Dorfromantik News

Hey everyone!

With the Most Wanted Feature Update out now, we are now fixing our gaze on the most important update since Creative Mode! More News in that regard will come soon™, so please look forward to that.



Today, we’d like to invite you once again to make your ideas and voices heard, and help us shape Dorfromantik to make it the best it can be. With our upcoming, third Game Mode, “Custom Mode” (Name subject to change) we plan to give you the keys to the castle, so to speak. In this Game Mode you will be able to play around with a lot of options and tailor the game to your wishes.

[h3]New possibilites[/h3]
Want to play without trains? No problem!
Less fields, but more water for more wooded islands? You know it!
Start off with less tiles? More Tiles? Yup, we got that too.
Only got the time for a short session and you don’t want another open game? Set a Tile Limit, just like we had in the various Demos!

This mode will also bring deterministic seeds, meaning you can share your 'seed' with someone else, and you will both play the same game! Never has it been easier to determine who's the better Dorfromantik player. You will also be able to share your custom game setup that way!

[h3]Preset Modes[/h3]
We will also be creating a handful of selected custom modes ourselves, which will be available to everybody by default as presets and will likely have their own leaderboards. We have two ideas already, which we'd like to share with you as examples of what we're looking for suggestion-wise:

• A quick mode which, like our various demoes, has a tile limitation that allows smaller and faster game sessions.
  
• A hard mode that will be more difficult than the Classic Mode for everybody who wants to compete at a higher level of difficulty.

This brings us to the heart of today’s call for ideas. Well, it is two-fold, really.
We would love to know the following things:

1. Which parameters would you like to be able to tweak for custom games?
   These could be options such as Stack Size, Quests Rewards / Frequency, or Tile Limitations.
   
2. Which preset game modes would you like to see in the game?
   As already mentioned, these preset game modes can also have their own leaderboards, but this is not a requirement, for example, if you would like to have an even calmer game mode completely without a highscore, that would also be an viable option.
   

We will be collecting all ideas and wishes from you over the next days and then check what the most requested and/or most interesting sounding suggestions are, which we can include in the game for you. Please share your thoughts with us here in the discussion thread or talk to us directly over on our Discord.


💛💙 Stay safe

Last year we presented you our roadmap with the development plans for Dorfromantik during its Early Access period. Since then we have successfully completed and published all milestones, and are approaching the upcoming 1.0 release this spring.
We wanted to thank you for accompanying us through the last year. Now, what would be more appropriate than an additional update 0.5 with a little surprise?

[h2]Balancing[/h2]
For this update we have the biggest balancing changes for Dorfromantik yet, with which we want to improve the game experience in many areas for the classic game mode. Since we are using a RNG system to generate the tiles, we wanted to counteract some of the possible RNG frustration that can sometimes occur, through introducing various changes, such as adjusting the spawn probability of tiles and elements. You can find the detailed list of changes in our changelog.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1455840/view/3105799413161192372

A big thank you to all the dedicated testers in the beta program here in the Community Hub and on our Discord server who have helped us shape the game in a direction that keeps it as exciting to play for casual players as it is for all players who take a competitive approach.

As already announced, the new balancing will come into effect with this patch and the new leaderboard will be released to match the 1.0 release.

[h2]Most Wanted Feature[/h2]
It's by far the most requested feature within the community and now it's finally here. We are very happy to give you this surprise as a big thank you for your help, cooperation and constructive feedback during the past months.

It is with great pleasure that we present:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Rudimentary Controller Support[/h2]
We have experimented with Dorfromantik on the Steam Deck and ported the basic controls for it. With this update you can play the classic mode of Dorfromantik with most features optimized for the Steam Deck. Full menu navigation, creative mode tools, quest edge highlighting as well as tutorial instructions are not yet implemented for Steam Deck and controller. You will however be able to use most of the functions via touch input.
In the future, all functionality will be fully supported for controller input, but we have decided to give you all access to the work in progress so that you can already play Dorfromantik on the Steam Deck. At the moment, we are focusing our full attention on the full release version and will dedicate ourselves to full Steam Deck and controller support after the launch this spring.


[h2]What's next?[/h2]
New Gamemode
We are currently working hard on the next update that we will release together with the full release 1.0. For this we will add another game mode, which will offer a wide variation of possibilities for how you can play Dorfromantik.

Price Change
With the start and during the Early Access phase we stated that we would like to thank all players who already put their trust in us with the current reduced price, and that the full version would come with a slight price increase. Since we would also like to put a nice launch discount on the new full price for the upcoming release, we have to increase the price at least 30 days before the actual release date. This is an official rule from Steam that we have to follow. As a result you can expect a price increase for Dorfromantik towards the end of March. You can also read more about the discount and price change rules from Valve themselves here.



💛💙 Stay safe!

- Team Toukana

Check out our overall Update Announcement to get a quick overview of new features and content:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1455840/view/3105799413161195193



🌻 Community Feedback: We highlight items that we have implemented based on community feedback or suggestions. We look forward to your feedback in our Steam Community Hub or on our Discord server.

