Topics

Please make sure you update to Alpha4d before voting! That's build 462. Balance has changed from earlier versions.

Please only respond to the poll if:

-You played a game on Cassandra Classic
-You played a long game (at least 50 days)

I'm looking for difficulty balancing feedback and I want to hear how it's been going for you guys. We're going to try to get metrics in for later versions so this can be balanced a lot more tightly but this is my temporary solution for now.

[Alpha4c]

Please only respond to the poll if:

-You've played Alpha4c
-You played a game on Cassandra Classic
-You played a long game (at least 50 days)

I'm looking for difficulty balancing feedback and I want to hear how it's been going for you guys. We're going to try to get metrics in for later versions so this can be balanced a lot more tightly but this is my temporary solution for now.

Since Alpha4c was released less than 24 hours ago, I expect answers to trickle in as people actually, you know, play the game.

Hey all. So Alpha 4 is coming up. I really want to get stability testing in on it, so I could use help from new testers!

Please note that testing isn't just playing the game. When you find bugs, you should be ready to investigate them and make efforts to determine steps to reproduce them. And, of course, you need to write bug reports for anything you find.

If you're interested, please reply to this thread. Please answer:

1. What OS(es) do you have?
2. Have you tested or developed software before?

Thanks all!

> Name your release thread according to the standard established on the board.

> Include a license with your mod and on the release post.

• Specify whether others can include your mod in mod packs and if/how you must be notified/credited.
• Specify whether others can use your content to make derivative works and if/how you should be notified or credited.

If you want to be super-permissive and allow others to use your mod in any way, put it in modpacks, and make other versions of it, use the zlib license. If not, you could choose a license from the creative commons website. If that's too complex, you could just write a few sentences saying what is and isn't allowed.

> If you are making a mod pack, make sure you have permission from the author of each mod to include it in your mod pack. If it isn't stated in the license, you must ask the developer for permission.

> Including source code with your mod is encouraged but not required.

> You can ask for donations. However, the mod itself must be made available to all players for free (anything else would not be a mod, but an unlicensed expansion pack).

> You may not place advertisements for other products on this forum. If you have your own website for a mod you can do as you wish with it.

Hey all,

So the wiki at http://rimworldwiki.com is a bit shaky. We put on a few too many plugins and some things are a bit off about the whole experience. I'm asking if there's anyone out there in the community with some experience in this sort of thing who would be willing and able to work with me on cleaning up and maintaining the wiki. This would involve you getting FTP rights to that server as well as admin rights on the wiki so you can modify/install/remove/configure plugins and generally lord the whole thing.

Please reply here if you're into it. Thanks!

(also noting that I won't be able to reply for two weeks since I'm going on vacation in 15 minutes).

It's been suggested that we move the forums to XenForo and off of SMF.

I'm open to the idea. The software does seem a bit more modern, and it has features that allow content management. For example, this is how the StarBound forums do their mod listing.

So a few things:

1. What do you guys think? Good idea?

2. Can anyone help or offer advice on how to move over properly? The simplest thing seems to be to install XenForo alongside SMF, freeze these forums, and let discussions migrate over. However, it would be great if we could import some of the content too. I just don't know how that's possible.

If you want to keep tabs on what I've been up to, you can follow the changelog.

Old changelog here.

A4 and later will include some source files for modder reference.

I thought I might as well release them here early; they might help someone.

http://puu.sh/8tVfJ.zip

Mod-making info is available here on the wiki:

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Modding

Another good source: Roxxploxx RimWorld Guide

If you have a question, post it in this forum. If you want my input, PM me and point me to the public thread. That way, your question and my response will be visible by all, and all can benefit. Please do not PM me questions - it's not sustainable for me to help everyone one-on-one.

If you're willing to help write more modding tutorials, that would be awesome as well! I also encourage people to transfer what they've learned from the forum to the wiki. The forum is ephemeral, the wiki is a permanent knowledge repository which I hope can just grow and grow until it is supremely useful.

[Must-do checklist:]

Hey all!

I'm looking for some epic screenshots to use in marketing the game. These will go in places like rimworldgame.com and on the eventual Steam website.

So I figured you guys probably have better shots than I can invent. So I invite you to post your best screenshots! Perhaps you have awesome action shots like in this story. Or maybe you just have an awesome base or funny circumstance. Bring it on!


