Going Medieval News

Greetings medievalists!

As mentioned in the previous MMT, we’d like to discuss some of the challenges we are facing with the incorporation of water and why working on it took time. Hopefully, this might give a better understanding of our process, but also our problem solving approach.

It’s worth noting that with the water update, the layout of existing map seeds will be changed if you start a new game. Basically, this means they will have a new layout and old images will not be a proper representation of those maps. This is partly due to implementation of rivers and lakes on maps and partly due to the terrain calculation of those areas. It's nothing game breaking, but it's good to know. In the images below is the map seed 1845052011 hillside, medium size. Left side is the current live build (0.15.8) while the right is created with Update #10. If anything, the new version is a bit richer in levels even when you take water out of the equation.



So how did we get here? How are the positions of rivers, lakes and water overall, calculated for each map? Well, as the latest addition to the game, it made sense that water positioning should be a last step of map generation.

From the start, we had three things in mind: rivers, lakes and a new type of map (marsh) where the whole map is flooded with shallow water and there are islands on the map.

Marsh was a bit different from your regular map as it required a global water level and under this level, everything should be flooded. With that in mind, what happens if you dig down in the marsh area? It makes sense that such a terrain would be wet by all the water around it, right? Digging such land would have to be a bit different. So that’s why we added marsh soil - it offers less soil and can spawn water in case you dig them out; so that if you dig a deep hole, you might find water, and the deeper you dig the more water you may have in that hole. This ground type has a darker and wetter appearance on Marshes.



Okay, but what does it mean for spawning points for animals/merchants/raiders on marshes? Since water gives a penalty to those that traverse it, humans/animals would seek to avoid it when possible. We also had to make sure that events are differently balanced on this map. So there will be no situations where a bunch of deer would appear suddenly (silly deer).

Back to the regular maps. Lake generation sounded simpler, so we started with that. We used so-called 'brushes' during map generation. Think of brushes as a small texture akin to stamp. The lighter the color of the brush, the deeper the lake. They could raise and lower height, set materials inside the terrain, and make holes to the map. Cool. But we had to add water too.



The first iteration of pasting a 'lake brush' did just switch the top voxels of the terrain with water. So a water voxels would cover the designated area of an “empty” lake and would fill it out accordingly. It worked just as intended on flat maps, but on those with more elevation such created lakes would flood half of the map. Yeah. This was because there were no clear limiters to the present system.



Something had to be done before pasting the brush process. The solution for this was to flatten out the terrain where the lake was and then carve the lake into the terrain. An additional layer of ground voxels, a wall on the level of the water surface was needed around the lake to make sure that water doesn't flow out of the flat area. This had to work for every map type, even mountains.



The next step was to handle the situation where we want to place multiple lakes on the map. The brushes which carve the lake into the terrain and fill it with water are placed randomly and may overlap, and this meant that lakes could overlap, too. To fix this, we placed ground to work as a divider of water between different elevation levels at this point of map generation voxel. This means no waterfalls inside a lake.

But we also had to consider what YOU want to do here. Would you like to deplete lakes by covering them with dirt voxel? You can try to do that. It might appear as a Sisyphean task, but it can be done. Additionally, what if you want to connect those two lakes? Again, it is possible, but plan it properly and be ready for potential consequences. These scenarios are better when they are player made. What we try to set up at the start is a balanced experience regardless of the map type and size. Which, hopefully by now, you can see that it is not as simple a process as it may look.

That’s just some of the marsh and lake trivia. You know what was more challenging? Rivers! Those are a completely different can of worms (hehe) in which there are no brushes, only perlin noise, angles, curves, waterfalls and a whole new set dimension of problems to solve. Are you curious to hear about this too? Just check this funky river curve and volume calculation:



If there is enough interest, we might dedicate another MMT to it, but if not, we understand (and our programmer thanks you).

As mentioned before, we have an idea when the water update is going live on the experimental branch. Currently, our internal QA team is testing it and things are looking stable and promising. If everything goes well, expect it to appear on the experimental branch in 10 days or so. As it goes with these things, it will stay there until we are confident that everyone is having a proper experience, which usually takes us a couple of weeks. But things are looking neat so far!

