This post will not be that interesting as I'm in the middle of a huuuuuuuge systems overhaul/upgrade and will mostly be about that. Before I get into it, I do want to say thanks for all your patience. Unfortunately, this update has been one which has had a million cascading tasks and is taking me a very long time to complete. I do appreciate all the support, feedback, and kind words. Keeps me going! Ok, enough sap from me. xD
Overhaul and improvements! Essentially, I'm extracting a very old system for entities called, 'behaviours'. It's a system which tries to dictate entity actions whilst also being a sort of status effect tracker and it's incredibly ugly. It causes a ton of weird--heh--behaviours in the game which often conflict with the entity state machine and so on. I won't get into too much of the tech details here because it just won't make sense without me walking through the code. However, the solution I'm putting in place is much cleaner and is only a slight detour from work on the update.
One lovely addition/change that's related to this is that many behaviours now appear as jobs on the map. Whereas, before, they were actions taking place without any feedback whatsoever. A great example is item movement. Now, you'll actually see jobs on items that indicate that they are going to be moved and which settler is doing so. These are 'auto jobs' much like the ones created by the farm room. Not only does this clearly communicate the actions of entities, but also gives players the ability to prioritize jobs--and keep them from being done at all if that is the desire (setting the priority to 0). The job may say something like, 'incorrect zone,' meaning the item is going to be removed from the zone it's in and moved to the correct one. I've added this level of communication to a lot of other entity actions so the player knows exactly what is taking place. i.e., sleeping, mating (wink wink), eating, drinking, putting out fires, etc.
Aside from that rabbit hole of work, I continued to improve the room management flow (this is taken directly from the discord #upcoming channel):
Room TLDR; It's super easy to select/add-to/remove rooms now and they can span multiple z levels OR be placed by another room of the same type.
(The above gif is me placing two new rooms [left-click]+[shift], then selecting the first [right-click]+[shift], adding tiles to it [left-click], selecting the second room [right-click]+[shift], adding tiles to it [left-click].)
Changed the editing of rooms so the same type can be side-by-side and one room can now span multiple z levels. Editing/placing rooms has been streamlined as well. You can easily select a room without using the room list with [shift] + [right-click]. Creating a brand new room, separate from the select room can be done with [shift] + [left-click] or by selecting a new room from the toolbar. Additionally, players will no longer lose their room names just be adding/removing points. There's a lot of transferable functionality here that I'm going to use in the future for zones. I want to update the zone system to work more like rooms. So that players can easily designate items, copy old zone groups, and edit at a larger scale. But I'll save that for the update after this one.
(Some quick selecting of rooms with [right-click]+[shift].)
Anyway, hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I'm up to.
Hope you are all well!
Thanks!
Waylon
August 2020 Dev Log
Hello!
This is NOT a post to say the next update is out! Some confusion there on my last development post as I erroneously used the word, 'update'. haha That's my bad! Also, I noticed some concern that I'm not posting these dev posts enough and all I can say is that it takes quite a bit of time for me to write them and I'd rather focus on work on the game. So, apologies for not writing them every week. I encourage you to join our discord server if you want constant news updates as I'm in there every day talking to the community. Here's a link to that: Discord Server
Anywho, on to the meat and bones:
I'm currently in the process of wrapping up work I had started on re-doing the rooms screen. Now, I know what you're thinking as I've thought it too, 'ugh, more work on a screen that's already done??' The thing is, that screen was initially done pretty poorly and because new rooms (such as the Prison Cell) need way more UI support, I had no choice but to fix it up.
Firstly, the room screen no longer appears when you open the room menu. Instead, you'll see a much smaller panel in the bottom right corner which simply displays a list of all the rooms that have been placed, their current status, and will have the ability to go to them or delete them altogether.
Some things to note about the status of a room: -Orange rooms indicate that the player has manually added occupants. Green means the room will automatically add/remove occupants based on the room's requirements. -The little rectangular bar to the right of the name indicates how full/empty the room is as well as whether it is missing required props (indicated by being red).
The main room management window now has its own button on the bottom right toolbar. This window lets players edit individual rooms to a much finer detail.
