Aprone's Castaways 2 - v2.8e (single-player edition)
=====================================================

This is the stand-alone single-player release of Castaways 2.  Everything runs
locally on your own computer - there is no login, no chat, no server, and no
monthly kingdom race.  The old online marketplace is now a local shop, and the
multi-plot "territory" play (settling, travelling, and shipping carts between
plots you own) that used to be server-only is fully included here.

New in this edition: rival settlers you can compete against and go to war with,
a graphics zoom for low-vision players, an automatic backup save, a save-game
picker, and a story/stage schedule that follows your own play time.


Update - v2.8e (31 July 2026)
-----------------------------
Fixed: choosing "Send supplies to another land" from the all-jobs list (the
Space key) sent the cart off empty.  It never asked where to send it or what
to load, so a worker, a cart and a horse were tied up for ten minutes to ship
nothing.  Only the job list you get by pressing Enter on a tile asked the
questions.  Both lists now ask, and the same is true of settling a new plot:
from the all-jobs list it used to skip the name prompt and name the land for
you.

Fixed: a job could inherit leftover details from an older, finished job that
had used the same task slot.  In the worst case a cart delivered the previous
cart's load a second time, creating goods out of nothing, and a new plot could
end up named after whatever an earlier cart had carried.

Fixed: the game now remembers your speech rate.  If you use SAPI, the rate you
set with Page Up and Page Down was being saved but not applied when the game
started, so it had to be set again every session.

Update - v2.8d (30 July 2026)
-----------------------------
New: the four stage stories are now available in single player.  While a game
is loaded, the main menu has a "Story" option at the bottom.  Multiplayer
always offered these; single player did not, even though the recordings were
already in your sounds folder.  Each story unlocks when you reach its stage,
so the list grows as your settlement does - the introduction from the start,
then one more at roughly 22 hours, 37 hours, and 45 hours of play.

Also new: the M key opens the marketplace directly from the map.  Shift+`
still works exactly as before, so nothing you already do has changed - M is
just faster.  There is also a new "Lumber" cheat code.

Two smaller corrections: the Axe, Hammer and Shovel cheats said they were
giving you 2 when they were really giving you 10 (they now say 10 - the
amount you receive has not changed), and the quest "Stocking ships (meat)"
now asks for 2 raw mutton instead of 10, since raw mutton is the one item in
it with no job that produces it.

This build also fixes three crashes that players ran into:

  - Braiding twine closed the game instead of finishing the job.  The same
    fault affected 74 of the 279 jobs, including building a house, chopping
    firewood, cutting lumber, and every "sell to the kingdom" job.
  - Pressing the left arrow on any mining job, to hear what it needs, closed
    the game.
  - Leaving the game sitting for a while and then pressing Escape could close
    it if you use a screen reader.

If a problem does slip through in future, the game now writes the details to
crashlog.txt, tells you once, and keeps playing instead of shutting down.


Getting started
---------------
Run Castaways2.exe.  Everything you need is in this folder.  Your saved games,
settings, and (optional) language file live right next to the exe.

When you start a new game you pick two perks and a fault, and then choose how
many RIVAL SETTLERS share your world:

    No rival settlers ............ a quiet world, exactly like playing solo
    One easygoing rival settler .. a neighbour who farms and trades, never fights
    Two rival settlers ........... one of them will raid you if you leave
                                   yourself open
    Three rival settlers, one of
      them serious ............... a serious neighbour who expands and raids
    A busy season: five rival
      settlers ................... a crowded, noisy world

Rivals run real settlements on their own plots.  They clear land, build houses,
hire workers, mine, sell goods in the marketplace, buy from YOUR store, donate
to the kingdom, settle new plots, and - once they have a barracks and a soldier
- send raids against unprotected lands, including each other's.  They play by
exactly the same rules you do: the same jobs, the same costs, the same dice.
They cannot see anything you cannot, and they get no free resources.

Rivals only act while you are playing.  Nobody gets ahead while you are away.


