This patch is to re-balance what shields are available and when, while also adding clear progression to the shield line. I have added the Tribal Shield recipe into the crafting options for era 2. The Hoplite shield now moves into a rare drop slot in era 3 where it belong. The current shields in the game now progress as follows.
As always please let me know of any issues and I will address them right away. Enjoy the game!
Tormunda
Build 1.2.5.22.64 Moved to live.
Build 1.2.5.22.64 has moved from the beta branch to live.
This build is the last of a series of small fixes that have taken place over the course of this week.
Due to the nature of releasing several fast hot fixes, the chances of other unforeseen minor issues creeping in and possible. As such please post on the forums if you encounter anything out of the ordinary or if things do not act like they did before.
As always I work on bug fixes before content and you will get my full attention.
Thank you. Tormunda.
HOT FIX Build 1.2.5.17.64
HOT FIX Build 1.2.5.17.64
There was an issue where a newly purchased game would not load correctly.
This has been resolved.
New Horizons: Development Diary #2
Welcome to Development Diary 2 for Evolution of Ages: New Horizons
Dev Diary #2: SUPPLY
In Settlements the process of supplying your crafting buildings was an arbitrary value that suggested there were many more people about that were working for you.
In New Horizons those people are now in view and you will have much more control over how supply works.
An overview of the crafting process
In the above picture you see a work flow as follows:
GATHERER Gathering buildings obtain base resources from the world, governed by the value of each terrain tile. The resources they will gather will be either base resources and/or foods. Workers then carry the base resources to the nearest warehouse that is flagged to store them and has room. (Yellow Arrow) Foods go to their own storage locations and do not use workers (Grey arrows)
WAREHOUSE Each warehouse can select what resources it wishes to store. Workers then carry these to crafting buildings for further processing. (Yellow Arrow)
CRAFTER A crafting building will process resources into one of the following things: Components, Finished goods or Foods. Workers will then carry components to a warehouse that is flagged to store them. (Yellow Arrow) Foods and Finished items go to their own storage locations and do not use workers. (Grey Arrows)
FOODS In Settlements everything used the same food resources. This led to a fight over the same resource for research and healing. In New Horizons there are now 3 food resources.
Base Foods: These will be consumed by your Workers. If there is not enough base food your workers will still do their job but very slowly.
Research Foods: These will be consumed by research buildings and turned into Research Points that can be spent to unlock technology.
Healing Foods: These can be consumed by injured characters and militia as well as used to create some in-combat healing items and empower some healing skills in battle.
FINISHED ITEMS Things like tools, armour, weapons, augment gems etc do not go back into a warehouse. Instead they are available in a generic pool, much like in Settlements.
EXAMPLE
Here is a small example of a startup village. The crashed ship acts as a large warehouse. Workers are carrying various base resources and components to and from the warehouse and as they travel they will make their own pathways and trails.
ROADS As you can see in the above example, workers will make their own little paths over time. These paths can be deleted or upgraded by you into roads. Roads will further boost the speed of your workers (as well as items and technology) to allow them to do their job faster. Which will become more important if you wish to bring resources from great distances.
That is it for this developer diary. I hope you enjoyed it and look forward to the next diary. If you have any questions on how things will work in EoA: New Horizons, please post them on the forums.
A big thank you to you the community, without whom these games would not be possible. Tormunda
Build 1.2.5 goes live!
Just a short announcement to say thank you to all those who tested and reported bugs in the beta build.
I have now moved this build into live for all to enjoy. Should there be any more urgent bugs I will, as always, fix them as a matter of urgency.
I will be working on EoA:2 and Dev Diary #2 for the rest of Feb but will return to add more fun and mayhem to EoA:1
Please note: Anyone playing on the beta branch may now move to the default branch without impact to their save game.
Tormunda
New Features and Content Update 1.2.5
The following update is released to the BETA BRANCH. Instructions: Right click the game in your library and select properties. Then betas and then select BETA from the drop down menu.
New Features and Content Update 1.2.5
Hello and welcome to the first update of 2020. This update has quite a few changes to core systems as well as adding some extra goodies to general gameplay. Due to the core changes this update will remain in the beta branch for some time until I am happy that it can move to the default branch. May I suggest that you give the beta branch a try, your save games will work and continue to work once you switch back to the default branch.