All rooms start with ideal default settings based on their functionality as they did before. i.e., The animal enclosure requiring Shepherds. Now, players can edit profession, skill, and race individually to have full control over who is automatically occupying the room. So, you could, say, have warriors fulfilling the role of an animal enclosure occupant. In most cases, I don't think players will really need to edit the default setting but the control is there if they wish. There are no restrictions to how players set these requirements. You want a bedroom full of cats? Go for it. The only negative to incorrectly placing occupants like so would be that the room may not be utilized correctly. i.e., manually assigning cats to the workshop and having nothing produced from that room as a result. Rooms such as this have a warning to indicate this misuse. You can also edit the room size if you wish (with a max level based on the room's placement size in the world). Might be handy if you only want one prisoner per prison cell room. Or you only want one guard.
In the above image you can see the popup which appears when you click to edit room requirements. The symbols on the title bar indicate, 'SELECT ALL, SELECT NONE, RESET TO DEFAULT.'
Something which you cannot see here, because I have yet to add it, is the room ability info. This will be right below the requirements info of the window and will provide room specific control and important benefits the room provides. i.e., Bedrooms will show benefits of beds and family stuff, whereas the prison cell will let you manage food and prisoner permissions.
One other minor addition I've added is the ability to move windows around by middle-mouse dragging them. Windows which can be dragged have a highlighted border when you mouse over them. You can easily reset window positions back to their default and they cannot be dragged completely off screen.
Lastly, I've also added the Scholar profession which lets entities go to the Library room to earn research points to spend on the research tree. I've also added an Alchemist profession and respective room but I don't think that one will make it into version 0.10.0.0 because it will require a lot of room mechanics which would push this update out even further. But I'm looking forward to adding that one to have fun potions in the game and also a method for healing entities. Which means diseases and interesting injuries later! :D
As you can see, I've got a lot on my plate. The room functionality is particularly complicated and I really want to take my time to make sure it is providing players a fun and engaging method for interacting with rooms. Things such as the new diet window and room window update are all carefully planned to lead into the Ardyn race implementation as they will depend heavily on prisoners.
I've learned my lesson about promising dates so I can't really tell you when this version will be out. It won't be soon and I really, really appreciate your patience and support. Just know that I am always working on the game and have no plans to abandon it! :)
Thanks!
W
0.10.0.0 Dev Update
Hey gang!
It has been a while since I've posted anything regarding the game's development and I thought I'd take a moment to do that.
The next update 0.10.0.0 Sacred Scrolls is quite big. One thing that I really wanted to focus on for this update was progression. For a lot of the game's development, I've focused on systems to broaden the game's possibilities, and quality of life improvements to help user experience. I've largely neglected adding too much content because it's harder to add new systems if you have to make sure all the previous content isn't broken as a result. So, when I say progression, I mean two things namely: content (more blueprints, items, props) and tuning. Alongside this progression work, I've also changed and improved how combat and taming works. Combat behaviour has totally been re-written as it was super frustrating and buggy. i.e., warriors not going to targets. Taming now works in a completely different way as players were getting confused by its mechanics. I'll detail that more below.
Here are the three biggest additions/changes:
Research Tree
As I'm sure you're aware, the current progression works where you start out with all the rooms and you unlock blueprints as you find the correct ingredients. This has two main issues. First, there's no clear progression for rooms. The starting rooms available are just too overwhelming and it's unclear what you need when. Second, because players don't know the possible blueprints out there, they don't know what to look for and end up skipping progression steps or never experiencing them altogether. The research tree solves these issues by providing clear paths to unlock rooms, professions, blueprints, and mechanics. Here's how it works: Players will receive Knowledge Points as they complete jobs around the settlement. As well, they can use Scholars to study at the Library room (unlocked from the research tree) to obtain this resource at a faster rate. (The Library will have more benefits but I won't get into that now.) Players can then spend the research on unlocking nodes within the research tree. Some nodes will have dependencies on previous nodes and some just require the previous column to have one node unlocked. Players will retain ALL research they unlock as long as they continue one game. This means things like migration won't reset the tree. However, starting a brand new game will. Additionally, each race will have their own special nodes on this tree that are unique. Later, when I introduce mixed race settlements, you'll be able to get them all unlocked if you had one of every race in the town.
