Songs of Syx News

I shall tell thee a bit of what's going on and why.

The main focus of this update has been polish. I thought it was just a couple of things, but once you open one Pandora's box, it leads to others.

A lot of work has gone into a brand new climate simulation, that allows for snow, and a living world that looks much better. Wind stroking the grass for instance. Animals have gotten an overhaul, with fixed spawn spots, and hunters work more predictably. Animals are also quite dangerous, so heads up.



I've dug through all UI panels, rearranged them, fixed them up, added new ones, removed others. Adhering to countless suggestions and bad reviews.

A big thing has also been to refactor code, so all rooms use a new sprite system that allows for upgrades. All refiners now have upgrades and some of the workshops.

Other from that it's just been about refining systems, and make sure everything works well. When this update is done, I consider the city-builder game to be very close to 1.0. That doesn't mean it's done, but in an acceptable state.

Heck, I'm sorry, I'm not good at this, I refer just toiling away at the code. I realize polish might sound bleak to players who have already made the effort to understand the game, but I'm sure there's something here for you as well. And, I'm getting close now to checking the last item on the list, in which case I'll start adding some new content.

The new content will be the ability that, through choices, get a public image that is either tyrannical or beloved. Choices can be public handouts, buying subjects drinks, or have your guards shake down a neighbourhood. Being a tyrant will be good for law and loyalty, while beloved increases happiness.

There will also be tourists, which will rate your city and throw you a coin based on their experience.

There will also be a lot more monuments, decorations and benches for your subjects.

Now, unfortunately, this is going to be the longest wait you'll ever had to endure. I plan on releasing V63 in early January. The reason for this is I'm on a working holiday for a few months, and I don't have the equipment to make my technically marvellous release videos. I'd also like more time doing this update, In the long term, it's a good thing, since a release is a lot of overhead.

Alpha testing will start mid December though, so if you're up to that, keep eyes peeled for the call, and join the discord if you haven't already!

Next version is going to be all about the world map. Factions, diplomacy, trade, and region development. I'm looking forward to that.

Greetings, noble ones. Thank you for your patience and confidence. A bunch of new features and fixes are now available for consumption. I've started alpha testing with this patch, so it's pretty stable. I will be at the bug reporting section for a week or two before I start working on the next batch.

We now have:

• Personal homes
  
• New tech tree
  
• Elderly care
  
• Disease & health
  
• World camps
  
• A new species and religion.
  
• Balance and fixes
  

Full patch notes can be found in the game's launcher.

Special thanks this round goes to all the alpha testers, and for Fatmice for leading the testing, and Buildus Maximus for his astounding balance overhaul. I hope they'll both stick around for the future.

Check it out by right clicking the game -> preferences -> betas and look for V62

Here's a video:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I thought it was time to check in before you start lynching me.

First off, I'd just want to say that I'm officially not keeping up with the community. I used to read everything, but there's just too much now. That's why I've created a special sub forum:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1162750/discussions/3/
Please, don't hold back from posting there if you have anything directed to me, it's what it's there for. I don't want to be left in the dark. I'll also read bugs and suggestions of course.

Progress regarding V62 is slow but steady. The primary feature is health, and I haven't gotten around to that yet, but here's what's in so far:

Private housing:


All subjects will require their own 3x3 house to live in. You get to set what race and class lives where. They require materials, which the subjects will go fetch for themselves if allowed. This visually upgrades their houses!



I've also remade techs and the tech tree, according to rewarding discussions here on steam.


Now each node has the possibility to be upgraded several times. Some nodes are one-ops though, that contain special stuff and unlocks.

Bonuses can now be either factors or terms, making for more interesting combinations. And the hideous forgetting mechanics is scrapped, you now get a penalty towards all bonuses instead.



Health will be easy enough to add, so I'm not to worried about that. I would like to catch up with my backlog regarding quality of live and suggestions though, so this might still take some time.

A potential problem with housing would be space. I've estimated that you'll need 25% of the map dedicated to housing for a 10k city. We'll see if this is a real problem or not from your impressions later on. The map can be expanded, in fact a 1500x1500 map has been tested, and performance is ok, but I haven't decided. RAM usage will be severe and there will be slowdowns.



Since there seems to be a lot of nay saying, I just want to clarify a few things.
Dormitories and apartments are removed. Apartments will make a comeback later as an inn for tourists, but that's much later. Sleep as a need is removed. Instead, people have a need to have homes. Every single person will want to their own home, I can't make multi-homes. Not if you want to be able to set what type of subject sleeps where.

This is how it works. Build your industry:


Build some homes to accommodate it, this takes about 1.26 seconds:


Build a hundred homes in 0.56 seconds


If you feel creative, build creatively:


This is what 500 homes look like, in a boring grid:


It still looks much more like a city than any Dormitory or Apartment complex would look like.

Finally, skip homes, why not. People will find somewhere indoors and sleep with a blanket, no big deal having some of your people homeless. More or less expected.

I'm not going to do families, at least not in this update, and maybe never. This is an upgrade from the current Dorm / apartment system, making people a bit more individualistic. In fact, it's pretty close to what apartments used to be.

Chambers will still be available for nobles.



Still little love for the new housing! I've spent the night thinking about how to technically allow for more residents per house, and I think I found a way that I will examine next week. Also different sizes make sense in that regard, so I'll add that as well, going from "homestead" to "longhouse". The only restriction will be that only members of the same race can occupy a house. With 2 people per 3x3. This will result in twice the area needed compared to the apartment room in previous versions. Actually a bit less, considering you don't need walls, and I think this is a good thing. Housing should make up a good chunk of a city. To compensate, I'd rather make other rooms (services and workplaces) more space efficient.

