REVISION 35 UP: ENOLA BRIMBLE'S FINE DAY IN WHICH EVERYTHING ISN'T GOING TO EXPLODE

I just uploaded a r34c video.

KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

Seriously, though, good work, keep them coming. I'll be making that r35 video sooner than expected, I guess.

Question: Do Giant Beetles now spawn in the Temperate Colorado biome now? I and some others have seen colonists hauling Beetle Meat back to the stockpile, despite the lack of actual beetle sightings.

*edit* Mystery solved! I witnessed one of my soldiers shooting and killing a (relatively) small beetle, the size of a Cocker Spaniel. I shall have to pay closer attention to the local fauna.

*edit* Looks like someone in the office needs their own memory utility code fixed:

 

They release in the late teens every month, this one was actually a little 'late'

Will have my patch notes thoughts and playthrough videos every Sunday from now on

 

This was more or less on time, if you consider a week off for Christmas and New Year's hangovers.

 

Aye, i'd set up a new schedule and actually planned for this Sunday to be the first week, expected a week delay so this was a few days early - woo

I love how things have gotten 2 dust increases in the past 2 months

 

I am definitely noticing the extra polish on r35 - I played all the way through to day 8, with 30something colonists, with no slowdowns, hitches, script errors, or glitches. I was able to save four times, and successfully load the most recent save. Soldiers were responsive, jobs were handled efficiently, and the game tick and framerate stayed solid throughout. There was no noticeable stutter when opening menus, and events like the supply drop and favours seemed to function as intended. A very good job, everything is much more solid.

 

Same experience as Alephred. I got up to day 11 with about 28 or so colonists after saving and loading a few times with no crashes. I haven't noticed anything funky yet.

Also, has cult activity been turned way down, or is it me?

 

Three (game) days in; looks good so far.

Trying to see what qualities a painting has is giving the popup MODULE INACCESSIBLE.

 

Everything is lots and lots and lots more solid. The job effecencies mean stockpiles fill up a lot quicker, because everyone has more time to haul a little. I like that a lot. Much fewer random commodities lying spread halfway across the map.

I think you might have been a bit zealous in de-clumping ore nodes in the tropical biome. 3 quick games now I've had to restart because there's no ore within any distance, so no rhyolite, so no stone anything. Makes getting off the ground a little more difficult. 4th game I figured, eh, screw it, and just continued. It's easily possible with the starting ressources + supply drops, but it does involve a bit of waiting.

I notice cult activity is *way* down. If that's just because people naturally have less ability to talk at this stage, that's neat, because it'll creep back in with more effencient colonies. Which is actually kind of a neat feature, if intended, given that it means people can spend more time focusing on building up the colony and then the cults spring up automatically once things are going very well. Super nifty. Still, no clawbulbs, no talks, no Extolling The Maddening Horrors Of The Briny Depths even at day 11 or 12.

The new mines are useful, but there's kind of an unintended side-problem in that my stockpiles slowly fill with peat. Great for industrial dreams about dynamics to come, less useful now. Also when people are "in" the mine, their pickaxes hover eerily in the air over the entrance. Spooky stuff.

DId something happen to the bandit spawns? In my most recent game I had 5 at day 7, 6 at day 8, 5 again at day 9. I guess they really, really want access to the peat stores... Which reminds me - is there any way to make rally points more obvious? They're very easily hidden under trees, next to buildings and the "fill" into the background almost too easily. When you have multiple squads, hunting them down is a bit of a hassle if you want to cancel rally jobs.

Worried about the naturalist movement to work crews. Mine get stuck doing non-cancellable jobs like cleaning terrain or flattening terrain. Either I have to subdue my incessant urge to rid the world of grass, or my naturalists will tend it all instead of rooting around it for dread idols. Can something be done?

The vacuum chamber is a thing of beauty.

Just hung up a lot of paintings in a game that's going as I write this - Lower class ones give me "Module inaccessible" as well. One placed in a kitchen did not, instead becoming unclickable. THE WEIRD THING IS: the ones labelled "Module Inaccessible" in big red text is clickable, and the description generate (inside of a house, horrific fish person corpse). The one without the big red text still has people admiring it, but no way to click or interact with it by me. Same holds true for middle class and upper class paintings (abstract subject on airsickness, hah)

Oh, and as I was testing that, I got a scripting error about "pointReachable: Object not tracked".

Verdict: Way, way smoother gameplay all in all, industry a lot better, people more productive, paintings stuck in nebolous dimensions.

Edit: Loaded day 7 save. Crashed. Tried loading again. Worked fine.

