RTS They Are Billions - steampunk/zombie RTS from Lords of Xulima dev

[Alienman]

We don't know what the campaign will be. Maybe you will fight against other survivors. The game right now only has the "tower defense" mode.

 

[Markman]

~15 euros profit times 500k means 7.5 mil euros for a mini indie studio. Expect campaign to be delayed till they spend all that shit on whores and coke.

 

[LESS T_T]

And now that they just added Chinese localization, let's see how much more they will earn: http://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1665638172200641060

New Languages and The Community Challenge!

Greetings Survivors!
We have a lot of news to share about our most recent big update V0.6!


Nine New Languages Available!!

Now the game can be played in Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Russian, German, French, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The game should start selecting the language automatically. If it does not work please select the language from the Options screen.

Of course, consider the new translation in a beta state as is the game. We will check and improve everything with time. Also, you can use this forum to give us feedback or reporting issues. Each language has its own forum discussion. Our translators will check the forums and update everything as soon as possible.


Are you the best survivor? Try the Community Challenge!

Finally, it is here! Every week, starting on Monday there will be a new Community Challenge where you can play the same survival map and compete with the entire They Are Billions community. The scores will be uploaded to a leaderboard where you can compare your score with other players or friends. You have just one opportunity to try every challenge, so be careful!


Some More Features for V.0.6

Waypoints for Patrol, Travel and Attack Commands

Now you can add more waypoints to a unit’s path when using the commands Patrol, Travel, and Attack. To do so, just keep the SHIFT key pressed when selecting the target of the command. It also works for the Move command. This can be done with the right button, just keep the SHIFT key pressed to add more points.

The Old Towers

Now in the survival maps, you can find some old fortified towers that were infected and abandoned some time ago. You can reclaim these structures and have them join your colony. They can be reactivated once they are repaired.

Explosive Barrels

A new bonus you can find in some of the ruins. Explosive barrels can be carried by Soldiers, Snipers, and Lucifers and placed anywhere you’d like. If a unit shoots the barrel, it will explode causing devastating damage to the surroundings. Be careful, because they will detonate more barrels within range. They can be very useful to lessen a big swarm, or even blow up a full Doom Village!

New Dwelling Models

We have created more models for the wood and stone houses. They share the same style as the older ones but add a bit more variety and beauty to the colony.

New Swarm Music Theme

Our great composer has created a new atmospheric theme for the swarms. Hope you like it. Also, very soon we will record the entire soundtrack with the symphonic orchestra of Bratislava!

Some more minor changes:

- Improvement: Commands activated with the keyboard are more responsive (they are activated on key down, instead of on the key up event).
- Improvement: When Steam Overlay is activated the game pauses automatically and when it is closed the game continues from its last state (paused/playing).
- Improvement: When sending a unit to attack a position, now the travel indicator is displayed in the color red.
- Improvement: When attacking a specific unit with the attack command, a small red indicator will be displayed under the target unit.
- Fixed: When using the command attack key repeatedly the units cancel their current action even when attacking the same target area.
- Fixed: Steam Overlay activation could leave some phantom keys pressed.
- Fixed: Technology names in mayor description.
- Fixed: Graphics glitch with patrol path line.

F.A.Q Available in the forum

We have published here a Frequent Asked Questions post that should answer the main questions about the game. We will update the F.A.Q periodically with more information.

And that's all for now. In the next big update, we expect to add some more features like the Lost Tavern, the Monuments and Wonders and the Great Telescope (the first new addon for the Command Center). Stay tuned!

See you soon!

 

[agris]

god damn, the bloom in all those screens is turned up to 11.

 

[The Wall]

I knew this game would sell well and unless devs get completely carried away by its success it should, at least in theory, secure funds for much better sequel to Lords of Xulima then initially planned. Who knows, if both They are Billions and Lords of Xulima II find success on the market (They are Billions already has after less then a month with over 5 times bigger sales number then first Lords of Xulima has after three years on Steam) and Lords of Xulima II doesn't get dumbed down significantly but instead expanded, refined and improved I think that we might have here a potential new major player on the RPG scene in the making. At bare minimum in the category of Stygian Software and Iron Tower Studio when it comes to sales and hopefully level of RPG incline as well. I also have a gut feeling that what They are Billions is for Numantian Games will be Copper Dreams for Whalenought Studios. None of my friends believed me when I told them this game would explode and catch attention of so many players, so feel free to be sceptical abot these predictions as well.

Stairway to Salesven

Are you on drugs? You are comparing a mobile tower defense game with a hardcore full fledged cRPG focusing on providing hardcore tabletop experience.

There is 0 chance Copper Dreams achieves even a part of the success of this casual time waster. Why? Because it is not made for same audience.

First and foremost: your obvious butthurt can be heared all the way from wherever you typed this response. Probably from your butthole. No, I didn't compare anything directly. No, 'mobile' tower defense which is PC exclusive btw and does feature towers and defenses but is not tower defense is not what, I repeat, directly compared to Copper Dreams. In any way, shape or form. What I compared and said that is similar if not the same is effect that will Copper Dreams have for Whalenought Studios which They are Billions had for Numantian Games. In terms of sales and making studio less financially indie and pushing it more towards mid tier (or at least serious, sustainable small(er) studio).

No, Copper Dreams will probably not sell half a million copies in less then a month. But it will probably sell as many more copies then Serpent in Staglands as They are Billions sold more than Lords of Xulima. Both of these games will make both studios more financially and in terms of size 'serious' players. And with that will in the future come even more ambitious projects with hopefully little compromise when it comes to 'hardcore' aspects both studios are known for. I doubt it will be jump from DOS1 - DOS2 and even less so DAO - DA2. I hope I made myself more clear.

In short: their newest games will not only allow them to survive but also afford them to bring us even bigger incline in the future. After which slowly inevitable decline will probably start to creep in. Such is a circle of RPG studio's life.

