RimWorld Alpha 14: Scenarios and Steam release

[Whuppee]

Currently topping Steam's top seller list.



Change summary from the blog:

Spoiler

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Scenario System

• New scenario system allows you to choose, randomize, and customize special situations to play in. Determine starting situation, your type of community (tribe, colony), permanent map conditions, starting items, animals, health conditions, and traits, and change special rules.
• Several built-in scenarios, including one matching the classic RimWorld experience, are included.
• You can randomize new scenarios.
• You can customize scenarios with a special interface that allows creation of any scenario you like.
• Scenarios can be uploaded to or grabbed from Steam Workshop with a single click.
• ScenPart: Permanent version of all map conditions (eclipse, solar flare, etc).
• ScenPart: Planetkiller scenario part: World is destroyed on X date.
• ScenPart: Climate cycle which makes the world get warmer and cooler over a period of years. Winter is coming.
• ScenPart: Disable building a given type of building.
• ScenPart: Pawns start with health condition.
• ScenPart: Start with items.
• ScenPart: Map is scattered with items.
• ScenPart: Configure arrival method (pods or standing)
• ScenPart: Starting pawns are all between ages X and Y
• ScenPart: Pawns explode on death (configurable type and radius)
• ScenPart: All pawns from source (game start/all) have trait X
• ScenPart: Starting animal(s)
• ScenPart: Disallow mining
• ScenPart: Disallow hunting
• ScenPart: Disallow taming
• ScenPart: Disallow growing
• ScenPart: Disable incident
• ScenPart: Multiplier for any stat on the game (move speed, mining speed, etc)
• ScenPart: Disallow building

Pawn overlapping

• Pawns can no longer overlap during melee combat (unless they’re really small). No more animal deathstacks! This also creates new tactics around blocking, surrounding, or back-line shooters. We had to write a bunch of AI and blocking code to make this function.

AI

• Raiders can now enter “steal” mode if they see enough value. They’ll grab your stuff and carry it off.
• Kidnapping raiders now work together much better to kidnap. Instead of everyone fleeing at once, some will kidnap while others cover them.
• AI dressing algorithm is now better at making outfits to withstand cold temperatures. If there is no way to make a survivable outfit, pawns won’t arrive at all. No more raids arriving and keeling over in -60C weather.
• Predators no longer hunt boomrats and boomalopes.
• Pawns will be smarter about avoiding traps in various situations.

New stuff

• Full Steam Workshop support for mods.
• You can now play as a tribe in some scenarios.
• Added torch lamp
• Added pemmican for low-tech food preservation.
• Research difficulty is now related to your faction’s tech level. Researching techs above your level is harder. So if you’re a tribe, researching spaceflight will be difficult.
• Added research (needed for tribes only): complex clothing, electricity
• Added research (needed for non-tribes only): pemmican
• Added research: air conditioning, autodoors, gun turrets
• Added ‘ransom demand’ incident. Can fire after one of your people is kidnapped.
• Added “killed my X” social thoughts so people dislike their loved ones’ killers
• Added new class of “minor” mental breaks, which can happen at mood under 40%.
• Added minor mental break: food binge.
• Ground fertility is now reported on mouseover.
• Added moisture pump, which slowly converts wet terrain to dry terrain. Requires power.
• Hives now pop out glow pods – bug light sources that glow for 20 days (as long as they’re installed) and can be reinstalled or sold.
• Added traits: creepy breathing, annoying voice. These are socially repellent.
• Added trait: pyromaniac. Will go on firestarting sprees when stressed, and never puts out fire.
• Added panther for jungle biome. Because I discovered panthers aren’t real and I need to cope with this somehow.
• There is now an orange glow to help you identify very hot areas.
• Added/replaced animals created by the excellent Kay Fedewa:
  • Caribou
  • Cassowary
  • Deer
  • Emu
  • Arctic fox
  • Fennec fox
  • Red fox
  • Gazelle
  • Husky
  • Ibex
  • Lynx
  • Megatherium (prehistoric giant ground sloth)
  • Ostrich
  • Raccoon
  • Rat
  • Turkey
  • Arctic wolf
  • Timber wolf

Interface

• Added a row of colonist icons along the top of the screen, with various status info. They can be clicked to select, double-clicked to jump to, or box-selected to multi-select. These icons can be turned off.
• Trading interface now lets you type in the number you want to trade instead of dragging to the number.
• Animals tab now has gender and life stage informational columns
• Animals tab now has a “slaughter” checkbox column to allow easy slaughtering of many animals
• Animals tab now has checkbox columns for each trainable, to allow easy training of many animals
• Reworked the right-click menu to be prettier, more readable, more solid, and better handle large lists of options.