Must-do checklist: In order for a screenshot to be usable it must follow this checklist:
-Map edge cannot be visible in frame
-Modded features cannot be visible
-Screenshot must not be downscaled (e.g. colonist names must be pixel-perfect)
-Put your screen in 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 resolution
-Don't process or crop the shot in any way. Don't add labels
-PNG lossless compression is ideal

Recommendations
-UI can be visible for some shots. Most of the time, you'll want to use F10 and F9 to grab screenshots with the UI off.
-Usually it's best to get nice lighting with sun shadows visible
-Avoid ugly UI elements like the "screenshot taken" text or the debug controls visible


-----------------

Also beware the legal notice below! Sorry I have to include it, but the company has to be secure in its ability to use the shots for marketing purposes.

Legal notice: By posting your screenshot in this thread you transfer ownership of it to Ludeon Studios, perpetually and for all purposes, without credit or compensation.

End of legalese; back to personal communication: I'm happy to credit everyone where I can! However, it often won't be possible. E.g. there's no easy place to credit you directly on a Steam page or on rimworldgame.com. That's why I said in the legalese that there is no credit - because Ludeon can't be bound by that.

Thanks everyone!

I think the translation process would benefit from being organized in a GitHub project for all language translations together. This project would contain a folder for every non-English language.

One person would have moderator control over the central repo. Community translators would clone the repo, add or improve languages, and issue pull requests. Then the moderator accepts or rejects the changes. When I make a build, I'll pull the repo into the game and get the latest approved version of all non-English languages.

This way, we don't have duplicate translations and work happening all over the Internet. There would be one version of each language, and any user can submit changes to it.

What do you all think? Is anyone willing to moderate the central git repo for this on GitHub?

RimWorld is really a sleeper success. There has been no coverage from any major bloggers and I think the biggest YouTuber who has done a video was Scott Manley. It still sells quite well, but I think that's mostly from word of mouth. Which I think is awesome. I love grass-roots- viral success.  But obviously I'd like to get the word out as well in more mainstream ways.

Can anyone recommend ways to publicize the game? Do you know of a popular YouTuber who you think would do a good RimWorld video? Or a blogger or writer to talk to? Let me know here - I want to know who I should tell about Alpha 3.

And if anyone has ideas on publicity strategy besides just sending messages to community gatekeepers, I'd love to hear em!

And obviously, if anyone wants to send an email to a YouTuber or writer they know or know of, that's be awesome as well

[IMPORTANT LICENSE INFO: These projects are officially-supported fan translations of RimWorld. Ludeon may include content derived from these projects in official releases of RimWorld without owing money or credit to anyone (though you can put your credits into your translations info and will appear in the main game's credits listing). By contributing to these projects you agree to give Ludeon a nonexclusive transferable perpetual worldwide license to use your contributed content in any way in any product, with or without credits, without any compensation except for the satisfaction of the work and community. If your content is in any of these repos and you don't wish these terms to apply to you, contact me immediately at [email protected].]

This page has info on how people can contribute to the fan-made RimWorld translations. Thank you very much for taking an interest!

How it works: We keep the translations on a popular public collaboration website called GitHub, on the Ludeon GitHub page. GitHub works through a program called Git, which is used to manage repositories of data. Git tracks each change made to the repository, so you can see what's changed, when it changed, and what was there before. It makes it easy to understand who has done what, and remove mistakes.

When Ludeon releases a new version of the game, we pull all the data from the GitHub repositories for each language and include it with the main game. So any translation work you do will be available to everyone as soon as the game is updated.

IMPORTANT LICENSE INFO: These projects are officially-supported fan translations of RimWorld. Ludeon may include content derived from these projects in official releases of RimWorld without owing money or credit to anyone (though you can put your credits into your translations info and will appear in the main game's credits listing). By contributing to these projects you agree to give Ludeon a nonexclusive transferable perpetual worldwide license to use your contributed content in any way in any product, with or without credits, without any compensation except for the satisfaction of the work and community. If your content is in any of these repos and you don't wish these terms to apply to you, contact me immediately at [email protected].

How to contribute

• Download Git from this page and install it.
• Go to https://github.com/Ludeon and navigate into the page for your project.
• Copy the URL of the language project page. For example, if it's French, it'll be https://github.com/Ludeon/RimWorld-fr
• Open the command line on your computer (here's how), navigate to the folder where you want to keep your translation files. Then type "git clone", then a space, then paste in the URL you copied before. Press ENTER to run the command. This will clone the repository to your computer. More help on this.
• Download and install Visual Studio Code. Despite the name, this is not just for code. This is a free lightweight text editor with direct Git integration.
• Use Visual Studio Code to open the folder you cloned. You can now editing the translation files on your computer! You can even commit changes to the repository right in VSCode, without using the command line. This modifies the repository on your computer, but doesn't affect the repository on GitHub. To upload your changes to the repository on GitHub, you need to do more.
  
