Base/Building/Some Grammar Stuff

• It doesn't say you can hold "shift" or "cntrl" to make placing buildings only go side-to-side or up-and-down where it says the controls while you are in build mode
• NPC allies (Duke) and orphans have a chance to spawn in walls at your base
• Traders don't use paths to get to your stalls (probably a pain to code though) and traders don't premptivly run away when a raid is about to start (already talked about the trading stuff in the mechanics)
• Workbenches don't want to rotate for some reason (bug)
• No Carpet foot/walking noise (it just leaves the wooden floor sound over wood floors)
• While on llama and right next to a stall, pressing "F" to fo to prev. product gets you off of the llama
  • pressing "F" to get onto llama while near stall makes you mount llama and go to prev. product
• When you upgrade a thing in the player upgrade, it seems all your items get taken away but then given back, making it do the "plus" thing on the items at the left side of the screen, as if you were picking up the item. (does something similar when crafting)
• May want to make workers have "breaks" after they pass an energy level (like 9000 or 18000) and go near an object
  • Like going to/hanging around the veggie pot; around a sell or buy stall; around a bell; bookshelfs; or outhouse.
  • May not want this to happen for effeciency, or not happen if a raid is happening; however, it would give a slight push to automation
  • May want to make energy go down slower when they are doing the break (so they don't do a break and sleep)
• Energy doesn't go down if Worker has Obj_bell or obj_skelly under them
  • May want to make energy go down but not have going to bed over/more important than fighting skellys or going to the bell.
• Custodian has wrong description (it's the description of the researcher) and researcher has it's description as "none"
• Small water pump has no indication that it is full
  • Maybe an animation with water dripping from the faucet?
• Building "happens" while riding a llama (the building grid pops up) but the menu for buildings and structures don't pop up (also can't build anything even on your base)
• Tool and Armor benches/stations say "Q/E to next weapon" instead of "Q/E to next tool" and "Q/E to next armor"
• Farmers still water crops whenever it is raining (it wastes water and doesn't make sense for them to because the crops are gonna be watered by the rain)

Really any suggestions I have for building has been already said in the survival mechanics post about the guard flags, trading, and walls/outposts for blocking raids. (Different kinds of stalls to attact more traders and more paths (like clay/brick and planks) are really the only suggestion I have for buildings that I don't think has been said)

Debug Stuff

• I would ask you to change the debug key " ` " to " shift ` "/"~" because I found out about debug mode after missing the "tab" button for my inventory and pressing it; I think requiring you to press shift to do it would solve the problem of that happening
• Pathing
  • While in your base it does not show the pathing of NPC companions (duke) unless they are following you
    • I also think there is a bug where it shows the last bit of pathing of duke when he was following you (the white line is left over)
  • It does not show the pathing of kids/orphans
  • It does not include pathing for traders
  • It does not include pathing for cats (I haven't seen if it shows when they are following you)
  • May want to seperate pathing and debug entirely to reduce lag (incase that gate glitch happens in Anchor Rage, so you wouldn't blow up your laptop incase you done the cat quest)
• Orphans (and maybe Duke) can pass through medium water towers if you place them in building mode
• Building Mode
  • Why is there a medium and large water tower, but no small water tower?
  • In the debug 2 section some of the objects don't have a "no description yet" and are just blank
• I had a glitch where eight farm plots (the bottom left ones) in Steven's Ranch were not able to be planted on, even in debug mode - it said it required four seeds (which I had even without debug) and the other farm tiles I planted, after harvesting them, the same "not enough seeds" thing happened
  • After I quit and got back on the game, it seemed to solve itself.

