Going Medieval News

Greetings medievalists!

We mentioned in the previous Medieval Monday Talk that we’re working on animals, and that’s still true, but just setting that process takes time. Even simple things like animating them, have to go through several iterations. Here’s what we mean:



But, that doesn’t stop us from setting up other things, like wall racks. Remember our Wall Deer Head Decoration?



It was just that - a decoration, not tied to anything except for the 10 bones you needed to create it. Well, additional animals give us more decoration options. After you kill them, you’ll get an option to turn them into trophies



You’ll need a butchering table, a carcass, and some wood, to turn them into trophies. But, this opened another question for us: What if you, the player, want to use the heads of your enemies as a trophy? That sounds pretty metal, but also like something you would be proud of after a long and hard battle. So we're implementing that, too!



Some of you even suggested how it would be pretty cool to have an option to put weapons and shields on wall racks - not only would it optimize space usage, but it would give more aesthetic options. After trying it, we tend to agree with you.



Awesome, right? In other news:

[h2]Another Discord AMA with Developers is coming soon[/h2]
We'll be hosting our second AMA ("ask me anything") session for Going Medieval on our Discord server. You can ask us any questions you like about the game, game development, or ANYTHING you want!

The event will start on Thursday, 14th April at 3:00 PM CEST and will last for one hour (might go even longer depending on demand).

So, join our Discord at https://discord.gg/goingmedieval. On the 14th, we'll unlock #ama-talk channel there, where you'll be able to post your questions and we'll try to reply to as many as we can (be sure to pass the initial discord verification first if you are new to the server). The first time was pretty cool for us and we hope to have even more fun this time. We are excited to see you there!

Foxy Voxel

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Greetings medievalists!

Time for another Medieval Monday Talk and this one is about a feature that many of you requested since the game went live - Animal Husbandry. There is a lot to talk about, and we’ll use upcoming Medieval Talks to provide more details. But for now, one step at a time. Let’s talk about Animal Panel.

There is going to be a new tab entitled “ANIMALS” located in the upper part of the screen.


Selecting it will open the Animal Panel. The Animal Panel is a way to give the player a quick overview of animals on the map, but it will also be used as a way of control over domestic animals, as well as wildlife.

Here is an example of the Domestic tab, within the Animal Panel:


From left to right, we’ll explain what each column represents.

Animals - This shows the type of animal in a form of a hyperlink. Hyperlinks will direct you to the Almanac entries for these animals. Also, each animal will have (f) and (m), indicating their gender, to differentiate between male and female.
Name - You will be able to give a name to the animal, and that name will also appear here.
Age - Represents the age of the animal in ingame years, with the age phase appearing in brackets.
Assigned to - When an animal is trained to be a pet, a dropdown will appear and the player will be able to assign the animal to a settler for training.
Haul - Some pets will have the ability to haul things. You’ll be able to turn that ability on/off here.
Battle - Some pets will be able to follow settlers and engage enemies alongside them. This too will be adjusted with an on/off function here. Not all animals will have this ability, but if you want to turn a bunch of rabbits into killing machines - you’ll be able to tinker with json files to allow that.
Train - Animals that have not yet been trained will have symbols indicating that they can be. This will start a training sequence.
Slaughter - Clicking on this icon will mark the animal for slaughtering (same as selecting the animal and clicking on the slaughter action or using the slaughter order from the order buttons down right).
Release - Clicking on this icon will mark the animal for release. When a settler releases the animal, it becomes wild again.
In Pen - If the animal is in a pen, the pen name will be added here. Clicking on it will select the pen and jump the camera to it. We might even add an option to name the pen. :)

Things are a bit different when it comes to the Wildlife tab of the Animal Panel:


Animal & Age columns are identical to the ones for Domestic animals.

Hunt - Use this button to mark the animal for hunting. You’ll still be able to mark the animal for hunting by selecting it as you previously did, but this is just an additional option.
Retaliate - Some animals have a chance to retaliate, meaning that if attacked, they’ll fight back. Chances for retaliation will appear here.
Tame - To turn wild animals into domesticated ones, you’ll use the Tame symbol here. You will also be able to start the taming process by finding the animal and marking it with Tame.
Tameable - Some animals will be harder to tame. The higher the chance, the easier taming process will be.
Retaliate - Once tamed, the animal will have a chance to retaliate. Those chances will appear here. Think of it as an animal being stubborn.

