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Ostriv
Asid:
Alpha 5 patch 9 hotfix 21 & some news
Wed, 19 February 2025
Added/changed:
- Limeworks workers will now prioritize removing a small remainder of quicklime from the kiln
Fixed:
- Planted trees could have some navigation problems
- Field lost its link to a farm if entrance blocked
- Yearly supply limits didn't always work properly
- Navigation issues with fishing docks on map 3 (may need to rebuild the problem buildings in older saves)
So, about that deadline. This time I broke my rule about not having a release date for anything and it was a mistake. For instance, I had 2 days allocated for a new feature: help pages for every type of resource. When I got to implementing it, it quickly became apparent that the whole in-game help system could use some more substantial overhaul. What you see here is the current work-in-progress:
It's now taking 6 days and it's not finished yet. And of course it's all tied to the new buildings and resources in Alpha 6, so it can't be released separately. Our work is mysterious and important and, as such, very unpredictable. That's why games always either get delayed or botched.
I want Alpha 6 to be released as soon as possible more than anyone else, but I also want it to be actually worth revisiting for everyone. It's a rare opportunity and I don't want it to be wasted.
Sorry to disappoint, but you know that making the best game possible has always been my highest priority. Alpha 6 will be out when it's ready.
Thank you for your patience. We're under construction.
Asid:
Alpha 5 patch 9 hotfix 25
Mon, 31 March 2025
Alpha 6 is so big, its features are spilling into hotfixes. I think it makes sense to polish out some of the less exciting features with the community before Alpha 6 arrives and brings new players.
Added/changed:
- Building categories are now separating food and non-food production
- Added the trade limits window, which allows more control of what stays in town and what goes for export
- Added a help page about trade limits
Fixed:
- Crash on save in some cases
- Could put graves too close to water leading to navigation problems
- People could forget about their dead relatives graves after loading a save
Asid:
Alpha 5 patch 9 hotfix 27
Sat, 10 May 2025
Gonna talk a bit about Alpha 6 development and things which make it longer than expected (once again).
One of the new features is about making resource consumption much more sensible and reallistic. As of Alpha 5, your citizens only strive to have 4 types of food (or 6-7 if they are on the richer side). Of course it's too simplified to be believable.
In Alpha 6 every food resource will have nutritional value, but as it turns out you can't just choose foods by nutrition. When I tried that, the citizens would just buy all the calorie-packed foods and ignore all the vegetables. Another issue is that each food type has it's own consumption rate (most people can't eat 100g of garlic at once, but everyone can eat 100g potatoes). People would rather choose foods by taste, not by technical specs.
There's also no difference in local market price for different foods in Alpha 5 and resource amounts are quite arbitrary. Alpha 6 goal is to make all numbers make sense and thus make it easier to set actual prices for different foods, which would also have an effect on purchasing decisions.
Yet another factor is citizens class differences (there will be a bit more administrative roles with higher wages in the town) which lead to different expectations for products on the market.
It's been a long time since the game had this level of rebalancing and all the little details should play along together and don't break the parts which actually work. It takes some time to experiment and choose all the right solutions, but I believe this will bring a lot of new depth to the game.
Meanwhile, here's what's available in this little update:
Added/changed:
- Added background colors in treasury stats to improve readability
- Total population wealth is now visible in population stats
- Optimized fences rendering when viewed from afar
- Added an icon to tell if a resource is set to be collected by a building which also produces it
- Updated some help pages
- Can now force lime kiln burn before the whole batch collected
Fixed:
- Taken loans didn't save between sessions
- Some stone bridges could block navigation on water
- Fields and reforestation areas could cause blocked paths in some cases
- Corrected some spelling mistakes
- Barbers sometimes couldn't stop visiting the same fracture patients repeatedly and taking their money
- Lime kiln resources were collected even if it's deactivated
Asid:
Alpha 5 patch 9 hotfix 28
Sun, 29 June 202
Added/changed:
- The game is now set on pause if user logged out or some other system events happened
- Arcaded rowhouses can now be build either with a store or extra apartment
- Can now flip (mirror) any building (with C key by default)
Slightly improved the pine model
Fixed:
- Minor UI corrections
- Some random issues with fishing spots
- Crash related to blocked buildings
- Sheep could be sheared an extra time after relocation
- Navigational issues related to rows of graves near water
- Fencelsess houses could create navigation issues when demolished
- "no market stalls nearby" warning was shown for rowhouses with store
- Brewery water supplies could get stuck if a well is demolished
- Coastal buildings could unfairly block navigation in some cases
Asid:
Alpha 5 patch 9 hotfix 32
Fri, July 25, 2025
I know some of you are disappointed about not having the big content update for so long. And my recent mistake of setting an ETA didn't make it any better. So I guess another portion of excuses is due:)
While Alpha 6 is the current big thing, my goal from day one has always been to release a finished game. And while the feedback received during the last 5 alpha iterations is invaluable and I really believe this community-based approach was the best choice for Ostriv, the whole deal of keeping the game playable and enjoyable on every step of the way is obviously taking a great deal of development time. So I've got this idea of making a much wider step this time to get much closer to the final release. The more final game mechanics I can bundle in this iteration, the sooner we'll be able to reach the fabled 1.0 version. There's a slight chance that this will be the last update of this size before the final release.
Alpha 6 will have at least 13 new buildings. I also made plans for additional 11, but not sure which will get into Alpha 6, bacause some mechanics are going to need more time, as usual, and in the end of the day there should be balance between the size of the update and wait time. I guess no one will forgive me another year of development.
It also gets more challenging to support both versions of the game in a single code base, because I need to be able to both work on Alpha 6 and deliver fixes for the current public version, so the code is now all littered with macros like this:
These macros isolate the unfinished functionality and choose the numbers depending on the type of build. Alpha 6 will have most of the numbers overhauled as they are being rebalanced to make more sense (1 unit will be 1kg for most resources). Numbers from old saves will be converted, of course.
Sometimes I forget to split the code properly and you get leaks in hotfixes (some of you may have noticed The Greasing Incident). Of course these mechanics are not yet ready to be publicly released.
Meanwhile here's what today's little update has inside:
Added/changed:
- Houses and apartments will now be set on hold if previous family was relocated
- Added notification icons with tooltips in all production buildings to show resources missing for a batch
- Status strings like "not enough X for Y production" are not shown anymore
- Can now right-click on any slider in the game and set the value manually
- Logs will now lye perfectly on slopes so the game is finally playable
- Can now change village house appearance with (by default) F2 key before construction
Fixed:
- It was possible to break the lighting on rowhouses with some manipulations
- Crash related to having multiple town hall buildings
- One of the rowhouse types had less apartments than expected
- Foresters stopped planting trees when storage is full in some cases
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