Dream Engines: Nomad Cities News

Fixed an issue accessing mods downloaded from the Steam workshop.

Citizens,

It's been just over 2 months since we launched Dream Engines: Nomad Cities in early access. Sadly, since that launch, it's been one crisis after another for us at Suncrash (one of which I told you about). It took a little longer than we planned, but I do feel we managed to create a decent update here despite all the difficulties.

I want to once again thank all of you early access players for your very valuable feedback. A lot of the changes and quality of life improvements here are directly related to things we saw and heard from you. Also thank you for your understanding regarding the delays.

Here are some of the larger changes in this update, and you can find the full list on our patch notes page.



The new Ashfall Range biome is a fiery biome full of ash, fire and molten rock. This is a late game biome that appears in 4-skull difficulty or higher, and it contains a new resource unique to this biome called Liquid Fire.

This new resource comes with new production recipes, some of which create brand new construction materials, and others are alternative recipes for existing construction materials - adding more valid options and freedom when choosing your next landing destination.





To better survive in the higher difficulty maps, we added new higher levels of equipment, including weapons and armor.

We also added a new type of weapon that shoots several projectiles in an arc, useful against stronger enemies that are nearby if you can hit them with the entire burst, and also against weaker enemies that are spread out.





We improved our in-game encyclopedia so it provides more information that is easier to access. You can now see resources in these archives, and for each resources you can see how to get it, and the different uses it has. More resources and uses will be displayed as you unlock them with research.

We also fleshed out the other pages, and improved navigation by adding a filter and sorting the subjects alphabetically.





We now officially support modding for Dream Engines and we opened the Steam Workshop for uploading and downloading of mods.

The current level of modding support lets you change configuration files that determine the game's content, balancing, and many systems. You can also upload custom sprites that can be used for example for adding resources or equipment. All language files are moddable too so you can add community-based translations for the game.

Support for additional modding functionality will be added later down the road if there is demand for it.

This subject deserves a separate, more detailed post, which I'll make in the next few days. For more information, you can check our Modding Guide (work in progress).





When you reached 5 skulls or high threat levels, you may have noticed that we used larger & stronger versions of the tier-2 enemies. In this update we added new tier-3 enemies, which will improve the balance and overall feel of the late game.





Lots of balancing and quality of life improvements were made, most of them based on your feedback. Some of the more important ones:

* Tiny can now move between buildings
* When raids split and attack using different paths, you will now see them all in the minimap
* We added fuel caches in some maps as another way to get fuel early on
* When buildings are attacked their position will now appear in the minimap
* Depleted resources now suffer a larger penalty, but resource nodes start with more resources



We've identified and improved some performance bottlenecks, especially in the late game when the map is full of carts travelling to resource drop-offs.

We know we still have more optimizations to do, and will keep improving in future updates. If you encounter a situation where the game's performance is bad, please follow the instructions in this post and send us the save file, it will really help if we can identify those poor performance situations so we can improve and optimize them.



Saves from previous builds are supported and should work fine for the most part, but there may be balancing issues and some of the changes will only take effect when you switch maps.



In this update we implemented some of the features in our roadmap, and we will now start planning our next update and which features it will include. You can probably expect a couple smaller patches as we collect feedback about these latest changes, while we work out which major additions/changes to tackle next.

Know that we are always listening to all feedback channels, and that your feedback is very much appreciated. We invite you to hop onto our discord server and chat with us directly, leave your feedback in the Steam discussion forums, or in-game feedback form.

If you are enjoying the game, please don't forget to leave us a review on Steam. Positive reviews are a great way to support games that you enjoy and developers that you like. It helps our motivation and lets other players know what you like about the game.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on all these changes.
The Suncrash team

Citizens,

This is an update on our development progress and plans for the near future.

Since we released Dream Engines a bit less than a month ago, we already uploaded 4 updates, some larger and some smaller, all based on feedback we got from our Early Access players.

Since then we've started to work on some of the roadmap features, and wanted to release one large update in August, and another one at the end of September.

Unfortunately, that plan is no longer possible. Due to COVID in the family (everyone is ok, no severe symptoms, thank god!), and the resulting quarantines, I now have to take care of two small children all by myself 24/7, no kindergarten and no help from their mother, for the next couple of weeks. Since I am 50% of the team, and the only programmer, this means that the August update will not be ready as planned.

Under these circumstances, we've decided to skip the large August update, and release the next update towards the end of September as planned, obviously making it a larger one that will include some features planned from both. We may still release smaller patches before that, as necessary.

This next big update is planned to include modding support, new content, balancing improvements, and improvements to the on-boarding (the tutorial and other things making the new-player experience better). In addition, we continue to fix bugs, tweak our systems based on feedback, and improve the UX and general quality of life.

I want to thank all our early access players once again for their support and feedback, and thank you in advance for understanding this delay in updates.

Tomer & The Suncrash team.

Citizens,

Patch 4 continues to fix and improve based on all the great feedback we received from our early access players. If you have any feedback you want to share, please don't hesitate to post on the Steam Forums or come chat with us directly on Discord.

