Version history

0.1.334

See upcoming features for future updates. Known bugs in the latest versions are listed here.

Upcoming version



Bug Fixes

• Extensive refactoring and bugfixing.
• Tons of bugfixes.

Changes

• Started some heavy refactoring of how different items fill different slots in a square.
• Added an options menu button to open your saves folder (nobody can find the damn thing).
• Added an options menu button to reset the adaptive tutor.
• Mac version now places Mods folder inside the app package to make the install cleaner.
• Cleanup and optimization: TargetPacks and DamageInfo are now structs for better GC performance. Made system to save TargetPacks when they refer to Things. Various other.
• Restructured how map section meshes are rebuilt to eliminate the in-between step that allocated large amounts of data. Now things print directly onto the mesh’s working data, which is a major optimization. Code is cleaner now too.
• Ridiculously huge performance improvements across the board due to simple rewriting of old perf-blind code. For example, we no longer draw the whole map every frame(!) - and tons of others.

• Trader kinds (farm vessel, slave trader) etc are now in XML and moddable.
• For modding, I cleaned up the load sequence so it loads every definition in the game and all mods before resolving all references between them.
• For modding, decoupled many references that found ThingDefinitions via their entitytypes, so we can have lots of definitions that share entitytypes. Now they use the ThingDefinitions directly.
• Some small optimizations.
• Stockpiling AI: when on hauling runs, colonists now pick up extra resources from nearby piles even if they can’t carry all of them.
• Cooks taking food to hoppers now more perf-efficient and cooks will no longer fill hoppers that are already nearly full.
• Mods can now load content cross-references and images. Content handling is much cleaner overall. In progress. Created Royal Bed test mod.
• Guns and equipment, plants, and apparel are all now loaded from XML. Added rose decorative plant.
• Letters now have varying urgencies. More urgent gets a hotter color. The most urgent ones also bounce occasionally to get your attention.
• Readjusted probabilities of solid and shuffled pawn bios appearing.
• Combined pawn RaceDefinitions into general ThingDefinitions. All pawn definitions now generate meat definitions.
• AI: The old code for having AIs watch for job failure conditions is creaking under the strain. I’ve cut it and started a new, more modularized failure condition watcher infrastructure. Now, when the JobDriver defines the high-level behaviors, the action and failure conditions won’t have to be coupled together. You’ll be able to configure and stack together failure conditions appropriate to the job being done. This allows reuse of behavior code in different contexts (e.g. Hauling a resource to a stockpile, hauling a resource to a building site, hauling a resource to a table for reaction site have different fail conditions but can use the same hauling core code).
• Started integrating Al’s ambient sounds.
• Finished basic new AI failure condition framework.
• Thoughts are now moddable definitions.
• Cannibalism causes bad thoughts, differently depending on whether it’s eaten raw or cooked into a meal. Colonists avoid eating it. Different meats look different.
• Integrated first-pass weather and ambient sounds.
• Reactions are now called recipes.
• Created a data-driven default settings system for storage buildings. Hoppers default to not accepting human meat.
• Cleaned up and pumped up map save/load to be able to handle all sorts of funky cross-references. This was originally so I could save a colonist’s job with a true reference to the specific work order they were in the process of carrying out.
• Blasting charges cut (until they can be balanced properly).
• Skill needs are now data-driven so you can define specific relationships between skills and different recipes’ efficiency and work time.
• Recipe ingredients are now configurable and work using categories. You can tell your colonists what to butcher, and whether or not it should include people.
• Balance: Colonists self-extinguish 2.5x more often.
• Advanced meal types require advanced cooking skills.
• Converted a bunch of old AI code into the new consistent toil format.
• Converted all building definitions from hardcoded into XML.
• Started modularizing EffectMakers and making them data-driven.
• Finished decent refactoring of effects system so it can be data-driven. Different meals/recipes can make different effects while being eaten/worked on.
• Finished refactoring out the Interactive interface; all AI actions are now specified in AI code, not in the things they interact with.
• Factored out a lot of EntityDefinitions. These are now used as mini-categories, not individual entity identifiers, so modders can add more entities easily.
• Migrated pawn kind definitions (sniper, drifter, refugee, etc) into XML.
• Migrated research project definitions into XML.
• Migrated all remaining Thing data into XML.
• Rewrote how thing component data is handled (it’s no longer defined per enum on a centralized list) and migrated it all into XML.
• Rewrote XML inheritance to inherit data about subelements and permit inheritance chaining (e.g. pawn->animal->squirrel).
• Set up apparels to spawn according to who they are, data-driven.
• Some late-night optimization, especially to the reachability checker, which, although not an expensive algorithm, can be called thousands of times in a frame, and so needs to be fast as hell.
• Skills now decay over time when at very high levels.
• Created the passion system, which affects learning rate according to characters’ natural inclination towards different subjects. As in real life, anyone can learn anything that they’re willing to do, but you learn a lot faster if you’re naturally interested in the subject.
• Game save/load of lists, dictionaries, and hashsets now runs the same code whether saving simple values, deep-saveable objects, in-map cross-references, or references to game data definitions.
• Mods can now override core game data as well as add to it.
• Storytellers are now defined in XML.
• Made turret look and sound weak to match its functionality.
• Work type definitions and work giver definitions are now in XML, so you can mod in new work types to correspond to new economy chains.
• Started working on getting code loading with mods.
• Finished up stone economy with stone walls.
• Reworked debug lister menu to handle large numbers of options. Also added a type-in filter.
• Filled out storyteller moddability.

