Honestly y'all should probably just rename it to "Latest" or something? Because a lot of people see "experimental" and think "buggy"
As BigD145 noted, there's plenty of times that the experimental
is buggy. Move fast and break things and all that (though we try to break as little as we need to
).
Speaking of stable releases when will the next one arrive?
Next time we all get together and say "it's time to do a new stable release". You'll get a couple of weeks warning as we shut down new features, then shut down string changes so that all the translators can catch up.
Total pipe-dream but it'd be nice if the NPC AI did things like formed road conveys that attempted to trade with you for gas if they drove past or gangs that assaulted your base (if you have a base).
Definitely on the "someday" list, though it's probably quite a ways off.
It'd be cool if you could find a spray-can and tag messages to walls as well (actually, can we already do that? That seems like a thing we might be able to do?)
Definite +1 from me if it's not in already. Should be fairly simple to do, though hypothetically you could end up with some small weirdness where things stenciled on the outside of the walls can also be read from the inside (since there's no "sides" to walls).
More random threats would be nice because once you have an established base surviving is easy. Maybe there could be outside threats? Like a fire could start and spread? Or perhaps a nuclear reactor goes into meltdown and you need to venture out of your base to stop it. Something that either endangers a players base or forces them outside of it.
The biggest competitor we've got for this right now is Hordes 2.0 (which we're currently getting backend pieces for into place, though it's still a ways off). Honestly though we're going to be looking at spreading factions more than disasters for a late game challenge though (since honestly there's not much the player is going to do in the event of a forest fire or nuclear meltdown). On the other hand you might be able to fight an encroaching triffid army, or work to burn out a nearby Mycus infestation, and so on. You might even end up pairing with one of the threats to help take out another in certain cases!
Something that would work very well with the NPC AI would be to have them form gangs/groups/communities and take 'territories' on the map. Each city might be divided up into several territories for example. The groups would patrol their territories, keep intruders out and also occasionally mount attacks on neighboring territories. When trading with groups you could even abstract their inventories based on what territories they controlled. Do they have a couple of gun shops? Well then they'll be well stocked on weapons... No bar for miles? Perhaps they'll spend big to buy some booze off you.
This is definitely planned, but it'll go beyond just NPC's. Triffids, Mycus, the zombies, military robot groups, Horrors, humans, the Mi-go... all of them should eventually be able to carve out and claim their own (sometimes big, sometimes little) areas, which will then develop in different ways as time goes on. You can then get all sorts of interesting conflicts where the territories meet, and it'll lead to a more "patchwork" feel to the whole world as well as definite changes should the player end up throwing in with one particular group or another to help them expand their territory.
EDIT: Have they finally fixed the experimental tiles/graphical version so it can be worked again in CodeBlocks?
Honestly it's probably not going to happen unless someone who desires it cracks down and figures out exactly how to do it. Almost all of the developers use the ASCII versions, and I don't think there are any right now that use graphics and are developing on Code::Blocks as opposed to on something else. No developer demand for it = it doesn't happen in most cases, so you'll probably need to either figure it out yourself or convince someone else that they want to do it. As for now the ASCII version does compile just fine on Code::Blocks, so if you want to develop something that isn't directly related to tiles that should allow you to do so.