Spiritlands
Patch patch patch!
Okay so in these patch notes it's thin on the ground as most changes are boring. I'll just list the remotely interesting stuff, and there are 2 sizable edits. Overall this update has at least 50 changes to the game.
- Paying off enemy camps will actually cancel their current attack. So if they're travelling to destroy your base, and you're low on basic resources for building up walls, then you can pay special items to the camp to stop them in their tracks!
- Now more workers collect more special items. This rate is the amount of workers divided by three, so a farm with 6 people in it collected 2 Skins, whereas a farm with 11 people in collects 4.
- Loading text is now a little story (explains why theres old and modern buildings).
- Lots of music and sound improvements.
- Golden chest text now without overlaps.
- Storage costs require Silver not Iron now. This is to stem to need for mines, workers in mines, and general pursuit of Iron for so many things.
- A lot of graphics clean ups. This is from actual image changes slightly, to things like the building requirements being removed now instantly, not sticking around.
- Storage limits now actually change if the enemy destroys the buildings.
- So many fire bug fixes like making fires graphically actually go out when fires are extinguised (oops). Fires also occur any season now. Turn off that furnace!
- Fixed an exploit where you can remove/add tiles or place paths in the same spots for FREE over and over affecting happiness.
- The graphical indicator when placing walls etc is now SO much more responsive. It's also better at placing things.
- Default storage management inputs are 25% for each, but still inactive by default. This is incase anyone comes to see, clicks active, and ends up shocked when they have 1% of everything left. Ouch.
- Soldiers now cost just 2 iron each. A big reduction.
- Mines also cost less iron now.
- Random trader events are now more frequent.
- Idle Worker size now changes to better show health text for tiles. This will be improved to change back after the tile is destroyed.
- Weather particles now make sense when you perform faith season jumps. I'm hoping to improve those jumps too but I won't say how in case I can't so you're not disappointed.
- All attack buildings now have a RED flag. I decided to do this because if your flag has a blue centre, you will struggle to easily know what is a defence, and what is an attack barracks. Arghh!
- Removed the ability to pick map size. There is just no performance benefit to this, and it would be lieing to claim otherwise after further testing.
- Building healing is slower but attacks are a little less frequent.
I'm curious what people think about the colonies system. Is it harsh to make you meet them before trading for their resources? The idea is that they don't exist before you meet them so there's no one to trade with, like with the Civilization games.
Some things I know will be added for the next update which I believe will be the final one:
- Smaller map editor size 2 brush.
- More extreme changes when using volume adjustments.
- The idle worker on tile destroyed change appearance improvement.
- For some reason resource collection sounds go full volume when you are scrolling- I'll fix that.
- I will be exporting the game as windowed like currently, but upon loading it will default to fullscreen unless changed in the settings. This is because I want to encourage people to play the game not in the background due to performance. I've noticed Youtube particularly impacts on frame rates (Netflix doesn't though).
Cya soon!
Another Patch.
- A few more helper messages, and moving the triggers for some to make them occur sooner (such as ruins and how to add explorers).
- Fixed a bug that was preventing people from clicking next sometimes on new games.
- Enemy camps a little more powerful, dependant on the size of your settlements.
- Building healing is slower for everyone.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the resource textboxes under management would not appear.
- Stopped UI event messages overlapping.
- Population button greys out when all rooms are full.
- Helper messages are capped to 20. This is so there is not a big stack of messages for people who close the helper.
- Fixed a bug where building requirements pulled out would be removed.
- Reduced iron costs for farms and mines (should speed up GETTING iron).
- Idle Worker is now red when outside of settlements.
- New Message notification has been added above the helper bubble.
- Added the new studio logo as a flag option (explained below).
- Opacity differences between looking at a settlement and the wilderness are more extreme.
- Colonies will definitely now not settle close to capitals.
- Fixed resource buildings showing a green plus button when space is full etc.
- Fixed the tile health text not being orange when it should be.
- Fixed the wall requirements not appearing.
- Fixed middle mouse not moving textboxes.
- Fixed Idle Workers finding special items outside of settlements.
