Update 5 for Atomic Society available now!
This is the big patch that we've been working on for ages. It now introduces a saving and loading feature, so you can now keep all the post-apocalyptic cities you build.
It also introduces a big new plague mechanic, making rotting corpses a big risk to keep around your town, a new crematory building to deal with the bodies, and a wide array of smaller tweaks, improvements and fixes that generally improve the core gameplay.
We've spent a lot of time polishing and bug-testing this version and hope our intrepid pre-alpha customers enjoy it over the Christmas period! If you're interested in supporting the game this early, and want to mess around with this new patch, you can get your copy here. Feedback always welcome!
There's more to come though in the near future.
I'm applying the finishing touches to a new dev blog, I'll be posting that here of course. I'm also working on 2 brand new videos. One is a general progress overview of the pre-alpha. The other is a more typical trailer. The game looks quite a bit better in motion that it did in the old trailers I filmed way back in February so I'm looking forward to sharing these new vids as soon as they're ready.
Work has already stated on the new version 6, which will come in the new year on our continuing voyage to steadily expand and improve the game ready for Early Access in 2017. I want there to be a good chunk of content and social and moral issues to handle before we move beyond this "pre-alpha" stage.
Here's the full Update 5 patch notes:
- You can now save your game! You can even load it as well. Saving can take a while with big cities but it does work. We will reduce saving times for big towns in the future.
- You can now delete resources from your storehouse if for some reason it is full and stuffed with things you don't want. Look for the bomb icon on the storehouse menu.
- Big performance increases. We optimised the game in many ways and turning up the speed no longer impacts performance. In general the game should run better for people on mid-range PCs. We have seen increases of 20-30fps.
- A crematory building has been added. If you build it, it will collect and dispose of dead bodies. Make sure you build enough of them though because...
- Plague and virus mechanic added. There is now a randomised virus element to the game. Dead bodies now decompose if not collected and can spread the "plague" to other citizens. The plague is incurable so you better contain it.
- Floodplains map has been added. This is a challenging level due to its narrow causeways and not recommended for first time players.
- Employment is a lot simpler now. Auto-Employ is now a toggle. Turn it on and the building will hire replacement workers as it needs them.
- Improved UI throughout the game. Almost every element has been touched up in some way. There is also a new tab called "users" that shows who is using it in a more informative way.
- Credits have been added to the game. Alongside the names of the team, credits also show the Special Edition customers who have given us their name to date (part of their reward). If you bought a Special Edition version of the game and your name is not on the credits yet please let me know and it will be added in the next version.
- Made it easier to tell how someone died. You can now right click on a dead body and see their cause of death.
- Easier to tell where you can place a building. We have improved the visual for placing buildings to make it more obvious.
- Stronger law enforcement (if you want it). You can now build multiple town halls, letting you employ more law enforcers.
- Smoother camera controls. Camera control has been improved. The camera now moves at different speeds according to its height (faster high up, slower low down).
- Many, many balance tweaks. Building a big city will require re-learning what you know to a degree.
- Added a "contact us" button to the title screen. Click on that to see a list of ways to send us a message if you ever need to. Also added a button to the saving and loading menu to make it easier to send us your save game if you do find a bug.
- Your town leader now starts with more resources to help you get started.
- Tutorial text updated somewhat. Added a new goal for expert players to the end of it.
- The costs for converting ruins as you deduct salvage from them have been re-worked to be logical and consistent. The most an empty ruin can cost now is 4 of each resource.
- Fixed: Buildings that were hard to click on.
- Fixed: Town leader now loading with the clothing choices you selected for your town leader.
- Fixed: Certain ruins were called "Ruined ruined".
- Fixed: Hanged victims now dangle from their necks.
- Fixed: Law enforcers now behave a lot more consistently.
- Fixed: Scaffolding now appears at the correct speed.
- Fixed: Issues where engineers were not using the correct entrance for buildings.
- Fixed: You can now destroy storehouses.
- And many more bug fixes than can be listed here
So that's it for now. I wish there was a little time to rest after putting out such a big update but I'm just glad we managed to pull it off. Now most of the core systems are in the game and working we should be able to focus on more fun content for the game in future patches.
In the meantime, if you want more up to date news/chat around the game, don't forget to check out our forum for it over here.
Thanks for reading.
Scott (Far Road Games)
