Not everything I'm working on becomes immediately visible in the game. Some things just take a long time to work on. (cough, mercenaries, cough)
One thing I've been working on for a while and am somewhat close to figuring out is dynamic paths. The following screenshot does not look spectacular:
...until I tell you that only the main village path near the right edge of the screen was placed by me during the level development. All the paths connecting the houses to each other and to the main path are dynamically calculated and placed when the house is built.
They connect to each other, wind around other buildings, arc naturally, clear grass and other vegetation in their way and eventually end at a larger road organically.
I still need to test these in larger amounts and make optimizations, figure out edge cases and other stuff, but I've wanted this for a long time, to make the villages look more real.
Oh yes, and these roads will also disappear again when the house is demolished or destroyed.
Quality of Life Update
It's been a while, and I'm starting slowly, so here's mostly bugfixes and small things such as balance changes:
Major rebalance of difficulty levels - easy should be a bit easier now, hard a bit harder and doomed somewhat more hard
Fixed: Several text errors
Fixed: Animal pen fences and pathfinding - animals should no longer wander outside of their pens
Fixed: Mill now correctly in the manual (on the page about fields)
Fixed: Peasant log wrapping of long lines
Fixed: Animal pens no longer show collection icons (milk, eggs, meat) when they are destroyed
Fixed: A small error in victory calculations that also caused the victory sound to be played twice
Fixed: Idle peasants now heal properly
For most buildings, you can now click on the status icons (damaged, harvest ready, etc.) to open the context menu
Updated a number of assets and tools
Quick Winter Update
Updated Unity 3D engine (to 2021.3.16) and many packages and assets
New decoration object on the winter maps.
Experimental fix for cows escaping from cow pens. Please have an eye on them and let me know if it works, so I can apply it to the other animal pens as well.
Quick Patch
Patching a few important bugs and adding a new level for teaser testing:
Fixed: Antoburg vegetation should show up properly again
Fixed: Startup error on Antoburg map for some quality settings
Fixed: Voices volume control should now work for everyone
"Betrayl" DLC Story first glance available now (just 5 days)
small "broken finger" patch
If you read the forums you know that I've got a broken finger right now and can't type or code well. So this is a small update, but know that I continue working on the game.
Fixed: Positions of damaged and destroyed icons on the two stone house types
Fixed: Building Stone Mason quest in Children's Tales now resolves if you built a stone mason before
Voiceovers now have a slider in options to control their volume
Updated Unity 3D engine version to 2021.3.15
More work on the DLC Story "Betrayl" - but not yet ready for release
New Sandbox Level, Bugfixes, Improvements
New level: Mountain Village sandbox (with Content DLC)
Fixed: Manor repair quest in "Darkest Nights" should now complete properly.
Fixed a few minor text bugs in story conversations.
Fixed some vegetation render issues on Kroburg
Fixed: No fishery on Swinvale anymore (no river or lake)
Balance: Slightly reduced milk amount in goat pens (now that cow pens exist)
Updated Unity 3D engine version to 2021.3.13
Increased pathfinding accuracy and resolution
Opening gather dialog now cancels construction
Added puddles and streams to Mountain Village
Updated a few level descriptions
Preparations for two new defensive buildings (guard post and balista)
Cleaned out a few no longer used assets
Small Update
Fixed: Shader/texture issue with some house roofs
Added more voiceover dialog to Children's Tales (first part now has audio throughout)
Reduced wander distance on animals, so they don't go out of the pen so often
Also added fence borders on animal pens, as well to stop animals from wandering outside
Monsters now spawn a bit later in the night, for better dramatic tension and to give peasants more time to get home
Minor text updates
fixed some more bugs for you:
Fixed: Peasants no longer water fields in winter (except for winter crops)
Fixed: Proper snow on all buildings again on winter maps
Fixed: Correct animation for collecting eggs
Improved dialogs a little bit
Improved water rendering on Antoburg and Neudorf
Trying out different animal icons (again)
Removed Halloween decorations
Updates and Experimental Voiceovers (please post feedback)
Fixed: Correct job descriptions for workers building houses
Fixed: Should no longer consider dead peasants as injured for the in-game hint system
Fixed: Graveyard should no longer be destroyable, not even by dragon fire
Added voiceovers to the first few dialogs in "Children's Tales" - please let me know what you think of them so I know if it's worth the effort (and money) to create more for the remaining dialogs.
Balance: Improved monster attack balance on Calm Village map
Updated Unity engine to latest LTS version (2021.3.12)
Improved many texts in the manual
Idle peasants now get a very small healing bonus
Reduced size of some icons in the game UI
Reduced water emitters on Swinvale map
Big Bunch of Bugfixes
Fixed: Animals wandering outside their pens (again, hopefully this time it'll stick)
Fixed: Tracks and fireflies for the new monster
Fixed: Cabbage correctly grows in winter again
Fixed: "don't show again" now actually saves and doesn't show again
Fixed a few small vegetation rendering issues
Fixed a few minor code issues
Fixed a couple minor dialog texts
Fixed: "Children's Tales" now correctly enables the Stone Hut
Balance: Some balance improvements for the new maps
Balance: Increased the AoE effect of the burning pile
