Click here for help on accessing the Unstable branch!

Update 2 Unstable 3 has arrived! Just like Unstable 1 and 2, this patch adds a ton bug fixes and improvements, but most importantly, new content!

Some of the highlights of this patch are the brand new death/ghost mechanics, the Reliquary, Crylithium Firepits, vessels, clouds, and a ton of bug fixes and other QoL changes.

Next up, Unstable 4 will be "the big one" you've all been waiting for, and easily one of the most requested features of all time. The beta release of ... achievements! 👀 Just keep in mind, I may not be able to officially enable them until full Update 2 release on the main branch. But the system will be in place, and usable.

As with most of Rise to Ruins' patches, there's way too much to cover in a summary, so check out the changelogs and enjoy!

If you find a bug, you can report it on the Steam Bugs Forums or Discord[discord.gg]!

Previous Update 2 Unstable Change Logs:
Update 2 Unstable 1
Update 2 Unstable 2


Reliquary and The Dead

• New Building: The Reliquary. You can store bound souls at the reliquary, binding the ghost to the general area, and maintaining their vessel.
  
• New Resources: Empty and Filled Eerie Vessels. Empty Vessels are made by the Occultists in the Reliquary with 1 iron and 1 gold.
  
• Occultists can now "capture souls", when a villager or doggo dies, they will go to their corpse and "capture" the soul, placing it in an Eerie Vessel and take the Vessel to the reliquary to store and maintain for future resurrections.
  
• Added all of the perks, job data and speed reductions for capturing souls where required.
  
• Ghost no longer wander to random buildings.
  
• Ghost now always try to hover around their vessel, or body.
  
• New Resource: Ghost Dust, can be freely sold to Catjeet Provisioners. Who knows what they want with it though.
  
• Ghosts not bound to a body or a vessel will eventually leave the map forever, when they do a ton of essence is released and they'll drop some ghost dust.
  
• Completely rebalanced when ghosts fade in and out of view.
  
• Doggos and Doofy Doggos ghosts now fade in significantly more frequently.
  
• Doggos and Doofy Doggos ghosts are much less likely to leave the world forever.
  
• Bound ghosts are 10 times more likely to appear at night.
  
• Increased durability of god dust by 5x, the same as the new ghost dust resource.
  
• Mobs now decay 20 times slower.

UI Improvements

• Increased the intensity of the mouse cursor light.
  
• Camp placement window now renders on the left side of the UI when the minimap is opened.
  
• Sound and music controls now have 25 volume levels rather than 10.
  
• Edge scrolling values in the settings menu now uses "O" instead of "[]" for the visual bar.
  
• Main menu messages now have random colors.
  
• "Mob rings" no longer appear when you mouse over dead mobs.
  
• Added a resource arrow under the mouse when you grab resources.
  
• The UI will no longer claim you can refine a resource at a building that can't carry it or its materials, even though the worker is allowed to refine that material.
  
• Fixed several UI issues related to the new Essence Altars and Reliquary.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Clouds!
  
• Rations now require cooked meat rather than raw.
  
• Rations food value increased from 100 to 120.
  
• Initial spawn in villagers now spawn in pre-equipped with one ration and one water bottle.
  
• Initial spawn in now spawns in cooked meat rather than raw.
  
• Improved how range and corruption resistance is generated by buildings, offering more consistent results. (And in many cases, increasing range)
  
• New Building: Crylithium Firepits. Crylithium Firepits cannot be crossed by ghosts (Like Crylithium Walls), and provide more range than their regular Firepit counterparts.
  
• Wind and temp variations are now calculated instantly on load of a new game.
  
• Flowers spawn chance is now 10 times slower.
  
• Essence buildup (for flower spawning mechanics) is now 3 times slower.
  
• Changed Terminate Animal Pregnancy to Tending Animals in preparation for new tending mechanics.
  
• "Wiser Elders" perk now also influences faith sharing.
  
• Elders sharing faith now provides a small amount of XP
  
• Flowers can now be dissolved or cleared for a small amount of essence.
  
• Mobs now make cracking/squishy sounds when they decay.
  
• Mobs now "pop" when poked a bit too many times, are dissolved with the dissolve spell or their soul is captured by an occultist.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause the migration system to crash the game if no valid coordinates were found based on the angle of entry.
  
• Fixed a bug where the faith calculations were reversed, causing blessed children to be born more often.
  
• Fixed a bug that could reduce the amount of spawn in resources and villagers at the start of the game if the camp is too enclosed.
  
• Fixed a minor bug in the courier delivery AI that could make an AI misfire and deliver resources a golem could not carry.
  
• Fixed a bug that can cause the new flower system to crash the game if flowers attempted to generate along the edges of the map.
  
• Fixed an issue where flower generation would crash the game if the flower tilesets were never loaded.
  
• Fixed a typo in one of the death messages.
  
• Fixed several data map font rendering glitches, mostly related to debug and dev tool views.
  
• Fixed a crash when you use a mouse with more than 10 buttons, and press any button over button #10.
  
• Fixed a minor issue where on >1080p displays sometimes the game window would launch overlapping the Window's start bar.
  
• Miscellaneous Storage no longer claims to recommend a Bowyer and Rock Tumbler before building.
  
• Drones no longer show work progress bars.
  
• "God XP jingle" stops playing when you exit the main menu.
  
• Fixed a bug where 2 resources could spawn in the same spot during initial spawn in, possibly crashing the game shortly after.

Click here for help on accessing the Unstable branch!

Update 2 Unstable 2 has arrived! Just like Unstable 1, this patch adds a ton bug fixes and improvements, but most importantly, new content!

Some of the highlights of this patch are the new upgradable doggo houses, further enhancements to the new faith system, tons and tons of new animations, the resource rate calculator, additional resource bar configurations, a new spell/disaster (a comet!), really high quality new font rendering, and a ton of bug fixes and other QoL changes.