 

[ArchAngel]

Or more likely these devs continue making tower defense games for casuals and Copper Dreams does not sell well because it is too hardcore for most. We on 'Dex will enjoy Copper Dream anyways but some on 'Dex will continue to look at this tower defense game with rose tinted glasses and expect this studio next game to be more hardcore but that might never happen.

 

[Galdred]

I don't understand the appeal of this game. But I guess I don't like Tower Defense games. It neither takes a lot of brain or skill.

WTF? I didn't play the game, but which tower defense has you making economic decisions (other than buy turret X or turret Y)?
This seems much closer to the Stronghold series than TD.

 

[ArchAngel]

I don't understand the appeal of this game. But I guess I don't like Tower Defense games. It neither takes a lot of brain or skill.

WTF? I didn't play the game, but which tower defense has you making economic decisions (other than buy turret X or turret Y)?
This seems much closer to the Stronghold series than TD.

Every one I tried, those were special maps for Wc3 and later for Sc2. The stand alone games are probably even more complex than those maps.

 

[thesheeep]

I don't understand the appeal of this game. But I guess I don't like Tower Defense games. It neither takes a lot of brain or skill.

WTF? I didn't play the game, but which tower defense has you making economic decisions (other than buy turret X or turret Y)?
This seems much closer to the Stronghold series than TD.

Everyone one I tried, those were special maps for Wc3 and later for Sc2. The stand alone games are probably even more complex than those maps.

Yes, but not too much, really.
The main difference between most actual TD games and TD maps for Blizzard games are production quality, assets, etc.

There are some of a much higher quality all-around, of course. Including gameplay.
But in general you are right about TD games. They can get a bit stressful at times, but in general I play them for the relaxing experience and the mild puzzle about them.

 

[sser]

First actual attempt I got to about day 58 on 100%. I got kinda screwed because I built toward this awesome stretch of farmland only for it to cut me off cause you can't build toward the map's edge. Then they attacked a spot about two stonewalls thick and I did not have anything to really stop it. I didn't even get to see my town descend into chaos cause the HQ was right nearby and they destroyed it ASAP.

 

[thesheeep]

Clever zombies.

 

[Jimmious]

Clever zombies.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Having a lot more fun with "Rise to ruins", as in more then 2 hours of it.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam forum is full of arguments over the "forced ironman" setting: http://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/0/1620599015898540532/

In other news, They Are Hundreds:

 

[Infinitron]

Steam forum is full of arguments over the "forced ironman" setting: http://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/0/1620599015898540532/

Ironman should be optional for any mode. Forced Ironman is for developers who absolutely hate their player base, other than the tiny niche of players who enjoy the mode, ironman is for online games where you have zero freedom to do as you please and games from 1980.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1667893138238264284

Development Update: The Incoming Wonders

Greetings!
This is a quick update to talk a bit more about the development and incoming features for They Are Billions. It has been a long time since our last update because we have been working in parallel on different parts of the game, not only for the Campaign but also for the Survival Mode.

The Six Wonders

Six new buildings are coming... and they are the greatest ones! They are extremely expensive to research and build. Not many colonies will have the capacity to even build just one of them. After all, we are surviving in a zombie apocalypse so there is no place for such luxurious and opulent wonders... BUT, if your colony has plenty of resources or you want to take the risk to build one of them, they can grant you very special rewards. Your colony will be the envy of all.

One of them, the cheapest one, will be the Inn/Tavern we mentioned in old updates. Finally we had to change its function as it was conflicting with other elements of the Campaign.

In the next update, we will show you all the Wonders and explain the special rewards. A quick look ahead on the Six Wonders, all of them will give you extra victory points if you win the game. The extra points will be very useful for the veteran players that try to get the highest score possible for the Survival or Community Challenge.

The Soundtrack Scored by the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra

Our composer, Nicolas Diteriks, is about to record the soundtrack of They Are Billions with the 60 musicians of the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra. This is going to be epic! In the next update, we will show you some videos. Stay tuned!

How is the final score computed?

Many people have asked us how the final game score is computed. This method could change in the future, especially with the new Wonders coming.

Right now, we use this formula:

- If the game is won the score is:
Score = 10,000 + Max(0, 5000 - 10 * Colonist Infected) + Max(0, 5000 -10 * Soldiers Died)

- If the game is lost then:
Score = 1.000 * (Number of Days Survived / Total Days to Win)

- Extra points for colonists:
Score += Max. Colony Population / 2

- Extra points for infected killed:
Score += Max. Infected Killed / 10

And then the final score is multiplied by the score factor.

For the Community Challenge, the score factor can be 100%, 115%, 135% or 155% depending on the map type.

The Campaign Development

There is much to do in the Campaign. We know the expectations are very high, so we want to create something really special. We are producing lots of new assets and implementing many more features.

As many of you already know, in the Campaign you will have to reconquest a huge territory from the infected under the orders of the New Empire. We want the campaign to be non-linear, so the player can decide if he or she prefers to explore an old human base in search of new technology or attack a huge swarm of 200K infected that is blocking a new territory to build a colony with their imperial army... Together with how the player progresses in the science and engineering tree, relation with the new empire, map reconquest strategy, and selection of objectives will make each campaign unique.

We want to add a lot of optional content so players that are stuck and cannot progress will more have more options to expand their army and advance in the technology trees.

Although this decision could change later, we would like to continue with the Ironman Mode for the missions, in the sense that you cannot reload old saves while playing a mission. Of course, if you lose you can repeat it again. Also, you can save freely when you are in the intermissions Campaign Dashboard.

And that's all for the moment, see you in the next update!

 

[Alienman]

Campaign sounds awesome.

 

[LESS T_T]

All that monies:



From an interview with the composer:

Did you know you were going to have access to a live orchestra from the start? If so, how did it influence your writing process?