Additions

• Plant growing zones added, along with AI to find and interact with them. Redesigned work AI to handle work on locations as well as things.
• Created a no-roof region similar to the home region. The game won’t generate roofs in these regions. In addition, player-constructed roofs are removed when no-roof regions are added.
• Added mod browser. Restructured mod data to be configurable. You can now install mods and run them in parallel. Created mod metadata screen (author, description, etc).
• AI: Started the reaction/butchery/cooking system. Working on a generalized reactions framework that characters will follow to transmute one set of items into another.
• Started creating the “bill” interface so you can tell your colonists what to create at a recipe station. e.g. What meals to cook, what to butcher, etc.
• Created cook stove and three meal types to cook. Advanced meal types require multiple ingredients but have better psychological and nutritive effects.
• Added varied food types from plants: potatoes, agave, and berries.
• Added release-mode console GUI so modders can properly debug their content without going insane.
• Added max ingredient search radius for bills.
• Added qualitative descriptions to skill levels.
• Added gather spots so you can make idle colonists gather around certain tables.
• Added stone economy: stonecutter’s table, crafting worktype, stone cutting workgiver, stone blocks thing, stone tiles floor, low stone wall, high stone wall.
• Added blasting charges back in as a mod.
• Added simple door. Cheaper, but cannot be powered.

Current version

Previous Version: [[Version/1.5.4063"" contains an extrinsic dash or other characters that are invalid for a date interpretation.]] Released on: –

Next Version: [[Version/0.0.232"" contains an extrinsic dash or other characters that are invalid for a date interpretation.]] Released on: –

"Error: Invalid time." contains an extrinsic dash or other characters that are invalid for a date interpretation.

Released on: –

---

It’s finally here – Alpha 1!

Everyone who has the game got this on January 27th via email. If you didn’t get it, more info here.

(Mac users: Please install the Mods folder alongside your app folder, not inside it. This will be rearranged for next build, but for now Mods needs to be there. Also, if your mouse right-click isn’t working, go fullscreen.)

This version brings a host of improvements on the venerable build 254b from last November.

To install the new version, just delete the old one and unzip the new one somewhere. Old saves will be unusable in the new version.

Changes (Summary)

Stockpiling

Resources no longer vanish into a magical storage number in the sky. Everything in the game is now present on the map at all times.

• Players can now designate stockpile zones. These are areas on the ground where colonists are supposed to store certain kinds of items. Zones don’t cost anything because they’re not physical – they’re just AI directives.
• Stockpile zones can be configured using a hierarchical interface to accept any combination of items. You could have one that takes all resources, or all guns, or just pistols, or only molotov cocktails, potatoes, and dead animals.
• Stockpile zones can have priorities. Haulers will fill the highest-priority zones first, and even move items from lower-priority zones to higher-priority ones.
• The storage and priority interface is also used for storage buildings, like food hoppers, graves, and the (currently-pointless) equipment racks.

One nice natural side-effect of this change is that your colonists will no longer starve if they have a huge food reserve but no nutrient paste dispenser. They can eat the raw food right from the stockpile – though it’s not efficient, and they hate eating raw potatoes. Also note that animals will sometimes eat food out of your stockpile.

