FreeHolder
FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 5
4.1.2022
April Fools! FreeHolder is still alive. Get it? Because y'all thought it was dead?
It was funnier in my head. Still, they say good things are worth waiting for. I intend to test that truism to the utmost.
Changes
-Recipes now display nutrition on resource level
-Descriptions of pick and hammer now clearly state whether they are for stone or ore.
Bugfixes
-Gather Firewood no longer treated as construction action w/o Adaptation
-Explorer and treasure map mechanics are now working properly.
-Frostbite no longer occurs with 0 heat need using upgraded buildings and clothing.
Developer Notes
So, after several false starts coming up with a plan for the mid/end game, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that I was
Doing It All Wrong.
I was seemingly turning FreeHolder into some kind of 4X game, and although I am now extremely intrigued by the idea of a Roguelike 4X, there are enough genres stuffed into this game already without adding another, and it must be said, a genre which almost runs contrary to the concept of a Roguelike because limited information (the hallmark of Roguelikes) is unacceptable when trying to plan grand strategy.
So we're going back to basics and delivering a mid-game that gives you more of everything you liked from the first part of the game, greater challenges, greater rewards, more balls to juggle but keeping it at the level of roguelike survival. Too many top down menus, too much abstract resource management, too many damn facts and systems to memorize, these were the signs of development that had lost sight of what FreeHolder is supposed to be about. It should be close the the bone.
This will also have the added advantage of being much less demanding of resources and time for me personally to write the thing, bringing it to a satisfying and appropriate conclusion without hitting the wall of trying to superimpose a 4X game on top of existing systems. None of you, I assure you, want me to actually try to design faction AI. I will fake it, GM-style, using a system of clever algorithms, and we will all be MUCH happier.
More specific design elements will be forthcoming. For now, I will be fixing bugs, cleaning things up, and getting my hand back in so that when the 2nd part design coalesces soon I will be ready to start construction.
Onward, friends.
And my apologies to those of you that were, like I was for a long time, looking forward to the top-down 4x superimpositions. My love of old-school Heroes of Might and Magic might have colored that whole phase a bit much.
I'm Back. Again.
It’s been a long time. Far too long. I don’t like it at all. But unfortunately it has been necessary to take a massive hiatus from working on the game, again, in order to deal with what are ultimately my primary responsibilities to my family and our general situation. I’m overjoyed to say that, despite all the current madness in the world that has sapped everyone’s mental if not physical health, my wife and I have welcomed a beautiful new baby girl into the world.
But this wonderful occurrence has brought with it a thousand additional things that needed to be dealt with, and many of them were down to me. We have had to move again because of our eternal problems with landlords but we have made a permanent move where we will not be hassled by these issues again. I am quite relieved and am looking forward to a future of peace and consolidating my slowly increasing free time into finally pushing this long-languishing project to its final completion.
To be clear: I am not interested in slapping a fresh coat of paint on FreeHolder and calling it done. I’m not interested in shoving a bunch of half-baked ideas into the game and calling it innovative. We have all waited too long and put too much faith into FreeHolder for it to be treated with anything than the utmost respect and diligence at this point. It’s going to be done right or it’s not going to be done at all. In other words, it’s going to be done right, whatever it takes and however long it takes. “Done for the sake of being done” is not something I care about when it comes to this project.
I’ve created a genuine framework for mid-game and I am currently working on it. It’s a lot of moving parts that cannot be slowly updated piecemeal. This framework has to be working together, even in the most meager way, for an update to be possible and worthwhile. So I can tell you for sure it is coming. But I cannot tell you when. I’d love to give you a concrete date but it’s impossible and I am not going to be making any empty promises. Once this next major update comes, a regular and predictable update schedule will be possible, and I will be able to make regular additions to the extant system. I’m tired of making little tweaks and bug fixes. There will be time enough for that later. FreeHolder needs a major push and it’s going to get it.
