It's that time of the year again, when the weather gets cold (at least here in the northern hemisphere) and Steam, by relentlessly asking me to nominate games for "The Steam Awards", reminds me once again that since starting working in the videogame industry more than 10 years ago, the time I actually spend playing videogames is getting closer and closer to zero with each passing year. So when I opened up the nominations page, not having played anything released in 2021, there was only one title I could nominate without hesitation, and that's "Factorio" in the "LABOR OF LOVE AWARD" category.
But...Having done that for the last two years at least, I changed my mind at the last moment and decided to be consciously lame for once and nominate the game that, for me, takes the meaning of "LABOR OF LOVE" to a whole new and personal level, "Lorenzo Il Magnifico".
So yeah, I just thought I would let you know because if I have to be lame, I want to score at least 9 out of 10.
Cheers, Cody
Leaders now have Covid Passport
Howdy folks! Due to an unfortunate series of minor reworks in the last update, our leaders lost their covid passport and our AIs, being very strict refused to let them in their courts resulting in a tedious "UnavailableLeader" game-breaking bug.
All is good now though; booster shot done, passport ok and everything should be back to normal!
Thanks to all the people that pointed out the nasty bug, have a nice one everybody!
Cody
Give me a ping Lorenzo. One ping only please.
Hey there people! Cody here. Apparently just like the Red October, we activated our caterpillar a while back and went silent out of everyone's sonars.
Ok not the best analogy for a game like Lorenzo, long story short, we are back with a quick and secondary update; just small things that you'll figure out by yourself with a quick game :)
Yes, the hard AI isn't here yet and this hunts my nights but, I'm confident we'll get it done before Half-Life 3 publication!
Cody
Patch 1.1, AI Fixes, More UI improvements
Good news everybody,
Lorenzo hits version 1.1 today, so let's review what's in it:
Fixed some major cases where the Experimental AI crashed and/or froze while thinking.
Added a new kind of AI, called "Experimental #2", for you people to try out (more on this later).
The Religion track was moved from the church to the UI, where it's more readable. Also, the Cathedral dome is now bigger and allows the excommunication icons to be seen more clearly.
Updated the priority of messages that appear under the log, so it should be clearer why some actions are unavailable according to the game state.
Fixed a bug that caused buildings highlights to disappear after the first game.
Minor fixes on glitches, animations timings, typos, etc.
What's with the new AI?
The "Experimental #2" AI is yet another approach to solve the many issues the current AI has. While we are still collecting data about #1, thus figuring out how to enhance its decision-making (especially when it comes to Leaders), we decided to release this other synthetic brain to see what you people think. Experimental #2 has a high disregard for Religion and Vatican but a higher chance to take advantage of combos, thus making it a diabolical (or at least heretical) personality overall. And yep, you can guess it from the name, it's still experimental, so expect some bumps along the way. Speaking of which, don't miss the chance to send User Reports if you see it play dumb or make weird actions instead of obvious, more favorable options.
About the city design
As many of you probably will notice, we took the chance to slightly change proportions to make information more readable. Towers now occupy a bigger portion of the screen and the other buildings have been moved as much as possible to accommodate a bigger space. We are really doing our best to satisfy as much feedback as possible, so thank you for your patience. Here's to hoping we'll be able to fiddle around even more in the future.
That's it for now. Let us know what you think! And as always, take care.
(PSST! Shoutout to our top player Reggie for having spotted a last-minute bug before publication! The gameplay scene in your resolution should be back to normal.ːsteamhappyː)
Patch 1.0.1 out on Stable branch, Multiplayer fixes
Hey folks,
as the migration on the new Unity version went smooth and with no significant issues, we are finally ready to release the update on the stable branch, thus making it available for everyone.
Moreover, the issue when starting 4-players multiplayer matches should be fixed now. If you are still experiencing problems, however, reach out and we'll help as best as we can!
What about the AI?
The hard "Experimental" AI will be available for everyone, too. But meanwhile, we keep fiddling with it, so expect some other upgrade in the future.
I was on Experimental branch, what do I do?
If you opted-in on the experimental branch, you may want to go back to the Stable version to enjoy all new updates. Just do the same passages you did previously: From your Steam Library, right-click onto Lorenzo il Magnifico, then choose "Properties...": Then from the dropdown in the "Betas" tab, pick "None": The game should then update automatically (if not, you can force it by restarting Steam). Once it's done, the label "[experimental]" should disappear from the game name in the leftmost list of your games.
