Hola amigos! I stop here with the attempt at speaking spanish because my spanish is rusty at best, but luckily our magic Carlos didn't have the same problem, and now Empires in Ruins is finally localized in spanish as well! And we didn't pull any punches!
v0.98.95
Added Spanish localization
Added Gallows, Carts, Dead Horses and Haystacks to battle maps
Fixed audiobug with building towers volumes
Fixed a minor bug with the tooltips in battle
Fixed a bug that cause the leaderboard to appear only once in Campaign and Sandbox
На развалинах империй! - Russian Localization is in!
Well, I don't have much to add, I did work so many hours today that I didn't have time to add the fixes done in the while to the release notes. But I also fixed a bit more stuff too beside integrating and testing the russian localization with the help of Roman, our amazingly good translator!
Cheers and see you soon! Dr.H
25th of March 2021 - Full Release 1.0 approaching!
Yes, it's incredible, but our small team is pulling it off. Against all the odds, against all the skepticism, against all the troubles, we are now barely more than one week from the full 1.0 release of Empires in Ruins!
It's been a hell of a trip, 5 years in development and 13 months in Early access, but we are getting there for real. It sounds almost incredible to just say it, you can imagine we are super excited!
From now to release though, a few things more will appear on the game, that are currently in closed beta only. First among all, localizations! Here's the full list of languages that will be supported at release (some will probably enter the main branch even before the date, or already are in).
Italian [Already in]
German
Russian
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Chinese (Simplified) [Already in]
Japanese
Korean
There is also a couple of features more, but we don't wanna spoil them yet! Anyway, if you already played the game and liked it, it would be amazing if you could give us a review before release, it would help us immensely!
Now, without further ado, back to work, promotion doesn't promote itself, and code doesn't code itself!
See you soon! Dr.H, Lead Dev
v.0955.10 Italian localization and even more fixes and polish
We are working around the clock, for real! 12 days left to release and we are finishing the balancing, the polishing, and adding all the localizations!
Available Languages:
English
Italian
Chinese (Simplified)
In course of integration:
German
Russian
Portuguese
Spanish
French
Korean
Japanese
v.0955.10
Added Italian localization and subtitles
Added system to select towers stacked in front of each other
Added audio SFX to Throw them everything you have! cooldown ability
Add VFX to Shouting and Bullying
Increased by 10% the effect of Pocket Money cooldown ability
Finishing a campaign now unlocks all the achievements related to finishing it at lower difficulties too
Fixed a bug in the way research tiers were unlocked
Fixed that when adding to research queue close the tech details window too
Hovering buy iron adds to gold preview
Consequence cards, rescale the pic and swapped with the new visuals
Fixed a bug that caused a crashing effect if leaving and re-entering too fast an arcade map
Aligned text in the help panel for the battle maps
Fixed that closing settlement panel doesn't hide tooltip
Fixed a problem with the size of the HQ in some of the maps
Research in Arcade Mode
During the Early Access months (btw, only 20 days left), we got a few "complains" that Arcade mode, while for many the less interesting one due to the lack of the management parts, felt like it was just an afterthought and not a really independent play mode.
The main reason being the lack of a sense of progression and of a tech tree system like in the campaign and sandbox. Well well, don't say we don't listen! Here comes the full Tech Tree and Research System for the Arcade mode.
It's similar, but also has quite a few differences, if compared to the campaign and sandbox one. First of all, it's not turn based. It means that buying a research is instantaneous as long as you have Research points to spend. Points are earned through victories, the same victories unlocking the next maps too.
The first time you achieve stars in each of the Difficulties you achieve an equivalent number of research points (thankfully, each difficulty also provide the missing stars on the lower difficulties, so if you get 3 stars in Hardcore mode, you don't have to replay in easy and intermediate to unlock the other stars, and you get them right away). If you get 3 Stars in Hardcore mode, you earn a bonus Research point for the golden medal.
Cooldown abilities and Temples, that in the campaign are not handled through research, are also unlockable the same way. We did some testing already, but we would really really like to get your feedback about the new system.
Ah, we introduced a reset method for Arcade mode, in case you already had stars and wanna start scoring some research points: hold left shift + hold right shift + tap Y on your keyboard. This will reset your full arcade progress and system, and you can now start earning research points.