Nicolas Diteriks: I didn’t know AT ALL that we were going to be able to go live! When we started, our music budget was super tight. But thanks to the big and completely unexpected success of the game we are now able to re-record everything with a 60-piece orchestra and therefore significantly upgrade the quality of the game’s music.

It was actually quite challenging to find the right musical direction for the game. It’s a zombie game but it is not scary, although it is stressful. It’s a steampunk game but it is not a stuffy world (like a lot of Steampunk projects): it’s dirty, noisy, greasy and large scale. It’s a world full of crazy characters. So all the steampunk codes (chamber music, etc.) or the horror music recipes didn’t really fit in this game. So after a few tries we came to the conclusion that the best style for the game was a big bombastic orchestra mixed with a lot of metallic sounds, clocks ticking, gears grinding, etc. This is an epic game with 20,000 units on the screen and we needed to reflect that with the music.

At first, I went full VST: meaning that every instrument was recorded with virtual instruments. Just the metallic sounds were real.

And yes, it totally changes the way I write. Because I always followed the motto that when you write for a virtual orchestra, it’s best not to try to write like if it is a live one. It just won’t be as good, so you have to “cheat” to make it sound convincing. Even though some companies are releasing some amazing products, it’s very hard to replicate the subtlety of a group of real musicians. It doesn’t mean we can’t do interesting things with samples, on the contrary. But it’s just not the same way of writing. At least for me!

 

[thesheeep]

I want to be a zombie!

 

[agris]

I wonder if, similar to people who win the lottery and go on to squander it, this windfall will be the downfall of the studio. Or at least, downfall in the codexian sense, i.e. they don't make a RPG on par with LoX again.

Full disclosure: I never played LoX, but it was pretty well received around here.

 

[PanteraNera]

Reminds me a bit of Infested Planet

Haven't played a RTS in ages, don't care to much for steampunk (still better than fantasy in my books) and zombies.

But damn, is this fun :D.

Also I think it looks gorgeous, true about to much bloom, but still love the level of detail.


Muhaaha:

Sexist Overtones
Your one female unit is the weakest unit in the game, and has all the innuendo of a cheap sex worker. You might want to consider fixing that.

"Sooo tired...last night was amazing." "Whatever you say, as long as you pay me."

I get she's supposed to be a vivacious mercenary in control of her own body who enjoys her sex life on the side while she's killing hordes of zombies, but it comes off more like she's an expendable amoral floozy.

If it was, in fact, your intent to make her sound like an expendable amoral floozy mercenary, well done! You totally nailed it!

Just thought I'd contribute.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/644930/discussions/0/1692662484248260510/

 

[Frusciante]

pfff I hope they don't change these lines, I like them

 

[Infinitron]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1670146840121246667

New Soundtrack and New Special Building Available!
26 MARCH - NUMANTIAN GAMES

Greetings!
It has been an old dream of ours here at Numantian to have the opportunity to record the soundtrack of TAB with a philharmonic orchestra. Our composer, Nicolas Diteriks, did a tremendous job collaborating with Johannes Vogel, who conducts the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. His orchestra has a great deal of experience recording music for videogames (Castlevania, Batman Arkham Origins, Assasin’s Creed III, Lords of the Fallen). It was an amazing experience and we’re thrilled with the final result. We hope the final results will make the playing experience of They Are Billions even more intense and engaging.

New Special Building: The Inn

Build an Inn for your colony to attract workers and mercenaries from the surroundings. Inns are very big and expensive buildings, but they have certain special features that can significantly help you in developing a successful colony. You’re only able to construct one Inn per colony, and you have to research it first in the Wood Workshop.

These are the goodies!

Happier Colonists
The colonists surrounding the Inn will get increasingly happier as they visiting the first-floor tavern causing them to spend more money there that will fill the colony reserves.

Workers for the Colony
You can expect lots of travelers visiting your colony to enjoy the Inn’s hospitality. Be sure you have enough food for your guests and also keep the fireplace stoked with enough wood to keep the rooms warm and cozy.

Mercenaries
There are a lot of lonely heroes roaming these dangerous and desolated lands. They aren’t ones to linger, but they love to stop for a rest and to enjoy a good beer. They can be hired by a fair price. Build as many colonist houses near the Inn as you can to keep a steady stream of animated colonists and to attract more and better mercenaries.

More news about the development: The Incoming Wonders

They’re taking more time than expected, but they are looking terrific! They’ll be the biggest and most awesome buildings we have created. We expect to have them finished for the next update, but for now, let’s give you the names of the Six Wonders:

- The Beholder
- The Lightning Spire
- The Transmutator
- The Victorious
- The Academy of Immortals
- The Crystal Palace

More news: 150+ new mayors on the works!

It’s true, we haven’t gone mad, more than new 150 mayors are coming!!

As some you surely remember we launched a supporting campaign (http://www.numantiangames.com/support-they-are-billions/) for They Are Billions some time before the official release. We offered special rewards for the fans who wanted to back the game. We’re happy to announce the three highest rewards: the Lucifer, Thanatos and Titan ones, included the creation of a custom mayor inspired in those backers who purchased it.

It’s a massive job! We have to contact the backers, draw a portrait and design their mayor, which requires a lot of feedback, changes, balancing, testing and translating all the slogans into eleven languages. So it is taking some time. We plan to release the mayors in stages, adding a pack of them with every new version.

We’ve already created 30, and they’re all looking awesome. They’re going to add a lot of variety to the game. For example, there’s a new one that pays you a gold coin for every zombie killed

New Version 0.7: Changes Log

- New Special Building: The Inn
- New Game Option: Show all alerts. It display all the alert events even when the action is happening inside the camera view are.
- All music themes scored by the Bratislava Philharmonic Orchestra.
- Buildings whose production is paused now displays an icon on the map.
- Some balancing tweaks: Foundry and Engineering Center now costs 3000 gold.