Taming/Capturing
Taming has now been changed mechanically to 'capture' entities. This is to support the following update where I will implement the Ardyn race which utilizes capturing a lot. Here's how it works: Players can build cages out of various materials. The material will determine the likeliness the cage will break or capture the entity. Cages come in three sizes (for now) and entities will only be captured by the correct size cage. i.e., chickens only captured by the small cage, Humans captured by the medium cage, etc. Animals can be lured with bait to go towards cages. Animals will only be lured to the cage by bait which matches their diet. Once an entity has successfully been put into a cage, the player can then apply a few jobs. They can butcher the entity, capture it, or free it. Capturing an entity will either make the animal tamed (if it's something like a cow or chicken) or make the animal a prisoner (if it's, say, a Human). Prisoners will do all the things you would expect from a normal settler. The catch (ha) is that they will do things at a lower proficiency, may try to escape (low chance), or may become hostile (also low chance) and start attacking your settlers. I'm thinking of adding some items later to deter prisoners from escaping/becoming hostile at the cost of other attributes. i.e., handcuffs which keep them from using hand items but totally keep them from escaping. Prisoners will also require their own Prison Cell where they will sleep and eat. I will also add more status effects for prisoners based on how well they are treated. i.e., becoming sick from poor cell conditions. This will come with the later update where I add alchemy. As well, we've conceptualized the idea of bringing prisoners into the settlement for good, but that's still very much in planning and will, again, be a later addition.
Diets
Ok, I had to add this new feature because, a) baiting animals needs specialized diets, and, b) I can no longer abide chickens eating chicken meat without repercussions. Here's how it works: Essentially, the diet window is quite similar to how uniforms get created. Each race that you've discovered will appear in the race/diet list. From here, you can assign diets to each race. (Later down the road I might make it so you can get more specific and apply diets to sub-groups within the race.) Each race has a default diet which is quite broad. Players can create their own diets and then overwrite that default diet if they choose to. The diets have 3 layers of priority within them: preferred, neutral, and undesired. Settlers will get a nice bump to various attributes and happiness if they are eating from the preferred diet set and they'll try to eat these first. Neutral has no positive/negative long-term affects. Undesired will have negative long term affects on attributes and happiness.
I know I could go into a lot more detail about all these main points but I would be here writing for hours and I want to go back to work haha. Hope that's a nice teaser for what's to come. Also, there were a lot of complaints about contrast and hard to read text. I've gone through every UI element and darkened all the backgrounds as well as brightened all the text elements. Hopefully this helps those players out a bit. :)
Thanks for being such an amazing and patient community. Really happy to get to chat with you all each day and get your feedback and warm messages.
Have a great weekend!
Waylon
Hotfix Beta Patch (v0.9.0.12)
Heyooo!
Just uploaded a build to the beta branch which should fix these issues:
-Fixed a bug where entities weren't updating their age status (child/adult/elder) after migrating. -Fixed a bug where the settler permissions screen wasn't updating skills when settlers became adults. -Fixed a bug where skills could get locked permanently. -Fixed a bug where grass from previous seasons could get carried over after Winter. -Fixed a bug where entities could get stuck inside blocks after building them. -Fixed a bug where one gender would only spawn for animals. -Fixed a bug where plant data for goose grass wasn't being found and could cause saves to corrupt. -Fixed a bug where hatches couldn't be built over ladders.
If this build turns out to be stable enough I'll move the changes to the main production branch.
Thanks!
Waylon
Season Transition Lock-Up Hotfix (v0.9.0.11)
Super quick announcement that I've uploaded a hotfix patch (v0.9.0.11) which fixes the season transition lock-up bug. Thank you to those folks which brought it up and sent me save files. You rock!
I will be uploading another fix over the next few days for other issues which have been brought up recently. Hang tight for that!
Thanks!
Waylon
0.9.0.7 Is Now Live On The Production Branch
It has been a while since I've updated the production branch, so there's a lot that has been changed. Here are the collective patch notes if you're interested in seeing what's different:
Thanks to those that helped me out by reporting bugs in the beta branch. You are much appreciated!
Best,
Waylon
Moving Beta Build to Production
Hey all!
This is just a quick note to give players some advance warning that I'll be moving the beta build to production very soon. Probably early tomorrow morning.
This new version will NOT be backwards compatible with previous versions. This means your current saved games won't work with the new version. Usually, I try to put out builds that are backwards compatible but it just wasn't possible with this one because it had so many low-level changes.
Anyway, I apologize for any lost progress and will try to avoid this in the future.
Thanks,
Waylon
Beta Patch 0.9.0.7 Notes
Hey folks!
Sorry for such a long period without putting up announcements. I had my nose against the grindstone trying to fix things in the game.
