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Going Medieval News

Experimental Branch Patch (0.16.5)

Greetings players! The newest patch (0.16.5) is now live on all platforms on the experimental branch. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. If you have any problems, please let us know.

For those that missed the full log of the new experimental update, you can find it here.

[h3]Bugs and Fixes[/h3]
  • Fixed the issue where the water would not flow in some cases.
  • Fixed the issue where a settler would, in some scenarios, fish from a spot that is occupied by a tree.
  • Fixed the manage group preset issue where apparel was set to no apparel for no reason.
  • Fixed the issue that prevented you from ordering settlers to traverse on water when starting a new game on the marsh map.
  • Fixed the issue that prevented pile modifiers from refreshing when a floor is built underneath them.

[h3]Quality of life improvements[/h3]
  • Added splashing particles to swimming and running in shallow waters for humans.
  • Some dropdown issues were solved (dropdowns in the Manage panel were scrolled too slow with the mouse wheel).
  • Rain will not appear as frequent in Spring and Autumn.

[h3]Known issues:[/h3]
  • Humans and animals can't drown for some reason. Yay?
  • Archers can't shoot arrows while in shallow water and will fight with fists.
  • Animals are lacking in animation when swimming (they’ll appear as walking on water).
  • Pathfinding penalty is doing some weird calculations when humans/animals are walking on shallow water and is not working properly.
  • Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  • If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to turn off V-sync and cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.


DISCLAIMERS:
⚠️ We decided to keep Dev version of the game on the experimental branch, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur.
⚠️ Also, at the moment, the experimental and the main branch are very different. You should not play saves from the experimental branch on the main one as it can cause various bugs - please avoid doing this.

As always, use F10 and/or the experimental bug subforum for reporting experimental issues. Thank you!

Foxy Voxel

Experimental Branch Patch (0.16.4)

Greetings players! The newest patch (0.16.4) is now live on all platforms on the experimental branch. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. If you have any problems, please let us know.

For those that missed the full log of the new experimental update, you can find it here. We’ve reworded instructions for adding water to existing settlements.

[h3]Bugs and Fixes[/h3]
  • Fixed several crash occurrences.
  • Fixed certain FPS drops.
  • Fixed the issue that caused prioritization of fishing to use Cutting plants job instead of Animal Husbandry.
  • Fixed the issue that caused animals and humans to get stuck.
  • Fixed the issue that caused the appearance of the “lacks fuel” messages in the torches/braziers that had fuel in them.
  • Fixed the issue where torches and braziers would turn on by themselves on the game's reload.
  • Fixed the issue where water would go through floors in certain scenarios.
  • Fixed the issue where a fish would spawn on dry land.
  • Fixed the issue where a small puddle would not disappear after some time.
  • Fixed the issue where water flowing through window animation would appear, even when there was no reason for it.
  • Fixed the issue where settlers would swim under walls, despite being located in the deep water.
  • Fixed the issue where animals and settlers would ignore urgent haul.
  • Fixed the issue where a map selection would show two marsh maps in some cases, but one of those maps would be a mountain map.
  • Fixed the issue where advanced books wouldn’t decay.

[h3]Quality of life improvements[/h3]
  • Hovering on the fish group will now display the fish type in the lower left corner of the screen.
  • Piles stored on shelves will not be affected by the shallow water.
  • Added sound effects to waterfalls.
  • Fish pile is forbidden by default if fish dies, but allowed when a worker catches it.

[h3]Known issues:[/h3]
  • When you start a new game, Marsh map will not create proper pathfinding nodes in deep water that's covered with shallow water. Saving and reloading it will fix this.
  • Humans and animals can't drown for some reason. Yay?
  • Animals are lacking in animation when swimming (they’ll appear as walking on water).
  • Pathfinding penalty is doing some weird calculations when humans/animals are walking on shallow water and is not working properly.
  • Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  • If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to turn off V-sync and cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.


DISCLAIMERS:
⚠️ We decided to keep Dev version of the game on the experimental branch, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur.
⚠️ Also, at the moment, the experimental and the main branch are very different. You should not play saves from the experimental branch on the main one as it can cause various bugs - please avoid doing this.

As always, use F10 and/or the experimental bug subforum for reporting experimental issues. Thank you!

