As promised, I have been working to make up for the missed development time while I had no internet, so today I can tell you about upgrades to the farm I worked on.
I had mentioned before that the farm is one of the last buildings that are placed A LOT, while being one of the older models. As such, I first of all decided to upgrade the farm model. The model is now in the style of an actual T1 wooden building, and fits a little better with the rest of the models (today’s picture). Additionally, I created some props for a variety of fields already - wheat, vegetables, and medicinal herbs. Each of these fields now has a few associated props, and the plan is for a part of the space in the farm’s model to show these props depending on which fields have been placed. Additionally, this farm being a proper T1 building opens the path to creating T2 and T3 versions of the farm as well. These will be direct upgrades, adding the possibility of adding an additional field with each.
The additional higher tier farms, as well as the conditional props will likely be introduced together with the building upgrade mechanic - but I will upload the tier 1 farm as soon as I have finished adding the colliders and functionality to it.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 210 - Intermission
Hi everyone,
I travelled with largely no internet over the past 2 weeks, so my apologies for the delayed post. I will try to catch up on development (and missed out posts) over the next 2 weeks!
Until next week!
Weekly Update 209 - Small Fixes
Hi everyone,
Last week was a little chaotic, so my apologies for the delayed post. I have however updated the game with some fixes based on your feedback, so let me go through some of them.
First of all, I fixed a number of texture issues that somehow crept into the game. Some of them affected all games, others only a few. In either case, all of the ones that were reported to me should be fixed now, but let me know if you find any others.
Secondly, I fixed one issue with game loading, that could lead to pirate attacks no longer occurring in loaded games. I also worked on an issue with game loading that can occur when playing co,op with differently fast computers or long ping times, and that can lead to the client computer not loading resource nodes in the world. I have not been able to completely eliminate this second issue yet, but the frequency of it occurring should be reduced.
Thirdly, I adjusted when pirate attacks start happening as well as their frequency. Pirate attacks will no longer start 10 minutes into the game, but players now have at least 20 minutes before the first attack is sent to them. Additionally, attacks will generally occur less frequently, but will be slightly stronger on average.
Additionally, I increased the ammo supply range from 50 metres to 100 metres. I am also aware that ammo supply ranges don’t currently show up as players place buildings that either supply or require ammo - but I am working on adding more range indications soon.
Finally, there were a few additional fixes, such as fixing spelling mistakes, that probably won't require in depth explanations.
Thank you all for your feedback, and please keep reaching out with any bugs or ideas you have!
Until next week!
Weekly Update 208 - Intermission
Hi everyone,
First of all, thank you very much for all of the feedback last week, it was very helpful to hear all of your thoughts on 0.8! Unfortunately I am travelling this weekend, so I will give a more detailed update next week.
In response to all of your comments, I have already made some changes to the game, and will upload a new version during the week. This will not yet address all of the feedback I received, but will address quite a few of the most common concerns.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 207 - Release of Version 0.8
Hi everyone,
Today, I am finally releasing version 0.8 to the stable branch, so I will walk you through some of the changes made since 0.7!
The first big change that comes to mind is about the maps and scouts. Having working maps and scouts in the game was a big goal even before the release of 0.7, and was originally my only goal for 0.8. Getting this right was going to be important for players to actually be able to understand what was going on with their settlements, as walking across the map can take quite a bit of time. The result of my efforts here were the strategy map, shown on various tables (Port and Scout’s hut) across your settlements, as well as the tactical map (shown in the book), which both allow selection and deployment of military units.
During the development of the maps, it also became apparent from player feedback (thank you very much), that most players did not want to play competitively. Most players wanted to play against AI, and a substantial percentage wanted to also play cooperatively. So I switched quite a bit of the development around, and focused on getting a coop working. Switching to co-op included creating a new game mode - artefact mode - which shifted away from economic competition between human players, and instead focused on human players fighting the AI controlled pirates militarily.
This switch also included creating a new island, which took me quite a while to create, and came with a substantial art upgrade over the old island. The new island is long and narrow, with both players starting on the same end, and fighting primarily against the pirates that are getting stronger the further along the island players progress. With the art upgrade also came performance upgrades as I was able to create the map with many of the lessons learnt from the previous PvP map in mind, and many of the FPS problems the game suffered from were reduced or removed.
Another big improvement was the addition of 6 new military units (including the scout), and the differentiation into melee and ranged units. With the co-op focus allowing me to slow down how quickly players progressed through the game, it became feasible to separate buildings into more distinct tiers, and each of the tiers got its own melee and ranged unit. This of course came with new buildings, so where 0.7 started with 26 buildings, there are now 42 buildings in the game, and that is ahead of the 0.9 update, which will focus more on base building.
Together with the new units (especially the ranged ones), I also introduced the new ammo-supply and healing mechanics, which are both meant to make supporting your armies a little more challenging, and make logistics and forward outposts more relevant.
Finally, I also revamped the tutorial island to bring it in line with the new map, and massively expanded on the tutorial to cover all of the new mechanics in detail. This included creating a quest system for the game (only used in the tutorial so far), and creating a 2 hour quest-line for the tutorial, broken into 6 individually selectable chapters, which I think help introduce new players to the game quite effectively.
Overall, I think that 0.8 is a huge update, which really takes Path to Prosperity much closer to the game I want it to be, and I thank all of you for sticking with it all this time!
