Hello everyone! Long time no see!
We sincerely hope everything is well on your end.

We are not announcing a new version today, yet. But...
MASSIVE changes were made to the internals of the game, which ended up fixing many old bugs and making the game Save/Load times much faster. This should allow us to design the game around having more cave layers later on. 
The changes also brought brand new and different bugs, which we should hopefully get a hold of in this final stage of preparing the release.

Fun story: No one on the team realized we'd be releasing a big, new version anytime soon. We are so focused on working on future stuff that it felt we had nothing cool ready to be shared at the moment. Turns out we do.

Find out more details and a list of the next version's features below!

Project Status

We've been more silent than usual, but the project is steadily progressing towards its Kickstarter campaign. 
There's many things that are being worked on at the same time that are still not ready for a public appearance, but we hope to keep showing off some progress on the Kickstarter showcases to back up our words.

Development of a new version remained on the sidelines for long, as we focused on feature and tech demos for the campaign. 
Initially, we would have the next update be limited to technical changes only.
But...As I was typing this devlog, we decided to bring in more to the next version than that. 

There's a lot that we've worked on to present on the Kickstarter campaign that is still early in development, but we decided to go ahead and invite you to try some new things out!

Working in the dark

Working towards a crowdfunding campaign can be pretty grating, as we work on multiple different fronts and potential features without any tangible results to show on the short-term. In other words, we can work on many new things, but they usually aren't brought up to a level that would be cool to add to the game right now.
This can lead into us having a bunch of concepts and prototypes floating around, waiting for their time to shine, while we keep working in the dark with little real things to show.

To the team, it's a pretty awkward change from our relatively free-but-focused development process of the past, where we could have new stuff to show almost on a weekly basis (when the team was sync'ed up), with most decisions being either obvious or quick to take.

Maybe it's just a matter of us being more open about what we're working on - ready or not - and sharing these concepts with you as we move along.

On the bright side, in order for the demos to be presentable, they require all sorts of design, code and art work. Some might even require large reworks of current code in order to behave properly. 
Thankfully, some of the work can - after even more work and much testing - be brought into an update!

Coming Soon™ on 1.3.0

The next release will be a major version update. 

Initial Clothing and Rebel Diversity

You've heard that right. We teased this in previous devlogs.
There's still a couple fixes and testing to be done for us to feel safe releasing it but, personally speaking, it makes the game a lot more fun to have varied peeps walking around! We've been playing internally with the new pawns for a long time now, to the point we feel very awkward when watching new videos about our game that only have the original pawn. 

Current diversification features: 
Pawns: male and female gender, different body and face types, hair and facial hair styles and colors, skin tones.
Clothing: some colored t-shirts, a dress, pants, an overcoat and glasses were added. The original cultural garb remains and was adapted to suit the new body styles. 
The ability to rename Pawns and to change their equipment will be coming at a later time due to our current workload.

Keep in mind that all are subject to change, and feedback is appreciated. We definitely hope to have more variety in this regard in the future. 
Our artist, Mari, worked hard on all these!

In-Game Feedback and Bug Reporting Tool

By pressing F11, the Feedback Screen pops up. It allows you to write a bug report, or a feedback, and choose whether or not to attach your save file. 

After a couple of minutes, we receive your report and can investigate it.
We also hope to hear feedback on any features, or suggestions for improvement through the tool! 
We have a lot noted down to work on, but it's always great to hear from you - it helps us focus on stuff that matters the most.

Save Game Overhaul (Multiple saves, Auto-Save, Quick-Save)

As the game gets more complex, so does the danger of making a mistake (or of the game misbehaving). 
In these moments, we always desire to have an auto-save ready to...save us.

• You can now have multiple, independent saves. 
• Auto-saving can be configured in the Settings - it can be toggled on or off, and the save interval and amount of saves to keep can be set.
• Per the standard, F5 Quick-Saves and (double-tapping) F9 Quick-Loads the game.
• Auto-saves and quick-saves are tracked separately for each unique save.

New Lighting System

Advances were made into the lighting system. The new one is not yet completely done, but looks a lot closer to what we would like to have in the game!
We've been playing with it internally for a while now, and it's time to set it free.

Multithreaded saving and loading + Massive internal reworks

Not exactly sure what caused it, but something made Kirthos bring out the Code-Sledgehammer and rework large parts of the game's internals.

One of such reworks is the multithreaded saving and loading of worlds. With it, the game has already become faster to load and save.
In the future, this will also allow us to add smoother and less invasive Saving and Loading notifications and screens.
It also makes the game better to develop and expand - including modding!
Many other fixes and optimizations were performed.

More stuff!

• More hotkeys
• Pause Menu
• Initial work with Particle Effects
• Fixed Audio Effects (such as Reverb)
• More sounds, less farts
• Some reworked sprites - rotations for the Solid Fuel Generator, wooo!
• A way to use Plant Fiber as fuel
• Dead old bugs 
• Very alive new bugs.

We've also had a player compose a TAR-inspired music track, and we will be checking in with him to have it added in the game.
It was a very unexpected happening, and I'm grateful for dsminor for it!

Socialization & Recreation Showcase

As mentioned, most of our time goes into developing demos (we call them Showcases) to display in on our future Kickstarter Trailer.
We've already showed a sneak peek of the Pawn Diversification, which will hopefully make it into 1.3.0.
Now, we present you the way cooler Social & Recreation Showcase trailer preview:

The team is spread in developing 4 showcases at the moment, and once they are finished, we'll move into some more. 
Once the Trailer and Page is ready, we'll launch the Crowdfunding Campaign.

How detailed and expansive our campaign will be is still undefined - the project is running on fumes, and we're all using up our savings to make it happen.
We would like to have many demos to show before launching, so it depends on how long we can keep up.

It's for that reason that we both thank and ask you, fellow rebels and followers, to keep the Rebellion in your hearts, and to share it and support it when the time™ comes.
The fall of the Communion relies on you.

Thanks for reading!
We're looking into maybe making some video DevLogs, or something similar. 
Let us know if you think that's cool, or if you have any questions for us. 

As always, thanks for following the project!
- Gabeux - on behalf of the Tech Age Rebellion team