Foxy Voxel (we have a dev page on steam now, yay)

Greetings medievalists!

You know what we never introduced, since the game launched in Early Access? New map type. Time to change that. Say hi to Marshes.



What makes a marsh different from other map types (valley, hillside and mountain) is that their terrain will be covered with 50% of shallow water, and limestone and metal will not be present throughout that land. This map type is considered a bit challenging because digging cellars/basements will be tricky, since water could easily fill them (and we mentioned that production buildings stop working in shallow water).

We also mentioned that the majority of trees and plants will not be able to grow in shallow water, so let’s talk about the ones that can: New flora and fauna is coming in the next update!



White willow is a new tree that will be present on all of the map types, but marshland will have the majority of these trees. And yes, you will be able to cultivate them on water voxels, but just on the ones with shallow depth.

Reeds are a plant similar to tall grass in a sense that harvesting it will provide you with hay. Like white willow, they’ll be on all map types, but they’ll be most common on marshes. You will not be able to cultivate reed, but they will spawn organically (as the tall grass does) at random, in shallow waters.



Water voles are a semi-aquatic rodent. They are often informally called the ‘water rat’ and while they look like rats, they will provide you with a solid amount of meat and leather if you decide to hunt them, among other things.

Mallard is a medium-sized waterfowl species that is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks. It will be exclusive to the marsh map type and will be idle in water, regardless of its depth.

It’s worth mentioning that almost every new map created after the Update 10 launches will be generated with some water source like a river, pond or lake. The majority of water sources will be destroyable by building dirt voxels in their place. However, those sources located at the edge of the map will persevere due to them being located in the forbidden zone where you can’t build. Old map saves will not have water magically appear on them, but once the update goes live we’ll post a guide on how you can integrate water there. More on that when Update 10 is officially released.

There are some challenges that we are currently facing with these new features, hence why we don’t have a date for the update yet. This was not unexpected, but it is worth talking about. Water is a big undertaking for us and as such, we want to set proper logistics that we can expand down the road.

In the next MMT we’ll talk about these current issues. Maybe then we’ll have a date for the Update #10, or at least for the experimental branch Update. It’s gonna stay there for a couple of weeks until the majority of bugs are fixed and we feel confident in its release. Until then,

Stay medieval

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

We’ve talked about water interaction with constructions and surfaces, now it’s time to talk about water and organic stuff. To talk about this is to talk about depth levels and how it affects humans, animals and plants.

When it comes to flora, the majority of plants and trees will not be able to grow in water. If water covers them, they’ll slowly start to lose hitpoints. We plan to introduce some simple irrigation systems eventually, through wetness caused by water, but we’ll focus on that once all the planned stuff works as intended.



Animals will be able to walk, haul and eat on shallow water, but the majority of them will not idle nor sleep on such surfaces. The same logic is applied when they swim on surfaces with low depth (previously referenced as medium). Deep water (the deepest water level) will not allow them to pick stuff from the ground nor eat.

Humans follow similar logic as animals but with additional options. They can walk on shallow water, but they can also build on it, play games, eat, pick stuff and cut trees and plants (that can grow on such depth). Low depth allows them to just swim and pick stuff up. In this depth they can swim beneath floors that are positioned on a level above them, but they can’t climb onto it. Deep water allows them just to swim, but they can climb onto surfaces and floors of the same level.



Voxel with low depth water is reached by ladders, stairs and slopes, while deep water voxel is reached from the upper ground level.



Settlers will be able to fight in water, but keep a few things in mind; Shallow water will offer a bit more flexibility, since settlers will be able to use all their weapons and shields as usual, but when it comes to other depth levels, that will only allow for melee combat. Shields will be ineffective and rangers will use fists. With this being water and all, certain penalties will follow combat, related to critical chance, damage, and speed. Simply put, people will fight slower when in water.