And that's all for the moment...
We expect that we’ll publish the Six Wonders in the next update, but perhaps we will release a prior update with some of the new mayors. . . stay tuned!

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1667898210970992537

Development Progress

Greetings!

As you know we are working on a big update for They Are Billions (V.0.8) with The Six Wonders, that we expect to publish on the 5th of May. Yes, it has been delayed, sorry about that! The main reason is that we have to translate all the new stuff into 12 languages which pushed back the release dates and also requires extra testing time.

Meanwhile we have used this time to add more features suggested by you, the players, to improve many aspects of the game. Apart from the Six Wonders, which we will go more in detail in our next post, we want to talk about the new features of the upcoming 0.8 version.

New Language Available: Italian

Finally, we have finished the translation to Italian and it will be included in the next version 0.8. They Are Billions is now available in twelve languages!

Flat Mode (F4)

This is really helpful! You can toggle the Flat Mode with the F4 key. When activated, mountains and forests will be displayed just as flat coloured cells, allowing you to see what’s behind them, making it easier to build near those hidden parts of the map.

More Building Assistance

The cells that are in the map limit, where building is not allowed, will be displayed without energy so that it is much easier to know where the limit is and plan your defences accordingly.

Also, when building, all existing objects will turn semi-transparent as the mouse moves over them, to improve the visibility behind them.

Chasing Command for Groups of Units

You will really love this feature! Now, all units in the same selection slot will automatically go in a group formation when they are in the chase command mode. Just select a group of units, save them in a slot with right click and then activate the command chase.

The Inn 2.0

The Inn has been improved in several ways. It’s influence radius is now bigger, and It’s building margin reduced by one.

Mercenaries come to the Inn every five days, except the first ones which will come after just one day. Also, the number of days remaining for new mercenaries to arrive and the percentage of prestige of the Inn is now shown in the features panel. The more prestige, the more powerful the group of mercenaries will be.

30 New Mayors!

We have added 30 new mayors to add more variety to your colonies. Also, if Mayors that bring resources to the colony (for example 200 wood) provide an excess that cannot be stored in the warehouses, they will be placed as bonus items next to the Command Centre, so you can use them when needed. This can be very useful when building the ultra-high expensive Wonders.

Lots of Balancing Improvements

We have made lots of balancing tweaks, so many that we cannot cite them all here. We have improved the Soldiers (that were not so useful compared to other units). Soldiers now level up faster, they do a bit more damage, they regenerate full life in just 24 seconds, their Armour is better and gives 50% more resistance to fire and venom.

Also, Lucifers do more damage, have more health and regenerate full life in just 12 seconds, and they have 75% resistance to venom.

Titans attack radius has been increased by 20% and deal more damage, also they have more life and Armour, but they are more expensive.

Many of the structures have also been tweaked, so now the game feels much more balanced. Also, the map generation is better now and the map scenario types have also been improved.

Now, more than ever, you will have a wider range of strategic options to fight the infected and develop a successful colony.

Units Health Regeneration

We have improved this mechanic to make it more relevant in game. First we have added a tooltip for the Life text in the selection panel which will tell you about the life regeneration rate of the unit. Units start to regenerate health after two seconds without having received any damage. It will then regenerate a fixed number of life points every second:

• Ranger: 1 point / second. Full life in 60 seconds.
  
• Soldier: 5 point / second. Full life in 24 seconds.
  
• Sniper: 1 point / second. Full life in 150 seconds.
  
• Lucifer: 40 point / second. Full life in 12 seconds.
  
• Thanatos: 3 point / second. Full life in 83 seconds.
  
• Titan: 8 point / second. Full life in 100 seconds.

Press F10 to take a Mega Screenshot of your entire colony!

This is just amazing! Have you ever wanted to show off your colony to your friends? Does your colony look amazing with your Six Wonders? Have you won the game without using walls or with any other crazy condition and you want to show it to the world? Now you can!

Just press F10 whenever you like and the game will render an ultra-big image of the full map. This is especially amazing when the final horde comes to the colony as all the map is revealed.

You can configure the resolution of the image in the options screen, the highest value being 256 mega pixels!! Just check this[www.dropbox.com].

We hope you like the new changes for gameplay and the Survival Mode. Of course, we keep on working on the campaign secretly behind the scenes. After this big update on the 5th of May, we will share with you more details about the highly anticipated campaign.

Thank you all for your incredible support! See you soon!

 

[HeatEXTEND]

InDev 30 - The Life is Precious Update - Released!
Rise to Ruins - Rayvolution
I'm proud to bring you one of the biggest, beefiest content filled game changer patches in Rise to Ruins history; The Life is Precious update!

This update has a metric crap ton of changes, including many that were suggested by you guys. Villagers can now carry multiple resources, they can grow old, medics have been reworked, the spawning system has been completely gutted and replace with the new corruption system, and the entire game has been fundamentally rebalanced. Check out the ridiculously extensive change log below!

The amount of changes this patch has thrown Rise to Ruins balance in the blender, and it may not quite be where we all want it yet. I'm asking everyone to provide tons of feedback about their experience. Let me know what you think. Compared to InDev 29, is it too hard, too easy, just right? What would you change? If you want to go the extra mile, hop into custom mode and make up your own brand of what you think survival and nightmare mode should be, and share your settings! This patch is a massive balance changer, unlike any patch before it. Even after extensive tweaking on the Unstable branch, it may still need additional adjustments. So it is imperative you let me know how your play sessions are going so I can adjust things in the inevitable minor patches before starting in on InDev 31!

InDev 30 Change Log

Spoiler

Corruption System

• The entire spawn system has been completely replaced with the new corruption system. Now, a corrupted area will spawn on the map once you place your camp, slowly consuming the world around you.
  
• A new mob has been added, the "Drone". Drones are mostly harmless, but will build corrupted buildings and maintain roads inside the corruption.
  
• Monsters no longer spawn or attack during the day time. They now start attacking at dusk, ramp up at night, and return back to the corruption during the day.
  