I am excited for the future of the game and your input on these new systems. I am truly sorry that this thing has taken so long, and I understand completely that your patience may be at an end. But all I can say is, out of respect for your investment of time and resources in my dream, I must do what it takes to reciprocate that, whatever the cost. Thank you for believing in FreeHolder.
Chris
FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 4
5.31.2020
See dev notes below, if you're interested.
PLEASE NOTE
***Please note with the changes to map data from altering how bandits function, existing savegames will probably break. Unless you want to see some map tile weirdness for the sake of it, please purge your old save files. Due to the way that saving works in FreeHolder, this sort of thing is unfortunately unavoidable, at least for now.***
New Features
-Town Stability. New system is a replacement of old "bandit activity level." Also gives certain bonuses to town. See dev notes for more details.
-Bandit Camps. In towns with very low stability, Bandit Camps appear and must be discovered and destroyed to allow stability to rise again. See dev notes for more details.
-Militia Activity. In dire circumstances, the towns militia may act independently to defeat bandits and increase stability.
-Raid action. Upon discovery of a bandit camp, you may launch a concerted attack to drive them off and greatly increase stability.
Changes
-Patrol has become Join Patrol. Now some town militia members will accompany you when fighting in patrol battles. You may assign them however you wish to the battle formation, and control them as if they were mercenaries.
-Town reputation increase from bandit battles is now determined by "assist XP system" and no longer random.
-"Encounter table" now determines what bandits are fought based on stability level of town
-Failure to defeat a patrol or camp no longer increases bandit activity (i.e. does not lower stability)
-Assaulting to take over a town has been temporarily removed (it will be back in a new, more realistic form with factions later)
Developer Notes
Bandits, Order, and Stability
In preparation for mid and late game systems, and also because it is just badly in need of an overhaul, I have replaced the old, numerical (though the numbers were hidden) system of bandit activity with a specifically tiered system of town stability, which will determine how likely you are to face bandit groups, and an "encounter table" determining which specific enemies you will face based on this, plus a random die roll determining whether you rolled the common, uncommon, and rare type (rarer is stronger).
Each tier has a chance of getting worse based on the size of town - generally towns and cities are more attractive to bandits, as they have greater resources to steal. In addition, towns do have a chance of taking militia action and increasing stability themselves, this is more likely with hilltowns and cities, who have stronger and more active militias, and will only be done when stability is at minimum or near minimum. But this does mean towns are not guaranteed to simply collapse into chaos if you do not choose to engage bandits in your playthrough.
The "town stability" has an upside as well - more peaceful towns with very low bandit activity will send more goods to the market, including a special bonus good at maximum stability, referred to as "Prosperous" status. On the downside, particularly chaotic towns will send less and then no goods to the market. Please note that the special bonus good for some towns is a placeholder until a few more things are implemented in the game, including olive orchards, vineyards, oil and wine presses, and bricks. The "prosperous" good will be a placeholder until then, usually something useful and not native to that town type (stone from timbercraft towns, for example).
Of particular note now is that "Patrol" has become "Join Patrol," and you will now accompany the town's militia (or a part of it) in patrolling the tile for bandits. This has the tremendous benefit of having the assistance of other units when trying to train up Kaius or Lydia into a fighter without risking their health so much. As long as stability is not too low, a successful patrol combat will always increase the stability of the town by one tier.
However, of particular note is the existence of Bandit Camps with the two lowest levels of stability, Unruly and Chaotic. The presence of these camps means that ordinary patrolling and engaging with small groups can no longer increase stability, though it will prevent it from degrading further. Only targeting the camps and wiping them out will restore order to the tile, though it will always take the stability level back to "Quiet" if you succeed. Camps can be discovered during patrols, and you come back to their known location later to raid them with the proper troops and equipment. If you wait long enough, the town militia may attempt to wipe out a camp and restore order on their own, though this may take an unacceptably long time.
