Closer Look: Customizable Gameplay and Community Requests
Previously we took a closer look at features that were outlined in our original roadmap, but in 1.0 we are going above and beyond just that! One of the main reasons we went into early access was to collect feedback and suggestions from our community and this update would not be complete without implementing the most requested features and improvements our players have been asking for!
Throughout early access, we have learned about the variety of playstyles our players approached the game with. As we were adding more and more systems, the complexity of the game grew and also became more challenging to understand for newcomers.
In 1.0, we expanded our tutorial significantly, to cover many of the features added past the initial launch, and we are also adding game modules. When you will be launching a new game, you will be able to toggle systems that you would like to keep active!
The modules that you will have available are:
There are also some other modules, that we have not uncovered here. How to get them and what they are you will have to discover for yourself when the update launches!
We have also introduced the ability to preview the generated map, so you no longer have to reload the game multiple times to find a map you like! Even more - we have exposed the random seed, which you can share with your friends to make sure they get the same map as you!
In 1.0 you will now have the option to choose who is the royal in charge! We completely redesigned the king's portrait and added the option of a queen! While this change is mostly cosmetic, we wanted to give our players more options to tell the stories they want. We have also overhauled the main menu experience, going with a more modern design.
The current system of trading was very limiting. You could only set a specific amount to sell, which meant that you must constantly update the number as your situation changes. You also had no way to automate purchasing from caravans, so often the only way to get what you needed was manually inspecting every new caravan that comes in. The UI experience overall was quite slow and cumbersome, so we decided to make a big change to address all of this and we are fully replacing the Sell tab with a new Trade tab.
On the left page, you can freely select between any resource available in the game, while on the right page you can manage the intended behavior. For this purpose, we distinguish between three different markets:
Each of these settings is applied to only a selected market. For example, you can both set to purchase all from caravans and sell it back to the locals for a fixed price. This way you can build a stock of goods expected to be needed later at a time when villagers themselves would not be buying them.
If we would have to pick a feature that was by far the most requested throughout early access, templates would certainly be one of the first things to think of. As it is quite a big feature to add, we never had the time to do it before, but now it is finally here!
The way they work is very simple. Click on any existing zone to access a new option to create a template. You can decide, if you want the zone tiles also be part of the template, or if you just want to store the structures (which can be useful if for example, you want to use the same construction in different zones).
After that, you simply name the template, and it will now appear in a new template build menu! All of these templates are stored in your save data folder, so they are shared between games and you can even share them with your friends (or come to our Discord and share them with the community!).
Any template can be freely rotated, and even placed over existing structures, which will mark them for removal. This way you can create several tiers of the same house and upgrade them with one click!
A common issue with any long-lasting settlements was that eventually they ran out of mountains to mine, and players had to rotate out a whole section of the economy, as it was not able to sustain itself. We have now added an underground layer of resources, which you can display with a new underground resource view.
To mine the underground resources, all you have to do is place a new structure - Mineshaft. Mineshafts will regularly increase their storage with resources mined from the underground and then relocated by other miners into nearby ground storage. Each mineshaft can cover a small surrounding while mining in a cyclical outwards-facing direction. We have also created unique bedrock texture variants, to hint if there are any special ores in each location.
By default, villagers will first mine the mountains on the ground, before entering the mineshaft. But you can also mark each mineshaft to be prioritized to change this. Beware that mining from mineshafts requires a regular supply of ropes!
When thinking about priorities for our villagers, certain tasks like cooking or cleaning, or harvesting are very important, so they would get a high priority. This also meant that they would be done often and by everyone in the family so we often had to limit the number of people doing them. This was often sufficient, but you would see people swapping when they got interrupted even if for a short while (for example when occupying a storefront). This approach also did not work with activities where we wanted to scale the number of people with the size of the family in a natural way.
To solve this, we added an AI role system. Families now (secretly) distribute roles between villagers, and each individual will prioritize slightly differently depending on the roles that were assigned to them. So, each family will try to have a dedicated chef, a person to clean, a person to do shopping, a person to manage the storefront, and so on. Other villagers can still help with for example cooking when necessary, but they will now do it only when their other responsibilities are finished.
[h2]Passive Private Storefronts[/h2]
We have also improved the behavior of storefronts built outside of marketplaces. Villagers will manage them passively, meaning they will only occupy them when a customer is approaching them. This frees up much of their time to do other work around the house and made especially small families of two to three people a lot more viable.
To optimize the flow of goods in the economy, our AI was always following a simple rule - always empty your pockets to the closest available storage as soon as possible. While optimal in many scenarios, sometimes it was difficult to deal with logistical challenges without having a way to direct this behavior better. So we are adding a system of storage priorities.