• A large majority of the monsters inside the corruption will despawn during the day. (Note: Boosted monsters never despawn.)
  
• Added a new "corruption resistance" range for the village that will push back and prevent corruption from spreading, that works differently than normal range and ignores all blocked tiles. Some buildings do not provide this range at all, like fire pits. You can see your village's corruption resistance using the data views panel.
  
• Monster spawn rates are now tied to how many days you have survived, the size of the corruption, and how many buildings are in the corruption.
  
• Several new corrupted buildings have been added, including hostile towers inside the corruption that will fire on villagers and golems.
  
• You can not cast spells inside the corruption.
  
• Monsters spawn when graveyards are damaged by the player.
  
• Skeletons now do not start spawning until day 5.
  
• Specters now do not start spawning until day 12.
  
• Fire Elementals now do not start spawning until day 16.
  
• Small slimes now no longer spawn until day 2.
  
• Regular slimes now no longer spawn until day 4.
  
• Zombies now no longer spawn until day 3.

Multi-Carry and Worker AI

• All villagers can now hold between 2 and 8 resources at a time based on their strength. They will gain 1 additional resource per 50 strength, and always be able to carry a minimum of at least 2. The formula is (STR/50)+2. This applies to labor golems as well.
  
• Harvesting AI has been modified to sometimes drop a resource on the ground. The chance they'll take resources home increases the more resources are in the area.
  
• Rearranged the farming AI to make it a much higher priority to do farm harvesting and tending tasks.
  
• Medics have been completely rewritten, they now "post" themselves at clinics, barracks and outposts and wait for injured and sick villagers to arrive.
  
• All of the delivery and construction harvest AI branches have been reworked and rearranged to better manage resources and make sure buildings get completed in the correct priority order if the resources are available to do so.
  
• Lowered the priority of dirty water in the farm to high, so the water purifier gets more dirty water.
  
• Reworked some AI branching that made some AI branches not fire as often as they should, like water bottle refining.
  
• Changed priority of clean water buckets in fountains and house from very high to high, to encourage more water buckets to make it to the bottlers.
  
• Cooks can now distribute rations again.
  
• Chanced all housing and barracks raw food priority to "high" so that kitchens get food before housing.
  
• Mobs will now abandon their task if the building they are in route to is destroyed or removed.

Aging System

• Human villagers can now live up to a maximum 40 days, catjeet 35, and doggos 15.
  
• Villagers can now become wise elders late in their life, for humans this is age 35 and catjeet 30. Doggos never become wise, and will remain young hearted goofballs until they die.
  
• Elder villagers can chat with lower level villagers, offering them a massive XP bonus so they can level up faster.
  
• A new Life Expectancy statistic has been added, and as you'd expect, how long your villager should live.
  
• A new Lifetime Constitution stat has also been added, that starts at maximum, and anytime your villager's well being is poor either from thirst, hunger, unhappiness, healing from injuries, taking damage, poisoned and a million other factors, their lifetime constitution will go down permanently. When this happens, it can lower their Life Expectancy.
  
• You can never recover constitution or life expectancy, so take care of your villagers!
  
• Villagers can die before they become elders if they live an extremely hard life and their life expectancy drops below the minimum age to become an elder.
  
• Rarely, when nomads spawn some of them can arrive already as elders.
  
• Mothers can now die giving childbirth if their lifelong constitution is low, unless they visit a clinic to give birth.
  
• There is a small chance the child can die during child birth.
  
• Mothers now take 25% of their total current hit points in damage during child birth.
  
• Mothers have a 50% chance of losing 1 day of life expectancy during child birth unless they visit a clinic.

Lootbox Changes

• You can no longer find keys harvesting resources.
  
• The chance you can find a loot box harvesting resources has been increased.
  
• Finding keys when trying to uncover lootboxes is now slightly more common.
  
• Lootbox settings can now be customized in the custom game mode menu.

Sweeping Balance Changes

• Doubled the length of a day.
  
• Rebalanced the stats of nearly every friendly mob in the game.
  
• Reduced the amount of nomads that spawn, as well as their chance to spawn.
  
• Starting villagers in a new region on the world map have been reduced to about 12.
  
• Starting resources in a new region on the world map have increased to 32.
  
• Starting villagers in skirmish mode reduced to 10-14.
  
• The amount of starting villagers in Limbo have been reduced to 19-29 in survival and nightmare.
  
• The monster spawn rates in survival, nightmare and traditional have been reduced.
  
• Farms now grow slower.
  
• Wild food now grows and spreads 2 times slower.
  
• All food items now provide more overall food.
  
• Almost all job slots provided by all work buildings has been cut in half.
  
• Occupancy maximum for housing has been cut in half.
  
• You now gain twice as much maximum influence per villager.
  
• Halved the doggo spawn rates.
  
• Rebalanced the length of nighttime in both Summer and Winter. Summer nights are now longer, and Winter nights are now shorter.
  
• The mob level hard cap has been raised to 200.
  
• Reduced the speed health is regenerated when in a house.
  
• Tripled the duration of poison, blight and dysentery, but also reduced damage taken by them by two thirds, resulting in the same amount of damage over a much longer period of time.
  
• Increased Cold Aura spell cost.
  
• Charm spell cost has been reduced by 25%, and the failure chance removed.
  
• An eclipse can no longer happen the same day as a full moon.
  
• Slimes now heal 3 times slower.
  
• Blood slimes now heal 2 times slower.
  
• Reduced range generated by outposts.
  
• Housing now requires rock for the first and second upgrades.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Added all new Patreons' rewards to the game.
  
• Monsters no longer wander to radiance pools.
  
• The base village range of all towers provide has been increased by about 50%. (Note: This is notfiring range)
  
• Reworked how the interface autoscaling works to get slightly better results.
  
• There are now a small amount of particles that generate when a mob gains XP.
  
