- Fix bug with tutorial panel not going away.
- Fix bug with crafting level always showing as 0.
- Improved job selection panel to hide jobs which can't be done.
Embark
Update 0.751
Update 0.75
New Research System
Research in the old system didn't seem meaningful enough. You just built a research building, set people to it, and just ignored it as stuff got unlocked one by one. Often times the reward for each research unlock was also not meaningful.
With the new research system, research is represented by Knowledge in each of the skills in the game. Each skill has 25 levels of knowledge. Each piece of knowledge can exist in the mind of a colonist, or as a book in your research library. Knowledge is added to the practical skill of the colonist for skill checks.
There are 3 ways to gain new knowledge. Firstly, researchers will wander around and think about it. Providing them with paper increases the speed. This is the slowest way and will take painfully long for the higher levels.
Secondly, workers have a chance to gain knowledge when they gain experience for that skill. Researchers can interview them to learn about that knowledge at a much faster rate.
Thirdly, some items which are crafted or traded for can be studied to gain knowledge of a related skill. Items which are bought from other factions have a higher chance of being useful in this way.
After your researchers have gathered enough information about a knowledge, they will write it down into a book, which is stored in a bookshelf. This will unlock the related buildings. Colonists can also read the book to gain that knowledge. Be careful to store your books somewhere safe. Fire will be coming in update 0.8 :)
This new research system is quite a major change, any feedback on it is much appreciated! The balance and pacing of it will need to be tweaked. Also there are plans to expand the knowledge system to cover other parts of the game, like faction interaction.
Item and Building Strength System
For more details on the new Item UI and strength calculations see the previous update post.
This has also greatly changed the balancing for combat. The harder to research weapons should be more powerful now.
End game buildings
A first draft of the end game buildings and the models are in the game. I will go into more detail in a future post, but the general idea is that it is a long term goal to work towards. Artifacts must be found and a large production base is be needed to successfully complete the project.
Building System Overhaul
The logic for buildings has been improved. Should make things easier to mod and new buildings easier to add in the future. New workshops have also been added to replace the old building upgrade system.
The UI for the building placement menus has also been improved.
Other Changes
- Updated tutorial and improved it slightly.
- Fixed floating halberd in corner of map.
- Fixed event timer not stopping when game is paused.
Known bugs
- Some faction parties are still not going home.
- Babies can get stuck with hauling turned on.
- Notification windows can break until the game is restarted. Unable to replicate this, any information on how is much appreciated.
Item System Overhaul
Material Strength
All material types in Embark have a material strength stat. This will remain the same. The difference will be how this stat is used. Previously it was used as one of the factors in determining item strength, but the way the total was calculated was hidden and too obtuse.
The new system will simply calculate the item strength value by using the material strength modified by the quality. 0 quality gives the base material strength and 100 quality triples the material strength.
Processed Materials
Processed materials like planks, blocks, and ingots will have the same strength values as their raw material counter parts. So a pine log and a pine plank of the same quality will have the same strength, but the quality roll for making the processed material will be added to the raw material, so the raw material quality is still important.
Combined Items
Items which are made by combining several materials will use the sum of their component strengths. Their quality will modify the total. So legendary items can have 3 x 3 or 9 times the strength of the base material.
Weapons
The final item strength is simply added to character strength to get the final damage. The weapons are also differentiated more with different attack speeds. Because the item strength is the sum of the components, the larger, harder to research and make items will be much more powerful now.
Buildings
All buildings now have an Ideal Strength and Difficulty Strength. A number of new buildings are planned, and will be the subject of another post. Buildings will also have the bonus they provide as a stat. This will replace the old building upgrade system. For example the bed is split into a normal bed and fancy bed. The fancy bed has a higher Ideal Strength but will provide a bigger bonus at 100% strength than the normal bed.
Ideal Strength
The Ideal Strength is simply the final item strength required to have a building which gives 100% of its bonuses.
Difficulty Strength
The difficulty strength is the strength required for construction to have a 100% success rate. The early game buildings will not have a difficulty strength, but the mid and late game buildings will have progressively higher difficulty strengths. Failing construction means the loss of all items used.
