Customization Update v1.1.0 Is Live In Public Beta!
Great news Lords and Ladies!
The awaited Customization patch is finally released - but a little differently than we've done previously, so please keep reading! We apologize for the delay, as our team faced complications with the development and transitioning into a new chapter for Lords and Villeins.
The patch is now ready. However, the customizable difficulty that it brings with it, introduces an extensive level of variability of game play. This makes testing and verifying issues in a simulation based game like ours even more complex. While we did our best to identify and fix any problems prior to release, in this case we decided to take extra precautions and launch the patch initially in public beta only.
In order to join, simply right click on the game in your library, select Properties, Betas and find the "customization_update" branch. We can't wait to hear your feedback, please come share your thoughts about the update to the discussions or our Discord server!
And don't worry, this is not the end for Lords and Villeins. We will continue improving the game, and are already hard at work on the next patch - details of this update will be revealed in the next few days!
New Features
Ability to customize difficulty
Ability to customize map creation in various degrees of detail
Ability to customize starting families
Ability to store difficulty and map presets as templates
Added new mountain ore distribution presets
Added new tropical climate, with a warm climate all-year round!
Ability to prioritize blueprints
New "Islands" preset and tweaked existing presets
Added x8 speed (Speed IV)
Added new x32 speed that is available between 10PM and 6AM
Improvements
Refactoring of mouse hover tooltip elements to provide more unified experience
Consolidated UI of priority screen and accounting report with extra bells and whistles.
New construction queue view in the accounting report
New blueprint context menu after clicking on it
Harsh weather module has been converted to harsh weather climate setting
Redesign of the new game menu screen flow
Removal tools are now permanently visible in HUD. This option can be turned off in the settings.
Updated Unity version to LFS 2021.3.17f1
Replaced old UI switches with new ON/OFF switches
Population book now displays specific age with a tooltip about when adulthood and elderly age is reached
Implemented algorithm for dynamic loading of scrollview content. This will be later expanded on all UI screens to greatly improve their performance.
Bugfixes
Fixed multiple bugs with noble marriages
Fixed alchemy not making stamina potions
Fixed alchemist workshop recommending Oven instead of Blast Furnace
Fixed starting resources not being added to generated families
UI Screens are now capped to scale down to fit within screen height if the UI scaling extends beyond the screen border
Fixed number of broken hover effects
Fixed issue with updating UI scaler when screen resolution changes
Fixed issue with animated UI elemenets for resources not being positioned correctly when UI scaling is changed
Fixed issue with river and sea type not being recognized in created maps
Added mechanism for hover tooltips to be restricted by screen border and automatically reposition
Number of other minor bugfixes
Closer Look On Upcoming Customizability Patch!
Dear lords and ladies,
we are doing our best to deliver the newest patch to you as soon as possible. While things are taking some time to develop properly, we are getting closer to a possible release, so we would like to share with you more details on what the next patch will bring!
Customize New Game
We are expanding on customizability in many big ways! Timers, sliders, modifiers, and just about anything you can come up with. Let's have a look at the new "New Game" experience!
In the first step, you are now given the ability to customize the passage of time. The day length changes the real-time to game time ratio, which becomes especially empowering in combination with the time to execute tasks multiplier available in the next step!
While there are no new game modules, we are enabling the creative mode and some other extra modules immediately, without the need to unlock the related achievements. The screen was also redesigned to make the functionality of modules more clear to new players.
You can choose from a variety of presets, lock your difficulty so they can not be changed during the gameplay, and store your difficulty presets as templates, or even share them with friends using a simple code!
The world editor is expanded with a number of new options. Using the sliders, you can craft just about any map you can imagine! With this, we are also adding a new preset for a tropical or very cold climate, and multiple presets for the distribution of rare ores in the mountains. Much like with difficulty, you will be able to store and recover templates and share import settings with friends with a simple code.
And finally, you can customize both the size and professions of up to three families to start the game with.
Consolidated UI
We have consolidated three UI screens into one, far more powerful and convenient screen! Priority screen and market presence UI have been merged with the accounting report, and can now freely be switched between the views using the tabs on the left side. This is in addition to a new context selector on the right, which can filter the data in any of the selected views.
