RimWorld Alpha 12 – Animal Taming released

Posted August 21st, 2015 by Tynan Sylvester

Animal taming is here! You can now tame animals, milk them, eat them, and train them into whirling furry/scaly death machines! We’ve also added codified room roles and statistics (like room wealth and room impressiveness), new traits, animals, threats, items, bonuses, bugfixes, and bugs. A full change list is at the end of this post.

How to upgrade: If you own the game, you can get the new version 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 the support page which includes an automatic link sender tool and our support email. There may be a delay of some hours before your download count resets or your email arrives.

Also note that this build will not load old savegames or old worlds, so please don’t try to load these in the new version. They’ll probably just crash the game.

Change list:

Animal taming

  • Colonists with the Animal Handler work type will now interact with animals.
  • Animal handling success rates are governed by the new Animals skill.
  • Handlers can tame animals. They approach designated wild animals with food and attempt to tame them to make them part of the colony.
  • Handlers can train animals as designated in tame animals’ Training tab. Animal training looks like taming, requires food, and trains one “trainable skill” at a time. Not all animals can learn anything; they need sufficient trainable intelligence.
  • Trainable skills:
    • Obedience: has master, follows master while master is drafted and defends him.
    • Release: master can release animal during combat to attack distant enemies, and call animal back.
    • Rescue: animal will rescue wounded colonists and take them to bed. Animal must be smart and large enough to do this.
    • Haul: animal will intermittently haul items like a colonist would. Animal must be smart enough to do this, and will haul an amount related to its body size.
  • Added Animals main tab, which lists all colony animals and provides interfaces to set their master and area restriction.
  • Each animal has a ‘wildness’ indicating how difficult it is to tame.
  • Animals have a minimum handling skill. Player is warned if they designate taming an animal that no handler can actually tame.
  • Tame animals can be assigned animal areas in which they will try to remain.
  • Tame animals can be bought and sold. Bulk traders carry normal animals, while exotic goods traders can buy and sell any weird animal, pre-tamed.
  • Tame animals can be designated for slaughter and animal handlers will slaughter them.

New animal behaviors and mechanics

  • Some animals (alpaca, muffalo, camel) can be shorn for wool that can be crafted into apparel.
  • Some animals (muffalo, cow, camel) can be milked.
  • Some animals (chicken, cobra, iguana, tortoise, etc) can now lay eggs. Fertilized eggs will hatch. All eggs can be eaten or cooked.
  • Animals can be pregnant and give birth. Animals are made pregnant when a male approaches and mates with a female. Birth is accompanied by amniotic fluid spray.
  • You can now build animal beds and animal boxes and place animal sleeping spots.
  • Animals all sleep.
  • Animals can have different graphics per gender.
  • Animals have “life stages” related to their ages. Baby animals are tiny and weak, juveniles somewhat larger, and adults are full size.
  • Colony starts with a random pet.
  • Animals can nuzzle colonists, improving their mood.
  • Animals can be named when tamed or when nuzzling. Names are drawn from a large bank of animal names.
  • All organisms including animals have life expectancies and will develop chronic conditions like frailty or cataracts in old age.
  • New incident: Farm Animals Wander In (some tame farm animals wander to and join the colony)
  • New incident: Self Tame (random wild animal on map becomes tame).
  • Doctors will treat animals’ wounds if the animal is in a colony bed.
  • Some animals may attack on a failed taming attempt.
  • Animals produce animal filth, proportional to body size, inversely proportional to petness.
  • Tons of new animal graphics and sounds for new animals.

New animals

  • Boomalope (large fragile animal that explodes and sets fires on death)
  • Thrumbo (giant peaceful powerful creature with amazing fur and horn)
  • Chinchilla (very valuable fur)
  • Capybara
  • Cow
  • Pig
  • Chicken
  • Yorkshire terrier
  • Labrador retriever
  • Husky
  • Elephant

