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THE FRONTIER JOURNAL

Changelog

Every update to the colony, newest first — 20 entries and counting.

  1. v0.1.2NEWEST
    • Take a clean screenshot: press F2 and the current view of your colony is copied straight to your clipboard, ready to paste into a message or document. It captures just the world — the HUD, panels and buttons are left out — so you get a tidy picture every time, no cropping needed.
    • Press \ (the backslash key) to hide the whole interface for an unobstructed look at your world, and press it again to bring everything back. Handy for admiring your colony or recording your screen.
  2. v0.1.1
    • Fixed a slowdown that crept in on long games: if you designated work a colonist couldn't actually reach — a mining tile or tree cut off across water, say — the colony kept trying to find a route to it every moment, and on a well-explored map that quietly dragged the whole game down to a crawl. Unreachable work is now checked once and set aside until something changes, so the framerate stays smooth no matter how long you play. (It automatically tries again the instant you dig or build a path to it.)
    • The Work panel now flags a task as "⚠ Unreachable" when no colonist can get to it, so you can tell at a glance why a designation is sitting untouched — cancel it, or carve a path to it, instead of wondering why nobody's working it.
  3. v0.1.0
    • The Craft menu's quantity box always opens on 1 again. If you pressed the camera keys (w/a/s/d) while the menu was open, those letters were landing in the quantity box and sticking around — so the next time you opened Craft you'd see stray letters in the field instead of the default 1. It now resets to 1 every time you open the menu.
    • Extending a stockpile now lines up cleanly: place a new storage pad while hovering over an existing one and it snaps flush against the edge you're nearest — the same way a farm plot snaps beside another — so the two merge into one tidy zone. Before, a pad dropped at an offset could land half a step out of line and render as a scattered, stretched-out clump of crates (a "2×6" smear instead of neat 2×2 patches). Hover off the stockpile to drop a free-standing one as before.
    • Carpenters now turn wood into timber based on skill: each wood is worked into one to four timber depending on who is crafting — a beginner gets only one or two, while a master gets three or four (it always took three wood to make a single timber before). Keep a colonist on the saw and let their carpentry climb, and the same woodpile goes far further for building. The craft menu shows the wood cost as "up to" that amount, since a skilled hand spends less.
    • Colonists no longer starve to death in their sleep: one who gets dangerously hungry overnight now wakes up to go eat, instead of sleeping straight through to starvation. (A colonist collapsing from hunger topples flat — just like a sleeping one — so these deaths often looked like dying in their sleep; they were really starvation, and they're now caught in time.)
    • Colonists carrying a full load no longer starve a few steps from a full stockpile: one hauling a heavy pack of wood, stone, or timber who gets urgently hungry now breaks off to grab a meal first and then finishes the haul — rather than trudging all the way home with food right there and dying on the doorstep.
    • Build crews no longer work themselves to death: a colonist ferrying timber out to a wall, floor, or door (or shuffling goods between stockpiles) used to ignore its hunger and drop dead mid-trip — queue a big floor and the whole crew could shuttle timber back and forth past starvation and collapse one by one. They now break off to eat when they get dangerously hungry, then return to finish the build, keeping whatever they were carrying.
    • Walls and floors now place with a precise corner-to-corner grid drag: pick Wall or Floor, click one corner and drag to the other, and the exact rectangle of tiles between them fills in — no more fuzzy screen-box that drifted as you tilted or spun the camera. A one-wide drag lays a clean line, a single click places a single tile, and walls snap to a straight run.
    • A whole wall or floor drag is now a single entry in the Work panel ("Build Floor — 8 tiles"), with one Cancel for the entire run, instead of flooding the panel with a separate row for every tile.
    • Storage that fills up no longer looks like laziness: when every stockpile is full, a colonist carrying a full pack has nowhere to put it, so they now stand put waiting to haul (with a ❓ floating over them) and their Work-panel status reads "Can't store goods" rather than "Idle". The HUD gained a "📦 Storage Available" line so you can see how much room is left across all your zones at a glance.
    • Turn off a stockpile's filter for something it's already holding and colonists now move those goods out: an idle colonist carries the rejected items over to another zone that will accept them (if one has room), instead of leaving them stranded where they're no longer wanted.
    • Stockpiles read as proper crate piles again — each 2×2 patch of a storage zone shows its own cluster of crates (a single big crate or a small stack), each with a slightly different lean, tint and size, so a large zone looks like a sprawl of crates rather than a flat, uniform grid.