Putting everything on the map required re-jiggering a lot of existing systems (which is why we did it now, so we won’t have to re-jigger even more systems to do it later):

• Selling goods to space traders now requires that you physically move goods to an outdoor launch pad. This is done by building the pad and configuring stockpile zones on top of it.
• Nutrient dispensers can no longer draw food magically from the sky reservoir. You must build food hoppers adjacent to them, and keep those hoppers filled with raw foods.
• There is a new Cooking work type added. Currently, all it does it refill food hoppers. In future it will actually cook stuff. However, we added it now because sometimes you want filling the hoppers to be at a different priority from general hauling.

Adaptive Tutor

There was a janky tutor before, but he basically ran on a rail and told you the same things every game, whether you needed to know them or not. The new adaptive tutor is much smarter in providing only the information players need.

The AT watches everything you do and keeps an internal database of how much he thinks you understand various game concepts. A concept is something like, “you can zoom the camera”, or “you can capture enemies by doing X”. He also watches what’s happening in the game, and works out a measure of how much you need to know each different concept at the moment. And, in his database of concepts, each concept has a natural priority. For examples, camera movement is considered more essential than opening the wiki.

Finally, the AT keeps track of the player’s “relax desire”. This is how much the player probably doesn’t want to see another tutor message right now. People only want to absorb information so fast, so we don’t want to overwhelm. Relax desire peaks just after a message appears, and falls off over time.

Evaluating all these together, the AT shows you training messages if the combination of their priority and immediate need-to-know exceeds the player’s desire to relax. The final outcome is:

• If you already know a concept, you’ll likely demonstrate it before the tutor tries to teach you anything in it, and you’ll never see the message for it.
• If there’s nothing you urgently need to know, the tutor will give you nice long intervals between messages.
• If you really need to know something, it gets bumped to the front of the list and overwhelms the relax desire, and is shown nearly immediately. This is for cases like, “You can rescue your bleeding-to-death colonist by doing X”.

There’s more to do to perfect this guy (like making messages point to elements on the map or on the UI), but so far I think it’s a great improvement on the old non-adaptive tutor.

Also, the AT’s database of player knowledge is now saved separately from maps, so it will stay between games. To reset it, delete Knowledge.xml in your RimWorld saves folder.

Modding

Modding support is started but not finished.

Many of the definitions in the game – some buildings, all sounds, hair, training concepts – are now exposed in a Mods folder, in the Core mod, in editable XML files. However, some data is still not exposed, like most Thing properties (especially the ones essential to making weapons or plants), race definitions for making animals or alternate humanoids, trader profiles, storyteller tunings, and so on. In addition, there’s not yet a system to install, activate, and deactivate mods. All you can do is destructively edit the core files.

Development tools have been added to the game. You can activate them with the “development mode” checkbox in the menus. For more info on these, check out the basic RimWorld modding document.

This system will be finished in a future release. Hopefully soon, because I grew up as a modder and can’t wait to see what people will do modding RimWorld.

Menu Art

You’ll notice some beautiful new art for our menus. Thank Ricardo Tomé, Portuguese digital painting expert, for spicing up the menu backgrounds and giving some life to the AI Storytellers.

Character Art, Apparel, and Hair

The character art in game has been redone by Rhopunzel, combined with some fun color-randomizing code by yours truly. So pawns can come in a variety of body shapes, skin colors, and head shapes.

And that’s just when they’re naked. In addition, there is a new apparel system. Characters can wear multiple layers of clothing, and the clothing itself is randomized. So you could have a guy in a green T-shirt. Or a dude in a white T-shirt, with an armor vest and a tan duster. The number of combinations is nearly infinite. Finally, hairdos are now randomized as well.

Currently, they’re just randomized for everyone and cannot be changed. In future, apparel will be fleshed out systemically, and you’ll see different clothing and hairdos for people from different cultures. One pirate band will wear all leather and spiky mohawks. A nearby tribe will send raiding parties in animal skins with tribal hairdos. And you could enforce an all-pink-clothes-with-pink-afro colony uniform if you wanted.

Overall we’re looking to get to a point where colonists and pirates can be characterized and recognized just by looking at them. The tools to do that are now in, but they’re used haphazardly. Upcoming versions will have characters spawn with proper clothing and change their clothing as appropriate. Clothes will also help protect characters, affect their movement speed, and so on.

