Update 9 is now available on the main branch for all players to check out, featuring many small fixes and tweaks and general polish in order to keep the game as stable as possible before we carry on adding new content.
We didn't receive any serious bug reports from players during the beta week (thanks to everybody who tried it out) so hopefully everything is running smoothly! But if you find anything, do let us know in the forum and we'll investigate.
Coming Next
Thanks to our dramatic summer (see previous dev blogs) we now have a little more financial breathing space and focus (and common sense!) to try and get this game to a place where we can be as proud of it as possible before we go broke. We're going to do all we can to give players what they generally want from Atomic Society, as best we can working day-jobs and with our tiny budget.
We're now at the early planning stages for Update 10, which is going to be a big one, and will be our attempt to solve the last player complaint with the game, that it runs out of steam a bit (no pun intended), by adding more depth and more unique gameplay events and objectives. There will be new buildings coming and we're going to try and add some form of "campaign" in order to make replaying the game feel more compelling and rewarding. If all goes well, this might get us to "1.0" status, but we'll see. I'll have a lot more to say about this in the next dev blog. Hopefully we've learnt a few things about game development and won't get stuck in development hell as we did last winter, but as I always say, we'll get there in the end.
Thanks to everybody for trying out the update and supplying feedback. We really appreciate it.
Update 9 Patch Notes (Final)
Note: This version is compatible with existing save games. You shouldn't lose anything by downloading it.
Bug Fixes
We have tried to clean up as many bugs as possible in this version. Thanks to everybody who told us about a bug. There's no way we would've found all these on our own...
- Fixed: The Trader taking but not giving goods if your storehouse was full.
- Fixed: The murders in the last 30 days statistic becoming inaccurate after a while.
- Fixed: A bug where the UI option to salvage scrap mounds would not appear if you destroyed multiple buildings.
- Fixed: A rare bug where the UI could break after starting a custom game with a unique number of adults.
- Fixed: Inconsistent speeds when builders/engineers were helping the Town Leader construct something. Sometimes it would be too fast, sometimes too slow.
- Fixed: Disabled the ability to save and load when Raiders were making a demand, which allowed players to bypass the Raiders entirely!
- Fixed: A bug where the Raiders would forget to come at all if you saved and loaded at a certain point.
- Fixed: A bug where the timer on the belief menu appeared glitched after the time was up.
- Fixed: The belief menu now updates without you having to close and re-open the menu.
- Fixed: If you walked out during sex with your spouse the sex somehow carried on.
- Fixed: Map descriptive texts being cut off at certain resolutions.
- Fixed: The menus locking the player out if the annual save game reminder popped up at the same time as the Raider story text.
- Fixed: The Town shortcut menu buttons for things like Town Hall stats opened the wrong menu on the first ever time they were clicked.
- Fixed: It is now possible to use capitals in the middle of names when creating a character.
- Fixed: Made small/narrow ruins easier to click on.
- Fixed: A bug where the icons for people who want to be your life partner would switch themselves on after sentencing laws.
- Fixed: The keyboard shortcut to zoom the camera in and out now works in Town Leader mode as well.
- Fixed: Made the keyboard shortcut (F11 by default) to hide the UI able to be re-bound to a different key.
- Fixed: Various rare code errors that could cause slowdown in larger towns.
- Fixed: Corpses can no longer despawn if you’re looking their menus so you have time to read them.
- Fixed: A bug where the population number on the Town Hall stats screen could be slightly inaccurate as it wasn’t counting people who left after a patriot scared them away.
- Fixed: Incorrect tooltips when people were being hung. The reason someone is executed should appear accurately now in all cases.
- Fixed: New migrants now have to get a lot closer to your Gateways in order to become citizens.
- Fixed: Corrected the bios on child citizens who were born after the nuclear war. For example, the entry on how they survived the bombs didn’t make sense.
Gameplay Changes:
- The building costs for all structures have been altered. Rather than most buildings using equal amounts of all 3 building supplies, now a building that is mostly wood will need more wood, one that is metal costs more metal and so on.
- Holding down shift (button can be rebound) now speeds up the camera, letting you fly across the map quickly if you want to.
- The speed of saving has been noticeably improved once again.
- Both mouse buttons can now be rebound in the controls section.
- The tenement, wind turbine and guard tower models have had some extra cosmetic love applied.
- The message that appears when you beat the game has been improved visually with new handmade artwork.
- All citizens now have a button on their menu letting you track them with the camera if you want to watch them going about their business.
- All citizens now have a button on their menu letting you open their workplace menu without needing to find it yourself.
- The screen shake that occurs when your bags are full (to alert you) can now be switched off in the gameplay options.
- All progress bars now show what percentage they’re on if you mouse over them.
- The main 5 need bars now flash if they get seriously low.
- You can see how many days until your child is born by mousing over the conceive button.
- It now shows you what your spouse/kids are up to if you mouse over the icons over their heads.
- New sound effects added for various actions (like entering your town name at the start, your child being born, etc).
- Citizen corpses will not despawn now if you’re reading their menus at the time.
- A repeating warning message has been added which tells you if your food and drink supplies are running out.
- A repeating warning message has been added if plague levels are rising noticeably.
Balance Changes:
- Decreased the rate prisoners starve to death by 50%.
- Survivors now went to the toilet before joining you at the start of a new game, and should be less likely to drop dead from poor sanitation before you’ve got your town up and running. This only applies to the easiest and middle difficulty settings.
- The Engineers you start a new game with have been toughened up and should survive longer now, letting you get more use out of them.