Keys
----
- Tab cycles screen reader options (SAPI -> NVDA -> JAWS).  Window-Eyes support
  has been removed.
- End cycles voiced menu options.
- Arrows move you around your 10x10 plot of land.
- 1 through 0 quickly adjust your X coordinate.
- Shift plus 1 through 0 quickly adjust your Y coordinate.
- Shift Up and Shift Down move you between surface and underground view.
- ` (grave) jumps you back to your storehouse (basically the center of the map).
- ` (grave) jumps you back to your mine exit, when used underground.
- M opens the marketplace, a local shop where you buy goods for coins.
- Shift ` (grave) also reaches the marketplace, the older way: it opens a box
  where you can type a cheat code (see the list below), and leaving that box
  blank opens the marketplace instead.  M is simply the quicker route to the
  same shop.
- Plus and Minus (main row or keypad) zoom the graphics in and out, for
  low-vision players.  Zoom stays where you set it between sessions.
- P opens your travel menu, letting you switch between the plots of land you own.
- Z lists your population.
- X lists any free workers (each task needs 1 worker, and some need 2 if they
  specifically say so).
- C lists how many coins you have.  You spend these at the storehouse, and in
  other places too.
- V lists your food energy.  Each task requires 1 food energy, so if you run
  out, you can't perform any new tasks.
- Shift+V permanently converts food items into food energy.
- T lists your current ongoing tasks.
- Q lists your current game quests.
- Page up and page down adjust sapi rate.
- Shift plus Page up and page down adjust music volume.
- < > brackets move you through the history.
- I lists your inventory.
- Enter brings up a list of all jobs you can currently do, based on the piece of
  land you have selected.
- Space brings up a list of absolutely all jobs, even if you can't do them yet.
- Left arrow (when viewing jobs) tells you what the job requires in order to do it.
- Right arrow (when viewing jobs) tells you what completing the job will give you.
- In most menus, typing a few letters narrows the results to only what contains
  what you typed.
- Backspace clears your current menu search.
- Escape gets you out of most menus, or opens the main menu from in-game.
- W lists all (if any) water tiles you have on your lands.
- H lists all (if any) bee hives you have on your lands.
- A lists all (if any) apple trees you have on your lands.
- B lists all buildings you have on your lands.
- R lists all tiles that are currently ready to be harvested (in one way or another).
- L lists all tiles that are forms of livestock.
- Home cycles between graphic modes.
- D lists all defensive tiles.
- M lists your military units.
- G lists any goblins on your lands.
- S tells your current score, and where you stand against your rivals.  In
  single-player this is a persistent lifetime score saved with your game -
  there is no monthly reset.
- Shift+S converts coins into a higher score.
- Ctrl quickly stops any text that is currently being read by the screen reader.
- O lists all exposed ores (if any) you have under your lands.
- G lists all exposed gems (if any) you have under your lands.
- Shift plus P tells you how many more jobs you can perform before your starting
  protection wears off.


Saving and loading
------------------
Save game and Load game are on the main menu (Escape).  Loading now shows you a
LIST of your saved games, newest first, with the date each was saved - arrow to
the one you want and press Enter.  Press T if you would rather type a name.

You can keep as many separate adventures as you like; each save is its own
world with its own score, quests, and progress.

The game also keeps an automatic backup called "lastsave".  It is written
quietly every ten minutes, when you exit, and when you close the window.  If
the game ever crashes or you forget to save, load "lastsave" and you will lose
at most ten minutes.


War
---
Once you have a barracks and a trained pikeman or knight, the "Send a pikeman
to rob your rivals" jobs will ask which rival land you want to hit.  Your
soldier rolls through ten (or fifteen) of their tiles, steals from any
buildings he reaches, and comes home - unless their defenses stop him.

Guard towers and military camps kill raiders.  Stone walls turn them back.  A
castle kills the raider AND keeps his armour and weapon.  Saboteurs do not
steal; they salt fields into wasteland.

Attacking somebody ends your own starting protection, and protected lands
cannot be attacked at all.  Your starting protection also wears off after 500
completed jobs, so build your defenses before that day arrives.  Your rivals
live under exactly the same rules.


Multiple plots
--------------
Once you are established you can settle a new plot of land (through the job list),
travel between the plots you own with the P menu, and use carts to ship items
from one of your plots to another.  All of your owned plots keep growing over
time, not just the one you are currently viewing.


The passage of time
-------------------
The kingdom moves through seven stages, unlocking new jobs as it goes (the
factory and steam eras arrive at stages 4 and 6).  On the old server this was
tied to the calendar month.  Here it follows YOUR play time instead: roughly
seven and a half hours of play per stage, reaching the final stage after about
forty-five hours.  Each stage is saved with that adventure and never goes
backwards.  The stage stories play as you cross into stages 4, 6 and 7.


Story
-----
This game takes place during the timeframe of mission 6 in Castaways.  That
might seem a little odd, but Castaways originally ended with mission 5.  I went
back and added missions 6 and 7 to bridge the gap between Castaways 1 and my
original plan for Castaways 2.


Tips
----
1) Start out by collecting long grass, sticks, and rocks.  Weave the
   grass/straw into twine and it lets you make tools.
2) Building a house is good because it lets you buy/breed additional people.
   Multi-tasking more jobs is way nicer than doing them only 2 at a time.
3) To get food going, from the storehouse you can buy a random food crop, cash
   crop, or livestock.  I recommend food crop so you have some source of food
   coming in, unless you are lucky enough to have a handful of apple trees on
   your land.
4) To get more money coming in, you need to dig up precious metals.  Building a
   mine lets you access the underground layer of the map.
5) I recommend browsing through the total job list (space bar).  Find one that
   looks interesting and see what it requires and gives by using the left and
   right arrows.
6) If you are playing with rivals, keep an eye on the standings with S, and
   remember that a guard tower is much cheaper than replacing a knight.


Cheats for testing purposes (single-player)
-------------------------------------------
Press Shift+`(grave) to open the box, then type any of the following commands:
Money
Twine
Sticks
Rocks
Clay
Lumber
Axe
Hammer
Shovel


Reporting problems
------------------
If something goes wrong, look for crashlog.txt and debuglog.txt next to
Castaways2.exe and send them along with a description of what you were doing.
