Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[Zhentar]

@Tynan

Is it intentional that crafting Stone bricks doesn't give crafting XP anymore? I could've sworn it did previously, so I think it may be a bug that it isnt.

It is intentional.

Can we let it give a boost to mining instead? I mean, you're basically breaking up rocks either way... making those arms stronger and swings more precise. Same skill set.

It trains construction currently

[giltirn]

But, the whole idea was to line that up. So in the game, if you start in the southern hemisphere, Decembary is summer... just like December is summer in reality.

We can't use seasons as a calendar because they're different per-region. Tropical and polar regions don't have the four seasons, they have wet/dry or no seasons at all. And of course other planets may have no seasons. Etc.

I think it is very confusing.  How about an in-game weather "app" based on simple stacked bar chart e.g. yellow (sun) for average temperature and blue (water) for average precipitation.  One stacked bar for each of the four 15 day quadrums.  You could model any basic climate in any hemisphere without needing to define a season or name it.  A quick glance of the app could indicate where I am today in the RimWorld climate pattern timeline and plan accordingly.

I never found the old abstraction particularly confusing; winter cold, summer hot, easy. This whole Aprimay, Decembruary whatever stuff just adds an unnecessary layer of obfuscation. Is Aprimay supposed to be hot? May is pretty hot around where I live. December is pretty hot in others. What colony manager actually cares about a global time standard? Far more important is knowing the prevailing climate and growth conditions. For date recording, in the rare case where it matters (art pieces are the only thing I can think of) you could have the weird month naming system, or better just a 'stardate' kind of system with 10 'months' in a year, or just the old Gregorian system if you don't fancy the scifi option.

[duduluu]

Hey, Tynan!

Look at this: https://github.com/RimWorld-zh/RimWorld-English
It's the RimWorld original language data, and I update it minutes ago.
Now, it exactly match to Core.

What do you think?
And this is the tool: https://github.com/duduluu/RimTrans

[Jstank]

I am going to give my two cents on this whole ApriMay shenanigans.

I will make a very simple point. When you are in Austraila, isn't spring still spring and winter still winter? So couldn't you just make it so that it displays spring, summer, winter, fall regardless of what moth it is.

So If I have a colony in the southern hemisphere during December, it would say summer, and if I had a Colony in the northern hemphisphere during May, then it would read spring.

Because when I go to my southern colony I read "winter" off the screen, the important information is conveyed. That is that it is winter here. That is all I need to know... I don't need to know it is decemburary and then try to think well I'm am in the southern hemisphere and therefore hot.

It would be FAR less confusing this way.

[XenGrimm]

My only complaint about the new 'months' is - there is no Febtober.

[AshbornK9]

Probably not what you want to be asked Tynan, but is there any ETA on the stable release? Just wondering as a modder what stage of panic updating I should be in since I got caught off guard by the last one.

[jchavezriva]

The problem with coolers not working and fixing itselfs after several events is persisting. I dont know if i fixed it flicking it off and on, or modifying the room's size, or some other thing. Several days have passed since then, would attaching a save be of any help at this point?

[Tynan]

I am going to give my two cents on this whole ApriMay shenanigans.

I will make a very simple point. When you are in Austraila, isn't spring still spring and winter still winter? So couldn't you just make it so that it displays spring, summer, winter, fall regardless of what moth it is.

So If I have a colony in the southern hemisphere during December, it would say summer, and if I had a Colony in the northern hemphisphere during May, then it would read spring.

Because when I go to my southern colony I read "winter" off the screen, the important information is conveyed. That is that it is winter here. That is all I need to know... I don't need to know it is decemburary and then try to think well I'm am in the southern hemisphere and therefore hot.

It would be FAR less confusing this way.

It doesn't work because these seasons don't exist near the equator, nor do they exist near the poles. In fact much of the world doesn't really have the traditional four seasons. Many humans live under wet/dry season (India) or no seasons at all.

Plus imagine the difficulty of tracking abstract dates as you move around the globe. You're traveling north and suddenly the season/date flips as you cross the equator? That's confusing as hell. Even worse if you have caravans on both sides.

And now remember it's not Earth. What if you're on an ice planet? To what degree can you say a planet has "summer" and "autumn" when there are no trees and it never goes above freezing?

So seasons can't be used as date labels.

I never found the old abstraction particularly confusing; winter cold, summer hot, easy. This whole Aprimay, Decembruary whatever stuff just adds an unnecessary layer of obfuscation. Is Aprimay supposed to be hot? May is pretty hot around where I live. December is pretty hot in others. What colony manager actually cares about a global time standard? Far more important is knowing the prevailing climate and growth conditions. For date recording, in the rare case where it matters (art pieces are the only thing I can think of) you could have the weird month naming system, or better just a 'stardate' kind of system with 10 'months' in a year, or just the old Gregorian system if you don't fancy the scifi option.

The new quadrum names are literally just the real month names mashed together to reflect the same time of year. What does Aprimay represent? It represents April and May at whatever latitude you're at. That's it. So the quadrums shouldn't be any more confusing than the real months we use day-to-day. If you can understand what "December" means, you can understand what "Decembary" means.