Exploit solutions

• Traders, visitors, raiders, kidnappers, animals, etc will now escape if surrounded by walls with no way out.
• Manhunters and insects will attack doors if colonists try to hop in and out of them while getting shots off.
• Hives must now be tended by insects, so if insects are all instantly killed by a turret wall, the hives will die out.
• You can no longer avoid the ‘executed prisoner’ mood impact by just shooting or starving the prisoner; pawns will get a “prisoner died innocent” thought. A similar solution applies to the deaths of colonists.
• Solved various powerleveling exploits. Once colonists have learned a certain (high) amount in a day, they’ll learn at a much-reduced rate until the next day.
• Flowers are no longer good animal feed (reduced nutrition).
• Fixed exploit where players would give prisoner to raiders for kidnapping, to make raiders go away without a fight. Solution: Raiders only kidnap colonists.

Other

• Updated to Unity 5.
• World generation is now part of the new game process, instead of being separate.
• Roofs must now be manually built and torn down by colonists; they do not appear and disappear instantly any more.
• Reworked AI food selection algorithm to take into account personal mood impacts, rottenness, and other new factors. e.g. Now cannibals will actually seek out cannibal food because they get a mood bonus, while non-cannibals will avoid it.
• Flow for opening worlds and savegames from old version is now improved; the “warning, old version” dialog comes before you open them instead of after.
• Deworked mods config menu to have a much nicer selection and ordering interface.
• Humans can now eat unbutchered corpses (though they really don’t like it).
• Infestations are easier and grow less exponentially.
• Infestations only appear deeper underground now.
• AI now runs away from grenades thrown by their own faction.
• Tortoises aren’t so deadly any more.
• Animals no longer do incest.
• Humans now do incest.
• Seeds for world gen are now generated from actual words instead of random letter strings.
• You can now set both minimum and maximum skill on a bill.
• Beauty trait now has four stages: Staggeringly ugly, ugly, pretty, beautiful.
• Some backstories now force pawns to have a given trait (e.g. Model->Beautiful)
• Trade caravans can bring pack dromedaries.
• Projectiles fired by hunting colonists no longer intercept random targets.
• Some traders buy and sell furniture now.
• Gut worms and muscle parasites vanish sooner.
• Reworked ancient tomb loot generation. Plasteel is sometimes found on pod people. So are components.
• Nuzzling is now a visualized, recorded social interaction.
• Various refactorings to make modding easier and code easier to maintain and more flexible. Much more functionality is now implemented as composable ThingComps.
• Many, many, many other balance changes, gameplay and interface refinements, and bugfixes.

[kregoth]

Wow it's currently at a 98% positive reviews.

[kregoth]

Sorry for the double post, but for those interested in Alpha 15; which adds drugs, addiction and a new tutorial. You can test out the unstable version on Rimworlds Unstable branch under the Betas properties in Steam!

Spoiler

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Tutorial

1. Added new rich tutorial with step-by-step instructions.
   Tutorial teaches the basics of setting up a game, building a small self-sustaining colony, and defeating the first
   raider.
   Tutorial locks out irrelevant controls and highlights relevant controls.
   At the end of the tutorial, the player can continue the game with a normal storyteller.

Learning helper

1. Added new learning helper system to replace yellow pop-up messages and yellow learning alerts.
   Learning helper sits in the top right of the screen. If something happens relating to a concept the player hasn’t learned, that lesson will be activated and shown on the learning helper. It can then be opened and read. Lessons are automatically marked as learned when the player does the necessary interaction, and can be marked as learned manually. Lessons are shown as needed by circumstance, or on a slow timer. The overall idea is that you’ll never be shown a lesson you already know, but always be shown the lessons you need to know now.
   Learning helper can be expanded and searched for any lesson, so you can look up how to do a specific thing at any time.

