Editing User:Yoshida Keiji/Documentary/Alpha4


{{ VersionFrame | Version = 0.4.460 | Description = '''Public Version 0.4.460''' was released on June 1, 2014 - Alpha 4 — Giant Centipede Robots
| Changes = *Tons of AI and usability improvements to hunting AI, player tutor, alerts, etc.
*Smarter AI storytellers that focus on wealth and let you recover from serious damage.
*More map variation.
| NewContents = *Wood economy. Logs, sawing, planks, flooring, tree growing, and more.
*More stuff to research.
*Crematorium.
*Slag refinery.
*Mechanoids raids.
*Tension music for combat situations.
*More songs for normal gameplay.
*Region system for better performance.
<div class="thumbinner" style="display:inline-block;">{{#ev:youtube|wusy3Z8JKkY|330}}<div class="thumbcaption">'''RimWorld Alpha 4 - Giant Centipede Robots'''</div></div>
}}

Have you ever wandered how old versions that launched years ago looked like before you even heard about this game? Here you will find out past content from the eyes of the future after official release of version 1.0.

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Back in the days, after selecting "New game", you would be introduced with five story tellers instead of just three:

* '''Chill Callie Classic''': Callie is a less aggressive version of her sister Cassandra. She's good for a first game.
* '''Cassandra Classic''': Cassandra creates story events on a steady-increasing curve of challenge and tension.
* '''Phoebe Friendly''': Phoebe doesn't want to hurt anyone. She just wants a relaxing tale about people building a colony. So she will be very friendly.
* '''Randy Random''': Randy doesn't follow rules. He'll generate random events, and he doesn't care if they make a story of triumph or utter hopelessness. It's all drama to him.
* '''Tough Cleopatra Classic''': Cassandra Classic less forgiving cousin.

[[File:Alpha4-00.png|600px]]

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Next, would be the character creation screen that didn't had a visual of the pawn, nor health status nor relationship. World Generation didn't exist back then, and the Advanced button was the map size setting instead. Only one biome, the Arid Shrubland. Crash-landed was the only scenario setting, no Lost Tribe, no Rich Explorer, nor Naked Brutality.

[[File:Alpha4-01.png|600px]]

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Your three survivors would be arriving in escape pods with several starter items all scattered across the entire map, instead of concentrated on a small spot. A stockpile zone and a dumping zone were created by default and three sleeping spots were also set for you. You would have to wait until they touch land to be able to open the "Work Tab". There were no pets yet and the beginning weapons were three ranged firearms: 2 pistols and a Lee-Enfield (Bolt-action rifle).

<gallery widths="450px" heights="450px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-02.png|'''Starter items scattered all over the map rather a single location'''
File:Alpha4-03.png|'''Work Tab'''
</gallery>

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* Creating a Growing Zone had no sow option as to whether plant or not and the species were only: potato, strawberry, rose, daylily, dandelions and oak trees.
* Building with wood had an intermediate procedure compared to present day, back then wood logs needed to be processed into wood planks to construct certain items. In order to make wood planks a work bench was required, called "Hand sawmill", 10 logs would be converted to 25 planks.
* You could build "Log walls", "Wood walls" or "Metal walls" at the start. Log walls were fast to construct but costed more logs than the wooden walls. Both wooden wall and metal walls had built-in power conduits already.
* Stone chunks were named "Debris" and in order to move them around, you needed to order from the architect menu and could not just select the debris and click haul as you can do today. There was only one type of debris as opposed to present time with five variants: granite, lime, sand, slate and marble.
* Days were faster and little could be done on a single day. Metal icon, or steel icon as you know it, had a different skin.

<gallery widths="250px" heights="250px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-04.png|'''Growing zones had little options'''
File:Alpha4-05.png|'''The Hand sawmill to bill wood planks'''
File:Alpha4-06.png|'''Three starter wall options: log, wood or metal'''
File:Alpha4-07.png|'''Days were faster'''
</gallery>

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* No Colonist roaster on top yet.
* If for some reason your start was slow, sleeping outside had no mood penalty and considered a shared room.
* While looking around your map, you would feel the luckiest man alive noticing lots of golds everywhere. This is because back then, steel (metal) had the yellow texture which is used to identify gold in present time.
* Colonist couldn’t carry any gear with then, so they had no way to have a meal around their activity location and had to return all the way back to your stockpile. From all items to gather, only silver could be hauled in stack, everything else was by individual units. Because of that it could take you seven days to bring everything close.
* Research bench is in “Misc” instead of “Production” and only the advanced version which is 2x5. Stonecutting required 3.000 ticks back then.
* Furniture has no quality yet.
* You could get a mad animal event, but there were no arrows to point where.
* No Health Tab and no Forced rest until healed, after a squirrel when mad, how do they heal?
* Boomrats look like penises.
* Potatoes would fully grow by the fifth day.
* You could build the Comms Console from day 1.