Room roles and stats

  • Rooms now have ‘roles’ and stats based on what is inside them. These are automatically-defined values that, in turn, passively affect thoughts and events in the room.
  • Room roles and stats can be inspected with a new inspection tool (bottom right of screen).
  • Room roles are:
    • Bedroom
    • Barracks
    • Prison bedroom
    • Prison barracks
    • Dining room
    • Hospital
    • Laboratory
    • Kitchen
    • Rec room
    • Tomb
  • Room stats are:
    • Impressiveness (most important stat; an aggregate of other stats, mostly for pride psychology)
    • Wealth
    • Space
    • Beauty
    • Cleanliness (has a direct effect on medical outcomes)
  • Room stats affect things like:
    • Immunity gain speed
    • Medical treatment quality
    • Room stats create many variants on thoughts like:
    • Ate in impressive dining room
    • Own impressive bedroom
    • Own bed in impressive barracks
    • Did joy activity in impressive rec room
  • Added traits:
    • Greedy: Unhappy without a very impressive room.
    • Jealous: Unhappy if anyone has a room noticeably better than him.
    • Ascetic: Unhappy unless he has a very crappy room.

Facilities

  • Added ‘facilities’ – passive buildings that give bonuses to nearby buildings:
  • Vitals monitor (improves healing in adjacent medical bed)
  • Tool cabinet (improves production at nearby work table)
  • Multi-analyzer (speeds research at nearby research bench)

Ancient artifacts

  • Ancient artifacts with psychic powers can be bought, sold, and found in ancient crypts.
  • Psychic powers work at any range through obstacles.
  • Artifacts are one-use.
  • The artifacts are:
    • Psychic insanity lance – drives a single target insane
    • Psychic shock lance – drops a single target asleep
    • Psychic animal pulser – drives animals berserk map-wide
    • Psychic soothe pulser – gives a temporary mood boost to everyone on the map

Graves and sarcophagi

  • Graves are no longer just glorified storage slots; colonists must actually ‘bury’ corpses.
  • Can now build sarcophagi out of solid materials. High-quality sarcophagi are art items.
  • Colonists will visit graves of dead colonists for a joy activity.

Misc new incidents

  • New incident: Poison ship. A variation on the psychic drone ship that kills plants in an expanding circle.
  • New Flashstorn. A localized, intense lightning storm in one area of the map. Causes big fires.

Interface rework

  • Main tabs like Work, Outfits, World, Factions, etc are now tabs permanently displayed along the bottom of the screen instead of being buried in an Overview window.
  • Some tabs, like Work, will not take more space than they need to given the number of entries (colonists) to display.

Misc

  • Added heart attacks. People or animals approaching or past their life expectancy will have a chance of heart attack, which will progress and resolve in a random way. Heart attack is emergency-treatable to improve outcomes.
  • Added hay (animal food only, for getting through winter). Added haygrass (long growing, high yield of hay).
  • Added way to enable/deny medicine in different qualities to any colonist, prisoner, or tame animal, from a the health tab.
  • All furniture is now ‘minifiable’ like televisions and telescopes. This means beds, chairs, etc can be moved without being rebuilt, bought, and sold.
  • New trait: Night owl. Happy when awake at night, sad if awake around midday.
  • New thought: Crowded – In a space with too many people.
  • New installable implant: Painstopper. Prevents all pain, but reduces consciousness permanently.
  • New installable implant: Joywire. Large permanent happiness boost, but reduces consciousness permanently.
  • Furniture can now be art engraved.
  • New floors: gold tile, sterile tile, cream carpet, dark gray carpet.
  • Game start now has a “select random landing site” button if you don’t want to choose.
  • Improvements to trade interface: better layout, expands vertically to use all screen space, increment/decrement buttons and launch/drop all buttons added.
  • Added ‘open’ designator for opening cryptosleep caskets, graves, sarcophagi, and other containers.
  • Manhunter pack incident can use animals besides wargs.
  • Commands are shown if there is at least 1 selected object with this command, instead of requiring all selected things be able to accept the command.
  • Dazed broken pawns will now randomly strip off clothes and drop things.
  • New graphics for squirrel and warg.
  • New graphics for research bench and other buildings.
  • Unskilled or injured growers can fail at harvesting, destroying the harvest for one plant
  • A bunch of new music from Alistair Lindsay.
  • Carrying capacity is now a stat that can change for body size and manipulation capacity.
  • Siegers will never be sent with only melee weapons (too exploitable).
  • Sappers now avoid mining through high-health ores and barriers.
  • Rebalanced crop yields and harvesting challenges so crops require a bit more space.
  • Game will auto-reset mods config on startup crash to try to recover.
  • Tons and tons of bugfixes and other adjustments, refactorings, balancings and tunings.