Foxy Voxel

Experimental Branch Update (0.16.2)

Greetings players! The newest patch (0.16.2) is now live on all platforms on the experimental branch. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. Once it is properly tested, we will push it live in the official update! Here are the notes for what awaits you in this version, but first, a warning:

[h3]Disable Mods if you have them[/h3]
Please note: if you are using unofficial mods you might experience crashes or even an inability to start the game. If you do, turn the mods off before starting the game. If the problem persists, be sure to delete everything in the steamapps\common\Going Medieval and then verify the game files.

Now, onto the update:

[h2]Water - [Community request][/h2]
Water is finally in the game. It will appear on almost every map type as bodies of water like lakes and rivers, as long as a new game is started. There's a chance for a map to not have a river or a lake on it, but that’s because the seed is randomly generated and calculated.

It will move when given the chance, so digging a hole next to a lake or river will make the water go to that empty spot. The way water is simulated is not supposed to be very realistic, but is simplified and follows some basic logic.

[h3]Levels of water[/h3]
Water is consistent, meaning that a full voxel of water will spread out on more voxels while lowering its core level. For the gameplay purposes of Going Medieval, water will have 3 levels: Shallow, Low and Deep. This will also make it clear if water can be traversed by foot or is it deep enough to swim. Here are key notes for each level:

Shallow water
  • About 30cm real world depth (1/10 of the whole voxel).
  • Settlers, raiders and animals can walk/run through it (yes, even rats and small animals. We are ok with this. :D).
  • Settlers can construct stuff, pickup piles, eat & drink, they can also harvest/slaughter/train animals.
  • Production buildings and beds don't work in this depth.
  • Leisure activities (praying and backgammon) and furniture are allowed in this depth.
  • All plants and trees start to lose HP in this depth except reeds & willow trees.
  • Crop Fields can't be placed on this depth except willow trees.
Low water
  • About 170cm real world depth (around 3/5 of the whole voxel).
  • Settlers (regardless of their height), raiders and animals swim in this depth.
  • Leisure activities (praying and backgammon) and furniture are not allowed in this depth.
  • Settlers can still construct stuff, pickup piles, eat & drink (they will not use chairs in low water).
  • Settlers, raiders and animals can’t climb out of low water without ladders or stairs/slopes.
  • If there is a floor that above low water, settlers, raiders and animals will swim under it,
  • Settlers can’t harvest/slaughter/train animals while the animal is in low water (or deeper).
  • Enemies can't attack prod buildings that are in low water.
  • Traps will not work on this depth.
  • Torches and braziers will not work on this depth, but wall torches will.
Deep water
  • 3m of water (one whole voxel).
  • Settlers (regardless of their height), raiders and animals swim in this depth.
  • Settlers can still construct stuff, pickup piles, eat & drink.
  • Settlers, raiders and animals can climb out of deep water without ladders or stairs/slopes.
  • Animals can't eat bushes that are in deep water, can't eat piles or carcasses that are in deep water.
  • Enemies can't attack prod buildings that are in deep water.

Different water levels can be layered on top of each other, so you might have deep water (3m) and shallow water over it. In that case, settlers will behave as in deep water.

[h3]Water movement[/h3]
Water will flow if there is available space for it. It can be blocked by the ground, but also some buildings.
  • Water will flow through open doors, grated doors, wicker doors and barn doors.
  • Water can go through grated and wicker floors.

[h3]Fishing[/h3]
  • Fish can spawn in rivers and lakes and can be marked by the player to be fished and used as a resource. Fishes spawn logic is similar to plants in a way that they spawn on a location (in this case water) and the settler comes and harvests them.Here is what you need to know about this process:
  • Animal handling skill will influence fishing performance.
  • Fishing is a part of the hunting job and is performed via order located in the bottom right side of the screen or right clicking on fish after you’ve selected a settler.
  • Fish spawns in all bodies of water.
  • Fish will die if the water is drained and will drop a small amount of resources in its place.
  • You can fish for pike, trout and eel.
  • 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, but there is not that much meat in the flock.
  • Eel is somewhere in-between pike and trout when it comes to chance failure and resource gain.
  • Map types can have a different combo of fishes. For instance, marsh maps have more eels and other maps have a combination of trouts and pikes.
  • Location in relation to the shore is also influencing what type of fish it spawns.
  • Once fished, you can smoke and salt them and turn them into corresponding meals.

