1. Songs of Syx
  2. News

Songs of Syx News

unstable V55 out!

Hohoho!

Here's a small Chrismas present from your devoted dev. This update changes a lot of things and adds stuff you could only dream about!

Generally, if focuses on production and some basic balancing surrounding it.

I've also updated the demo from V51 to V53!

  • Sithilion Ore that can be mined. Very rare and at a slow rate.
  • Happiness modifier based on resource stored per citizen (modable in race init files). Dondorians like Sithilion ore.
  • Stockpile crates size increased from 64 to 255.
  • Stockpiles have adjustable radius for their workers.
  • Smaller radius for employed subjects that wants to give a hand with odd jobs like hauling, construction or maintenance.
  • Bread resource + Bakery industry. Grain is no longer edible, but must be processed into bread. The industry only needs grain to operate.
  • Proper hunting rooms. Very effective in the beginning to feet your subjects. Has an adjustable radius that can cover the whole map. Wild game will be exterminated quickly though if overused.
  • Proper fisheries. You now place a fishery room on top of shallow water. Expand a bit on land too to be able to place storage and auxiliary items. Fish stock is static and is highlighted when placing the room. Green is best. Red is hardly worth placing a fishery on top.
  • When placing your throne at the beginning of the game you have the ability to regenerate (button below "place start"). While the general layout will be the same and dirived from the world tiles you picked, minerals, game, and fish stock will be randomly generated once more.
  • Tilling period for farms. No longer will you get an army of workers after harvest, the farmers must remain an "till" the earth until they can sow in spring. Tilling increases the output of next harvest.
  • Manual food usage in kitchen. You can now check which raw ingredients to use. Can come in handy if you're saving up some of them, or using them different locally (save the meat for the nobility district)
  • Manual usage of specific raw materials in workshops. Now only applies to tailors in practise that can use either pelts or fabric.
  • Rates added to industries. The rate is an estimate of the amount of produce per worker per day.
  • All industries internal storage reduced and will stop producing if these are full. should prevent carpenter from using up all the wood.
  • Tiny saves < 1MB. No need to zip anymore! Things now saved better and faster.
  • Fields of minable resources are now much bigger, while having a lower yield. they are also infinite and clearly visible if you right click. they can also generate inside mountains, or under shallow water.
  • Room placement undo better.
  • Ability to change roof of room when reconstructing it.
  • Ability to reconstruct rooms under construction. (Just click them).
  • Livestock resource replaces the damned eggs (eggs now a food) and pastures no longer needs them in the construction process. Instead the herders will grab a livestock and haul it into the pasture where it transforms into cattle. Pastures produce livestock at a low rate. Different type pastures are available in different climates and the animals produce different kinds of resources at different rates (meat, pelt, cotton, eggs). Hunters sometimes produce a livestock resource.
  • Animals also spawned according to climate and have different resources when hunted.
  • Minimap has been a bit revamped with better and more consistent colors and functions.
  • Construction panel has been condensed.
  • New setting in the launcher allows you to pick both width and height of a windowed window. Should now work well with ultra wide-screeners.
  • Service rooms have a reachability map on hover that shows you the area where subjects can reach it. "Distance" also added as a modifier to service happiness. You can never max it out, but you can decrease it by placing services closer to where they're needed.
  • Ability to pick multiple mods. The first chosen mod will have residence over the second and so forth.
  • 3 more soundtracks. I advise you turn the music volume back up.
  • keyboard rework. Ability to assign more keys using ctrl/alt as a modulator. Added keys for saving and zooming. More keys to come. Open to suggestions.
  • All rooms and their production now reflected on the world map. What this means is that the AI is playing by the same rules as you are when building your city in terms of manpower and production rates.
  • Trade fixed a bit. You will now get special treatment in the algorithms, making sure you're the first who gets to export/import on the world scene, leading to massive trades.
  • Baths are now made modable, meaning they are dynamically loaded. So you can add as many variations of a bath as you want and define how it affects happiness.
  • Clarified service access happiness a bit. I grouped each "group" (food & sleep)
  • Immigrants will now walk to the throne and kiss it.
  • Happiness and immigration completely reworked. We now have "expectations" which will increase as your population grows. It affects total population as well as population per species.
  • New, rare race added (Cantors). Giants not really good at anything else but fighting. Very picky and demanding.
  • Maintenance and upkeep reworked. Should be a higher rate, you now need to pay attention to it. There are settings for road and room maintenance in the room panel.
  • More resource expenditure UI. Added maintenance, construction and some other resource usage statistics.
  • Temperature according to climate and season. Exposure added to subjects. they have a chance to die from exposure. Exposure can be mitigated by wearing clothes and using hearths /skinnydipping. There is also snow in cold climates.
  • Walls now count towards building preference.
  • Squareness thing added for room construction. Affects happiness. Species can have a thing for organic looking cities or square ones.
  • Isolation added to rooms based on walls surrounding it. Affects maintenance needed greatly.
  • Room cost and upkeep is increased by building big rooms. You now need supportive pillars or walls inside the rooms to avoid this extra cost.
  • Efficiency/cosiness reworked. Based on actual stations vs knick-knacks/auxiliaries
  • Monument Trees now emit harmony. awe, harmony and dread reworked.
  • Noise. Noisy rooms disturb subjects. Noise travels through air, but is dampened by walls.
  • Paper and papermaker, primarely for libraries that now needs paper, else they'll work at 25% speed.
  • Fixed game zooming, should now zoom in and out without disorientation.
  • Krull wins if his men reaches the throne.
  • Species work priorities draggable.
  • Fart sounds reduced.
  • Re-added sounds to work rooms
  • Service usage number fixed
  • New localization method ensuring swift translation.
  • Removed coal usage in weaver, reduced efficiency
  • Launcher wind sound lowered.
  • Faction colors mixup fix.
  • CTD when invasion
  • CTD when dragging unit cards in dev mode
  • CTD when opening room list
  • Fixed broken kitchens. No more free food.
  • Food preference fixed.
  • CTD when deleting room from panel