66 Responses to “RimWorld Alpha 12 – Animal Taming released”

  1. Ryott

    I was browsing Tynan’s twitter when I saw the update. I don’t know if that’s luck or not. Either way, FIRST.

  2. Pandora

    Will mods/ mod coding be affected?


  3. Pandora – Yes, mod compatibility will be totally broken between A11 and A12. As it is between all different alphas.

  4. Pandora

    Not a problem, I was about to update my mods anyway. I’ll check the core files for changes.

  5. Pandora

    I’m liking the new UI. My mod seems to be ok, it’s just a basic .XML that adds new items, research and workbenches. No error come up in dev mode. Thanks for the update, been looking forward to this one.

  6. Teagan Wilson

    Very Excited, Great Work Tynan!
    Can’t wait to start playing!

  7. Jamie

    Wow Tynan, you’ve outdone yourselves this time. You must have worked hard to get this out before September.

    Thank you very much. I’m super excited.

    Fantastic work as always.


  8. Thanks Jamie. We’ve actually had four of us working through summer – me, Piotr, Rhopunzel and Al. Plus Michael on support and all the excellent volunteer translators and testers. Spread the credit.

  9. Kajin

    YES! Thank you so much! This all looks really impressive, gonna dig right in.

  10. Bohb

    Really excited for the new music!!!

  11. john

    Great patch! Good work guys!
    Im so excited starting a new colony! 🙂

  12. Mike

    You know, when I first picked up Rimworld over a year ago, I cringed a little bit at the price tag, but decided to roll the dice because I really liked what I was seeing.
    I really want to say that I’ve been consistently impressed with the progress made and have been very satisfied with that decision. Have a great vacation and I look forward to what is to come in the future!

    Thanks!

  13. Dr. Z

    I really like the new dynamic interface without the overview button. The bottom right menu always looked a bit unfinished. I’m also really exited for comabt cows 😉

  14. sandman

    My link expired.

    I will try later if i can download the alpha 12. Thanks to solve the problem. I know you learn french Mr Sylvester so i put the french text i had.

    Lien a expiré
    Le fichier que vous avez essayé de télécharger a atteint sa limite de téléchargement. Cela peut être dû au nombre de tentatives de téléchargement est atteint ou la durée pour laquelle un téléchargement est autorisée ayant expiré. Détails des limites pour chaque commande peut être trouvée sur la page de téléchargement.

  15. Tipx

    @sandman: Your browser might have send a request for the file too often. If you got that error through the mail they sent you, I suggest you contact support…. OR, you can read the text up in this post that says “Anyone still having trouble should start at the support page which includes an automatic link sender tool and our support email.”, but since you’ll try later, it will most likely be fixed by “There may be a delay of some hours before your download count resets or your email arrives.”

    🙂

  16. Jozrael

    Enjoy your vacation!

  17. Jasta85

    So excited about this release, I remember asking if animal herding would be in the game like a year ago, want even expecting animal taking along with that. I was going to spend this weekend playing the new shadowrun game but now I’m going to have to split my time.

  18. kevin9614

    Amazing updates!!! Thank you so much 😀

  19. Raven

    *Hugs TYnan tightly* THANK YOU! Who knew that you would release the next Alpha on my birthday! Can’t wait to play this game. Man so many games to play now. This made itself adds a whole lot of entertainment for me, since i always wanted to engrave stuff.

  20. wedge

    I thought you were on vacation until january. Wasn’t expecting new updates. Why you no release the game on Steam?!

    Cheers!

  21. Pantalaimon

    Awesome update! Can’t wait to try out the animal related mechanics. Thanks Tynan!

  22. Pantalaimon

    (and of course thanks to everyone else currently working on the game too!)

  23. towerbooks3192

    Wow. I was surprised this is released pretty early. I thought you said that whenever someone asks for the release of the next alpha you will delay it for a week and this is due to come out November 2033 because of that.

    Excited to play it.


  24. That is awsome! To celibrate; I am buying my wife a copy.

  25. Tomkat

    Really nice update. Nice work, but we need german shepherd dogs :). I really like to see them in the game. Anyway nice work.

