We’re finally leaving Early Access! After several years of development, After The Collapse is finally ready for prime time! While this doesn’t mean the development is going the stop anytime soon, it’s still a very important milestone. The 1.0 version will be released today on Steam and Itch.io.
I want to thank everyone who supported me, contributed in any way, no matter if it’s feedback, coding advices, bug reports, mods, or criticism. Without all this input, we wouldn’t be here today. You have no idea how grateful I am.
This post will detail the major new additions and will be followed by a note regarding my immediate plans following this release. As usual, the changelog is at the bottom.
This is the first draft for the 0.9x dev cycle. It contains most of the promised core features for 0.9 outside of the map/building editor and handcrafted maps (they go hand-in-hand). As with all milestone updates, despite a lot of testing, it might not be as polished or stable as the previous version, but all bugs and oddities will quickly be addressed.
I’ll talk about the future of the 0.9 branch later, but for now, let’s focus on the new features and changes. As usual, full changelog at the end. I’ll only cover the major changes in the article.
TL;DR
Deeper world map mechanics
Patrol zones
AI/Hostile hordes roaming the map
AI Factions sending their own expeditions
End-game’s Genetic Horrors faction overhaul
Mental breakdowns
Content, engine, UI, and balance pass
Patrol Zones
Patrol zones are a new type of zone you can define. It’s relatively self explanatory. You can assign survivors to a patrol zone, either as a permanent job or as a rally point when you switch to combat mode. People assigned to a patrol zone will attack any hostile in range automatically. This is a great way to reduce pre-raid micro management, as your soldiers will automatically go to the locations you’ve assigned them to. Additionally, setting up a permanent zone near your base entrance with a couple guards is a great way to defend against pesky animals.
Note that unless specified otherwise, people will still go to sleep, eat, drink and take breaks. You can prevent them to by checking the appropriate checkbox, just make sure you don’t forget, because they will starve to death otherwise.
Assignable Factories
It is now possible to assign a particular worker to a single factory or research station using the new advanced tab in the factory menu. Most of the time, this won’t be nearly as productive as just letting the survivors pick their jobs on their own (as you know, if there’s a single worker assigned to factory, that factory won’t be producing anything while the worker is on break). That being said, it synergize very well with robots as they don’t take breaks.
That warning out of the way, it works very well for research stations. Simply assign your best science guy to the research station and you’re all set. Before, you’d have to disable science on everyone else, which was pretty tedious.
World Map Combat Update
Until now, all the game had to work with to generate opponents in manual combat maps (or run automated battles) on the world map was just a single number per tile dubbed “opposition strength”. I had to extrapolate, from that single number, the number and type of enemies and what would be the result if you opted to do the combat automatically instead of manually. As you can guess, it didn’t make for a good or accurate representation with difficulty/results between manual and automated battles being completely disconnected from each other.
So, I rewrote the whole system completely, including AI factions’ logic, how the data itself is handled, how you reinforce your productions centers and how “offline” combat works, all that in a way that wouldn’t break mod or save compatibility. Now factions and the world map generator is using proper NPC to populate the map. Factions no longer send “points” to a production center, they send people. They don’t grow by points, they grow by adding new soldiers to their roster. Each faction grows at a different pace and have different thresholds when it come to select an action.
The first visible result is that instead of having a very vague pre-battle screen when looking at a hostile location, you’ll have the exact list of who you’re going to fight against. The offensive and defensive stats are shown both for you and the opposing party. And, finally, the automated combat results are a LOT less in your favor. Even a 100% victory chance might still mean that half of your party will be on the brink of death (when the combat is roughly balanced number-wise).
They no longer teleport always winning “numbers” to a location they want to invade, instead they send their own expeditions with a given amount of soldiers (deducted from the people at their base), which might or might not succeed. You can intercept AI expeditions with your own but I will cover that later.
Additionally, you no longer “build defenses” at your productions centers. Instead you recruit mercenaries. While in practice it serves the exact same purpose: boosting your ability to defend the location; in the near future, it’ll make you able to manually control your military forces during the defense of your production centers. It’s something that I will improve during the follow up 0.9x patches. For instance, it would be fun to have the ability to recruit different mercenary types you could unlock through diplo, quests or tech.
Hordes and AI Expeditions
As explained in the previous devlog, your expeditions are no longer the only things roaming the world map.
AI Factions will send expeditions to capture production centers. Expeditions that you can intercept with your own and potentially fight against. They aren’t using this system when attacking your own base yet (troops still get teleported and rely on the random event system), but this will likely happen in the next patch.
Additionally, naturally occurring hordes will gradually spawn in the world map, it might be infected hordes or herds of giant animals. They move slowly, aimlessly but grow over time in population (within limits). They might take over or attack map locations, even capturing places you’ve cleared in the past. If they come across your base, this will automatically trigger a raid. Likewise, they can be intercepted by your own expeditions before they become a nuisance or for their loot. Hordes can be fought manually or automatically. Right now it’s using the same setup as with production centers, meaning that they’ll hide in buildings.
Finally, some large infected hordes (and a faction, more on that later), can “infect” a building. Infections are a special type of conquest. They change a location into another one, generally with the ability to spawn additional hordes. So, if a large horde infects one building in a cluster, the rest of the cluster will likely follow within a few days. Infected buildings can be cleared the same way you attack locations normally.
Genetic Abominations
The end-game threat of genetic abominations got a lot more dangerous. It’s taking advantage of all the mechanics explained above. Their numbers grow quickly, they send expeditions regularly and they infect conquered locations, spawning more hordes. They might spiral out of control in a matter of weeks if not dealt with. This should make the end game a bit more hectic.