- Fixed no light on initial Town Hall.
- Added new achievements and checker as to whether to display them in the statistics menu.
- UI scale is now saved across saves along with keybindings etc.
As another heads up, a few days ago we changed studio name from Tall Story Studios to Prey Interactive!
Find us here: https://www.facebook.com/preyinteractive/
Latest Patch Notes
- New statistics menu (achievements not added yet).
- More flag options.
- Settlement sizes are much bigger.
- New text colours.
- Information shown by helper about building upgrades.
- Added keybindings in settings (saving throughout maps not yet added).
- Market bug fixes.
- Some tile graphic improvements.
- Explorers/armies that are travelling speed up over decored tiles and paths.
- Can now decor tiles outside settlements.
- Travel on ocean and mountains to slow travel time (good for defence).
- Decreased population increases on homes, and costs of them.
- Other fixes.
Update #12.5
I put this together as there are over 40 changes made and I thought well, people might be curious!
Most of the updates are graphics, but there are some changes that will fix or edit things in a way you will like! Every little helps. I've had testers playing the game who will continue to, which has provided some amazing feedback.
Some of the listed changes appeared in the earlier mini update.
Graphical
- Lowered the default UI scale.
- Special Items panel opens on new game now as it's important at the start.
- Remade the map editor tutorial text to be much less intrusive.
- Edited them explorer exp bar length to be based on UI scale.
- Mini-flag now scales on new game after setup.
- Main menu buttons interactions clean-up.
- Added new background UI graphics for when right-clicking buildings.
- Nice background graphics for the text in the UI for faith etc purchases.
- Settings buttons now unhover when you don't overlap them.
- Count helper pages as X bubbles left.
- Improvements to player setup graphics.
- Panels that solely read from the settlement you look at now change appearance to show it's not because of a bug that text suddenly disappears.
- Added sickness and fire sounds.
- Add a negative beep when right-clicking sand as nothing can be built there.
- Worker tooltips less intrusive now.
- Red box now flashes at first in the map editor to highlight the buttons for people who want to skip it.
- Loading game logo changed.
- Custom cursor added, it feedbacks right and left clicks.
- Added random fire particle effects during attacks (either way).
Bugs
- Starred mountain tiles now work with the idle workers.
- Fixed the settlement areas turning invisible when attempting quick town hall upgrades with barbarians near.
- Initial panels now have a close button.
- Fixed the spanner disappearing.
- Fixed the error with not displaying maxfarmers properly in the worker panel.
Other Edits
- Tile healths are now between 200 and 400 (far higher).
- Sped up the settings menu interactions (still working on this slightly).
- Relowered the special items chance again to rebalance.
- Jumping to disasters now considers the settings selection.
- Added an 'Are you sure?' pop-up box for shutting down the helper.
- Added a help question mark button to ALL panels and other elements. Clicking them will cause the helper to talk in full about that panel.
- Tile boundaries should no longer overlap (edited them for the hundreds of sprites).
- Added more events to the event box.
- SPY CENTRE NOW HAS FUNCTION. Building them reveals an unseen colony.
- The social media buttons in the main menu pop up a warning before opening fully.
- Added tool-tips for finding out water and power amounts.
- On the building menu when you hover your mouse over an icon, on the requirements pop-up, there is now a question mark button that when clicked tells the helper to appear to say what that building does, even if she is disabled.
There is still quite a bit to do for the full release. There are a few known bugs and big features.
- Tutorial will be added.
- Statistics menu redone for all the changes, achievements will be added too.
- Will fix some animation issues when building on tiles with flooring.
- Will fix that if you move a boat from a spot that was once e.g sand, it will return appearance to sand.
- Will fix worker panel fishers count not updating and mine workers going into the negative not positive (panel works as it should).
- Keybindings in the settings panel.
- Will decrease population growths with home upgrades but costs too.
- Rebalancing in general.
- Will save settings for new games.
Have fun!
- Katherine Riverwood.
Update #12 Improvements Update
There are some major changes and small ones, and this list includes the mini-updates with essential bug fixes released earlier this week.