Ah, this you will like. We also added a new shooting mode, Flying Enemies First, it should save you a lot of pain in the more advanced maps! Remember to use it with unlocked targetting for the best results.
v0.951.30
Added Research to Arcade Mode
Added new shooting priority: Shoot flying enemy first
Added Religious buildings to Sandbox research mode
Fixed the research related to maximum available barracks per map
Fixed the Technology Armor bonus to Soldiers and Builders
Fixed the Technology bonus to faster non-tower buildings construction time
Fixed missing localizations on some time units
Fixed the missing Castle Armor bonus
Fixed a bug that stacked research bonuses multiple times in case of upgraded tier towers
Fixed a bug in which the selected shooting mode didn't show up when opening the settings menu for a tower
Fixed a glitch with the dependencies lines on the Arcade tech tree
Fixed a bug in Sandbox mode that allowed to unlock research tiers the wrong way
Fixed Surrender entry in the battle map menu
Fixed the bug that when finishing the campaign in Hardcore mode doesn't reward with the achievement
Increased the effect on Autoresolve of having alredy fought and won a full battle in a province (+5% for each 1 or 2 stars Victory, +10% for each 3 stars victory)
v920.10 Balancing, feedback and fixes
A bit of fair negative feedback is always good to give a shake to our sitting butts, isn't it? We got some, and we worked right away into converting it into positive fixes and rebalancing of the game! That, mixed with some minor bugs found and squashed, brings you a brand new update!
v0920.10
Fixes
Fixed a bug that caused an exploding enemy bomb to throw exception messages if caught during the last Battle dialog of the campaign
Fixed a bug that showed the Return to Refill function of the Bombardier in other artilleries UIs in some conditions
Fixed a bug that unlocked the wrong achievement upon ruining the relations with the Church. If you missed it because of the bug, hold the following keys A,S + K to unlock it. Don't cheat if you didn't deserve it.
Fixed a missing text on the autoresolve panel for Heimer presence
Fixed a missing icon to the Jack of All trades perk
Balancing
Increased by a default 5% the autoresolve chance for Riots
Increased the autoresolve chance for later-game provinces
Increased the impact of Scouting and Research on Autoresolve
Lowered the cost of Tier 4 Techs (by 10 research points) and Tier 5 Techs (by 15 research points)
Increased the obedience of the Governors when picking building priorities
Cheers, Dr.H
Early Diaries #13 Leaderboards
So, we promised them, we're delivering them. Empires in Ruins finally has its leaderboard. I know that it might feel a thing of vanity, but let me tell you why I wanted to implement them. The idea came for the first time, eons ago, when I was playing Anomaly, by 11bit Studios (great game btw).
Each map had its own leaderboard, and upon defeating it, you could see your ranking. I am not much into score attack or competitive games, but damn, I did replay more than a few maps, just to get into a better position. It felt kinda unexpected and silly to me, but I loved it. And so I thought, why not having them for Empires in Ruins as well? They are now available in multiple formats. In the menu screens, you get a summary leaderboards of your position among friends that own and play the game. It rotates among Campaign, Sandbox and Arcade mode (the sum of all best map results for the latter).
That said, time to brutally humiliate your friends on those boards, don't you think? For the Campaign and Sandbox, I had to insert a specific scoring system, here you have it, for clarity.
Campaign Score Calculation Per battle won >> +Battle score Per battle lost >> -1000 Per autoresolve won >> +500 Per autoresolve lost >> -500 Per event prevented >> +100 Per officer investigated with success >> +100 Per rebellion quelled in a province with success >> +100 Per chapter completed +1000 Per research unlocked +50 Per province with Rebellion below 5% at the end of the game >> +100 Per provicne with Authority or Happiness above 75% at the end of the game >> +100 Per province with Rebellion above 50% at the end of the game >> -100 Per provicne with Authority or Happiness below 30% at the end of the game >> -100 Per tribute successfully paid >> +500 Per tribute failed >> -500 Per settlment upgraded >> 100 Tributes active >> +15% total Riots active (Sandbox only) >> +15% total Easy >> 85% Intermediate >> 100% Hardcore >> 120%
Now off you trot, I have a Tech Tree for Arcade mode to implement, one new beautiful view of the Settlements for the campaign, and one month and half left of our Early Access! See you soon! Cheers, Dr.H
v0920.00
Added leaderboards for Campaign, Arcade, Sandbox and all the Arcade maps (one board per map)
Fixed a typo on research unlock tooltips in battle
Fixed a typo on the Espionage panel notification
Fixed a bug on trying to repair a deselected tower in battle
Fixed tooltips on Market UI providing the wrong amounts information (5000 instead of 100)
Fixed a bug that seemed to assign the governor to the wrong province (only in text)
Fixed a bug that occurred when using F11 feedback from research
Fixed a bug that didn't display the defaul shooting mode of a tower
0913.00 Pre-release Leaderboards
We started adding Leaderboards, but we need entries. So we need you guys to win (or lose :lunar2019grinningpig: ) some battles, play a bit of sandbox and campaign, etc. Are you gonna help us?