As with most of Rise to Ruins' patches, there's way too much to cover in a summary, so check out the changelogs and enjoy!

If you find a bug, you can report it on the Steam Bugs Forums or Discord[discord.gg]!

Previous Update 2 Unstable Change Logs:
Update 2 Unstable 1

Bug Fixes

• Mining facility's construction outline phase no longer generates a shadow.
  
• Fixed font scaling issues at scales higher than 2x.
  
• Fixed an issue where returning to the profile select screen without clicking a profile, then attempting to delete a profile, would always delete the first profile regardless of what profile appeared selected on the list.
  
• You can no longer click other buttons in the play state and map editor UI when the settings menu is open.
  
• Fixed a bug where the new flowers system wouldn't actually generate said flowers.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Areas where range is generated, but can't be used because it doesn't reach back to the main body of the village, now show up in red when viewing the range map.

Resource Bar and Panel Changes

• You can now set the resource filters to "rate", an experimental data view that gives you a rough idea how much of a resource is being consumed or generated over a given time period.
  
• The right hand resource bars can now be customized by opening the resource panel and selecting various types between food, water, dirty water, gold, faith and energy.
  
• The right hand resource bars now display a fill bar rather than just numbers.
  
• The right hand resource bar can now display 4 items, rather than 3.

Faith and Influence System

• Flowers can now generate near concentrated areas of energy on the map, and where essence moves heavily through.
  
• Adjusted faith decay rates for all villagers.
  
• Increased Essence Altar's desirability stat to 3.
  
• Readjusted Cold Aura faith gains.
  
• Now all villagers lose a very small amount of faith when another villager dies from any cause that isn't old age. Villagers who witness the death lose significantly more.
  
• Standard and High Quality housing both now offer faith bonuses when upgraded.
  
• Villager's mates now lose 25% of their total faith if they die.
  
• Completely rebalanced influence amounts faith provides for all friendly mobs.
  
• Healing Aura now provides much less faith to villagers already fully healed.
  
• Now you gain additional/bonus faith if you use illuminate during an eclipse or blood moon.

Spell Changes

• New Spell/Disaster added: Comet. A huge ice comet can now fall from the sky, causing catastrophic damage around it and digging a deep hole in the ground.
  
• Tripled cost of God Wall spell.
  
• Increased the cost, and cooldown, of the Holy Potatoes and Holy Wood spells
  
• Increased the cost of the Harvest spell.
  
• God Tower now has a 5 second cooldown.
  
• God Tower now also has a new spell cooldown perks.
  
• Harvest spell can now rarely generate trash when harvesting.

Temperature Influences

• Adjusted several spell descriptions to mention their impact on region temps.
  
• Meteor strikes can now slightly heat up the region for a short time.
  
• Blood Moons now make the region excessively hot.
  
• Full Moons now make the region slightly cooler.
  
• Eclipses now make the region very cold.
  
• Flame spell extremely slightly increases region temps.
  
• Cold aura now slightly lowers region temps.
  
• Storm spell now reduces the temperature when cast.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Completely overhauled the entire font rendering system to greatly reduce texture bleeding at some interface scale settings, and added ultra high resolution fonts for users who use 2x scaling or higher. This should mostly be apparent with 4k and similar displays.
  
• Tons of new animations added for villagers digging, picking up and dropping resources, and many old ones tweaked slightly.
  
• Skirmish mode now starts with 20 +- 2 villages.
  
• Slightly increased how much trash is generated when builders harvest rather than the dedicated harvester jobs.
  
• The initial spawn in villagers now start with max hunger and thirst bars.
  
• Initial resource spawn in can also spawn in food and water now.
  
• Increased the initial spawn in resources from up to 32, to up to 64.
  
• There is now a 1 in 50 chance your entire initial spawn in of villagers will be catjeet.
  
• There is now a 1 in 200 chance your initial spawn in of villagers will also include doggos.
  
• Doggo houses are now upgradable, and have new art.
  
• Increased the amount of storage of all villager housing.
  
• Changed "Ellen Page" to "Elliot Page" in the villager's name list (Thanks to ArcticFox011 for catching it)
  
• Added tons of new speech bubbles to the game.
  
• Changed death subtitle "Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you." to "Sometimes you eat the rous and sometimes the rous eats you."
  
• Tons of new death messages added.
  
• Farmers can now terminate animal pregnancies when the village is completely out of proper housing for them.
  
• You can now draw road selections overtop harvest resource selections.
  
• "Needs" thought bubbles added, rather than seeing occasional floating icons when a villager has a dire need (starving, homeless, sleepy) there is now a thought bubble that follows around the villager.
  
• Changed the missing icon icon to a better icon that you should never see unless I missed an icon and need to load a missing icon icon.
  
• Towers and projectiles now rotate smoothly.
  
• Nomads can no longer spawn on day 1, to avoid overwhelming new players with too much information.
  
• Doggos are now more rare.
  
• Very slightly optimized the animal spawn rate code.
  
• Digging, clearing and removing road work now picks more randomized standing coordinates to work at.
  
• The AI now automatically resets itself when you load an old save.
  
• Updated the cut stone resource artwork so it looks more distinct from iron ingots.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a longstanding bug that could sometimes crash the game if a mob attempted to flee, and could not find flee coordinates (Thanks to Veldrin for the fix)
  
• Corrected Essence Altar tooltips.
  
• Devine Blessing no longer shows an incorrect cast radius when selected.
  
• The spell (blast) radius of meteors is now properly displayed.
  
• Fixed a spelling error in the blessed descriptions.
  
• Newly born nephilim children are now properly recorded in the birth stats.
  