In short, the game should be much harder. With more workers required for basically everything. The great dev himself could only manage a 100 pop city. There should also be a strong insensitive to build smaller and more thought out with the noise pollution. Maintenance is also boosted severely. Good luck!

Next up will be "law & order". Unfortunately we had a poll in the discord what V56 should and you guys picked the most difficult one. It will feature:
  • A room for soldiers. Fixing up army UI.
  • Soldiers patrolling the streets through a network of guard posts,
  • citizens commits crimes.
  • soldiers apprehend criminals
  • criminals stored in prisons
  • execution square for prisoners and for civic entertainment
  • ability to set laws and have them affect happiness / crime


Right now that sounds quite manageable and shouldn't take long, but I'm sure I'll find 50 other things to add along the way as usual, so I'll play it save and say 1st of March as an ETA.

A merry Christmas to you all! Thanks for your support.

/Jake


V54 release - Nobles and stuff

Game is now updated to V54. It is not save-game compatible with V53, but V53 can still be checked out in the steam client and you can continue playing it.

In the steam client, right click Songs of Syx, and click properties.


Now, on to the goodies!

Whenever the game updates in steam, you can now easily get a sense of what updates has occurred in the launcher:



Two new tiers of sleeping. One suited for the nobility.



UI iteration 2563. Might not be perfect, but better than before. Thanks to the community and especially Rowen in the Discord for the help in getting there.



A bunch of complicated stuff enhanced and modifiable. The goal of this update has really been to nail down the city population framework, to make the game more complex, while also opening it up to modding. feel free to start making your own species!


Nobility. This is kind of hollow ATM, but you can appoint people as nobility. Nobles will walk around boosting their assignations.



There is lot's lots more features and fixes. You can have a look in the in-game launcher for details.

[h2]Modding[/h2]
I've opened up a mod.io account for the game and written a few rudimentary guides for you to get started. My business plan has always been to create the framework of the game and steal the content from modders, much more talented than me. So if you have something you'd like to put in the game, let me know.
https://songsofsyx.mod.io/

[h2]Unstable testers[/h2]
Thank you all so much, those who have played the unstable branch these few days. I think this is the most stable version of Songs of Syx ever.