  Get set up to contribute to the central GitHub repository:
  
  
• Create a user on GitHub.com.
• Email support pro Michael at [email protected] telling him the language and your GitHub user name. He will give you access to the appropriate GitHub repo.
• Work with the other translators through GitHub and the forum page to improve the translation. Remember it's a team effort; sometimes people have different opinions on the best way to translate, so please be ready to collaborate with others.
• Create a forum account on this forum.
• Go to the appropriate forum page for your language (listed here) and make a post introducing yourself to the other translators.
  
  The game has a tool that inserts the original English data in comments in the files and creates "TODO" stubs for every necessary translation automatically. It is extremely useful. If you don't see an "EN:" comment with the original English data above each translation in your translation files, nobody has run the translation cleaner tool yet. You'll need to integrate the files into RimWorld as described and run the tool to update the files for translation.
  
  Integrate your working files into RimWorld so you can test:
  
  
• Download the version of RimWorld you want to translate, through Steam or your DRM-free download link (you'll need to own the game).
• If you're working with the Steam version, you need to copy the RimWorld files, otherwise Steam may overwrite the changes you make to the translation. Find the RimWorld folder in your Steam installation. It'll be on a path similar to this:
  
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld
  
  Copy that folder, and paste it in another folder on your PC (like C:/Translation/RimWorld).
• Delete the translation from your copied installation of RimWorld.
• Move your cloned Git translation folder into its place and change its name to match.
• You can now start your copied version of RimWorld and test your translation, pull changes from Git continuously. Note that if the game gets updated, you'll need to repeat this process.
• Start your copied version of RimWorld. Select your language on the main menu.
• On the main menu, in the bottom left translation info window, click the "Translation cleanup" button. This updates all the translations files to the latest English data format, and inserts the original English text into comments you can reference while translating.
  
• On the main menu, in the bottom left translation info window, click the "translation report" button. This produces a text file with info on the translation and what it needs.

Useful info:

There's a English translation available here for reference. This has all the game data in it, in English, ready to be translated to other languages. You can copy the XML over and translate it in-place. Link to English translation on GitHub. Thanks to forum user duduluu for maintaining it.

Duduluu also created a translation tool called RimTrans.

Core language files are stored in (GameFolder)/Data/Core/Languages. The original English data is in (GameFolder)/Data/Core/Languages/English.

Metadata: Translations have metadata that gives them a name and flag.
--- Create a FriendlyName.txt which contains the name of your language in your language (e.g. Italiano not Italian).
--- Create a flag image in PNG format, 128x64 pixels, called LangIcon.png. See other languages for reference.

There are four kinds of translation in RimWorld:

• Keyed translations are used by the game with their "key". e.g. the game wants to show the game-over message, so it looks up the string with the key "GameOverMessage" in the currently-selected language and displays that.
• DefInjected translations are different. These work by modifying the core "defs" that define every item, faction, storyteller, skill, and so on. They are data that is "injected" directly into the def data that the game runs on. These are translated by creating a DefInjected folder in your language folder. The en-US language folder lacks one of these because all the original def data is in English so no English data needs to be injected. However, you can see examples from other languages like German.
• Backstories translations are used to translate character childhood and adulthood backstories.
• Strings translations are files full of simple lists of "strings" of words. These are used when randomly assembling text, as in art descriptions.

To translate DefInjected stuff, you'll have to look through the various defs in (GameFolder)/Mods/Core/Defs and create translations for each field of each def that you want to change in your language. The basic format is <defName.fieldName>, where defName is the defName of the def you want to inject into, and fieldName is the name of the field. So, for example, if you want to modify the label of wood, you'd write <Wood.label>Bois</Wood.label>. This would change the label of wood to "Bois". For more complex structures like lists, there are other formats to use described here.

Be sure to save your translation files with UTF-8 encoding, or special characters won't show up properly in-game.

Do not leave copies of game data in your translation repo. We don't want to ship a bunch of copies of useless game data, and it will produce errors when the translation is used in-game.

To help with updating translations, translator WMP wrote a tool that finds the difference between two translations. Run it with another more mature translation (or with the English data) and it can show you what tags you still need to translate. Find it here.

[screenshot mode]

I'd like to show everyone some of the work you guys are doing on mods. To that end, I'm hoping to put together a montage of clips and images from various A2 mods that I can put in the Alpha 3 video.

Basically, this will be just 5-15 seconds each of various mods. I can use a simple image, but a short video clip is better. Videos should be around 15-20 seconds (I'll probably cut them shorter than that.)