Overall, all living things that pass through water will get speed penalty and effectors that will lower their body temperature. Combine that with colder environments and it’s a recipe for getting Hypothermia.

People will be able to pass out on every depth level, but doing so in low and deep water will result in slowly losing health followed up by drowning. When it comes to drowning, yes, you will be able to trap a settler/enemy/animal in a room and fill it with water.



You’ll be happy to hear that fishing is coming to Going Medieval. Fishing is a new order type with which your settlers will be able to catch pike, trout and eels. Pike is just one fish and offers a larger chance of failure during the fishing process, but provides more meat if caught. Trout flock offers multiple fishes to catch and a smaller chance to fail. However, there is not much meat in the whole flock (one pike will give more meat than the entire trout flock in an area. Eels are somewhere in-between these two. You will notice their flocks in water areas close to shores. Settlers with a “Hunt'' job will go and fish in these areas. Once caught, you will be able to directly cook them, smoke them and use them to create various meals.

Unfortunately, boats (nor any water based vehicles) will not appear in the update. Again, to simplify the reasoning behind this: it is not an issue of water logic, rather pathfinding logic. A settler occupies a space of one voxel. If we create a boat, it would have to be lengthy in size, let’s say 3 voxels. Objects of that size wouldn’t be able to pass through narrow passages that players tend to construct in our game. And that’s just if we talk about a boat for one person which… doesn’t look/sound fun. Now, if the boat had a capacity for 4 people, that would be something else. But then comes another problem. What if each person on a boat wants to do something different? What if they want to use a boat automatically so they could pass on the other side? Should they wait for others to board first? If not, that means a settler will try to reach a boat and might miss it, causing them to recalculate their new route to the destination. These are just a few scenarios, but there are many, many different ways these scenarios could occur and developing one system to cover all of it might not be worth the final result.

You will notice that we didn’t mention anything about drinking water. Simply said, that will not be possible. We made a conscious decision to not turn water into a resource. That means settlers will not be able to drink it, harvest it nor use it for say… washing purposes. While we are aware of the common myth that said that people only drank alcohol in medieval times, we also allowed ourselves a bit of flexibility here since our game is set in alternative history where 95% of the global population has perished due to rampant plague. There is also a thing where water as a resource would have to retroactively be integrated with existing systems, which would in turn cause a bunch of unpredictable issues. We might revisit this idea again, but for now we chose to opt out of it.

You might be surprised by this decision, but once you experience all of the available options in the next Update, maybe it will become clear why we choose to do so. While these Medieval Monday Talks are here to give you insight into the game development process, they are also a nice opportunity to set proper expectations.

One more MMT awaits us and it’s coming in two weeks. Maybe then we’ll have a clear date when you can expect this Update. Until that day,

Stay medieval

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

Let’s continue the water discussion: First, we’ll talk about how it will affect buildings.

Water will not be able to pass through walls, floors and roofs. Now, since these elements have variations (like rounded walls), it may appear as water should pass through, but keep in mind that variations are just cosmetic and don’t change anything regarding their functionality. Certain types of these construction elements will allow water to pass through, like: grated floors, wicker, barn and grated floors.

Things that don't block water (above) & things that block water (below)

Open doors will let water in, regardless of door type. Open windows, on the other hand, will let water in but only a certain amount, resulting in shallow water on the other side (e.g. room).



When it comes to production buildings, being in water will stop their production. Yes, even shallow water will stop production, so be careful with your experiments. How can you remove water from such places? Dig holes, place barriers, because, if you don’t do so - water is there to stay.



With water comes wetness, so even if you get rid of it, the marks and effects will stay for a short period of time. Water affecting the temperature will be evident during summer, as it will emit coldness.

Upon hearing news about the water, many of you mentioned drawbridges as a must-have thing. We agree, but they will come a bit later, as we still have to work on them.

