Alpha 3 – Factional Infighting released

Posted April 10th, 2014 by Tynan Sylvester

The changelog has a full accounting of changes (read between builds 363 and 408).

Anyone having trouble with their download – please see this forum thread.

For mods, you may want to start with the Big Bang Alpha 3 mod pack.

New Stuff

The big new thing is the faction system. Now we have generated factions like pirate bands, outlander towns, and tribes. They even generate names for themselves! This leads to hilarity with three-way battles, buying off factions to get their allegiance so they’ll send fighters to help you, and getting raided by a dude’s friends after you capture him and beat him up. The video shows this in detail.

Alistair Lindsay’s music is in this build! Al is obviously still refining and expanding the music, but I think this is a great start. Listen to the dulcet tones of the mixed sci-fi/Western theme he’s been cooking up for the past 3 months.

There’s now a planning tool, so you can put down inert designations that don’t do anything. This helps you plan your colony visually, on the map. (I recommend you don’t put thousands of them, though; they’re not rendered in a super-efficient way right now.)

The map generates in a more varied way now, using a data-driven algorithm which you can mod (from the MapGeneratorDefs folder).

Tons more stuff is moddable now. And you can write proper code mods that link DLLs into the game, easily, and in a way that’s compatible with other code mods.

There is a proper hunting system which allows you to mark animals for hunting and let your colonists handle the details. Beware sending unarmed colonists to hunt boomrats by kicking them to death. The rats go boom.

The game has partial support for localization now. This was a last-minute addition, so it’s not all locked in yet and not everything can be translated. But lots of stuff can be. Now the Russian hackers can stop hacking the DLL to make the game display in Cyrillic. A rough German fan translation from TheEisbaer is included with Alpha 3.

The bill interface has been redesigned and smartened. You can now set colonists to maintain a certain stockpile of a certain kind of item. No more repeatedly ordering them to cook 4 meals every day. Just set it to “make until you have 10 meals” and it’ll run forever.

Finally, and very important, is the many small AI improvements. The AI in Alpha 2 was a little bit derpy. This was a consequence of the game increasing in complexity but the AI not becoming smarter fast enough to handle the new situations it was trying to deal with. Now, you won’t see colonists eat raw potatoes out of the stockpile when there is a dispenser ready. They will put food in the dispenser, then use it. And colonists who make something at a table will actually put it in storage now. And there are many other improvements.

Have fun! See you on the forums, Twitter, and reddit:

http://ludeon.com/forums/
https://twitter.com/TynanSylvester
http://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/

Ty

15 Responses to “Alpha 3 – Factional Infighting released”

  1. Dr. Z

    Well, it seems this lonley planet in the outer galaxy getting more popular with all the factions and stuff 🙂

  2. Gabriel Lefebvre

    Did not get my game sent to me tynan, where can I go to download it?


  3. Anyone having download trouble – please check the forum thread mentioned in the original post.

  4. Mike

    Haven’t played this (or any mods) yet, but this looks fantastic. Thanks for also giving those of use outside the mod scene a glimpse at them!

  5. HoshiGiniro

    what happened to the stone wall system?


  6. Hoshi – you have to research it now.

  7. Dr. Z

    I already mentioned it in the forums but the music is so amazing I tried to shut it down to go to sleep but I continued playing for like two hours just to listen to the music, is there any place where I can download the soundtrack?

  8. Red Storm 58

    THIS IS …… ALPHA THREE!!!! YES!!

  9. Boniu

    Great update!

  10. NiceStuff

    Hey i am following this game since start and i am going to buy it in 1or2 more alphas, it would be really nice if you can add the best fanstuff do the vanila game, especially stuff that pluralises the game item and option wise

  11. tcelvis

    Is the cooking does not give cooking exp problem fixed?


  12. Cooking xp bug should be fixed.

  13. Mary

    I been emailing you guys over 4times. I haven’t got no updates on any of the ALPHA, which is the part 2 and 3. Please send me the update. Thanks in advance


  14. Mary, I have no record of your email and no emails from you. Please email [email protected] and mention your primary PayPal email.

    More info here: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=1875.0

  15. bill

    hey do you change email address so u wont be sending it to my odd one