• Animals no longer constantly escape being slaughtered. Although they can still escape rarely.
  
• Added missing revision tag to essenceCollector.makeshift.description
  
• Fixed a UI error that would make praying speed bonuses not display in some cases.
  
• Added perk category localization for faith perks.
  
• The description of the small and large fountains no longer call Water Masters "Well" Masters.
  
• Fixed a few crashes related to deselecting road work outside map bounds.
  
• Fixed a bug that would prevent spell cooldowns from saving.
  
• Corrected the Crystillery's description, so that it no longer mentions fueling essence collectors.
  
• Fixed stray pixel on energy icon.
  
• Fixed upgrading essence collector's values being slightly off.
  
• Removed previous fix that would stop sounds from playing if the sound is too far away or too quiet to be audible and re-re-calculated sound effect distance math.
  
• Fixed overlapping tool tips when the interface scale is higher than 1.
  
• Removed some debug loading data from the logs.
  
• Slightly optimized how the courier AI finds work.
  
• Fixed a minor bug in the road construction delivery AI that would misflag the current job task.
  
• Slaughter Animal AI now checks for the correct TileX/Y coordinates before picking up the animal.
  
• Armor and helmets now take damage when struck.
  
• Dying mobs that get healed, or regenerate a hit point right at the exact moment of death no longer display a health bar when decaying.
  
• Tweaked the god XP tally sound effects slightly, and implemented a possible fix to the "endless sound effects" bug that rarely occurs.
  
• Fixed the very tiny freebie XP gains for "Villager Leveling Up" that the player would get every time the world map is reloaded.
  
• Villagers and golems (and other mobs, where possibly applicable) retain their proper layer colors upon death now.
  
• Fixed an issue with storage limits on housing being wrong while it's upgrading.

Click here for help on accessing the Unstable branch!

A long time coming, I am happy to introduce that Update 2 Unstable 1 has arrived! This patch adds a ton bug fixes and improvements, but most importantly, new content!

The biggest additions are the new essence generation and faith mechanics. Now, you no longer fuel your Essence Collectors with crylithium. Rather, you now build a new building called an Essence Altar and assign new workers called Occultists to them. These new Occultists will go to the altar and pray, upon completing a pray action, they will boost faith in the area and generate essence that can be delivered to an Essence Collector, effectively replacing the fueling mechanics that were removed with a method the player can more directly control by building additional altars and assigning more Occultists.

The faith itself is a new system that bleeds over into many aspects of the game. Now villagers will gain and lose faith in you based on your or the world's actions. As their faith increases, you'll gain additional max influence to your influence bar, and they will be less likely to be confused or panic when they see you do anything.

As with most of Rise to Ruins' patches, there's way too much to cover in a summary, so check out the changelogs and enjoy!

If you find a bug, you can report it on the Steam Bugs Forums or Discord[discord.gg]!


Faith System

• Villagers now gain and lose a new need, called faith, based on your and the world's actions. Anything they deem positive, they'll gain faith, negative, they lose it.
  
• Villagers are now less likely to panic or be confused when they have high faith and witness god doing things in the village.
  
• All spells now influence faith stats in some way or another when cast near villagers.
  
• New Building: The Essence Altar. Villagers can now be assigned as "Occultists", who will go to the altar and pray. Completing a pray action will increase the villager's faith and the villagers around them, as well as generate free essence that will be sent to an Essence Collector.
  
• New perks added for praying speeds.
  
• Lightning and Meteor (all kinds, including the spells) will now raise or lower faith depending on where it strikes, and what it hits.
  
• Villagers will now sometimes get a boost in faith when chatting with someone with significantly higher faith than they have.
  
• Villagers now gain 10 faith when they domesticate a wild doggo or take a mate.
  
• Villagers now gain faith when they mate, and villagers nearby gain a very small amount.
  
• Nearby villagers gain faith when they witness a monster killed.
  
• Nearby villagers lose faith when they witness another villager killed.
  
• Nearby villagers get a bonus to faith when they witness an elder die of natural causes. (Living a "full life")
  
• Villagers now conceive Nephilim children if their combined total faith is within 90% of their maximum faith.
  
• Lightning rods can increase faith when a lightning bolt hits them.
  
• A mob resurrected from the Resurrect spell get maximum faith instantly upon resurrection.

Influence System

• Completely rewrote how max influence is calculated, each villager now provides a minimum and maximum amount, depending on the type of villager they are. Children offer less, while elders offer more, and Nephilims offer additional bonuses.
  
• All domesticated animals other than Doggos now provide 5 max influence each.
  
• Doggos now provide 20 max influence each.
  
• Doofy Doggos now provide 50 max influence each.
  
• The amount of total influence to the max influence bar each mob provides is now based on their faith. For example, if their faith is only 50% full, they will only provide 50% of their potential maximum influence. (Note: This only counts for mobs with faith stats, like villagers. Doggos for example, will always provide max faith as they have no faith stats.)
  
• New perks added for minimum influence, influence per animal and influence per villager.

Essence and Essence Collector Changes

• Significantly increased the speed newly spawned "resting" essence becomes active.
  
• Greatly improved essence colors and trails.
  
• Essence Collectors can no longer be fueled with or store crylithium.
  
• Essence Collectors now hold much more energy.
  
• Recolored and tweaked the Essence Collector art.
  
• Essence Collectors construction requirements have been increased, and now require crylithium for the first upgrade, and iron ingots for the second.

Spell Changes

• Banish spell now only confuses friendly mobs in the area if it actually banishes something.
  
• Banish confusion is now triggered from around the mob that was teleported away, rather than where the spell was cast.
  
• Dispel God Structures and Dispel Golem now can cause villagers to be confused upon seeing it cast.
  
• Dispel God Structures no longer panics villagers when cast.
  
