Diary #21 – 0.5.09 Release Notes

Not too much in this fortnight’s dev diary, since we’re leaving for a family trip to Ontario tomorrow, but I did manage to sneak in an update of the Alpha. Here’s what’s inside:

• Added shadows to pops, buildings, and trains (you might have seen some of these in 0.5.02, I had started implementing these between releasing 0.5.00 and making the hotfix for it).
• The well is now animated when someone is working there.
• You can now click and drag to build a road, rather than constantly clicking “Road” and clicking a grid square for each individual square.
• Added a bunch of new trees, some bushes, and other flora.
• Trains are no longer randomized, and will alternate between trade trains and passenger trains. This way, you won’t be waiting forever to get a chance to trade.
• The first train of the game no longer supplies wood, forcing the player to learn how to chop down trees at the start to do anything.
• Building demolition is no longer instant, and follows the same logic as “demolishing” trees – pops have to come by to do the work.
• Train color information is now saved in save files, and carries over when loaded.
• Buy and Sell panels in the train UI can now be minimized.
• The Railway Status screen now has fancy graphics showing what is unlocked, and what will be unlocked in the next level.
• A little blue indicator icon comes up when you can level up.
• Added a cute little 0-4-0 steam engine that pulls trains in the first level.
• The Train UI and Building Info Box now remain within the screen, no matter where the camera is.
• There is now a “Bailout” train, offering to purchase basic resources and gives a small amount of free gold. This train gets spawned if the player runs out of gold.
• Storage buildings now have actual resource costs to build, and have icons in the build menu.
• The rest of the screen now darkens when in certain menus.

Known Issues:

• The Bailout Train comes when you have 0 gold, even when you have plenty of tradeable resources. This will be fixed later.
• In certain situations when exiting a menu, the game will not automatically resume. For example, opening the menu, clicking credits, clicking menu again, and then closing the popup will not resume the game at its previous speed.