Summary: Update 0.4.9
Here's a massive update for After The Collapse. It includes a lot of new content which we will be detailing in this post. But, first of all, a short summary:
- Interactive Tutorial
- New weapons, armors, crafting stations and technologies
- More balanced difficulty settings (with more events)
- Construction skill & progress
- Fixed all the crashes on the french version (our deepest apologies)
Interactive Tutorial
While it was initially planned for the 0.5 branch, it was made obvious to us (from your feedback) that a proper tutorial was needed quickly. This is now done. It introduces the game's basic concepts while telling a short story. It also gives some information about the game's world and story-line.
It took a lot of time to write, more so than all the rest of the update combined, by far. Yet, it's probably far from fail-proof and bugs are likely present.
Feedback is more than welcome, as it's very difficult for me to evaluate a tutorial for a game I built.
Weapons and Armors
We added mid game weapons and armors to fill the gap between the early "stone age" equipment and the modern one. Those weapons (with ammo) and armors can be produced locally after you have researched the associated technologies and built the appropriate crafting stations.
The weapons are home-made pipe weapons. Like those two:
Simply put, they are less efficient counterparts to the gun and shotgun. Their advantage is that they can be both produced with metal, wood and charcoal and the ammunition is simple to make.
Same goes for the armors. 2 variants (standard and heavy) of a metal armor. Doesn't require much to build, they offer decent protection for their cost.
This is part of our first pass at balancing weaponry, equipment and pacing.
Difficulty / Event System
Another response to feedback:
The Standard difficulty has been tweaked: bandits with modern weapons will no longer spawn until you have the Electronics tech. Other events have been slightly tweaked to even things out.
The Hectic difficulty level has been renamed to Difficult. The above requirements for Electronics are no longer present, but outside of that, it's generally less "hardcore" than before. Which makes it a decent option for experienced players.
We added 2 "tribal raid" events for the mid and late game. You'll also notice that bandits, settlers and tribals carry much more varied gear.
Settlers
To reduce confusion about some skills, we renamed Carpentry to Construction. It's, now, used only for building purpose. Building speed is now influenced by the construction skill and settlers gain experience as they build more stuff. All crafting recipes using that skill have been moved to "Crafting" instead.
In a similar fashion, the previously unused Mining skill is now used when survivors are breaking rocks and boulders (instead of Disassembling).
While at it, we added a few more traits and jobs.
General Notes
There's a lot more stuff under the hood, making the game more stable, more moddable and generally speaking easier to use.
Full Changelog
Additions
- Interactive Tutorial (it was supposed to be a 0.5 feature, but due to popular demand we had to tweak our roadmap a bit)
- Building furniture/walls/etc increases the builder's skill at construction
- Building speed of furniture/walls/etc proportional to their construction skill
- Raiders with modern gear won't attack until you've researched the "electronics" tech in standard difficulty
- 2 new weapons: Pipe Pistol and Pipe Shotgun
- 1 ammo type: pipe weapon ammo
- 3 new armors: Spec Ops (top tier, loot/trade only), light and heavy metal armors (buildable)
- Armor Forge building (build basic tier armors, no electricity needed)
- Weapon Forge building (build pipe weapons, no electricity needed)
- A new armor related technology (Basic Armors)
- A new weapon related technology (Pipe Weapons)
- Increased equipment variety on bandits and tribals
- The axe gives a bonus to the 'disassembling' skill
- Zone size is displayed during placement
- Pathing to moving agents is much more reactive, which will improve combat behaviors
- Gametip for 1st time building placement (explains rotation)
- 5 new achievements (techs + tutorial)
- New traits and jobs for your survivors
- 2 more tribal attack events for the mid and late game.
Changes
- Renamed skill "Carpentry" to "Construction" (as it's what it actually does, after all)
- The few recipes using "Carpentry" are now using "Crafting"
- Breaking rocks properly use the "Mining" skill instead of "Disassembling"
- Armor technology has 2 tiers now. One for the construction of basic armors (leather, metal), the second one for the maintenance of modern armors.
- Reordered tech tree to make room for pipe weapons
- Edited some jobs to account for the construction skill
- Reorganized how and where armors are produced (leather armor and metal helmet moved to the armor forge)
- Heavy metal armor and flamethrower give the "heavy duty equipment" trait while equipped (settler heavily slown down)
- Increased base damage of the (rare) flamethrower from 10 to 25 per "bullet"
- Increased bullet speed of modern firearms (pistol especially) and tweaked damage output
- Rebalanced event managers: Standard is a bit easier, Hectic became Difficult (as in, it's playable if you really know what you're doing)
Modding
- Events can go in their own files loaded by an event manager now, making the whole process much less annoying
- Note that the "Construction" skill is still called 'Carpenting' (yes, with that typo) in game files for compatibility purpose.
- Added "AutoSelect" flag to equipment presets. If set, the NPC will select one of each weapon/armor/headgear (quantity=probability) in file and automatically add required ammo if need be (see tribal_basic.json)
- Events can be gated by specific technologies
Fixes
- Extremely unlikely crash (clicking on an animated object at the first frame of the game)
- Many crashes caused by the French translation (sorry about that)
- Generally speaking the UI library is much more robust when encountering unexpected characters
- Missing unique icon for armor technology
- Issue where a raider would get "stuck" in place not finding their path toward the target
- Bug where people would occasionally go "explore" (0,0) coordinates