What do you think about this? In the upcoming weeks, we’ll also discuss the importance of animal gender, how the taming/training process will work and how it will affect resource management, so stay tuned.

Foxy Voxel

We have active TikTok account: @going.medieval
Follow us on Twitter: going_medieval
Our Facebook page: Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

Time for another Medieval Monday Talk. We were pondering for a bit on how to present what we are working on since there is a lot of technical things happening under the hood. But, we’ll try our best. Let’s talk about pathfinding.

When it comes to settlers' navigation in our medieval colony sim… there is a lot left to be desired. Let’s take a simple movement, like walking diagonally. Here it is how it looked before:



Notice the zig-zag movement. And this is how it will look in the next major update.



It might appear to be a minor thing, but this overhaul is a part of a bigger process that will offer significant optimization chances, easier implementation of upcoming features, and overall better game performance. Those existing issues could not easily be solved due to how the old system was interconnected with the rest of the game. There were a lot of variables, a lot of settlers, and a lot of resources. Calculating all of those options would affect the gameplay but also the CPU.

Within the new system, we implemented multiple agents. Agents represent everything "organic" that moves in our game - your settlers, enemies, and animals. In the current version, the problem is that everyone would try to follow such a system - your settlers, merchants, enemies, and even animals. It would look kinda silly - for a deer to walk over the limestone floors and stairs, just because we established that it is the fastest way for your settlers to move.

Since pathfinding is a big part of the game, this overhaul will allow for a faster calculation for every moving thing in the game and, in turn, allow for better game performance. It will also offer better game experiences. If there is an issue with hauling or ignoring job priorities, we will be able to find it easily and make a solution that will not upset the rest of the systems.

Now, every agent will allow for much more effective, much easier customization to their pathfinding. Animals will have different movement rules and penalties than humans. Deer and rabbits’ navigation will not be affected by flora, and floors will not provide as much penalty reduction as it does to humans (more on that later, below).

With human agents, we can separate how your settlers, merchants, and enemies will behave. An example: Your settlers and merchants will be able to avoid traps with ease (we plan for everyone to be able to activate traps), while the enemies will go through them.

Examples of settler movement vs wolf movement when faced with traps.

Agents will also allow for easier integration with the upcoming updates. Let’s say we plan to implement a new animal within the game (*ominous hint noises*) this new system will allow us to easily define how that animal would move throughout the game. That relates to settlements' position and location, type of constructions surrounding the animal, and other characters.

Take penalties, as an example, every grid space represents one node. Every node offers a penalty that is calculated by what is exactly that node’s made of and what’s on it. So if there was a bush there, that would cause 3000 penalty points to anything that walks through it, resulting in the slowing down of the character. The simple ground would offer 1000 penalty points, while the floor would provide 250 penalty points.

Everything mentioned above will affect game performance. You might not see it, but it will be felt.

Take this scenario as an example: A settler wants to reach a woodpile. With our old pathfinding system, it would ask if such a pile is reachable and start calculating. The system would take into account every single grid space, the penalties they provide, and thus provide the path for the settler. Now imagine such a simple action for every settler. That action would be very CPU heavy.

Here is an example of A star pathfinding that is used by our game: PATHFINDING. Try building a maze around the end position and once you are satisfied with the result, select Start Search. That is basically showing the current pathfinding logic - in that link, it’s a simplified and slower version, but it very much represents how the game calculates destinations related to the agent.

Thanks to the new region system, the game will instantly recognize where the thing your settler is looking for is. It will inform them about all the necessary regions they need to traverse in order to get to it.

Each region is made from 420 nodes (grid spaces) and it knows what the other regions that surround it are.



This makes calculating traversal significantly easier on the CPU since it doesn’t take the complete map into consideration when calculating. It takes only the necessary regions into account, making the experience much smoother, performance-wise.

Hopefully, this gives you a better understanding of what you can expect in the next update, without the need to go fully technical on it. But trust us - this is excellent news for Going Medieval

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

The new hotfix (0.7.17) is now live on all of the platforms. 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.
[h3]Bugs and Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed crash caused by settlers trying to install a Structure Pile.
  