• When a mob gains a level, there is no longer a message in the console, and the sound is localized to where they leveled instead of being global.
  
• There are now some particle effects when a mob levels.
  
• Changed how essence is generated from objects, making the output more varied in appearance.
  
• When the game needs to find an open space to force drop a resource, the location is a bit more randomized now.
  
• Increased the rate light levels transition.
  
• You can now advance the passage of time in sandbox mode if you enable debug mode.
  
• You can now set the clock to 16x speed if you enable debug mode.
  
• Survival Island map tweaked slightly.
  
• Removed map "Bottleneck" from the Official Maps list.
  
• Increased the range provided by the forge.
  
• Nomad settings can now be customized in the custom game mode menu.
  
• There is now a 1 in 50 chance that a fire elemental will spawn when a meteor hits.
  
• Radiance pools now slowly generate energy the player can steal with their hand.
  
• Radiance pools no longer use cut stone, but require more rock and crystal.
  
• Removed the single-threaded settings from the game, as they caused more trouble than they helped in almost all scenarios.
  
• Updated many of the tips.

Interface Changes

• A new statistics panel has been added to the game, showing tons of daily statistics about your village.
  
• All GUI code has been completely gutted and reorganized, most of the changes will be transparent to the player. But pretty much everything under the hood was redone.
  
• Updated the mouse lock icon.
  
• Spells on the spell bar will no longer stay highlighted even if no spell is selected.
  
• Right clicking to add/remove workers now adds and removes plus or minus 5, rather than 10.
  
• Lowered the "low villager count" warning in the problem panel from 10 to 5 villagers.
  
• Changed the description of the crystillery so it fits in the description box.
  
• You can now access the reset AI function by holding down left shift on the selected region panel in world map view, and the load game menu in skirmish.
  
• Tips popping up now cancel the current task, to prevent accidental clicking.
  
• Pausing the game hides the entire GUI now, but you can interact with the new statistics panel, the main menu panel, settings, and see the clock.
  
• Keys are no longer listed as "Rare wood drops" in the resource production panel.
  
• Players now get subtle warnings the time of day period before a full moon, eclipse or blood moon.
  
• Updated copyright date on main menu.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Multithreaded the autosave system, reducing save time substainally for multicore processors.
  
• Removed even more erroneous names from the name list.
  
• Wrote in a system to remove erroneous names during runtime, preventing them from causing problems.
  
• Catjeet nomad children are now in the correct mob group.
  
• Fixed a bug that would allow workers to "overfill" the farm while it is being upgraded.
  
• Heavily optimized the provisioner price update and stock increase code. This should completely eliminate the "New day" lag some players have been having.
  
• Fixed a rare crash when a mob is harvesting a resource and it the tile decays before he completes his work.
  
• Fixed crash when casting mend on walls that were completely blocked on all sides.
  
• Fixed a minor bug that would make laborers leave the marketplace too quickly sometimes.
  
• Fixed a minor shadow generation glitch on the construction phase of the rain catcher.
  
• Fixed a few minor errors in the water artwork.
  
• Compressed all sound effects a bit, increasing load times and shrinking the game's initial install size.
  
• Tons of code cleanup to the input code for the game.
  
• Reworked all the code related to coloring mob sprites in game, cleaning up a lot of minor issues with recoloring mobs.
  
• Fixed the statistics panel from rendering incorrectly with interface scale settings other than 1.
  
• When selecting a terrain while making a new map, you no longer unselect the map size.
  
• Fixed mining facility upgrade descriptions.
  
• Fixed a minor typo in the catjeet laboror's tasking AI.
  
• Fixed a typo in the debug screen, that was showing the topography layers flipped.

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18 Apr
Build InDev 30 Unstable 5 Released
Rise to Ruins - Rayvolution
Click here for help on accessing the Unstable branch!

InDev 30 Unstable 5 has been released, this patch is a feature complete build of what will practically be InDev 30 stable, due out on April 22nd. This patch is fairly small, mostly tying up loose ends and fixing last minute bugs, as well as throwing in additional balance tweaks and adjustments. This patch is also still compatible with both Unstable 4 and 4b saves!

You can report bugs over at the official website's Support and Bugs Forum, or on the Steam Discussion Board.

InDev 30 Unstable 5 Change Log

Corruption System

• Increased the range of all corruption towers.
  
• Increased the amount and rate of monsters that spawn from the graveyards when attacked.
  
• Monsters that are spawned from attacking graveyards will now auto-attack the attacker.
  
• Monsters will no longer spawn from graveyards when damaged by any other means that are not from towers or mobs. (eg; Disasters)

Miscellaneous Changes

• Reworked how the interface autoscaling works to get slightly better results.
  
• Added elderly lists to the population panel.
  
• Updated many of the tips.
  
• Pregnant villagers now use clinics to give birth, removing the chance of death and losing lifetime expectancy.
  
• Average age and life expectancy added to population list GUI.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an endless loop bug because of range generation errors on low-desirability buildings.
  
• Fixed day length setting in custom mode.
  
• Fixed radiance pool essence coming from the wrong tile.
  
• Fixed radiance pool firing the "Energy" tip.

InDev 30 Unstable 4b *HOT FIX* Change Log

Aging System

• Villagers all have been given an additional 10 years of life.
  
• Doggos have been given an additional 5 years of life.
  
• Rebalanced/Nerfed the rate constitution drops.
  
• Halved the chance villagers can die from child birth.
  
• Now mothers have a 50% chance of losing 1 day of life expectancy during child birth, rather than a guaranteed chance of losing 1 or 2.

Big Fixes

• Fixed world map edge scrolling settings.
  
• Fixed a minor range generation issue that could result in some AI getting stuck in an endless loop trying to deliver something.

InDev 30 Unstable 4 Change Log

Aging System

• Human villagers can now live up to a maximum 30 days, catjeet 25, and doggos 15.
  