[h2]Reviews[/h2]
We are low on reviews. Reviews are really important for the growth and future of the game (algorithms and stuff) . If you haven't left a review yet, what are you waiting for!? If you intend on leave a positive one that is, otherwise disregard this shoutout :). Please keep in mind that this is clearly stated as early access and should be treated as early access in reviews IMO. You can always change it later if the game turns out to be crap.

Have fun, and thanks for playing!


V54 unstable - Nobles and Stuff

Finally, I'm done-ish with nobles and slaves and tons of suggestions and bugs!

I've put it in the unstable branch for now. There is a lot of new stuff and changes that requires a lot of testing, and while I'll be testing myself, it will speed things a lot if those willing will help.

Here's how to check out the unstable branch:



Now on to the goodies!

[h2]FEATURES[/h2]
  • Version log in launcher!
  • Nobles!
  • Slaves
  • Ability to enslave Krull's men.
  • Emigration
  • New top panel
  • New bottom build panel
  • New room - chambers. The finest of sleep services.
  • New Room - flats an upgrade from dormitories.
  • Dormitory reworked and job-less.
  • Dorms and flats modable. You can add your own versions.
  • Sleepy subjects will find sleep facilities in the order they like them. Then find a place indoors to sleep.
  • Reputation now Happiness. Complete rework.
  • 2 new songs + music changes with battles/stops at night.
  • All panels have been reworked slightly
  • Subjects get clean in baths and by skinny-dipping. They get dirty over time, visiting the lavatory and spending time in industries and mines.
  • Added harmony and Dread influence to work the same as awe. Added ability for roads to emit different kinds of influence. Specific monuments for harmony and dread will come
  • Added a bunch of new statistics and some happiness tied to them.
  • Added extensive modability to races.
  • Retirement mechanics added
  • Service room access reworked
  • Kickstarter names for subjects added
  • Building preference added. Races like to stay in different buildings.
  • Reworked room placement UI
  • Added walls and doorways when placing rooms.
  • Added colors for battlegear upgrades
  • Minimap boxes for resources and wild edibles.
  • Work priorities added
  • Secondary work priority added per race
  • Races have different skills and different preferences when it comes to work
  • Added light & awe coverage to right click explore.
  • New font for launcher


[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Might now correspond at a 1:1 ratio with your population. For claiming regions 1500 might is required for each of them
  • Added email in error messages.
  • Possibly trade depot bugs fixed.
  • Added manual steam-fetch mods button in launcher.
  • Export/import setting is set to 50%
  • Fixed a bunch of placability issues.
  • Woodcutters stopped from chopping invisible trees.
  • Rooms can now be built on top of degrading roads.
  • When placing monuments, you can delete mistakes by holding shift.
  • Collision with domesticated animals removed.
  • Available services changed to a "usage" percentage. Can be sorted in menus.
  • Flowers no longer grows on fences.
  • When you're building a room, Right Clicking or opening another panel will construct the room (if it's constructible). This also applies when Refurnishing a room
  • Krull increases his tribute as you yield.
  • You are warned where Krull is likely to strike.
  • camera pans to where Krull attacks
  • Adjusted working schedules, so that there will be more activity in the day.
  • Graveyard items fixed
  • Might have fixed world map lights
  • Subjects will return equippables to stockpiles if there is storage for it before they drop it on the ground. Inc. Battlegear.
  • Delta generation fixed.
  • Fixed Stockpile UI.
  • Light, awe and road access now only updates when a subject is outside of a room.
  • Main menu: rearranged buttons a bit, removed others.
  • Mouse scrolling now opens the minimap.
  • Fixed some rendering bugs with growables.
  • Adjusted Animal spawn rates, eating behavior.
  • Adjusted light colors somewhat.
  • Fixed subjects clothes color.
  • Fixed minimap colors for rooms working as intended, no need to load save
  • Fixed a visual bug with degraded floors/roads
  • Errored jobs show what resource is missing.
  • Changed a little trade thing with imports. The game would import resources in order depleting your treasury on the first ones, never getting to the last ones. Now changed to prioritize resources based on incoming/storage capacity.
  • Mushrooms now placable in caves.
  • Monument no longer removes cave roof when removed.
  • Fixed some stat and cost values for room items.
  • Added support for non 16:9 screens (no more stretching).
  • NOTE: some drivers might report faulty resolutions, casing crashes.
  • Hopefully fixed the game from going into low FPS when Vsync is enabled.
  • Defeated divisions un-musters
  • Accepting Message prompt about Krull's tribute closes the message UI
  • Soldiers move from their current division to ones with more experience if experience is gained. Fixed a few training bugs
  • Animals no longer run away from hunters
  • Animals drop a lot more resources
  • Hunting fixed in general
  • Animals in water rendering fix.
  • Entities saved differently, shaving off a few MB of savegame size
  • Sorted the order of resources.
  • Flimsy placement of walls/ceilings fixed.
  • Graveyard desecration values reworked. (Avoid penalty by deactivating it and let the graves disappear)
  • Max room size now can't be exceeded.",
  • Dormitory knickknacks different costs",
  • Library and knowledge fixed, it was a disaster.",
  • Slayed enemies now says that they were slayed by you.",
  • Outposts such as fisheries always finds fish, even if once depleted",
  • Double click for save/load in menu

