Five days after an event called the Cataclysm, the mundane routine of a civilized world has transformed into a desparate fight for survival of the human race. From the mist of government conspiracies and cover-ups, the few who saw the coming dangers prepared themselves for the end of the world...
Cataclysm 2040 is a turn-based roguelike survival game set in a cyberpunk post-apocalyptic future. Forked from the critically acclaimed Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Cataclysm 2040 is a revival project that seeks to restore the original futuristic setting and thematics of Cataclysm prior to the "present-day" retcon.
In order to properly set the scope for this fork, I'd like to take a moment to discuss the design philosophy behind Cataclysm 2040.
Cataclysm has a really unique setting that mixes cyberpunk and transhumanist flair with gritty post-apocalyptic survival.
The core litmus test over whether something should be added or changed is as follows: "Does the change help further the experience of being a survivor in a gritty cyberpunk/transhumanist post-apocalyptic world?" If the answer isn't an obvious "yes", then it shouldn't be added.
It's really fun and rewarding to find things that work just like in real life, but there's a fine line between enjoyable complexity and tedium. Just because something is more realistic doesn't mean it's always more fun. The goal of Cataclsym isn't to be a 1:1 copy of real life-- it's a game, and games are designed to be fun!
Let's take a moment and explore what the core activities in Cataclysm that the player is expected to derive enjoyment from doing:
- Exploring a dangerous futuristic post-apocalyptic world and learning its secrets.
- Transcending the human condition and asking philosophical questions about what it means to be a survivor in a world like this.
- Customising a unique and personalised character to allow oneself to step into their character's shoes and roleplay.
- Emergent storytelling through random encounters with procedurally generated characters and locations.
- Tending your virtual zen garden by simulating rural living, self-sufficiency, homesteading, etc.
- Building crazy contraptions, vehicles, and bases using all the toys available in the sandbox.
- Hoarding valuables and curating+organising your hoard.
If a feature or system doesn't encourage or play into one of the above gameplay loops, it needs to be changed. Regardless of how realistic it is.
Don't fix what isn't broken. This is purely a subjective stance, but an opinion of mine that heavily influenced the creation of this project is that Dark Days Ahead v0.G is already a great game as-is.
It doesn't really need new features or systems; it mostly just needs minor refinement to make it more fun and more focused on its unique setting+lore. Any massive overhauls or system changes are outside of the scope of Cataclysm 2040.
This project's goal is to move slowly, cut scope, and focus on making existing stuff better rather than overhauling stuff or adding new systems.
I am one person and I don't have hundreds of contributors like C:DDA does, so it's likely that any releases will be few and far between. Any new development in Cataclysm 2040 will be focused on one of the following things:
- Restoring content to make the experience of playing Cataclysm 2040 more closely aligned with the 2040 iteration of the C:DDA universe.
- Fixing existing bugs.
- Adding lore/fluff related content.
- Tweaking existing gameplay with QoL changes and streamlining/removing stuff that doesn't align with the core gameplay loops identified above.
As of this writing, this fork is maintained by a single person. As such, Cataclysm 2040 simply doesn't have the capacity to support the broad range of platforms available for Cataclysm: DDA. Currently, the only officially supported platform with pre-compiled release binaries is macOS (arm64 - Apple Silicon).
No other platforms or architectures are officially supported, but you're free to use the compilation guides written for Cataclysm: DDA to build your own binaries. At this time, we're not in any major package managers.
Precompiled binaries of Cataclysm are released here on GitHub.
At the current time of writing, I don't have automated CI set up for Cataclysm 2040, so release builds are assembled manually. This limits the frequency new releases can be published, but we can make use of release families to ease this lack of capacity.
Cataclysm 2040 pre-built releases are named using the following notation:
Codename BuildDate <--- The convention we use
Alie 2024.2 <--- Example of an actual release version name
This notation is designed to tell you the release family codename as well as the date that the build was assembled (which has an associated tag in this repo).
If you build you compile your own version of Cataclysm 2040, the default version string in the Makefile is configured to name your build the following way:
Codename CommitHash <--- The convention we use
Alie 47b1d66250c6f32bdc0348316f5fc24ce0a28d8e <--- Example of an actual self-compiled build version
This notation is designed to tell you that your version isn't a date-tagged release, as well as telling you the release family codename and the commit hash at which you built your version.
The Cataclysm 2040 release model works based on release families. The purpose of grouping releases into families with unqiue codenames is to indicate binary compatibility between stable versions.
This means that within a given stable release family, there are no C++ changes between individual versions (only runtime changes like json and tilesets). Our release model guarantees that you can upgrade from one version within a given release family to a different version in the same family by simply copying your data and gfx folders to the new version.
All C++ changes will be batched together in the beta release branch so that they can compiled as a bundle into a new release all at once. This makes it easier for less technical users to have freedom to mod their game and move around between versions within the stable release family of their choosing.
However, there are some important caveats to our release model:
- The fact that you can upgrade/downgrade between versions within a release family by replacing your runtime files does NOT guarantee savegame compatibility between versions within a release family. JSON edits can and do break saves-- probably even more frequently than C++ changes do.
- The beta branch does NOT have the same guarantees of inter-version binary compatibility until it is marked stable and a new beta branch is created.
The currently supported stable branch is Alie. The beta branch is currently Bellamy.
Please understand that due to the scope and limited capacity, releases are likely to be few and far between. But given that there are no plans for significant overhauls or feature expansion in this project, that shouldn't be an issue for you anyway.
Please read COMPILING.md - it covers general information and more specific recipes for Linux, OS X, Windows and BSD. See COMPILER_SUPPORT.md for details on which compilers we support. And you can always dig for more information in doc/.
We also have the following build guides:
- Building on Windows with
MSYS2at COMPILING-MSYS.md - Building on Windows with
vcpkgat COMPILING-VS-VCPKG.md - Building with
cmakeat COMPILING-CMAKE.md (unofficial guide)
Yes, you can find the tutorial in the Special menu at the main menu (be aware that due to many code changes the tutorial may not function). You can also access documentation in-game via the ? key.
Press the ? key, followed by the 1 key to see the full list of key commands. Press the + key to add a key binding, select which action with the corresponding letter key a-w, and then the key you wish to assign to that action.
World on the main menu will generate a fresh world for you. Select Create World.
Please submit an issue on our GitHub page using bug report template.
Please submit an issue on our GitHub page using feature request template.
Cataclysm 2040 is not associated with or endorsed by Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead or CleverRaven in any way. I'm just a fan who appreciates the old lore from before the retcon :)