I can’t really say it’s carefully balanced, as I didn’t have much time to test this. I will adjust if need be.
Mental Breakdown
It’s also something I explained in the previous devlog, but here’s the gist of it. The main goal of this feature is to make sure that experienced players can no longer completely ignore happiness. Contrary to popular belief, the “depression” trait has a minimal impact on gameplay and could be ignored while passing laws that would boost productivity and reduce food consumption at the cost of happiness.
Now, your survivors have an invisible gauge determining their sanity. Sanity slowly decreases when they are unhappy, and slowly gets back to normal when they are happy. If a survivor’s sanity reaches zero, they’ll have a mental breakdown. They won’t respond to any command and pick a detrimental action from a list. They might break some furniture, light something on fire, or flat out turn hostile. Assuming they survived, their sanity will be reset and resume work as usual. Note that, occasionally, they will pick multiple actions. More possible actions will be added over time.
The feature can also be tweaked or disabled in the difficulty settings. Still, this is not a very punishing mechanic, it takes several days of 24/24 misery for a survivor to have a breakdown. The goal here is to prevent an exploit and accelerate the process when a base is doomed, not to punish small mistakes.
User Interface
We have a proper loading screen now! Hopefully, this should help with people who [alt]+[tab] right at the moment where the game engine doesn’t support losing focus (when loading graphical data). More mood and activity dialog bubbles have been added to the menus and game to give better feedback. A vehicle comparison table has been added to the encyclopedia. It’s possible to remove people from combat mode using the multi selection panel. The “research completed” popup contains a button to open the research panel.
Oh, “forges” have been renamed to “smelters” which is more accurate, as someone mentioned recently.
Of course there are more minor changes, please refer to the changelog for a complete list 🙂
Balance Pass
Your expeditions’ vehicles have HP now. It decreases very slowly while traveling naturally (or not so slowly when going over some hostile terrains) and can be damaged during events. Notably, the minefield event will damage the vehicle on failure (or when ignoring it). When the HP pool reaches zero, your expedition will automatically head home for repairs. You do not lose anything in the process. I might add a difficulty setting in the future to make it deadlier.
Firearms have been tuned. They got better looking sprites, bullet speed has been increased and standardized, damage output slightly tweaked. There’s 3 new guns: a revolver, a submachine gun and a combat rifle. Tomato cans, which was way too expensive to build have been tuned. You now get back the metal after consuming the can (it ends up in the inventory of whoever consumed it). Quartz is now used to build solar panels and CPU chips, justifying it’s very high trading price.
Engine Level Changes
I had to rewrite the whole way sound and music is handled, switching library. In practice, for 90% of you, it won’t make any major change. The audio settings gained a “master volume” gauge which adjusts all sounds at once. Large battles with a lot of sounds being played at once sound better thanks to the much better mixing. That’s about it. For the remaining 10%, your KN/N edition of Windows is now compatible right out of the box with ATC, no need to download the windows media player pack. And if you’re one of the last 3 people on Earth who still install those codec packs, ATC is now codec independent and your setup should no longer interfere with the game’s audio.
The low level DirectX interface / library has also been updated, I’ve not noticed anything really relevant in their changelog, but well, it’ll probably fix some edge case bugs or graphical oddities.
Save-game and Mod Compatibility
Old saves dating from 0.8.5 and later should be compatible, roughly, and believe me, given all the structural changes it’s kind of a small miracle. Not all features will be present, and I cannot 100% guarantee that everything will be working with older saves. Don’t yell at me if your save is not working, you can roll back to 0.8 from Steam (properties / beta tab) if need be.
Mods are generally compatible with 3 exceptions:
Mods adding or editing existing factions are outdated, while they shouldn’t break the game, they might prevent some of the improvements from taking effect. It’s not possible to update or (fully) remove such mods mid game as faction data is loaded once when a new game is started.
Mods altering existing firearms (beside purely textures) are outdated, but can be removed safely.
Mods adding or altering sound effects MUST be in Stereo 44.100Hz mp3 files (also, music/effects are no longer compiled, ATC can read mp3 files out of the box).
Closing Words
I think it’s the first time I have so much of a branch todo list in the very first release, despite the time I had to waste replacing the sound library.
The obvious missing feature is the map editor (and all the content that would come from it), it’s being worked on but it’s nowhere ready, and I can’t really rush it. Also, I sorta had to get those world map changes finished first. I’d rather dedicate an update to this feature so I can write it properly without worrying about the other 50 items in my changelog. Base relocation ain’t there yet. It shouldn’t be a problem, it just didn’t make the cut. Same for manned turrets, all the underlaying mechanics are here, I just didn’t have to time to implement it.
Oh, I *might* have fixed that elusive teleportation bug thing. I noticed that after loading a save-game, the game would load the map and start running before the pathing information is calculated. So, for a few frames (depending on machine), all the map would be considered impassible terrain. While in theory it’s not a real problem, I suspect that under some rare conditions (lag), it might cause a survivor to run it’s emergency “omg I’m in a wall and shouldn’t be, I need to teleport somewhere else” script before the information is loaded.
Anyway, I hope you’ll like this release! While I probably added more bugs than I fixed (which is sorta the rule with milestone updates), I doubt it’s anything major or game breaking. Just report any problem you encounter and I’ll get it fixed ASAP.
And with that, I wish you all a happy new year! I’ll come back to Discord and stuff as soon as the year is over.
Cheers!
