Version/0.5.492

This version was released on: July 4th, 2014

We’re back with another alpha of RimWorld! Alpha 5 brings on lots of juicy new features and improvements. You can follow our day-to-day work on the changelog.

If you own the game, you should get an update email from us. You can also get Alpha 5 by re-downloading from the link you used before (it is a permanent link and always has the newest version). Anyone still having trouble should start at this thread.

Also note that this build will not load old savegames, so keep your old install separate if you want to finish an Alpha 4 colony.

Core Release

• Sieges added. Raiders will now sometimes besiege the colony by setting up a fortified position nearby and bombarding you until you die or come out to break the siege. Of course this also means there are now researchable and buildable mortar weapons – both explosive and incendiary.
• Escape ship added. You can now, at great cost, build a ship to escape the planet if you wish.
• Crashed ancient ship part incident added. Sometimes this bad boy will crash-land nearby and start emitting an ever-increasing psychic drone that slowly drives colonists insane. Attack it to make it stop, but beware its defenses.
• New mechanoid type added – the scyther.
• Many new sound effects from the illustrious Alistair Lindsay.
• A new gear system allows changing out of clothing. Clothing now has basic effects, like reducing damage or movement speed.
• There is now an info card you can view for most things in the game. For weapons, it shows statistics about damage, accuracy, and so on. For animals, it displays health, damage, meat amounts. Lots of other things can be inspected as well.
• A game history tracker records the history of your colony in graphs of wealth, population, and happiness, as well as recording individual important events.
• Game history is now uploaded automatically to our servers after an opt-in prompt is agreed to. This uploads your game history – the same one you see on your history graph – to us to help us balance future versions.
• More translations added (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, others) and existing translations updated.
• Language can now be switched by clicking the flag on the main game screen.
• Lots of other small improvements.

Alpha 5 Balance/Hotfix

You all knew a hotfix was coming! It’s like a tradition now!

The good thing is that this isn’t a bug hotfix, but a balance one. I’d been hearing a lot of reports that the global psychic drone event – causing -25 to mood – was harming play. So until I can rebalance it, it’s disabled in Alpha5b. The crashed ship part event seen in the release video is still present.

To update, you just have to change one number in one file:

Open Notepad or some other text editor.

With Notepad, open [YourRimWorldFolder]/Mods/Core/Defs/IncidentDefs/BaseIncidents.xml, and find this text:

<IncidentDef>
<defName>PsychicDrone</defName>
<workerClass>IncidentWorker_PsychicDrone</workerClass>
<chance>1.2</chance>
<minRefireDays>8</minRefireDays>
<favorability>Bad</favorability>
</IncidentDef>

Set <chance>1.2</chance> to <chance>0</chance>.

Or, you can re-download the game from your old link.

I’ll be reworking this event in future versions.

Alpha 5C (Silent Hotfix)

Released on: July 7, 2014

Changes

• Long eclipses no longer kill all the grass on the map

Alpha 5D

Released on: July 14, 2014

Changes

• No significant changes other than folder name change