New Screen Support
The game was designed to work on the standard 16:9 ratio monitors and as such has been an issue for those with 21:9 ratio ultra wide screen monitors since launch. To this end I have created a new interface for the 21:9 ratio players. On the right is the normal game play window for the game, however on the 21:9 screens you can see that I have relocated the Settlement statistics display to the left of the screen and the whole right hand side has been given over to the text update panel. 4:3 and other screen ratio monitors. I have made sure the game still plays in the 4:3 square monitor ratio and a new setting is available in the options menu: Force 16:9. What Force 16:9 will do is make sure the default display is used no matter what monitor ratio you are using.
Monitor Hot Switching
For those with more than 1 monitor, in the options menu there will be a display of up to 3 monitors connected to your computer. You can click on these images and instantly move the game to which ever monitor you wish. The game will automatically re-scale the GUI and fonts for the new monitor even if in the middle of combat.
New Sound System
Due to a few historical sound issues and 1 recent sound issue, I have changed the code for the sound output. If you had an issue with game freezing due to sound before, please try this current release and give feedback on the issue.
New Content
The Thrasher
A new rare boss event has been added to The Spawn boss encounter. This event will not trigger until at least era 6 or unless you have increased the boss challenge rating.
Bosses, achievements and the Boss Hunter Book
All rare bosses have now been added to the Boss Hunter book, along with the shadow images of their equipment. New Steam Achievements have been added for all of the rare bosses and an extra one for 5 rare boss kills.
Monsters and Pets
3 new monsters have been added to the game as well as 3 new character pets.
The new pets will allow you to have your very own barb spitting plants.
Hard and Challenging Difficulty Changes
On the higher difficulty levels some creatures can use special abilities not available to them on other difficulty settings. Some of these have been changed: Growth and use Bandages: These actions are now restricted to enemies in the reserve rows and if used they will not be able to have an attack that turn. Regeneration: This is a new ability given to some enemies. It will give them a chance each turn to heal some hit points. This ability is unaffected by the enemy combat position nor does it stop them from attacking.
Restricted Spawns
Changes have been made to the spawning system. Examples of this are the Sandmen. They will no longer be able to attack settlement 7 nor group in staging areas for this location. The reason for this is that the swamplands are the domain of the vampire and are avoided by the shapechanging sandmen.
Many other Changes
Many other changes have been made as listed below.
Waiting monster numbers now update when spending diplomacy.
New characters no longer have the chance to inherit dead character backgrounds.
You are now stopped from spending diplomacy and coin once the gathering numbers of enemies have reached 0.
Attack animations have been added to the Ice Worm Queen.
Greater Ice worms can now appear in settlement 6 from era 9 onwards.
New artwork and animations have been added for Greater Ice Worms.
Changed the artwork for the ice worm lava.
Scouts now have increased chances to find what they are looking for.
The Cartographer skill has been given a boost to better assist scouting.
Fixed an issue with the Boss Hunter book not showing the templates for items.
The world map did not correctly update scout activity when sending scouts
Cleaned up many various GUI niggles.
Evolution of Ages 2: Development Diary
Welcome to the first Development Diary for the next game and Chapter of Evolution of Ages.
Each Development Diary will cover a specific part of the new game and explain the differences between it and the first. The new game is still early in development and this is an ideal time for the community to give feedback and ideas as the development progresses.
So how does the storyline progress? Many of you may not have completed the first game and as such can skip the spoiler! After leaving Earth, the survivors head out into the stars, travelling for the only known location where the ancient humans may have gone. Mars! After many long months, Mars finally comes into view and to your surprise the planet is a mass of blue water with many islands. Around the planet is a complex grid of satellites, forming some kind of artificial ionosphere. It seems the ancients had found a way to terraform planets and make Mars into a new home. The flight team adjusts course and heads towards the nearest landmass when suddenly a huge explosion impacts into the side of the craft. Orbital defence systems have locked onto your ship and are in the process of launching a second and final missile strike. The Captain takes the only measure he can and accelerates the ship towards the ground. Death by missile strike or death by impacting the planet.... With a prayer he closes his eyes and hopes someone may survive. After an unknown amount of time the first cryogenic pods for the earth survivors runs low on power and brings its occupants to life. Staggering from the wreckage of the spacecraft, a few survivors make their way out onto the new horizon....