Full Changelog
AI: NPC and turrets using fire based weapons now take this damage type into consideration to determine which target they should focus on
AI: Several improvements to the other CPU factions’ overworld AI
Balance: Quartz is now used to build solar panels and CPU chips
Balance: Some world map interactive events have been tweaked to take new features into account
Balance: Expedition vehicle speed bonus on roads increased from 20% to 25%
Balance: If set to NOT recover death-drop items, items dropped from crates destroyed by fires will also be marked as not to be retrieved
Balance: In expedition, manual and automated combat are more on par, with automated no longer being a free win
Balance: Increased healing rate of idle expeditions + added much smaller healing rate during travel
Balance: Consuming a tomato can gives back the metal that was used to pack it
Balance: Desert Eagle penetration from High to very high, increased base damage, decreased RoF (so the revolver can fit the high penetration slot)
Balance: Standardized / Increased bullet speed for all gun type weapons (very fast for real guns, fast for pipe weapons, medium for bows and crossbows)
Balance: Tweaked damage output, RoF and reload time of several rifles
Balance: Removed blood-thirsty tag from antisocial trait (translation: they won’t ignore incapacitation settings anymore)
Content: Expedition vehicles have their own HP pool and can be damaged by events or during travel
Content: A vehicle with no HP will force the expedition to go back home for repairs
Content: Research and crafting stations can be assigned to specific workers (be sure to read related information/tooltips)
Content: Configurable patrol zones where people can be assigned to guard strategic locations
Content: Added internal “mental breakdown” meter to survivors which might cause a survivor to leave or do other more “fun inducing” actions
Content: Being happy reduces the “mental breakdown” gauge, getting/staying depressed increases it
Content: Added remote explosive collar pack (vehicle equipment), allows you to take prisoners instead of recruits during expeditions
Content: Added hordes/groups to the map: moving ‘points of interest’ which can appear naturally or as the result of random events
Content: Hordes grow over time and might trigger an attack when coming into contact with your base or another map location
Content: Map locations now inform you of their exact enemy content before battle (instead of a rough list of possible enemy types)
Content: New world map locations that will spawn hostile groups until conquered are making their appearance (either from start, or through random events)
Content: Large zombie hordes can infect a map location after a successful attack
Content: AI Factions send expeditions (which are visible on the map and which can be intercepted) to conquer map locations
Content: A couple new “random” events (horde spawn mostly)
Content: The defense of outposts is done using mercenaries that you recruit the same way you built defenses previously (work in progress)
Content: End game threat of genetic abominations turned up to eleven, able to infect buildings and spawn hordes on a regular basis
Content: Added Magnum .44, FAMAS G1 and FN-P90 weapons (just under slightly different names because copyright is a thing)
Engine: Minor code improvements and optimizations, update of the low level DirectX interface
Engine: New sound library, removing the need to use the unreliable windows media player library
Engine: Windows KN & N editions are now compatible with ATC right out of the box (no longer requiring the download of a media player pack)
Graphics: Replaced most of the older weapon textures by more detailed ones (handguns and most assault rifles)
Graphics: Added a couple faction leader portraits, replaced some older ones
Graphics: Exploding fat zombies have a new, easily recognizable, body
Modding: Ability to damage vehicle during interactive map events (see the minefield one)
Modding: Added horde data files
Modding: Added EventSpawnHorde event, function similarly to POI spawner event, see “data/events/horde_*”
Modding: Musics and SFX have respectively moved from Content/Music & Content/SFX to data/musics & data/sfx
Modding: All sound effects/music *must* be in 44.1kHz MP3, preferably stereo. Any bitrate.
Modding: Music and SFX no longer need to be compiled with the modding tools
Modding: mapgen/worlds files can define which hordes can naturally spawn on the map (and how many and often)
Modding: Spawn of events and hordes can be gated by variables set in an interactive event
Modding: Added ability for PoI to spawn hordes (see spawner_* poi files for details, technically same format as for spawner clutter or npc)
Modding: Faction data overhaul, all Strength* fields replaced, added new horde customization fields (see any main faction files)
Modding: Added “GiveItems” field to consumables, will add the items to the user’s inventory on consumption, (see tomato can)
Sound: Much better sound quality when a lot of effects are played at once
Sound: Added “master volume” setting to audio settings (alter all outputs at once, practical when you want to keep relative levels intact)
UI: Proper loading screen (which will be less confusing that the blank screen in fullscreen mode on a non-ssd drive)
UI: Added more mood/activity dialog bubbles in various menus/situations
UI: Renamed “Exploring/I am exploring” by “Idle/I am taking a break” which is more accurate
UI: High priority and new assignment settings have been put into the new “advanced” tab in the factory screen
UI: Added expedition vehicle comparison chart to encyclopedia
UI: Added Hit Point information to every vehicle/expedition related menus
UI: Added mental breakdown difficulty modifiers
UI: Multi selection menu can release a group of people from combat duty when in combat mode
UI: Jobs button in settler info panel is no longer greyed out in combat mode (only the military skill checkbox)
UI: Faction leadership change event got its own interactive panel with the ability to contact the faction directly (if you have radio tech)
UI: Added difficulty toggle to enable/disable naturally spawning hordes
UI: Research completed popup got a button to directly open the research screen
UI: More information on the expedition combat screen
UI: Renamed a few things so they make more sense: “Former Military” -> “Army Remnants”, “Forge” -> “Smelter”
UI: Popup message when a (player owned) production center gets taken/destroyed by another faction (optional, enabled by default, in game settings)
UI: Warning (in the log) just before a production center gets attacked
Fixed: Mood/Status dialog bubble were shown in menu displaying survivors
Fixed: Scrollbar occasionally placed off panel until panel is refreshed / mouse goes over
Fixed: The “yell for help” system (used when someone is attacked) could disrupt operations of nearby expedition goers or people trying to get to the hospital
Fixed: People selection menu in the garage had barely relevant and overflowing text due to change of description for scavenging skill. (regression bug 0.8.7.8)
Fixed: Long standing bug (no idea how it managed to stay unnoticed forever) which would lead to some mood/trait parameters to reset on loading a save
Fixed: Fairly large memory leak each time a savegame is loaded
Fixed: A couple extremely improbable (and never reported) potential crashes
Fixed: Stone tables and seats could catch fire
Fixed: Fire SFX would keep playing when the game is paused and the camera away from fire
Fixed: Recently introduced issue between with tile placement and savegames (was fixed in a non documented patch earlier)
Fixed: Possible crash on exit if a combat map contains an electric grid item (power relay and such)
Fixed: Mood modifiers from laws were not applied consistently
Fixed: Enemy faction soldiers would spawn with sub-par statistics
Fixed: A problem which could, in theory, teleport NPC semi randomly when loading a save-game (that might be the one that eluded me for so long, finally!)