    • Fixed a colonist who, after dropping a haul at one stockpile, would play the eating animation there while a meal was actually pulled from a different stockpile clear across the map — they now eat from the zone they're actually standing at.
    • Build walls and floors: open the Build menu (B), pick Wall or Floor, and drag out where you want them. Colonists haul timber from your stockpiles and construct them, working faster as their new Building skill rises. Walls are solid — colonists path around them — so you can wall off an area; floors are flat, walkable pads you can place stockpiles on top of.
    • Build doors: pick Door in the Build menu and click to drop a doorway. Press R before placing to rotate which way it faces, and F to flip which way it swings. A door is passable, so colonists walk through it — letting you close off a space with walls while still leaving a way in and out.
    • Building finally gives the logs→timber crafting chain a real purpose: walls, floors, and doors are all built from timber, so it's now worth keeping a crafter turning logs into timber.
    • The Destroy tool tears down walls, doors, and floors too now, not just campfires and farms — a colonist demolishes the structure and salvages some of its timber back into your stores.
    • Every wall, floor, and door you queue shows up in the Work panel as its own build entry — with the right icon and what it still needs — and you can cancel one before it's built. A build in progress is now saved as well, so a half-finished structure picks up where it left off when you reload.
    • Stockpiles are now placed as a 4×4 pad — the size of a farm plot — and render as a stack of crates, so they read clearly apart from the new flat floors. Dropping another stockpile next to an existing one still merges the two into one bigger zone.
    • Stockpiles are now something you build, like a farm or a campfire: pick Stockpile in the Build menu and click to place one, and a colonist hauls timber over and constructs the storage pad. A green/red preview shows whether it'll fit before you commit — so storage now costs materials instead of appearing for free.
    • The Work panel now opens automatically whenever a game starts, so you can see what every colonist is up to right away.
    • Storage is now spread across multiple stockpile zones you place yourself, instead of one fixed central larder. Set up a wood pile by the fire and a larder by the farms — colonists automatically haul to, eat from, and stock fires and crafting from whichever zone is nearest, so where you put storage actually matters.
    • Each stockpile zone has a real capacity based on how big it is — a larger zone holds more — so a full stockpile is now a genuine constraint you solve by growing the zone or clearing space, instead of a bottomless pit.
    • Each zone has a type filter: tell one stockpile to accept only food, another only wood or stone, and colonists deposit accordingly. Goods already sitting in a zone when you change its filter are left in place rather than tossed out.
    • Double-click a stockpile to open its management panel — see exactly what it's holding, broken down by type, and trash individual stacks you don't want taking up room.
    • Chopping a tree now sends leaves fluttering down from its canopy while a colonist works — they tumble and spiral as they sink, and pick up the light and season tint of the world (so a fall chop drifts down amber). A small touch that makes felling read as active work.
    • Double-click a colonist in the Work panel to open a stats card showing what they're up to, their hunger and warmth, every skill with its tier and how close they are to the next one, and what they're carrying. (Double-click used to just move the camera — there's now a Focus-camera button on the card for that.)
    • The card's Warmth bar shows all year round, not just in winter: it stays full while a colonist is comfortable, drains as the winter cold sets in, and fills back up by a fire — so you can always see at a glance how warm everyone is.
    • Give your colonists names: click a colonist's name at the top of their stats card to rename them, then press Enter to save (or Escape to cancel). The new name shows in the Work panel too, and sticks across saves.
    • You can now chop down berry bushes with the Chop tool to clear them out of the way — ripe, picked-over, or winter-bare. Bushes give no wood; it's purely for tidying up space (handy for building and mining later).
    • Berry bushes look lusher — instead of one big berry on top, a ripe bush now has seven smaller berries scattered across every face, so it reads as berry-laden from any angle.
    • Campfires throw off drifting sparks now — warm embers that rise above the flames and fade as they go. The plume thins as a fire burns down, tapering off in step with the dwindling flame.
    • Campfires and the storage chest are now solid objects in the world — colonists walk AROUND them and stand BESIDE them, instead of strolling straight onto the flames or up into the chest to grab supplies. Hauling food in, fetching a meal, stoking a fire, and building a new campfire all happen from an adjacent tile.