  26. sandman

    @Tipx: i try again, same issue. It says that i have 7 download remain, but link expired. And i dont received the link for the alpha 12 and reclaim one link in this page http://rimworldgame.com/getmygame/ but same issue. I will send a mail. Thanks to reply anyway.

  27. Dan

    I thought we were done for updates this year, what a great surprise, and what an amazing update! So much new stuff!

    Thank you!!

  28. Jack

    Can we get a list of what the new pets eat please? Also Im in love with the pets part of this, it makes me want to do a peaceful run with pets galore. I would also like to thank you for the animals, HYPE!

  29. Jack

    Some suggestions- collars for the dogs (would fall under the art category mabye)? Letting prisoners have time with the pets (probably the dogs) to improve their mood and possibly their chance of recruitment? Sorry for the double post, but Im in love with animal related mechanics in games. :p

  30. Skade

    The more “Let’s plays” I see the more I want to play this game and now this… I’m going to have to buy it, been hoping for something husbandry style for a while 😀

    Also I really like Jacks idea; maybe expand on it a bit more to include collars for most animals since it’s not uncommon to collar most breeds that is kept as pets. And maybe other different apparel for pets like safety vests for dogs etc.

  31. Ken

    All these things are just amazing! 🙂

  32. Natas_Enasni

    HOLY CRAP; what an update. Thank you SO MUCH. I had said that I felt animal taming was the one thing missing; but this update exceeds my expectations so much that I don’t even know what to say. Besides thanks, again, of course!

  33. Garr

    This whole thing is neat and awesome! Every time such updates pursue me to do more and more of Rimworld!
    There’s no more simple words to thank you, Tynan.(I really like nicknames of Piotr and Rhopunzel). So I will patiently wait for your new features! Make them good, even if it will take longer than most fans expect. Quality always more preferable than quantity.

  34. Michael

    Wow brillant development speed and very creative ideas put into this release, props for that! The only thing I fear a little is a sudden development stop too early… Hope this doesn’t appear since the game foundation (style, interface, clean programming) is very promising and there are way too many great game mechanics waiting to be implemented. `Hope we can enjoy development for at least 2-3 years.

    No comparison to this extremely laggy, buggy game called DF which forces you to start a new game only after 10 ingame years because it STILL can’t handle the increasing amount of remains on the map. Are they serious?

  35. SW

    Hi!
    First I must say that “this is the most amazing survival game I ever played!” 🙂
    But second thing is that I am missing there one very important game mechanism. For presence: water. There is (of course) some on map, but is not interactable. So I must ask, if you are planning to add its mechanisms to the game in the next bigger update or in near future? Or it is still not important for the game now?

  36. aalikane

    Is anyone else having issues with assigning a Master to an animal? I don’t have the little master button to assign a handler to my starting dog…. am I missing something or is anyone else having similar issues?

  37. milo

    Yay, I was in this video 😀

  38. Kajin

    @aalikane

    Do any of your starting pawns have any skill in handling? Some animals require the pawn to have a minimum skill in handling before they can be assigned to them.


  39. […] It also added in many more new features, and you can about read about them by checking out the the full Alpha 12 changelog on the official Ludeon Studios […]

  40. Nimrod100

    Good job Ludeon. Will colonists ever be able to reproduce?

  41. Nimrod100

    And one more question, why does the mod coding change between versions, it is a bit annoying.

  42. Ryan

    I really wish they would add something to help with the whole random issue with the Colonists at the start what i mean is when you make your first Colonists it is so annoying to have to hit random over and over and over AND OVER till you get someone that you like.
    Here is my idea
    You let people have a skill points that you can give to people but keep the traits and background random.
    I get that you want it to be like “real life” But sometimes you need to give a little realism up so that the game is more fun.
    And I’m not saying to not keep the other colonists that join you random in fact i like that part just not the starting people being random.

  43. 00neo_man00

    man this update added so mutch i wanted THANK YOU.
    love the direction this game is going.

    P.S. i think it would add so mutch to the game if animals were able to to eat\trample your crops, so you would have to build fences, or now with tameing have gaurds protecting crops.

  44. FFpotato

    Any chance of an option to use the old UI style? The stuff on the bottom of the screen feels really out of place to me. I kinda liked the game pausing when I wanted to mess with those menus, as it kept my colonists from doing anything stupid while I changed things around. This one I can kinda get used to I suppose, as it’s not as bad as the game ruining LoL hud changes.

