After the Collapse: September Devlog news

Hi everyone!

Here's our monthly progress update, and between the new combat Interface, medical system, embark screen and other improvements, there's a lot to go over. So let's get down to business.

We've just published our first trailer, it's still a work in progress and it will likely be replaced by something a bit more action packed and showing more of the late game content before the official release. It still a decent demonstration of the user interface and how the game plays.

We're now on Steam! Our store-page and community hub have been open to the public. If you're interested by the game, please make sure to wishlist it, it's helping us as much as it's helping you. Barring any last minute problem, we're planning to release the game in Early Access at the beginning of October.

We have finally implemented proper direct/manual controls for military units during raids. Simply put with the press of a button you can switch in and out of this combat interface.

When enabled, your militia (any survivor with the military job enabled and a weapon in hand) will be under your control in the same fashion as in most RTS, click to select, right click to move/attack. The currently selected unit is highlighted in gold, military units in green, enemies in red and civilians/neutrals are in grey.

Civilians will continue to act as usual, unless you've built a shelter (a zone you can build anywhere on the map). In that case, they will stop whatever they were doing and go to the shelter zone. Depending on how you're building your base, both options are perfectly valid.

There are more things to come on that front, with the ability to set patrol roads and positions for your military units (so they go there directly when toggling combat mode on), but that will be for a bit later :)

We went over the illnesses and wounds in the last post, Proper doctor and patient AI have been implemented, alongside specialized medical beds. While normal beds do the job, medical ones ensure better healing.

Your survivors can get wounded when hit by weapons, and various events will trigger and spread illnesses, they can also lose health by starving, being sick, and so on. Simple health damage can be fixed with time in a hospital and a doctor treating the patient. Wounds and illness can be cured with specific items produced at the medical station. They can also heal on their own with time, or, well, get much worse.

Currently the selection of sicknesses and wounds is pretty limited, which is pretty much constant for all new features. The code works, but the data still need to be filled. This is a good problem to have, though, as adding new items is pretty easy when the code handling it is solid.

I've been improving the user interface and quality of life features. The “population” menu got expanded. You can sort your survivors by skill, attribute or needs, and toggle skills on/off directly from this menu without having to go to each person’s individual menu.

The depot menu, on top of displaying the individual content for each depot is also displaying everything you have in total. It's still missing a few bells and whistles but it's getting there.

With the constant addition of new crafting stations, furniture and other items, I have expanded the build menu a bit, it's also looking much nicer now.

There’s a lot more on that front, but I don’t want to turn that post in a novel. Point is, it’s more or less ready for prime time.

This is the equivalent of Rimworld's storyteller. At the start of the game you can select one from a list, and it will determine which events you’ll get, at what pace and under which conditions.

For instance, I currently have a Passive World, in which the only event you’ll get is “neutral survivors are asking to join your group”. It’s as boring as it sounds, but it’s pretty much ideal for testing and getting used to the game’s mechanics. I also have a standard setting which will unleash raiders, zombies, sicknesses and other events at kind of a slow pace and depending on how well you’re doing. Adding or altering those settings is pretty easy as everything is contained in a single text file per event system. Well, it’s formatted in a particular way, but it’s easy enough to alter with proper guidance.

Right now the selection of event is a bit limited, but I’m adding more and the process to do so is pretty straightforward.

it’s now possible, and heavily recommended, to start with some basic resources and equipment. This is done through the embark screen pictured below.

Before starting the game, you're given a set amount of points you can spend on weapons, food, water, and other necessary supply (and seeds, very important). There are some presets in place, and I will add the ability to save/load new ones later down the line.

You can also select the amount of survivors you want to start with (8 by default), it's cost-free as larger groups have more chances to die of starvation before you can start food production. So “paying” for additional survivors wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense. You can also, for a nominal cost allow your settlers to spawn with some weapons and armor.

Well, here again, there's a lot being done. Armor and helmets are now visible in-game. Well there’s more to it than that, a lot of work have been made behind the scene to the way equipment and body parts are handled. Weapons won’t be rendered, tho, at least not until later, there are some obstacles and minors bugs to overcome first on that front. Those changes also allow me to add a lot of variety when it comes to the survivors’ appearance.

On top of that, survivors now properly align themselves with the crafting stations instead of just being in their general vicinity when using them. A (basic) weather system has been added, with visible rain, fog, clouds. Each weather pattern has it’s own dynamic ambient sound layer (wind, rain, thunder, general soundscape). I also added a few pretty decent music tracks from Incompetech. Given it’s free music, you might have heard some of the themes already, but I tried to select appropriate songs.

With the official release planned for very soon, a lot of attention has been put into fixing every bug and issue I could find on my own. While I'm sure I will regret writing those words later: so far the game seems to be quite stable, and runs pretty well on most hardware. I still have 3 features to complete before prime time, namely trading caravans, expeditions (both being worked on currently) and a tutorial. A month sounds like plenty enough, though. Granted those feature get completed quickly, I will feed the engine with more data (items, events, enemies).

I hope you'll enjoy the journey with us :)

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