Fixed: The last built path-blocking object, if 2×2 (or more), wouldn’t update the map information correctly until something else is built, which could confuse survivors pathing
Fixed: The initial/starting depot (which initially contains more than it’s allowed to) was interfering with the information given in the storage menu
Fixed: A couple minor issues in the user interface
Fixed: People being “force-pushed” when they are building/removing something while positioned at a tile with a door
Fixed: Couple small issues with animation selection (during combat, and yes, large melee enemies still look derpy when fighting, will be fixed)
Fixed: Some more typos (please report any remaining typo, suggestions for better sentences/descriptions are welcome now)
Fixed: [Ctrl]+[Right Click] wouldn’t allow to attack incapacitated hostiles
So, this is technically the second part of the Expedition Overhaul, but it became much larger than anticipated. We have a lot of content to go over and not everything will be covered in the article. As usual, I will only list the major changes in this article. Please, look at the changelog for a complete list.
Enjoy! 🙂
TL;DR
Explore a whole new array of worlds, buildings and locations
Setup traps to kill your enemies without risking your life
Optional manual combats during expeditions (work in progress)
New event and questline systems
Get rid of enemy factions permanently
Manual Expedition Battles
The promised feature is finally here! I know, it took a while, but here we are. Simply put, you can decide to play combat encounters yourself instead of letting the dice rolls decide. When you select this option, a map will be generated. The nature of said map depends on the location. Right now, only the various factories, the lumber mill and the military base have dedicated buildings and/or layouts, the other locations use a generic layout (a single large building). Enemy selection depends on who (or what) is currently controlling the area. If it’s another faction, you’ll encounter their soldiers, otherwise it might be infected or some hostile fauna.
The battle will happen in a “time bubble”, your base and the rest of the game will be paused. You don’t have to worry about missing a trader or being attacked. Of course, your goal will be to kill everything hostile on the map or die trying as, right now, there are no way to retreat (it’s going to be added later on, don’t worry).
Also, ammunition handling is disabled during those fights. Simply put, both you and the enemies have infinite ammo. It’s unlikely to change as there are no simple, non cumbersome way to make that happen (both code and gameplay wise) . The whole system is still a bit bare-bone, the difficulty ain’t really scaled to its automatic counter part. The enemy placement is not really adapted to the task. And most locations are using the same map layout. Still, the base system is there and it goes without saying that the following patches will be improving the whole thing.
Improved World Generation
Bored of that big and repetitive world map? Well, me too! This is why we have new world presets, rivers, bridges and the ability to have multiple, smaller cities.
See this nice button in the top right? It opens the menu in the center. A menu from which you can choose between 3 (currently) different world map generators. And yes, as usual it can be modded. It’s not just cosmetic, for instance, the Dead Lands map will be mostly desert and scorched biomes while New Eden will have no hostile biomes at all. Rivers are not just there to be pretty either, they block the path of your expeditions (until you find the new amphibious vehicle) which will have to use a bridge to go on the other side.
The improvements don’t stop at the world map either. New buildings have been introduced (various factories) and locations like the industrial zone, the factory and the lumber mill can be settled into. Additionally the amount of buildings in non city/roadside maps is now proportional to the size of the Playable Area. In other words, gigantic maps no longer feel so empty. Finally, the placement of buildings in Village type maps looks more organic.
Quests and Dynamic Locations
Building upon the interactive travel events from the previous update, After The Collapse now includes the ability to build multi stage questlines. The first introduced quest is the new Bandit Convoy event (it’s repeatable). Occasionally, your expeditions will encounter a very well defended enemy convoy. The game will offer several methods to deal with the problem (or ignore it). Assuming you manage to intercept said convoy, one of 3 rewards will get unlocked, 2 of them are rare or expensive loot, and the last one will continue the quest further.
Of course I won’t spoil it further, but going through that quest several times will definitely highlight the abilities of the new system which will be extensively used in future patches and updates. If you’ve ever played Space Rangers or Frostpunk, this kind of short interactive stories should immediately feel very familiar.
Additionally, now that the world map is really dynamic, after unlocking the Radio technology, you’ll occasionally receive radio transmissions from various sources. It might be a trader in your vicinity, a group of civilian asking for help, and so on. Those events will generally add a time limited location on the world map for you to explore. Beside the time limit, the main difference between those locations and the usual ones is that exploring them will trigger a dialog box (like the one in the screenshot above) or a small quest.
Spikes and Traps
Due to popular demand (and completely unrelated to this update’s thematic), you can now build a variety of traps, from simple fall traps your survivors have to reload manually to automated metal spike traps powered by your generators.
Ever thought about building an underground lair filled with your creatures but wondered how to lead your enemies there? Well, with those new fall traps, any hostile stepping on one of them will fall down in the layer below giving a free meal to whatever is crawling there. It’s still a bit basic, and probably not very well balanced, but I think it makes for a fun addition to the defensive roster.