BIG CHANGES
- The map editor is almost finished. There are 5 presets added, as well as new graphics for a much nicer appearance.
- Map sizes are now available, so you can use a smaller map if you want to.
- Smeltries now make iron and gold! Seriously! You can place any amount of stone to be processed, and every 50 stone becomes iron or gold at random.
- At long last, the transfers feature has arrived! After extensive difficulties a few months ago, I revisited the idea and managed to create a UI system that allows settlements to exchange resources. Now you can dedicate settlements to resource types!
- When you are attacked, it will no longer be sudden. You can see the enemy icon travel towards you, and see the centre of their attack. This now means you can build defenses as needed.
- Attacking and exploring works the same way. Your troops and explorers must journey to their destination. Each tile costs time to move, so the further the destination, the longer it will take.
- The main menu is now fully completed (the update notes will be removed on the next update however).
SMALLER CHANGES
- The helper pop-up messages now stack behind any that are currently visible, meaning messages can be ordered and it no longer interrupts reading.
- Following from the above, there are now a series of tutorial messages about basic mechanics on the start of playing the game.
- Two settlements cannot have the same name- it would break idle workers and settlement transfers. As a result renaming settlements is no longer an option, but the game is far more stable.
- Removed the missions UI icon- which is now not needed.
- Protections for first settlements when you use the auto-place function in the map editor:
-Settlements now should never place on the edge of the map, cutting access to tiles.
-They also make sure no colony settles in an area the size of the biggest settlement, meaning you can make one big place to live as your capital without going to war.
- The ruins level 5 research upgrade has now changed due to changes in exploring wait times. It now means ruins give you 2 golden chests rather than 1 (and 2 keys).
- Idle workers can now be placed on fires to put fires out.
- The Town Hall menu can now be dragged around, in case you the top edge of the screen blocks the menu at all.
BUG FIXES
- The no worker symbol (red cross) now disappears when a worker is added straight away to buildings.
- You can now properly make a settlement where colonies are defeated, using the same campfire that is left.
- Idle worker is fixed but is limited now to settlement areas only.
It has been only 9 days since Update #11, and there are a lot of changes here that I am excited about. The next Update will be the FULL RELEASE of Spiritlands. For this reason, it will take closer to a month to complete as I want it to be as well tested, bug-free, and perfectly adjusted as possible and that will take time. That update likely will not include any new features but a long list of edits, fixes and small graphical changes.
If you are waiting for the full release to have a play of the game, please play it now and give us some forum feedback if you can spare the time, it would be massively appreciated. There is little worse than making full release and people reporting issues and grievances after! Also if you know any Youtubers who might want to play, please let them know you'd like them to have a go after the game is fully out.
Thank you to everyone for your support. Keep an eye out for updates as the full release date will be announced weeks before.
There is also the game Facebook page where all little announcements go:
Facebook page.
Hope to hear from you all soon!
Update #11 Bye to Clicking!
This update changes some fundamental, core mechanics of the game (as will the next one). I have been listening and recounting old feedback.
Feature Changes
Clicking replacement
There is now NO clicking. There is no conceivable way to call Spiritlands a clicker game anymore. Instead, each settlement has it's own unlisted worker that you can drag onto a resource tile to collect resources. The value collected is equal to the worker itself + any idle workers you have.
Be aware of resource tile health though, tiles die all the same.
Tip: To deactivate the workers you can just place them over your Town Hall.
Disease
A new mechanic to the game is diseases! This is tied in with a settlement's happiness. The more UNHAPPY the settlement is, the more chance a building will be infected. This mechanic is blocked until year 3 and only hits buildings level 3+.
When it happens, a medical symbol spawns above the affected tile. Buildings that are hit can not be upgraded and workers cannot be added or removed directly.
To cure- resource buildings cost 1 herb per worker. homes cost 1/2 herb per room rounded up. Having a Medical Centre in the settlement reduces herb costs in half.
Fires
Another new mechanic adds some heat to the gameplay! From year 2 and upwards, there is a chance of multiple fires starting in the hot mid summer heat on your buildings. Fires will destroy buildings.