Finally, rather than your town reputation increasing randomly based on successful combats, there is now a (hidden) "assist counter" for each town that will always give a reputation increase after a certain amount of successful patrols or camp raids. It takes more assists for larger towns to gain reputation, and each successive increase will require more assists up to a certain limit. This means you can actually learn to expect an increase and weave it into your strategy, rather than crossing your fingers every time.
There are a few other minor elements that have come from this upgraded system that you will have to discover for yourself. On the whole it should be more fun and more comprehensible. Please, as always, your feedback is most appreciated.
In the future, I also intend to add a few non-combat ways of increasing stability or driving off bandits, including espionage, setting traps, convincing the militia to act with you, and other options, but let's see how this goes for a bit.
Thanks as always.
P.S. You can no longer assault and take over towns. I removed this for several reasons. Complete lack of realism was only one of them. But in the mid-game, you will be able to take over towns with your chosen faction. This will be important for strategy. Later. As a result, the "take over town requirement" for joining the Gauls has been removed. The faction joining requirements will eventually be reworked with some of the mid-game additions.
Back In The Saddle
My sincere apologies for the lack of updates or communiques this last month. Things have been difficult and I've had to focus my attention and energies on other things besides my beloved game for the previous few weeks. I am pleased to announce, however, that I'm back. It's time to get cranking on the second section of the game, and I'm going to kick it off by revising the whole bandit system and how it interacts with the towns, as a preparation to the mid-game overhaul I have planned, but yet to execute.
I expect to have a goodly update within about a week's time. Thank you as always for your consummate patience and kindness. I hope you are all well.
Chris
The Tale of Only Having One Computer
The bad news is, since school will be remaining closed through the end of the year, she will be doing distance learning for her students....on the only computer in the house, which is mine, which I use to develop the game. This means unfettered access to my computer is now, er, fettered occasionally. We may be able to get another one at some point. Or not.
The bottom line is, I'm going to have to rearrange my work hours again, probably into the wee hours of the morning, like 4AM-7AM and that sort of thing, in order to get dev back up the speed it should be. My constant exhaustion has not been helpful in this regard. Nevertheless, we shall prevail!
Thank you for your patience and support. I hope you are well and not going too crazy or getting too desperate.
Chris
Delayed Update
Due to several complications arising from the, er, global situation I have been slightly slowed in my ability to work effectively and deliver updates. However, I do plan on having a decent update with bugfixes and a few new features up within a few days. Thank you for your patience, and stay safe everyone!
Chris
FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 3
3.22.2020
See dev notes below, if you're interested.
PLEASE NOTE
**!!Please note with the changes to pasture data from adding barns, pastures from old saves may be subject to corruption when loaded. Your animals will probably be fine, but you may for example have the barn icon showing even though you don't have one, and will be unable to take the build action. New saves should not have any problems. Thank you!!**
New Features
Animal Features
-Animals not kept in a barn are subject to possible spooking by storms and blizzards (except for Mules)
Husbandry Features
-"Move Animal" a free action which allows you to move animals from one pasture to another
-"Build Barn" an action which costs 2 points and 10 timber, upgrades all pastures in a hex
-Barn prevents weather roll and fatigue penalties for animal actions, as if you were in your villa
-Barn provides some protection against wolf effects and attacks
-Barn prevents animals from spooking due to storms and blizzards
Bugfixes
Animal Fixes
-Incorrect animals such as mules can no longer become pregnant
-Mules now correctly exhibit the "stubborn" trait that makes them immune to spooking and its associated friendship loss
Tile Fixes
-Cliffwall Moor and Shaded Gully tile bonuses now work properly, i.e. they provide a free barn and free pasture spaces
Changes
Action Changes
-Lowered cost of Fence Pasture from 5 to 4 Timber
Animal Changes
-Animals are spooked for just the current month unless they escape from a wolf attack, which inflicts 2-3 months.
