Black Forest
Dev Livestream Today
There will be exclusive information, things you see here and only here for the first time, and an opportunity to chat with me and ask questions.
To watch and check your local time, visit my Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/blackforestdev/schedule
Balance Updates and Threat Level Increase
- Options Menu now also has a close button.
- Balance: Smithy now needs a smith assigned to function.
- Balance: Gathering now has reduced efficiency when you send lots of people the same day
- Balance: To compensate for depletion, initial gains for food and wood gathering are slightly increased.
- Balance: Multiple manned towers now have a slightly increased gather bonus
- Reverted status display back to icons, as nobody said that they are fans of the flags, and the icons are more clear and versatile
- Peasants can get attacked by wild animals while in the forest now. The chance is quite small, and they will usually escape with some injury.
- Monsters should now completely miss the village less often.
Some usability updates
- Zoom speed (mouse scrollwheel) is now configurable.
- You can now speed up and slow down the game with the + and - keys on your keyboard.
- Peasant Info and Log Window now have close buttons
- Event log now much cleaner as gather results are reported in accumulated form.
- Re-enabled Apple Silicon (M1) support.
- Updated Unity engine and Steam integration library.
Devlog: Future Developments
I'm working hard on making more and more interesting enemies. The "wolf-rockets" as someone called them are just the first step. Harpies are already more refined as are the kobolds, which use actual pathfinding to go through holes in your defenses.
I want a good number of different creatures which work in different ways, and when there's a good selection, then maps can have only a subset. So on one map you need to focus on those creatures and that means you need these kinds of defenses. Anything to reward strategy and thought.
This is also the requirement to start developing the story mode of the game.
Some of the next buildings will also bring more automation, at the cost of semi-permanently assigning workforce. I also watch every stream and video of the game that I can find, checking on how you play, what features you don't spot, which parts are frustrating, and adapting the game to address those issues.
All of these things are there to make the game more interesting, more challenging and to give different experiences to different maps. The old "Test Village" is where I throw most things in just to test them, but other maps will get their individual flavour. Already Endraville plays very different from the other maps and this will continue. I won't be adding a new map in the next few updates, but I have a few plans for some very interesting new maps that will come soon. One is the mountain map which will be boxed in by cliffs on two sides, so that attacks come not from all around - you will need a more concentrated defense there. I also plan to have attacks in waves on some maps - where many nights are quite calm and you have several days to rebuild what's left after the nights with very intense attacks.
So those are some thoughts for the near future. Stay tuned, check the update news, and see you in-game.
Hide, the night terrors are here...
- New monster: Harpy - a flying critter hungry for fresh human meat
- Balance: Increased cost of palisade
- Balance: Slightly decreased the speed of wheat harvest, assigning more than one person is now worth it
- Peasants now start the game at full health. I thought it more realistic if they aren't 100% fit, but it seems to confuse people and they think there's a deeper reason.
- Fireflies now have slighly different colours for different creatures
- More variety and colours in villager models
- Temporarily disabled Apple Silicon (M1 etc.) support so that macOS Intel works, waiting for a bugfix from upstream to re-enable it.
- Lumberjack and other workshops with assigned workers now display in the context menu how many work slots are filled
- Lumberjack (and soon other mannable buildings) now shows a status icon when nobody is assigned to it
small bag of fixes
- Fixed: random cloud effects when placing fences no longer showing up
- Fixed: Can no longer assign workers to a destroyed lumberjack
- Fixed: Village name displaying correctly again
- Balance: Karenfang end-game made slightly more challenging
Leaderboards
- New: Leaderboards are here - compare yourself to other players and see how they are doing.
- Fixed: Smithy can no longer have workers assigned (they don't do anything anyway)
- Considerable re-write of Steam integration and some backend code handling - this might add new bugs, so let me know if something breaks that used to work.
- Slightly improved fireflies, and added them to kobolds/goblins, too.
Hotfix: Monster Wall Glitch (plus slow option)
- Fixed: Monsters should no longer be glitching through walls.
- New gameplay option (check options menu) to automatically set the game speed to "slow" whenever peasants become available for work again.
Stone walls are here - and some bugfixes
- New building: Stone walls - finally something that will stand up to the large monsters
- New monster: Goblin throwers (only on the test map, and they're not fully functional yet, just a preview)
- Fixed: Several buildings were wrongly considered living spaces (lumberjack, church, etc.)
- Fixed: Clicking on peasant names in peasant list now shows their home again
- Fixed: Housing (peasants moving to empty homes) should now work properly
- Balance: Raised starting resources on Endraville (hard)
- Improved sound handling (you mostly won't notice, but it's more consistent and easier for me to code)
- Known bug: On fast speed, wolves can glitch through walls. I'm working on it.
My rate of updates has slowed down somewhat because I'm working on smarter and more interesting monsters and it's a complex thing. It will be a while before there's something I can push online seriously. There are some goblins for your enjoyment on the test map.
Back in Early Access
Sorry for the confusion and all. You all see how much is still in progress.