  45. Duane

    Thank you for the MOST awesome and ADDICTING game I have EVER Played!

    Duane

  46. Elsy

    Love this update. My game was ruined by a rather annoying bug, however. Everyone in my colony gained the -10 “Unburied colonist” thing.
    No colonists had died, however. I even had empty sarcophagi waiting to be filled. I went and scoured the map for every single corpse but even then they were unhappy. 🙁


  47. Thanks everyone!

    Elsy – Yes this has been reported. There will probably be a hotfix that addresses this and some other issues as well.

  48. Pandora

    Tynan…Tribal’s/ raiders using tamed animals to attack?

  49. Pandora

    Also, using tamed wargs/ dogs to help hunting?

  50. Level

    Sweet update!. About the trait ‘jealous’ (Unhappy if someone has a room noticeably better than him.) – Well the word is incorrect, it should be ‘Envy’, rather ‘Envious’.

    Keep up the good work.

  51. SmoK

    Maybe you add that colonist might get pregnant

  52. Jack

    I seem to have a bug- Any time a colonist breaks (mentally) they continue doing tasks like they aren’t broken.


  53. Thanks Jack I’ll look into it.

    For future bug reports, ideally please report on the Bugs forum.

  54. ImpulsiveZombie

    Lo, Tynan. First of all I’d like to thank you for this brilliant update. Almost immediately after starting a new colony my objective was to make a pet bed for my labrador out of Yorkshire terrier leather, so that the lesser dogs may learn their place.

    Anyway, if you don’t mind I’d like to ask a small question that Google couldn’t help me with: How do you heal animals and pets? My cows got shot up during the last raider assault and I can’t seem to do anything apart from watch them casually bleed out.

  55. Lupus

    @ImpulsiveZombie: build an animal sleeping spot in an area that is accessible the wounded animal. Your doctors will treat them there.

  56. Juliusz

    Wonderful update! But is it just me or is firefighting sort of broken? I have set firefight to 1, as being the most important thing. I have tried to make them prioritize it by manually clicking on the fires. Yes the fires are within my home area. But the colonists preferred to go talk to prisoners, eat and sleep while the whole base burned down around them =(.

  57. Maklane

    Im really surprised that you added something like the Chinchilla, tipical from Canary Islands, a really small spot in the planet. im sure that you have visited one of our 7 islands 🙂

  58. 3koozy

    Good Update..
    one thing that I noticed is that colonists visit drifters’ graves for joy!? are they suppose to do that.. or is it a bug?


  59. Maklane – It was just too adorable to resist. Also it’s famous for its fur, and you can now make chinchilla coats in the game.

    3koozy – they’re just very sentimental!

  60. Qodek

    I don’t saw this, but why don’t you put some “like-dislike” system? It’s hard? example: Peter and Gary were working together, but some chatting made them “fight”, now everytime they’re together there is a debuff on emotions, and if Peter or Gary breaks, he will go after the other.
    (Sorry any mistakes)

  61. Duane C

    What about fire hoses or fire extinguishers? The colonist can build almost anything but they still stamp out fires with their feet????? You can set up fire hose points within and around the colony…the hoses can be a certain length. Same with fire extinguishers… Bigger the fire more extinguishers needed… And then they need to be refilled…. Also… Who makes sandbags with steel????? Its canvas/ plastic bag and sand!!!!!. And please tweek the AI to prevent the colonists from running thru fire to either fight it or rescue someone…its just plain stupid and wouldnt happen in real life…especially if there is a clear path around the fire…. Thanks

  62. Desastreger

    Shouldn’t the trait “workaholic” be added? Joys goes up when they work, goes down when they need to eat or sleep. Plus workaholics relax socially when they work alongside one another. Makes sense?

  63. Alex

    Hey, is there somewhere that describes how to use the sorting buttons on the trade interface? I just can’t seem to get a handle on it, those two buttons make it a little unintuitive. Thanks!

  64. Jay

    For the “night owl” trait what hours 0-23 via the restrictions tab are regarded as night?

  65. ConTrust

    I am gonna buy this game as soon as I set up the PayPal acc! Excellent work Tynan!


  66. I really want this game