In case you haven’t heard yet, Townsmen VR recently won the German Computer Games Award (“Deutscher Computerspielpreis”) for “Best Game Design 2018” as well as additional funding from the FFF Bavaria and Computec Media Group.
All of this is obviously very good news and grants us the opportunity to make the game even bigger and better. While until recently we were more focused on fixing bugs and improving the overall experience, we are now in preparations to expand the game. This will neither be an easy, nor a quick task, as many underlying systems have to be streamlined and optimized to allow us to meet the requirements for the increased scope of the project. This includes creating new tools that help us build levels and other content faster. Even if it will take a lot of time, we are dedicated to making this the best game it can be, so expect more to come from Townsmen VR in the future!
Two concepts for more islands
Until then enjoy the game, keep the feedback coming and stay tuned for more information in the coming months.
Mixed Reality Update (0.17)
Hi everybody,
We added official support for Windows Mixed Reality!
These changes come into effect when playing with a Mixed Reality headset:
• Menu options are mapped on thumbstick directions instead of touchpad directions to avoid unwanted menu inputs when grabbing objects.
• You still can grab objects with thumb and/or index finger.
• Control options now display the Motion Controller instead of the Vive Controller.
General changes:
• The catapult’s aim highlight doesn’t aim at the center of the island when the target position is lost anymore.
• Small performance optimizations of hand touches and catapult aim functions.
• Fixed button mapping in control options for Oculus Rift.
As always: have fun and leave us comments in the forum! :)
Another bugfix update released (0.16)
Thanks to your feedback and more internal testing we were able to iron out many more minor issues:
- Save System: Fixed autosave not working if the load or save menu have not been opened during the current play session.
- Save System: Fixed enemy archers having wrong colors after loading.
- Save System: Fixed "skip tutorial" activating the two “start townsmen” only once (didn’t work if you loaded an earlier save file and skipped again).
- Save System: Fixed a rare issue with unlocking buildings.
- Save System: Fixed an issue with tutorial UI hints.
- Save System: Fixed the "enemy attacks" option not loading correctly.
- Save System: Fixed some issues with rally flags.
- Pathfinding: Townsmen now better detect if a target is not reachable.
- Combat: Normal townsmen now engage in combat if dropped near an ongoing fight or a building being attacked (previously they only engaged if they were near when the fight started.)
- Combat: Archers now change target or position if they don't hit their target.
- Combat: Removed unintended hand interactions with enemy archers.
- Combat: Catapults and construction sites can now be attacked by enemies.
- Balancing: Increased difficulty of later attacks.
- Map: Removed some small islands around ship landing zones.
- Game Over: Added a Game Over screen that appears when all buildings have been destroyed.
- Fixed an error that let you duplicate resources dropping off a catapult if it was struck by lightning while falling.
- Fixed resources not being slowed down by water if they hit ground before falling in water.
- Fixed enemy attacks not resetting after restarting the game.
- Prevented the victory music from playing if the game is restarted during combat.
- Fixed an issue with townsmen sometimes still reacting to hand rotation after being dropped.
+ Catapults can now damage enemies on ships.
Have fun and keep us updated if you have problems!
Feature update released (0.15)
Finally we can present our first bigger feature update for Townsmen VR, thanks to your feedback:
- Save System: Added a way to save and load the game progress manually as well as an autosave feature.
- Random Attacks: After the tutorial, enemies will keep attacking your island from different directions and with different strength. You can deactivate this feature in the options menu.
- Enemies now have a chance to drop different resources on death (instead of just swords)
- Enemy archers: Like the player, the enemies can now also have archers.
- Building Names: If you use the info button on your buildings, the name of the building will be displayed on top of the resource info.
- Pathfinding: Townsmen now try to find new paths if they are stuck too long at one position.
- Fixed an error that made the catapult falling through the ground easier while a projectile was loaded.
- Fixed an issue that allowed you to build more soldiers/archers than allowed by the amount of barracks on the island.
- Fixed an issue where people wouldn't stop attacking thin air after their enemy was tossed away by a catapult attack.
Also in order to get the annoying crash fixed that some users experience, we decided to use the version that doesn't have the problem as new main version of the game. The better performing but randomly crashing version can now be found in the beta channel. All users with decent hardware should be able to enjoy the game with slightly worse performance anyway.
We hope you like the update and that no more crashes appear and await your comments here or in the forums.
Thanks for playing!