    • Cold colonists now stay by the fire until they've warmed up all the way, instead of dashing back to work the moment they touch the warm radius and starting the same cold trudge again. Their Work-panel status keeps reading "Warming up" through the whole recovery, so it's clear they're not slacking. Eating, fetching wood, and tending the fire still happen as normal.
    • Each colonist in the Work panel now shows a Warmth bar during winter, so you can see at a glance who's warm, who's getting chilly, and who's close to freezing. The bar empties as a colonist gets colder, turning amber once they start shivering and red when they're in real danger. It hides itself outside winter, when cold isn't a concern.
    • Colonists no longer pile onto a campfire when warming up or bedding down for the night — they ring the fire about a tile apart instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and never stand or lie down inside the flames. Sleepers tuck a bit farther out than colonists just warming up, because the flat sleeping pose stretches a body longer than the upright one.
    • Colonists warming themselves at a fire now turn to face the flames, rather than staring off past them — a small touch that makes a ring of warmers around a campfire actually look like one.
    • Press M to grab the Mine tool from anywhere — press it again to drop the tool, just like clicking the Mine button.
    • Press C to grab the Chop tool the same way — press it again to drop it.
    • Chopping is now click-to-pick: select the Chop tool and click individual trees to mark them (they glow green), clicking a marked tree again to unmark it — no more dragging a box over the ground. The selection stays live until you press Esc, click Chop again, or pick another tool.
    • Clicking trees is reliable now — trees would often refuse to be selected, and that's fixed, so every tree clicks the first time.
    • The tree under your cursor lights up blue while the Chop tool is active, so you can see exactly which one a click will mark or unmark.
    • Mining works the same way as chopping now: click a tile to mark it for digging (and click again to unmark), with the same blue hover cue — instead of dragging a box over the ground.
    • For both Chop and Mine you can click and hold, then drag across many tiles to mark them all at once. Start on an empty tile to add as you sweep, or start on a marked one to clear a swathe — whichever you begin with, the whole drag does just that.
    • You can now tear down farm plots, not just campfires. In the Build menu (B) pick Destroy, then hover a plot (a ⛏️ appears) and click to mark it (a 🚫 shows). A colonist walks over and clears it — at any stage, whether it's still a placeholder, freshly tilled, growing, or ready to harvest.
    • Changed your mind mid-job? Marking a farm for teardown pulls whatever colonist was tilling or tending it off the work, and canceling the teardown in the Work panel lets the farm carry on as before.
    • The water is alive now: little schools of minnows dart about just below the surface of ponds, lakes and the sea, drifting around as you watch.
    • When winter sets in and the berry bushes go bare, any forage jobs you'd marked are automatically called off — no more colonists trudging out to empty bushes. Re-designate them when spring brings the berries back.
    • No more frozen death spirals: when there's nowhere to warm up — no lit fire and no wood to light one — a cold colonist now keeps working instead of standing around waiting for warmth. So a wood-starved colony can chop a tree, haul the wood back, and get a fire going again. Cold colonists still work slower, and freezing is still the price of leaving it too late.
    • Farms are now something you build, not a drag tool. Open the Build menu (B) and pick Farm, then click to place plots one at a time — the same way you place a campfire.
    • A farm plot is a proper multi-tile patch now, not a single square, so it actually looks like a field. Placing one shows a blue placeholder of its full footprint, and plots snap to a grid so they sit neatly side by side instead of overlapping in a mess.
    • A colonist walks over and tills the plot (no materials needed for now), turning the blue placeholder into real soil ready to sow.
    • The Work panel lists each placed farm as its own "Build Farm" entry — counting actual plots, with a Cancel to remove one you haven't built yet — instead of a confusing tile count.
    • The Farm button is gone from the top toolbar (it lives in the Build menu now); Forage and Fishing are quick-keys 1 and 2.
    • The world is now vast — a full-size map hundreds of times larger than the old test island, streaming in around the camera so it stays smooth as you explore.
    • Real terrain: broad continents with rolling hills and rocky peaks, a proper coastline, and inland lakes — taller and far more varied than the flat little island.
    • Forests and fields: trees and berry bushes now grow in clusters — dense woods with open clearings and meadows between them, and distinct berry patches — instead of being sprinkled evenly across the map.
    • Dig down: a new Mine tool — drag a box over land to mark it, and colonists dig it down a step at a time. Dug walls reveal the layers underground — grass over dirt over rock — with seeded pockets of ore.
    • Stone and ore are new resources, carried and stockpiled like wood (no use for them just yet — they're the groundwork for building and crafting to come).
