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Howdy Ladies and Gentlemen.

I bought rimworld Last week. I followed it pretty closely back in 2014 but haven't looked at it since. I've seen plenty of lets plays on my youtube feed but not watched any. A friend was banging on about it recently, the royalty add on got him going.

I watched a heavily modded lets play and decided rimworld has come a long way and it was time for me to buy in. Its come a long way since 2014, even though the version history suggested otherwise to me. I posted here in 2014 asking Tynan some questions, he was quite active back then and he replied. I was asking him about possibly introducing an "adventure mode", \and whether he ever saw the game being relevant to anything outside the map youre playing on t the minute. The answers he gave made me think ill look back at this later.

Well when I saw the/a globe in the lets play, and the mods for factions I was interested. Since then repeated references to caravans, world quests, raiding enemy sites, multiple colonies etc really made me want in. I am super impressed a multiplayer mod has seemingly been made functional (from watching lets plays) even if I don't think ill ever use it.

Go ask Toady (dwarf fortress developer) if hell ever implement multiplayer or if its even possible in dwarf fortress via a mod (/ever). LOL.

Im currently setting up a modpack and an edb prepare carefully embark. I've grabbed the children and pregnancy mod (I grabbed 1.0 from steam as there seem to be a higher number of mods available for 1.0 than 1.1) which seems to work fine in 1.0. I want to setup a multi generational fort. Ive done 2 generations in dwarf fortress which takes way longer than rimworld.

Its basically cheating I know but im setting up 8 married couples at about 45 years old with 4 children each at about 20. Im then going to marry all the second gen children appropriately then setup 4 children at age  4ish for each of the second generation for 3 total generations inside the fort. I want to "breed" the clans/prime houses setup multiple colonies, dominate the world etc etc.

Now after rambling I have a question (s).

I have downloaded 1.1 from the direct link after paying ludeon. I've setup my steam version using their (ludeons) scheme. I have set steam to run the 1.0 version. Ive got a silly number of mods subscribed and im finding it difficult to narrow down the ones causing problems. I unselected all mods and im still getting errors in my debug log (lots). I assumed/imagined if I unselected all my listed mods they would not be run and I would  therefore see 0 errors in debug log but that doesn't seem to be the case. I figured id need to unsubscribe to all mods and favourite them so I can add them back. That's a lot of work I don't want to do. (about 200 mods).

I thought "I know ill copy my steam directory and place mods in the folder manually. Trouble is my copy of the steam folder is reading the workshop folder still (probably obvious this should be the case) and im getting errors in debug sill with 0 mods selected. Obviously copying the steam version to another location has made 0 difference.

Im wondering if anyone has ever requested a 1.0 download officially having received 1.1 ? If theres any way I could copy mods selectively from my steam install to a non steam install that is version 1.0 (since I have downloaded 1.1). Seems to me theres a lot of mods on the steam workshop that are much more easily obtained than anywhere else.

I will ask ludeon direcly but im hoping somone has set a precedent. In the meantime I guess I'll set about favouriting all my mods and clearing my steam directory.

sigh....... ill be playing soon

EDIT OK im having issues with harmony running some mods that I think may have been updated for 1.1.

Im getting harmony errors today that I know I wasn't getting last week.

[something]

I saw Rimworld for the first time via the yogscast Sips' lets play videos. I liked how it looked and did a lot of reading. Ive watched some more lets plays and started trawling the forums.

Im going to say this is a copy of dwarf fortress.

Ill try to head off the negativity by saying firstly I dont think theres anything wrong with copying something.

Secondly the tactical aspects of the game really look like they add something significant. If I say the combat feels like real time xcom, im saying that from the point of view of someone who is watching someone else play. Ive played xcom and df loads and love them both.

Thirdly the UI looks amazing. As someone who has played, loved, lamented the UI for and braced myself for the complete lack of an imminent UI upgrade for, dwarf fortress, looking at the UI for rimworld makes me want to play it

Fourthly I think Rimworld "adventure mode"/roguelike RPG/procedural fallout type RPG a la Dwarf fortress would be amazing (and I have some idea that this might as well be a second gamein terms of work)

So if this is a copy of dwarf fortress, I say hurrah, because I love the sci-fi/western, firefly type setting, and playing dwarf fortress on that UI would be fun.

Ive just donated to DF, the first time I have ever donated money to a game. Id quite like to get rimworld at some point but some things may strongly influence when that purchase happens. Amongst the readings about rimworld I cant see much in the way of medium to long term policy/development goals for rimworld.

Im curious about the following, so if anyone has any links to discussion related to this please link, otherwise I suppose im asking the game developers/Tynan.

What level of emulation of df does rimworld seek to replicate ?

Ive read z levels, may be added not soon and that balance for available resources is tied to z levels which makes sense. Id like to see z levels.

Colonist procreation, ive read could be done in future not soon, and the idea "stories star with characters as children and end with characters as children.I tend to play DF in slow burn mode, turtling, and often enjoy breeding dwarf clans, which akes me feel more attached to them and their story. I totally understand the "theyll never have time to grow up" comment but I want it anyway.

More flavour. Ive read Tynan asking, would you rather see 10 variations of an existing item or 5 totally new items. Tynan's seemed to imply his view that 5 totally new is always better. Given rimworlds current state id probably agree. However a mixture of those as the game ages would be nice to see. Flavour crops, stone, metal and animals would definitely be something id hope to see given enough time.

So with those specific questions/issues in mind im also curious about realistic estimates of project longevity/sustainability/longterm vision/ultimate direction.

What id like to be the case is that this is a breakout success, that development is still continuing in 10 years and i see all my own personal desires met and exceeded. Dwarf fortress needs competition in awesomeness and ive not seen anything that comes as close as this. Also Df is fantasy and this is scifi so I dont see why they couldnt coexist. Also if this goes well it could finally shame df into doing something about its UI.

However, what I feel is more likely, looking at kickstarter numbers and thinking of the backgrounds of  Tynan and DFs author is that this game will not still be in development in 10 years. (Toady I suspect is something of an anomolous person let alone game designer from whom I consider myself lucky to be able to play dwarf fortress via)

So Ludeon Studios, do you have a guess/projection/hope for how long rimworld be in development for ?
Do you imagine the "adventure mode"/RPG thing has an above 0 chance of ever happening ?
Do you have a certain (rough) feature set that you envisage as "complete" with regard to a finished game that could be sold commercially and might represent a logical cessation of development based on sales performance?
Is there any chance of "true" expansions/second games/DLC(shorthand term)/properly continued development to continue for rimworld if only moderate sales success is acheived
If Rimworld is only moderately successful are the founders and employees of Ludeon going to disperse to the winds ?

I realise that a lot of the depth of df in terms of both flavour (various rocks and ores, massive bestiary, crop types (with brand new version)) and systems/mechanics ( z levels, thirst/drinking, ADVENTURE MODE, animal husbandry ) has come from a very long and protracted development period/process and that rimworld cannot mimic/improve upon that level of content in a small fraction of the time (caveats apply).

I also feel that df adventure mode (rimworld style) or possible a civilisation/sims style planet/multi settlement game mode or even a planetary/interstellar game mode comprise as much work as the entirety of rimworld currently though I am not a coder nor designer. And im trying to be realistic (but am quite excited).

Id like to say Rimworld looks like an amzing game and I think with a bunch of flavour could be sold as a commercial product in short time.

And finally id like to say great "work guys" to Ludeon and apologies for the massive wall of text.