If you're interested in having your mod included, please post here. Include:

-The name of the mod.
-The web address where people should go to get it.
-The name of the author(s) you want shown off.
-The content. This is either an image (a screenshot, as large as possible) OR a link to a downloadable video, 16:9 ratio, at least 720p, ideally 1080p.

Please shoot videos in screenshot mode (use F11 and F12) with no labels or anything else added over. Just the video. I will label things.

I can't guarantee we'll use any or all content, but I really want to use lots.

Please add by April 6. This isn't an alpha release date; I want to have the vids some time ahead so I can work with them.

Thanks all!

[In order to keep this thread clean, posts that don't focus on a usability story are liable to be deleted. Sorry, but I don't want this to devolve into a general suggestions thread.]

So the game has increased in complexity over the last few alphas, first with the addition of stockpiles, and now with work tables and the associated bill system.

I'm seeing more reports of people getting blocked by AI/behavior/usability issues. Things like:

-Why aren't they cooking? (the ingredients are too far away, outside the bill's ingredient search radius, or, no cook with enough skill, or you ordered a fine meal but only have one kind of ingredient)
-Why aren't they cutting stone? (bill expired)
-Why aren't they hauling the bodies? (the bodies are far away; they're busy hauling other stuff because they haul in order of distance)

Basically, it seems there are a lot of silent failure points. It worries me. I don't want people to hit these kinds of silent failures.

My question is:

Tell me stories about times you got stuck by some usability/clarity/AI priority condition that you didn't understand and caused you distress.

To be clear, I'm not really asking for suggestions about how to fix things. You can offer these if you wish, but they'll be of secondary importance to the problem story itself.

Thanks greatly to anyone who is willing to share their experiences of the game breaking on them! If I collect a good number of these stories, I hope I'll be able to synthesize a redesign that elegantly fixes the problems. I really want to add content to the game, but I also want to make sure the core stays nice and smooth. And unfortunately, I think it's been regressing on the smoothness measure since the pre-alpha due to increasing complexity.

In order to keep this thread clean, posts that don't focus on a usability story are liable to be deleted. Sorry, but I don't want this to devolve into a general suggestions thread.

Updated August 2021 as of version 1.3.3068

This DropBox folder contains the source art for RimWorld and all its expansions, and all our logos.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mz6zjq3f1d654f3/AACX_OMdBG_J78hF2Ph-HzM3a?dl=0

So it's important to get the word out about the game. Alpha 1 release went well, but I was told I was pretty much releasing it in secret. As in,

*psst*! Hey guys.... I've got this secret game release!

So anyway, this time I'd like to get the word out. I'll be posting on a few forums. My question here is, which game sites should I notify about this? And is there anywhere besides reddit and the Dwarf Fortress forums where I should definitely get the word out?

I'm hoping to see the community start to take off within a few months. Since modding is in with Alpha 2, this is theoretically where it should start sustainable growth, with that virtuous players->modders->mods->players cycle.

Anyway, let me know any thoughts on publicity.

[email and spam filters for anything from [email protected]]

For the Steam version of RimWorld, exiting & restarting Steam will force it to check all your games for an update.  This can be used to force-update RimWorld.

For the DRM-free version, there is a tool to auto-resend your email at https://transactions.sendowl.com/order_recoveries/new?merchant_id=3792.

You can always email our support expert Michael at [email protected] and he'll sort you out ASAP.

However, to save your time, you may try these steps.

In 60% of cases, a spamfilter ate it. Please check your email and spam filters for anything from [email protected] - that's the address used by our distributor.

In 30% of cases, the email was sent, but not to the address the customer expected. Make sure you're checking the right email:

• If you bought the game off rimworldgame.com: The email goes to the primary email of the PayPal account that paid for the game, as it was when you bought the game.

PayPal accounts can have multiple emails; ensure you check the primary one.

• If you got it off Kickstarter: The email goes to the address on your Kickstarter account as of November 1 (when we copied the records).

If you can't access this email, or you want it changed, contact support at [email protected] and tell me the before-and-after emails you want.

In 5% of cases, the customer used an eCheck for purchase but it didn't clear yet. The game is sent automatically when the check clears. It takes a few days.

In <5% of cases, something else happened and you'll have to email me.

We're always happy to help - [email protected]

Cheers
Ty

I could use some help with programming and design (we�re good on artists and audio for now).

If anyone's interested, check out the Careers page.

If you're into it and serious, please email me. No need to reply to the thread.

Just a real short update!

Been doing lots of audio stuff, but character graphics haven't totally been forgotten! We got fully recolorable hair, skin, and garments working. I even had to write a special shader for the skin so it wouldn't desaturate when darkened like this.