• Villagers can now become wise elders late in their life, for humans this is age 25 and catjeet 20. Doggos never become wise, and will remain young hearted goofballs until they die.
  
• Elder villagers can chat with lower level villagers, offering them a massive XP bonus so they can level up faster.
  
• A new Life Expectancy statistic has been added, and as you'd expect, how long your villager should live.
  
• A new Lifetime Constitution stat has also been added, that starts at maximum, and anytime your villager's well being is poor either from thirst, hunger, unhappiness, healing from injuries, taking damage, poisoned and a million other factors, their lifetime constitution will go down permanently. When this happens, it can lower their Life Expectancy.
  
• You can never recover constitution or life expectancy, so take care of your villagers!
  
• Villagers can die before they become elders if they live an extremely hard life, and their life expectancy drops below the minimum age to become an elder.
  
• Rarely, when nomads spawn some of them can arrive already as elders.
  
• Mothers can now die giving childbirth if their lifelong constitution is low.
  
• There is a small chance the child can die during child birth.
  
• Mothers now take 25% of their total current hit points in damage during child birth.
  
• Giving birth instantly lowers the mother's life expectancy by 1 or 2 days.

Corruption System

• Added a new "corruption resistance" range for the village, that works differently than normal range and ignores all blocked tiles. Some buildings do not provide this range at all, like fire pits, making them useless to push back the corruption.
  
• You can see your village's corruption resistance using the data views panel.
  
• Global monster spawn rates have been reduced by about 33%.
  
• Corruption no longer creates new spots on the map.
  
• When monsters despawn, they drop all their equipped items on the ground so the next spawn cycle of monsters can pick them back up.
  
• Skeletons now do not start spawning until day 5.
  
• Specters now do not start spawning until day 12.
  
• Fire Elementals now do not start spawning until day 16.
  
• Small slimes now no longer spawn until day 2.
  
• Regular slimes now no longer spawn until day 4.
  
• Zombies now no longer spawn until day 3.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Patreon credits/names data updated.
  
• Medics have been completely rewritten, they now "post" themselves at clinics, barracks and outposts and wait for injured and sick villagers to arrive.
  
• Rebalanced the length of nighttime in both Summer and Winter. Summer nights are now longer, and Winter nights are now shorter.
  
• The mob level hard cap has been raised to 200.
  
• There are now a small amount of particles that generate when a mob gains XP.
  
• When a mob gains a level, there is no longer a message in the console, and the sound is localized to where they leveled instead of being global.
  
• There are now some particle effects when a mob levels.
  
• Raised the doggo spawn rates back to what they were in Unstable 2.
  
• Rearranged the farming AI to make it a much higher priority to do farm harvesting and tending tasks.
  
• Slightly increased farm growth rate.
  
• All villagers, catjeet and doggos stats have been halved. (Roughly back to what they are in InDev 29f)
  
• Carry max now goes up by one per every 50 STR rather than 100.
  
• The base village range of all towers provide has been increased by about 50%. (Note: This is notfiring range)
  
• Removed the single-threaded settings from the game, as they caused more trouble than they helped in almost all scenarios.
  
• Reduced the speed health is regenerated when in a house.
  
• Tripled the duration of poison, blight and dysentery, but also reduced damage taken by them by two thirds, resulting in the same amount of damage over a much longer period of time.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Reworked all the code related to coloring mob sprites in game, cleaning up a lot of minor issues with recoloring mobs.
  
• Permanent corruption increase per day settings are now properly saved in custom mode.
  
• Fixed a bug that can cause the game to enter an endless loop if a monster despawns while being attacked.
  
• Fixed the statistics panel from rendering incorrectly with interface scale settings other than 1.

InDev 30 Unstable 3 Change Log

Corruption System

• Decreased traditional mode spawn and corruption spread rates.
  
• Increased spawn rate of monsters in survival and nightmare mode.
  
• The amount per spawn multiplier has been decreased, coupled with the above change, this should show a more steady and consistent increase in spawn rates.
  
• Increased the amount of "starting spread" corruption has, making the initial starting corruption spot a bit bigger.
  
• Monsters now spawn when graveyards are damaged, except from hail.
  
• Corrupted fire pits are now built less often, causing other corruption buildings to be built more often.
  
• Made some minor tweaks to how corruption picks a start spot, encouraging them to spawn farther away from the village that previously.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Now you can interact with the speed controls, settings, save and exit or look at stats while paused.
  
• Charm spell cost has been halved, and the failure chance removed.
  
• Reworked some AI branching that made some AI branches not fire as often as they should, like water bottle refining.
  
• Changed priority of water buckets in fountains and house from very high to high, to encourage more water buckets to make it to the bottlers.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Fixed blood moons from not triggering blood rain/slimes.
  
• Compressed all sound effects a bit, increasing load times and shrinking the game's initial install size.
  
• An eclipse can no longer happen the same day as a full moon.
  
• Fixed some tips not correctly popping up at the right time.
  
• Tons of code cleanup to the input code for the game.
  
• Fixed a crash if a monster tried to despawn but was trapped in a 1x1 open area.
  
• Fixed a bunch of AI flow issues.
  
• Fixed a bug when a mob died carrying a resource the resource on the ground would be ignored by all other workers until the game was reloaded.
  
• Halved the doggo spawn rates.

InDev 30 Unstable 2 Change Log

Corruption System

• Now, the game will randomly corrupt your save files. The chance this happens increases the longer you survive, in an attempt to increase end game difficulty.

Better Corruption System

• Due to overwhelming negative feedback, the game no longer will randomly corrupt your save files the longer you survive in an attempt to increase difficulty.
  
• The entire spawn system has been completely replaced with the new corruption system. Now, a corrupted area will spawn on the map once you place your camp, slowly consuming the world around you.
  
• A new mob has been added, the "Drone". Drones are mostly harmless, but will build corrupted buildings and maintain roads inside the corruption.
  
