Timbertales
Restored Linux functionality
Changelog Timbertales 1.4.4 – Moving through friendly units
it is unbelievable how fast one week pasts at the moment, but you can be sure there is another patch online!
As usual I will explain a little bit of the changes in detail. Before we handle the changelog I would like to announce that next week will be a much smaller patch, because I have a lot of other stuff ongoing at the moment and I would like to receive some player feedback.
Changelog
- You are now able to move units through friendly units
I think this is the biggest change this week and it changes a lot to the game play. The game feels much more strategic now since you can your units more precise and don't have to wait until the way is clear. Of course it wasn't that easy to implement it because it affected a lot of code.
- Adjusted some in game sounds and added more new sounds
I investigated a lot of time into the audio effects and adjusted some volumes of different sound files. Also Stiggy the wasp got a new death sound effect.
- Game setting "follow camera" was added to the options
In the options window you are now able to toggle, if you would like the in game camera to follow your units or not. I received a feedback which stated that the moving / following camera is pretty distracting. You can now choose whatever fits you better.
- Finding treasures in campaign don't reward acorn points anymore
The long term goal is remove everything related to acorn points and come up with a better progression system. For now I changed some acorn point rewards and I removed everything related to purchase with acorn points, which was an artefact of the mobile version.
- Modified combat text animation
The combat text was quite fast and I had sometimes problems to read it correctly. I made the animation a little bit slower and also added a new one for the treasures.
- Window fullscreen mode fixed
This was already stated in the last patch note. Unfortunately I had to remove the changes regarding to window mode because they were pretty buggy. I was able to fix it and now you are able to play the game in window fullscreen mode!
- Bug fixing
There were quite a lot of bugs because of the friendly units pass through feature :) Also I have fixed a game crash related to the new speak dialog.
I hope you like the changes! I would absolutely ask you to join our discord for feedback and comments. At the moment I have the feeling I just develop the game for myself which is very frustrating.
Deep dive into the combat system of Timbertales
Patch week 4 1.4.4 is in full swing. Today I published an article about the combat system of Timbertales and possible changes. I hope you are interested:
Devblog Post Combat system
Changelog Timbertales 1.4.3 – It's all about sounds!
I hope you followed the last two updates and you enjoying the improvements Timbertales get! In my opinion the game improved already a lot and more changes will follow soon. The last three weeks more about changes stuff which wasn't implemented the right way without adding much new to the gameplay. This will change with the next week! But first let's go through the changelog for today as usual I will explain the changes.
Changelog
- Added "Rich Precense" feature to Steam Client
I saw this feature was added to Steam and I thought why not implementing it and test it out. What it does if you enter the campaign, challenge or main menu your friends will see it in the friends list:
- Campaign changes
I played through the complete campaign and made some balance changes where it was needed. Also there were a lot of typos and grammatical errors. I tried to fix as much as possible. There will be more changes in the future, since I plan to change the core gameplay quite a bit.
- Sound changes, new death, running and attack sounds
In the past I had a lot of placeholder audio files and most units sounded very similar. I changed that and added more specific audio files. There are still some missing, but they will also follow in the near future.
- Resolution problems
Yeah I hate that topic. Unfortunately the lwlgl3 backend from libGDX which the game is written in, isn't that flexibel and resolution + fullscreen + multiple displays is always a big problem. What I did so far: On the first start the primary display resolution should be picked in fullscreen. Unfortunately you are not able to alt + tab correctly in fullscreen. This is why I removed the decoration of the game window in window mode to have something similar to windowed fullscreen – For me it was quite buggy on Windows and OSX. So maybe you have more luck? Feedback would be awesome on this topic! :)
- Bugfix and possible game crashes
There were still quite a lot situation where the game could crash. I fixed some of them. There was an issue that the Sylvan campaign wasn't replay able once you finished it. That should be possible now. I encountered a crash when I was unloading my units too fast, which should be fixed as well and last but not least the issue that the game stays in task manager after quitting should be gone!
As usual I hope you like the changes and if I could wish one thing: Please bring in more feedback, review etc.
Best,
Thorben
Timbertales Update 1.4.2 - March Week 2
here is another update for you! As usually I will update you with the thoughts behind the changes.
Changelog
- Removed survival bonus from units
There was a 10% chance that a unit survive even if it receives deadly damage. I removed this possibility because I think it feels not very rewarding and is too much random. If you attack a unit which should be dead and it survives it feels worse as attacker and as defender you can't rely on a survival chance, so I think it is best to be removed.
- Cleaned up main menu
Removed: Army creation button, ranking button, multiplayer, Facebook, Twitter, shop, acorn points and profile screen.
Added: Tooltips
Within the next updates I want to focus the game more around the single player experience and improve the gameplay a lot. Since we don't have much players and the multiplayer isn't used at all I removed everything related for that for now. (It will come back later if needed)
- Speakdialogs now needs to click next or close
Instead of having the dialogs fading out after a while you now have to actually click on them to close or get the next sequence. This change was requested by the community and should also set the focus of the game more to a desktop game.
- Added tooltips to the game
I added the feature to add tooltips as mouse over for different objects in the ui and also in game. That said I added some tooltips already, but there will be a lot more with the next patches.
- Further tweaking of attack and walk times
I noticed that some animations had wrong times and looked kind of weird. Also some walk times felt that some units were on crack or something :D
- Reworked mantis and racoon idle animation
In the last update I added new idle animations and I wasn't that happy with the mantis and raccoon animation so I changed them again.