We may add some thing where you can get a tooltip with the *local* season. But even that's kind of arbitrary given that the same latitude can have wet/dry season, 4 seasons, or no seasons depending on rainfall and temperature levels.

The only viable alternative is to change it to "1st quarter", "2nd quarter", and so on. But all this does is subtract information. That's why I went with the quadrums.

If it's confusing that's because real dates and seasons are kind of confusing. People think they're simple because they think of these things from a local point of view based on their real-life region. But if you're thinking globally seasons aren't consistent at all and are actually kind of confusing.

Probably not what you want to be asked Tynan, but is there any ETA on the stable release? Just wondering as a modder what stage of panic updating I should be in since I got caught off guard by the last one.

There are never ETAs, sorry.

[Tynan]

This thread isn't for open-ended suggestions, for those please go to the Suggestions forum. This is for specific feedback on the build, thanks.

[giltirn]

I never found the old abstraction particularly confusing; winter cold, summer hot, easy. This whole Aprimay, Decembruary whatever stuff just adds an unnecessary layer of obfuscation. Is Aprimay supposed to be hot? May is pretty hot around where I live. December is pretty hot in others. What colony manager actually cares about a global time standard? Far more important is knowing the prevailing climate and growth conditions. For date recording, in the rare case where it matters (art pieces are the only thing I can think of) you could have the weird month naming system, or better just a 'stardate' kind of system with 10 'months' in a year, or just the old Gregorian system if you don't fancy the scifi option.

The new quadrum names are literally just the real month names mashed together to reflect the same time of year. What does Aprimay represent? It represents April and May at whatever latitude you're at. That's it. So the quadrums shouldn't be any more confusing than the real months we use day-to-day. If you can understand what "December" means, you can understand what "Decembary" means.

We may add some thing where you can get a tooltip with the *local* season. But even that's kind of arbitrary given that the same latitude can have wet/dry season, 4 seasons, or no seasons depending on rainfall and temperature levels.

The only viable alternative is to change it to "1st quarter", "2nd quarter", and so on. But all this does is subtract information. That's why I went with the quadrums.

If it's confusing that's because real dates and seasons are kind of confusing. People think they're simple because they think of these things from a local point of view based on their real-life region. But if you're thinking globally seasons aren't consistent at all and are actually kind of confusing.

Hi Tynan, thank you for your response. I believe we are on the same page in saying that there are two different pieces of information that need conveying: one, the standard global date, and two the "season". Quadra are a means of conveying the former, although in a non-standard and potentially confusing way. But for a Rimworld colony it is far far more important to know the season, which I use in proxy of meaning the general climate as a function of time. I really cannot imagine a situation where I would care if it is quadrum 2 or quadrum 3, unless I knew that quadrum 3 was when I can grow my crops and quadrum 2 when I cannot. This information is now much more obscure.

I agree that the concept of season is somewhat variable depending on your position on the globe, but given that the game already simulates this variation, surely the standard seasonal conventions for such places would suffice? Dry/rainy season for the equator and spring/summer/fall/winter for the rest. In the background of course you can have a quadra calendar for recording actual dates if and when such information is needed.

 

[myfirstme]

Weird season names are weird season names. The system right now doesn't sound nice and it doesn't have as much info as naming the season at the location.

The first is easily solved, simply use season or quarter. If it absolutely needs to be months, then why not January / February / March, January - March or something like that?

The second is more difficult. Ideally you would get the precise season reading at your location, so summer, winter etc. or rainy dry or none. But I guess that'd need some work to code.

[MikeLemmer]

What's confusing me about the month names is they seem to be set one off from the actual seasons. For example, Jebruary stands in for Spring, and Juaugust stands in for Fall, when I'm expecting them to stand for winter & summer.

[YokoZar]

The only viable alternative is to change it to "1st quarter", "2nd quarter", and so on.

If you go this route please implement a fiscal year too. 

[O Negative]

I'll take "1st Day of 2nd Quarter" over "1st Day of Aprimay" any day. I know this thread is specifically for feedback on the game, and suggestions should be posted elsewhere, but I felt that this kind of fell under both categories.

I could be wrong, but I feel like releasing A17 with the quarters named as they are will lead to a lot of confusion and fussiness.

Planets orbit their star in an ellipse​, and you could possibly look towards that fact for naming ideas. Heck, I would even be up for 1st Solstice, 1st Equinox, 2nd Solstice, 2nd Equinox.

At the end of the day, I think it's more important for the player to have a firm understanding of what kind of weather they should be preparing for. How you decide to go about accomplishing that transparency is entirely up to you, but I don't feel that "Aprimay" and other mutt-months accomplish this.

That's my feedback on this issue

[FCDetonados]

so at the moment i am having to play on a shitty notebook, after around ~30 minutes of play time my notebook will shut off, no warning, no error message, nothing.

this was not happening while i was playing my A16 heavily modded save just a few hours earlier