[h3]Marsh map[/h3]
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. Here are other notable things you can expect on the Marsh map:
  • Marsh soil - similar to the regular soil, but leaves shallow water where it is dug out. It appears only on marsh maps and gives only 1x soil instead of 3x like regular dirt voxels.
  • Willow trees - similar to regular trees, but mostly present on marshes,
  • Reeds - located mostly on marshes. They offer hay, albeit less when compared to tall dry grass.
  • Water Vole - similar to a rat. Gives good leather and mostly spawns in marsh map types. Can be held in pens.
  • Mallard - medium-sized waterfowl species that spawns on marsh maps. Can be held in pens.
  • Metal and limestone are not present on this map type so you’ll have to acquire them via trading.

More water related info:

  • Humans and animals can fight on all water levels.
  • Piles rot and decompose much much faster if in water (except fish piles, their decay is slowed down in that case).
  • Flora doesn’t spawn in water (except willow trees and reeds).
  • Reed will start dying if it’s deprived of water.
  • If you start a trade with another village located in the marsh map type, expect that the stock of that village will probably lack limestone but will offer more herbs.

[h2]Other Notable Stuff[/h2]
[h3]Urgent Haul order[/h3]
Urgent Haul is a new order type located in the Jobs panel that is separated from the (regular) haul. This will give you more control when it comes to prioritization and which settler will respond to the Urgent Haul order. Here is how it works:
  • There is a new “Urgent Haul” button located in the lower right corner of the screen.
  • Settlers that have only urgent haul on (regular haul off) will only haul urgent marked piles and not the ones that are not marked.
  • Settlers that have haul on (urgent haul off) will haul urgent marked piles too, but they will not prioritize them during the hauling process.
  • Pets will follow urgent haul orders, too, regardless of their owner’s priorities.
  • A pile can't be forbidden and urgent haul marked at the same time.
  • A pile that's on a stockpile can't be marked as an urgent haul except if the pile can be moved to a better stockpile.
  • Shelved piles cant be marked for urgent haul.

[h3]Quality of life changes[/h3]
  • Limestone (impure) is a new type of the voxel we’ve added. It looks exactly like the regular limestone but gives less resources, has less HP and is faster dug. It will be only found on mountain maps. This is so players can dig those maps faster and not have a gazillion limestone around. Don’t worry, ordinary limestone is still present on mountain maps and is the same as before.
  • Using the Overview tab now pauses the game.

[h3]Bugs and Fixes[/h3]
  • Fixed the bug that indicated that food reserves are low, even when they weren’t.
  • Fixed the bug where installing a rug under a bookshelf would cause the books to fall down.
  • Fixed the issue that occurred when the settler with a high enough skill (10) to smoke meat returns from a caravan, during which time no other settler could have performed an ongoing order to smoke meat, the smoke house order does not update. It will continue to say no settlers with enough skills are available.
  • Fixed the issue where the high motor function would slow down certain activities.

[h3]Known issues[/h3]
  • Right clicking and prioritizing fishing is controlled by the cut plant job.
  • Animals are lacking in animation when swimming (they’ll appear as walking on water).
  • Pathfinding penalty is doing some weird calculations when humans/animals are walking on shallow water and is not working properly.
  • Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  • If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30. If that doesn’t work, turn the V-sync off.

[h3]For players that want to add water on the existing saves/maps[/h3]

DISCLAIMER: We sincerely suggest that you start a new map to properly experience water and terrain adjustments that accompany it. If you have an old save that you really want to add water to, you can find the guide below. If you try to use Dev Tools and report bugs in the process, those reports will be ignored simply because dev tools can be buggy, we can’t cover all of the custom scenarios made by these tools and because the game is not experienced the way it was intended. Since we are a small team, this is made so we can focus on the core experience and prioritize our bug fixing to the real bugs. But we also want for you to have fun, and create fun experiences and screenshots.