To stop the fires you can build an emergency building to quickly put them out. There will never be more than 3 fires in one settlement.
User Interface
Can now scale up or down!
Smaller Changes
[X] Changed the Revealed area indicator to make it smoother.
[X] Fixed the town hall level 1 snow brightness changing during animation.
[X] Added all new buildings except windfarm and water tower to the 'can be attacked' list.
[X] Fixed cant edit map after a failed attempt to auto place town hall.
[X] Improved skip next season ability in faith menu.
[X] Reduce upgrade costs of some buildings.
[X] Stopped backspacing on resource buildings textbox changing the icons locations.
[X] Sound from in-game now stops when going back to the main menu.
[X] Corrected issues with faith costs.
[X] Increased key finding chance by 1/3.
[X] Better pause menu more.
[X] Spanner from key research reinforced in case it somehow goes missing.
[X] Gold chests now replace normal ones when the space is full.
[X] Water tower being called wind farm on hover before building is fixed.
[X] Fixed 'explorers done die' text helper error.
[X] Improved chances for special items from 20 to 15!
[PREVIEW]
What's in the next update? (for sure)
- Smelty will be able to sift stone for gold and iron.
- More helper pop-ups.
- Combat and ruins searching will be made more visual and interesting, with the ability to see attacks incoming.
Thanks for playing!
Update #10 Research!
This new update brings the RESEARCH panel once again! New and improved, and designed not to follow a clicker design, it has roughly 30 unique things to research, a few including:
- Fisheries finding special items.
- Halving faith costs.
- Reducing building costs.
- Making attack soldiers more powerful.
- Using Attack Barracks for defence points too.
There are 5 directions your research will take you, and you're unlikely to be able to research everything from the map resources. What you focus on shows what priorities you have as a leader.
1) Discoverer -
Discoverers seek peaceful routes to knowledge, unvailing the world and the secrets in it is their goal, while preserving the natural landscape around them.
3) Evolutionist -
Evolutionists pursue prosperity and growth. They want to control vast areas with masses of resources and highly developed land.
5) Conqueror -
Conquorers desire power above all else. They wish to route out all competitors and destroy them, and to be the only sign of life in these lands.
Two Sub-Paths -
2) Scientist -
Scientists appreciate the power of the learning. They seek improvement on all manner of every day things for a leader.
4) Dictator -
Dictators desire to enslave their own people for power. Although this provides no benefit to production, they become more feared by their opponents.
One of the biggest parts of the new research is 6 NEW BUILDINGS. Each of them have their own ability. Two of which are waiting on new game obstacles in the next update before their ability is added. Let's quickly break it down:
Tavern: - adds 20 to happiness.
Wood- 200
Stone- 250
Leather- 25
power- 10
water- 10
Spy Centre: - spies on custom areas of land. Can be changed every season.
Silver- 40
Diamonds- 40
Gold- 40
power- 25
Health Centre: - reduces plague elimination time by 20 seconds.
Stone- 200
Steel- 25
Herbs- 40
power- 10
water- 20
Smithy: - +10 healing to all damaged buildings.
Stone- 350
Steel- 20
Coal- 400
Watch Tower: - increases area defences by 50.
Wood- 300
Gold- 25
Horses- 12
Lighthouse: - Increases the chance fisheries find special items by 15 per lighthouse, also adds happiness 6- max 2
Stone- 400
Silver- 50
Wood- 50
power- 10
Find research points in ruins and enemy camps!
What else have I been up to?!
I have fixed a lot of bugs that I have come across in testing. Some of them include the town area becoming invisible on an invalid upgrade, and special items coming from all resources!!
There have been a lot of minor adjustments, but here are the bigger ones:
- Initial flags are randomised.
- You can disable edge scrolling.
- You can no longer click for resources but you can hold down left click for some.
- Added sound for water tower (and new buildings).
- The hide UI button now makes all tiles fully visible- great for those screenshots.
- Due to costing issues, tile textures now come from the capital in any settlement.
- All worker production INCREASED, especially coal.
- Homes use less coal.
- Lots of fix work for special items.