Manage Construction Priorities
As part of the accounting report screen, there is also a new construction tab. Here, you can observe all blueprints currently under construction, and manage their priorities. The prioritizing switch will push the selected object to a new maximum priority class. Items in this class are still prioritized by the AI to some extent but are guaranteed to be before everything that is not marked in this way. We may expand this in the future to a more granular management system, however, we chose to opt out of it for now, as it would require a more significant overhaul of the priority system.
Similar options can also be accessed by simply clicking on a blueprint on the map. Here, you will also receive a hint informing you about the current blocker for the specific blueprint not being built. This should make pinpointing construction issues much easier!
And among other things, we are also adding Speed IV, which is an x8 game speed multiplier (previously the highest Speed III allowed to increase the game speed by x4), revisiting some balancing issues, and fixing a number of bugs.
What's next?
In our previous content update preview article, we mentioned several things, that are not listed here. Namely, UI to manage cooking, stockpile strategies, copy-pasting storage priorities, intelligence report screen improvements, simplifying clergy donations, a tool to select and place construction on the map, discount slider for surcharges, rework of the prioritization screen, and other smaller improvements.
A lot of our time during the last two months was also spent learning more about what our players would like, figuring out our future plans, and planning and designing solutions for the current problems. As a result, our development on the update was slowed down.
In the end, we decided to prioritize and deliver a portion of the content to you now. We are hoping to deliver this first part in early February, but bear with us, since we are still in the testing stages. As for the rest of our plans, we are still not ready to share more, but stay tuned for more information soon!
Thank you for your patience and support!
Closer Look On Upcomming Customizability Patch!
Dear lords and ladies,
we are doing our best to deliver the newest patch to you as soon as possible. While things are taking some time to develop properly, we are getting closer to a possible release, so we would like to share with you more details on what the next patch will bring!
Customize New Game
We are expanding on customizability in many big ways! Timers, sliders, modifiers, and just about anything you can come up with. Let's have a look at the new "New Game" experience!
In the first step, you are now given the ability to customize the passage of time. The day length changes the real-time to game time ratio, which becomes especially empowering in combination with the time to execute tasks multiplier available in the next step!
While there are no new game modules, we are enabling the creative mode and some other extra modules immediately, without the need to unlock the related achievements. The screen was also redesigned to make the functionality of modules more clear to new players.
You can choose from a variety of presets, lock your difficulty so they can not be changed during the gameplay, and store your difficulty presets as templates, or even share them with friends using a simple code!
The world editor is expanded with a number of new options. Using the sliders, you can craft just about any map you can imagine! With this, we are also adding a new preset for a tropical or very cold climate, and multiple presets for the distribution of rare ores in the mountains. Much like with difficulty, you will be able to store and recover templates and share import settings with friends with a simple code.
And finally, you can customize both the size and professions of up to three families to start the game with.
Consolidated UI
We have consolidated three UI screens into one, far more powerful and convenient screen! Priority screen and market presence UI have been merged with the accounting report, and can now freely be switched between the views using the tabs on the left side. This is in addition to a new context selector on the right, which can filter the data in any of the selected views.
Manage Construction Priorities
As part of the accounting report screen, there is also a new construction tab. Here, you can observe all blueprints currently under construction, and manage their priorities. The prioritizing switch will push the selected object to a new maximum priority class. Items in this class are still prioritized by the AI to some extent but are guaranteed to be before everything that is not marked in this way. We may expand this in the future to a more granular management system, however, we chose to opt out of it for now, as it would require a more significant overhaul of the priority system.
Similar options can also be accessed by simply clicking on a blueprint on the map. Here, you will also receive a hint informing you about the current blocker for the specific blueprint not being built. This should make pinpointing construction issues much easier!
And among other things, we are also adding Speed IV, which is an x8 game speed multiplier (previously the highest Speed III allowed to increase the game speed by x4), revisiting some balancing issues, and fixing a number of bugs.
What's next?
In our previous content update preview article, we mentioned several things, that are not listed here. Namely, UI to manage cooking, stockpile strategies, copy-pasting storage priorities, intelligence report screen improvements, simplifying clergy donations, a tool to select and place construction on the map, discount slider for surcharges, rework of the prioritization screen, and other smaller improvements.
A lot of our time during the last two months was also spent learning more about what our players would like, figuring out our future plans, and planning and designing solutions for the current problems. As a result, our development on the update was slowed down.
