Alpha 8 is out! This time we’ve added a seasonal cycle and temperature simulation, snow, two more biomes (boreal forest and tundra) with all the attached animals, art sculpting, crafted item quality, weapon and apparel crafting, homegrown medicine, wind turbines, and more.
If you own the game, you can get Alpha 8 by re-downloading from the link you used before (it is a permanent link and always has the newest version). You should also get an update email from us. Anyone still having trouble should start at this thread.
Also note that this build will not load old savegames, so keep your old install separate if you want to finish an Alpha 7 colony.
Change summary below:
Temperature and seasons
- A new temperature system tracks temperatures indoors and outdoors.
- Characters can get hypothermia, frostbite, heatstroke, or burns from being in extreme-temperature areas.
- Certain clothing can protect against temperature discomfort/harm.
- Temperature changes daily and on a yearly cycle according to where you are on the planet. There are distinct seasons.
- There are special heat wave/cold snap events.
- Added heater and cooler buildings.
- Food spoils. This can be slowed or prevented with refrigeration.
- Snow falls and accumulates over winter. It slows down movement.
- Snow can be cleared manually, and will melt if heated.
- New apparel: Parka and tuque.
- Added new biomes: boreal forest and tundra
Art and crafting
- Sculptor’s table added. Colonists can create abstract sculptures.
- Sculptures and melee weapons have a quality. Quality is influenced by crafter skill and affects beauty and damage.
- Apparel crafting now allows crafting any kind of apparel.
- Can now craft any kind of melee weapon from appropriate materials.
- Created ‘unfinished thing’ step to crafting. Crafting can now take several days per item (as in the case of advanced weapons or art).
- Added art trading.
New content
- New animals: elk, hare
- New plants: pine tree, birch tree, moss, xerigium
- Xerigium plants can be farmed and refined into herbal medicine.
- New power plant: wind turbine.
- New weapons: triple rocket launcher, doomsday rocket launcher.
- New items: Glitterworld medicine, herbal medicine.
- Alphabeaver event creates alphabeavers who will consume trees until stopped.
- Ancient cryptosleep shrines now generate on the map. Open the cryptosleep caskets if you dare – the occupants may not be friendly.
- Economy and trader stock generation reworked and rebalanced from the ground up.
- Stats inspector allows inspecting more things in more places, and provides more, clearer info.
- Several new songs from Alistair Lindsay.
- You can now release prisoners. This gains you goodwill from their faction.
- You can now configure your keyboard hotkeys.
- Dozens of other fixes and improvements.
December 10th, 2014 - 6:01 pm
Woo! Can’t wait to get home and try it out.
December 10th, 2014 - 6:29 pm
Yessss!!!!! There goes my plans for the weekend lol. Amazing work Tynan. RimWorld is already one of the best games I’ve ever played even in Alpha. With the dedication you’ve show to continuing to expand the functions of the game, I don’t think I can even fathom what the finish line will look like.
Thank you!
December 10th, 2014 - 6:31 pm
How can you dare releasing an update while I have a good colony running?!?
But seriously, game developer making a video and coming to a situation saying “WTF is happening?” is proof of quality.
December 10th, 2014 - 6:33 pm
Yeah a lot of random lucky things happened while shooting that video… legendary quality weapons are extremely rare among traders, so seeing one was not expected. Especially in plasteel.
Or, maybe it’s a sign that the game is developed enough that there’s so much interesting stuff around that something will tend to happen regularly. That’d be nice!
December 10th, 2014 - 6:39 pm
Holy crap, I didn’t know I owned this game. I must’ve bought it 2 years ago at some point, to contribute to an up-and commer… Tynan, in the meantime, you’ve been creating an AWESOME game.
This new update makes it even better. I began peeking at it recently, and only noticed the email in my box today about an update! Hahaha. Awesome!
December 10th, 2014 - 6:40 pm
You say alpha 8 has been released, so where is the updated download? How long do you reckon that will take to set up?
December 10th, 2014 - 6:42 pm
Daryl – The download link doesn’t change; you can use your old one. Or wait for the new email to arrive (with the same link).
December 10th, 2014 - 6:44 pm
The server must not have updated yet. I so badly want it to go faster.
December 10th, 2014 - 6:49 pm
Awesome! I check back from time to time and after a month’s break I decided to look this morning and I was a little sad nothing new had shown up. Just checked my email, excited now!