Feature update released
Finally we can present our first bigger feature update for Townsmen VR, thanks to your feedback:
- Save System: Added a way to save and load the game progress manually as well as an autosave feature.
- Random Attacks: After the tutorial, enemies will keep attacking your island from different directions and with different strength. You can deactivate this feature in the options menu.
- Enemies now have a chance to drop different resources on death (instead of just swords)
- Enemy archers: Like the player, the enemies can now also have archers.
- Building Names: If you use the info button on your buildings, the name of the building will be displayed on top of the resource info.
- Pathfinding: Townsmen now try to find new paths if they are stuck too long at one position.
- Fixed an error that made the catapult falling through the ground easier while a projectile was loaded.
- Fixed an issue that allowed you to build more soldiers/archers than allowed by the amount of barracks on the island.
- Fixed an issue where people wouldn't stop attacking thin air after their enemy was tossed away by a catapult attack.
Also in order to get the annoying crash fixed that some users experience, we decided to use the version that doesn't have the problem as new main version of the game. The better performing but randomly crashing version can now be found in the beta channel. All users with decent hardware should be able to enjoy the game with slightly worse performance anyway.
We hope you like the update and that no more crashes appear and await your comments here or in the forums.
Thanks for playing!
Townsmen VR - Dev commentary
Watch our new dev commentary (Let's Play) with our game designer of Townsmen VR!
By the way. Many of you have requested a specific feature, which we have now implemented. Due to further tests, we officially can't show this yet. But if you are attentive, you can guess it and find a little hint. ;)
Have fun! <3
Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/BevwmpG8Zj4
Update with crash fix (hopefully)!
About crashes: Some people reported random crashes while playing the game. We weren’t able to reproduce these crashes on our testing machines, but thanks to your bug reports we could see that they were all connected to Unity’s multithreaded rendering.
Since then we have uploaded a beta branch with a build that doesn’t support multithreaded rendering. This version didn’t crash for anyone but of course the performance is worse.
In version 0.14 we now have officially updated to a newer version of Unity that should contain a fix for the multithreaded rendering issue. Please let us know if this fixes the crashes for you.
Other fixes in this version: • Fixed a broken game state that appeared if you tried to hit Baron Melvin with lightning strikes.
• Fixed projectiles not working correctly anymore after you chose the “RESTART” option from the menu.
• Fixed an issue that appeared if you restarted the game while an enemy ship was at the island.
We are currently also working on the save system and random attacks, so we hope that we can have another update ready soon.
For feedback please visit the Steam forums!
Q&A Livestream Feb. 16th at 3 PM (CET)
LIVESTREAM tomorrow!
Join us for a Q&A Livestream of Townsmen VR. See who will rock the stream and ask us all the questions you got!
Just head over to our facebook page and tune in! We are really looking forward to have a laid back stream and enjoy the game together with our community!
[https://www.facebook.com/HandyGames/]
New patch (version 0.13) released
We have released another update with the following changes:
• Added command line parameter –noaudioinput that allows you to deactivate microphone and voice recognition completely
• Fixed exception in SteamApi initialization
• Added graphics option to activate soft particles (default is now off)
• You can now feed the cat dead fish (although cats still won’t search for fish on their own)
• Fixed an issue where you got stuck in the tutorial if you burned down the woodcutter’s hut before being told how to construct new buildings
If you experience or have experienced crashes before:
• Don’t activate soft particles
• If it still crashes, switch to the beta channel
To subscribe to the beta channel, right click on the game in your steam library, select Properties->BETAS and choose the beta branch from the dropdown menu. This version needs more GPU power, but should be more stable.
As always please keep us updated in the forums of how the versions are working for you!
Thank you!
First patch (version 0.12) released
Thanks to your feedback we were already able to track down and solve some problems:
• Fixed some crashes
• Fixed an issue where building previews disappeared from the build menu (if you grabbed them while they were invisible)
• Fixed overlapping dialogs between Sir Clunkalot and Baron Melvin if you quickly hit the baron several times
• Fixed collider on landing stage
• Reduced the townsmen’s reaction to player speech
• Fixed Sir Clunkalot speeding up the windmill wings when talking
Please keep us updated in the forums if this patch fixes your problems or you stumble over new ones!
Thank you!
Update: Actually the patch didn't fix the crashes as we have hoped it would. We uploaded a badly optimized debug build in the beta channel that seems to fix the crashes. So everybody experiencing crashes please try that beta build as we are working to optimize it to bring it to the public.