In the end, we decided to prioritize and deliver a portion of the content to you now. We are hoping to deliver this first part in early February, but bear with us, since we are still in the testing stages. As for the rest of our plans, we are still not ready to share more, but stay tuned for more information soon!
Thank you for your patience and support!
Base Builder Fest Brings a 20% Discount For Lords and Villeins
To all the builders around the world, BASE BUILDER FEST is here and along with it some juicy discounts!
During this week, you can get Lords and Villeins for 20% off, and that's a hell of a deal, isn't it? The sale ends on January 30, so hurry up and get on with the building!
We have a comprehensive patch in the oven that we'll be serving to you soon. It is adding new options to customize your gameplay, greatly expanding the map editor, new construction queue with prioritization of blueprints and minor tweaks and improvements, as well as fixing more bugs and addressing some balancing issues. Preparing and thoroughly testing updates for a game as complex as Lords and Villeins takes time however, so bear with us please.
As always, you are most welcome to join our community! Just click the following link and you'll be forwarded to our Discord server where everything important around Lords and Villeins happens. Don't forget to follow our publisher Fulqrum Publishing as well, click this link to check out their Social Media accounts!
Lords and Villeins Placed Fifth In The IndieDB Awards - Players Choice
Greetings, Lords and Ladies,
2022 is over and along with it the IndieDB Awards for the year. We are incredibly happy to let you know that Lords and Villeins placed FIFTH in the Players Choice category. That is an amazing achievement and we owe that only to you, our beloved community. Even getting to the TOP 100 was extraordinary for us and reaching the highest ranks is like a dream come true.
Rest assured, we will not let this success go to our heads; quite the contrary, we take it as an obligation to keep working and improve the game even further, to fulfill and hopefully even exceed your expectations! We have previously shared our plans for the 1.1 update which is coming soon, and we will have even more to say about that in the coming days.
But please, do not just "stay tuned" for more information - come to our Discord server and chat with us, post your thoughts here in Steam discussions, or leave us a review of the game. We welcome all forms of feedback, the game would never get to where it is today if it wasn't for community participation!
We Reached Indiedb Top 100 and Share Plans for New Update!
Thank you all that voted for us to be nominated for IndieDB's Indie of the Year! Thanks to your votes, we are now nominated in the selection of the top 100 games as a representative in the realistic simulation category.
If you are wondering what is next for Lords and Villeins, we are now laser-focused on the next update. While it will not bring new content to the game, there are many things to look forward to! So let's look at them one by one.
Customize...everything?
We are expanding the options for customizing your gameplay. And there is a lot to look forward to! Let's have a look at our UI mockups (work in progress!).
First, you will be able to customize time-related options. Would you like seasons to change faster? People aging slower? And what about the length of a day in real-time minutes? These options will have a strong impact on the gameplay, so expect some combinations to be a little wacky! Seasons length will also impact the frequency of Sunday Service and Town Hall meetings.
Next, you can customize the difficulty. We have exposed almost any value that made sense. We are also making it simple for you to store your settings in form of a code that you can share with the community! You will be able to modify these settings on existing save files or during the game. On new maps, you can enable the lock difficulty option and be forced to stick with your settings throughout the whole game.
We are expanding the options to create your own map and make your own biomes! The sliders for water, sand, grass, and forest represent cutoffs for the height levels of the generated heightmap. The highest layer is always filled with mountains, so by pushing the forest to the top, you can get rid of them completely! You can also select a secondary terrain type and the intensity with which it will be generated over the base layer, or if it will cut through mountains. And finally, you will be able to choose presets of mountain ore compositions, if your map has rivers or sea sides, and what kind of climate it should be.
Yes! We are expanding climate presets as well! These will adjust the temperature curve over the year, and will allow you to experience tropical weather, as well as a very harsh winter! Just like difficulty presets, you will be able to store unique codes for your settings and share them with your friends!
Improving UI
We have learned a lot about how our players engage with our game and we are revisiting several UI screens to further improve the user experience. There are not a lot of details we can share at this moment, but the specific problems we are looking to address are:
In the priority UI, we will likely replace numbers with sliders, and add a dynamic colorful bar, that will visualize the resulting ratios.
