Hello, dear testers.
I've uploaded Windows, OSX, and Linux 0.10.0.0 versions of the game to the beta branch.
Please Read
Ok, so, this beta version is coming out in a very unstable state. I wanted to get this out there to get help finding bugs. Please, please don't play it if you're not looking to help report bugs. It's not going to be much fun until I can put out a few patches. I still have a huge amount of polish to put into the game to get 0.10.0.0 ready for production. Over the next few weeks I will be periodically uploading patches to the beta branch to fix things.
Also, currently, the world is using way more RAM than it should and isn't properly unloading it in between world loads. Depending on how beefy your machine is, the game might crash as it's trying to load into a tile. I am working on this and I apologize for the huge memory footprint. If you are having issues, try playing smaller map sizes until I can fix this. You can do this from the new game screen. Try lowering the depth before the width and height because that will lower the RAM usage, but still give you quite a bit of x and y space to work with.
I'm in the process of re-tuning a lot of things and, because of this, I've disabled the majority of scenarios. Don't worry, I haven't deleted them, they're just going to get incrementally added back in as I tune things. I want to improve how players are challenged and scenarios (i.e., bandit raids and events) are a big part of this. You should still see the settler wave, ancient immortality tombs, and merchant scenarios. But probably nothing else. This includes animal migrations! I'll be adding them back in this next week, don't worry. Additionally, underground discoveries are a bit different. Before, I generated everything when the game loaded. Now, I add underground discoveries as you play dynamically. So, there might be situations where they just appear. That's the scenario manager dishing out scenarios over-time. This is now dynamic to be more balanced and to have a bit more flexibility with the types of scenarios you encounter. For example, do you really, really need another ancient? Well, now, I can generate that discovery. That's the idea at least.
Oh, you'll notice all the trees in the game are the same. That's totally normal. I wrote a prefab generation system that looks at previously authored models and generates them. Right now, the game is using a plane-jane tree model. I'll be adding in a bunch of other models over the next couple weeks.
There is also no tutorial for the game. I have to re-work the old one, so you'll just have to go in dark. I'm sorry!
Regarding progression, players will notice that there's a new research tree in the Saga screen. This lets you unlock blueprints and room functions by using Tomes. Tomes are a physical item that you get through several methods: sometimes settlers randomly write one after they level up (sort of like writing down their experiences), merchants, random items in scenarios, and from the library room function (scholars can make them from paper and ink). There are five tomes for the five respective tech trees. You can also sell them for 100 Ren at merchants which is quite a lot! The tech tree progress has seen zero tuning, so feel free to give me lots of feedback there. I'll be tuning it over the next few weeks and adding things (some of the nodes are sparse, I know).
A quick note on modding. There is a new folder where your game's executable is, called Streaming Assets. This has two files: game data and a texture atlas. You can edit these, but I haven't double checked to see if the game is still referencing them. I'll be testing this out this week to make sure it's functional, but I thought I would mention them in case you wanted to check out that sort of thing.
There's a lot of missing UI feedback--not out of neglect, but lack of time--and I'll be working on this. Please let me know where things confuse you. I will be taking that feedback seriously. For now, you'll have to test things out and fumble around a bit. Please leave me a message any time. I'm happy to chat about anything.
I'm going to try and upload a patch very soon to address any immediate issues. Sometime over the weekend or early next week.
Oh, one more thing. Many have requested brighter text and I've gone through and brightened up the majority of the text, but I know I've missed a few. Feel free to point them out, but know that I am periodically brightening them as I see them. All the background for UI should be black to help with contrast.
To play the beta version, follow these instructions:
I've also created this sticky post for reporting bugs:
Or, you can join us on discord for the live play-by-plays:
Thanks so much to everyone willing to endure the issues in this version and help me out. You are rock stars and I owe you so much.
Best,
W