Stuff People Wanted Very Much ™
In no particular order:
Factions can now be wiped out. Yes, no more pesky factions stealing all your outposts. You will have to conquer or at least wipe ALL their outposts before you can attack their HQ, though. I’d love to say it’s a game design choice, but it’s more of a technical one at the moment.
A “Prison Guard” skill/job has been added, which should make it easier to keep those prisoners fed. The value for that skill has absolutely no relevance right now.
To give people more stuff to do in the very early game the “Advanced Carpentry” tech has been removed, Looms and Tanner no longer have a tech requirement and the rest has been put in more relevant techs in the main branch. Additionally you can craft your own (colored) caps and padded vests at the loom.
People with a large screen resolution will be very happy to know that you can choose how many resources you monitor in the “resource info panel” (at the very top of the screen). It’s in the general settings, pay attention to the help bubble if you change this setting mid-game.
Balance, UI and Improvements
Turrets have a way more useful right click info panel / encyclopedia page. Same goes for the new traps. Speaking of documentation, an article about the Pandemonium virus has been added to the Encyclopedia. It explains in details what it does, how to detect it, and how it’s transmitted. All of which might be very critical details for at least some of the scenarios.
The option to focus an expedition loot session on a particular category, which in practice adds stuff (that might not be there initially) to the location’s loot table, is still there, but using it “consumes” the building 4 times faster. So, yes, you can still loot a lumber mill for weaponry and ammo, but it’s gonna empty it much faster.
And of course there are tons of fixes, tweaks and minor improvements on top of all this.
Savegame & Mod Compatibility
This update is (surprisingly) compatible with save-games from previous versions. There are a couple limiting factors, though:
The Prison Guard job/skill will be disabled by default on all settlers. You’ll have to manually enable it.
In the previous version the Genetic Abominations nest (assuming they spawned) might be invisible or impossible to attack or both. It’s a bug that has been fixed here, but it’s a problem that cannot be undone.
Mods for previous versions (unless hopelessly outdated) should be compatible. The only thing is that any mod relying on the now defunct Advanced Carpentry tech might need a small update.
Closing Words
I’m very happy with this update. Between the manual combat system which now has solid foundations for me to build upon and the quest / dynamic location combo there’s a lot of new and pretty unique content that can be added in the future. Best thing is, it’s entirely data driven using elaborated text files. It’s now perfectly possible to add quests telling the player to visit several locations, build specific unique techs/items, and deal with problems going beyond the base building itself.
Speaking of quests, it’s likely that in a very nearby future, the more Sci-Fi elements of the tech tree (sentient robot building I’m looking at you right now) will only be unlocked through such quests which would make a lot more sense.
Of course, I need to warn you. It’s a very big update touching on a ton of things, as such, you can expect new and interesting bugs. They will be dealt with in the usual follow up hot-patches.
Speaking of bugs, now that most of the work for the 0.8x branch is done. I will take some time to focus on some of the few remaining long standing (but elusive and relatively uncommon) bugs and glaring omissions while improving the newly added systems described above.
Now, I’m going to take a week off because it would be nice to see the sun at least a couple times before September 🙂
Full Changelog
Balance: Removed “Advanced Carpentry” tech, moved associated items to early branches of the tech tree
Balance: Loom and Tanning stations no longer have a tech requirement
Balance: Hospital bed moved to medical tech (from defunct adv carpentry)
Balance: Pool table and large still moved to the construction tech (from defunct adv carpentry)
Balance: Interactive events during expeditions are slightly more frequent
Balance: During expeditions, focused search (for loot) consumes the “loot left” variable a lot faster (x4) than a standard search
Content: Combats during expeditions can now be done manually. This is still experimental and will be improved upon, but it’s there
Content: Some map locations have unique combat maps (factories, lumber mill) while others use more generic buildings
Content: Genetic Abominations’ main base got its own unique buildings for manual combat
Content: Expedition transports have a new “Noise” value which influences the chance to trigger hostile events
Content: New category of defensive items: Traps (which completes the already existing artisanal mines)
Content: Added several types/quality of spike traps, causing damage and bleeding (at various levels of the tech tree)
Content: Added trap door which will make someone fall in the layer below (various versions at different level of tech tree)
Content: Added recipes to build caps and padded vests to the loom (those are mostly decorative pieces of equipment)
Content: Shamblers and tribals are marked as part of the new “Infected” faction
Content: Lumber mill added to the list of locations you can settle in
Content: Factories & Industrial zones added to the list of locations you can settle in
Content: Multiple world presets making for more diverse world maps to visit
Content: Expeditions are moving slightly faster when on roads
Content: Added “Prison Guard” job/skill, used to determine who can feed and recruit prisoners
Content: Some scenarios have been edited to enforce specific city layouts
Content: Enemy factions can fully be destroyed by conquering all their outposts and then attacking their base directly
Content: Occasional (time limited) traders can spawn on the world map, send expeditions to them
Content: Sometimes, after radio tech, people might contact you and ask for help (besieged communities)
Content: Several new random travel events for your expeditions to deal with
Content: One long, multi staged travel event with multiple good and bad endings (repeatable)
Content: Special, time limited, locations may appear on the world map as the result of various events
Content: New amphibious transport for expeditions (can be acquired during a special event in the mid/late game)
Content: New map location : water tower, produces daily fresh water
Engine: Removed a bunch of no longer used textures and animation files (old versions of crabs, mantis, spiders)