Other Stuff and Suggestions

• If you press and quickly unpress the button, the orphans don't go
  • Probably intended incase someone accidentaly clicked it, but adding the person who is going to take the orphans away from you saying: "second thought?" (and possibly "third thoughts?" if you do it again) would add some polish to it
• The loading screen for areas should probably have a background based on the weather for two reasons -
  • To hide the assests being put in and that weird camera zoom/zip to where you are (it can break the emersion)
  • It having rolling dust or clouds/fog (basically could just be a greyscale version of the dust) based on the weather would be a nice touch and help transition from world map view to your view.
• A varient of the water towers that are empty/damaged/irradiated 
  • Could have a "rusted hole" and a "shot up" varient of those to have better enviromental telling (rusted is abandoned, shot up is raided, irradiated is poisioned); and you could use it in explore tiles without the player going "Why aren't people flocking here? it's a wasteland and this is water!"
• Betting Settings (or more than just resets)
  • Gunfire Volume - Just a slider of how loud the gunshots are (my ears got hurt the first time I heard Duke shooting enemies)
  • Building Particles/Particles in General - To reduce lag
  • Frames Per Second Cap - framerates for me flunctuated wildly, it would be nice to cap it at 90 frames for me
  • Weather Settings - this goes for if you implement the weather causes more effects, like putting out the fire of the flame boots; and how long and how often they occur (like making rain rarer but longer)
  • Control Options - to remap buttons (I think your doing controller support anyway)
  • Raid Options - Options where you could choose where the timer is set at (like 500000 to 2500) and if raids can come from multiple directions after awhile (if you were to implement that happening after a raid doesn't happen when it counts down for so long)
  • Random Encounter Options - if you are adding totally random encounters (not like running into a skull icon that would be a Raid Wagon, but just events happening at random times without warning) you may want to make it toggalable or where you can decrease the frequency
  • Harder Options/Presets - options to make the game harder; like barely any traders, crops growing a lot slower, buildings cost more, ammo boxs running out, friendly fire, or taps going dry (stuff like that)
• If your going to add trading wagons/raiding wagons/raiding llama parties; I would suggest to make some have a pre made/not randomly generated path (like a trader from Anchor Rage to Steven's Ranch) and a "?"/question mark icon over them until you get close (if you do this, you could make binoculors (binocoulrs? bincoulurs? binocollours?) that would show what they are from farther away.
• Really all the stuff I suggested in the survival mechanics post, especially the broom mechanics cause it could add so much flair to the world building (and it make me feel so great inside), the "dusting off sand" that the broom does could also be used to brush off dust from solar panels if you plan on nerfing them by making them produce less energy after a dust storm because they get covered in dust.
  • Also the little flag idea for guards to patrol could be incorparated into being checkpoints for the llama racing.

Really this game has been a blast to play, and it's been great knowing that your taking suggestions (cause alpha) and implementing them. I can't wait for an update (especially for llama racing and more quests). 

I'm going to take a bit of a rest now.

A couple hours in and really enjoying the game so far!

I don't know if this has been posted by anyone else already, but when the light levels are low at night, the menus of workstations get obscured by the darkness as well. I'm assuming that this isn't the developer's intended design, since it seems like the player should always be able to fully see menus.

This is more of a recommendation than a suggestion, but I feel like it would be a welcome one -

Two programs that you might want to use is "Bosca Ceoil" and "Pixel Studio for pixel art" (yes those are the names); Bosca is for music and is a free download (it's kinda limited, but multiple tracks and audacity will prolly help with that) and the link is here: https://terrycavanagh.itch.io/bosca-ceoil and another link for it (non-itch) is here: https://boscaceoil.net/ (the non-itch may work better for now, it seems like it's a bit buggy - but I have the non-itch and it works fine for me)

and Pixel Studio for pixel art is on the apple store and steam - I can't share/find the links, but if you search it up fully it should be the one (it's for pixel art and it's really good and there is multiple ways to export it - it's free to play, but using it free has been fine with me, some tools are locked (but barely ANY) and there is ads on the free app version, but only when you are saving a project, so it's really good in my opinion).

Hopefully you can easily use these two programs for your game, I have to say they are on my "must-haves" for any thing game-making related.

A 2nd floor. That's it. Couldn't ask more from a golden "Alpha". Expect some notes in the near future.

PS I like notes.

Please optimize frame rate when there is any type of weather. I ran into this problem recording gameplay and any weather reduces from 120 to 40 fps. Just a quick notification.

Is there a discord that is setup to were people could submit art/tiles that could be in the game? I would love to help with this by making some concept art or even tile sets (like double wide/garage doors); I'm even willing to setup the server (I have experience with setup and bots for it).