    • Water has a mind of its own now. Dig a pit below the waterline and keep its walls intact, and it stays a dry quarry you can keep mining. But cut through to the sea or a lake and it floods — the water rushes in through the whole connected pit at once. Be careful what you dig next to.
    • You can now zoom much closer to your colonists on the big map.
    • Bigger worlds are saved in a roomier store so the whole map fits and reloads reliably.
    • Wood arrives: a new resource you gather by chopping down trees. It stacks in the stockpile alongside your food and shows in the HUD, but never spoils.
    • New Chop tool on the toolbar — drag a box over trees to mark them for felling. A colonist walks over, fells the tree (it topples over with a satisfying fall), and leaves a log on the ground.
    • Logs are hauled away a load at a time, visibly shrinking with each trip until they're gone — a big tree takes a few runs to clear.
    • Build campfires: press B to open the Build menu, pick Campfire, then click a tile to place it. A colonist hauls wood from the stockpile to the site and lights the fire — you can't build one without the wood to spare.
    • Changed your mind about a fire? The Build menu now has a Destroy option — hover a campfire (a ⛏️ appears over it) and click to mark it for teardown (a 🚫 shows on it). A colonist walks over and demolishes it, salvaging any leftover fuel back into wood.
    • Winter is now genuinely dangerous. Colonists feel the cold when they're away from a fire, and a fire is the only thing that keeps them warm.
    • A cold colonist walks to the nearest fire to warm up, dropping its work if it gets cold enough. Left out in the cold too long, a colonist will freeze to death.
    • Fires burn through their fuel over the winter — faster at night — so they need tending. Colonists top up a running-low fire with wood from the stockpile, even before anyone's shivering, so it doesn't burn out.
    • A shivering colonist works more slowly — a clear warning to get them warm before the cold turns deadly.
    • In winter, colonists bed down next to a fire rather than wherever they happen to be standing, and a sleeper whose fire is dying wakes up to tend it, then goes back to sleep.
    • Fires glow to life on screen — big bright flames when well-fed, dwindling to a small flame and then a bed of embers as the fuel runs down, each casting warm light on the snow.
    • Colonists who are dangerously cold show 🥶/❄️ popups and shiver in place, so you can spot trouble at a glance.
    • Hover a colonist heading to warm up at or restock a fire and its destination tile lights up, just like with hauling and meal trips.
    • Saved games now remember your campfires and their fuel, how cold each colonist is, your wood, and any half-cleared logs — so winter picks up exactly where you left it.
    • Crops now look like tufts of grass instead of a single block — each plot sprouts a scatter of uneven blades that grow taller as the crop ripens. As a plot is harvested, the blades are cut down to stubble a few at a time until the patch is bare.
    • New time controls in the bottom-center of the screen: pause/resume plus 1×, 2× and 4× speed, so you can fast-forward through quiet nights and slow farm growth. Use − and = to slow down and speed up; Space or P pauses. The Pause button moved here from the bottom-left.
    • New stockpile & hauling system: food no longer pools instantly. Colonists now carry what they gather in a shoulder satchel and haul it to a central stockpile — a 2×2 timber pad with crates, placed on solid ground near the middle of your colony.
    • Each colonist can only carry so much. Once their pack is full (or there's no reachable work left), they walk their load to the stockpile, drop it off, and get back to work.
    • Hungry colonists eat straight from their own pack if they're carrying food; empty-handed, they walk to the stockpile to eat — so a colonist out in the field with food won't starve next to a full pack.
    • Big harvests that won't fit in a single trip stay in the field and get carried away over several runs.
    • A carrying colonist wears a backpack, so you can spot a haul at a glance and watch it walk to the larder.
    • Colonists now turn to face the direction they're walking, instead of always facing the same way.
    • The "days of food" warning now also counts food in colonists' packs, not just the stockpile — so it reflects your whole supply even while food is in transit.
    • Hover a colonist in the Work panel to highlight the tile they're headed to — their stockpile drop-off, a meal trip, or their job.
    • Saved games now remember what each colonist is carrying and the trip they're partway through, so a mid-haul colonist picks up exactly where it left off.
    • Tidied the HUD: removed the "Tool" line, since the highlighted Farm/Forage/Fish button already shows what's selected.
