0.7 Branch Update : A Man’s Best Friend

EsKa

Here is the first content update for our 0.7 branch, introducing pets, social mechanics, a new in-game mod browser, artifacts, and plenty more.

As usual, I’m only going to go over the major features and changes. There are plenty more modding, UI and balance improvements you can find in the full change-log at the bottom.

Pets

The idea with this 0.7x branch is to add neutral critters to the map, some moving in herd, for the player to tame or hunt. Both in build mode, and on the world map.

As a the first and biggest step in the right direction, we can now breed and adopt dogs. Pets will defend their owner and provide a flat bonus to their happiness. Their death causes a temporary debuff to their owner. Dogs without owners will hang out in a pasture and can be butchered.

Dogs can be found during expeditions, both during travel and in specific locations (bars). The animal trader also sell them. Pets, like cattle, die of old age, can reproduce and be butchered.

The animal info menu is now similar to the one used with humans. And in this menu you can give them a new owner.

Animal Food

Instead of wheat, all settlement creatures eat animal food now, dogs included. To make the transition go smoothly, wheat farms produce “animal food” directly for now. You can also make more by cooking meat. It is also a proper food item, instead of an ingredient.

Your settlers won’t eat animal food, though. This is a first step toward having diets for specific groups of settlers or animals.

Happiness and Personality Traits

Happiness changes are gradual instead of instant. People gain and loss points at a rate determined by their new personality trait. Other traits have been redesigned to make use of that system. The mood of your survivors should be much less erratic. Settlers also spawn with a new small list of traits they like and dislike.
Humans also start with base stats much closer to average now. As such, traits, mental attributes and jobs have a much more meaningful impact on a new survivor’s abilities. In turn, it removes many cases where a settlers with a trait like Strong would still have very sub-par strength.
As you can see, the character and mood panels got a face-lift to illustrate the new system.

Making Friends

Settlers will now talk and bond with each other as illustrated here with the new speech bubbles.

While they appear simultaneously, the bubbles show one of the different outcomes of the discussion, taking happiness, relation with other settler, social stats, likes & dislikes, and some dice rolls, into account. Generally, the more blue ? and ! speech bubbles, the better.

Having friends gives small happiness buffs, but if one dies, his friends will mourn for a few days (slower, sad). Of course, enemies provide a small debuff. Occasionally, two settlers who dislike each other may start brawling. It’s a non lethal (normally) duel with punches only, its duration may vary. Once the fight is over, they’ll hate each other less.

A “Relation” tab has been added to the settler info menu to keep track of each settler’s relationships, pets included.

Artifacts

Settlers can equip new rare and powerful items in their new equipment slot. They can be acquired when raiding mutated nests and during scavenging runs (rare). There’s only a few for now, but more will be added along the way.

Map and User Interface

This is still a bit experimental, but the world map no longer pauses the game. You still use the keyboard shortcuts to control time in map mode. As such, you can see your expeditions moving in real time. Still from the world map, you can open diplomatic channels with a faction by clicking on its flag. The idea in the long run is to also have expedition management directly on the map screen.

Mods and Steam Workshop

Thanks to Alex, you can now share your saves on the Steam Workshop to your friends and to the community at large. Workshop mods can now be listed and subbed directly from the game. There’s a new modding doc available here. And we have a new in-game mod manager as pictured below.

Speaking of mods, I should point out the ones made by Xen. Lots of good content in there! :steamhappy:

Save Compatibility

Start a new game. As with all major milestone updates, save files aren’t compatible with previous versions.

Release Notes

This 0.7.0 version is by no mean perfect, and you’ll probably find some issues left & right which i’ll address through hot-patches, as usual. The very small “fixed” list in the changelog is still a testament to our progress over the last few months: ATC works, generally ™.

My apologies for taking so long to publish 0.7, it should have been completed much earlier this month, but I also had to take care of older family members due to the covid19 quarantine. As such, it’s now clear that we won’t reach 1.0 before end of Q2 2020. It doesn’t mean much, as i plan to continue coding past 1.0, but it’s only fair to tell you.

Also note, that we’ll be increasing the game’s cost by $1 somewhere near the end of the 0.7 branch, you’ll be warned in advance, and it’ll be coupled with a discount when applied.

Plans for future 0.7.x updates

Prisoner management is the big thing. Basically a way to capture, sell, and put to work prisoners. The new non-lethal combat, social features and pet system are an introduction to this.

I would like to add migratory herds to the world map as well. They could be hunted by expeditions and serve as event generators when entering in contact with the base, productions centers or expeditions. It could in turn be used to replace the random enemy raids and migration events by something a bit more natural.

Give more reasons to grow in population, with settlement laws to be enacted at each milestone. A mayor’s office for the colony’s leader would be nice as well. In a more distant future it’d help adding elections and a political system in general.