Separate removal tools to a dedicated and more easily readable section of the HUD.
Expand the market presence UI in a similar fashion to the accounting report UI. Allowing filtering between families, as well as providing an overview tab to better track the current state of the whole market.
Expand animal limitations UI to communicate values about breeding strategies with given amounts.
Allow copy and paste of storing priorities between different zones.
Intelligence Reports will be updated to provide more guidance on how to solve the issues.
New "color drop" tool (also switchable with keybind), that will let you select the object for construction by clicking on it on the map.
Accounting finance page will also list quantities sold and purchased.
Update zone tenure UI to better present taxing strategies.
Discount slider in the trading tab will also allow for % based surcharge.
Better communicate and guide players to find out why construction is not happening.
Better communicate and guide players to find out why cooking is not happening.
We are also adding some new general game settings as well:
Turn off camera panning when a new family arrives.
Turn off the visualization of weather effects (rain will be visualized only by darker lighting).
Gameplay Improvements
And finally, these are additional community suggestions, that we want to look at:
8x time speed (Speed IV) will be added.
Allow players to manage to stockpile limitations for families.
Prevent villagers from violating the production ratios when they can not obtain sufficient material (i.e. tailor spending additional yarn to make more silk, to remain occupied since they lack wool).
Improvements to caravan purchasing behavior to alleviate oversupply more efficiently.
Simplifying the clergy donation system and making it more transparent.
We are considering minor ways to earn more favor throughout gameplay and the ability to spend it on an emergency supply of resources.
Bugfixes and Balancing
As with each update, we will take a further look at balancing and fixing additional bugs. On this front, we are monitoring mainly these problems:
Profitability of certain professions.
Royal taxation is too aggressive and random.
Combat is sometimes creating odd outcomes and equipment does not seem to be impactful enough.
Villagers getting stuck between walls.
Occasional pathfinding issues.
We are aiming to release another update during January. The update is currently in the early stages of development, so while this list is our current plan, things are open to change and it is possible we would break up these changes into multiple updates as a way to take the extra time needed to fulfill them, while also being able to deliver improvements to you more regularly.
Our priorities may also change, as we discover new problems, perhaps more severe or more important to the community, so we will be updating you further as we get closer to the release. Is there something you would like to see addressed that was not mentioned? Let us know in the comments!
Thank you for supporting us and sharing your sentiment for Lords and Villeins! If you wish to see this game grow even further, please consider telling about it your friends, wishlist it if and if you own the game, please leave a review! All of it helps us be discovered by more players and support us to deliver more content to you!
We wish you all peaceful holidays in the company of your loved ones, with many hours of joyful gaming!
2022's Indie of the Year Awards Are Open for Voting!
We greet you, Lords and Ladies,
It came to our attention that voting on IndieDB's Indie of the Year 2022 has just started - the first round of voting is live until December 10, and you can select as many games as you feel deserve to be included in the Top100 list.
While we realize that Lords and Villeins is not perfect and thanks to your feedback and suggestions, we are still working on making the game even better, we do hope that you will consider us for that honor. Just follow this link to the Lords and Villeins IndieDB page and click on "vote now", it's that easy. Last year, while our game was still in early access, we managed to get to the top 100 selected games!
We have recently released a patch fixing many bugs, and we will have more information on upcoming updates for you soon, please stay tuned!
For those of you, who like to bond with other community members on Discord, you are very welcome to join ours. You can also follow us on Twitter for more details and don't forget to follow our publisher on their Social Media as well!
Hotfix v1.03 Released!
Greetings Lords and Ladies,
through the changes introduced in 1.0.2, two critical issues have slipped through our testing process and impacted a small number of our players. Because of the potential severity of these issues, we have immediately issued a fix and are deploying it to you now. We apologize to anyone impacted, and thank you for reporting these problems to us!
Changelog:
Fixes a critical bug which could happen to players that changed keybindings in version 1.00
Servant cooks will now use ingredients taxed by royals if they are marked as usable.
More noticeable updates are on their way and we will be publishing them in the upcomming weeks. Thank you for playing and see you soon!
Hotfix v1.0.2 Is Here!
Most honorable lords and ladies!
the first wave of bugfixes is just being deployed to your lands. We have been working hard to resolve the most immediate issues and address some smaller problems, so we can improve the quality of the game while you wait for a bigger patch. Our efforts are not ending here!
