Alpha 18: BOOM*

*aka The Alpha Directed by Michael Bay. No poyos were harmed in the creation of the splash screen.

Welcome to the explosive debut of Stonehearth Alpha 18! In this release, we’re continuing the focus on building begun in Alpha 17. Except this time, the emphasis is on destruction rather than construction. That’s right — the “Remove” button is back… with a bang. That means your structures don’t simply disappear, they’re demolished. (This is only the initial implementation of this feature — improved animations and SFX will be added soon.) You should be able to remove both completed and in-progress buildings, including those from older saves.

Also arriving (finally!): buildings that don’t leave landscape holes when destroyed. (How does it work? We don’t know. It’s almost like… magic.) Please note that there is still a landscape scar left by the Goblin chief’s camp — but we’ll be remedying that very soon.

But wait! There’s more! This Alpha also features the initial steps in a first-time player’s tutorial (only for the Ascendancy at the moment). Let us know what you think of the format. This is an oft-requested feature, and we’re eager to make sure we cover all the necessary first-time player challenges.

Alpha 18 also adds features and functionality that will improve your Stonehearth experience. You’ll now see more engaging idle behavior from your hearthlings, and even in some of your enemies! See if you can catch them in an unguarded moment. There’s also some functionality you won’t see — but it’s just as important. We’re instrumenting Stonehearth to provide us with anonymous data about how you play the game — how your towns grow, what classes you choose for promotions, how long you play a given settlement, and so on. This information is vital to help us continue to create a game that captivates you and exceeds your expectations. You can choose to opt in or out of this feature on your loading screen. Obviously, we hope you’ll want to participate!

Finally, Alpha 18 contains some important updates for modders. If you create mods or add them to your game, please make sure you read the appropriate section below.

And now, let’s take a closer look at the highlights of this release.

Building fall down. Go boom.

• Building removal is back! Hearthlings “tear down” buildings quickly, now. You currently get back 70% of the materials invested in the structure
• Placing an item into a building blueprint or finished building attaches that item to the building blueprint. If the item is destroyed, hearthlings will attempt to replace it
• You (currently) cannot place an item into a building that is under construction
• New ladder creation routine reduces some of the ladder-spam seen around complex structures
• Fixed a bug in scaffolding that lead to some scaffolding being built within building structures
• Fixed some objects not falling when support is removed
• Some performance improvements for large building construction
• Scaffolding will now wait for associated ladders to be torn down, before finally marking itself as “torn down”
• Fix some memory leaks from reloading a game
• Fixed bug where some items were not being placed
• Restore terrain when buildings are destroyed
• Add SFX for building destruction
• Correct fixture merging bug when buildings are merged
• Building cost now updates accurately based on furniture placement
• Add tall clay window and tan latticed window
• Added red clay peaked roof
• Roof margins now rotate
• Remove the “Max Height” option on flat roofs because it was never supported and should not even be there
• If InstaBuild produces inconsistent results for a truly giant building (Mindemann castle gigantic), try using it before you finish editing, and before the building calculation happens, not after.

Hearthling life, yo.

• The Farmer now has more reason to level up! Farmer progression includes unlocking more crops with each new level, as well as unlocking new trade options at Level 6. With a Master Farmer, chance trade encounters will include traders who will bring exotic seeds from distant lands, unlocking crops from other factions for you to grow.
• Added Emote_Concerned animation
• Added Goblin Emote: Pick Ear
• Added hearthling Emotes: Tap Foot, Count Fingers, Tool Inspection
• Touched up hearthling animation: Whistle
• Added new anonymous data collection functions to better understand play patterns (for example, number of game days played per settlement; total hearthlings in settlement per game day; balance of crafters, workers, and combat units… etc).
• The Promotion Tree’s unavailable job icons are now black and white
• Added Weaver and Potter house building templates for Rayya’s Children
• Added Emote Animations: Complete, Concerned, Browwipe, Reservation
• Adjusted Yawn Animation – Previous Yawn Update looked too much like a celebration when time sped up
• Merchants now have gold caps! You can only sell them as much stuff as they have gold to trade you for it!
• Add min days before return to trader scripts
• Display the returning trader’s remaining time in days, not hours, when a large amount of time remains
• Pets can go up and down ladders
• Added basic tutorial when starting a game on Ascendancy
• Change market stall recipes to use wood/clay resources instead of piles
• Adjust pain value of Engineer’s wrench
• Fix some issues with pets eating
• Make level up bulletins less spammy; auto remove if close button is pressed
• Fix goblin boss naming issue
• Food now decays correctly, and disappears when it is completely rotten
• Reduce harvest tool box max size from 80 to 50 to discourage deforesting in large chunks

It’s a mod, mod, mod, mod world.

IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR MODDERS AND PLAYERS WHO USE MODS: Alpha 18 contains certain updates designed to improve performance of the game overall. These updates include a bunch of mod-related improvements we have made to make your life and the game better. The minimum mod version number has been increased to 3 so outdated mods will no longer load. Please update your mods (and let us know if you have any trouble) — games using mods that have not been updated will not see those mods loaded. These changes are effective immediately.

Full details are here. Please read.
A list of mods already updated to work with Alpha 18 may be found here.

Also:

• Update microworld mod to work with latest version of the game
• For modders: Add resource_loot_table support to stonehearth:renewable_resource_node component
• Modding: You can now not specify a resource for renewable resource node and only specify a loot table
• Modding: You can now specify a harvester effect for renewable resource nodes

Performance ++!

• Improved UI load times by a little
• Tons of performance fixes related to memory
• Remove components from items that don’t need them: unit info, material, regions, etc
• Reduce memory usage in nav grids
• Various fixes related to material proxies
• Separate biome generation data from biome definition to speed up lookup
• Reduce # of traces on entities

General stuff and bugfixes

• Fixed one instance of game crashing while hitting shift+F5
• A loading screen with text now appears when loading a saved game
• Fixed assertion when exiting the game
• Remove rename functionality on things that shouldn’t/can’t be renamed
• Fix bug where toasts float a hundred feet above people’s heads
• Fix militia not standing ground in town alert mode
• Add button properties to Craft button in crafter UI
• Fixed patrol formation bug. Keeps members from following a former patrol lead when she’s off duty (e.g. going to bed)
• Fixed bug that spammed mining regions when digging building foundations
• Fix Ent raid starting in peaceful mode
• Fix bug that tried to set player_id on invalid goblin sheep
• Fixed container inception bug where hearthlings were placing other items over the ghosts of manually moved objects
• Fixed bug where inventory counts of items were incorrect because duplicate ghosts were appearing at the edge of the world

Known issues in this release

• Wall mounted items will fall down in old (pre-Alpha 18) saves. This will happen the first time you load an older save, but not on subsequent loads
• Old pet names have been forgotten (sorry!); you’ll have to rename them
• Building names have also been forgotten; you’ll have to rename them
• IB (instabuild) may not work correctly for very large structures