This patch has quite a lot in it. Take a look at the notes, check out the build, let me know what you think! :)
-Fixed a bug where palm trees were not maintaining the same position as their sapling. -Changed entity name colors to represent their gender. -Fixed a food/beverage reservation bug which caused multiple entities to go and try to drink/eat the same item. Fools. -Cleaned up the top hud stats to be a bit clearer. -Fixed a bug where populations could exceed the player set amount. -Actually fixed right-side climbing for human children. -Fixed a bug where death notifications weren't showing the cause of death. -Tuned the Collect Water job to produce 3 water items and Wells to produce 5. -Tuned daily item spawn for trees to... you know... actually have a chance to spawn items. -Making animal fodder now requires the cooking skill instead of the survival skill. -Removed cut skill buff from items because it's no longer an active skill. -Fixed a bug where mining overlays weren't showing whether they are covered properly. -Fixed some issues where various blocks could become unregistered from the hourly update tick. -Fixed a bug where snow couldn't land on grass. -Added wood bow to custom loadout screen. -Fixed a bug where Spring Stew was being displayed as Fall Stew. -Fixed a bug where wool cloth blueprints weren't available. -Fixed a bug where the item watch list wasn't updating for when entities used up resources for building that they carried. -Fixed a bug with blueprint item requirement planning which resulted in settlers not being able to start building blueprints. -Fixed a bug where entities were occasionally unreserving items right before going to go pick them up. This would cause other settlers to think they could also go get that item. -Fixed a bug where zones would disappear. -Fixed a bug where world chunks might not display properly on game load. -Fixed a bug where props weren't dropping after their platform was removed. -Fixed a bug where reserved item UIDs weren't being saved and loaded, causing two settlers to try and pick up the same item. -Fixed a bug where settlers could think they were able to reach a point which was not connected by an open path. -Fixed a bug within the merchant overlay which was causing errors. -Fixed a bug where the ` key would display in the debug console. -Fixed a bug where props and items couldn't fall into water. -Added a notification for when blocks/items/props get destroyed by water. -Lowered item requirement amounts for most complex food recipes. -Added a toggle to hide blueprints. (Shift) -Fixed a bug where secondary room occupants weren't tracking properly. -Fixed a bug where plants could clear out blueprints that were occupying their space after they expired or reproduced. -You can now see previous jobs when any job is selected rather than when the same job is selected. Additionally, you can overwrite other jobs if that job is not selected. -Changed brick blueprints to require stonework rather than metalwork. -Fixed a bug where workstations weren't being used if all the room points had blueprints on them. -Brick blueprint output increased to 8 from 4 and requirement increased to 2 from 1. -Time to mature is now shown for weeds. -Fixed a bug where auto harvest for weeds would use the deprecated cut job rather than harvest. -Fixed a bug where you couldn't set rooms, zones, or utilities using the border shape. -Fixed a bug where you could change utilities through platforms. i.e., changing the priority of a job that's on the floor below. -Fixed a bug where you'd see a blue flash when forcing the camera to follow a target. -Fixed a bug where setting the priority of a job to 0 would sometimes not stop the settler from completing the job if it was already started. -Fixed a bug where the training dummy attack fx wasn't visible. -Disabled the Tavern as a room option as it's not fully implemented and needs some love. -Upped the melt threshold of snow and ice so they don't melt as easily in warmer winter days. -Fixed a bug where auto plant jobs in the farm room would overwrite props. -Drowning damage is now given rather than entities drowning as soon as they enter a water block. This is similar to taking burn damage from fire blocks as it's issued over time. -Fixed a bug where water wasn't being found for extinguishing fires if the water was in a container. -Added a notification for when items can't be accessed when trying to equip them. -Fixed a bug where Tamtallen Remains tooltips were missing. -Complex food recipes now produce 4 rather than just 1. -Added restrictions and tooltips for building props in the air that require platforms. -Fixed a bug where the undiscovered sparkle effect was showing up on props. -The custom layout screen now shows item type, some tooltip info, and is ordered by type > merchant value > name. -Fixed a bug where hotkeys weren't being saved properly. -Fixed a bug where saplings couldn't be harvested. -Fixed a bug where Void Imps weren't spawning items on death. -Added a visual icon to certain jobs to show water neighbors. -Void Woken, now, do not receive speed penalties for moving vertically as they float. -Right-clicking while using the rotate utility will now rotate the block in the opposite direction. -Fixed a bug where entities were flagged as in combat and would not move on rare occasions. -Fixed a bug where the version conflict message window wasn't appearing over the load transition screen. -Loot bags will only be dropped if the entity had gear. Not for when they drop just resources. This is to keep entities like Void Woken from spawning tons of loot bags which just get in the way. -Fixed a bug where settlement names would get overwritten on game re-load. -Fixed a bug where the overworld map wouldn't open the first time you hit the m hotkey after loading a new game. -Fixed a bug where the overworld map couldn't be closed using the m hotkey. -Fixed a bug where the end year of the settlement was not displayed correctly.