Engine: Adding new job/skills no longer require to break savegame compatibility (the new skill will be toggled off, tho)
Graphics: Added and improved some of the base tiles
Graphics: Made world map lighting a bit higher for general visibility purpose
Graphics: Trees & rocks on world map are more representative of what the location should contain when settled in
Modding: New trap component which can be put on clutter
Modding: Added LUA hook for ClutterData.UpgradableTo
Modding: Added files (mapgen/worlds/*) to change the procedural generation of the world map
Modding: Added NoiseModifier and CanFly fields to TravelItem (change likelihood of some travelevents, and CanFly allows to fly over rivers)
Modding: Added “DeletePOI” (deletes the POI the group is located on), “MapEvent” (launch the selected game event), “Tech” (get a tech) results to travel events
Modding: Travel events can test for vehicle noise, any Skill/Stat (best qualified member), an item being installed on the vehicle, if the player has/lacks a tech
Modding: Travel events can be tagged as “Mature” (true/false), and can be put behind a “TechRequirement” for them to trigger
Modding: Travel event menu can handle any amount of choices instead of just 3 (will add a scroll bar if too many choices for the panel)
Modding: Game events can now spawn points of interest (EventSpawnPOI, see data/events/poi_*)
Modding: Point of interests can trigger travel events when being explored (replaces loot)
Modding: Point of interests can self destruct via timer
Modding: World map can be tied to scenarios (Scenario’s WorldMap field, “default” is the default map, duh)
Modding: Added “TrapImmune” (default false) info to NPC data files (so cars or flyers don’t fall into traps)
Modding: Factions can have distinctly looking HQ (by using the FactionHQ true/false POI field)
ProcGen: The world map can now contain rivers and lakes of various sizes and shapes
ProcGen: Many new internal parameters when generating world maps (city size/spacing/count, biomes, brigdes, roads, custom locations)
ProcGen: New map buildings: wood and coal processing factories, recycling factory
ProcGen: “Random” building placement mode (used in villages, outside city and some underground locations) has been improved
ProcGen: More diversity when it comes to floor types in buildings
ProcGen: In several map types (city & roadside layouts excluded), the total amount of buildings now depends on the map size
Steam: Moved/renamed the achievement previously associated with Advanced Carpentry to Manufacturing
Steam: Added achievement for breaching a secret military bunker
Steam: Added achievement for finding the amphibious transport
Steam: Added achievement for wiping out another faction
UI: Input value for factory recipes no longer capped to 999 items (4millions instead)
UI: Information panel / encyclopedia page about placeable objects indicates if they block path or not
UI: Tweaked world map menu to allow for the selection of the different world presets
UI: Panel informing the player that one of their outpost was attacked/stolen got a button to center the map on the location
UI: Tweaks to pharmacy select screen (people sorted by name, animals show ownership)
UI: The amount of items in the resource panel at the top of the screen can be changed in the game settings
UI: Right click info menu has specific information regarding traps
UI: Right click info menu gives more detailed information about turrets and interactive items (beds, recreation)
UI: Less wasted space in the inventory panel of survivors
UI: Added article about Pandemonium virus to encyclopedia
UI: Improved French translation, courtesy of Piebleu
Fixed: Minor issue when an agent is changing layer / using stairs which could cause hostiles to shoot at a location the agent is no longer at
Fixed: Bug that could cause barracks in the military base map to spawn without the intended rooms
Fixed: Not all zombie and giant crab variants would be counted toward their respective achievements
Fixed: Light sources not deleted when a world map is being generated again by the player
Fixed: Tribals would sometimes incorrectly be spawned as part of the bandit faction
Fixed: When the UI scale is not set to 1:1 (default), clicking/dragging on the minimap wouldn’t work as expected
Fixed: If an expedition is clicked just after loading a savegame while the game has been kept paused, it would cause a crash
Fixed: Alignement of light sources after switching to map mode while the game is paused
Fixed: Some of the “ambush” monsters located in buildings wouldn’t be animated properly until the room is explored by the player
Fixed: Some items supposed to spawn outside of a building could occasionally spawn inside instead
Fixed: Escaped prisoner event could make the escapees spawn in a non valid tile (within a wall)
Fixed: Missing ammo info indicator in some places
Fixed: minor issues in factory queue
Fixed: Survivors could get stuck if they try to retrieve (non weightless) ammo when their inventory is full
Fixed: Dead bodies couldn’t be selected anymore (which was a problem with things you can butcher)
Fixed: Regression bug that was preventing the user from installing artifacts/backpacks from their individual menu
Fixed: Heavy CPU spike when having a lot of wandering pets and placing a pasture in a location they can’t access
Fixed: Possible crash tied to emergency shelters
Fixed: Abominations’ HQ wouldn’t properly create or delete itself when the late game event is triggered (regression bug in 0.8.3)
Fixed: The ‘action’ menu for expeditions wouldn’t always update properly when the expedition arrives at a destination (if the expedition is kept selected)
Fixed: The pause and encyclopedia menus were not keeping track of the active pause and would reset it when closed
Fixed: Rain not providing enough water to farms anymore
Fixed: The “Raze” job could, under a very specific set of circumstances I’ve yet to replicate, crash the game. The job will just be canceled instead.
Fixed: Survivors would occasionally try to dispose of the body of things which are bound to disappear within seconds (dead giant spiders for instance)
Fixed: Code typo which could lead to subpar world map generation and building placement
Fixed: A location could change hand while the player is attacking it, which could lead to unexpected declarations of war
Fixed: (Modding) MainBasePoI field in factions’ data would be ignored
As explained in my previous devlog, this update (and the next) is focusing on the expeditions. A very short summary would be that we can now manage multiple expeditions at once. Of course, as with all major updates, it runs a lot deeper than that. As usual, this article will focus on the main changes while you can find a complete changelog at the very end. Without further ado let’s get to it.
