I added a few minor things this week, including the ability to clear ground cover in your villages.
The ground cover clearance will show up in the construction tab of the building book, and you can select it like you are constructing any other building, but selecting it is free. Once selected, you will see an outline on the ground (see today's image), which will remove any grass/sticks/flowers that are inside its area when placed. This is a merely cosmetic change, but will allow you to remove grass in your streets and squares, rather than having to live with them looking as wild as the nature outside of your village. I am anticipating some changes to this system in 0.9, such as being able to place road textures, but I think this is a good start for the time being.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 200 - 0.8 Preview on Stable Branch
Hi everyone,
Last week, I decided to move the latest preview build of 0.8 onto the stable branch. I also finished the upgrade of the medium house, as you can see in the screenshot.
Moving the latest preview build onto the stable branch mostly reflects that the build is sufficiently bug-free at this point to be played broadly, and I am looking forward to getting some more feedback on it. There will be a few additional little updates (e.g. bringing the new medium house into the game), before 0.8 will be finalised, but I am still waiting on some external work before I can get that done.
As usual, you will get a longer update on the development over the last year with post 108, as that will mark exactly 4 years of these posts.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 199 - Building Model Script
Hi everyone,
My tech issues seem to be finally fixed (fingers crossed), and I have made quite a bit of headway on the new scripts.
There is not much to see at the moment, as switching from the old scripts to the new ones will require setting up each of the buildings for the new script. That will require quite a bit of work, as some of the older building models also need to have new colliders set up for them to work with the new system. However, once 0.8 has been released fully, I should be able to do that quite quickly.
In terms of releasing 0.8, most of the new marketing materials have been created, and I am just waiting for some additional input to switch things over. Considering next week will be my 200th post, I will give a longer update on 0.8 then.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 198 - Small Decisions for v0.9
Hi everyone,
I am still playing catch-up from my tech issues last week, so not too much has happened.
I mostly managed to finalise a lot of the planned production chains for 0.9, and started with another update for a building model - the medium house. Beyond that, I have decided that my first priority after the release of 0.8 (other than bug fixing) will be to create the upgrade to the building model script, and I have started planning out some of the code for this. The new script will bring with it the functionality for building upgrades (e.g. small house to medium house), randomisation of buildings (so each small house may be a random one of 3 different models), and random ornaments (so the same small house model may have a tool, or a plant, or a barrel next to its door). This change should also fix some collider issues (e.g. colliders being active during the construction phase while a wall isn’t actually visible yet).
As always, I will keep you updated.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 197 - Two Steps Backward, Two Steps Forward
Hi everyone,
Last week was fraught with problems, so there is not too much to say today.
I had a number of technical issues last week, which resulted in crashes and me losing a lot of work. With patience and redoing a lot of things, I managed to get back to essentially the same point where I started, but that was obviously a frustrating experience. In good news, I think I re-did everything I lost, and I solved the issue leading to the crashes to start with. However, there has not been any progress despite all of the effort...
Until next week!
Weekly Update 196 - New Market
Hi everyone,
Today will be only a brief update - I got a lot done for the game last week, the most visible of which is the new market model.
The new market model should suit the other new buildings a little bit better. The next two models I will likely tackle for updating will be the farm and the medium house, as they are two of the most placed buildings that are still in the old style.
With 0.9, I will introduce an improvement for how building models will be handled, which will include making their inventories visible on the outside. The new market has already been designed with this in mind, so in the future, passing by the market will allow you to assess whether the market currently has different types of food, and roughly how much of it is being stored.
On a separate note, I have also finished the first draft of the new trailer for 0.8, which should be released soon.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 195 - Small QoL Improvements and Fixes
Hi everyone,
With further testing and recording of gameplay footage, I have addressed another batch of small bugs and needed quality of life improvements last week.
One - somewhat important - quality of life improvement is the addition of “steps” for inventory transfers. Rather than having to transfer wood, food, etc. either individually or in the maximum stack size, it is now possible to transfer stacks of five by holding “alt”. This should make it much easier to, e.g. stock up on 30 food before heading out to do some exploring. Other quality of life improvements include small changes to the UI, additional tooltips, and some priority changes for how things get transported.
