fullness mechanics have been revised to be both more forgiving and realistic (having the cake and being able to eat it? Done), which means eating and drinking feels more natural.
One additional thing regarding the interface, finally the game tells you how many component you already got when hovering the mouse on a Crafting/Building recipe:
64 bit support and versioning changes:
DinoSystem now runs at 64 bit by default, but the 32 bit version is still mantained in the "32bit" download branch, if you have a 32 bit OS. To run the 32 bit version, right click on the game on Steam -> Proprieties -> BETAS and select "32bit".
Moreover, as you may have noticed, the version number changed from 0.5.3.0 to 0.53.0, this because the "53" represents the % towards the final version, and that makes it more clear!
The revision number jumped from 2xx to 520, this to account for a huge "numbering gap" of the last year, when I decided to change the revision system on a dayly basis. So I just calculated the "missing" 300 days (roughly) and added them to the revision count (yes i know it's just details, but I'm a perfectionist :P).
Other stuff:
This update has tons of tweaks to the survival balance, which should now feel more natural and overall easier to get into. I recommend to check the full changelog for the list of changes.
There are also many fixes and details, as always!
About the Troodon / Taming update:
The aforementioned update is not everything I worked for in the past 2 weeks, Troodon is shaping up pretty well, but didn't make it into v0.53 update as there's still work to do on it.
Anyway, here's the art used for it:
Here's the dead one:
This little guy will be very smart and have a highly social behaviour, which makes it great for taming. This also means it will hunt you in packs, unfortunately.
I'm now pretty confident that November will be the Troodon/Taming month! But considering the complex nature of the update, I can't make promises, just rest assured I'm always working on something else to bring to the table even if the "major" update isn't ready yet ;).
Oh, and as always, make sure to report bugs!
Dan