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The_Newspaper
WorldNews turns the events of your game into a broadsheet you can read, illustrate and share. This page covers how an issue reaches you, what it contains, and the options around it.
Status: this describes the 0.8 newspaper, in development. The current release (v0.7.0) is Regions and Territories compatibility.
When enough news has accumulated, a "Newspaper Published" letter arrives. Click it and choose Read newspaper to open the broadsheet — a full front page laid out on a single, linked-scroll page:
- Masthead — paper name, volume/issue/date/price, and a strapline.
- Banner headline — the issue's overarching story.
- Lead story — a byline, an illustration, and a drop-cap opening; the body flows down the main column.
- Side rail — secondary stories, an In Brief panel of short notices, and a single advertisement.
- Footer — section marker and paper name.
An issue never publishes empty: it needs a headline and at least one story with real body text, so a thin moment never prints a blank page.
The broadsheet has an Export HTML button. It writes the current issue to a single self-contained web page — images are embedded, so the one file carries its own pictures and opens in any browser. After exporting, the toolbar shows the saved file path in a selectable field with a Copy path button. Nothing is written until you click Export; the game never saves a copy on its own.
The newspaper can illustrate its stories using pollinations.ai, a free online image generator (no account, no key). This is opt-in:
- The first published issue shows a one-time consent window; you can also toggle it any time under Mod Settings → RimSynapse - WorldNews.
- Only the AI-written scene description is sent (e.g. "a dust-caked caravan at the gates") — never personal information, colony data, or save files.
- Pictures are downloaded once and cached on disk; with illustrations off, the paper stays text-only.
- Publication waits for the pictures to arrive so an issue isn't printed half-illustrated. If the service declines a request, that story simply runs text-only rather than holding the paper up.
Every issue carries one quirky, RimWorld-flavoured house advertisement, drawn from a pool of twenty and rotating weekly — the same ad all week, a new one next week. Half of them ship with a small black-and-white brand mark.
News travels slowly on the rim. Events are held for a short delay before they arrive (the deferred-news pipeline, configured under RimSynapse - Core settings — a default of two days, per-category, adjustable).
- With a powered comms console, held events appear immediately as an advance BREAKING NEWS ticker across the top of the screen — your early warning. The banner is movable, resizable and collapsible.
- Without comms, there is no early bulletin: you learn of an event only when it is released, and the newspaper reports it then. No comms means you lose that lead time.
No. WorldNews reports colony-local news on its own. When Regions and Territories is present, the paper additionally draws on territory, borders and regional beliefs to cover the wider world.