Beta 0.8.2 – The tornado update

We finally have a trailer for Stormland! It was a great deal of work ; I will now be more focused on bug fixing and content addition. The problem when you have a very small team AND a very low budget is that you have to make several jobs, including some you aren’t really qualified for. Although I find really interesting to alternate between different kinds of work, I underestimated the exhausting mental load it causes. I’d now find relaxing to do just programming!

Beware the tornados!

Just when you might have found a way to resist the first storms, a new challenge will appear. A tornado can heavily damage a building. In fact it destroys nearly everything on its way. But it is also very localized and with a bit of luck can completely avoid your village.

Bugfix

I (hopefully) have fixed the bugs that were corrupting save files. More, I’ve added mechanisms to minimize the damage. I obviously don’t plan to introduce more similar bugs, but I realized the problem was often related to a single map entity (like a blackberry bush or a fish), and that it was preventing the whole file loading. Now the loading process will just skip the bugging entity and load the others. It will also display an error message that you can send to the development team to help debugging!

Patchnote

Version 0.8.2 (beta)

New features and content

• Tornadoes
• Randomly generated building rubble

Minor improvements

• Improved storm-chosing algorithm. Natural disasters will become more threatening with time.
• Smooth camera movement when following an object (like a raft or a tornado)
• Building time slider now has a default value maximised (according to the amount of remaining time of the selected villager)

Bugfixes

• Fixed several bugs that were corrupting save files. Added a mechanism to minimise the damage when a bug happens with a save file, and another to attempt repairing the file.
• Recycling a wattle hut gave zucchinis. I liked this bug.
• Shorter building repair time so it can always be made with a single action.
• Fixed buggy scroll rect in repair tab.
• Added missing texts