• "Confusion" area of effect of Cold Aura increased.
  
• Generate Essence now has 1/4th the confusion/panic range.
  
• Generate Essence now costs twice as much to cast, but generates twice as much essence per cast.
  
• Conjure Material spell can now panic or confuse villagers.
  
• God Tower and God Wall spells now cause villagers to be confused or panic when cast around them.
  
• Grab spell now positively influences faith when you grab resources, and negatively when you grab mobs.
  
• Grab spell now no longer makes villagers panic when you grab resources (Note: Still will for grabbing mobs)
  
• Grab spell's panic/confusion range doubled.
  
• Harvest Spell can now cause villagers to panic if a resource is spawned right next to them.
  
• Harvest Spell's panic and confusion is now based on the location the resource spawned, rather than where the spell was cast.
  
• Holy Potatoes and Holy Wood spells can now cause panic and confusion to nearby villagers.
  
• Illuminate spell cost doubled.
  
• Illuminate spell now increases faith when cast and active, but only if cast at dusk or night.
  
• Recall spell now causes confusion and influences faith based on the location the actual mobs and resources left/arrived than where the spell was cast.
  
• Resurrect spell now only causes villagers to panic if the resurrection fails and creates a zombie. (Note: They will still be "confused" if the spell is successful.)
  
• Dissolve spell now has a chance to panic villagers.
  
• Blessing villagers no longer triggers Nephilim to be born. Now, blessing villagers guarantees that they will become pregnant the next time they coitus.
  
• Greatly optimized Cold Aura's CPU usage.
  
• Slightly optimized Flame Spell's CPU usage.
  
• Slightly optimized the Healing Aura spell.

Loot box Changes

• Poking a loot box "circle" will confuse villagers and slightly increase faith, regardless if anything is uncovered.
  
• Moving a loot box will cause confusion at both locations, negative faith in the departing location and positive in the arrival location.
  
• Loot boxes being opened now positively influence faith (even when they're trashy!)
  
• Loot boxes idle in the village will sometimes confuse a villager.
  
• Loot box "circles" (before the box is uncovered) will now confuse villagers sometimes, as well as provide a tiny amount of faith.
  
• Uncovered loot boxes and keys now give a burst of faith, but also can cause villagers to panic or be confused in a wide area.
  
• Increased distance loot boxes cause panic and confusion when opening.
  
• Villagers now panic if a resource from a loot box right next to them, but also gains additional faith.
  
• Chances of a loot box being uncovered on click changed from 1 in 4 to 1 in 6.
  
• Slightly adjusted where resources spawn when a loot box is opened.

Miscellaneous Changes

• You can now change your worker's job colors to anything you want by clicking on the new color picker icon on the left hand workforce or resource management panel.
  
• Adjusted (hopefully) all blessed villager descriptions throughout the GUI.
  
• Birth console banner now displays what mob type was born.
  
• Increased the villager initial spawn in to up to 20.
  
• Nomads are much, much more likely to appear between days 1 and 3 to help avoid "bad RNG luck" early game.
  
• Nomads can no longer spawn during the morning of day 1 to prevent new players from being overwhelmed with new information. (Note: They should almost-always arrive Midday day 1 now)
  
• Replaced the particle effect that would generate above a resource about to be picked up, to an arrow that points down. The arrow gets increasing brighter green the closer the mob gets to the resource.
  Significantly lowered the volume of rain in the game.
  
• Villagers now are much less likely to work when their condition is compromised (Low hunger, thirst, overheating, etc). They also now factor in their hit points, poison and many other conditions and are less likely to work the more injured they are.
  
• Easter egg logo is now 20 times more likely to appear.
  
• Recompiled executable to hopefully avoid some memory allocation issues on certain machines.
  
• Increased animal slaughter speed.
  
• Added kills counter stats to mobs and objects.
  
• Reduced screenshake when smaller buildings are destroyed (Mostly for walls)
  
• Updated silk's description to mention it's use in bows.
  
• The energy maintenance requirement for most golems is now 5 times higher. (sorry)
  
• The energy maintenance requirement for Cube-E golems has been doubled.
  
• Courier golems now have a small maintenance requirement.
  
• All golems now die twice as fast when the comboulator runs out of energy to maintain them.
  
• Improved the tooltip render boundaries math. (Note: There is an existing/known bug in high-res displays that may cause some overlap issues)
  
• Tweaked the Hide Topography view's red grid slightly.
  
• You can now view the corrupted tiles on the data map tab, including tiles under rocks, trees, etc.
  
• Villagers who are repairing structures will stop automatically if the building becomes fully repaired before they finish their work.
  
• Doubled the amount Catjeet Provisioners restock daily.
  
• Made Wilhelm scream slightly over twice as likely to happen.
  
• You can now increase or decrease the brush size in both the play state and map editor by holding the axis lock key (Default: Left Shift)
  
• Wilhelm Scream is now more common when throwing male villagers into Cullis Gates.
  
• Throwing doggos (and especially Doofy Doggos) into a Cullis Gate is a REALLY bad idea.
  
• Adjusted nearly all of the panic and confusion chances in the villager's AI.
  
• Added a faith counter to the resource panel UI.
  
• Reworked the total gold, water, and dirty water resource counters (as well as the new faith counter) to all also show resource maximums on hover over, as well as fill bar.
  
• Lightning and Meteor's panic/confusion range has been adjusted to more realistic values.
  
• Updated copyright date on main menu.

Bug Fixes

• Corrected a minor typo in the Trashy Trash description.
  
• Population list panel no longer shows farm animals as unemployed.
  
• "Captured Animal" fake resource no longer shows up on the courier panel.
  
• Steamworks4j will now forcefully load the .dll files in the install folder's native library.
  
• "Review The Game" popup no longer appears when nonSteamMode is true. (eg; Won't show up on Utomik or GOG copies of the game.)
  