The last major arc is an improved medical system. But it might get delayed or swapped with the following as I’m not sure I like the idea of dealing with this topic in the current situation. It would feel a bit ghoulish.

Instead, preset scenarios and generally speaking a more user friendly new game menu. Coupled with a basic in-game mission system to provide guidance in a less intrusive way than with popups, and a general makeover of the map/expedition/diplo UI stuff which is way too disjointed at the moment.

Full Changelog

  • Balance: Merged “consumable” item category into “drinks” (it was only used for dirty water, use depot filters when needed instead)
  • Balance: Mood changes are now gradual and vary from a settler to another
  • Balance: Joyful & Depressed are no longer timed and will always trigger whenever a settler’s mood is over 85 or below 15
  • Balance: Traders have more items in stock
  • Balance: Humans spawn with roughly average base stats, making traits and professions more meaningful
  • Changes: Animals eat animal food (categorised as food) instead of wheat (categorised as ingredient)
  • Changes: Wheat farms produce animal food, removed wheat from ingredients
  • Content: Added recipe to produce animal food from meat at basic kitchen
  • Content: Added new traits illustrating the new mood system and edited existing ones
  • Content: New equipment slot for settlers (backpack/artifacts)
  • Content: Added several powerful items and artifacts to the loot and trade tables (your settlers can equip them in the new slot)
  • Content: New artifact trader event (very rare, late game, event)
  • Content: Settlers can now form relations with each other
  • Content: Settlers can chat with each other, modifying their mood and relations
  • Content: The death of a friend will cause a settler to mourn for a few days (bad morale, slow speed, low social)
  • Content: Having friends will increase a settler’s mood while having foes will decrease it
  • Content: Settlers who hate each other may occasionally brawl (which will partially reset their relation)
  • Content: Pet dogs for your settlers to adopt and breed (or eat, you maniacs)
  • Content: Pets provide basic help in combat and a slight happiness boost to their owners
  • Content: The death of a pet will render their owner sad for a while
  • Content: Ability to share your savegames on the Steam Workshop (by Alex) (Steam Only)
  • Content: Pets and cattle regen health when eating.
  • Content: Claimed production centers can still be explored for resources now
  • Modding: New ingame workshop mod manager (by Alex)
  • Modding: New modding api documentation, online version here: https://modding.anarkisgaming.com (by Alex)
  • Modding: Ability to set recipes with varying quantity produced (see data/recipes/_example.txt file)
  • Modding: Factories can now properly understand recipes with multiple output (they sorta did already, but items would not always end up where they should)
  • Modding: Added several mood/relation modifiers to traits
  • Modding: Added “AI” = PetAI to npc files (they’ll need a properly set race for the agents to be considered properly ownable pets and be of the animal category)
  • Modding: Traits have the new DamageThreshold field (add/remove flat incoming damage in combat)
  • Modding: Traits have the new MeleeDamageModifier and RangedDamageModifier fields (add/remove flat outgoing damage in combat)
  • Modding: Added ability to toggle developer mode and menus (see devmode.txt in game’s folder)
  • Modding: Added _example.txt files to data/npc, data/racedata, data/recipes and data/traits to start documenting stuff a bit (more will come)
  • Modding: Animal fodder consumable must have the “Fodder” tag attributed otherwise settlers will eat them too.
  • Modding: UI graphical elements can be retextured (by Alex)
  • Modding: Detection and warning messages for outdated/broken mods (by Alex)
  • Modding: (change) Metalsmith jobs properly tagged as “Metalsmith” instead of “Social” in data files now (update your mod if need be)
  • Modding: (change) Consumable item Category removed. Use food, drink, medical.. instead (update mod if need be)
  • UI: Updated trait tooltip to display mood growth/decrease modifiers when relevant
  • UI: More legible settler character sheet displaying more info while using less screen estate
  • UI: Updated settler info panel and population screen to take the new artifact/utility equipment slot into account
  • UI: Added relation tab to the settler info panel (displaying friends, foes, pets)
  • UI: The mood tab in the settler info panel got a makeover and displays more info
  • UI: Clicking on a faction’s banner on the world map open their diplomatic screen (when applicable)
  • UI: The world map can work without pausing now and pause/speed keyboard shortcuts work (no buttons yet) (bit experimental)
  • UI: The animal info panel has been reworked and behave very similarly to the settler info panel
  • UI: Butcher screen display population count by species
  • UI: Multiselection menu added to combat mode
  • UI: Experimental: pause/speed keyboard shortcuts work on the worldmap now.
  • UI: Much needed facelift to the in-game mod menu.
  • Fixed: Possible case where a settler could stop moving (despite the UI telling you they are) until they switch to a new job on their own.
  • Fixed: Misc issues found in the experimental version
  • Fixed: Clicking on combat log messages wouldn’t center the camera on the action
  • Fixed: Expeditions not properly reset when starting a second game