• Fixed crash caused by canceling relocated structures mid-construction on the same voxel several times, using the assigned keybind.
  
• Fixed crash caused by drafting a settler that is sleeping in a bed via keybind,
  
• Fixed the issue where undrafted stances of settlers couldn’t be modified through the Manage menu when other settlers are traveling with a caravan.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused merchant idling behavior to bug out if a merchant's stall is locked away or walled off.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused settlers not to sow the fields when seeds become available.
  
• Fixed the issue where a roof blueprint could be placed and built overlapped over Floor Tiles, with no warning messages displayed.
  
• Fixed the issue where the structure piles would multiply if their installation was canceled multiple times via the assigned keybind.
  
• Percentages in the production speed modifiers in the selection panel of a production structure are color-coded now.
  
• All variations of research tables now count for the warning message “research table missing”. Also, all research tables unlock the research panel (if the player somehow purchases an advanced research table before constructing the basic one).
  

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

The new hotfix (0.7.15) is now live on all of the platforms. 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.
[h3]Bugs and Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed the issue that caused settlers to ignore hauling to stockpiles marked as ‘very high priority’.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused settlers to stop sowing the fields even when Seeds became available.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused Clothes and Armors to be displayed sideways when stored on armor racks.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused settlers not to sow fields, even though seeds, as a resource, became present.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused icons for winter clothes to appear smaller than the rest of the items when hovering over racks and chests.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the game not to update counter of the “Until you have” option for the Armourer’s Table once the Buckler Shield has been crafted.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the Reroll and Pseudonym buttons for Background on the Settlers screen to appear, even if the Advanced Customization menu is disabled.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the "Load" preset feature in the Settlers screen to stay disabled upon using the “Save” preset feature for the first time.
  
• Fixed the issue where deleting a preset (in a Settlers screen) would corrupt Save menu's functionality and additional presets would overwrite the remaining preset.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the settler's avatar to not properly update with the settlers' hair color when changing the body type.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused short screen freezes when changing settlers’ body type in the Settlers screen.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused changing settlers’ body type to modify the current Group Creation Points value, even though no other options that use Creation Points were changed.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused Structure Piles to not be accumulated and properly displayed in the Merchants' Trading menu.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused Factions' Alignment values to be inconsistently displayed in the Info Tab and in the tooltips.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the Hair Color/Skin Color menu to have the scroll bar present.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused sides of voxels situated in the Forbidden Zone to not have red overlay.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the disappearance of tooltips for Apparel and Equipment items when hovering over them in the Seal the Deal screen.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused corruption of settlers’ avatars after modifying their "Height" or “Body Type” value by typing in the text box and clicking on a different settler afterwards, in the Settler Creation screen.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused Summary Screen to not update properly when going back and forth between menus to select a different Heraldry.
  
• Fixed the issue where packaged meals (human meat) would not count in the “until you have” production counter.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused tooltips not to update in real time when using the "Allow/Forbid" order.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused "Pain" and "Inebriated" stat values not consistent with the ones in the Scenario description.
  
• Fixed the issue where text boxes from a custom scenario, upon entering 9 or more digits, would corrupt such scenario.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused the corruption of the custom scenario edit menu if “Override” stats are added.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused all of the shields to have "Two Handed" description in their Info tab and Almanac entries.
  
• Map seed number has been added to the pause menu and statistics panel within Historical Records.
  
• Mail helmets are no longer comically large.
  
• Metal shields are now properly added to the almanac.
  
• Wooden Buckler and Wooden Shield from the Research menu now have a proper Almanac link functionality when clicked on.
  
• Beds can be built now in rooms like the kitchen and workshop.
  
• Animated equipment like bows and flails will have proper animations after loading a game (previously, only equipped items from that session would be animated properly).
  
• Facial hair is hidden when mail helmets are equipped.
  
• NOTE: Due to shield and buckler productions changes within the code, every active production of that equipment from 0.7.11 saves and before these productions will be automatically deleted upon load. Any new production set will work fine.
  
• Fixed minor text issues.
  

Foxy Voxel