Desert 0.2.4-alpha — Creaky Sailboat

0.2.4-alpha “Creaky Sailboat”

A manual sail hoist, physical salvage rewards and clearer radio handling.
Includes the sailing, traversal and exploration baseline described below.

• Raise and lower sails with a fitted hand winch and a real halyard over the masthead.
  Starter and found rigs supply the hardware; fully hauled sails retain wind-deed progress.
• Remove fitted sails and board rope ends, and recover loose ropes without losing anchors.
  Previously owned and older loose coils open into usable rope when picked up.
  Remaining coils follow the active paying end and use layered rope windings.
  The authored yacht uses visible ballast, four hover trays and two centreline keels.
• Show tuning controls in the radio close view and give stations distinct machine voices.
  New reports discard interference fragments left over from the previous playback.
• Pick up Halloran coalcane normally and unlock a physical service cache after the burn.
  Homes, refinery fittings and the connected pipeline gain modeled detail.
• Add a short illustrated hoisting page to the sailing notes.
• Reach Starcom's relay mountain and the far-side observatory volcano: hazy distant
  silhouettes become real slopes, colonial galleries and salvage when approached.
  The existing volcanic plume rises from the mountain's flank.
• Storm-stripped ruins refill more slowly in calmer air, leaving a short window to
  investigate after the dust clears. Strong storms can still bury them again.

0.2.3-alpha “Sailboat”

Physical sailing controls, clearer radio reception, and a first encounter at Halloran.

The 0.2.2 and 0.2.3 tags remained unpublished candidates. The first failed its
verification gate; the second was withheld after a repeat-report interference bug
was reproduced. Version 0.2.4 includes their scope and fixes that bug.

• Select waist lines by hovering and clicking in the carry view. A single line reels
  without selection; release all uses timed progress and preserves momentum.
• Sailing booms turn on physical hinges, constrained by real sheets and routed lines.
  Fit hooks to clear surfaces, route ropes through them, and yank a worked line for
  a quick tug. Four short illustrated pages replace the long sailing tutorial.
• Skates, hover parts and keels can share decks where they physically fit. Vault onto
  reachable ledges and moving decks with a climb scaled to the ledge height; exposed
  wreck roofs provide solid walking and hoverboard surfaces.
• Fix distant stake placement, depleted-deck hover shutdown, freed rope selections,
  and frame-rate-dependent ridden-board battery use.
• Radios gain station marks, independent sound effects and steadier carried audio.
  Scheduled songs keep playing through mixer/world-clock drift instead of restarting under load.
  Bundled weather, god and beacon speech works without an external voice service.
• Thirteen satellites broadcast overhead. Signal the delivery drone with a flare to call
  a cargo drop; active deliveries and used flares survive saving and loading.
• Explore Halloran's lower homes and Crossing, feed the Stoker's maintenance furnace,
  and claim a finite service cache after the burn. Fuel, burn progress and rewards persist.
• Add a directional survey receiver, a physical Surveyor's Guide, a playable
  Archaeologist kit and a personal shield for the Salvager start.

Current limits

• Drone cargo containers are empty; supply contents are not implemented yet.
• The Halloran maintenance burn is a bounded encounter, not a portable generator,
  sustainable fuel loop or completed ending.
• Kites, camp beacons and keeping distant camps loaded remain planned work.
• Scenario runs do not save. Use a Normal run to test persistence.

0.2.1-alpha “Sailboat”

Richer sand and trails, recoverable Nomad sailing gear, and fixes from sailing playtests.

• More depth and shade in dune sand and nearby ripples.
• Sand trails gain shaped depressions and rims that flatten the surrounding ripples.
• Nomad wrecks and camps with recoverable sailing gear, a streamer and a crow's nest.
• The dev console can open over any menu; unlocking origins updates the open menu.
• A crow's nest can be placed on a standing mast from deck height.
• The Varran's sheet ring rests on the deck, and waist ropes follow the rider's displayed movement.
• Waist lines show the selected line's name, length and tension; reeling and untying work that same line.
• The board can catch up on slack lines and carry momentum around a sailing rig. Motor assistance is limited under load; heavy towing grounds it and makes it sputter until you ease off.
• A physical sailing field guide in the sail scenario explains wind, trim, steering and the Varran bridle.
• Shorter weather announcements, spoken when storm news changes.

0.2.0-alpha

The second alpha of a cozy survival game on a dead desert moon. Your home is a bubble
shield you carry with you, on a rig you build and tie down against the wind. Everything
is still rough: grey boxes, placeholder sounds, numbers still moving. It's here to be
played and broken.

