---
Type: desktop-application
ID: org.cataclysmdda.CataclysmDDA
Package: cataclysm-dda-sdl
ProjectLicense: CC-BY-SA-3.0
Name:
C: "Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead"
Summary:
C: A turn-based survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world
Description:
C: >-
<p>
Struggle to survive in a harsh, persistent, procedurally
generated world. Scavenge the remnants of a dead civilization
for food, equipment, or, if you are lucky, a vehicle with a full
tank of gas to get you the hell out of Dodge. Fight to defeat or
escape from a wide variety of powerful monstrosities, from
zombies to giant insects to killer robots and things far
stranger and deadlier, and against the others like yourself,
that want what you have...
</p>
<p>
As your game begins, you awaken with hazy memories of violence
and terror from when the world suddenly unraveled around
you. Now you need to explore your surroundings, and secure food,
water and safety. After that, who knows? Long term survival will
mean tapping abilities you haven’t used before, learning to
survive in this new environment and developing new skills.
</p>
Developer:
id: org.cataclysmdda
name:
C: Kevin Granade and Contributors
Categories:
- Game
- RolePlaying
Keywords:
C:
- zombie
- survival
- game
- tiles
- dda
- cdda
Url:
homepage: https://www.cataclysmdda.org
bugtracker: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues
translate: https://www.transifex.com/cataclysm-dda-translators/cataclysm-dda/
vcs-browser: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/
contribute: https://cataclysmdda.org/contributions/
Icon:
cached:
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width: 48
height: 48
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width: 64
height: 64
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width: 128
height: 128
remote:
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width: 128
height: 128
stock: org.cataclysmdda.CataclysmDDA
Launchable:
desktop-id:
- org.cataclysmdda.CataclysmDDA.desktop
Provides:
binaries:
- cataclysm-tiles
Screenshots:
- default: true
thumbnails:
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height: 126
source-image:
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height: 1080
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source-image:
url: org/cataclysmdda/CataclysmDDA/da401933112342659737331fbf493efe/screenshots/image-2_orig.png
width: 1920
height: 1080
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width: 224
height: 126
source-image:
url: org/cataclysmdda/CataclysmDDA/da401933112342659737331fbf493efe/screenshots/image-3_orig.png
width: 1920
height: 1080
Releases:
- version: "0.I"
type: stable
unix-timestamp: 1780704000
description:
C: >-
<p>
The 9th post alpha stable release of Cataclysm: DDA has arrived. It is named after Junji
Ito, known for his ability to transform mundane occurrences into catastrophic events. As
a long inspiration of many horror elements of Dark Days Ahead this namesake is well
deserved. Between 0.H and 0.I there were over 13,000 commits from 486 contributors (242
of which were first-time contributors), affecting 82,000 entities, and adding more than 1
million lines of code and data.
</p>
<p>
The headline features for this cycle: Dormant zombies that have turned quiescent for a
lack of nearby prey, avoid disturbing them and your travels will be easier. Trees have
tops that you can climb into on separate z-levels now. Faults have expanded to items so
that eventually you won’t get generic damage but each level of damage on an item will
have specific ways to mend it similar to how many vehicle parts work now. Overmap specials
now have different visibility levels that controls how far away you can identify what they
are. We have probably now reached saturation on animal themed mutation paths and mutation
gain has been reworked to eliminate the wait between mutating to avoid bad mutations.
Defined outfits and tons of new mapgen including some things hidden out in the ocean.
More eldritch abominations exist and finally procgenned riot damage to represent that some
places got destroyed in and before the Cataclysm. Progress continues on the Imgui
migration as DDA transitions to a standardized UI that allows for easier development.
</p>
<p>
In news for the in repo mods several games worth of content has been added to Aftershock:
Exoplanet, Mind over Matter and Xedra Evolved. Isolation Protocol and Sky Island continue
to receive work that enables them to deliver unique gameplay experiences. This has also
included our focus on making more details of the game meaningfully moddable. EOC
expansion has been pioneered in mods and we expect those benefits to accrue to mainline
over time.
</p>
<p>
We welcome you to join us here in finding the beautiful and the horrific in the Cataclysm
while we ask the question of how you will spend your final days.
</p>
url:
details: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/refs/heads/0.I-branch/data/changelog.txt
- version: "0.H"
type: stable
unix-timestamp: 1721606400
description:
C: >-
<p>
I'm proud to announce that the Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead 0.H "Herbert" release is here!
With an 11 month Gestation (before forking) and a 10 month delivery (after forking),
we once again utterly failed to limit the scope of work with a release, the 0.H
development process has been the longest in many releases, packing in thousands of new
pieces of content, massive performance improvements, and IMO more polish than we've ever
seen in a DDA release. A huge group of about 450 people contributed to this release,
about 200 for the first time this release. All together we changed about 12 million
lines of code and data across about 5,500 files, adding about 5,000 game entities in the
core game and another 5,000 in mods. This time around we handled the release process
differently, following a more traditional process where we called 0.H "feature complete"
all the way back in January of 2024 and moved it to a dedicated fork for bugfixing.