Fixes
Reduced tribute amount in Wood, Stone and Iron from (1200, 800, 800) to (700, 700, 700)
Make the Buy on Steam button appear only if it's a demo
Fixed a bug that could throw an exception in case of killing a Marauder during the frame it started sprinting
Fixed the impact of relations with Folks on a province stability
Fixed the positive impact of a Governor from the Folk faction on a province stability
Fixed the provicne of Schlasia that was not snowy in the main map
Leaderboard summary now goes behind new game panels
Pre-release 0.913.00 Leaderboards and testing
Hello guys, we need your help (no worries, all you have to do is to play!)
We are implementing and adding the leaderboards to the game, to all the gameplay modes, and soon one per arcade map as well. Currently, the only visible leaderboards are the Friends ones, showing you plus 2 friends. The whole engine to show them all is ready, but we can't add test entries to validate the system, so we need first you guys to play a bit, score some points (Arcade, Campaign, Sandbox) and let us know if there is any bug or any problem. Do that, and in a couple of days we will have the full leaderboards, with full ranks, various maps, etc.
We are pushing the test build (after some testing) direcly on the main branch, so that it's gonna be no hassle at all for you guys to test it and we will get as much data as possible in the shorter time!
Like I said, any problem you might have, just hit F11 and send a bug report, and it will be fixed ASAP!
Cheers, Dr.H
Fixes
Reduced tribute amount in Wood, Stone and Iron from (1200, 800, 800) to (700, 700, 700)
Make the Buy on Steam button appear only if it's a demo
Fixed a bug that could throw an exception in case of killing a Marauder during the frame it started sprinting
Fixed the impact of relations with Folks on a province stability
Fixed the positive impact of a Governor from the Folk faction on a province stability
Fixed the provicne of Schlasia that was not snowy in the main map
Leaderboard summary now goes behind new game panels
Early Dev Diaries #12 Research Queue
I remember well one complain that while "minor" was mentioned a lot of times, specially in the first few months of review. At first it did sound a bit weird to be honest, then I understood. The aforementioned complain was "it's weird to have a loading screen to open the research screen". I gotta admit, I didn't understand why it was that weird.
At that time, it was possible to set for research one technology at time though, that meant that specially if you had a good research points output and you were researching cheap techs, you might have had to go back and forth to the the Research screen quite a few times. Once every 2-3 turns maybe. Oh well, then I can understand why the loading panel might get in the way. The research screen is on a separate scene for performance reasons, too long to explain, but let's say that this way, the game is a lot more robust and optimized in terms of RAM above all.
But how to solve that problem? Well, the answer is simple. Don't have the player have to go back to research that often, so what better than a queue in which to enqueue several researches to so minimize the trips to the engineer? It took as while because we had a lot higher priority tasks set, but now you finally get your well deserved research queue!
It has 5 slots (plus the slot of the currently researched tech, so 6 in total), it warns you in the main campaign screen when it's empty, it does display a preview in the same screen (just hover the Tech icon on the lower bar) and allows you to add and remove elements at your pleasure. What more could you ask for from a Research Queue?
That said, now back to work, next we get started with th-
Anyway, also quite a few fixes.
v0.910.00
Added Research Queue with up to 5 slots
Fixed a bug that didn't show correctly negative % modifiers in research
Iron Discipline icon was upside down
Fixed a bug with persistence of part of the points already spent in one research upon cancelling it
Reduced the occurrence of Megler's random dialogs
Added sounds to Research UI interactions
Addes missing sounds to Main Menu interactions
Fixed a TimeZone exception in Arcade mode when the user has no TimeZone set on their computer
Fixed a bug that showed chapter lines also in sandbox mode in Research
Fixed localized text with the right numbers for Failed Tributes that lead to defeat
Fixed a bug that prevented panning of the camera with ultrawide or unusual resolutions
Research notification now only shown in case of empty queue
