When I started the development of Ostriv alone back in 2014, my country was experiencing quite an uneasy time in its history. But this project managed to change my life and, judging by the enormous amount of feedback I was getting, it gave a lot of hope to a lot of folks around the world.

In the course of these years I went from a part-time solo development to full-time with a team of 3 helping me out. All thanks to 20 thousands awesome people who believed in the project and purchased the early alpha.

I also want to thank everyone who spread the word on Youtube, Twitch, and (occasionally) gaming press. Without you I’d never reach those thousands of people! I have to say, just a few years ago, I wouldn’t even imagine seeing videos of someone in Thailand or Japan building their own Ukrainian villages.

I hope this game will bring you some joy and calmness (of course if you’re lucky enough to run it without crashes) during this time, uneasy for the whole world, or at least a good reason to stay at home.

Take care and please don’t buy any more toilet paper!

Now to what’s new in Alpha 3:

Added/changed:

New building: Wagon shed



New building: Stable

New building: Saddlery

New building: Limeworks

New building: Lime kiln



There are now stone and limestone deposits on maps



New building: Mining camp



New building: Church



Significantly optimized performance, especially in big towns on faster game speeds (When porting old saves it may need some time on 1x speed to improve)

Can now produce horseshoes at the smithy

Now showing current field status in farm’s field list

Raised the metal parts selling price by 5x

Name of workplace in citizen’s properties and family tree is now clickable



Animal death of starvation and thirst are now more sparsely spaced in time

Added an icon to tell the crop harvest from processed resource

Threshing is now evenly distributed between crops

Now showing how much more resources required for construction



A bit more color variety for autumn leaves



Showing warning when trying to buy animals before there’s a place to keep them

Granary workers will now supply to nearby shops if no other work

Now showing how many resources required for a carpentry order

Thatchers are now using multiple points to gather reeds, also being smarter about newly accessible points (after bridges built) and obstructed points (less teleporting)

Windmill now uses the same supply options as other buildings

Added animation and sound for chopping trees

Citizens are now smarter about finding shortest distances. A is now closer than B



Zooming out to fit the focused object on a screen (following mode, searching buildings)

Added clay digging animation

Improved model for horses with texture variation

Hay barracks are now being built just like other buildings

Added a minimal bridge height over water level

Added a button for quick access to the town hall building

Now using a current user’s Documents folder for saves and settings

Fixed:

Tannery batch size slider didn’t work properly

Pigs didn’t reproduce when livestock = limit

Could store unprocessed buckwheat harvest in the warehouse

Sometimes it was impossible to demolish a fallow field

Windmills stopped rotating in older towns

Uneven terrain restriction didn’t work in several recent patches

Carts had visual glitches on bridges

Wife’s parents didn’t have their own last name (works for new games only)

Weird navigation around field and village house entries

Female fertility wasn’t limited by old age

Trade deal slider showed wrong numbers when switching between deals

Starting camp placement had unwanted offset applied

In some cases it was possible to stack multiple constructions on top of each other

Planted trees were removed instantly when built on (even the old ones)

Foresters ignored trees accessible by built bridges

Couldn’t copy buckwheat field with eyedropper tool

Cows left on the field if trying to relocate at the end of pasture season

Memory overflow (crash or glitches farm fields) when playing for a long time straight

Entering big numbers in text field made them negative

Workers avoided moving resources to trading posts when emptying buildings

Demolishing and then cancelling on windmill created navigational anomalies leading to walking through buildings around it

Crash once winter starts in some games

Multiple cowsheds could use a same pasture, breaking several game mechanics

Farm workers needlessly visited field entry when harvesting

Two coastal buildings being constructed on opposite sides of the river created a breach for water-walking

Crash when demolishing a bench waiting for trees to be removed

Boatyards used too small amounts of wood for boat construction/repair

Chicken relocation had several issues (like dead locks)

It was sometimes possible to start construction on the other side of the river before the bridge has been built (thus teleporting and other issues)

Some bridge builders decided to live underground

Navigation around windmill was a bit broken if game saved while turning its body

Bridge construction ignored trees

Could duplicate resources in trading posts and warehouses leading to weird behavior

Various small UI fixes

To port your old saves to Alpha 3, run the updated game at least once. Then copy “save” folder from your game’s directory to Ostriv subdirectory of your documents (usually in c:/Users/USERNAME/Documents/Ostriv). You can do the same with the file “settings.data” to port your settings. Note that some features will not work in older saves due to absence of stone deposits.

If you already own the game and looking for your GOG/Steam key, you can find them at your humblebundle link you used to update the game!

To manually update your game you can just download it again from Humble with the same link they sent you when you purchased the game and then replace it completely with your current version

If you have lost your link, you can use this tool to regain access: http://humblebundle.com/resender

If you have errors regarding “MSVCP140.dll” you need to install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017. Here’s the direct link for 32-bit version: https://aka.ms/vs/15/release/vc_redist.x86.exe and here for 64-bit: https://aka.ms/vs/15/release/vc_redist.x64.exe