Build 26298406

0.10.0: Islands you can walk end to end, towns that grow, a castaway's road

This update changes how the islands are put together, how towns grow on them, and how the castaway career plays. It has been on the beta branch for a few days and it is now the main version.

Your saves carry over. Worlds you already started keep their islands and towns as they were.

Islands you can walk end to end

There is a new Shore terrain setting on New Game called Continuous. With it, an island is one connected piece of ground instead of a separate map for each landing. You can land on one beach and walk to the far side, through the towns and the jungle in between. The coasts follow the chart in curves, the ground rises and falls a little, and the vegetation grows in patches of jungle, palm groves, scrub and small clearings.

The ground ahead of you is built in the background while you walk, so crossing an island does not stall. It is still marked experimental, and Classic shores stay the default.

Towns that grow to their ground

In new worlds the towns are laid out differently. Streets start from a plaza and bend with the land, every house has its door on a street, walls have gates where the streets cross them, and a town keeps the coast around it instead of sitting on a square of grass. A town on a river uses both banks, with footbridges between them.

The castaway's road

The castaway used to be able to leave the island in a few minutes. Now you wash up on an island with no port, a dozen sea tiles from the nearest one, with a cutlass and not much else.

• The wreck gives you two timbers and a rope, and stripping it takes most of a day. The rest of the timber comes from the trees and the beach.
• Building the raft takes a full day, and your food and water run down while you work. A spring helps.
• Before you push off, a card tells you how far it is, how much of it is deep water and the odds of going over.
• If the raft capsizes, the sea throws you back onto the nearest island with half your stores and the rope from the lashings.
• Once you are back in port and own a sloop, you choose the road your retirement is judged by: a merchant's, a privateer's, a pirate's, a naturalist's, or simply a fortune.

The Castaway's Passage in the weekly Short Voyage uses the new rules too, on its own larger chart.

Smaller changes

• Food and water now show how many days they actually last. A ration is not a day, and the old numbers made it easy to run short at sea.
• A port that cannot retire you now says which port can, and how far it is.
• Loot messages name the goods instead of their internal names.
• Boarding and derelict decks are drawn with angled hulls.
• Auto-explore keeps walking in caves instead of stopping every few steps.
• World turns on big charts are much faster, and walking on the Steam Deck no longer hitches.

Thanks to everyone who has been playing and sending reports. If something looks wrong on your islands, tell me in the discussions.