In each zone, you will now be able to mark which resources are preferred to be stored within that zone. To maintain efficiency, whenever villagers will be producing new resources, they will still store them in the nearest storage, but other family members will then regularly relocate them.
We saw that the randomness of receiving new professions is sometimes too disruptive. Especially for carpenters or architects, obtaining them in a timely manner could be quite challenging. We have redesigned the favor system and introduced custom family requests. At an increased cost of favor, you will be able to customize the family that you will receive. You will also start with a certain amount of favor to request a single family of your choice before the first taxation happens.
Finally, we have also done a lot of work to let you customize the user experience:
[h2]Steam Achievements[/h2]
For players on the Steam platform, we will also be introducing achievements! They will appear in the library in the future as we get closer to the release, so we are able to fully test them before the launch of the update. So if you notice achievements on Steam, please beware, that they are in preparation for the launch and are not available yet in the game.
We can't wait to have you try the game with all of these changes when the game goes live! We will be carefully listening for your feedback and ready to address any bugs and issues that arise. Stay tuned for the release date, which we will announce very soon!
Customizable Experience
Throughout early access, we have learned about the variety of playstyles our players approached the game with. As we were adding more and more systems, the complexity of the game grew and also became more challenging to understand for newcomers.
In 1.0, we expanded our tutorial significantly, to cover many of the features added past the initial launch, and we are also adding game modules. When you will be launching a new game, you will be able to toggle systems that you would like to keep active!
The modules that you will have available are:
- Resource Tax - if you like to hoard all of your wealth for yourself, you can now put a stop to those pesky royal taxes.
- Soldier Requests - without this module, royalty will stop requesting soldiers for war. When both resource and soldier tax are disabled, you will be receiving favor automatically every year.
- Clergy Donations - clergy will not mandate financial donations to keep your relationship stable. Nobles will also be relieved from those donations and they will never leave the settlement due to their inability to pay.
- Criminal Acts - without this module, villagers will grow their empathy and stop committing crimes.
- Sickness - there is no place for sickness in this dark world. Remove this module and villagers will never get sick!
- Oppositions - do you like to be cruel and face no consequences? Without this module, oppositions will never bother you.
- Construction Tiers - if you're not a fan of the new construction system involving tiers and specialized professions, you can now keep playing with the original system where every villager builds for themselves!
- Dynamic Terrain - dynamic terrain is a new feature added in 1.0, which lets you deforest areas fully, or create forests where there previously have been none, simply by planting or removing trees. This module also recovers sand on shorelines and turns grass into the clay where villagers walk over it too often (or back to grass when they stop).
- Permanent Paths - tied to the dynamic terrain module, you can customize if the paths that you create manually will have a chance to recover automatically into grass over time.
There are also some other modules, that we have not uncovered here. How to get them and what they are you will have to discover for yourself when the update launches!
We have also introduced the ability to preview the generated map, so you no longer have to reload the game multiple times to find a map you like! Even more - we have exposed the random seed, which you can share with your friends to make sure they get the same map as you!
New Royals
In 1.0 you will now have the option to choose who is the royal in charge! We completely redesigned the king's portrait and added the option of a queen! While this change is mostly cosmetic, we wanted to give our players more options to tell the stories they want. We have also overhauled the main menu experience, going with a more modern design.
Overhauled Trading
The current system of trading was very limiting. You could only set a specific amount to sell, which meant that you must constantly update the number as your situation changes. You also had no way to automate purchasing from caravans, so often the only way to get what you needed was manually inspecting every new caravan that comes in. The UI experience overall was quite slow and cumbersome, so we decided to make a big change to address all of this and we are fully replacing the Sell tab with a new Trade tab.
On the left page, you can freely select between any resource available in the game, while on the right page you can manage the intended behavior. For this purpose, we distinguish between three different markets:
- Locals consist of any family in your village, peasant or noble.
- Caravans consist of any traveling caravan visiting your settlement.
- Butchers consist of local families with assigned butchery. This market is only applicable to animals and it is concerned with selling animal corpses or old animals that can be butchered for meat.
- All will buy or sell anything that is offered / owned.
- Until limit will buy or sell until a certain stock amount is reached.
- Until taxed is the same as until limit where the limit is the amount taxed by the royals, or 0 if it is not taxed at all.
- Specific is the current system, where you manually enter a number to be sold / purchased.
Each of these settings is applied to only a selected market. For example, you can both set to purchase all from caravans and sell it back to the locals for a fixed price. This way you can build a stock of goods expected to be needed later at a time when villagers themselves would not be buying them.
Templates
If we would have to pick a feature that was by far the most requested throughout early access, templates would certainly be one of the first things to think of. As it is quite a big feature to add, we never had the time to do it before, but now it is finally here!