Thanks friends! Have a lovely day.
Waylon
Hotfix Patch 0.9.0.5 Notes
Hey all!
Special thanks to JK47 and all the people reporting bugs on the beta. It's much appreciated. :)
Here are today's patch notes: -Fixed a bug where beverages would show 99+ on the HUD but food would not. -Fixed a bug where plants weren't being cut when building on them. -Tuned night to be a bit darker. -Added a slider to manual change how dark night is in the settings panel. -Fixed a bug where climbing anims weren't playing for male children. -Players now start the game with a random set of crates and barrels containing their starting items. -Humans now start off with a bit more food and beverages. -Fixed a bug where tutorials weren't properly restarting. -Fixed a bug where the tutorial for building would disallow placing blueprints. -Fixed a bug where weeds would drop seeds even when not mature. -Fixed a bug where props could lose their light property if worked on. i.e., the fire pit losing light when someone builds coal there. -Fixed a pathing bug where entities could path upwards but not downards in certain situations. -Fixed a bug where entities could move through platforms. -Fixed a bug where plants were reproducing outside their plant points. -Fixed a bug where plants and trees could get stuck during their growing phases. -Fixed a bug where blueprints would retain the floor texture of a previous season. -Fixed a bug where ice/snow could spawn underwater/underground. -Fixed a bug which caused performance issues with blueprints. -Fixed a bug where blueprints would show as unbuildable in the build menu even if you had more than enough materials. -Fixed a bug where the minimap wasn't always updating. -Fixed a bug where move commands could not be given through the minimap. -Fixed a bug where room highlights weren't updating the overlay visual. -Fixed a bug where the temperature overlay wasn't quite matching up with the actual temperature on the tooltip. -Added entity gender to the info tooltip. -Training dummies are now harder to destroy. -Training dummies now cost 1 plant fiber to build as opposed to 5.
Thanks! Have a solid rest of your evening!
Waylon
0.9.0.3 and 0.9.0.4 Hotfix Patch Notes
Hey folks! Hope you're all having a great week. Here are the notes for last two patches.
0.9.0.3 -Fixed a bug where blueprints could be placed on blocks that are the same as the blueprint creation. -Fixed a bug where gates weren't rotatable. -Fixed a bug where blueprints weren't resetting ambient shadows for props. -Fixed a bug where you could build over a light/heat source and keep the light/heat properties. -Fixed a bug where points weren't being unreserved after item pickup, causing entities to have to wait for the point to be unreserved after the reserving entity had finished their task. -Fixed a bug where rain would SNEAK past glass surfaces like some sort of Baggins. -Fixed a bug where plants were using the correct data for cold tolerance thresholds. -Fixed a bug where latitude temperature offsets weren't saving and loading correctly. -Fixed a bug where entities could get stuck in combat, flailing about like idiots as they contemplate life. Their eyes blank, faces slack. "Distance too big. Stabby stick big too! Kill? No kill!", they grunted. Bewildered and afraid, the idiots stared at each other. Time ran on, like the wind over a savanna filled with a pack of frothing, insane hyenas. Madness precluded any feelings of hunger or thirst. These creatures were lost in the dark recesses of their minds. Anyway, turns out the bug was happening because of some incorrect tuning values. Should be good now. -Certain indicators will now only show up after a set delay. This is to keep hunger/thirst indicators from appearing even though the settler will immediately go and eat. -Fixed a bug where saplings were block paths.
0.9.0.4 -Fixed a bug where the wrong grass type was growing in the tropical biome. -Fixed a bug where grass wasn't growing naturally. -Fixed a bug where 'medium' was not capitalized for Vytrax and Gharrox Medium Leather blueprints. -Fixed a bug where leather blueprints were not showing up in the Tannery workstation. -Entity buffs are now ordered by name. -Fixed a bug where entity buffs weren't showing tooltips. -Added a subtle cloud shadow to textures in open skylight. -Fixed a bug where weather fx were showing incorrectly for dust storms. -Switched expand tooltip hotkey to left-control so as not to conflict with the search function (left-shift) on the build menu. -Fixed a bug where entities could get stuck building things out over water.