New since 0.1

• The chassis is the one structure. Crates and slots are gone:
  • Anything sticks on a chassis's faces, and frames take walls and shelves.
  • Hover trays lift toward the sand they face.
  • Everything on a deck shares one power pool.
  • Walls and fabric catch the wind and shelter what's behind them.
• Power boxes come in four makes, from a colonial cabinet to a temple shrine. Each bay has
  a light strip, and a Console ranks and switches devices as far as the box allows.
• Sailing for real:
  • The sheet is a line you haul in and ease out, and the cloth shows its trim.
  • With a helm and a keel, a camp sails as a land yacht.
• The hoverboard skids on hard carves, lands hard, crashes, and comes in four makes.
• Deeds: 40 of them in eleven trees, earned in play with a bell and a badge. Four starts
  open by deeds.
• Two new starts:
  • The Varran settler flies a kite rig with his board as its keel.
  • The Archaeologist digs ruins out of the dunes.
• Dune archaeology:
  • Storms strip windward faces and bury the lee.
  • Big dunes hide ruins that a big storm bares.
  • A Console's ground radar maps what's buried, and a scoop and a sieve dig it out.
• Wrecks to cut open seam by seam, with live hazards to make safe first.
• The anomaly: a rare storm the forecast can't see, and the tells that give it away.
• Vents and plumes: sand columns that tower over the storm walls from far off, and booms
  that arrive after you see the burst.
• Sightlines: ruins on the horizon, true to size, catching the light.
• Sleep in a bedroll to skip a night or a storm, and auto-walk for the long haul.
• The radio:
  • Its storm reports come in a recorded voice.
  • Seven gods broadcast on its dial.
• Sand that reads as sand:
  • lopsided ripples;
  • grain at your feet;
  • grainflows down slip faces.
• A creative menu in the dev console, to build anything in a test run.

What's in it

• The moon: endless dunes that the wind reshapes. A day and night with the gas giant
  Tu overhead and its eclipses, and storms you can see coming as a wall on the horizon.

• The camp:

  • a bubble shield that keeps the storm out;
  • chassis pieces you join into a deck, with hover trays, frames and walls;
  • whatever you find stuck on it: devices, batteries, hooks, lamps, a sail.

• Power: solar panels, a wind turbine, batteries, power boxes and cables, on a budget
  that has to last through night and storm.

• Rope: stakes, lines and reels to moor what floats and tow your camp behind you.

• Survival: water, food and a suit with five slots, and a condenser that wrings water
  out of the air.

• Salvage: finds half-buried in the dunes, ruins to walk into, and wrecks to cut open,
  all uncovered and buried again as the weather moves the sand.

• Farming: planters that grow root-tubers in the clear and vat fungus in the storm's
  dark, wild saltbush, and a harvester that feeds you.

• Gear: hoverboards, a radio, a Console for your instruments and maps, and a compass that
  Tu's field and the ground pull off north.

• Five origins:

  • the Surveyor tows a camp;
  • the Salvager rides light;
  • the Homesteader stays put;
  • the Varran sails;
  • the Archaeologist digs.

  All but the Surveyor open by deeds. Each runs in Normal, which saves as you go, or
  Ironman, where death ends the run.

• The dev console and its scenarios are left in, for jumping straight to a storm, a
  wreck or a vent. A scenario's run, or any run a dev command has touched, counts no deeds.

How to start

1. Unzip the download for your computer and open the folder.
2. Start the game:
   • Windows: Desert.exe.
   • macOS: Desert.app.
   • Linux: Desert.x86_64. If it won't start, make it executable first:
     chmod +x Desert.x86_64.
3. Choose New game, pick who you come as, then Normal.
4. Press F1 for the keys list. It shows every key as it's bound now. F11
   switches fullscreen.

You'll need a graphics card with Vulkan (Windows and Linux) or a Mac on macOS 13 or
later (Apple silicon) or 11 or later (Intel).

Known issues

• The builds aren't signed, so your computer will warn you the first time:

  • Windows SmartScreen says "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then
    Run anyway.
  • macOS says the app can't be opened because Apple can't check it for malicious
    software. Control-click Desert.app, choose Open, then Open again. On
    macOS 15 or later, try to open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy &
    Security and click Open Anyway. Or, in Terminal, from the folder it's in:
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Desert.app.

• Saves from 0.1 don't load, since the camp is built differently now. Your settings
  carry over.

• Saves may not carry over between later builds either. A build that can't read a save
  says so on the main menu and leaves it alone; it never loads half a run.

• It's an alpha. Expect rough edges, odd physics in a hard storm, and balance that
  will change. Your save, your profile and the game's logs are in:

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\Desert
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/app_userdata/Desert
  • Linux: ~/.local/share/godot/app_userdata/Desert

  The version is in the main menu's corner. Please name it when you report a bug.