I don't know if the different sized rooms should have increased efficiency in terms of capacity. It makes sense that a 4x4 room has space for 4 people, but that would only prompt the player to use the largest size? But if so, this can be mitigated by having race specific penalties/bonuses according to size. That would limit creativity based on race preference however.

Still having dormitories as a shelter/backup is a good idea in theory, but I don't think it works in SoS. It would work in a capitalistic game, but in SoS you can choose between building houses or a dormitory, and why would you build a dormitory if it's just simply an inferior choice?

this is how I see it, feel free to argue:

[h2]Pros:[/h2]

• They use resources that you allow to upgrade their house, going from slum-looking to something really nice.
  
• The resources adds a new, familiar from other games, depth to the simulation. A lot more resources will have bigger meaning and demand. Cantors wants gems and cut stone, very expensive to keep happy. Garthimi requires a slab of clay for full upgrade.
  
• The thin walls and detail makes it look much more detailed than the 1x1 tile walls of Dormitories/apartments. It also takes less space that say an apartment complex.
  
• Need 5 more beds? No need to refurnish a room and evict everyone. Add dynamically
  
• No need to build a city with dorms, unlock the apartments and have to tear everything down to add them. Now the houses can stay. You upgrade them by allowing for more furniture resources.
  
• "Communist ant simulation" gets a hit. Everyone will have their own little space they go to, uniquely furnished (automatic) by the individual.
  
• Easier to decide where, and how big services to place down.
  
• Zoning, getting to decide exactly who lives where (if you want to). If you don't, the game will work out the most efficient placement of your citizens, and move them about as you change your workplaces.
  

[h2]Cons:[/h2]

• More space requirement (x2)
  
• Dormitories and Apartments gone (Chambers still available, and you can still mimic the apartment room if you want.)
  

Regarding map size. Indeed, the idea is to have this as an option. You computer specs doesn't really matter regarding this, since it's mostly dependant on the performance of a single CPU core. And CPU cores today are mostly similar, it's the amount of cores that increases with price. It has nothing to do with your graphics card, that only affects what you currently see on screen, which will be the same. So, state of the art PCs might only benefit 100-200% compared to a potato.

The reason I don't want to add it ATM, is mostly because I don't need more bugs. Map size has the possibility to increase current bugs by multiplication. It will definitely be a thing later on though.



Thanks for all the feedback. I suppose you all have been right, so I implemented the following:

• Apartment - 3x3 - 2 residents ~4.5 tiles/person
  
• Homestead - 4x4 - 4 residents ~4 tiles/person
  
• Dormitory - 5x5 - 8 residents ~ 3.1 tiles/person
  
• Longhouse - 5x7 - 16 residents ~2.1 tiles/person
  

So, space won't be a problem (if it is, I can increase max residents). And you'll have "families" living inside. I suppose in the future that those who procreate naturally could do so in the privacy of their homes. Nursery still makes sense for Garthimi I'd say though.

Greetings,

Gratitude to those who have tested and been patient about V61. It's now stable enough and moved to the default branch. The demo has also been updated to V59.

As always, the new version is not save-compatible, so if you want to continue building a V60 city, you need to check this version out manually in the steam client.

To my great surprise, there weren't many tasks left on Trello, which means 1.0 will be done in a foreseeable future, which is fun. That doesn't mean I'll quit the game, it's just a milestone.

Next up is mainly health.

• People will have a "healthy" stat that will be increased by comfortable jobs, food rations and visits to a doctor. Hygiene will be important to keep off epidemics. I'm thinking immigration could also increase the chance for that. We will have wards, or hospitals that will need supplies of medicines (made from opiates I'm thinking). A curfew decree that will cause everyone to stay indoors to prevent spread. Obviously your economy will suffer from this. I also want to make some kind of martial law mechanics where soldiers will patrol the streets, we will see about that.
  
• An elderly care building for retired people, where they can hang around playing cards as the elderly often do.
  
• I also plan to make private housing. Each dude will have one of different quality. They will also fetch stuff such as furniture and cloth to improve their dwelling, if you allow it. You'll be able to specify what species get to live where. I'm aiming to make some funny interaction between neighbours as flavour, but also potential problems.
  
• Some races will be converted into a sort of "creature" instead. They will not immigrate, but they will have camps on the world map that you can persuade to join you if certain conditions are met. Cantors will be one of those. There will also be a new ant species.
  
• I've had this idea about changing up the tech tree, and just display all bonuses that you can allocate tech points into, indefinitely, but at an increasing cost. This will really simplify the whole tech aspect of the game, while offering more freedom at the same time. I'd like to hear if anyone has objections to that.
  
• A new notification system that will bake messages and notifications into one, with some clever mechanics and customization options, so that you can decide exactly what you want to be notified about.
  
• I have an idea of a new sprite system as well, that will benefit modding, and allow for more variation and detail. Basically I want to put all sprites in a folder and have all assets map to the sprite they're using. that way a lot of sprites can be reused, and you can mod in new rooms without having to draw stuff.
  
• Tons of suggestions and QoL's and polish are going into this one as well.
  

As always, much of what's to come are suggestions from you fine folk, so thank you for that.

It shouldn't take long, but I always think that, so we'll see.