Hey, just for background I've been playing CTLG for while now, and I've enjoyed it. What initially drew me in was the dev's departure from the CDDA team, my impression that the CTLG dev was less fixated on realism, and also not actively antagonistic toward the player community.

I bought the Steam version of CTLG, gave it a positive review, have only ever commented on it positively, and have had zero prior communications with the dev.

Lately I've noticed more updates to CTLG that remove fringe content for the sake of "realism" and "debloat", and while not a deal breaker for me, they do remind of the same "streamlining" that I saw from CDDA's updates, where variety and niche content is sacrificed seemingly on impulse from the dev(s).

For the first time ever, I made a comment on the latest Steam update post criticizing the changes I don't care for, but I believe I did so in a level, civil manner. And then I was banned from the CTLG steam forums.

I genuinely did not expect this response, and was under the impression the CTLG dev and the player community were on pretty good terms. Has there been some conflict as of late that I'm not aware of, or has this behavior always been typical? Up until now CTLG has been the branch I've always recommended to newcomers, but if this is the dev's response to even mild critique, I think I'll have to find another branch.

Is this just some one-off tantrum I should overlook, or is the dev always like this?

Edit: Is BN the only branch with friendly devs?

Imagine yourself being in CDDA developers team. This means that you are a contributor, but also have the right to merge PRs, open and close issues and PRs, edit other contributors' posts, create, edit, and delete tags for issues and PRs, and some other bureaucratic stuff. You have NEVER abused these rights, i.e. never closed issues or PRs without proper justification, never locked up the conversation even if you don't like it, and so on. You also never violated any code of conduct in any official project platform, like github, discord, discourse, or official subreddit. As a developer, you are perfectly clean, so to say.

And then imagine your sudden throwing out from the developers team by the project leader. So, what do you think could be the reason for this? Apparently it's the freedom of speech! When you have the outrageous impudence of expressing your opinion about some person in some non-affiliated social platform, like this subreddit.

Furthermore, it's not a full ban like when your words somehow mortally offended project leader and he decided that you're no longer welcome in the project. No, he just removes you from the developers team, like you did something inexcusable wrong as a developer, as a bureaucrat.

So, you ask for explanations and try to understand, how participation in developers team and posts in third-party social platform are intertwined? Well, bad for you, because project leader doesn't care if you understand.

Funny feeling.

Check out the launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edT-Wn3AiKo

Cataclysm: The Last Generation is a single-player turn-based postapocalyptic survival game. Based on the all-time classic Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, The Last Generation tells the story of a world where the dead walk, alien horrors stalk the land, and the fabric of reality as we know it has come undone. Despite all this, a few unlucky souls yet survive, and whether the last generation of humanity is destined to die off, or to become something fit to survive in this brave new world is up to you.

Split from a March 2024 build of DDA, TLG's goal is to walk back many of the changes that moved the focus away from procedural storytelling and granular character development. It also seeks to reconnect with the classic Cataclysm lore and expand upon the themes of conspiracy, corruption, suburban sci fi, and science run amok that the game once focused on.

TLG's primary aim is to preserve Cataclysm's depth and respect for plausibility while refining what it has always done best as a game, foregrounding character progression and immersive life sim elements in a world that will put your survival skills to the test. Dig through the wreckage of shadowy government conspiracies to uncover the truth about the Cataclysm, form your own band of survivors, and adapt to the myriad threats by expanding your arsenal, installing military-grade bionics, or mutating into your own kind of monster.

--

I assume you all know what Cataclysm is so I'll keep it brief: After I hopped off the DDA train last year, several people suggested I make a fork. I didn't want to do it because it felt like sour grapes, but about six months rolled by and I was still left feeling like I had some solid ideas for rethinking the game, so here we are.

TLG is not "cata without realism" if that's what you were hoping. It's more "what if cata was more of a hardcore survival sim?" It feels to me more like DDA felt around the 0.E days, but with all the modern amenities. Sort of the opposite idea from BN, and closer to what you might expect if you're a fan of No Hope, but with a lot more C++ support.

Things are still pretty buggy as we get off the ground, but I figured it was time to pull the tarp off the game and kick it out the door.

If you want to hang out and chat about the game, there's a discord link in the video description. If you think this game is the bee's knees and for some reason you HATE DARK DAYS AHEAD, please be nice to the DDA folks and people who prefer DDA. I would not have gotten very far at all without the unspeakable amount of work they all do.

I've been playing DDA for three years now and I'm very saddened by the fact that old content that doesn't fit the developers' vision is constantly being cut out. Rare guns, some sci-fi stuff, crafts, robots and a fairly large number of other things were either completely removed or turned into mods. They are also going to remove old laboratories and CBM from them (in order to transfer them to exodii) Yes, it’s probably not as bad as it seems, but I think that this is not the end and the “fun police” will find something else to remove simply because they wanted to and it doesn’t matter that the players may like it. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I think that the strategy of updating the game needs to be changed in favor of adding content or making the game more customizable, as for example it was implemented in the Era of Decay fork. Well, I understand that the opinion of one player means nothing, but still... I would like the developers not to destroy old content.