I want to help bring more stuff to the game, but I don't know the palette of it (like the metal and wood) and I don't think putting the imagefiles in the suggestion thread or make a new one - and sadly I don't have a work email/anonymous email that isn't filled up to the brim with spam. 

Also are you/when are you planning to add more missions/side-missions to the game?

you should make running over the enemies with a car do more damage and also damage the car so you need to repair it

You should add stairs and floors. Stairs will give you access to floors and when you're in a new floor clear out the things you built on other floors. Instead , Show the things you built on that floor. You may have up to 5 floors or probably more.  I also found that 2 traveling merchants are in the same outhouse and it's inhumane so pls fix it. By the way can you still access the alpha after you finished the final product?

I got a question, how can make a campmate follow me? im gonna be sad if you remove that feature because it will make traveling much easier on fighting all those enemies.

Hey, just suggesting a function for seeds. I think we should be able to feed seeds to chickens. This will shorten the cooldown for the chicken to lay an egg.

This is a really cool game!
I have a few suggestions though.

1. Uniform Controls
Right now, similar functions require different (sometimes contradictory) inputs.
*  For example, if you want to exit a menu, it can either be Q, B, or Tab depending what menu you have open.. and EDIE's menu doesn't have a key to exit out, so you have to click the exit button. Also, sometimes if you hit Escape, it will close the menu and bring up the "do you want to quit" screen, but sometimes it won't close the menu (depending on what menu it is). I would like it so that I can just hit Escape and/or Q to exit any menu, and when all the menus are closed, then it brings up the "do you want to quit" popup.
*  Another place is adding items to shops and machines. Q takes from the shop, but adds to the machine(if one ingredient). E adds to the shops, and sometimes adds secondary ingredients. You can remove items from shops, but not from machines. It would be nice if E was always add, and Q was always remove, or something similar.
* Some things you can hold down the add/remove button to speed up the process, and sometimes you can't. Shop you can, machines you can't, and junk piles you can't. It would be nice if this was available everywhere.
* Scrolling. 3 different scrolling options by my count. Mouse(Build and Weapon menus), W/S(Player Upgrade), and R/F(Trade booths). It would be nice if this was also more uniform.

2. Custodians also restock machines
Currently, you have to restock all machines by hand (unless I am missing something), and since you have to hit the key to add each item individually instead of holding down the key, it takes a lot of clicks. For Example, if you want to make 1 piece of metal, you need to click a total of 28 times on different machines(16 to add veg to oil, 4 to add oil to stone, 4 to add oil to metal, 4 to add stone to metal). Alternatively I could hack away at a junkpile and get a piece of metal every 8 clicks, all in one spot, with a chance of getting plastic.
All this to say that if the custodian filled up machines, as well as the wood burner.. that would be nice. Or if you could hold down the buttons, that would be good too.

3. Change order of build menu
Right now, the build menu seems kinda random. There are certain sets of tabs/categories which I often use in conjunction, and they are never next to each other. For example, when I am building, If I'm working on production/farming, I often switch between production, ranch, and automation. These are all two clicks apart. Likewise, if I am building actual buildings, I'll need to switch between Building, furniture, and light/deco, which again are each two spaces apart. It would be nice if these tabs were grouped together, right now I've seem to have memorized 2 sets of build menu tabs (Auto->??->Prod->??->Ranch, and Building->??Furniture->??->Light/Deco) switching between the two or looking for something not on those lists feels random. I'm sure with enough time I'll get the hand of it as it is, but until then it's pretty frustrating..
I would organize it something like so: Building->Furniture->Light/Deco->Ranch->Prod->Auto->Resources->Economy->Building

4. Bigger weapon arcs.
Right now it feels like I have to be looking directly as an enemy to deal damage to it. when there are multiple enemies/friends/corpses, and damage numbers flying over them, it's hard to tell if I am hitting anything or not. When I die in a fight, it's often because I am swinging my machete over a corpse, instead of the enemy right next to it.