Thank you all for your feedback, it's been very valuable. If you are enjoying the game and want to show your support, please don't forget to leave us a review on Steam, and let your friends know.

Here's the list of changes in this build:

• You can now expand your city to areas where you already have buildings without having to move or destroy them, as long as none of those buildings are partially within the expansion area and partially outside it.
  
• Tiny can now pass through tiles with rail crossings.
  
• The repeating research in the end was tweaked down since it was overpowered. The bonuses it provides are about half the previous ones, and the costs for researching it increase every time the research is complete.
  
• Fixed a bug where after switching a map or reloading a saved game, the bonuses from the repeating research were lost until it was researched one more time.
  
• Fixed a bug where nightmare reinforcements to turrets would not give any bonuses.
  
• Faster global infestation growth from having a large city & infrastructure upgrades limited to a maximum of +70% over the base value. This means that if your city grows very quickly, the global infestation will not increase as much faster than usual as it did before (but it will still increase faster than usual up to the maximum).
  
• Fixed a bug where the upgrades layer UI would not refresh if it was open while you upgrade a building through the building window.
  
• Made total weight and weight capacity rounding from X.5 to be consistent (total weight always rounds down at X.5, and weight capacity will round up).
  
• City information window now displays the current rail speed.
  
• Fixed a bug in simplified and traditional Chinese that would break the city information window.
  
• Added the ability to bind mouse buttons to keyboard shortcuts, starting from mouse button 4 and onwards (left click, right click and middle click are still hard coded and cannot be re-bound).
  
• Made it possible to change the resolution even in full-screen. Choosing resolutions below the desktop resolution may create blurring effects.
  
• Added a 240 maximum FPS option, though on the majority of systems the game will not be able to reach such numbers.
  
• Using an ability that takes time to charge will now initiate the cooldown as soon as the charging begins. This will prevent players from accidently using several consumables of the same kind while the ability is charging.
  
• Flux, power and fuel now slowly drop when over-capacity, instead of immediately dropping. This way if a storage building is temporarily disabled you will still be able to salvage most of the resources if you quickly repair it. This is now similar to how you lose workers when there is overpopulation. The rate at which these resources decrease varies (flux drops fastest, fuel slowest).
  
• Loot drop animation a bit faster, and less delay before you can pick them up. Also increased the loot pickup range. This allows more easy scavenging of debris with less delay.
  
• Increase of city expansion costs grow slower now at higher levels (more than 20-30 expansions), making the costs more realistic.
  
• Fixed a bug where the tips for repairing when activating the repair tool would remain on screen until relaoding.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could remove a building add-on after selecting a production recipe that requires that add-on, and it would continue producing it.
  
• Fixed a bug in Ironman mode that prevented the game from being saved when there was a backup save file that remained from a previous failed save (can happen if a player terminates the game while it's saving).
  
• Increased the number of cycles worth of threat removed by the Smoker to 20 instead of 10.
  
• Text tweaks and fixes.
  

[h2]Previous Patches[/h2]
Patch 3: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1076750/view/5631172529439983607
Patches 1 & 2: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1076750/view/5631172529425301331

Patch 3 is based entirely on things we learned through early access feedback. It fixes some significant bugs, and includes usability improvements and balancing tweaks.

Changes in patch 3:

• Fixed a bug where every time Tiny activated emergency teleport, bonuses to maximum population from infrastructure upgrades would get re-added over and over again. This would reset after leaving the map or reloading a save, which would cause a drop in maximum population and people starting to die.
  
• Fixed a bug when you had multiple resource drop-offs that accepted different resources, then sometimes the pathfinding for some of the carts would not re-calculate when you build or demolish buildings, causing them to get stuck and after a while really hurt performance when hundreds of carts would get stuck at the same spot.
  
• Tweaked map generation so there is a little more building space around the city and clearings are a bit larger.
  
• Balanced building upgrades so they are more efficient (less increase in maintenance costs), and no longer less worthwhile than building more buildings of lower levels. Tweaked the price of said upgrades a bit as well to be higher, so upgrading creates a trade-off between high up-front costs, while saving space and weight.
  
• Made some advanced recipes for flux, power, research and upgrade materials a bit more efficient and worthwhile.
  
• Apartment a bit more efficient now (less food consumption, less weight, a bit more max population - base and upgrades).
  
• A bit higher Flux production with all recipes.
  
• Incresed Tiny's base speed when not attacking and some of the speed bonuses.
  
• 1 Skull maps now always have both featherstone and bloodwood.
  
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't move a Materializer if you reached the maximum amount of this building.
  
• Fixed a bug that when a building is destroyed in the middle of trying to move it, you could still place it with 0 health after it was destroyed.
  
• Made FPS limit configurable (default is now 30).
  
• New sound when an attack is preparing, different from the regular alarm (people dying, etc).
  
• Made the city info area in the HUD a button so it's clearer that it can be pressed to open the city information window.
  
• Added a learning message after the first time that you fly to a new destination, explaining that you can open the city information window that also shows information about current map.
  
• You can no longer switch to management mode in the first tutorial mission (the one where you learn the basic controls). Players who accidently switched didn't know they had to switch back in order to complete the tutorial.
  
• Text fixes.