I know some of you are disappointed about not having the big content update for so long. And my recent mistake of setting an ETA didn't make it any better. So I guess another portion of excuses is due:)
While Alpha 6 is the current big thing, my goal from day one has always been to release a finished game. And while the feedback received during the last 5 alpha iterations is invaluable and I really believe this community-based approach was the best choice for Ostriv, the whole deal of keeping the game playable and enjoyable on every step of the way is obviously taking a great deal of development time. So I've got this idea of making a much wider step this time to get much closer to the final release. The more final game mechanics I can bundle in this iteration, the sooner we'll be able to reach the fabled 1.0 version. There's a slight chance that this will be the last update of this size before the final release.
Alpha 6 will have at least 13 new buildings. I also made plans for additional 11, but not sure which will get into Alpha 6, bacause some mechanics are going to need more time, as usual, and in the end of the day there should be balance between the size of the update and wait time. I guess no one will forgive me another year of development.
It also gets more challenging to support both versions of the game in a single code base, because I need to be able to both work on Alpha 6 and deliver fixes for the current public version, so the code is now all littered with macros like this:
These macros isolate the unfinished functionality and choose the numbers depending on the type of build. Alpha 6 will have most of the numbers overhauled as they are being rebalanced to make more sense (1 unit will be 1kg for most resources). Numbers from old saves will be converted, of course.
Sometimes I forget to split the code properly and you get leaks in hotfixes (some of you may have noticed The Greasing Incident). Of course these mechanics are not yet ready to be publicly released.
Meanwhile here's what today's little update has inside:
Added/changed:
- Houses and apartments will now be set on hold if previous family was relocated
- Added notification icons with tooltips in all production buildings to show resources missing for a batch
- Status strings like "not enough X for Y production" are not shown anymore
- Can now right-click on any slider in the game and set the value manually
- Logs will now lye perfectly on slopes so the game is finally playable
- Can now change village house appearance with (by default) F2 key before construction
Fixed:
- It was possible to break the lighting on rowhouses with some manipulations
- Crash related to having multiple town hall buildings
- One of the rowhouse types had less apartments than expected
- Foresters stopped planting trees when storage is full in some cases