As always, thank you for your patience and your support. Lorenzo wouldn't be the same without your precious feedback. <3
Stay safe out there!
Patch 1.0.1 and new AI system on Experimental branch
Fellow florentines,
Dario here - back with some updates on the current state of the art, roadmap, and future upgrades of our beloved Lorenzo.
As always, if you want to skip the boring chitchat, remember you can check our Roadmap on Trello to see some fancy images and a better sum up of the situation ːlunar2019piginablanketː
Version 1.0.1 is out on Experimental
Aye aye, as the virus situation got worse everywhere, and more and more people experienced crashes due to Unity and Citrix fighting for memory, we upgraded the engine version running Lorenzo. This should help fixing many of those situations, and should also bring a bunch of under-the-hood optimizations for everyone else.
And since we are on an experimental branch, we felt it was a nice occasion to publish a base version of the new AI, to gather some feedback from you people. To try it, select "Experimental #1" under the AI name during game creation. Don't forget to tell us what you think! (And if you see any particular weird action, or dumb move, don't forget to snap a screenshot and/or send a User report ːsteamthumbsupː)
How to switch to "Experimental" branch
From your Steam library, right-click onto Lorenzo il Magnifico and choose "Properties...". You'll be prompted with a popup. Click on "Beta" tab, where you'll find a dropdown menu. From it, just choose "experimental". The game should auto-update as usual, but if it doesn't, simply try restarting Steam.
If the procedure goes well, you should see v.1.0.1 b.2463 on the top right corner of the main menu, once you open the game.
(If you ever want to get back to the current version, you can opt out with the same procedure by choosing "None" from the dropdown menu)
Online 4-players games issues
As some of you pointed out, there are issues when creating a 4-player online game. We are still working on this one. Please be patient, we'll hit you up as soon as we patch it.
What about the next stable version?
Once we are done polishing the AI strategies through more playtesting, we should be able to release a new version anytime soon, hopefully as soon as the holiday season is over.
And while you wait, here is a little something as a preview: What do you think of the new UI sizes and volumes? Can you spot all the changes? Let us know if you like it in the comments!
Lorenzo joins the Steam Winter Sale
Winter holidays means one thing: it's discount time!
Until Jan 5th you can get Lorenzo il Magnifico 30% off and enjoy countless matches against AIs or online against your friends (because nothing says Happy Holidays such as rubbing your loved ones' face in some sweet piles of Victory Points!)
If you've been having Lorenzo il Magnifico in your wishlist for a while, here's why it's a good time to grab it: We are working on a new AI level which should put up a real challenge for experienced players; We are collecting feedback from players to polish up the UI once more; We are planning some major updates for the upcoming year, so you'd be contributing to our little journey thanks to your support.
Happy Holidays and stay safe out there!
Lorenzo il Magnifico joins Steam Digital Tabletop Fest!
Hey folks!
We are delighted to take part in the amazing Steam Digital TABLETOP Fest!
To celebrate our everlasting love for tabletop adaptations, we are discounting Lorenzo il Magnifico by 30% for the duration of the event!
Dont miss this opportunity, grab the game and let us know what you think!
Lorenzo is going 1.0!
Howdy, people of Florence!
With today, we reach a long-awaited milestone on Lorenzo's journey: the game finally goes out of Early Access. Let's dive into the news!
What's new
Polish, polish, polish! We spent a considerable amount of time catching up with some evaded - yet important - tasks, such as making the colors more readable or fixing up some texts that were misbehaving. The game should now be as stable as possible (with the exception of few graphical glitches that we'll fix soonish) and compatible to all screen resolutions. We hope you'll enjoy playing as much as we do!
For a complete list of changes see the end of the post - let's discuss more interesting things first.
To Err is human - but the AI knows better
Version 1.0 allowed us to make some minor improvements to the medium AI; our goal was to make it a decent battleground to prepare players to the awesome world of multiplayer matches.