I hope you like the updates so far and you stay tuned for the next patch next week. If you have any questions, feedback or comments make sure to participate in the community hub or join our discord server: Discord
Changelog Timbertales 1.4.1 – First step: Visual improvements
as promised and announced at the start of February I continue my development on Timbertales and I am pretty hyped to finally give Timbertales the quality it deserves :)
So here I am with the first update for Timbertales! It includes a lot of visual improvements and I would like to showcase and explain them even further. As this is only a visual update most likely don't be disappointed with the next updates there will also following a lot of content, balancing and gameplay updates!
Let us speak a bit about this update for today. It is already live and you are able to check it out. For me it was kind of hard to get back into the Timbertales code and project in general, but I made it and I think most of the changes adds a lot to the game. One major decision has been made: Timbertales will be no longer cross platform! I removed it from AppStore and PlayStore and I won't maintain any mobile version of it in the future. On the contrary I will focus a lot more on desktop and will also change a lot of the UI in the future!
Changelog
- Timbertales removed from mobile stores
Timbertales was planned as a kind of complex game and should be somewhat hard to play. Unfortunately with the support for mobile platforms it is often mistaken as a casual game, also the cute looks highlights this. But I want to go back to the original plan and make Timbertales a core game for core gamer. This means there will only be a Linux / Windows and Mac version in future with a strong focus to core gamers. UI will be changed within the next updates!
- All units received a drop shadow
Really, I don't know why these shadows were missing in the first place and why I didn't notice it for so long. I think these shadows adds a lot to the integration of the units into the landscape and makes the complete look and feel so much better! I hope you like them too :)
- All units received a new idle animation
We always had idle animations, but they were super minimalistic and didn't add so much to the game. I overhauled all idle animations and they now have so much more emotion. It was quite a lot of work to make so much new animations, but I think they are worth it.
- Improved water animation, color and pattern
The old water wasn't perfectly matching the landscape. The color looked kind of odd and the animation wasn't good at all. There were also a small border around the game, which had no waves at all. I changed that and I am very happy with the new water.
- Every map is now visible on start but covered in fog of war instead of black tiles
One thing which always bothered me where those black tiles. The idea behind them were to not offer the complete view on the map from beginning, but it added so much black to the screen that the game felt very bad. I changed this behaviour and we now start with the complete map visible, but covered in fog of war.
- Clouds has been removed
I am not sure if you can even remember now I removed them :D But we had clouds which were just looking not good at all and moved from left to right. I find them pretty distracting in game and so I decided to remove them completely.
- The walk animation speed has been decreased, since the speed was too rushed
I reviewed a lot of the animations in the whole process and I have the feeling that much animations are too rushed. I decreased the walk speed a bit to make the game feels more natural. There will be more investigation in the future.
- Better fitting ambience music
- Bugfix for missing textures on some objects
Outlook
This is the first patch on a new road I would like to go with Timbertales. Yes, most of the changes are just visual things, but I think there are a lot of problems to address at the moment and I have to start somewhere. I know some of you guys encounter problems with resolutions or other bugs. That said I would like to make so much more changes to the game and I hope to have your support! If you have any special topics, comments, feedback or questions please visit the discussion thread: Discussion
There will be a lot of changes coming soon, please stay tuned and help me to give Timbertales the quality it deserves!
We also have a new thumbnail up for Timbertales and with this patch there will be also a sale follow!
Future development of Timbertales – Your feedback is needed!
first of all I have to say sorry for treating Timbertales so neglected in the past. I want to thank you guys for being this loyal to me! I appreciate that very much and I promise improvement in the future, because I think Timbertales is more than worth it and there is a lot of room for improvements available!
For this reason I created a new topic in the community hub and hope for your contribution:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/673480/discussions/0/1741140435157560305/
I try to keep you as updated as possible as soon as the first steps are gone :)
Best,
Thorben
Enjoy Timbertales on 64bit and on HDPI Screens
After I updated my working place with a 4k display I noticed that Timbertales had some issues with the high resolution. That said I started to create a fix for that and here we go:
- 64Bit client
- High resolution screens are now supported!
Enjoy Timbertales in higher resolutions :)
Timbertales leaves early access - We are live! :)
I am proud to announce that Timbertales is now full released, yeah!
There are some major changes included in this step – I will describe them in detail below, but first of all: I want to thank everybody, who supported Timbertales by feedback, questions or even money. I am very happy that I was able to develop Timbertales this far and this was only possible, because of your kindness and support. Thank you!
Lets get on to the changes for the release version:
Steam Achievements
I think I don't have to tell you much here. I added 30 achievements with their own pictures and challenges. There are also some hidden achievements, so good luck achieving them all!
Improvements to the game
I increased the game speed a bit, so everything should feel a bit more fast paced. The attack animations should close the distance to your opponent and making the combat feeling more enjoyable. I spend also a lot of time into bug fixing, which includes problems with fullscreen mode, crashes in missions or wrong counting map objectives.
Idle Animations
All units should feel more alive by now. I added new idle animations for every unit to make the game more lively.
Sound improvements
There were a lot of sound effects, which were annoying or not matching at all. I made a lot of changes to the sound effects and I hope you like them.
Of course there were also a lot of code changes and cleanup overall. I wish you a lot of fun while playing Timbertales and feel free to share your thoughts!
Future of Timbertales
I want to be open and share some insights with you. Unfortunately Timbertales didn't sale very well and I didn't received so much feedback I would have hoped for! Nevertheless there are some fans and I am still willing to invest time into the game. My backlog is full of cool features and updates, but how to say the game needs to pay off a bit first. I don't want to earn a million bugs that said, but I can't invest full time into a game, when I have less than two sales / week.
So summarised if there is good feedback and the game performs quite well in future. I will invest more time :)
Minor patch with some improvements and bugfixes
I was able to patch today the steam version of Timbertales by a small update. For more details please read the changelog here:
Patchnotes