Trees and Plants on Roofs Update, Colony Sim Fest & More!

Hi everyone,

A new update is out (v0.5.015), which includes the new mechanic to seed plants / plant trees on roofs or in the underground, a new item + constructions, some additional updates & more!

I have also to announce, that AColony will join the steam city builder and colony sim fest today with a special discount of -50%! (so don't forget to fasten your seatbelts)

Plants and Trees on Roofs & in Underground

With this update a new mechanic will be introduced, which allows you to build special floors for an extended plant seeding and tree planting functionality in unusual places. This means, that you can place them on roofs but also in the underground now.

Grass Floors

To achieve that goal, I have added a new special material for the default floor which has grass or dirt on its surface. It gets unlocked by the basic husbandry technology and can be placed like any other floor in the game.

New Resource (Dirt)

In connection with the grass floors I have also added a new item (dirt), which can be bought by traders or will spawn if you mine grass and dirt blocks now. This resource is required to build the new floors, but also to build the decoration construction house plant.

Underground Plants + new Construction (Plant Light)

Of course, you can also seed plants in the mountains or the underground now, but that comes with a huge debuff which increases the grow time by 400%.

Plants or trees are seen as in underground, when an active terrain block is blocking the way straight upwards to the sky. Because I don't want a penalty for players which want to construct something like a plant skyscraper, I have excluded any debuff if you build floors or roofs over plants.

You can avoid the debuff of underground plants, by building a new construction - the plant light - which works similar like the modern sprinkler and gives a +400% grow boost once per day.

This means your plants can grow with the same time like on the free air, but with the requirement of additional power costs.

Additional Updates

Mark Plants, Trees, Rocks & Animals Directly

I have added a new button to the plants, trees, rocks & animals info menus, which allows the player to directly mark, if the related object should be harvested, cut, mined or hunted.

Decreased Fire Extinguish Time

Based on player feedback, I have reduced the time to extinguish fires by circa 45%. This should increase the speed with which you can stop fires from spreading (mostly during the volcano eruption event).

Fixed Volcano Event Weather

It seems like there was a bug in the weather manager which has often chosen the default volcano weather instead of the default stormy weather (beside the normal sunny one). This should be fixed now.

Note: If you load a save file from before this update, the volcano weathers for the next 7 days are probably still in the scheduler. You need to play 7 ingame days until the normal stormy weathers will come again.

Updated Demo

And as a side task, I have upgraded the demo of AColony to the newest version (v0.5.015), which should include all bug fixes and some additional functions from the latest early access version.

Patch Notes:

Last but not least, I have here a list with all patch notes:

• added functionality to seed plants & trees on special floors

• added new construction (floor (material, grass))

• added new construction (plant light)

• added new item (dirt)

• added that grass & dirt blocks give dirt by mining now

• you can mark plants, trees, rocks & animals directly in their menu now

• fixed that volcano weather was often chosen as default weather

• fire extinguish times are by ~45% decreased now

• random seed in new game menu can be set back now

• grass floors can be found under technology 'basic husbandry' now

• plant lights can be found under the technology 'technical helpers

• dirt can be bought or sold via traders now

• fixed sprinkler audio ignored master volume on pause / play

• reduced wind bend factor on trees

• construction 'houseplant' requires dirt as build material now

• increased tree plant value per tree for forest helpers

• fixed weather info in weather forecast machine (client)

• fixed some smaller things

What's Next?

The next points on my list (and during the fest) are to upgrade the difficulty & start settings menu to be more customizable and to add some smaller features / QoL stuff which I got recommended by player feedback.

I hope you all have an awesome day and will enjoy the update + the steam city builder & colony sim fest, Cheers!