Since then we've created new infrastructure to manage the stabilization process,
fixed many many bugs, and backported a limited number of key features from the
experimental branch. Whether this new approach really hits its stride is yet to be seen,
but I'm hopeful next cycle can be shorter now that the infrastructure is in place.
</p>
<p>
Feature wise, we've seen the addition of biomes, where traveling East now leads to larger
cities to a point, then the lands ends in an ocean. Travelling West leads to sparser human
settlements and more wilderness. Portal storms now spawn and move around on the map, you
can either hunker down or move to avoid them (or chase them if you're so inclined), and an
unprecedented amount of new and interesting content has been added to their chaotic mix.
After years of hard work, 3D vision has improved greatly, bugs are few and far between,
and thanks to this feature we can see a lot more interactivity between Z levels. It still
defaults off, but you don't need to be afraid of it. Our accidental bespoke scripting
framework, the EOC system, has been greatly expanded and many, many features have been
overhauled to take advantage of it. This allows an enormous flexibility of events in both
mainline and mods without ever touching a compiler. Multiple new boss-tier encounters have
been added for late game challenge, though I don't want to spoil them here. Now you will
know why you fear the night. The number of proficiencies has increased greatly for this
version, roughly doubling the number of proficiencies you can learn, with unique effects.
We've seen an expansion of the proficiency framework in some of the directions desired
initially, allowing proficiencies to confer more than just crafting bonuses. Practice
actions have also filled out, providing a smooth path for skill gain instead of grinding
crafting or other activities. This version should see an end to repeatedly crafting and
uncrafting a simple object to grind skills, allowing you to streamline the process to
represent your character studying and practicing, spending character time but not so much
player time. You'll also notice other savings in player time, we've found a number of
places to speed up key code and drastically reduce waiting times, making for a much more
responsive experience.
</p>
<p>
Try it out. It's the best DDA yet.
</p>
url:
details: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/tree/0.H-branch/data/changelog.txt
- version: "0.G Gaiman"
type: stable
unix-timestamp: 1677628800
description:
C: >-
<p>
We are proud to announce that 0.G “Gaiman” stable release has arrived! Two years have
passed since the release of the stable version 0.F “Frank”, two years of unprecedented
turmoil in the real world that delayed our planned release of the next stable. These two
years have seen many IRL job changes among the dev team, new contributors to CleverRaven,
and a couple of babies joining members' families. The 0.G release is more than double the
size of the 0.F release, a distinction that we keep trying and failing to avoid. Even more
than previous stable versions, this release features a massive range of bugfixes, code and
content additions, and new features. 10,293 new game entities were added, 11,643,312 lines
of source code were inserted, and 5,022,361 lines were deleted. This included several new
language translations, multiple new tilesets; including some isometric tileset demos, and
multiple new mods in addition to base game content and features.
</p>
<p>
This cycle was started, tilting at our perennial windmill of a six to nine month release
cycle. Shortly thereafter, Covid locked down the world but not contributions to DDA! There
are many incredible changes that have entered the game and several ancient issues that
have been closed. The skill system has been greatly expanded with many new proficiencies
and many new ways to learn them, as well as the groundwork for practice-based skill
improvement, including a skill rust system that doesn't suck because it caps effective
skill loss and regenerates faster than regular skill gain. Appliance based stationary
power grids now exist. Turning vehicles now present complete walls that block out
monsters, fields and more from crossing from the outside to the inside of the vehicle. Map
memory is now unlimited, so you will no longer forget places you haven't been to recently.
Cardio has finally been modeled so that your endurance will increase if you spend your
days running and working hard or exercising. Perspiration is now modeled, your character
running around the middle of summer in full plate mail won't immediately overheat. Now
your character will perspire and thirst will increase until you are dehydrated at which
point overheating will begin. Hydrate yourselves accordingly!
</p>
<p>
In addition to the above issue/request resolving features above, there are a number of new
features that haven't necessarily been on the roadmap for a long time but came to fruition
during this experimental cycle. The amount of UI based contributions has gone through the
roof this cycle and created tons of options around how your fully customizable sidebar
looks, the color theme for your UI is also fully customizable with multiple shipped
options, along with updates and improvements to action explanations, tutorials and the
github process itself, which while not visible to people who only play the game makes a
huge difference in the quality and amount of contributions added to Cataclysm: Dark Days
Ahead. You can now passively purify water by boiling it by placing it in a fireproof
container on a fire or near an extreme heat source. A new hobby tab in character creation
allows you to choose traits and skills that go together that represent how you spent your
time before the end of the world. Monster weak points now exist, allowing your strikes to
critically hit. You can learn proficiencies that will increase your likelihood to
critically hit these weak points by researching and dissecting monsters. Speaking of
monsters, we've adjusted the aggression system so that some more intelligent monsters will
recognize whether they were attacked by another monster or the player and will remain
passive or gain hostility depending on who harmed them. A lone zombie will no longer turn
a pack of wild dogs permanently hostile to you. Finally, Effect on Condition brings a
scripting pseudo language to Cataclysm. Some of its key uses in 0.G have been the
introduction of portal storms, NPC faction development over time, the ability to take over
a follower after pc death, and random encounters in already explored maps.