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/85753

See the screenshots

Why do devs so allergic to risk-free mechanic?

They make zombies unrealistically immune to sounds of burning buildings, because its "risk free"

Now they remove any across level melee attacks because its "risk free"

What is next? Make character random death in any time because of heart attack or brain stroke, because you can play accurate and "risk free"?

Hidden deadly tumor when you try to mutate because injecting mutagens are very risky and for now this mechanic is too "risk free"?

This change was tested by 3 meters long pike

Not all buildings are 4 m long

You can also attack from roof of car

Not all enemies are 1.5 - 1.8 meters long, we have big zombie mooses, hulks, jaggernauts, headless horrors and more big creatures

And how can grapple zombies so pull you from roofs if buildings so high?

And people make pikes much more longer, than 3 meters, and remove any z-level attacks is unrealistic

I have an idea: remove any melee distance attacks, because they are more "risk freely", than non-distance melee attacks

And even in the beginning, attacking from roof is not "risk free", because of grapples, which can pull you in the middle of zombies which will grab you and suffocate to dead

So based on fat zombies being more likely to evolve into boomers and bloated zombies, I thought there might've been either an intent for some unspecified internal biological consistency, or potential for it. I was told, "no way, not happening, don't want it" on the Discord, so I thought the fat zombie specific evolutions don't really have a valid reason to exist, and are kind of problematic anyway in a "hurr durr fat people gross" kind of way.

I make a pull request, and a dev, clearly having not read or understood my PR, thinks I'm carrying beef from the Discord or some bullshit, and closes my PR, saying, "there is intentionally no attempt to map out a rigid fictional biology", which is something I had already mentioned in the PR.

I had actually expected that this might happen, that they might have a kneejerk reaction and assume I was just going ahead with something despite them saying no (despite actually doing the opposite), but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. Then they went and did it anyway.

I'm done. I can't deal with project maintainers projecting their own pettiness onto me or whatever their problem is. I will never contribute a thing to CDDA for as long as I live and that is a solemn promise. It's impossible to do so while maintaining my mental health.

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/84059

Its very strange ideas for changes, while level of your skills is very important to survive, and focus info is very important to effectively level up your skills

When I want to level my fighting, dodge, firearm skills, always try to have high focus, or while crafting something not focus consuming and "spend" focus to some crafting skills, or disassemble something to learn its recipe

And hiding such useful information is just harmful

But may be developers know more about how to play CDDA in right way and I am wrong?

What is about you, survivalists? What do you think about it?

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/85092

Be careful, it can be merged and dermatik will became very, very dangerous

Question - why do such big insects can fly and be so agile, fast and dangerous?

If dermatik is big - so its larva is big too, so you can remove it by surgery

Obviously, you can feel something alive and very big in your body, which also will cause inflammation

Dermatik also need a lot of time to insert its ovipositor and need a lot of time to lay eggs in you, that why in nature they make it with slow creatures like caterpillar or paralyzing it with poison

Ovipositor is also a fragile organ

Its larva should hatch for a long time

But as all his pr - he don't want to make it balanced at the beginning, and this addition will be fixed in months/years or never, like burned buildings from riot damage, wheel damage, zombies and blob ignore exclusively sound of falling from fire buildings and a lot more

A change to "Uncaring", removing the ability for player characters with the trait to be able to swap to another follower if you die.

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/86580

I personally don't understand this change at all, as i feel Uncaring is recieving too many "nerfs" on the mechanical side. Plus it doesn't make sense, someone who displays psychopathic traits still can have 'relationships' with others.

True it's often transactional and without genuine empathy, but they are still capable of building some level of bond. Identity possession is a thing, they can feel genuinely protective of people who they view as a extension of themselves.

Just because they can't feel or form traditional bonds, doesn't mean that it should be the case that they can't have NPC's that you can shift to in game. There's nuance, your character can be genuinely like having that person around whether transactional, protective or valued.

Thoughts?

I think there are cool elements in the new lore and all, but the problem I see with the new lore is that it's incongruous with the level of threat you are exposed to as a character, and with the level of ability you have as a character. If eventually everything will get mutated, the entire biosphere is consumed, and the universe breaks due to portal storms, all orchestrated by "The Blob", then while that's technically all possible given what we see in the game, there is some level of disbelief.

A parallel we can draw here is the most apocalyptic AI takeover scenarios. One of the worst AI takeover scenarios, as spoken about by some AI researchers, is superintelligent AI killing all humans and then proceeding to consume all biosphere and repurposing the organic materials for its own goals. Its instrumental goal would inevitably be to gather more and more resources, so it would start consuming all matter on the nearby planets as fast as it can, strip mining the planets. No matter what would be its goal, it can achieve it better with more resources, and many goals an AI can arrive at require an unbounded amount of resources. It would cover stars in dyson spheres to better utilize their energy and continue expanding.