-Animal friendship penalty from being spooked has been reduced
-Slightly reduced difficulty of milking goats in general
-Lowered cost of lamb to 1d and sheep to 2d
-Lowered cost of foal to 1d50s and mule to 3d
Farming Changes
-Fields now require twice as much fertilizer (20) for the apply fertilizer action
Skill Changes
-Genius' composting skill is now twice as effective as before
Developer Notes
Animal Changes
I spent quite a bit of time testing animals this week and I came to the conclusion that they are a bit too hard to use out of the gate. I was particularly concerned with the fact that a goat being spooked by wolves could prevent collection of cheese for as many as 3 months, which is pretty excessive. Now this will only happen in the rare circumstance where an animal survives being hunted by a wolf. This makes much more sense. Animals being harder to use and less reliable than other methods of food collection is going to discourage people from using them, which I do not want.
I made the milking a LITTLE easier, not much, but it was necessary given the new weather penalties and such. This raises the question of how your animals are protected from the elements. To avoid complications I didn't bother with barns or fodder storage and such originally since it would add even more work to animals and I do want animal keeping to be somewhat less labor intensive than farming. You can handfeed them for extra health, but it doesn't take extra time.
On the other hand, barns are probably a necessary upgrade for realism. Basically, you can build a barn on any hex with at least one pasture, and thereafter all pastures in that hex are upgraded to use the barn. What does this mean? One, all animal interactions ignore weather as if you were performing villa actions. Milking goats or shearing sheep in a storm or blizzard will no longer be insanely difficult or fatiguing. Two, it provides somewhat increased protection against wolves. Animals still spend most their time outside, so it's helpful but not wolfproof. Three, it removes the chance (that I just added) of animals being spooked by storms or blizzards, which should have been in there before, except that there was no way to counter it at the time. You still need pasture space for each animal as that ensures a food supply for them.
As a side note, the Cliffwall Moor and Shaded Gully tile bonuses now essentially provide a free barn and pasture spaces when discovered. The natural features of the hex essentially mimic what a barn does, except of course you don't have to build anything. However, as a trade off the tiles hold 2 fewer animals overall than they could in a normal hex of that type (6 for meadow, 4 for heathlands).
Finally, I don't think sheep should be any more expensive than goats. Goats keep you alive, whereas sheep provide you wool quite slowly as a luxury item, so why they should they cost more? They're argaubly less immediately useful. I also dropped the cost of foals and mules in the hopes that more people could recover from having their mule killed by wolves. That tends to be a game-ender, and it would be, but perhaps this will allow people to squeak by a bit more.
As a side note, I didn't like the fact that a few animals would basically give you enough fertilizer that you never had to worry about crop rotation, cover cropping, or any other nutrient tactics ever again. Now you need 20 per field, which still means 3 farm animals can still provide for almost 2 fields a year, but it's a little more reasonable than before. I also doubled the effectiveness of the Genius' composting skill to compensate for this.
More Updates Planned
It is my hope that I will get another update out this weekend, most likely tomorrow. Although I am technically home more than I used to be, I ironically have less time to work because my child is not in school, so my ability to work uninterrupted has been, um, impeded. On top of that I've been a bit ill, nothing serious. Nevertheless, I think once I adapt it shouldn't have too much of a long term impact on the update schedule.
I've been working quite a bit on animals, trying to crush some bugs, balance them a bit better and maybe add a feature or two that were lacking up to this point. You'll learn the rest when I post the update.
Thanks for your patience, and stay safe.
Chris
FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 2
3.13.2020
NOTE: Please note, the title screen still says hotfix 1 at the moment. I will update this soon. Rest assured the newest hotfix is live.
***See dev notes below, if you're interested.***
Bugfixes
Action Fixes
-Excavation and Deep Mining discounts now appear properly in mouseover text when building pits, quarries, and mines
Black Market Fixes
-Equipment purchased at black market now is the correct type; obsolete types were causing glitches
Combat Fixes
-Bleed status ailment is now working properly
Equipment Fixes
-Crafted fishing nets now work properly
Fatigue and Disease Fixes
-Fatigue calculations now implemented properly after previous changes
-Disease calculations now implemented properly using disease resist property
Bribe and Quota Fixes
-Bribe and wheat quota no longer sometimes resets upon loading game (!)
