Version/0.9.722

Previous Version: Version/0.8.657 Released on: 16 December 2014

Next Version: Version/0.10.785 Released on: 23 April 2015

Released on: 19 February 2015

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Alpha 9 is out! This time we’ve added alcohol, drunkenness, binges, hangovers, multiple sculpture types with generated art based on historical events, personal shields for melee fighters, and dozens of smaller improvements. A full change list is at the end of this post.

If you own the game, you can get Alpha 9 by re-downloading from the link you used before (it is a permanent link and always has the newest version). You should also get an update email from us. Anyone still having trouble should start at this thread.

Also note that this build will not load old savegames or old worlds, so please don’t try to load these in the new version. They’ll probably just crash the game.

4:21 EST: I fixed a bug with forbidding and sculptures just two hours after initial release and hotfixed the build to Alpha9b. If you already got it, please re-download. Alpha 9 saves won’t be affected.

Core Release

Alcohol

• Added hops growing, beer brewing, beer drinking, inebriated thoughts and ability impacts
• Added special ‘binge’ mental breaks
• Added teetotaler and chemical fascination traits
• Added hangovers

Tales and Art

• There are now three tiers of sculpture: small, large, and grand. Grand sculptures are 2×2 cells.
• Sculptures now have generated descriptions of what they depict.
• Sculptures will depict events that happened earlier in a colony’s life, include: killings, drunkenness,vomiting, landing in drop pods, artwork created, struck ore, person captured, person recruited, animal hunted, surgery done, someone was on fire, someone went psychotic, someone gave up
• High-quality weapons have art engraved into them.
• All weapons now have quality levels, including guns and bows.

Age

• Old characters have gray hair and more fleshed-out old age illnesses.
• Old characters tend to spawn with higher skills.
• Since people don’t age in cryptosleep, characters now have both chronolotical age and biological age. Even animals and mechanoids have ages.
• Dates are now relative to specific years. The game starts in 5500.

New Stuff

• Personal shields added. These one-person shields block a certain amount of damage from ranged attacks and also prevent shooting out. Great for melee fighters.
• Artillery shells are now needed by artillery cannons. Shells on the ground can explode. Siegers will come with shells to use to bombard you. Shells can be crafted at the machining table.
• Added deterioration: items left outside for a very long time will deteriorate and eventually crumble away.
• Surgery can fail now, sometimes catastrophically. Failure chance is related to the surgeon’s medical skill and the quality of the medicine.
• You can now rescue incapacitated neutral people and heal them. Their faction will be appreciative.
• Guns now have quality levels which affect accuracy.
• Added Heavy SMG
• Added psychic foil helmet
• Added corn and rice crops.
• Vomiting: Some diseases, drunkenness, cryptosleep sickness, and hangovers now cause people to vomit.
• People can now get food poisoning. Bad cooks are more likely to accidentally poison meals.
• Game now records total real playtime per colony.
• Added ‘pause on load game’ option.
• Many new sound effects from Alistair Lindsay for UI, work, and combat.

Misc Improvements

• Deep optimization on various systems – especially AI. This should make big colonies run much more smoothly.
• Added bad thought for wearing tattered clothes.
• Apparel becomes damaged when owner dies from violence.
• Apparel actually takes the damage it absorbs as armor.
• Apparel wears out over very long periods of use.
• Uranium ore now appears as a minable natural rock.
• Colonists will now go to extinguish nearby fires even if someone else is already coming to do it.
• Cryptosleep caskets are now sealed, come with warnings, and can contain deadly ancient defenders.
• Reworked the ‘do until you have X’ option on bills; it now works for more bills and shows the number you currently have.
• Eating now takes priority even over emergency work (doctoring, firefighting) if a colonist is starving.
• Colonists, when hauling to stockpiles, always haul the max amount they can carry, and drop the extra nearby if the target cell can’t hold it all.
• Reworked ship takeoff sequence into a proper whiteout with nice credits.
• Player can no longer magically toggle power on any item. Rather, you designate power to be toggled and the colonists go do it.
• Temperature now equalizes through both walls and roof/floor.
• Lengthened day from 20,000 to 24,000 ticks. Shortened month to 12 days.
• Reworked auto-tutor to rely more on passive alerts and less on in-your-face interrupting modal dialogs.
• Colonists are now bothered by people walking around inside the room while they sleep.
• People newly woken from cryptosleep have cryptosleep sickness for a while.
• Wind varies over time (not just with weather changes), and so will the power output of wind turbines.
• Fonts are now nicely antialiased.
• Tons of other refinements, rebalancings, and bugfixes.

Alpha 9C & Alpha 9D

I’ve just updated the game to Alpha9c. (UPDATE: Now Alpha9d is up.)

Please delete your old installed game, download the new build from your existing download link, and install it to a clean empty folder.

All save games from Alpha 9 will still be playable and mod compatibility shouldn’t be affected.

Alpha 9C Changes

• Fixed a black-screen-on-startup bug when playing with certain translations.
• Fixed a bug that caused savegames to become unloadable.
• Fixed a bug that caused binging people to never eat or sleep, leading to death.
• Balance: Heaters and coolers are somewhat more powerful to match new heat loss mechanics.
• Balance: Wind turbines are now much more powerful.
• Balance: Adjusted frequency of tales so your statues aren’t all of people hunting and vomiting.
• Updated translation content.

Alpha 9D Changes

• Fixed probability calculations so the game won’t constantly spam insane animals any more.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Graphic_Collections loading mod content.
• Raiders will no longer eat from players’ nutrient paste dispensers.

Alpha 9E

I’ve released a hotfix to Alpha 9, Alpha9e, that rebalances a few things and fixes a few issues. This is build 0.9.727.

You won’t receive an email for this hotfix as we don’t want to spam people. The download link is the same one you got all other versions of the game from. Your personal download link never changes and always gives the latest version.

You can update by deleting your old installed game, downloading the new build from your existing download link, and installing it to a clean empty folder.

If you need help with your download please email ludeonhelp@gmail.com.

All save games from Alpha 9 will still be playable and mod compatibility shouldn’t be affected.

Changes

• Reduced room temperature equalization rates.
• Room walls that are two or more cells thick now equalize temperature slower.
• Balanced sieges to be slightly weaker.
• Various tuning adjustments to several thought mood effects.
• Removed “buildings need power” alert as it is annoying to see it when a power switch is off.
• Fixed a bug that corrupts savegames if you sell a statue that is marked to be installed.
• While firefighting, colonists will now fight any fire they walk into.
• Fixed a bug that caused non-prisoner beds to be set as prisoner beds on load.
• Fixed a bug that froze wounded colonist prisoners if they were marked to get doctor care.
• Fixed a bug that prevented prisoners from using nutrient paste dispensers in their cells.
• Fixed a bug that caused temperatures indoors to sometimes become NaN (not a number).
• Fixed a rare bug that prevented running a game that saved with some corrupted work priorities data.