• Animal pens and clucker coops UI overlap issues in the building panel have been fixed.
  
• When an animal is slaughtered, the damage is now correctly recorded as coming from the cook.
  
• Fixed a bug where work decay ticks in MobBase.doWork() was not actually utilizing the input values.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the Holy Golem speed perk to actually slow down the golems, rather than increase their speed.
  
• Hide Topography button no longer can glitch out and leave the topography partially transparent.
  
• Market buy and sell prices can no longer be less than 1 gold per item.
  
• Crash issue when trying to buy a resource from the marketplace for 0 gold fixed (See above change.)
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause sounds out of range to still play, but at zero volume. (Note: There is a known issue with extremely low volume levels causing issues with this new system.)
  
• Fixed a bug where building's art wouldn't update when essence was sent from it.
  
• Lightning Rod no longer incorrectly reports it requires a rain catcher, purifier or well.
  
• Nephilim children now properly spawn a child Nephilim ghost when they die, rather than an adult Nephilim ghost.
  
• Nephilim are now properly counted in the migration system.
  
• Fixed an issue where Nephilim children sometimes wouldn't get their bonus lifespan stats.
  
• Fixed several totaling errors on the population panel.

Greetings everyone,

It's time to get back on the bandwagon, and explain my current plans. Although they are always subject to change, I wanted to give everyone an update on what's been going on and where I'd like to see my company, Rise to Ruins and my future projects to go in the future.

As you all know, I've taken an extended break from game development as I focused on myself and my own health, my life, and the people around me. Most of you guys who follow me on Discord[discord.gg] or Twitter have seen several of the things I've posted or said over the past year or so. A mistake I made on my previous announcement was the timeline though. I was unaware exactly how bad my mental health actually was at the time of writing it, and thus took an enormously longer time than I expected to start recovering.

The previous announcement is now only half the story, the other half is perhaps fascinating, I'm not sure. But it's another half that should be told, now that it can be.

The last 2 years have been quite an experience for me, good, bad and otherwise. It's hard to articulate it, because of who I am and how I am wired. But I will do my best to explain the situation and what happened. I'm not trying to make excuses, I do not care too. That's not the point.

I won't bother going over my life history again as I did in my previous announcement, but I will add some fun tidbits to it that may have some drastic changes on how everything is perceived, and I hope to give a better understanding as to what happened.

The first, and extremely likely most important addition to the story is on December 16th, 2021. I was officially diagnosed with ASD Level 1, or going by a (now obsolete) term more of you will recognize; I am a twice-exceptional person with Asperger's. If you want an example of what this means, I'm basically a real life Sheldon Cooper, just a bit less hyperbolic about it. (Fellow ASD: I get many people with ASD don't like this comparison, but it's very accurate for people like myself, we're just rare even among the ASD community.)

What does this mean? Well for you guys, not much. For me? Again, not much. I am still who I am, labels don't change that. I'm not magically some other person. But, it does give me clarity and explain some of my past actions, behaviors and why sometimes things just aren't in sync. As well, and most importantly, what the hell happened to me sometime in 2020.

What is important to understand, is why this happened. I've been working my entire adult life, non-stop in the pursuit of success to reach a level of security and stability, I achieved that in mid 2020, 20 years after first entering the workforce and 30 years too young, and my life fell apart. (Weird right?). I now can effectively retire whenever I want, although I won't. That feeling sounds great, until you realize I'm someone with Asperger's who made survival paramount.

I was burned out from 15 years of non-stop work. If you've read my previous announcement, you know my life. I've been on turbo for most of it, and I don't know how to not be on turbo. But I am not on turbo anymore, regardless I don't know how not to be. There in is the problem. In 2020, I suffered a complete emotional breakdown. I was never suicidal, but something was "super wrong". I couldn't articulate it, but something was, in fact, "super wrong". Things kept getting worse and worse, day after day.

Well, I figured out what it was more recently. It was a severe Autistic Burnout[www.spectrumnews.org] brought on by probably a decade of pushing forward non-stop.

I had no idea what this felt like, because I've been on turbo for so long I didn't even recognize I burned out (probably) over 5 years ago, yet I just kept on going anyway. People even asked me "How do you deal with burnout?" and my answer was a hilariously now-myopic "I just don't burn out I guess? I don't know how to stop." The first part was apparently a lie, the second was the truth.

I won't pretend I can handwave away the last two years, I won't even bother trying. But now I better understand how I went from a powerhouse, doing the work of 5 developers across probably a dozen skillsets, to so mentally exhausted and broken I couldn't even open my compiler or Photoshop without feeling tired.

That is ending. I feel much better, I am alive, me and getting back on track. I recognize what happened, and now I am working to a much better work/life balance, that doesn't involve me doing the work of 5 developers.

Course the next and most obvious question is a resounding "What the frick now then?!" Well, gamedev stuff obviously! I have been working on a plan over the past few months for my company, and what direction I'd like to take everything. As with all good plans, it absolutely won't go to said plan, but this is what's on the board:

- Reignite work on Rise to Ruins Update 2, adding achievements, a new goals/reward system, and a new essence generation/praying system.
- Release the entire Rise to Ruins source code in the semi-near future, so anyone and everyone can learn, edit, or do whatever they want with RtR's base code and share it openly with others. (Note: This is NOT mod support in the traditional sense, programmers in the known probably get what I mean by this.)
- A complete redesign of the Rise to Ruins website. Effectively turning it into a basic splash page, and removing the forum. (Will probably update the Steam store page too*)
- Launch of the Project Mary website, my next major project that will likely take 3-5 years to complete.
- Working on smaller projects, that will be done between RtR and Project Mary, these are smaller games. Things you'd normally expect to pay like $2-$5 on Steam. These won't be seen anytime soon though.
- Building a new Java-based 2D Engine that is faster than literally anything else gaming related that exists in Java right now. (and yes, I already have a working prototype that is multithreaded, faster than every single Java engine that exists, and uses 'modern' OGL.) This is the engine Project Mary and my smaller projects will be based on.