Equipment Fixes
-Woodsman's Axe and Heavy Scythe no longer display incorrect properties on crafting screen
-Net Fishing action now consumes first available net's durability rather than being disabled
Changes
Equipment Changes
-Revised sell pricing on all equipment
-Lowered stone cost for all basic tools to 1
-Lowered stone cost for all primitive weapons to 1
-Druid Garb now costs 2 Hides and 2 Linen, and does not require Heavy Furs to make
-Greatcloak now costs 2 Linen rather than 2 Cloth to make
-Fishing net now costs 3 Reed rather than 3 Willow to make
Market Changes
-Lowered cost of buying items from 2 x normal price to 1.5 x normal price
-Lowered amount required for most market orders considerably
-Increased monetary reward per good for market orders
-Changed clothing repair market order to flax (from wool)
Black Market Changes
-Greatly alter existing item inventory for sale items
-Revised pricing for all black market sale items
-Revised fence contracts to be less profitable, and partially randomized amounts required
Developer Notes
What? Easier?! Stone Crafting and Market Orders
It may or may not surprise you that, while I designed and coded it, I am not particularly good at PLAYING FreeHolder. Partly because I don't have much time, as I have to keep working on it, and partly because I am too experimental and unfocused in my approach to games of this sort. Being experimental and unfocused as a DESIGNER has helped the game be what it is, but as a player, it is less helpful. Although I definitely hope that the game itself encourages experimentation and not just min-maxing.
So whenever I actually consider making the game a bit easier based on my own playthroughs, I have to be thoroughly certain that I am not simply editing the game to be easier because I'm bad at it. That would be a tremendous disservice to you all, who are the actual measure of what the game is, difficulty-wise. But the following items ultimately I felt could not be justified from a design perspective, and not just a player perspective, so I feel okay with making these adjustments. Do not hesitate to let me know what you think.
Upon a few playthroughs the other day I absolutely cannot justify tool crafting consuming 2 or even 3 stone to make a single tool, which disappears after a mere 5 uses without Toolsmithing. Stone is too hard to gather and valuable to consume so quickly, so all primitive tools and weapons that require stone only take 1. It was insane that it was ever more than that.
Furthermore, some of the early market orders are just plain unrealistic without extreme effort which was never my intention, considering the relatively small reward. Market orders are currently the best universal way to generate early income, and I don't particularly like the optics of starting up a game and getting a bunch of unfillable market orders. The game is plenty hard without arbitarily impossible orders.
Other Market and Black Market Considerations
I also updated the market and black market in terms of costs and benefits. I really think the double priced buy goods are too expensive to be useful; I want people to be including buying things from the market as part of their strategies, and I don't want that option to be priced out of existence, so I lowered it from double cost to about 1.5 x cost. It's still expensive, but hopefully will allow a little more flexibility when considering buying some things you can't easily obtain yourself.
The black market has been thoroughly updated with relevant contract types and items, and the monetary reward in general has been lowered somewhat, as it was frankly too much before. The item text is still wonky. I need to redo a number of information displays but that will take some time and although it looks bad it doesn't affect the function, which was my concern on this update.
FreeHolder Alpha 8 Hotfix 1
3.7.2020
Weather Resistance, Disease, and Fatigue
I've made some changes, increased some of the difficulty and rebalanced these factors. Please see below for the extended notes on all of this; there's too much text to put it at the top. If you notice a significant change in overall game difficulty, please provide feedback about it! I only want the game to be a little harder as a result of these changes. Thanks!
Upcoming
More bugfixes, changing the town/bandit level, patrol, and attacking mechanics to be more predictable, comprehensible, and useful, in eventual preparation for the long-awaited overhaul and tremendous improvement to the mid-game. Stay tuned! We are getting there.