Drugs system

1. Added new drugs system. It’s not just beer any more!
   Drugs typically create up to four effects. Not all drugs have all effects.
   Primary – The valuable short-term effect, whether it improves mood or work focus or combat effectiveness or makes one immune to a disease.
   Overdose – Excessive drug usage in a short time can build up blood toxicity, leading to unconsciousness and possible death.
   Tolerance – Long-term usage of a drug can build up a tolerance which makes subsequent usage less and less effective in producing the high.
   Addiction – Drug use can form an addiction. This generates a new need for the drug which the pawn will try to feed regularly. If the need isn’t fed, the pawn will develop withdrawal symptoms (low mood, reduced consciousness). Eventually withdrawal will pass and the addiction will go away.
   Drugs can be assigned for regular taking through the drug policy system. Similar to Outfits, drug policies are an assigned schedule for taking drugs. You can set any number of drugs, each with a frequency. For example, you can assign a colonist to drink 2 beers every day, and take one Malari-Block every 5 days.

The drugs are:

1. Beer – Improved mood but worsened capacities. Addictive.
   Malari-block – Prevents malaria infection for 5 days.
   Yayo – Stimulant pleasure drug, addictive.
   Flake – Cheap, short high, very addictive.
   Amphetamines – Improves work performance, addictive.
   Marijuana – Improved mood but worsened capacities. More hunger, slower movement. Can form dependence.
   Go-Juice – Synthetic futuristic combat drug. Boost speed and fighting capacity tremendously. Addictive.
   Luciferium – Glitterworld mechanites that give huge bonuses to most capacities. However, without repeated doses the user goes insane and dies. It is impossible to clear the addiction, and the drug is 100% addictive on one dose.
   Drugs are produced in various ways, typically at the new Drug Lab building, from various precursor chemicals and growable crops. They require research to create.

Deep drilling

1. The map now spawns with clusters of underground resources. These can be accessed by building a deep scanner to find them, and then building deep drills on top of them, and then working the drills. This slowly produces the resource.
   Deep drilling tech is at the end of the tech tree. This should mitigate late-game resource exhaustion problems.

Misc

1. Mood is now drawn subtly behind the pawn on the colonist readout at the top of the screen.
   You can now produce medicine from herbal medicine, neutroamine (a precursor chemical you buy), and cloth. Requires research.
   Added passive cooler building. Made of wood and low tech, it cools a room for a short time. Good for passing heat waves as a tribe.
   Added a ‘copy building’ tool which lets you quickly select the designator for a building through an existing copy of that building.
   Beer production now takes several stages: Colonists make wort (unfermented beer) at the brewer table, then leave it in fermenting barrels for a while, after which they can harvest it as beer.
   Infestation can now only spawn under a thick roof.
   Gear tab now shows aggregate stats about armor and comfy temperatures.
   Raider steal a bit more often now.
   Factored MapGeneratorDef apart into separate GenStepDefs which can be modded or inserted individually. This will allow modders to change the MapGenerator without blowing away each others’ changes.
   Added alert: Need warm clothes.
   Mods can now be dragged to reorder them in the mods page.
   Re-tuned food finding algorithm.
   Hunters will no longer hunt without a ranged weapon.
   Debuffed corn a bit.
   Reworked trade interface to clearly state what kind of trader they are, and to list items they’re not willing to trade.
   Reworked trader stock generators so traders carry and accept more sensible items for their type.
   You can now request traders by calling allied factions. It costs silver.
   Chance to spring known traps is reduced from 2.5% to 0.4%.
   Friendly fire chances reduced by 60% for fly-by shots (shots that miss and land in the cell with a pawn have the same chance to hit as before).
   Added a message when food spoils in storage.
   Fix: Pawns don’t get ‘catharsis’ mood gainer thought after a mental break.
   Rename PDW to Machine pistol.
   Torches and campfires are no longer destroyed near-instantly by rain/snow. They instead consume fuel faster.
   Torches consume fuel a bit faster overall.
   Fueled generator consumes fuel faster and holds less fuel.
   Plant sow and harvest are now slower.
   Debuffed fists.
   Reduced volume of idle animal calls at high time speeds.
   Smithing is now a prerequisite for Machining research.
   Added a toggleable view that shows roofs in glowing green.
   Hundreds of other balance changes, text fixes, redesigns, and bug fixes.