I will not ask for your support, but I will ask for your patience as I work through restarting work, and seeking a healthy life/work balance that will avoid all this crap from happening again in my life.

Have fun gaming! I look forward to your feedback on the eventual release of Rise to Ruins Update 2. :)

Greetings fellow gamers!

Many of you have probably noted an obvious slowdown in development since Update 1c was released last year. First and foremost, I would like to absolutely reassure you that development is, in fact, continuing and Update 2 is currently in work, with Update 3 and 4 already planned out.

But why did this happen? Well, that's a story I thought I would never find myself in a position to tell, but here we are. So strap in! There's a lot of back context needed.

In 2013 I decided to learn to program as it was the only remaining skill left I did not have to make a video game. I had no experience what so ever outside of doing mods/scripting for various games over the years. I spent 8-9 months of my life doing nothing but working at Lockheed Martin as an Avionics Technician 8-10 hours a day, and another 8-10 at home learning how to program in my language of choice, Java. After roughly a year it was time to go pro, and I started development on Retro-Pixel Castles, or eventually to be renamed, Rise to Ruins. I saved up (or have been saving up, more accurately) around $90k working at Lockheed, because I lived out of a suitcase moving from one military base to the next every 4-6 months for 5 straight years. So, I did the totally rational thing you do when you want to completely change career paths into a job with an extremely high rate of failure that you have literally zero professional experience what so ever in doing, I quit my current job at Lockheed Martin.

Yes, you read that right. My first ever attempt to "go pro" happened within a year of learning to program and I quit my very secure job to do it. Despite all odds, I was successful in the attempt. I also got an Associates Degree in Psychology at a local community college and bought a house in cash (87k, near-condemned foreclosure) while doing all this because it was necessary. Thanks to my former military service I could go to college for free. In fact, they paid me roughly $1,200/mo to go on top of paying for books/tuition, it's how I fed myself in the early days of this. I also needed a place to live during this ridiculous adventure too, and reducing costs was key to my strategy working, so what better cost reduction than removing rent/mortgages all together? Long as I was in college for free and getting paid $1,200/mo to educate myself for the next 4 years, I could survive.

Development on Rise to Ruins itself was blistering fast as a result, because this whole plan would implode within 4 years when my education benefits ran out. It's easily a whole story in of itself, but I'll gloss over that for brevity's sake because that's not the point of this already really long announcement. Basically I dedicated years to work, spending a good 10-14 hours a day usually 7 days a week at the height of it just chugging out patches during Early Access. Fast forward to Rise to Ruins officially releasing in October of 2019, right before the pandemic started. My plan was (and still is) to continue to support the game post release. Rise to Ruins has done me very well financially, supporting my and my wife's lives without either of us having to get outside jobs.

But there's a problem. While Rise to Ruins does in fact currently support my livelihood and the entire 4 year plan became irrelevant by year 2 because Rise to Ruins' income started to support me and my wife by itself, it still isn't enough to finance the next game. The next game, code named "Project Mary", is another project that will likely take me multiple years to complete with a very long Early Access cycle. I cannot guarantee I can duplicate Rise to Ruins' Early Access success again, and Rise to Ruins' sales revenue will eventually dwindle. It must, it's just the nature of how it works in this business.

So, how do I get around this problem? Money. Lots of money. Well, Rise to Ruins makes decent money, but still not enough, I can't assure it will be there forever and I am against taking money from publishers and what not.

Coronavirus has entered chat.

In 2020 one of the worst pandemics in human history began and to my disadvantage, only a few months after Rise to Ruins released. I was faced with an awkward problem as I was locked in my home. I needed to find proper funding for my second game and I absolutely abhor taking money from publishers. I'm a solo developer and it's going to stay that way. The pandemic amplified this problem because it limited what I could do to solve my funding issue.

I knew Rise to Ruins profits couldn't sustain development for the multiple years needed to complete Project Mary, and a Kickstarter also wouldn't be right as an already successful company running a Kickstarter for funding is bad optics in my opinion. Even with full continued patch support, Rise to Ruins will eventually drop under the bar its sales support me, that's just how it works unless you have a mega-ultra-hit like Stardew Valley, Rimworld, etc that generates so much cash on the front end it doesn't matter. Rise to Ruins still had done me well, at the time of making this decision I had no debts of any kind, house and car paid off in full, and over $200,000 in my savings account. That sounds great, but it still wasn't enough to accomplish my goals and as I said previously, I felt a Kickstarter would be in bad tastes (and potentially not raise enough money anyway). I had to figure out how to generate even more cash during a pandemic without relying on Rise to Ruins, so I could work on the game without any future cash flow fears.

Repeating my normal methodology of throwing my whole-everything into a problem, I dedicated a ridiculous amount of time in one of the places I thought I'd never find myself; The soulless depths of the stock market. I studied, studied, and studied more. My whole life existed for one reason and one reason alone; Learn the market and use it to secure funding for Project Mary.

So uh, yeah, again in my life, against all odds, I did it.

As of writing this, I have turned $200k into $2.5 million dollars. That was actually higher before the recent tech crash in February and early March, where I broke a staggering $3 million. I am now pulling back from active investing, and transitioning to a semi-active-passive thing, so I can refocus on what's important; Rise to Ruins continued development, and starting development full time on Project Mary. I should hopefully have a minimum sustained additional income of $10k/month (that's not a typo) throughout all of Project Mary's development without actually touching the $2.5 million. That's not assured, but it seems likely.

