Alpha 4 released!

Development Blog - Yevheniy

##### March 5, 2021

Three weeks ago we had Alpha 4 feature-complete and started testing it internally. It was tempting at the moment to give you an estimation on release date, but it would’ve been a big mistake. The testing showed so many issues and being able to thoroughly research all the new additions and make corrections without time pressure was priceless.

So here we are with Alpha 4 ready for your judgement. In short, there are 5 new buildings, introduced basic education, new ways of transporting resources, improved performance, private farming, storage capacity limits and a lot of other stuff.

Your old saves will load fine, but it is recommended to start a new game because of the number of new things that have a great impact on your local economy. Also older saves will not enjoy the same amount of performance improvements.

**Added/changed:**

* Citizens will now use their gardens to grow their own food for sale and for personal consumption
* Greatly optimized the pathfinding to use all available CPU power
* Slightly optimized overall graphics performance
* Resources will now also be supplied for the next construction in a queue
* Export stock can now be marked as one-time deal (will not be restocked after a sale)
* New info overlay that shows products for sale on the local market
* A bit more info in chicken coop help
* Added an explanation why trade boats don’t depart in winter
* Improved forestry construction animation
* Can plant the trees again after the reforestation area is all cleared
* New building: construction office (allows to hire additional builders)
* Now highlighting reached yearly limits in supply options
* Now showing the number of trees in a reforestation area
* New building: cart shed (allows to hire carters for regular deliveries)
* Can see monthly family income in house properties now
* More smoke from charcoal piles and lime kilns (only those built after the update)
* Citizens will now only choose nearby market stalls and wells
* New building: gazebo (comes in two variations)

* Can now build houses without gardens around them
* Added a simple ambient occlusion effect near the ground
* Problem icons over buildings are now clickable
* Added storage capacity limits on all buildings
* Added new cursors when relocating animals or vehicles
* Can now create a special order to move resources (fulfilled by carters or wagon shed workers)
* Added a help text for wagon shed
* Slightly reduced forestry wood/firewood production per log
* Women will now use carts (but with less efficiency)
* Can now immediately destroy building’s resources
* Added tooltips on world map wagon icons
* Added a help text for well
* Wells built too close to the river will only produce low-quality water
* New tree type: spruce
* Can now choose one of two tree types when creating a new game
* Family tree will now also show children and parents who live separately (but only those who moved after the update)
* Lots of small and painful optimizations with a bit of results, but no one said it’ll be easy
* Citizens will now get inheritance from their deceased parents
* “Continue” button in the main menu will load the last save if not in game now
* Colder shadow color in winter
* Improved model and construction animation for trading post
* Old people who live alone will try to move in with their children
* When both parents living with children die, their oldest child will become a head of the family (was undefined behavior before)
* Food consumption now depends on family budget, market price and amount stored
* Improved houses models and their construction animation
* New building: saltworks. Allows to produce salt from underground brine deposits (which are everywhere at the moment)
* Added information about trade deals in trading post’s help
* Amount of house construction resources now depends on model variation
* Most citizens will plant decorative flowers near their house in the spring
* Improved farm model and construction animation
* Slightly rebalanced fishing to be less reliant on travel distance
* Newlyweds and newcomers will choose houses with no regard to the order in which they were built
* Improved grass timings for better visuals in spring and fall
* The seasonal hiring setting is now being restored if counsellor was rehired
* Extended family patience by 50% when they decide to leave
* Now showing the reason why the family is moving out in house properties
* You can now buy products from citizens in granaries and trading posts
* New building: primary school
* Can now customize form and size of the village house garden (F1 by default)
* Garden owners will now pay land tax set by the town hall (based on land area)
* Pigs can now be fed new vegetables: carrots, cabbage, beetroot
* Added a help text for market stall
* Added generic cargo model on wagons
* New option: Confine cursor to window (useful for edge-scrolling on multi-monitor setups)
* Bigger font size in tool tips

**Fixed:**

* Couldn’t reassign fields in some cases
* Wrong navigation around bridges (will stay in old saves unfortunately)
* Pathfinding inconsistency which led to sub-optimal paths in some cases
* Slaughterhouse workers did an unneeded return to the stable when slaughtering a horse
* Citizens could stand for several seconds before starting to walk (mostly on developed towns)
* Building disappeared for a moment on construction completion
* Save game window had wrong title
* Heavy stuttering when hovering a building over some parts of the map
* Key bindings for up/down, right/left, CW/CCW were all inverted
* Forming new families could stuck in some cases (unintended indian tradition)
* Activate/Deactivate didn’t work exactly correct in charcoal piles and lime kilns
* Shift key (for x10) didn’t work in economy panel
* Trading dock’s roof didn’t cover from snow
* It was still possible to build on map entry points (after loading a save)
* Crash after you somehow create a triangular pasture
* Crash after pasture entrance is blocked
* Newlywed couples could accidentally move out on game load
* Citizens didn’t remember if they have shoes/clothes upon game reload
* Could build outside the map bounds in some cases
* Tooltips were hidden over cursor if cursor size is increased in Windows control panel
* Seasonal hiring didn’t reset on new game start
* Several cases of cyclic market stall deliveries
* Wrong shadows on construction parts during assembling
* Firewood wasn’t consumed for heating in winter (only for food preparation) from version 0.2.4 until now
* Demolished building could still have dangling properties UI
* Boat relocation by laborers didn’t work
* FPS limit didn’t work correctly
* When a citizen was carrying multiple resources, only the first one was showing in properties
* Trees could hover over ground after terraforming
* Windmills could motivate people to walk through buildings and fences
* Demolishing and cancelling some buildings made unexpected navigation around them
* Some doors were opened by the ghosts on regular basis
* Crash after demolishing tannery
* Lots of minor UI fixes

**If you’re using the portable version of the game, you can just download it again from Humble with the same link they sent you when you purchased the game and then replace it completely with your current version. Steam and GOG versions will update automatically.**

**If you don’t own the game yet or you want to further support the Ostriv development team, please consider buying the game here. You will get both Steam and GOG keys and a portable DRM-free version for direct download.**