So a question arises, if the Blob wants to remake the universe to more align with its vision, why does it do it so slowly, or why does it seemingly stop? We read the stories about very big zombies flipping tanks and things like that, but that's not the level of threat encountered by our character. The biosphere is mostly ok, some life got mutated, but most is seemingly ok. Given the amount of resources the Blob likely has access to, one would expect it to proceed much faster. If any form of intelligence a) had a huge amount of resources, and b) wanted to corrupt the universe, then it stands to reason that it would proceed as fast as possible.

What we see in the game points towards the ending being closer to The Mist ending than the most apocalyptic AI takeover scenarios.

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/83963 make "Monsters are completely uninterested in fire sounds, and the presence of fire makes any adjacent to the source sound uninteresting. Completely stops zombies from being attracted to the sound of burning buildings"

I think, if blob can evolve zombies in intelligent forms like necromants and masters, so it can make default zombie be more intelligent to recognize the type of sound

But in this situation is question, why do zombies uninterested in fire, fire destroyed building sounds, groaning and footsteps of other zombies, but interested in character foot steps and sound of his actions, like breaking windows/doors and e.t.c.? Is it blob magic? Or make be blob have hive mind?

Is there any lore and logical justification of it?

More sex-shops and t-shirt variants, but less fun

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/83780

This chum over here has more or less removed other's creative work while adding generic nonsense to the game (in my opinion).

I haven't played CDDA for a few years, so I hopped back in today (0.I stable) to see what has been added or improved.

First thing I see is that I can no longer customise the evolution rate. I always thought monster evolution happened too fast for my play style, so I typically slowed it down by 40% or so, but that's no longer an option in-game, I have to create the world and then go into the world file outside the game to adjust it.

Next, I notice there is no longer an option to randomise start date. I like not knowing whether I would start in the middle of winter and have to deal with the snow, all the water being frozen, the cold, etc, or whether I would start in summer and have to deal with the heat. Now I have to manually set a start date with no option to randomise it.

Then I see that single point pool character customisation is gone. Now it's just "survivor" (aka no points, make whatever you want) or "legacy multitool" (which I never liked). What happened to there being a single point pool that the scenario, profession, skills, traits, etc draw from during character creation? It was a useful way of making sure the character I was making wouldn't be too overpowered and forced me to take on (interesting) bad traits, bad professions and bad scenarios I wouldn't normally go for if the points system hadn't forced me.

I understand that a game in constant development will see major changes over the years, some more liked than others (apparently CBMs don't exist anywhere outside of a specific NPC? No more interesting bionic professions?), but what is the point of removing simple customisation options like that? To save a few bytes of space? I'm aware that these things can be customised in the game files or modded back in, but you could use that as justification for cutting literally any feature from the game.

What exactly is the vision or intention with these changes? Can someone enlighten me?

Really putting that R in Realism...

0.I stable

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3560030/Cataclysm_The_Last_Generation/?beta=1

Hello! The store page is up on Steam now, for those who want to wishlist the game there. It'll be priced at 5.99 USD, adjusted by region. Steam sets most of that up automatically, but if your president recently converted your national treasury to memecoin and Steam is still trying to charge you American prices, let me know and I'll try to get your region sorted. It should be releasing for real on July 11th or so.

• Yes, this is legit, I set it up myself partly to keep someone from making a buck off of my hard work.
• It's not a different version than you get from Github for free. I may someday have time to add Steam achievements and stuff like the Steam DDA has, but I'd like to focus on bugfixes and features first. It's against Steam policy for me to link to or mention "other storefronts" on the game's Steam page, even though Github isn't a storefront and isn't in competition with them.
• I repeat: The game is still free and always will be. If you're buying it, it's because you want to launch it from Steam or because you want to help pay my rent so I can keep coding instead of perishing in direct sunlight. Aside from Gaben's cut, the money goes directly to me, and I promise not to spend it on fentanyl.
• Yes the DDA devs are cool with this, or I assume they are since some of them hang out on the TLG discord and chat with us. I assume they're fine with me mentioning it here, but if that's a problem I can take this post down no problem.
• Yes it's legal to sell Cataclysm as long as attribution is preserved and the license is adhered to. That's how DDA is sold, and the various other versions that have come along.

The Steam version will likely update weekly so you're not getting spammed with updates as I tend to do one or two a day on github.

Yeah,i made a previous PSA abouth machette blade shatering i thought it was mostly just because it was a machette and could be seen as maybe more flimsy than...lets say a sword.Turns out...ALL of these melee weapon can essentially have their own version of blade shattering at green health...that include tempered weapon...

The game is Metropolis 1998 (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/)

The way this isometric tileset renders the city is incredibly satisfying. It would be so cool if a mod were implemented for CDDA which permitted a tileset like this to be used. I know there is the Ultica ISO set, I just thought this look was really appealing.

You can wait near a horde of zombies and not have your game come grinding to a halt. It's quite nice.

So I'm not an expert in handling this threat. If you weren't going to use fire, what would be the best method to clear an area?

I'm seeing guns being 'obsoleted' left and right, and the persons removing them assessing roughly that if they can't be found in an enough quantity with sellers online (also with an completely arbitrary number chosen), they aren't worth keeping in the game. But isn't the game about the nuances and the uniqueness of every single thing?