    • Double-click a colonist in the Work panel and the camera now follows them as they move — watch them walk to work, eat, sleep, or wander. Rotating (Q/E) and zooming stay locked on, so you can orbit and zoom in while you watch; panning (WASD or click-and-drag) releases the camera.
    • The "days of food" warning now accounts for spoilage: it knows spoiling food fills colonists less (so they eat through it faster) and that food which rots away before anyone eats it doesn't count — so a stockpile that's about to spoil now shows its true, shorter runway instead of an inflated one.
    • Fixed zoom: the scroll wheel now zooms all the way in to ground level among your colonists, matching the close-up you got from double-clicking a colonist.
    • Trees and bushes are now solid obstacles — colonists walk around them instead of standing on top, and foragers pick berries from a clear tile beside the bush.
    • Fixed foraging on awkwardly-placed bushes: a colonist now walks to whichever side of a berry bush it can actually reach, and a bush that's completely boxed in no longer stalls the forage task — it's dropped so the rest of the work can finish.
    • Fixed harvesting: colonists now carry a full load of grain back to the stockpile instead of lingering on the crop picking up a grain at a time — so your food count actually goes up.
    • Hungry colonists no longer abandon a job mid-task to walk back for a single bite. They finish gathering and eat from their own pack, and a colonist dropping food at the stockpile now eats there if it's hungry instead of making a second trip.
    • You can now pause the game — press Space (or P), or use the Pause button in the bottom-left corner. The camera still works while paused.
    • Food now comes in three kinds — grain from farming, berries from foraging, and fish from fishing — each tracked separately in the HUD.
    • Berries and fish are perishable: they start fresh, turn to "spoiling", and eventually rot away if left too long. Grain keeps indefinitely.
    • Spoilage is seasonal — food rots fastest in summer, more slowly in spring and fall, and not at all through winter's cold.
    • Colonists eat spoiling food first and save grain for last, but a spoiling meal fills them less and sends them back sooner — so keeping food fresh stretches your stores.
    • The HUD now breaks your stockpile down by type and shows how much of each food is spoiling.
    • Colonists now harvest crops from the tile beside them, and crops shake as they're picked — just like foraging a berry bush.
    • Added this changelog — click the info icon in the bottom-left corner any time to see what's new.
    • Crops now ripen gradually, shifting from green to amber over their final days instead of changing color all at once.
    • Day and night now cycle — the light shifts from dawn through dusk, and colonists bed down to sleep through the night.
    • Seasons arrive: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter each last 30 days, with a banner tracking the year and counting down to winter.
    • Crops grow slower in fall and freeze in winter, and berry bushes go barren until spring — stockpile food before the cold hits.
    • Winter brings longer, colder nights and a chilly tint across the world.
    • Your colony now saves automatically and picks up right where you left off when you come back.
    • Idle colonists wander the map instead of standing still, giving the colony more life.
    • Double-click a colonist in the Work panel to snap the camera straight to them.
    • Sleeping colonists show a 💤 and hungry ones visibly sweat, so their state is easy to read at a glance.
    • Fixes: fishing stops cleanly when a fisher sleeps, sleeping colonists now rest on top of the ground, and up/down camera panning feels right.
    • Added a warning that shows how many days of food you have left before famine.
    • A post-run summary now shows how you did — days survived, food gathered, and tasks completed.
    • Polish pass: floating popups when colonists gather food or eat, plus water splashes and rustling bushes.
    • Overhauled the camera controls and added keyboard shortcuts for the farm, forage and fishing tools.
    • Foraging is now a one-time harvest per bush — bushes regrow over time and must be re-designated to harvest again.
    • Selection and designation highlights hug the shape of the terrain, so they read clearly even on hills.
    • Hover a task or a colonist to highlight the tiles being worked on.
    • Colonists can forage from a tile next to a bush, and bushes shake while being picked.
    • Balance tuning across the food and hunger loop.
    • First playable build of Outpost — a colony of four colonists you keep fed.
    • Designate areas to farm, forage berries, or fish; idle colonists assign themselves to the work.
    • Farming runs a full cycle: till the soil, sow the seed, watch it grow, then harvest.
    • Colonists get hungry and eat from a shared stockpile; if the food runs out they starve and the game ends.
    • A HUD tracks food, population, day and the active tool.
    • A Work panel shows what each colonist is doing, lets you cancel jobs, and reorder or cancel whole tasks by dragging.
    • Shape the land by raising and lowering terrain, and pan, zoom and rotate the camera around your colony.