In terms of bug fixes, an important one is a fix of some market worker transport allocation. The bug could lead to market workers being considered the only viable worker to deliver food to the market if the market was the exactly “right” distance from a warehouse. If the market served enough villagers, the single market worker wouldn't be able to keep up with demand, and no warehouse or idle workers would step in to help. This is no longer the case, as all market workers will now consistently be allocated to deliver food based on their own task queue. Additional fixes include a fixed soldier behaviour when pirates were faced with both the player and the player’s soldiers, and the removal of some unwanted UI functionality.
Additionally, I created a new pirate flag (see today’s image) which will finally prove that you have been fighting pirates, rather than a random hostile army!
Until next week!
Weekly Update 194 - Seed Bag Sending
Hi everyone,
After some multiplayers testing last week, I realised that I had not yet added a functionality which I think needed to be in 0.8: The ability to send seed bags between allied players. This has now been remedied.
The sending of seed bags has been added to the economy tab, in the same location as the ability to send coin between allied players. Unlike for coin, there is currently no “physical” component to this, i.e. no villager will walk between the two villages to deliver the bag, and the transfer is instantaneous.
A player needs to first select the destination they want to send the bag to (so which ally - which should be fairly straightforward right now), then the type of seed (only available seeds will show, so those used in fields already won’t be displayed), then the amount. Confirmation is given by clicking the wax seal, in the same way as with the sending of coin.
In addition to this new function, I also cleaned up some of the UI surrounding the sending of coin and materials: When you send coin, the name of the player you are sending the coin to will now be displayed correctly (rather than showing untagged), which should help in particular once it is possible to have more than 1 ally.
I have also switched the sending of materials around slightly: Instead of giving the option to set up a route to every single warehouse of the allied player, you can now only set up a route to the allied player generally, which will target their first/main warehouse. I am intending to switch this up slightly once I introduce transport wagons in 0.9, so you can set up a route to any of your ally’s villages, rather than individual warehouses.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 193 - Fuel Packages in v0.9
Hi everyone,
I want to take today to give you some details about fuel packages, which will be introduced in v0.9.
In the current version of the game, there are a few processes that take place that have an implied fuel consumption, such as smelting iron ore into iron bars, turning flour into bread, etc. These processes, and some of the production processes that will be introduced throughout 0.9, will start requiring an actual fuel, which will come in the form of fuel packages.
Fuel packages are a way for me to simplify the fact that there are already multiple types of goods that can be used as fuel. Wood and coal could both be used to support a fire, and I will probably introduce another good (wood scraps for the time being), which can likewise be used. I could enable these processes to be able to take any of the three types of fuel to run, but this would come with many additional questions:
What if a player doesn’t want to burn their wood, as they are trying to save up for something? Do they need to go around the whole village, switching each process manually? Can they define thresholds at a village level? Overall, the production of fuel packages just seems like a more straightforward option. Fuel packages will be created in a dedicated building, and can be crafted from either 5 wood scraps, 3 wood, or 1 coal (ratios subject to change). Each process will then take an appropriate amount of fuel packages, and planning should be fairly easy.
Overall, this process should introduce another broader cost (together with food), which will need to be managed among many processes, rather than just for one. This means that increasing production on, e.g. the iron bars, may affect your bread production down the line if you don’t plan for it - which I think will improve the overall challenge of building your base.
Until next week!
Weekly Update 192 - Audio Stutter
Hi everyone,
I will also keep today’s post a little shorter than usual as I am still travelling and have a lot of work to get done. However, I wanted to briefly mention that I had finally addressed the bug that could cause audio stutter after playing for a while.
The stutter would usually happen after about 1-2 hours of playing, and reloading fixed the issue - so it was not the highest priority for me to fix in the past. Having to let the game run for 2 hours each time I wanted to test for the bug made it a very long process to address, but the issue was sufficiently jarring when it happened that I decided to finally dedicate more time to it.
In the end, the issue was one of me misunderstanding how a subsystem of our third party audio plug-in worked, leading to a continuous build-up of audio instances until the computer couldn’t handle it anymore. The issue should now be fixed (or at least does not occur within 3 hours of play), so I will consider it fixed until someone reports that the bug is still around.