Enjoy!
Expedition Overhaul
The city map and expeditions are no longer completely abstracted. Both became tangible things connected to the game world. To explain that in simpler terms, you are now able to given direct orders to your expeditions, tell them to move to wherever you want them to, and change you mind mid travel. You can move them on the world map like you would move a survivor in combat mode. You can loot or attack multiple locations with the same expedition and decide when you want them to come back home.
More importantly, you’re no longer permanently limited to run a single expedition at a time. Unlocking specific technologies will increase the maximum amount of expeditions you can run simultaneously to a maximum of 4 in a vanilla game. I made a lot of adjustments to the UI and help screens to make the transition as smooth as possible. For instance, you can track the status of each expedition in the optional panel on the right side of the screen (can be toggled on/off in the filters), clicking one panel will center the screen on the expedition or its garage if it’s not off map.
The Garage building
This new building is pretty much the heart of this update. Your first garage is unlocked with the Exploration technology and will allow you to setup and manage one expedition. Other technologies will permit you to build more garages for more simultaneous expeditions (radio, logistics and garage maintenance).
Garages have to be built on the surface, in a spot from which a vehicle can path to the border of the game map. This is where you can assign a vehicle, people and items to a specific expedition. New vehicles can be found by exploring specific location on the map and from research. Items, right now, can only be found while exploring the city. Vehicles and items will determine how many people you can bring with you, your movement speed and can also influence how good will be your group at given tasks.
Once satisfied with your choices, you can launch the expedition. The selected survivors will hop in the car, leaving any useless cargo behind (and releasing their claim on any personal bedroom or pet). The car will exit the game map and will then be available on the world map. From there, you’ll be able to order it around, tell the expedition to path to any point of interest, attack hostile locations, loot or take control of others.
Loot Management
It’s now possible to order your expeditions to loot a location until it’s empty or until their cargo hold is full. If you change your mind, you can order your expedition to stop the looting session at any time. To recover the cargo found during your looting session(s), you’ll have to manually bring the expedition back home.
You can also decide to get rid of loot you don’t want to make room for more useful stuff. It means that don’t need to go back home each time you collected too many stones. To do so, simply open the expedition’s cargo screen, click on the item you don’t want and a menu will appear allowing you to select how many units you want to get rid of. The menu is still a bit ugly, but I’ll get that fixed soon.
Important Changes
Of course I had to tweak some features to work with this new system. Here are the most important points you should be made aware of:
The whole expedition tech tree has been changed. Techs to increase movement speed, range or capacity have been scrapped. Instead you’ll get techs to repair better vehicles than your default car. The best cars can only be found by exploring specific locations.
Expeditions can be renamed like you would for a survivor: by clicking on their name in their associated panel.
People you rescue while looting a location will automatically be sent to you base. You no longer need to wait for your expedition to come back home, instead a “recruitment” event will popup roughly 12 hours after your expedition is done with the looting.
There is no longer a limit to how far an expedition can travel to. Once you can send your first expedition, the whole map is available to you. It might just take a while for your guys to travel, especially with the default car. In the same spirit, the amount of people you can bring is only determined by the vehicle you’ll be using. Same goes for the cargo space.
Taking over a production center will no longer “consume” the expedition. Instead, you’ll be asked to select people who are still in your base. Once the repairs are over, the expedition will be available again and ready to go do something else.
It is now possible to conduct diplomacy with other factions early (before Radio) by sending an expedition to their headquarter and opening diplomatic channels.
Interactive Events
I’m particularly proud of this one and you’ll see a lot more of it in the future. While traveling, expeditions will occasionally encounter situations requiring your input. They might have found something worth investigating, been attacked by bandits, and so on.
You’ll be offered different options with different outcomes. Each option will generally be testing a particular statistic tied to the expedition. A positive outcome might give you loot or a bonus while a failure might damage or even kill some of your people. Once the situation has been resolved in a way or another, the group will continue on its merry way.
This system replaces completely the old non-interactive travel events.
AI Tweaks and Fixes
I also fixed several minor issues with the survivors’ AI. Most notably, there was a problem that if something is being constructed next to a depot, it could temporarily prevent people from accessing it, causing any survivor trying to do so to freeze in place. Survivors are also much better at recognizing that an order has been canceled or is not longer possible to complete: instead of pathing all the way toward the no-longer-relevant-destination they will switch to something more productive.
Savegame & Mod Compatibility
This version is not compatible with previous save-games. If you want to finish your game, you can roll back to the previous version as usual (right click on ATC in steam, properties / beta tab). Most existing mods should be compatible, including those adding or altering city locations. Mods altering expeditions or adding travel events are not compatible but shouldn’t cause any major issue.
Closing Words
So this is the first part of the expedition overhaul. It’s setting up solid foundations for the more content oriented “Part 2”. Switching to a proper “scene” to handle the city as a whole instead of relying on smokes & mirrors took a while, and made me rewrite things I never thought I would need to, but I’m pretty happy with the end result. A lot and I really mean A LOT of new content can now be added to this part of the game.
Speaking of new content, Part 2 will add the ability to manually handle most combat related stuff during expeditions. It’ll also add new things to interact with on the map like travelers, merchants, other factions’ expeditions and roaming beasts. It will also add new terrains (rivers, lakes, chokepoints) alongside new items and events to form a more interesting and cohesive experience.
In any case I hope you’ll enjoy this update, because it was a real pain to write 😀
Cheers!
