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Beyond Nations 0.4.0 (A Nation to Run)

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@dmccoystephenson dmccoystephenson released this 21 Oct 13:39
0.4.0
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Learn about vigilant mode.

The first release since 0.3.0 (January 2024). The game has been rebuilt from Unity onto its own C# simulation core with the Strata engine. It now runs in a browser as well as on the desktop, and it has a full game loop: goals, eras, an ending and saves.

Play in the browser: https://beyond-nations.play.danielstephenson.dev

Highlights

A new foundation

  • Unity is gone. The simulation is a standalone C# core with no engine references, drawn by the Strata engine on desktop (OpenGL) and in the browser (WebGL 2, WebAssembly) (#294, #297, #298).
  • Simulation time is counted in ticks rather than wall-clock time, so runs are reproducible (#285).
  • Phones are supported: touch controls (#325) and GPUs with fewer than 16 texture units (#312).

Something to do

  • Objectives: a teaching arc that leads into longer-term ambitions, with a HUD tracker (#302).
  • Eras: grow from Camp to Kingdom, with victories, defeat and an end-of-run history screen (#324).
  • Chronicle (Y): a dated record of what happens in the world (#303).
  • Choice events: droughts, bandits, claimants to the throne and more (#320).
  • Ruling: laws, war and peace, and heirs (#322).

A living world

  • Settlements visibly grow, with buildings that use stone; rocks regrow (#304, #310).
  • Nations have relations, territory, diplomacy and sieges (#306).
  • Pawns have relationships, personalities and offspring; leadership passes on when a leader dies (#300, #308, #268, #271).
  • Seasons with a lean winter, plus regions with surpluses and shortages (#318).
  • Trade caravans and market prices that move with supply (#321).
  • Crafting (C): tools that wear out, cooked meat, planks and bricks (#307).
  • Hunger, building costs, prices and pacing rebalanced (#301).

Feel and usability

  • Two usability passes: a controls screen, high-DPI scaling, an energy bar, failure feedback, nametags and darker nights (#299, #305).
  • Sound, visual feedback and tips for the first five minutes (#317).
  • Steer by dragging with the right mouse button (#309). Mouse look and input fixes (#290, #291, #296).

Saves and sharing

  • Save and load worlds. Saves have integrity checks and an atomic write with a backup, and older save formats still load (#311).
  • Share a world by seed or link, and export its history as Markdown or as a USD replay (#323, #284, #293).

Fixes

  • The game no longer crashes when the player's settlement is deleted (#288).
  • Collecting profit from an empty stall no longer creates a coin (#316).
  • Crashes now report the real exception (#289).

Under the hood

  • A pacing bot plays each objective in CI and fails the build if one takes longer than its time budget (#319).
  • Every host switch and every CI job is documented (#313).

Known issues

  • The "Eat something" objective involves about a minute of waiting.
  • Pawns stockpile apples, which makes winter mild.
  • Some touch-mode text still names keyboard keys.
  • The claimant event bypasses the realm's laws.
  • A bandit camp that was waited out cannot be cleared.

Full changelog: 0.3.0...0.4.0

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