A number of advanced items will also have a difficulty strength. The difficulty strength is only used during the creation of the item/building and has no other effect.
Replacing the old system where one could provide a bonus to item quality by using more materials, difficulty strength can be purposely added to provide a bonus to quality.
Special Cases
There are still some special cases. Blunt weapons will still use the density stat instead of material strength. Tools have an Ideal Strength but also have a base value as a bonus. The other item attributes like value, weight, and space remain the same.
Update 0.708
- Fixed crash caused by notifications with invalid creatures.
- Adjusted strength of "large siege" event.
- Tweaked priority for sleeping on beds, should stop them from sleeping on the floor when there are free beds.
- Colonists should no longer go for a swim in too hot or cold water.
Update 0.707
- Fix for broken save game issue.
- Improvements to faction attacking AI, should help with AI squads getting stuck.
Will do some posts on short term plans are soon.
Update 0.703 / 0.704
Fixed not being able to rescue unconscious but not injured colonists.
Fixed writing job.
Fixed taming priority.
Known issue with colonists sometimes going unconscious for no reason. if anyone catches them before they fall unconscious please let me know, thanks!
0.704
Fixed issue with notifications when loading a save from inside the game.
Fixed crash when killing really old creatures.
Fixed and improved taming job.
Update 0.7
Art changes
New character models. Let us know what you think about them!
New customization system for colonists, different facial features, facial hair, eye, hair, and skin colours.
New Toddler model.
New models for artifacts.
Improvements to terrain textures.
Tweaks to graphical settings to make things look more cohesive.
Pathing
Improved combat pathing, characters should no longer run back and forth while trying to fight each other.
Improvements to archer pathing.
Improved efficiency of job system, game should be able to handle more colonists now.
Factions
Changed the way factions spawn, they should spawn into territories now instead of randomly around the map. Factions also own and produce items which can be stolen or traded for.
Added a new faction panel with options to initiate trade and more with factions.
Events
Before events used to be completely random, a map could have enemies attacking within the first week or no attacks during the whole year. The new system should make things less random, with some events tied to your colony's wealth, but other events will still happen regardless of how well you are doing. Each faction on the map will also interact with you on their own timer.
New social events, hold feasts and weddings, colonists can also get into fights.
Made the rate of social events independant of number of colonists.
With the new system in place, the next few patches will focus on adjusting and fixing the balance and pacing of the events and factions.
Bug Fixes
Overhauled item reservation system to fix issue with items getting stuck in reserved state.
Many other small bug fixes.
Progress on update 0.7
A common feedback has been that the current colonist models look creepy. The update will also bring all new character models from artist Ruiqing. With a new system to randomize facial features, so that every colonist will look different.
Once again, sorry for the long overdue update, it should be out in the next 1-2 weeks.
Update 0.656
- Fix to prevent cave plants from spreading like crazy above ground.
- Fixed colonists not using 100 quality legendary items.
- Fix for potential cause of out of memory crash to desktop.
- Added an exception log to debug panel so that mods can be more easily debugged.
This week Embark's workshop saw the first 2 UI Mods from user Kailen_. Really exciting to see!
We have a Heatmap / Temperature Overlay mod which beat us to the punch, and a nifty Villager UI mod. Also available in the workshop currently are various balance mods.
Update 0.653 / 0.654 / 0.655
- Fixed uploading of save games to the workshop. Show off your bases by uploading them to the Steam Workshop in the load game menu.
- Improved the job assignment panel. The order of which colonists are displayed there and in shortcut panel with the portraits is now saved. New colonists will be placed later in order by default. You can rearrange them by clicking and dragging their names in the job assignment panel.
- Clicking on colonist names in the job assignment panel now zooms the camera to them.
0.654
- Fix for crash related to items.
- Fixed arrow model rotation.
0.655
- Fixes for build wall order. Colonists should be less likely to get stuck building walls now. Ordering for building walls partially in water should be better also.
- Fixed build wall order not combining properly sometimes.
- Fixes for dig order.
- Tweaked texture of "unknown" terrain.
- Proper crash handling in main menu.
- Fix for hunting tool "untaming" tamed animals.