The way they work is very simple. Click on any existing zone to access a new option to create a template. You can decide, if you want the zone tiles also be part of the template, or if you just want to store the structures (which can be useful if for example, you want to use the same construction in different zones).
After that, you simply name the template, and it will now appear in a new template build menu! All of these templates are stored in your save data folder, so they are shared between games and you can even share them with your friends (or come to our Discord and share them with the community!).
Any template can be freely rotated, and even placed over existing structures, which will mark them for removal. This way you can create several tiers of the same house and upgrade them with one click!
Underground Mining
A common issue with any long-lasting settlements was that eventually they ran out of mountains to mine, and players had to rotate out a whole section of the economy, as it was not able to sustain itself. We have now added an underground layer of resources, which you can display with a new underground resource view.
To mine the underground resources, all you have to do is place a new structure - Mineshaft. Mineshafts will regularly increase their storage with resources mined from the underground and then relocated by other miners into nearby ground storage. Each mineshaft can cover a small surrounding while mining in a cyclical outwards-facing direction. We have also created unique bedrock texture variants, to hint if there are any special ores in each location.
By default, villagers will first mine the mountains on the ground, before entering the mineshaft. But you can also mark each mineshaft to be prioritized to change this. Beware that mining from mineshafts requires a regular supply of ropes!
AI Role System
When thinking about priorities for our villagers, certain tasks like cooking or cleaning, or harvesting are very important, so they would get a high priority. This also meant that they would be done often and by everyone in the family so we often had to limit the number of people doing them. This was often sufficient, but you would see people swapping when they got interrupted even if for a short while (for example when occupying a storefront). This approach also did not work with activities where we wanted to scale the number of people with the size of the family in a natural way.
To solve this, we added an AI role system. Families now (secretly) distribute roles between villagers, and each individual will prioritize slightly differently depending on the roles that were assigned to them. So, each family will try to have a dedicated chef, a person to clean, a person to do shopping, a person to manage the storefront, and so on. Other villagers can still help with for example cooking when necessary, but they will now do it only when their other responsibilities are finished.
[h2]Passive Private Storefronts[/h2]
We have also improved the behavior of storefronts built outside of marketplaces. Villagers will manage them passively, meaning they will only occupy them when a customer is approaching them. This frees up much of their time to do other work around the house and made especially small families of two to three people a lot more viable.
Storage Priority System
To optimize the flow of goods in the economy, our AI was always following a simple rule - always empty your pockets to the closest available storage as soon as possible. While optimal in many scenarios, sometimes it was difficult to deal with logistical challenges without having a way to direct this behavior better. So we are adding a system of storage priorities.
In each zone, you will now be able to mark which resources are preferred to be stored within that zone. To maintain efficiency, whenever villagers will be producing new resources, they will still store them in the nearest storage, but other family members will then regularly relocate them.
Custom Family Requests
We saw that the randomness of receiving new professions is sometimes too disruptive. Especially for carpenters or architects, obtaining them in a timely manner could be quite challenging. We have redesigned the favor system and introduced custom family requests. At an increased cost of favor, you will be able to customize the family that you will receive. You will also start with a certain amount of favor to request a single family of your choice before the first taxation happens.
UI Customizability
Finally, we have also done a lot of work to let you customize the user experience:
- More Languages - with the launch of 1.0, you will be able to play the game in English, German, French, Czech, Russian and Simplified Chinese.
- New Fonts - we have removed the older fonts and replaced them with several options. Depending on the language selected, you can select from up to 5 different fonts. We made sure to offer both stylized and clean and readable options.
- Status Monitor - we replaced many notifications with a status indicator. You can now observe in real-time how many people are hungry, cold, low on money, or sick. We are also making more information accessible about people in your demesne and active debuffs about your settlement, like rumors that the place is not safe to visit.
- Savegame Screenshots - the save and load game screen has been extended with screenshots of your camera at the time of saving to help you orient which saves is the one you are looking for.
- Capture Settlement - in the main menu you will have access to a new button, that will capture the whole settlement in full resolution and store it in your user folder. This way you can share images of your full settlement in high detail, or even create a timelapse!
[h2]Steam Achievements[/h2]
For players on the Steam platform, we will also be introducing achievements! They will appear in the library in the future as we get closer to the release, so we are able to fully test them before the launch of the update. So if you notice achievements on Steam, please beware, that they are in preparation for the launch and are not available yet in the game.
We can't wait to have you try the game with all of these changes when the game goes live! We will be carefully listening for your feedback and ready to address any bugs and issues that arise. Stay tuned for the release date, which we will announce very soon!