Mind the Vikings
Save and Load
Save games are NOT going to be guaranteed to work across big patches. Atleast until we are out of early access. Ensuring compatability is a large amount of work and I decided it was not worth it for now.
Next up I plan to fix a few bugs you guys have been reporting, and start working on the Seasons and Farming systems!
Join our discord to follow the development, https://discord.gg/VWecwS7
have a great day,
Simon
Back with a vengeance
Going solo this time, it's been really hard getting to this point, but finally I feel like i have the start of something great that is ready for Early Access.
Its still quite buggy, but stable enough to be in early access. There are way too many changes to list off, and i've probably forgotten hundreds of small things i've changed, added or removed. But the biggest changes of all include:
Raiding
You can now dispatch vikings on raids, either they return with booty or they dont return at all. Its a risky move that may or may not pay off. Currently the raiding system is bare bones, but its a skeleton that I want to build a complex system of relationship management, strategy, war and drama.
Visual overhaul
I've spent a lot of time working on getting the visual fidelity to more what i imagined it should look like. There are many elements that I still havent worked on, but I hope it looks better now.
UI Overhaul
This is only halfway done. Lots of old ui elements are still there, but are being replaced constantly.
Custom made maps
The biggest challenge for me when i was taking over the project was to learn the complex code behind the procedural generation and pathfinding. I decided it was not adding enough to the game to warrant literal months of research, so I replaced it with custom maps that i will add continuously. Later hopefully it should be moddable and players can add their own maps.
Overall change in tone and direction
The game is less silly and aims to be more immersive now. At its core I want Mind the Vikings to be a thematic, strategic and personal take on the city building genre. Games like these often focus on grandeur and big numbers. Mind the Vikings wants to turn that on its head and let you in closer. Get to know your citizens personally, decorate the nooks and crannies of your settlement and make you think twice before starting a feud. This will be a long ongoing process but that is part of the journey!
The game is today lacking two very important features. Save games and Farming. This will be my biggest priority the coming weeks.
All the best,
Simon
Join our discord!
WE ARE GOING ON VACATION
WE ARE TAKING A LONG VACATION!
Both me and danny are completely burnt out and stressed out of our minds.
We have tried for so long to just survive, and kept releasing sub-par patches and slowly tried to ramp up production. But after very long discussions we have decided that this is the wrong way to go.
Things are simply too slow. We want to get back to the super high tempo that we had before we burnt out. To do that we have decided that things need to get slow, before they can speed up.
We have decided to stop working completely until january 2019 and put all of our attention on resting and healing. In january we will resume operations, and hopefully we will feel much much better, and can start kicking ass again.
So i can already imagine all the hate comments and negative reviews, but we have decided to come to terms with it, and have accepted the consequenses.
Thank you, and I hope for your understanding.
Simon and Danny.
Relics and bug fixes - 0.5.3
Hey!
Today we are sending you a small update with a small teaser.. Relics! Along with some much needed bug fixes and tweaks. We hope you enjoy!
Features:
Added 2 relics...
Added falling snow
Added Snow footstep sound
Day sign now animates in and out
Bug Fixes:
Farming works again! (kind of..*)
Dragging vikings is no longer choppy
Trying to select a farm is now much easier
UI should no longer cut outside of the game screen
Camera should no longer focus on the viking from underground
Made fixes to trees so they should no longer fly up in the air or become invulnerable
Day time is now saved
Date is now saved
Fixed false homeless bug
Guards now level up when breaking up fights
Uncommon resources are now saved
* Keep the shapes simple people, we’re still improving it!
Tweaks:
Bush regen rate increased
Increased chance of food poisoning
Increased damage of food poisoning and curses
And if you have ideas for what cool new stuff we should work on, check this out:
https://trello.com/b/qSqAecgZ/mind-the-vikings-ideas
And of course: Talk to us! (we bite gently)
https://discord.gg/q4mPUdP
/Daniel Perlman and Simon Ulander
Winter is here! P. 0.5.2
Despite the cold we are alive and kicking!
It's actually record heat here in Sweden right now, so what better time to release a winter patch!?