Until next week!
Weekly Update 206 - Solutions and Release
Hi everyone,
In my last post, I mentioned some issues with the pathfinding solution, which I am happy to report as being resolved. Additionally, I think that nothing is standing in the way of fully releasing version 0.8 to the main branch, so I’m going to set the release date for next Thursday, the 12th of September.
First up, let me give some of my findings regarding the pathfinding solution. I was using a slightly more up-to-date version of Unity for my experimentation, so updating the pathfinding solution meant that it no longer worked in the main Unity project, which also explained why various attempts to fix it didn’t work. Why the pathfinding was updated in both projects at the same time remains anyone’s guess, but I did manage to fix it by now, so I am glad to report that the issue has at least been solved.
Now that pathfinding is working again and I have also fixed the last few issues with the medium houses and terrain clearance, I have decided that 0.8 is finally in the state in which I think it warrants a full release to the main branch, which I am setting for next Thursday. One might think that this is short notice, but frankly, I have been teasing 0.8 for so long, I would think that I’ve given more notice than I ever expected.
I will of course focus on fixing any bugs you find for a little while after Thursday, but I am excited for people to try it out.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 205 - Experiments and Mysteries
Hi everyone,
Last week I ran into a completely new problem, which may be interesting to mention here.
As part of development, I have always had a number of additional Unity projects for experimentation. Trying things in isolation usually means that A) I can assess a new system or function by itself first, which tends to be easier to implement and shows me how it would work without competing mechanics, and B) means that any problems I create (trial and error tends to lead to quite a bit of error) stays contained within its own project, and I don’t end up breaking the main game with it. Or so I thought.
Last week, I ran some experiments on the pathfinding plugin Path to Prosperity uses, seeing if I could optimise performance and improve the way units run toward each other at the start of combat. As usual, I set up a new project, imported the third party pathfinding tool, updated it, and worked on it for a little while. Unlike usual, I found that the update had broken the pathfinding in the regular Path to Prosperity project when I switched back.
There is no obvious reason to me as to why this would happen. Files should not be shared between the two project folders, and updating one should have no effect on the other. Fixing it was not straightforward either. Where usually rolling back any changed files, or biting the bullet and updating the main project as well should be easy fixes, neither of them worked in this case. There are a few more ideas I have for how to diagnose the problem and try to fix it, but this was a curveball I certainly wasn’t expecting.
I will keep you updated.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 204 - Harvestable Plants for 0.9
Hi everyone,
With today’s update, I should be all caught up on the posts I missed. So let’s jump straight into it.
As I had mentioned before, one of the first things I will update after 0.8 will be the building script, allowing the updating of buildings and generally more flexibility for how buildings may look. After that, however, I am planning to focus on creating the new harvestables across the map I mentioned in posts 172 and 173. With these, players will be able to find different types of plant across the map (e.g. finding coffee plants in the wild), and harvest them either manually or using the gatherer’s hut. Similar to the banana groves, the plants will slowly regrow their harvestable fruit, and players will be able to either use their harvest directly (e.g. selling them), or will be able to craft seed bags for their fields from them.
This should really add to the value of exploring the island, and should add an additional benefit to expanding into the “right” parts of the island. Spawning of the plants will be random, just like the banana groves, so each game should be fairly different from the last, as some will have an abundance of one type of plants early on, while others may not provide the plant until very late.
I am fairly excited to be getting into these developments, so hopefully my efforts to get the marketing work for 0.8 out of the way will be finished soon!
Until next week!
Weekly Update 203 - The New Trailer
Hi everyone,
As promised, I am trying to make up for my lack of posts last week, and will give you another update this week.
Specifically, I want to mention that I have finished the new trailer and updated the materials on the steam store. Considering the various changes of the game between 0.7 and 0.8, as well as the changed direction (and completed promises), I felt that it was necessary to give new players a better idea of what they are getting into.
For those of you who haven’t played the 0.8 preview yet, this should also give you a good summary of where the game is right now. I tried to keep the trailer much shorter than the one it replaces (despite the many more features the game has now), as the last trailer simply felt a little too slow. Check it out and let me know what you think!
Until next week!
Weekly Update 202 - Updating the Farm
Hi everyone, My apologies for the delay on the last posts, I was travelling and didn’t manage to get anything out - so I will try to make up for it this week.
One of my current projects is to update the model of the farm, which is another building that occurs very frequently, and still has a very old model. I am planning to release this new building model with the building model script as the first update after the full release of 0.8, but there are also some mechanical changes I want to make to the farm at the same time.
Namely, I want to remove the current distinction between the farm as a “food crop” building, and the plantation as a “cash crop” building. Instead of this differentiation, I am planning to create a crop growing building for each tier, with each building being able to support a different amount of fields: the tier 1 “garden” (names to be workshopped) building would be able to put down 1 field, while the tier 2 “farm” would be able to place 3 fields, and the tier 3 “plantation” would be able to place 5. Each building will be able to place any crop you have seeds for, so you could also have a mix between food and cash crops at the higher tiers.
Together with different biomes supporting different types of crops, I think these changes should both improve the progression of placing crop growing buildings, and make it more interesting where to grow crops and what building to place them from.
As usual, I will keep you updated as I work through this.