In the following patch, we aim to fix more issues, but also spend time on improving the UI and adding quality-of-life features requested by our players, including more options to customize difficulty, a better way to manage priorities of villagers, more UI stats and balancing improvements, so stay tuned for the next patch in the following weeks! We are doing our best to deliver these updates to you as soon as possible.
In the meantime, here is a list of changes delivered with 1.0.2!
Major Bugs:
Updated Unity version to Unity 2021.3.14f1 to solve a number of native crashes caused by the engine
Sickness no longer impacts mood, happiness, and health before the sickness incubates (it will only spread to others during this time)
Chance to die from sickness was incorrectly multiplied by three because it was not recognizing villagers sleeping in bed
Expelling a family will automatically remove all related notifications
Fixed crash in the finance book related to when a family died or left
Fixed crash in the population book related to villagers dying
Fixed a backward compatibility crash for older save files
Fixed incorrect order of calls when objects are removed. This led to a number of crashes in the UI and other parts of the game
Fixed camera clipping issue that miscalculated cursor position due to a rounding error
Fixed serialization issue with tax data that allowed evaluating taxation multiple times if save file was made on the same day
Fixed a crash during loading which would happen when the player has no soldier regiments
Fixed incorrect music being queued on startup
Minor Bugs:
Fixed notification for marketplace closed being displaced incorrectly around the public celebration days
Unsafe Marketplace and Unsafe Tourism are now triggered only when a caravan member dies out of hunger, combat, or temperature (previously old age death would also trigger this debuff)
Increased character limit and changed validation method on the settlement name
Fixed Select keybinding action to allow rebinds
Requesting a custom family is now updating favor points immediately after spending them
Setting the Caravan price and switching to the local market and selecting Sell action will no longer switch to the "Free" price type
Sicknesses will now correctly show in the HUD counter after they end the incubation period
Unsafe Settlement, Unsafe Tourism, and Family Left Or Was Expelled debuffs now reset their timers with the most recent event
Fixed incorrect loading of states for Promotion quests during the tutorial
Fixed incorrect loading of a cooking quest during the tutorial
Fixed performance-related texturing issue in the zone tenure UI
Fixed crash when the database of unique last names would exhaust itself
Fixed possible crash with a villager moving on the edge of a map
Market Presence UI now automatically closes if it is displaying information about the family that left or died
Fixed crash related to a Market Presence UI when closed after family left or died
Fixed achievement "A Noble cause"
Fixed "Settle them All" and "They Are All Here" achievement
Fixed issue with guards attempting to occupy guard postmarked for removal
QOL Changes:
Removed redundant alternative key bindings
Nonstackable settlement debuffs now display the remaining time
Balancing changes:
Sheep can now spawn in the wilderness and be tamed
Redesigned drafting mechanism for animals brought by caravans to ensure more variety
Increased inventory capacity of the caravan to bring a higher variety of resources, caravans will also appear slightly more frequently
Increased yields of stones from stone mountains
During the tutorial, the emergency supply of normal meals was reduced, but the player will now also receive a regular supply of good meals
Help Nominate Lords and Villeins for Innovative Gameplay Steam Award!
Greetings, esteemed Lords and Ladies,
While we are hard at work to deliver you the next hotfix patch and introduce further quality of life improvements and work on your suggestions, we are turning to you now with a humble request. The year 2022 is nearing its end, and in this time of contemplation, it is up to you, the players, to decide which games get nominated for the Steam Awards!
Please consider Lords and Villeins for the "Innovative Gameplay" category. Lords and Villeins was truly an ambitious project for our team, as we strived to innovate with in-depth immersive and detailed simulation of a thriving medieval settlement. We keep striving to make it more polished, balanced and the best version it can be, but we are already very proud of our achievement and are so thankful for your feedback and support, that got us this far. If you believe as we do, that our contribution to the genre was innovative, all you have to do is check the box on top of this article. We will be really grateful for your support!
Voting is possible until November 29 and during the same period you can buy the game for 15% off, as Lords and Villeins is a part of the Autumn Sale.
Also don't forget that Lords and Villeins is a part of a bundle along with its soundtrack, meaning you can combine the discounts. That's a hell of a bargain, isn't it?
