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Beyond Nations 0.5.0

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@dmccoystephenson dmccoystephenson released this 22 Oct 13:23
0.5.0
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Learn about vigilant mode.

A spring that no longer starves, a sheltered first village, a status line that keeps every message, and the first release playtested by ten AI agents.

Play in the browser: https://beyond-nations.play.danielstephenson.dev
Desktop downloads: Windows x64 and Linux x64 builds are attached below.

Gameplay

  • Lean worlds recover at spring. Starving pawns forage instead of pacing between their gate and an unaffordable market; in winter, with nothing to forage, they stay home. Hungry pawns prefer food when gathering, and a run of deaths reads as one line ("5 pawns have died."). Second-spring deaths fell from 7–15 to 0–3 per world in measurements, with winter as lean as before (#338).
  • The player's first village is sheltered. The early siege grace now covers a nation the player joined as well as one they lead, and when the Town era ends it, no new siege can begin for five minutes. The era box shows an amber "Sieges can begin in m:ss" countdown, on touch too (#339).
  • Every message reaches the status line. Messages from the same moment are joined into one line, so "A new era" is no longer replaced by "Objective complete" before it is seen (#342).

Playtesting

  • A playtest kit lets AI agents play the real desktop build headlessly: a --playtest-out flag writes the game's state and events, tools/playtest/pt.sh drives isolated sessions, and the results are aggregated into one report (#341, docs/PLAYTESTING.md).
  • The first ten-agent playtest ran on this build. Its evidence is in docs/playtests/0.5.0/, and its confirmed major findings are filed as #344–#358. Releases now need their playtest evidence, which the release workflow checks (#343).

Saves from 0.4.1 and earlier load unchanged (save format 5).

Known issues

Found by the playtest and not yet fixed in this release (fixes for several are already in review):

  • Pawns in the player's own settlement can't be talked to, gifted or invited (#344).
  • The bottom command bar can rearrange under the cursor (#345).
  • A new nation can turn hostile and be raided from day 1 with no reason shown (#346).
  • The Nations screen lists only the oldest 7–8 nations (#347); "Too close to another settlement" gives no distance or direction (#349).
  • Inside a settlement the right-hand HUD column overflows (#350).
  • In the first winter, many NPCs can starve with no warning, and the player can't feed them (#353).

Full changelog: 0.4.1...0.5.0

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