This process impacted everything in my life, including my own mental health, that I'm still recovering from as I write this. Trust me folks, money doesn't buy happiness and while I have a lot of it now, the past 8 months have been absolutely exhausting and downright destructive to my mental health. I will simply need time to recover.

I hope you guys can forgive the lack of patches over the last year as I went through this adventure, and have gained some understanding as to why I did it at all in the first place. But, one thing is now certain for Rise to Ruins', Project Mary's and most importantly SixtyGig Games' future as a whole:

Funding Secured.

(EDIT/Update: No you ridiculously awesome goofballs, I didn't yolo into $GME. :P)

This is a smaller patch full of a ton of small quality of life improvements, bug fixes and balance changes. This patch was originally going into Update 2, but I decided to break out some of the Update 2 content and move it to a smaller patch, so you can get some of the new improvements and changes early, without having to wait for Update 2 later. Enjoy! :)

Check out the change log for all the juicy bits, and if you find a bug, don't forget to report it on Discord[discord.gg] or the Steam Forums. :)


Miscellaneous Changes

• Essence Collectors no longer deliver essence when out of range of the village.
  
• Drones now only harvest resources when there is not any already available within the corruption.
  
• Resources now decay twice as fast on corrupted tiles.
  
• Non-monster buildings are now slowly destroyed if they are caught in the corruption.
  
• Reduced the overall amount of resources generated when a very large or highly upgraded building is destroyed.
  
• Blood Slimes no longer can spawn boosted.
  
• Blood Slimes now die slowly when they're not on the corruption.
  
• All slimes now will no longer regain hit points unless they're inside the corruption.
  
• Blood Slimes no longer level alongside the corruption or current day.
  
• Rock now regrows at an extremely slow rate, roughly 1/20th the rate of trees.
  
• Rock now remains selected after harvesting.
  
• Added hot key support for object upgrade buttons, but the hot keys must be assigned manually.
  
• The hot key for dismantling buildings is now unassigned by default, but can still be assigned in settings. This is to prevent new players from accidentally triggering a dismantle action they can't reverse, but still allow experienced players to have a hot key if they desire.
  
• Nerfed the Flame Spell's damage by 50%

Bug Fixes

• Range is no longer improperly generated on initial load.
  
• Fixed the never-ending god XP tally sound that sometimes occurs on the world map.
  
• Fixed a rare bug that would crash the game in the event a mob would drop off a resource to a building that has just become out of range, and still had remaining resources to drop.
  
• You can no longer start an upgrade on a building out of range of the village, causing the game to crash.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the mouse to move too far when you increased or decreased the priority of a building on the building list panel.
  
• Fixed some overlaying text on the building upgrade panel on some buildings.
  
• Fixed an issue where several mob related perks would not apply correctly to the mobs.
  
• Blight settings are now properly saved in custom game mode templates.
  
• If a blessed villager has twins or triplets, all of the children will be born nephilims.
  
• Fixed a few typos in the tool tips.
  
• Fixed an extremely rare bug where sometimes mobs would reset their AI, and no longer be "dead" even if they have no hit points.
  
• Fixed a bug that could sometimes trigger invulnerable slimes.
  
• Slightly optimized the building destruction code.

The Rise to Ruins soundtrack is now uploaded all over the internet, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Youtube, Google Play and more!

All revenue (Less various store fees) from purchasing or listening to the soundtrack does not go to me, rather it goes to Rise to Ruins' composer, José Ramón "Bibiki" García. So if you want to support him directly by throwing a few bucks his way, be sure to buy the soundtrack! :)

If you're interested in listening or purchasing the soundtrack on various platforms, you can click here to get started![distrokid.com]

Additionally, if you just want to jam out on youtube, you can find the full OST here.

And finally, always remember, the full sound track is always available unobfuscated within the game files, in .ogg format, just poke around the /res/music folder. But buying the soundtrack online is a way to support RtR's awesome composer, and get the files in a more appropriately organized format for easy listening on multiple devices. :)

The first free post release content patch has arrived, introducing The Magic Update!

This update includes a complete and total overhaul of the spell casting mechanics, as well as a ton of new spells. It also includes double the perks the game released with, a ton of bug fixes, balance changes, and general improvements.

Specter mechanics have been changed quite a bit in this patch as well, so be sure to checkout the "New Walls and Specter Mechanics" category below and read it carefully! ːrtrheartː

Check out the change log for all the juicy bits, and if you find a bug, don't forget to report it on Discord[discord.gg] or the Steam Forums. :)


New Walls and Specter Mechanics

• Added Crylithium Curtain Walls, Crylithium Walls and Crylithium Gates to the game. They all can block specters and ghosts from passing through them.
  
• Specters and Ghosts can no longer cross crystal patches.
  
• Regular Curtain Walls no longer block specters and ghosts from passing through them.
  
• All old saves before this patch get their Curtain Walls updated to Crylithium Curtain Walls automatically and free, so late game villages don't get overrun with specters after this change.
  
• Reorganized the walls category into two subcategories.

New Perks

• Labor Golem and Holy Golem Duration perk removed as they serve no purpose anymore.
  
• Tons of new perks added, more than doubling the original perk list. There are too many to list here, so just take my word for it and enjoy! :)
  
• Removed "perk rarity" from the game. This feature used to determine how common certain perks were, now all perks have an equal chance of being unlocked.

Spell and Influence Overhaul

• New Spell: Construct. Uses your godly powers to assist in constructing buildings, but requires the resources to already be delivered to the build site.
  
• New Spell: Divine Blessing. Bless a villager, causing their next born child to be a Nephilim with superior strength, dexterity and lifespan.
  
• New Spell: God Tower. Summons a magic bow tower with unlimited ammo. Requires a portion of your maximum influence to maintain. Can be dispelled with the Dispel Structure spell.
  