In this patch we have added our second season: you guessed it, Winter! (there's more coming as well) We also fixed some bugs, tweaked some tweaks and balanced some inbalances!
- Added snow on the ground, and some falling snow as well
- Ice ice baby (on the water)
- Firewood consumption in winter goes through the roof
- Farms produce less during winter
- Fishing is now kind of hard when the water is frozen
- Added a season clock
- You can see what season your savegame is currently in
- Increased chance of positive traits
- Trees now bend in the wind
- Floating trees should no longer appear
- Fixed bug where vikings would not converse
- Increased initial amount of firewood on houses
- During pause the camera will rotate slightly
Thank you all for supporting the game, and we're super hyped to speed up the progress on the game again, we have so many awesome ideas from the community to get through! :)
All the best,
Simon Ulander and Danny Perlman
Thought’s n’ Witches - Patch 0.5.1
Here’s some changes we’ve added to make the game even better, including mind-reading and witchcraft! Some great features are in the works and we are slowly but surely picking up the pace again.
Features:
- Witch Hut is now enabled and fully functional
- You can now see what a viking is thinking
- “New” notification on vikings disappears after 30 seconds
- Trap chance is now displayed for coal and magical plants
- Camera position is now saved and loaded
Bug Fixes:
- Farms can now be removed!
- Fishing and witch hut profiles now stick on click
- Coal and magical plants collected are now saved
- Fisherman job is now properly saved
- No random smiths showing up
- Floating rocks
- Mystery curses not showing up anymore
Tweaks
- Firewood consumption has been drastically increased
- Lowered initial firewood inventory on houses drastically
- Food consumption increased as well
And if you have ideas for what cool new stuff we should work on, check this out:
https://trello.com/b/qSqAecgZ/mind-the-vikings-ideas
And of course: Talk to us! (we bite gently)
https://discord.gg/q4mPUdP
Also, huge shoutout to Laurie (otherwise known as Berserk-bob), a new developer who has joined the team, and whom is responsible for a lot of the changes in this patch! Thanks for all the patience and feedback, we look forward to bringing you even more awesome content!
/Daniel Perlman and Simon Ulander
Hotfix 0.5.0.5
Freeze's are only acceptable during Midvinter
Here’s a hotfix that should fix the most immediate crashes and freezes you’ve been experiencing.
Fixed a crash that would happen when you went on an adventure
Fixed a freeze on game load
Fixed a freeze when you throw vikings into water
Fixed a freeze with vikings wandering around
Tweaks:
Torches and braziers now require a little less coal
Thank you all for being patient and understanding. We pushed ourselves a little too far with the day/night patch, and Danny is currently experiencing some burnout, so we are forced to slow down and lick our wounds for a short while before picking up speed again.
Thank you for helping us develop this amazing game!
Day / Night cycle! - Patch 0.5.0
It's time to enter darkness.
Day & Night cycle
Let the darkness surround your island and viking settlement. Set alight all the torches and watch the mist roll in from the ocean.
The big feature of this patch is Darkness. A much needed change from the monotonous perpetual day we’ve had up until now.
To adapt the game for this change has been huge, spanning all features of the game, so I hope you can have understanding for how long time it took us to get here!
New UI for the buildings to support more types!
We had to revamp the building UI because the old format just couldnt support this amount of buildings, so this new one should have more space, let us know what you think of it!
Torches and Braziers
Light up the night with these fancy torches and braziers!
Adventures & Treasures
Send your vikings out on missions to collect valuable treasures!
This feature is the framework that we will try to build raiding around, so please give us feedback on it!
Log Palisade
Ward off evil attackers with this sturdy log wall (evil attackers to-be-added, for now it just looks pretty)
Coal
A “Treasure item” used to build torches and braziers
Witch’s Hut
Recruit a witch to brew concoctions for your vikings, can cure both curses and illnesses.
Currently has no use, but we wanted to show it to you! Functionality will be added in 0.5.1
Herbs
A “Treasure item” used by the witch to concoct potions to cure illnesses etc
Fishing huts work okay now!