Incredibly tiny design thing: The loading screen/menu flag is very pretty. Maybe resize the "Loading..." box to fit inside the gear-shaped circular hole of the flag?

Edit-edit: Okay now I'm confused. After reloading, the lower class paintings no longer display "Module Inaccessible" when hovered over, because they've become completely non-interactive.

But what they *do* do is act like doors. My colonies are walking into my buildings through the paintings.

I re-iterate my "Productivity way up, pastel colors act as doorways into the beyond" statement.

 

Impressions of the new build.

Probably the most stable and workable of the builds thus so far. Colonists rarely get stuck in modules or hung up while burying a corpse in the graveyard (though it still happens occasionally). Cult activity is way down, almost a bit too much, but as mentioned above this is probably because people spend less time gossiping (idle hands are Quag'garoth's playthings!). However, bandit activity is too random and can be ridiculous at times; there were 3 bandit raids against my colony over the course of 2 days each consisting of 5 individuals and there was a 4 individual bandit raid against me on day 2 (I thought it was only supposed to be 3 on the second day, and only maybe)! It seems as though the chances of getting unusual colonists during immigration (footsoldiers, NCOs, naturalists, and upper class) has gone down, though it just may be because there are fewer immigration events.

One thing I noticed is that colonists do not drink. Ever. Don't bother building a brewery until this is addressed. The reduced cultist activity kind of makes it pointless anyhow. Also, vicars rarely preach/prey at the chapel even when they have nothing else to do; in previous builds they would more or less constantly preach when not eating, sleeping, etc. if only workshop jobs were enabled (and that's kind of the point, isn't it?).

Food is still a bit of a problem once your colony hits a population of 30 or thereabouts, even in the New Sogwood. A single farm plot can only produce 18 units of food and it takes 2-3 days until it's ready for harvest (assuming it is constantly tended). Four maximum-sized plots require around 8-10 full-time farmers plus a kitchen staffed by 5-6 colonists; this will only produce, at best, 28 units of food per day (assuming fishpeople or clawbulbs don't disrupt things, which they usually do). Don't forget that the food needs to be hauled back and forth as well. I've tried simply letting every work crew farm and it also works, but all other activities drag to a nearly a halt. Thus well over half your colony needs to be focused on growing food and cooking just to keep up with the demand. This makes it difficult to establish a broad range of workshops necessary to build fancier items and modules since so many of your workers are busy trying to stave off starvation; one thing that kind of works is requesting a lot of overseers and staffing all the workshops with single artisans while leaving the majority of the lower class to work the farms and kitchen. That said, there really needs to be a food production overall (or a clearer strategy presented). Oh, and apparently colonists think bricks count as food since they keep depositing them in food only stockpiles; I guess they take the process of 'baking' bricks too literally.

Also, what the heck is sugarloaf for? It counts as uncooked food but there's nothing further you can do with it. Don't bother with sugarcane in New Sogwood for now since it can only be used to produce booze (currently useless) and sugarloaf (cannot cook).

I've also experienced a "pointReachable: Object not tracked" error; when I tried to save and reload the game from this it just crashed.

 

The .dmp file was empty.

Just tried reloading it and it successfully loaded, albeit with the pointReachable: xxxxxxxx object not tracked repeating script error. You actually may have already addressed the problem in this build.

 

My workaround for this is to reissue the rally order on open terrain, then cancel the new-visible rally point.

 

Tried to save, I now have an 0xc0000005. The resulting save file was corrupted, zip-wise.

 

Should be in that zip?

 

I encountered another "pointReachable: Object not tracked" repeating error. I could actually keep playing the game but I would have to pause, close the error window so I could interact with the game, then unpause to let the game continue. Most irritating. When I tried to load the game I actually got a windows runtime error and it crashed (hence the lack of a dmp file?). Shame to, because it was a truly splendid colony!

I also noticed something new(?) that I'm 95% certain isn't a bug. When a bandit dies on a farm plot, Malfeasant Clawbulb springs up where they fell. Apparently cultist aren't the only thing that spread those things!

 

I agree with the above sentiments, the builds alot more solid now. In order to try and force a crash I got as many people as possible onto the colony, and I only started seeing issues around the 9th day with over 40 people. At that level every now and again something takes awhile to 'load' (Like build order pop ups etc), had some near crashes and was finally able to crash it when I went to save.

Good times.

 

Perhaps the workcrew utilisation counter could be split into at least two categories? Civilian, military/militia, specialists? The jobs they will accept differ...