• New Spell: God Wall. Summons a magic wall that will help block all types of monsters, including specters, from crossing. Requires a portion of your maximum influence to maintain. Can be dispelled with the Dispel Structure spell.
  
• New Spell: Harvest. Automatically harvests resources from the region, dropping them on the ground for your villagers to quickly collect. Make sure you cast this in range of your village, else nobody will come pick anything up!
  
• New Spell: Holy Potatoes. Sprouts magic potatoes from the ground, really handy if you've just completely run out of food or want to create a new patch elsewhere in the village!
  
• New Spell: Holy Wood. Sprouts large erections of wood from the ground, really handy if you've just completely run out of wood or want to create a new patch elsewhere in the village!
  
• New Spell: Dispel Golem. Dispel a previously summoned or combobulated golem. Will work on any golem in the village, including the ones you did not summon yourself. Typically should be used to dispel labor or holy golems to regain some of your maximum influence.
  
• New Spell: Dispel God Structure. Dispel a previously summoned structure to regain some of your maximum influence.
  
• A new type of influence mechanic has been added. Now some spells can last forever, but they take up a portion of your maximum influence to maintain. For example, Labor Golems now last forever, but permanently reserve 300 points of influence on your influence bar until you dispel them, or they are killed by monsters.
  
• Some spells like Conjure Essence and Flame can now be continuously casted, meaning you can hold down the mouse button to continue casting them rather than clicking.
  
• Many of the old spells now have cooldowns, but have also been buffed or rebalanced accordingly.
  
• Labor and Holy Golems no longer die slowly over time, but do require influence to be maintained.
  
• Slightly reduced how much maximum influence the player gets per villager.
  
• Uncorked the influence absolute maximum, there is no longer a maximum cap on how much total influence you can have.
  
• Your maximum influence now uses the entire bar (visibly), but the amount of maximum influence still increases per villager.
  
• Influence gained per tick is now based on a percentage of maximum influence rather than a fixed amount.
  
• The spell select panel and spell descriptions panel have been completely overhauled.
  
• Revised many of the spell descriptions.
  
• Added a spell radius display when you have a spell selected.
  
• Reduced the particle count on the influence bar.
  
• Buffed conjure essence spell, it can now produce more resources per cast, and perks can boost it further.
  
• Slightly reduced influence generation rates.

Miscellaneous Changes

• New range generation "trimming" system, that will remove generated range in areas not connected to the village. Added to cut down on villagers straying away from the village and getting killed. Note that corruption resistance will still generate even if range does not.
  
• Increased the storage counts of equipment storage.
  
• Screenshot files are now tagged with the version number of the game they were taken with.
  
• Cleaned up some of the mouse tooltip message positions.
  
• Added pointer lines from selected buildings to the building's occupants or workers.
  
• Added lavender color trees to the game. Currently only used for the Holy Wood spell.
  
• Added holy potatoes to the game. Currently only used for the Holy Potatoes spell.
  
• A new mob type called "Nephilim" to the game, that is currently created via the new Divine Blessing spell. These new villagers have longer lifespans and boosted stats.
  
• Changed the pregnancy icon to look more like a rattle.
  
• Kitchen now increases worker's cooked meat and boiled egg refine time when upgraded.
  
• Updated the graveyard's tooltips.

Bug Fixes

• Added fix to buildings to prevent them from being stuck at >100% completed on load after receiving a perk that reduces construction resource requirements.
  
• Fixed several minor typos.
  
• Fixed a rare endless loop crash that could happen if monsters tried to spawn from a completely blocked in corrupted fire pit.
  
• Fixed a minor bug that would cause villagers to not lose hunger points when they mated.
  
• Fixed some animal mating issues.
  
• Fixed the construction outline and abandoned graphics for all gates.
  
• Fixed a very rare crash caused by an endless loop in the trajectory calculation code.
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing work speed reductions due to high wind to be calculated twice.
  
• Fixed a bug that wouldn't allow any golems to get their level increase perk unless the player had the wood golem level perk.
  
• Charmed monsters no longer threaten tiles.
  
• Fixed an issue where mobs would actually lose hunger, thirst and energy slower when working, rather than faster.
  
• Fixed a minor bug that could cause newborn animals to spawn the wrong color.
  
• Fixed a minor bug where catjeet elders would not show up on the population panel when the filter was set to "Elder".
  
• Fixed a bug where sometimes specters could be banished to inside your village.
  
• You can no longer upgrade the outpost while it's already being upgraded.
  
• Fire pit construction can now be paused.
  
• Fixed purple color crystals minimap color.
  
• Slightly modified Casas, Wyvernedge and Death Pass to add more valid animal spawn locations.
  
• Burner no longer trigger the energy usage tip when built.
  
• Doggos now count on the domesticated stats panel.
  
• Fixed the upgrade description panel text from overflowing on the Established Ranger Lodge description.
  
• Ranger lodges no longer count on the problem panel as homes with no food.
  
• Fixed the missing blank panels on the combobulator category on the right panel.
  
• Fixed a interface scaling issue with some ultrawide monitors that would cause buttons to be hidden under the UI.
  
• Fixed a very minor bug where the save system would claim it's converting old road map save data when it wasn't, and the data was already converted.
  
• Catjeet children are now counted in the children total on the population totals panel.
  
• Blood Moon and Eclipse countdown delay timers are now properly saved.
  
• Fixed a rounding issue on the perk list totals.

I am giving out up to 100 FREE copies of Rise to Ruins to anyone who Follows, RTs and replies to this post on Twitter with their "proof" they are staying at home during the #CoronavirusOutbreak!

I'm not telling you what the proof is, just have fun with it. ːlunar2020ratinablanketː

Have fun, and wash your hands!