Rewrite Devlog #1

Today is the first anniversary since the preview alpha of Alien Horizon released here on Steam. As you may know, the preview alpha is kind of a dirty prototype of the game, while the proper game is being developed in the background, with its code base completely rewritten from scratch. I often refer to this new version as "The Rewrite".

This new version is necessary, as preview alpha cannot feasibly be expanded, because of the quick and dirty nature of its code base, resulting from fast prototyping and many design changes during its development. A lot of new features that I'd like to have in the final version are also outright impossible to implement without, well, a major rewrite.

Work on the rewrite has been ongoing for almost two years now, with majority of my time spent on it, which is why updates to preview alpha have been very minor and are going to cease after two more updates (in spring and summer). After that, I will commit fully to this new version. Currently, I'm planning for a November release, but don't take it as a promise as it has been delayed already (originally, I wanted to release in March). This release isn't going to be the final version, though, as I expect to spend a few more years in early access. After all, I am a single developer working on an overly ambitious project.

I've decided that the best way to celebrate the anniversary is to show you some of the progress that has been made on the rewrite. If you're on the official Discord server, you may have seen some of this content already, as I post teasers there regularly, but I want these to be accessible to everyone else too.

The teasers are going to be mostly for features that are not present in preview alpha and can never be. I'd like to post a devlog like this every month from now on, until the release. So let's get to it.

Erosion

The terrain generation has been greatly improved, using an erosion algorithm to create much more realistic, interesting and playable maps. The generator can also be much more easily tweaked, which should allow me to eventually add some more interesting features such as craters and mesas, although this hasn't been implemented yet.

Thanks to the erosion algorithm, I can also identify areas of sediment (light color) and bare rock (darker color). Sediment is easy to landscape, while rock is extremely difficult. This makes terrain modification fast in the lowlands, while not allowing players to level mountains, as those are meant to be an obstacle.

Maps in the rewrite are smaller than in preview alpha (15x15 km instead of 30x30 km), as I've come to the conclusion that the map is unnecessarily large, which doesn't contribute to gameplay at all and only slows down the game when a lot of it is explored.

Liquid Water

I've deliberately hidden something in the previous image to make this reveal more dramatic. Yes, there is liquid water in the rewrite! No more mining for ice in the ground, now you can pump water from lakes. These evaporate over time and are replenished with rain, changing the water level. When they're filled, the excess flows into lower lying lakes and can even flood your colony. The flow is abstract for now (the water just starts appearing wherever it flows into), but reacts to terrain, so you can direct it using landscaping.

There are a lot of very small lakes on this picture, which is a side effect of terrain generation. This is not deliberate and I should be able to get rid of these with tweaks to the generator further down the line.

What happens when the temperature gets too low for water to stay liquid? Well, that's up to the next devlog to show. Or you can peek into the Discord server, where this question has already been answered. Either way, I hope you've enjoyed this devlog and see you next month!