</p>
<p>
During this time modders have added a half dozen new in repo mods: Innawoods for the
survival from scratch you crave, Backrooms which takes place in the neverending backrooms
dimension, Massachusetts mod for people who desire geographic accuracy, Xedra Evolved a
science fantasy mod with weird magic and vampirism, Tropicataclysm for your Cataclysm at a
warmer latitude, and the Megafauna mod which targets an ancient epoch with creatures that
outsize our modern equivalents, similar to Dinomod. In addition to this Magiclysm,
Dinomod, and Aftershock have received dozens of new PRs each to a scale that would be
equal to or larger than paid DLC for a AAA game.
</p>
<p>
We, the DDA team, have had a great time creating new content and worlds to explore and we
hope that you enjoy them and if a mood takes you, that you join us in creating more in the
future.
</p>
url:
details: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/tree/0.G-branch/data/changelog.txt
- version: "0.F Frank"
type: stable
unix-timestamp: 1625184000
description:
C: >-
<p>
After a long and anticlimactic buildup, we are pleased to
announce the release of stable version 0.F "Frank" of
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead! Like our previous stable
versions, this release features an expansive range of
bugfixes, code and content additions, and new features.
4,500 new game entities were added, 123,162 lines of source
code were inserted, and 77,727 lines were deleted.
</p>
<p>
The goal was to have a smaller and more manageable release
this cycle, which was an utter failure, as it took well over
a year and by several measures was even larger than the 0.E
cycle.
</p>
<p>
We'd overall characterize 0.F as a release with a lot of
content and polish. Compared to 0.E, you may find it a
little more difficult (the pendulum swings ever back and
forth), but we think also more rewarding.
</p>
<p>
The most obvious feature of 0.F is the addition of nested
inventory, the ability to store items in containers and
have them behave as you'd expect. This is probably the most
long awaited and highly requested feature of the past five
years of development.
</p>
<p>
Besides pockets, 0.F features the addition of achievements
for fun and bragging rights, a proficiency system to
represent more refined skill knowledge, blood loss mechanics
for you and your enemies, weariness that builds as you push
yourself to your limits, vehicles that can drive up and down
z-levels (and bridges that are above rivers, enabling more
navigable rivers, as a result), and a vast host of new
content from new monsters and evolutions to new quests and items.
</p>
<p>
On the mod side, Magiclysm, Aftershock, and Dinomod have all
grown expansively, including new artifact and enchantment
systems that have impacted content in the main game.
And much more, too much to list here.
</p>
<p>
Players coming from the last stable will notice a switch
towards encouraging looting over crafting, especially in
the early game, and will have to be cautious about
overextending themselves in the beginning of their survival
effort. As usual, you'll want to avoid getting into combat
with multiple zombies in an open area. However, you can also
have 'grab bags' of useful gear and tools, allowing you to
toss your loot sack to the floor to engage in an
unencumbered melee battle with zombies!
</p>
<p>
All in all, as usual, we're deeply excited about this new
version, and look forward to continuing to make your
survival difficult in the months to come.
</p>
<ul>
<li>Nested Containers rationalize inventory management and enable dropping and retrieving go-bags during fights.</li>
<li>Achievements track your deeds and misdeeds across games.</li>
<li>Proficiencies better represent deeper knowledge required for various endeavors, mostly crafting.</li>
<li>Bleeding added to both the player and monsters as the first step toward a more comprehensive wound and wound treatment system.</li>
<li>Weariness tracking added to represent longer-term physical exhaustion.</li>
<li>Elevated bridges over navigable rivers added, allowing better navigability while using boats.</li>
<li>Large-scale audit of weapon and armor values for better representativeness and consistency.</li>
<li>Improved armor handling by separating ballistic damage into its own damage type.</li>
<li>Pervasive performance enhancements throughout the game.</li>
<li>Tileset vehicle support for more cohesive vehicle rendering.</li>
<li>Aftershock changes direction to a total conversion mod with a new far-future setting on a frozen world.</li>
<li>Dinomod added 238 dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, and dino-related NPCs with missions and dino locations.</li>
<li>Added many dino features, including zombie, fungal, evolved, bionic, baby, and mutant dino variants.</li>
<li>Dinomod added many dino interactions, including farming, riding, butchering, cooking, and special attacks.</li>
<li>Magiclysm added a huge content update including many new traits called Attunements that switch up gameplay at the endgame.</li>
</ul>
url:
details: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/blob/0.F/data/changelog.txt
ContentRating:
oars-1.1:
violence-fantasy: intense
violence-bloodshed: intense
violence-sexual: intense
violence-desecration: intense
violence-slavery: intense
violence-worship: intense
drugs-alcohol: moderate
drugs-narcotics: moderate
drugs-tobacco: moderate
sex-nudity: intense
sex-themes: intense
sex-homosexuality: intense
sex-prostitution: intense
sex-adultery: intense
sex-appearance: intense
language-profanity: moderate
language-humor: mild
language-discrimination: intense