<gallery widths="350px" heights="350px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-08.png|'''Steel (Metal) ores had the texture of gold instead.'''
File:Alpha4-09.png|'''Advanced research bench was default and furniture had no quality.'''
File:Alpha4-10.png|'''Boomrats looked like penises.'''
</gallery>

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After researching "Stone cutting", you could build stone walls but no stone doors yet. Awww...but not that bad. However something else was more disturbing... power lines could not run under stone walls nor log walls but only "inside" wooden walls or metal walls. This meant that your power grid arrangement was somehow difficult as you needed to build colony segments based on materials that allowed electric current to run through within your walls.

By now, you would also notice that wildlife never slept during nights.

Capturing downed enemies had Prisoner treatment options that included "beating".

What did players used to research after Stone Cutting? I don't know, but among the list, there is one called "[[Fear]] Tech 1". Let's check this one out. This technology...which is kinda odd and I'm not sure how something like this is advanced knowledge, allowed players to build [[Gibbet cage]]s in which you could place enemy corpses as war trophies to cause fear on enemies... This is awesome...why was this removed from the game?

<gallery widths="250px" heights="250px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-11.png|'''No stone doors, power lines didn't run beneath stone or log walls.'''
File:Alpha4-12.png|'''What is "Fear Tech 1"?'''
File:Alpha4-13.png|'''Gibbet cage "decoration".'''
File:Alpha4-14.png|'''War trophy display.'''
</gallery>

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* One of the things that would notice about your characters is that they already had "Trait" slots in their sheets but none of them were functional yet, to be done in the future.

* I encountered four type of Events: '''Raids''' (obviously) of the three types, immediate attack, preparation and drop pods; '''drop pod items''', '''escape pods''' and lots of friendly '''visits''' but without any interaction or exchanges. One of the drop pods left me 72 missiles...which at the end I could never use...I assume these are future items for mortars maybe.

* Back in the days, you had to build the Orbital Trade Beacon out in the open, as in unroofed and it didn't require a power line to function.
* Riesling was already there, I got that character like a thousand times. Found her wielding a "[[Handful of Stones]]".

<gallery widths="350px" heights="350px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-15.png|'''Missiles in Drop pod items.'''
File:Alpha4-16.png|'''Orbital Trade Beacons in the open.'''
File:Alpha4-17.png|'''Handful of Stones.'''
</gallery>

* Carpets, used to require "steel", yes I said steel. Instead of cotton like we are used to.
* The only trade system available was through trade ship: Industrial traders, Food traders, Slave traders.

<gallery widths="350px" heights="350px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-18.png|'''Industrial traders.'''
File:Alpha4-19.png|'''Food traders.'''
File:Alpha4-21.png|'''Slave traders.'''
</gallery>
<gallery widths="450px" heights="450px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-22.png|'''Selling loots.'''
File:Alpha4-23.png|'''Picking the shooters only.'''
</gallery>

* I have never been a "Turrets" player myself and most of my games within my 5.000+hs counted on Steam, barely had up to three tops but still I don't think I ever saw a turret explosion detonate hard enough to blow mountain tiles.

<gallery widths="350px" heights="350px" class="center" mode="nolines">
File:Alpha4-20.png|'''Turret explosion blew mountain tiles too.'''
File:Alpha4-24.png|'''Colony overall.'''
File:Alpha4-25.png|'''Colony zoom-in.'''
</gallery>

* There were other researches that were fast to complete but had little use during it's mid-game, like the Machining table, Crematorium and Slag refinery.
* Refrigeration wasn't present yet and food wouldn't perish, no cooler needed.
* I never touched the animals in my "one" game experience, and I saw a lot of muffalos around.
* Rooms of 4x4 size would get the "Cramped" mood so the least punishing dimension I found was 4x5 = 20 tiles width.
* No Apparel tailoring yet, no Weapon smithing yet.
* This last one took me some time to figure out but it appears that any room that had more than three doors wouldn't get a roof for some reason, so the max "allowed" was three. Which explains why my base layout looks strange.


There really wasn't much to do by then and you could just finish everything within a one in-game year, no Space Ship launching yet.

I hope you enjoyed the read.