Full Changelog
AI: People are better at detecting that their job target has been destroyed and will no longer travel all the way over something that no longer exists
AI: People are better at detecting that a raze order has been canceled and will stop earlier
AI: Minor optimizations to the job dispatcher
Balance: Marked clothing items as rare to make them less common during trading
Balance: Due to the more permanent nature of expeditions, members will ‘unclaim’ their private room(s) when leaving
Balance: Radio and Logistic techs both allow you to build an additional garage (see below)
Balance: Made sure that city locations with high tier loot (military base, police station) are always at least somewhat defended
Content: First part of the expedition overhaul (multiple groups, new UI, equipment and transports)
Content: New garage building to manage individual expedition settings
Content: Added several new “travel items” which are used to improve an expeditions’ performances
Content: Loot in an expedition’s cargo space can be destroyed to make room for more important stuff
Content: New trade/loot tables and technologies to integrate those new items into the game
Content: New transports for expeditions can be found through technologies, some of which can only be found during expeditions.
Content: Reworked the expedition tech tree to accommodate the new changes
Content: Looting action for expeditions can be run “until the cargo is full / place is empty”
Content: Diplomacy can be conducted before the radio technology by sending an expedition to another faction’s main base
Content: Random events during expeditions are interactive now, giving you control on how to deal with the situation
Content: Added “Police Station” to the list of explorable map locations
Engine: Added ability to cap the spawn of hostiles with RaiderAI, especially useful in Last Stand scenario (settings.json -> RaiderAICap = max number)
Engine: Reworked the save/load logic and format to accommodate the changes (+ some future proofing)
Engine: Initial loading time very slightly reduced (more parallelism)
Engine: Switch from/to world map is now instant
Modding: Removed “CanDrop” and “Tradable” from item data, as it was a duplicate of the “DontDrop” and “NeverTrade” tags. Adjusted all items accordingly.
Modding: Cleaned up base files of outdated fields
Modding: Clutter with a MaxCount per map, can have that count changed via techs (see garage & expedition tech tree)
Modding: Techs are used to unlock new transports for expeditions (see garage & expedition tech tree)
Modding: Filters used for expeditions loot (and pharmacy) got the new WantedName field: overrides all Allow/Deny. Used to force a particular item in the loot table.
Modding: Added “ForceHostility” field to map POIs (the mapgen will use this to override the tile’s hostility if it’s lower than the value)
Modding: New interactive travel events can added/customized (see files data/travelevents)
UI: Right clicking items’ checkbox in the depot menu will display their associated info screen
UI: Added new menus to handle the expeditions from the world map
UI: Expedition message log is kept when saving/loading a savegame
UI: Added scrollbar to the optional ‘research completed’ panel
UI: Added widget to the right side of the screen to display the status of each active expedition/garage (can be toggled on/off in Filters)
UI: Title and text in the recruitment menu is context sensitive (recognizing if from an expedition, escaped prisoners or simple visitors)
UI: Added specific item info screen for the new expedition related items
UI: Updated help screens and the encyclopedia article about expeditions
UI: Pressing the “go to map layer X” shortcuts is now working even from the world map
Fixed: Bow from tribals, if used, could propagate pandemonium infection to unintended target. The bow can no longer drop.
Fixed: The panel shown when you research a tech, find it in an expedition, or find it in loot always had the same title, which might have been confusing
Fixed: Texture for settlers in some menus could be outdated (still wearing an armor they no longer have and so on)
Fixed: When renaming a survivor or animal (or expedition, now) pressing the WASD would still move the camera around
Fixed: Potential crash if one of the survivors is exiting the map (for an expedition) while still being selected
Fixed: Potential crash on the save/load screen if a savegame from a NEWER version is present in the folder
Fixed: In some underground scenarios, “surface events” could still happen before the player breaches the surface (for good this time, my bad)
Fixed: Multiple uncommon/rare issues on the world map
Fixed: Filter menu panel was slightly too short to fit all elements
Fixed: the ‘Escaped Prisoners’ event would display an useless dialog box below the message from the faction.
Fixed: Annoying bug where settlers would seem locked trying to get to a depot when something is being built at the spot they’d use to drop items in said depot
Long time not seen! My apologies for the lack of news on the official website and, more generally, the lack of store-page posts outside of game releases. The first two months of 2021 have sadly been cannibalized by family and personal reasons which I’m not going bother you with. I’m not looking for an excuse, just know it was unavoidable and let’s leave it at that. When forced to make a choice between the two, I always favor writing the game itself over community interactions . As such, those interactions were more limited than I would want them to, but that’s life. It might continue for a while. The best way to catch me is through the discord channel if need be. Don’t worry, I do still get, read, and fix anything related to crash/bug reports as long as they go through the established methods.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the game proper, that’s why we’re all here after all.
The major 0.8.2 update has just been released. Contrary to 0.8.1 which was mostly putting the finishing touches on 0.8.0, it’s a big chunky one hinting at what I envision the game to be when we reach 1.0. Without further delay, let’s dive in the new features.
So, this is the last large content update for the 0.7 branch (minor bug fixing patches will still be released as need be). I will be moving toward 0.8 which will focus on procedural generation, the worldmap, and the game outside of the base building part proper.
In any case, this last update both redesign and add tons of content all over an expanded tech tree. I will go over the main changes in this article, but for a complete list, please refer to the changelog at the end of this article.
This is a new major content update for After The Collapse. I added three entirely new interlocked features, while improving the graphics, user interface, AI, balance, gameplay and fixing (most) bugs that have been reported to us. Also it seems that I have forgotten about posting last update on this very website, I’m very sorry about that. You can refer to this post on steam for a summary.
It’s going to be a long ride, so let’s get started. I’m only going over the more notable changes. There are plenty of other improvements you can find in the full, 100 item long, change-log at the bottom of this very article. Read More …