[h2] BUGS[/h2]
  • Fixed CTD when undoing items in room construction.
  • Fixed continue button in menu when saves were deleted.
  • Fixed a CTD when restarting from the main menu a couple of times.
  • Fixed CTD when trying to delete non existent save
  • kitchen had a nasty bug, hopefully fixed.
  • Rare corpses stay active fix
  • Fleeing Krull messes everything up fixed.


[h2]Notes[/h2]
  • Doors are no longer intended to use with rooms. They're going to be changed to gatehouses, but I leave them in for now.
  • Some things are coded in the blind. I only have a 16:9 display for instance, so, wide displays may/may not work, please let me know if you have one...",
  • I seem to get crashes when choosing certain full screen displays. I hope this is because I bought a cheap display :). Let me know if you get any of that.



There is no tutorial in the unstable version. I will fix it once it stable.

P.S.

Some day V53 is going to be the new demo. If you have a city you're proud of, please send me the save, and I'll add it to the example cities.

V54 progress - 2

Hello!

I felt the time was right for me to show you that you're getting a return on your investment.

I've been refactoring like crazy, basically ripping out part of the old AI and inserting a new one that allows for extensive moddability for races and more flexible code for me to flesh out.



Now, all resources can be made "equippable" and you can define what boosts they give to a subject. You can also define traits with similar properties and chance of occurring. Reputation is now called standing and is also fully modifiable per race. You can also define what trades your race likes, making it more important with trade or race diversity in your city.

Thanks to some feedback, I've also been experimenting with a new UI layout, especially to improve trading and other aspects.



I want to get rid of the full screen ones in general and trying to figure out ways to convey a lot of information in a simple way. I really like the standing main panel. Not only is it clean, it also allows me to crop the main game somewhat, which saves a few % in performance.

I've also tried to fix the most pressing bugs in the current release. the rest will have to wait for V54.

Currently the main challenge is not to starve from waves of immigration. I plan on tipping this over. You'll have a toggle to allow immigration and Instead we'll have emigration when your standing is low, and "retirement", meaning that it should be more of a challenge as your city grows and not the other way around.

Then there will of course be the nobles and slaves, which I hope to get to next week. Other from that, lots of QOL, bugfixes and tweaks for a better experience. Hope you'll like it.

Songs of Syx appears to be an early success brewing on Steam

After releasing into Early Access on Steam on September 21, 2020 - it appears that the grand strategy city-builder Songs of Syx is seeing some early success.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/09/songs-of-syx-appears-to-be-an-early-success-brewing-on-steam