The game is now “Very early alpha” instead of “Very very early alpha”
We’re getting there!
Small stuff:
Vikings now require more food per day
Days are much longer
Changed horn to a more low-key horn so that your ears will be less likely to explode.
Viking list is now located in bottom right corner
Fishing hut renamed to fishing shack
Road renamed to Wooden Road
Added rarities to the storage inventory
Added a “wake up” button on houses for you to disturb a viking’s beautysleep because why the heck not?
Bugs:
Holy cow we fixed a lot of bugs, but they were produced by the features we just added, so we cannot count them, Doh!
At least we fixed an infinite loop with the farm, so your game should crash less often!
Thank you for having the patience and sticking with us, this patch was a real pain to make, but we sincerely hope you enjoy it!
You can follow our bug-squishing journey here
https://trello.com/b/jwezI6DE/mind-the-vikings-bugs-issues
And if you have ideas for what cool new stuff we should work on, check this out:
https://trello.com/b/qSqAecgZ/mind-the-vikings-ideas
And of course: Talk to us! (we bite gently)
https://discord.gg/q4mPUdP
Odin’s blessing upon you.
/ Simon Ulander and Daniel Perlman.
Quality of Life update - v.0.4.4
Hello Viking Overlords!
We’re adding a few quality of life features before we drop the 0.5.0 patch next week (which we suspect you will like… quite a bit.)
Here comes a few changes that should make life in vikingville a little easier!
Features:
- New UI for vikings, buildings and resources that should hopefully make managing information a little easier
- Re-growing forests - saplings now spawn in forest-areas that turn into trees after a while
- Launch menu has been totally revamped for simplicity
- Range indicator on lumberyard to see it’s area of effect
- You can now quickly see how much firewood each house contains by selecting the lumberyard
- You can now hold SHIFT to automatically see information on hovered object
- Added details to damage, so you can see where damage was taken from
- Added confirm quesion on main menu so you don’t accidentally exit game without saving
- You can now evict vikings from houses that you think they don’t belong in by draggin another viking onto that house
You can now opt-in to the stable version of the game under the beta branch on our game's properties page!
Bugs:
- Lag when saving the game has been reduced (more fixes are coming)
- Fixed gatherers mixing up trees and bushes
Thank you for reporting issues to us and coming up with awesome ideas! Lets continue this train all the way to valhalla!
You can follow our bug-squishing journey here
https://trello.com/b/jwezI6DE/mind-the-vikings-bugs-issues
And if you have ideas for what cool new stuff we should work on, check this out:
https://trello.com/b/qSqAecgZ/mind-the-vikings-ideas
And of course: Talk to us! (we bite gently)
https://discord.gg/q4mPUdP
Odin’s blessing upon you.
/ Simon Ulander and Daniel Perlman.
30 Vikings? How about 300? 0.4.3 is here!
Together with that we also threw in a couple bug fixes and improvements to the UI
Performance:
Fixed a bleed that would increase exponentially as you gained more vikings
Recruiting more vikings would cause a big lag spike later on during the game
Alleviated stuttering that would occur when you recruited a large number of vikings
Bugs:
Scuba-diving vikings are no-more (hopefully atleast, they really like scuba-diving)
Every homeless person would say “gained home” when placing a house, even if that is sadly not true.
Woodchoppers are no longer inactive on a loaded game start
Houses are now set on fire correctly
Fixed buildings not being properly built when placed
Dead viking profile pages are no longer glued to the screen to remind you what horrible thing you let happen to this poor viking..
Features:
Seeds are now separated into two boxes, second one being for mountaineusness(euess?)
Added foundation to guard tower
Death notification now tells you in what horrible way the viking died
That’s it folk!
You can follow our bug-squishing journey here
https://trello.com/b/jwezI6DE/mind-the-vikings-bugs-issues
And if you have ideas for what cool new stuff we should work on, check this out:
https://trello.com/b/qSqAecgZ/mind-the-vikings-ideas
And of course: Talk to us! (we bite gently)
https://discord.gg/q4mPUdP
Odin’s blessing upon you.
/ Simon Ulander and Daniel Perlman.