To add water to the existing maps, you will need to enable Dev Tools first. This is done on the experimental branch (only on Steam). For it to work, you'll have to change two files:

1) Find your game within steamapps in this location: SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Going Medieval\Going Medieval_Data\StreamingAssets\Data\ . Find file named GameSettings.json and open it with notepad. Look for the devTools line and change false to true . Save the file.

2) Go here: %userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\ . Find file global.config and open it with notepad. Look for the devtools and change false next to it to true . Save the file.

Now start the game and go to Options > Game > Dev tool.


In the upper part of the screen, a new tab titled DEV TOOLS will appear next to the Region tab.


When you select it, a new window will appear showing various commands. Look for the TOGGLE WATER DEBUG UI and select it.


This will add a new window that allows you to add and control water. To use this window, you’ll have to select “Enable Draw/Edit”. We’re going to explain what each function does:

Add water - selecting it will add water to the voxel where your mouse is. You can use the click and hold function to draw water across the area. If the area is flat and the amount of added water is modest, there is a big chance that the water will disappear after some time.
Fill to cursor - will add water depending on the cursor positioning. Be careful when using this as it may overflow the map. Take into consideration the angle of the camera, too.
Add flow in - this will add a voxel that will constantly emit water from its positioning. When you see a map with a river in it, this is the type of voxel located on one edge of the map.
Add flow out - this is the type of voxel located on the other side of the river that ‘swallows’ the water and stops it from overflowing in that case. By default, map edges are surrounded by these voxels.
Water level to set - indicates the amount of water that will be placed on start when using the add water function.
Draw vertical offset - offsets water placement in relation to the cursor.
Refresh All Obstacles, DBG Visualize Obstacles, Hide DBG Obstacles - this doesn’t have practical use as we used it for debugging purposes early on.
Clear water - Removes all water from the map.
Clear inflow - Removes all inflow voxels from the map, even ones that create rivers.
Enable water sim - turning this off will essentially freeze water movements. Trying to add water in this state will create water blurbs that will stand in one place until this option is turned on.
Tick Water Sim - simulates water movement one tick at a time. Can be used when the water sim is turned off or the game is paused.
Backup Water State - use this to save current water positioning.
Restore Water State - if you make a mess with water experimentation, use this to restore water state to your backup point made above,
Clamp Water Levels - turning this off was used for debugging on our side.
Show water mesh - hides/shows water. It doesn’t erase its functionality, just hides the visuals.

If you still can't find Dev Tools after the instruction above: It might be because you have at one point used unofficial modding tools that modified game's files. Since we don't know what they change, we suggest that you to certain folder and file cleanup. Go to Steam Library > Right-click on Going Medieval > Properties > Local Files > Browse.

This should open a new folder and you should delete all of the files located in there. After you do that, go to Steam Library > Right-click on Going Medieval > Properties > Local Files > Verify integrity... Wait for it to finish and start the game. Don't worry, this will not delete your save files, but you'll still have to change again devtool within .json. Find your game within steamapps in this location: SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Going Medieval\Going Medieval_Data\StreamingAssets\Data\ . Find file named GameSettings.json and open it with notepad. Look for the devTools line and change false to true. Save the file and start the game and see if you can see Dev Tools within the game's options. If the answer is still no, then...

Go here: %userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\ and delete everything there. Note: This will also delete your saves so be sure to back them up somewhere before you do so. Start the game and exit it. Go back to that folder and find file global.config and open it with notepad. Look for the devtools and change false next to it to true. Save the file. Check if you can see dev tools in game now.

If the answer is No, the last thing we can suggest is to reinstall the game. Again, we're sorry that you are experiencing this issue, but using unofficial tools can lead to unexpected problem like these. :(

Use these tools at your own risk, as they are not perfect nor meant to be used for sandbox experience (but we might focus on that once everything is working as intended). And when you are done, don’t forget to turn the dev tools off so you can report proper bugs, if that is your thing. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMERS:
⚠️ We decided to keep Dev version of the game on the experimental branch, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur.
⚠️ Also, at the moment, the experimental and the main branch are very different. You should not play saves from the experimental branch on the main one as it can cause various bugs - please avoid doing this.

As always, use F10 and/or the experimental bug subforum for reporting experimental issues. Thank you!

Foxy Voxel

Medieval Monday Talk #42

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)

Medieval Monday Talk #41

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