• Monsters no longer spawn or attack during the day time. They now start attacking at dusk, ramp up at night, and return back to the corruption during the day.
  
• A large majority of the monsters inside the corruption will despawn during the day. (Note: Boosted monsters never despawn.)
  
• Monster spawn rates are now tied to how many days you have survived, the size of the corruption, and how many buildings are in the corruption.
  
• Several new corrupted buildings have been added, including hostile towers inside the corruption that will fire on villagers and golems.
  
• You can not cast spells inside the corruption.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Doubled the length of a day.
  
• All of the delivery and construction harvest AI branches have been reworked and rearranged to better manage resources and make sure buildings get completed in the correct priority order if the resources are available to do so.
  
• Increased the rate light levels transition.
  
• Monsters no longer wander to radiance pools.
  
• You can now advance the passage of time in sandbox mode if you enable debug mode.
  
• You can now set the clock to 16x speed if you enable debug mode.
  
• Survival Island map tweaked slightly.
  
• Nerfed food values slightly.
  
• Lowered the priority of dirty water in the farm to high, so the water purifier gets more dirty water.
  
• Removed map "Bottleneck" from the Official Maps list.
  
• Increased the range provided by the forge.
  
• Nomad settings can now be customized in the custom game mode menu.
  
• There is now a 1 in 50 chance that a fire elemental will spawn when a meteor hits.
  
• Radiance pools now slowly generate energy the player can steal with their hand.
  
• Radiance pools no longer use cut stone, but require more rock and crystal.
  
• Increased Cold Aura spell cost.

Interface Changes

• You can now access the reset AI function by holding down left shift on the selected region panel in world map view, and the load game menu in skirmish.
  
• Fixed copyright date on main menu.
  
• World overlay GUI elements no longer display behind the GUI panels.
  
• Tips popping up now cancel the current task, to prevent accidental clicking.
  
• Pausing the game hides the entire GUI now.
  
• Keys are no longer listed as "Rare wood drops" in the resource production panel.
  
• Tips no longer pop up associated with monster's buildings.
  
• Players now get subtle warnings the time of day period before a full moon, eclipse or blood moon.
  
• Fixed a typo in the debug screen, that was showing the topography layers flipped.

Lootbox Changes

• You can no longer find keys harvesting resources.
  
• The chance you can find a loot box harvesting resources has been increased.
  
• Finding keys when trying to uncover lootboxes is now slightly more common.
  
• Lootbox settings can now be customized in the custom game mode menu.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Heavily optimized the provisioner price update and stock increase code. This should completely eliminate the "New day" lag some players have been having.
  
• Fixed some issues with sell resource and deliver resource AI branches not switching to the correct AI branches when failing.
  
• Fixed a rare crash when a mob is harvesting a resource and it the tile decays before he completes his work.
  
• Fixed crash when casting mend on walls that were completely blocked on all sides.
  
• Fixed a minor bug that would make laborers leave the marketplace too quickly sometimes.
  
• Fixed a crash when the delivery or selling AI would fail and try to repeat itself, sometimes returning incorrect values for the new assignment.
  
• Fixed a minor shadow generation glitch on the construction phase of the rain catcher.
  
• Fixed a few minor errors in the water artwork.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could not hide the camp placement panel in sandbox.

InDev 30 Unstable 1 Change Log

Multi-Carry

• All villagers can now hold between 3 and 8 resources at a time based on their strength. They will gain 1 additional resource per 100 strength, and always be able to carry a minimum of at least 3. This applies to labor golems as well.
  
• Harvesting AI has been modified to sometimes drop a resource on the ground. The chance they'll take resources home increases the more resources are in the area.

Sweeping Balance Changes

• Increased the stats of all friendly mobs and villagers by about 80%
  
• Reduced the amount of nomads that spawn, as well as their chance to spawn.
  
• Starting villagers in a new region on the world map have been reduced to 12.
  
• Starting resources in a new region on the world map have increased to 32.
  
• Starting villagers in skirmish mode reduced to 10-14.
  
• The amount of starting villagers in Limbo have been reduced to 19-29 in survival and nightmare.
  
• The monster spawn rates in survival, nightmare and traditional have been reduced.
  
• Doggo spawn rates have been halved.
  
• Farms now grow food 4 times slower.
  
• Wild food now grows and spreads 2 times slower.
  
• All food items now provide more overall food.
  
• Almost all job slots provided by all work buildings has been cut in half.
  
• Occupancy maximum for housing has been cut in half.
  
• You now gain twice as much maximum influence per villager.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Added all new Patreons' rewards to the game.
  
• Changed how essence is generated from objects, making the output more varied in appearance.
  
• When the game needs to find an open space to force drop a resource, the location is a bit more randomized now.

Interface Changes

• A new statistics panel has been added to the game, showing tons of daily statistics about your village.
  
• All GUI code has been completely gutted and reorganized, most of the changes will be transparent to the player. But pretty much everything under the hood was redone.
  
• Updated the mouse lock icon.
  
• When selecting a terrain while making a new map, you no longer unselect the map size.
  
• Fixed mining facility upgrade descriptions.
  
• Spells on the spell bar will no longer stay highlighted even if no spell is selected.
  
• Fixed a minor typo in the catjeet laboror's tasking AI.
  
• Right clicking to add/remove workers now adds and removes plus or minus 5, rather than 10.
  
• Lowered the "low villager count" warning in the problem panel from 10 to 5 villagers.
  
• Changed the description of the crystillery so it fits in the description box.

Optimizing and Big Fixes

• Removed even more erroneous names from the name list.
  
• Wrote in a system to remove erroneous names during runtime, preventing them from causing problems.
  
• Catjeet nomad children are now in the correct mob group.
  
• Fixed a bug that would allow workers to "overfill" the farm while it is being upgraded.

RISE TO RUINS IS THE SUPERIOR GAME