There's not a lot to list as there's no reason to address any feedback as I don't have it. As ever, let me know what you think if you've played the game recently. Please make sure you've played the game recently though as many changed have been heavy on old gameplay. Thank you.
The next update includes more animations, cheaper building upgrades, fires, plague, market adjustment, and more! It won't be classed as a big one but as a patch in the hidden patch notes like the last one.
Enjoy!
Feedback wanted!
If you have any thoughts, ideas, even little things you'd like to see tweaked to make progression better, please let me know.
There are only two big updates left to come- research and schenarios.
When schenarios comes out this game will be finished and on full release. Now is the time to tweak!
Spotted any bugs or weird behaviours? Let me know so I can patch them.
Thanks a lot,
Tall Story Studios.
Update #9- Power & Water!
It is at long last that after some development issues for a few months, Spiritlands is back on development (more information below)! Not only that, there is an update!
The latest update is around another significant part of production that affects happiness- power and water. Your people will require access to these so that they enjoy living in your settlements, and ultimately produce more goods for you to spend! Water and Power are more late-game requirements as they are for higher level buildings.
Each settlement has a power and water requirement- a CurrentAmount/NeededAmount. The Current can exceed the Needed. When Needed is not met- happiness falls by one point per under. Populations dont see things in terms of - lots of power, or lots of water- they just want what they need. Power cost is equal to the building's level.
Down to the nitty-gritty:
There are two new buildings- Windfarm and Watertower.
Windfarms produce power and Watertowers produce water.
Windfarms can be placed on - ocean, hills, mountains- but tile specials are removed.
You can view the P&W requirements of a settlement by right-clicking the Town Hall or fully zooming out to see all. There are also indicators on the profile panel that will turn red.
Power building costs:
-- Resource buildings except fishing level 3+. Homes level 5+. Happiness buildings. Town Hall level 3+. Defence Barracks.
- + 10 needed per level.
Water building costs:
-- Homes level 3+. Happiness buildings. Farms level 3+. Quarries level 5+. Town Hall level 3+.
- + 5 needed per level.
Ambience sounds added for Windfarms of course!
Pro Tip: Build Windfarms high on mountains!
Patches/Adjustments
[X] Increased happiness added from happiness buildings by around 50%.
[X] New building click-outs.
[X] Added new building small UI
[X] Buildings can now be mirrored via a button in their UI.
[X] Tile Icons for buildings are grayed out when they are unavailable.
[X] The old custom save positions are now keyboard-tied to settlements. So Capital = 1, Settlement 2 = 2. Pressing 2 on your keyboard will teleport you to it, etc.
[X] Transfered some of the old mission tips into helper form.
[X] Fixed music and sounds not scaling based on zoom.
Naturally there is still work to be done. Two more large updates will include next research, then finally schenarios for challengers!
There is more to adjust. I want to make production for all but food higher, especially for coal, to speed up progression.
I also want to iron out the UI's interactivity.
If there is anything you'd like to suggest then you can get in touch via any of our social media or via the forums on here or on our website!
P.S:
(Why did this update take so long?
A few months ago Spiritlands after a 2 week personal break, no longer worked. Running previews crashed my PC, and with no explanation for a long time. I had to remove the resource transfers planned feature, run plugin updates, and got a laptop to boost testing. Now the issue is all sorted at long last!)
Kenthria- @ Tall Story Studios
Forum: https://www.tallstorystudios.com/forum/spiritlands
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tallstorystudios/
-: https://www.facebook.com/kenthria/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TallStory_S
Update #8- Happiness
Happiness is a settlement-specific value that can be viewed by right-clicking the Town Hall or completely zooming out. The value is from 0-100 and provides production effects from -40 to +40% to all production. It is generated through settlement natural tiles, ruins (particularly explored ones), the diamonds/flowers you have, and by building barracks, walls, and any of the THREE NEW BUILDINGS.
The emergency services, schools, and waste management centres all provide a 10 point boost to happiness. I will be asking if people want more to be used from these buildings after the next update.
Big changes:
- Happiness as talked about above. There are also happy/sad particle effects to show you what affects happiness which way even more.