Fixes and Tunings

Tons of things have been fixed and tuned, including recruiting chances, storyteller difficulties, and so on.

Creative Content

If you got the Name in Game or Backstory in Game pack and had your content approved before Friday or so (when I content-locked the Alpha for final stability testing), your content will be in the game. It’s quite refreshing to have a nice deep pool of content to draw from. There aren’t a massive number of backstories – you can become familiar with individuals if you play a lot – but there are enough that the game isn’t under pressure to repeat anything.

Also, the options menu now has an “encouraged spawn list” of names. Put a last name on here, and the game will prefer spawning characters from this list. So you’ll want to put your own name on the list, and perhaps those of your friends, and watch yourself spawn in!

Great thanks to all the testers and the two creative rewards moderators who helped make this happen. Have fun and watch out for the raging muffalo!

Changes (List)

• Starting moving game content out of hardcoding and into external, modifiable xml and content files. This is the beginnings of the mod system.
• Redid storage allowance system into a nice hierarchy, so you can allow/disallow storage of individual kinds of items in a stockpile, or do it by categories. All with a nice collapsible-category interface.
• AI's now haul construction-blocking items to the nearest open square instead of hauling them all the way to storage.
• Had to scrap and try a new approach to having fixed default categories on the storage buildings.
• Integrated storyteller portraits in entry menus.
• Unified thing dropping placement code.
• Kassandra is now Cleopatra.
• Updated credits.
• Stockpiling AI can now collect resources for multiple building sites when taking resources to building sites. So if there is a long wall, they can collect a pile of metal and lay down a dozen wall sections at once instead of going back and forth for each one. They still only collect from one resource pile.
• Stockpiling AI: Pawns will now draw from several resource piles if it helps them build more efficiently. So they can pick up from multiple resource piles, carry the resources in one trip, and then deposit them in multiple building sites. Very efficient and fun to watch!
• Included Rho’s new RimWorld logo and Ricardo’s happy/sad Randy portrait.
• Colonist will now eat from dispensers in prisoners’ rooms as well as store meals in prisoners’ rooms if there is no prisoner present.
• You can now rename stockpiles.
• Some fairly easy but extremely impactful optimizations: eliminated 30k/frame of memory allocs from switching to the same font over and over. Game no longer tries to make tooltips from every rock square in the map (only pawns make tooltips now). Some others.
• Terrain, building, and terrain scatterable definitions are now all moddable. Concept definitions (used by the adaptive tutor) as well.
• Imported the latest player creative content.
• Continuing to tune the adaptive tutor and put in more lessons and cues.
• Rho did nicer thicker outlines for characters.
• Worker AI rejiggered to allow prioritization of different classes of targets within one work type. The upshot is that they’ll try to finish existing unfinished buildings before carrying resources to blueprints.
• Adaptive tutor now saves its estimates of the player’s knowledge as a separate file that will persist between games. Delete Knowledge.xml (in savegames’ parent folder) to reset it.
• Returned adaptive tutor and reworked the internal numbers to all be percentages.
• Major optimizations on the algorithm for regenerating rooms. Will help during mining.
• Deconstructing is now done by designating a target, which the colonists go deconstruct.

New Content

• Created audio authoring system, supporting one-shots and sustained sounds, various filters, pitch, volume settings, mappings from in-game parameters.
• Created live-modding system, which allows modification of game content while the game is running. This includes the package editor and the definition editor.
• Created apparel system and introduced the first batch of apparel from Rho’s art.
• Created a system to randomize, remember, and manage colors for apparel and characters’ skin.
• Lots of new art from Rho.
• Added jacket from Rho.
• AI can now add to existing stacks in storage, as well as handle various contingencies with lack of space, and so on.
• Created adaptive tutor system. It watches everything you do and tries to determine your knowledge of various concepts. If it detects a concept is needed but knowledge hasn’t been demonstrated, it shows a helpful note. Effectively it tries to replicate a good teacher sitting behind you, saying only the things that are really needed.
• Added preferred names list, so you can encourage the game to spawn your Name in Game or Backstory in Game character.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed another batch of stockpiling bugs, largely around configuration of special storage buildings.
• Various bugfixes.

References

• Internal version
• Changelog

This article may contain outdated information that is inaccurate for the current version of the game. It was last updated for p.