5. Puppy priority last.
I really like having the dog follow me around ^^ and I like petting him occasionally..
But he'll often get if the way when I am planting, watering, harvesting, filling machines, tending animals, looting, etc etc.
It would be nice if the option to pet him only showed up when there is nothing else in range which I could use the E key on.

6. Can't click the x in windowed mode to close the game.
Not too big of an issue, but it puts me a little bit on edge when a program won't let me close it by hitting the close button..

Sorry for such a wall of text, I didn't intend for it to be so long >.<;
I really do enjoy the game a lot =D
It just needs a little bit more polish I think =]

P.S. Are you programming this from scratch, or are you using an engine? If an engine, which one?

I tried the game a while ago, and have roughly followed its development for the last few months.

Accordingly, I want to give a few comments and tips about the game, especially because I find the concept itself really great.

It will be a little longer

In my last playthrough, I was quite disturbed by the fact that almost every minute there was an attack on the base and I had no real possibilities to make major changes to the infrastructure of my base. 
For this reason, at some point I started to draw a wall around the base, directing the enemies through a corridor when they attacked and letting them run into a wall of saws at the end.

The fact that my companions also run randomly into the blades is not a problem, I can revive them at any time, but this was sometimes the only possibility for me to make the attacks more pleasant, when I actually wanted to expand the base.

The fact that the world map has changed a lot had pleased me, also the new enemies that you could run into have added new tactics. The sand worms in particular were a pleasant challenge.
New mobs and perhaps also things that you can discover in the free world would be a great incentive to move further out into the world. Maybe some unique upgrades that you have to find before you can unlock them in EDIE?
I could imagine that would be cool.

Some kind of battle animal system might also be fun. The dog that you always have with you is a really cool new feature that I missed in the old versions. The fact that the dog can slow down the opponents makes many combat situations much more pleasant and not so hectic. 
What I would perhaps bring in would be a system where you could perhaps raise animals as combat companions. For example, a Wolly that you can choose from your herd and raise from a human companion by means of a new job. Beast of burden, fighting animal, or maybe a way to trade them?`Could fit well with the dystopian scenario.

And, what also caught the eye especially in the attacks was the lack of electrical circuits. So simple circuits. At the moment, certain defense systems don't really make sense to build, since there's no way to centrally activate their function, since they already consume electricity.
I had tried something like this, a remote control for the defense systems, but it could not be built properly. 

The companions currently equip themselves with what fits their job. Maybe it would be possible to allow and forbid certain equipment for the companions. So that the guards get the strongest unlocked weapons and armor, and you can also assign weapons and armor to the others in case of an attack. Otherwise the companions die too quickly when human attackers walk into the base.

Finally, I have a very small comment, which would certainly not mean much trouble.
For the devices that can be filled up to produce other things, for example this composting plant that turns vegetables into oil, it would be pretty cool to have a way to fill them up completely or only partially by pressing a button. Currently, if you have a capacity of 200 vegetables, you have to press a button 200 times so that you can then produce 100 oil. I don't know if there is a button for that yet, but so far I couldn't find it, which is why I bought more of the stuff instead of producing it myself.

Those were my comments, I hope they could help you and maybe inspire you to new possibilities within the game. I think the game is really great, keep it up.

Optimized mode. Yes sounds dumb for a game that’s a sandbox and/or story game made of pixels.

I have a problem with my potato device whenever it rains it suddenly lags BAD. Even though the fps counter says like 30-60 fps. I thought of posting this in bugs but maybe an optimized mode was better here

hello!

i have a small suggestion, i apologize that it isnt gameplay related, but that is because i cannot play the game! the font is very hard for me to read as someone with reading disorders, and i was not able to understand what to do. are different font options a possibility in the future? thank you :-)

I had a dream about a game that looked exactly like this, so this is where my suggestion is coming from.
It'd be cool to have a mobile base and have a sort of rope system where you could tether llamas to your base and have it act like a sleigh. or a mobile battle fort.

anyways, that was what it was like in my dream and it was pretty cool. But then again everything is cooler in a dream.

I have a small complaint. When I got a quest that was marked on my map, like the locket quest, it wouldn't show on the map if I haven't discovered the area yet. So maybe make it it would still show it just in the black square.