However, as you may recall from our latest blog post, we are still working on a Hard AI to challenge the most skilled players in offline mode. With this latest version comes a new tracking system which will give us a ton of information on how top tier players play - all the data will help our new AI to figure out the best way to build up a more efficient economy engine. So expect an update in the future - the moment our newborn baby is fed enough gameplay data, we will release the coveted new difficulty level.
Post-launch roadmap
We are still using Trello to keep track of what we are working on, so you can see there's still plenty of room for improvement. Building a hard AI is still our top priority, and what will go into our next big release. We do hope this release will bring in plenty of new feedback on how the game works, so that we can tinker with a new roadmap to share with you in the future according to how Lorenzo is perceived by our growing community.
Special thanks
Guys, gals, you know half of the success of this project belongs to you, our precious supporters - from the original backers to everyone who spent their time giving us their impression and point of view. We know you've been very patient and trustful. We do hope you will share today's moment of happiness with us, amidst this weird year that impacted all of us, one way or another.
Thank you for being part of this project! We hope you'll keep following us in the next steps of development, and share the joy of this little big German goliath with your friends. :3
Version 1.0 Changes and Fixes
Here's the full list of improvements from the latest update:
Added new tracking system for Players actions. This is a report tool to track anonymous data on how assets are chosen throughout the game, to analyze players strategies in order to improve the AI
Implemented a new rule-based AI system on top of the current one, to allow future updates and data collection
Improved AI - Medium basic ruleset (slight upgrade in score median)
Full support for wide and ultra-wide aspect ratios; fixed many bugs related to popup visualization on 16:10+
Improved color coding on Actions Log
Fixed a soft-lock during Leaders Tutorial
Polished some graphics during the gameover sequence and in some leader-related popups
Some texts were reviewed and better localized
Minor refactors, bugfixes, and code optimization
Release date and Roadmap update
Howdy folks,
we finally sat down at a table (albeit virtual, thanks Covid for ruining our social bonding) to discuss the latest steps of development, and to figure out a tentative release date for our little child.
Now I imagine you'll be anxious to skip the chitchat and go straight to the big news, so first thing first, here it is:
We are targeting Oct. 5 2020 as the release date for Lorenzo il Magnifico!
Still here? Good! Now let's dig into the details.
What happens until Oct. 5?
Well, you know the drill: there's still a lot to do on our Trello board, including updating the list itself. Given the somehow short window of time, 90% of our efforts will still be focused on improving the AI until we feel like we reached a decent score target. As you read in Cody's detailed dive-in (see other News), the new AI system is under delicate surgery, but shows promising results. While the development is going forward, we are trying to point out the basic rules which should empower the AI behaviour tree; though the basic rules are quite obvious from an experienced player's point of view, there's also a lot of trial-and-error related to the randomness that defines how content is assigned on the board, workers values etc. To deal with that, the best thing to do is to just work with a lot, and a lot, and a lot of data. So while the AI is capable of simulating a ton of games in quick time (thus allowing us to evaluate its basic performance), we will start collecting more detailed data on how human players perform their actions, as nothing beats a firsthand, data-driven examination of human strategy in our Renaissance battle of wits. If everything goes right (which is quite the big deal, given how 2020 has been so far), version 1.0 will feature a new AI which should be slightly more effective (or less stupid, if you prefer) and challenging.
The remaining 10% of time will be used to deal with critical bugs and crashes, as the bug tracking system will still work inside the game. If no additional issues arise, there probably won't be any more releases until Oct. 5 (unless we need some sort of stress test or we have to deliver some hotfixes on urgent bugs).
What next?
Of course, version 1.0 is a massive milestone to hit, but it will leave some room for improvements as well. This is why we will continue to support the project and to deliver at least another major update, especially when we'll have enough data from played games to improve the overall AI performance. After all, we want to ensure the AI works as intended before considering the project done.
As far as other features that were requested (such as the async multiplayer), we will have to evaluate the development effort to understand whether they are deliverable according to how well the game is received after the launch date.
Again, our bug reporting / feedback form will remain available in the game even after launch, as a quick way to deliver messages directly to everyone involved in the project, but we'll also be around here and on BoardGameGeek to address every issue you may have.
That's it for now, people. As always, thank you for supporting us and for your patience. We've been on a long way with this project and we hope we'll be able to make it as close as possible to what you initially envisioned this game to be.
We are working on a new AI level which should put up a real challenge for experienced players;
What's new