We’re aware that many of you suggested introducing watermills. That’s a nice idea, but we’ve thought about its incorporation and, from our perspective, it would increase the production chain side of the game. Put bluntly: if you imagine a gameplay spectrum with Factorio on one side (as a representative of production heavy games) and Sims on the other (as a representative of life simulation games), we want to lean more to the Sims side. It would look cool, we admit, but we want to make them a smart integration to the rest of the systems. Since we’ve already planned this update carefully, we decided that watermills are not a priority at the moment, nor are fountains. We’ll definitely notify you once we get back to them.

Another thing we want to mention that is not happening is Ice voxel. We know what you think, once the winter comes, your nearby river/lake should freeze. Freezing lakes should be walkable and mined and extracted into ice blocks which you would use for cooling down your storages/rooms. It’s a wonderful and realistic idea! But our recently introduced depth levels pose an issue: if we allow water freezing, that means every level should be turned into an ice block. That would result in 3 different levels of walkable surfaces within one voxel. The thing is, our technology and gameplay is not set up to support that. Without going too much into logistics and potential code issues, our hard surfaces are all positioned as one voxel. That’s why we’re unable to introduce things like half-walls - they would offer only aesthetics but not functionality, and we already have nice alternatives for them (merlons).

Just to clarify - we’re not saying this is impossible. We’re saying that given our available technology, we’ve chosen to focus our priorities elsewhere. So yeah, our core setup opted us out of this feature.

Alrighty, that is enough talk about water and hard surfaces. Next time we’ll talk about how water affects all living things - humans, animals and even plants. There is a lot to say in that area. See ya in two weeks!

Stay Medieval,

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

It’s not uncommon for you to influence our development process. That is happening all the time, in both big and small ways. Among all of your suggestions, one feature stood out as the most requested, and we always thought about it, but wanted to tackle it once the game’s roadmap is done. Well, you continued to voice your opinion about this feature and we couldn’t put it aside anymore. It had to be done, at least in some capacity. So that’s what we are doing at the moment.

We’re happy to announce that water is coming to Going Medieval.



First, we want to talk about options we considered and challenges they posed, before we go into discussing the system we’ve chosen.

We had to establish clear 2d rules before we could move to 3D.

The first thing we had to decide is water distribution mechanics. Its speed, weight, amount distribution, etc. We didn’t want to turn the game into a realistic water simulation, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t experiment. We tried to experiment with fast simulation and distribution (voxel to voxel), but this would unnecessarily be taxing for the CPU. Water pressure posed a similar issue - initially we consider water pressure as an attribute, which would lead to creation of underwater caves (and even building destruction by water) and while it seemed cool, you would not be able to clearly understand what was going on while layer calculation would work full time, again, taxing the CPU.

Showcase of some of our 3d experiments.

After some trial and error, it was decided - water should be simulated just enough to keep and maintain predictable behavior, while offering additional control from the player (e.g. for creations of dams and lakes). Think Minecraft, where it would fill empty spaces (if available) step by step. So, in a way, water will most of the time appear as static and not simulated. Allow us to explain.



Water voxel has the same size as your regular voxel, meaning 1x1x3m. Water voxel will have a depth value which will be filled out as the water voxel moves to the empty space. This depth will have 3 different levels (four if you count being empty), and depending on the amount of water, will provide certain limitations for settlers, but more on that in another MMT.



“What about the traversal of water between the levels?”, some of you might ask. Well, if water reaches the end of the level (height-wise) and needs to “fall down”, in that case, a waterfall will appear.



Does this mean water will be infinite? Not exactly. Water will be spawned by a water inflow voxel. Think of inflow voxels as water sources for rivers and ponds - they will constantly deploy water until that water covers the inflow voxel. Inflow voxels will not be buildable as their number is calculated based on the map seed and optimized for average CPU performance. You will be able to spawn them with dev tools, and this way you will be able to add water to the old maps that don’t have generated rivers (use it at your own risk).

Okay, this is a good point to stop this blog, but don’t worry - there is still a lot to talk about. How water affects buildings and settlers, new map type, and a couple more surprises. We’ll continue this topic in two weeks, but until then, feel free to discuss potential scenarios and how you wanna use what you read here.

Stay medieval,

Foxy Voxel