Bugfixes
Campaign Mode Fixes
-In campaign mode, invaders no longer remain on tiles after defeating them
-Equipment no longer disappears from existence after defeating tile invaders in campaign mode
Tool Fixes
-Fishing Net now functions properly, you cannot set fishing net without consuming tool durability
Equipment Fixes
-Cooling Tunic graphic now appears properly
Changes
Weather Changes
-Increased the overall action roll penalties for working in most weather types except blizzard, subzero and snow
-Rebalanced fatigue penalties given for working in inclement weather
-Rebalanced fatigue reduction given by weather gear
Action Changes
-Rebalanced the fatigue reduction given by "Resist Fatigue" gear
Developer Notes
Weather Resistance, Disease, and Fatigue
With the updated weather resistance system and new clothing types to go with it, I have also had to make some adjustments to how much weather is going to penalize action rolls. It sounds a bit harsh, but I have roughly doubled the overall penalties applied to rolls for the non-cold weather types; however, even a bit of resistance clothing significantly reduces they penalties. I have left the cold weather penalties alone for now as winter is unavoidable no matter what seed you roll, and you may or may not be able to get much resist gear together depending on circumstances. And they were pretty nasty already. ;)
Inclement weather has two non-specific effects: penalties to action rolls AND increased fatigue when taking actions. Fatigue is a hidden value that essentially increases your character's chance to get sick at the end of the turn. These mechanics rely upon your common sense to intuit them: certain actions, for example chopping wood, are more strenuous and cost more fatigue than others, say cooking a meal. You should be aware that actions at your villa always ignore weather effects as you perform them indoors. This fatigue amount per action is increased by inclement weather, and is reduced by weather resist equipment and the coveted resist fatigue property, and also mitigated by rue and many other game effects. The specific effects of weather you already know: wet weather waters your crops, droughts require double water, extra actions are required to go to market in storms, etc.
I have also rebalanced the disease mechanics somewhat, as I didn't like the way I was performing some of the calculations. For you, there probably won't be that much of a noticeable change. Essentially I have removed the base weather disease penalties and replaced them with the fatigue penalties I mentioned earlier, so what it amounts to is you will be less likely than before to get sick if you are careful about avoiding difficult actions in harsh weather, and more likely than before if you push yourself really hard in said weather. It therefore also makes weather resist equipment much more helpful. Of particular note is that it is now possible to immediately become very sick from healthy under rare circumstances, such as overworking in storms when there is a disease event occurring, or so forth. I don't like that you always have ordinary sick status to buffer you, sometimes, you just get a horrible illness. It happens.
A Note On Difficulty
I should say it is unlikely that the difficulty of FreeHolder in general is ever going to go down, unless I get a considerable amount of complaints about specific mechanics that are too harsh. However, I should say that it is my intention that the mid-game and end-game should have significant increases in difficulty each time, so it will not be necessary for the early game to be brutally difficult; those seeking a challenge will need only to get past the beginning, which many players can already do easily enough. Although: this will come down more to balancing different needs than simply making everything harder to do per se, in fact since you are arguably getting more and more powerful throughout the game, the difficulty increase effectively needs to be parabolic to get ahead of your linear progression, i.e. as you get linearly stronger, the game must get exponentially harder for it actually become relatively more difficult against your increased abilities. Unfortunately there is no equation for this, just continual attempts and refining through playtesting.
I must stress that mid-game is soon slated to undergo a massive overhaul in mechanics and execution, and is not very playable or free of glitches, nor does it represent the intended mid-game experience in any way, except for invasions of your tiles, though I don't think it would be happening as often or as soon when I get back to redoing it all. It does offer some increased challenge, but is unreliable. I should also mention at SOME point we will have difficulty flags for people that wish to increase the difficulty for their playthroughs. That's a good ways away right now though; we have to get the core experience right.
Thank you, everyone!