December 10th, 2014 - 6:50 pm
Yet another massive update that just blows everything out of the water and adds a lot of new toys to play with. I don’t know how you’re able to pull this off, but thank you, from the bottom of my heart, that you’re a good developer. Even if it’s just a patch filled with bugfixes and tweaks or another content update, you always deliver.
December 10th, 2014 - 6:54 pm
Awesome update, as usual (and expected! 🙂 ). I always love some good weather simulation (“Don’t Starve” style). Amazing how consistently productive you are on Rimworld, it’s gonna be a huge hit when it finally goes 1.0.
December 10th, 2014 - 7:08 pm
Can’t wait to get home, Awesome update! 😀
Looking over the log, a few questions occurred to me: Does the game track where colonists originated? More specifically, if I recruit a prisoner from TribeX and then, for whatever reason throw them back in the slammer, does releasing them make TribeX happy?
How informative is the relationship boost? i.e. is it steady +x relations, or will releasing the SpaceNinja boost relations more than the armless Oaf? And will we be told the value?
Is there a plan for craft-able ranged weapons? (Bows, Javelins, Slings, etc.)
December 10th, 2014 - 7:44 pm
I can’t say it any better than SaKenyi already did so I’ll just add this… wow. Why am I at work? Cannot wait to play. Everything looks excellent.
December 10th, 2014 - 8:32 pm
Still waiting 🙁
December 10th, 2014 - 8:35 pm
Looks like christmas came early this year…
thanks Tynan for this update
December 10th, 2014 - 8:42 pm
Um the new update was an email sent out? Or did i miss something?
December 10th, 2014 - 8:47 pm
I didn’t receive an email but apparently the download is now for a8. Does say I only have 3 downloads left though.
December 10th, 2014 - 9:03 pm
The reset sometimes happens on a delay.
December 10th, 2014 - 9:47 pm
yeaaaa! I cant wait to start playing, thanks for the update Ludeon studios
December 10th, 2014 - 10:09 pm
Not tried it yet, but looks nice. In regards to the being able to release prisoners–has it been changed so that when a friendly visitor is incapacitated, if you can ‘rescue’ instead of ‘capture’ so they don’t just lie there and die if ignored (as it makes the faction hostile to ‘capture’ them)? Maybe rescue them and release them once they’re healed up for higher goodwill from the faction…
December 10th, 2014 - 10:20 pm
Can’t wait to play! Thank you Ludeon Studios!
December 11th, 2014 - 12:07 am
A hero amongst men. :p I just got back into the groove of RimWorld and tried a few mods (woot woot). This update seems incredible, once again: well done, Tynan!
December 11th, 2014 - 12:10 am
Great job, Tynon. I love this game!
Is cryptosleep really a thing or are you confusing it with cryosleep, as in cryonics? I understand “crypto” to be more associated with encryption and “cryo” to mean freeze or something to that effect. Just curious… Don’t mean to be critical. Thank you so much for your hard work on this wonderful game.
December 11th, 2014 - 12:16 am
I named it cryptosleep. After crypts (where people sleep like this), adn cryptobiosis, which is the phenomena of microscopic lifeforms being alive without showing any sign of it (e.g. sea monkeys in dry form).
December 11th, 2014 - 12:17 am
I support RKumono’s idea.
Ofc I was always happy to strip any dead vistors off their stuff but I rather have the rescue option with a faction boost!
Glad A8 & Winter stuff have arrived! 🙂
December 11th, 2014 - 4:02 am
Wow, that’s a nice birthday present for me. That change/feature list is massive!
December 11th, 2014 - 11:28 pm
Norton360 does not like Alpha 8. Erases 2 .dll files and the game .exe and goes inside the .zip to erase them as well.
December 12th, 2014 - 7:11 am
yeah awsome update!
downloadlink is old link? i lost old link 🙁
because i have some problem at old mailaddres so i changed mailaddres.
December 12th, 2014 - 9:28 am
LOVE THIS !!! keep up the good work and happy holidays man!
December 13th, 2014 - 8:04 am
What I really want to see is the ability to travel to other locations on the world map so you could do things like raid other colonies, visit other colonies, attack pirates, raid/visit your friends or your other colonies on the same world and explore for things like the cryptosleep shrines(or maby even mechanoid hives if they are added)
December 13th, 2014 - 8:05 am
Also amazing game, keep up the good work
December 13th, 2014 - 2:10 pm
I check for new updates on this game every day and when i saw alpha 8 was released i got very exited and happy! Thank you for an awesome game!
December 15th, 2014 - 3:30 pm
What are some other planned features that you would like to add? Also, how much will this be like Dwarf Fortress in the end?