Hey everyone, hope summer treats you well. So here’s the state of development now:
First, players found some rare but game-killing bugs in Alpha 11b. As in, they can actually kill your save game and make it unloadable. I’ll probably be releasing a small, non-essential hotfix to Alpha11 to fix these. This will be a minimal fix with no new content or changes to compatibility.
Second, Alpha 12’s key feature will be animal husbandry and related features. It’s an ambitious update: new animals, animal mating, reproduction, egg laying, species life stages with different labels, appearances, and statistics, perhaps animal training, attack animals, and so on. Piotr is also working on some other juicy features: new varieties of one-use ancient artifacts for psychic attacks and control, a new room stats system so pawns get happier when they have impressive rooms and heal better in sterile hospitals, and passive ‘facility’ buildings that enhance the function of other nearby buildings.
So I think Alpha 12 will be an important update, but it will take some time. It might not be finished before the end of August, in which case it’ll have to wait until 2016 (since I’m taking a break starting in September). I considered just releasing what we have but I really don’t want to release animal husbandry in a half-done state. I want you to experience the glory of it all at once.
In general everything’s been going great, and work is progressing rapidly. Currently I, Piotr, Rhopunzel, and Al are all working on RimWorld, so great new stuff is getting slammed in every day. It’s fun!
And now, a picture of wargs and Yorkies next to a pile of corpses.
July 22nd, 2015 - 5:22 am
Will Alpha 12 release be soonish ™ or are you just updating us what we might expect in the distant future?
July 22nd, 2015 - 5:57 am
You guys are doing some fantastic work. You are really holding the torch high for the ‘Alpha Game Industry’. RimWorld is the kind of game I can top the list of ‘Trustworthy alpha games’ when convincing people alphas aren’t so bad.
That aside, love the game guys. It’s made so well and really stands out. Keep up the hard work. Just wanted to put in a good note to hopefully keep you happy and motivated.
-Tony
July 22nd, 2015 - 8:27 am
The internet is world wide, winter is treating me well, Thank you. Humans are not animals? Can we not reproduce? A bit early for me to gripe about a lack of human reproduction right now, isn’t it? I’ve just been craving having something almost useless, maybe even a bit of a hindrance, that the colonists would WANT to protect with their lives, can fall in love with, get happier happiness from and deeper depression id it’s lost. The game seems to be headed in that direction with animal husbandry and if you don’t include it, it could be easily modded in. Thank you! Keep up the top work.
July 22nd, 2015 - 9:20 am
Thank you for this update. This transparency really is welcomed for convenience related reasons. I hate to start playing a game while it gets updated. All these mods are obsolete the next day, and I have the features I miss right before my nose if I don’t update.
Hopefully, the passive buildings have some logical sense behind them and you, as a player, actually have to create the requirements for them to work. Like laying pipes, cables, whatever. It would be disappointing, for me of course, if you just had a magical machine standing somewhere that has an aura of influence.
July 22nd, 2015 - 9:54 am
The updates on the work log have been exciting and I’m looking forward to alpha 12. I don’t like that we’ll have to wait until 2016 for the next version. That’s a long way off.
Tynan, I think that it’s good that you’re taking a while off though, if that’s what you feel is in your best interest. You’ve been fairly consistent in updating and developing the game and it’s becoming a great game that I enjoy to play very much. I hope it doesn’t loose too much momentum while you’re away from it, but I’m glad that you want to release a more complete version rather than just throw out a buggy version for us to sit on for several months.
I hope the time away gives you clarity and a renewed desire to make the game better than it would’ve otherwise been. I’m sure there will still be many of us here waiting to see where you take this fun and exciting game of RimWorld.
July 22nd, 2015 - 10:13 am
Hope u give us the option too feed dead bandits to meat-eating animals 🙂
July 22nd, 2015 - 11:13 am
I love this game so much! Great job! BTW, do the wargs look different or is it just me?
July 22nd, 2015 - 1:11 pm
Wow, alpha 12 sounds amazing. This might sound like a bit of a wacky idea, but how aboout cross breading and genetic manipulation? There could, for example, be cross breeding pathways which would have different outcomes, so that with the right breeding/genetic work you could create a super strong large animal species (which could be put to some kind of use), or going in another direction you could even work towards creating some kind of sentient bipedal work creature. Your colonists can become Gods. Just don’t mix the wrong species or all hell could break loose!
July 22nd, 2015 - 3:07 pm
@Dan I love your idea. I think it might need too much work to be done by Tynan, but a mod could possibly succeed to deliver such functionality.
July 22nd, 2015 - 3:41 pm
Thanks for redrawing wargs! Because they look kinda stupid in current version 🙂
July 23rd, 2015 - 11:03 am
Wargs look good on the image.
It would indeed be interesting to be able to create a pen to hold certain animals for either meat or perhaps even wool (sheep).
July 24th, 2015 - 12:14 am
@Mur; read the article jeez he states his timetable is either late August (since he’s not sure he can complete it) to 2016 since he’s taking a break in sept.
I hope you take your time, the game is amazing but it does really need the animal training. That was the only thing I was really missing… besides the Prison Improvements Mod which doesn’t work anymore…
@dan that does sound cool but it’s the kinda thing a mod could achieve I don’t think it should take core developer time.
July 24th, 2015 - 2:34 am
You always make reasons to keep playing after a game in the last session. I always can’t wait for the next release. Keep up the good work.
July 24th, 2015 - 2:51 am
Thank you for the comments everyone 🙂
July 27th, 2015 - 5:21 am
I really love the game; I’ve played it for 100s of hours.
If Alpha 11 is going to be around for a while, I can’t wait to see all the cool mods that get built on it. I’ll probably play for 100s of hours more.
Cheers, and have a good vacation. Looking forward to Alpha 12.
July 29th, 2015 - 11:57 am
Soon the yorkie warmachine will be a reality! Animal breeding is something i’ve been hoping for for a while, and its more than meeting my expectations. I look forward to Alpha 12, when ever it arrives!
August 3rd, 2015 - 7:16 am
Great update. Can’t wait for release date. Another great addition to RimWorld, good job Ludeon
August 16th, 2015 - 2:07 am
I want this animal husbandry update so bad, I can taste the meat already. Also, those room happiness values look pretty awesome as well. Can’t wait to sink my teeth in.