Once again you are back to basics: Sticks, stones and trying to obtain food.
Developer Diary 1: The World Generator!
In Settlements the world is a fixed image that allows for the spawning of icons that you can click on and a space for new icons to appear due to scouting missions.
In New Horizons the whole world is randomly generated and displayed in classic hex format. This world is covered in a fog of war type effect and you will need to send out scouts to uncover the land around you.
In the above picture you can see that the ship has crashed into a swamp. The good news is that you have lots of wood, stone and water nearby, the bad news on this map is that your hauliers will have a hard time moving resources at speed (more on this later!)
Goals
The new system will allow for maximum re-playability, with each game being a new world map. I am currently at a point whereby 80% of all worlds generated are balanced so that you have the resources you need within reach and a map that is enjoyable. As the game progresses I will continue to fine tune this, however the downside of having a random world is that some worlds will always be easier than others!
As we progress through the various development diaries I will explain how Scouting, building, crafting, encounters and missions all work on this world map as well as how you will need to lay out warehousing so that hauliers can move materials quickly between buildings.
A forum post is available for everyone to give feedback and discuss the new game. All of the issues raised by the community in the first game are taken on board and changes have been made to the next game to make sure everyone can enjoy the game to the max.
Tormunda.
Ruined house hotfix 1.2.4.5.64
Minor Hotfix for the Ruined House.
The Dig and Search skills required has been lowered to better reflect the era of this adventure.
If you do not have a high enough skill, the text output will tell you how much skill was required. (Previously it reported the wrong value).
Patch 1.2.4.4.64
Patch 1.2.4.4.64
Just a quick patch today with some minor changes as listed below.
The Tactical Shield Recipe has been added to the science unlock progress, it should now be available the same time as the Tactical Armour and Helmet. Anyone who has already progressed this far will receive the recipe when they next load a saved game.
The Stage 1 Christmas tree now has a golden glow to make it stand out.
The amount of baubles needed to reach the highest stage of the Christmas tree now clearly show.
Hit points for pets in combat now correctly calculate based upon the characters Beastmastery skill.
Removed the debug box that appeared when right-clicking on the stars on the character sheet.
When digging in the last room of the Copper mine, the player will not be moved into the hidden room instead of just a small passage being shown. (This action requires a mining skill of 4).
Christmas 2019 Game Event
As well as the annual Christmas event, this year I am also adding a few new items and changes to the game.
The Highwayman This new era 6 rare drop is the first head item to have misc skill bonuses added to it. When worn it will increase the damage of your characters gunslinger weapons.
The Woodsman The Woodsman is an era 5 rare drop that will boost the Critical Damage chance of archers. This item will stack with any critical bonuses obtained from special arrows.
The Cowboy Era 7 was in dire need of extra headwear and the Cowboy hat is ideal. It is a rare drop that will add damage to your characters gunslinger weapons and is a direct upgrade to the Highwayman, offering more damage and a point of Status. On top of that it also drops the threat gain of the wearer, making it ideal for a healer/leader role.
Black Bess What Highwayman would be without a new set of pistols? Black Bess is a rare drop for era 6 that rewards the character with a slight edge over the Fine Flintlock and with all rare drops it rewards larger bonuses per skill point.
DUAL WIELD
The dual wield system was not working correctly and as been fixed in this update. The ranged damage display on your character will now show your off-hand melee weapon statistics and now works as intended. This should allow characters to experiment with not only twin melee weapons but later on be able to place a sword in the prime melee hand and a pistol in the off-hand, as well as twin pistols.
The following changes have also been made.
The livestock building has been given a slight boost to meat production.
The text for the farm boosting pet has now had it's tooltip change to explain only food production building boosts. This does NOT include the livestock farm as that buildings main role is to produce hide & wool.
The cost of buying the warrior skill from the character feat menu has been increased.
The Tech tree for era 9 now explains that the Nuclear Power Plant produces electricity based upon the amount of Electric Grids that you have built across all Settlements. Warning: Without a full set of Electric grids, the Nuclear plant does not produce much electricity.