- 11 new building icons in the tile UI are added including 3 categories. Some of the icons won't be usable yet.
- New school, waste management, and emergency services happiness buildings.
- The Faith extra time ability has now been changed to a 2x production boost for 30 seconds per spend/click.
- A lot more uses of the helper. She can now also be toggled on and off easily. She will also store un-closed messages, so if you quickly get a few, you won't miss a thing.
- Disabled research and missions- they are just too pointless until their update (two from now).
- Every settlement can have a maximum of 5 explorers per Town Hall level. This stops the endless assignment of explorers from being possible.
Smaller changes:
- Tile requirements are now all vertical and have a visible expand button for pulling out the requirements.
- The Profile panel now includes tiny icons for happiness, power, water, food, housing, and coal. When a settlement disaster is happening, the correct icon will be red when looking at the settlement.
- A new option is in the settings menu- you can turn off the automatic jumping to settlements. This occurs if you are at one settlement, but another e.g. runs out of coal. That way you won't miss that happening and face a big problem when you do.
- New original main menu music again by Brian Fairbanks.
- All small window event notifications are related to the settlement you are looking at.
- Secret settlements- the old 15 buildings before being attacked is settlement specific. Settlements with at least 10 buildings can be attacked. Also the more camps you can see (up to 6)- the more frequently you will be attacked.
- Some small graphical additions.
- You can no longer upgrade settlements to overlap enemy camps- you must destroy them first.
- Saves now display the total population that you have across all settlements.
- You can now place sandstone on ocean tiles.
- Campfires are now cheaper at 150 wood.
- Brought back the- press 'R' and selected tile will rotate hidden trick-- works on all tiles.
- Wall costs are significantly reduced- meaning they should be purchasable early-game.
- Double the number of bones found in ruins (as they are used in building schools).
- You now find keys in ruins to help you open golden chests.
- Colonies use up the resources you trade with them 3x faster.
- Homes cost less skins to upgrade.
- Food stored no longer goes below 0- this is because if you have multiple settlements and one runs out of food and you don't notice- you won't have to recover masses of food.
- Less explorers needed to explore ruins.
- Lowered the coal rate from homes costs slightly- to 0.3.
- Tile flooring can be placed outside of settlements but at costs to the capital.
Patch:
- On leaving game and restarting- main UI is no longer visible.
- Increased edge of world so the camera can always overlay settlements on right side.
- Clicking next page on the market quickly overlaying buttons improperly no longer happens.
- Building homes no longer removes the visual element of the pre-existing flooring.
- Light being created even without the resources to build a farm- fixed.
- Some text issues with words poking outside of boxes.
- The initial zoom level is slightly further back, and the layer scaling issue (pre-first zoom) is fixed.
- Stopped free walls, paths, and tile decors.
- Stopped trying to build walls without the correct resources from destroying paths.
- Added atmospheric sounds for the colonies too.
- Explored ruins are also removed when settlements are destroyed.
- Slightly lowered defence military atmospheric sound volume and spaced it out by 10 seconds.
- Fixed some statistics.
- Statistics menu is now above tile requirements pullout-- has its own close button.
- Removed the ability to move boats outside of a settlement.
- Lots of attack and defence fixing.
- Enemy camps overlapping colonies are destroyed better.
- Renamed the population achievements to 25 and 50 pop so they will work again.
Coming up
The next update is power and water- that means 2 more buildings (but a few appearance variations for the windfarms). Currently I plan on making it so that the power and water requirements affect happiness- but I might expand on that.
I am also looking into adding a new panel that will organise a periodic set of resources from one settlement to another. That way you can create resource specific (mostly) settlements- such as ports.
Question:
Should changing resource collection change from clicks to putting a symbol over a tile to start autocollection- the same with building healing, and you can quickly reselect the tile or drag it to a new place?
Please let you know your thoughts! Months in and on the edge of the final month of development. Have your say!
Kenthria- @ Tall Story Studios
Forum: https://www.tallstorystudios.com/forum/spiritlands
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tallstorystudios/
-: https://www.facebook.com/kenthria/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TallStory_S