Build 1505 Available for Download

I’ll  try to keep this brief.

A non-trivial amount of time this month was spent thinking of a way to prevent stats from becoming unbalanced, both from the current (rather unintelligent) random distribution algorithm and from player manipulation (which I still consider the biggest threat to the viability of this genetics system). I’ve implemented a system inspired by a mechanic I remember from both Rimworld and Tropico: forced negatives. Currently, this means the addition of a second, “negative” stat to each gene. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the stat in question will have a negative value, just that the effect will be bad rather than good (a positive increase to the time it takes to cast a spell, for instance, would be considered a bad thing). Unfortunately, the main stat is not guaranteed to be positive, which results in stats tending towards the negative end of the scale. I haven’t yet decided how I want to deal with this. While the negative stats themselves are semi-avoidable (but randomly generated) in Rimworld, they aren’t avoidable in Tropico, but you do get to choose what they are. I’ve decided to make them both random and unavoidable in SoVII:ST.

With the help of the Twitch chat, I got the conga line to follow the player around the map. They don’t run, so be sure to walk; you can’t rush a good conga line.

To combat the still-present issue causing ragdolls to occasionally fall through the ground, I added two commands: moveUp, which will teleport the player roughly 10m up into the air, and kill, which should be used as a last resort.

Finally, sleep. I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep these last few weeks, so it’s been on my mind. Tiredness is now put to good use, with all characters, both NPC and player, collapsing from exhaustion after 36 hours without rest. Upon waking from sleep, a temporary debuff intended to mimic morning grogginess will cut your movement speed in half until it wears off after approximately 16 in-game minutes.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t all that brief.

 

Changelog

added the remainder of the geneome.

added summed stats to the genome visualization (tab).

added conga option to time command.

added kill and moveUp console commands.

added a second “downside” stat to each gene.

added textual tiredness display to debug bar.

added exhaustion: characters now fall asleep if awake for more than 36 hours.

added ragdolling to falling asleep from exhaustion.

added a groggyness debuff which halves movement speed when waking up.

removed LPV. framerates should be a little bit higher now, especially indoors, but it may also be darker at night.

changed the length of an in-game day to 48 real-world minutes.

changed GeneSlot count: each chromosome now contains 1/2000^th the amount of genes as its real-world counterpart.

changed genome visualization so that it fits on an FHD screen.

changed gene randomization algorithm in an effort to prevent stat dumps.

changed rate at which stamina replenishes when asleep.

fixed final chromosome assignment so that males and females receive the correct 46th chromosome.

Known Bugs

The ocean is solid, preventing you from swimming in it.

The esc menu is reluctant to give and take focus, requiring the user to click once to focus it upon opening and click once again to defocus it after closing the menu.

Turning headbob off will cause the player’s head to move through the camera while running or sprinting, temporarily obstructing your view.

Running out of living people to spawn into upon death will cause you to freeze in place and will display a debug message onscreen. To “fix” this, open the console and type RestartLevel, then press enter.

During periods of high CPU use, ragdolls may occasionally fall through terrain. This can also occur if you rapidly toggle in and out of ragdoll mode.

There is a very small chance that everyone alive may die before the player has a chance to start playing.

Download

You can download 1505 as a self-extracting archive (297mb, 673mb decompressed) directly from icannotfly.net.

If you’d prefer, there are also .torrent and magnet downloads available (both 673mb, uncompressed). This is only experimental at this point and isn’t guaranteed to be available in the future.

If you find any bugs, please let me know.

Please Note

To start the game, extract the contents of the archive and run PlayGame-1080p.bat. You can edit this file if you’d like to change the resolution to better match your screen.