Hello, all!
After the pacing discussions that we've had with you all over the last couple months since the game launched, we decided we needed to speed things up. This is one of the most major changes we've done to the game, so we really wanted to put the beta out to our community to hear feedback before finalizing the new pacing.
Here's the details on the 1.9 Beta updates:
Take it Week by Week:
Time in your biodome no longer pass a day at time but a week at a time instead. This change allows the game to move 7x faster than before, therefore reproduction happens much sooner as territories grow, split, and even die. Players may want to consider putting carnivores earlier in their ecosystems' development.
Here are some variables that changed:
- Hunger starvation rates of all animals increased
- Some animals brood sizes were reduced
- Leaf points and Fruit points increased
- Players now receive coins every month instead of every week.
- Don't worry this is actually more frequent than it was before this patch.
- Users may now skip between 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year.
We've also made your first load into each of your domes not skip anytime to prevent players ecosystems from collapsing as it skips up to a year. You're welcome. ;)
Plant Grouping
All year reproducing plants (Galleta Grass, Blue Grama Grass, Buffalo grass, Blue Poppy, Himalayan Fairy Grass) now increase their own max leaf count as a group when reproducing up until a max. When a plant field reaches maximum plant capacity, it creates a new plant field instead of increasing it's own max leaf count. In this way, it acts more like the animal territories now.
If a plant field fails to find enough room to grow, it will not grow another plant. This plant field system allows for heavy performance optimizations in saving, loading, and general gameplay. Unfortunately, these changes aren't retroactive meaning that newly placed plants will experience these optimizations.
Minor Features or Tweaks:
- Herbivores and Insectivores have a more randomized eating algorithm.
- Hopefully less decomposers and pollinators will find their way to the notification list.
- Mushrooms now prompt notifications on a lower number.
- We reset everyone's saves to "no time passed" so that users don't come back to destroyed ecosystems.
Minor Bug Fixes:
- 3 digit notification numbers now fit in the notification badge now.
- Dead animals no longer play a sfx when clicked on.
- Agave plants no longer reproduce as babies.
- Fixed a bug where animals territories we're splitting off inside the tower.
- Biodex biome selection text is now fitted properly.
- Trimmed off names that have a space at the front or end of a name.
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Getting onto the Beta
- First, open your Steam Library.
- Right click on Tyto Ecology, select Properties.
- Go to Betas and enter this beta code: 0RkAX2GYlSxJuALd
- Select 1.9.0 from the drop down options to opt into the beta.
- If you want to leave, change that to NONE.
We are looking forward to hearing your input before making any final decisions and going live with this. Thank you!