Balancing
• Changed probabilities of many tile presets. This should result in a higher spawn probability for generally more useful tiles and a lower probability for difficult tiles
  
• Increased frequency of all lake variants
  
• Water Train Stations spawn frequency decreases slowly as the game progresses
  
• Unified Quest difficulty across different quest types (e.g. it now should be just as difficult to complete a field quest as a forest quest)
  
• 🌻 Fixed an issue that caused "mirrored" versions of a tile to appear less frequent than the non-mirrored variant - now all variations (with the same segments on them but rotated differently) should spawn with an equal probability
  
  
  Usability
• 🌻 The first 5 tiles of a game will now always have one or two empty edges so they will never be incompatible with the empty starting tile
  
• 🌻 Click on quests markers when highlighting offscreen quests (by pressing "H") to move camera towards them
  
  
  Rudimentary Controller Support
• Most ingame actions can now controlled with a gamepad (tile slot selection, tile rotation, tile placement, camera controls, offscreen quest highlighting, toggling menu)
  
• Press left joystick to switch between two tile slot selection methods: moving through the tile slots via joystick or selecting tile slots with cross hairs by moving the camera
  
• Gamepad menu navigation, gamepad key remapping, input-independent tutorial texts / tooltips, quest edge highlighting and creative mode controls are not yet implemented
  
  
  New Content
• 🌻🌻🌻 Added Undo functionality to classic mode
  
• 🌻 Added flag quests for water and train groups
  
• 🌻 Added 2A lake (lake occupying two sides of a tile)
  
  
  Bugfixes
• 🌻 Fixed an issue that could cause boats to get stuck in a Water Train Station
  
• Fixed an issue that caused lake corners to flicker due to overlapping corner meshes
  
  
  Other
• Save game preview images are now loaded when the save game selection screen is opened instead of when the game starts, improving loading times when you have many save games
  
• reward images are now also pre-rendered instead of being generated on start, improving loading time
  
• improved tile stack animation behaviour
  
• tile preset 2A-2A-2A (with 3 segments occupying two edges each) can now spawn
  
• 🌻 Added "Current Score" to stats screen
  
• 🌻 When completing a higher level of Analyst or Planner, all previous levels will be completed as well
  
• 🌻 Deleting a save game no longer deletes its .bac (backup) file
  
• .bac files are no longer synced with the Steam Cloud
  
• 🌻 Updated the translation files for many languages
  
• Various Fixes for Chinese texts to be displayed correctly
  

💛💙 Stay safe!

- Team Toukana

Feedback is essential for us to successfully add new features and improve Dorfromantik together with you. Of course, it helps us a lot if you are specifically trying to test features that we have listed up in the Beta Patch Notes for the current update.

🧪 Beta: If you also want to test new features earlier and help with your feedback the development of Dorfromantik, then find out here how you can participate in the public beta.

🌻 Community Feedback: We highlight items that we have implemented based on community feedback or suggestions. We look forward to your feedback in our Steam Community Hub or on our Discord server.

Balancing
• - 🌻 Quest rewards no longer decrease when reaching certain score tresholds
  
• - Removed indicators to display reached score milestones
  
  Bugfixes
• - 🌻 Fixed an issue that could cause boats to get stuck in a Water Train Station
  
• - 🌻 Preplaced tiles with lakes & rivers on them now have the correct ground mesh instead of the regular one
  
• - Fixed an issue that caused lake corners to flicker due to overlapping corner meshes
  
  Other
• - 🌻 Updated the translation files for many languages
  
• - Fixes for Chinese Fonts
  

💛 Once again, we would love to thank you for helping us testing these changes and providing lots of feedback!

Feedback is essential for us to successfully add new features and improve Dorfromantik together with you. Of course, it helps us a lot if you are specifically trying to test features that we have listed up in the Beta Patch Notes for the current update.

🧪 Beta: If you also want to test new features earlier and help with your feedback the development of Dorfromantik, then find out here how you can participate in the public beta.

🌻 Community Feedback: We highlight items that we have implemented based on community feedback or suggestions. We look forward to your feedback in our Steam Community Hub or on our Discord server.

Balancing
• 🌻 Removed the max quest count
  
• 🌻 Fixed an issue that caused "mirrored" versions of a tile to appear less frequent than the non-mirrored variant - now all variations (with the same segments on them but rotated differently) should spawn with an equal probability
  
• Quest rewards are now reduced after reaching certain milestones - quests give 5 tiles before 50,000 points, 4 tiles before 100,000 points, 3 tiles before 250,000 points, 2 tiles before 500,000 points and 1 tile afterwards. The purpose of this is to counterbalance the growing return on perfect placements when the map gets very large.
  
• Added UI crown markers above the current score display that indicate which milestones were already reached within this run
  
• Tweaked probabilities of many tile presets and segments. This should result in a higher spawn probability for generally more useful tiles and a lower probability for difficult tiles
  
  Content
• 🌻 Added flag quests for water and train groups
  
• 🌻 Added 2A lake (lake occupying two sides of a tile)
  
  Rudimentary Controller Support
• Tile slot selector no longer stays at the placed tile's position if it's out of camera view
  
• Improved tile slot selection visuals
  
  Other
• 🌻 Added "Current Score" to stats screen - not localized yet
  
• 🌻 When completing a higher level of Analyst or Planner, all previous levels will be completed as well
  
• 🌻 Deleting a save game no longer deletes its .bac (backup) file
  
• .bac files are no longer synchronized with the Steam Cloud
  

[h2]Testing a new approach[/h2]
In this patch we are trying a different approach to late game balancing. Instead of limiting the maximum number of quests and thus reducing the fun and motivation in the late game, we are now reducing the quest rewards when certain point count thresholds are reached. This change only affects scores above 50,000 and is intended to increase the difficulty when a point is reached where the rewards for perfect placement and quests can exceed the expense of placing tiles.
Based on very rough calculations, we suspect that infinite runs are still theoretically possible, but will be more difficult to achieve with the changes in 0.5.0.1. Feedback from those of you who have reached 100,000 or more points is again very important to us, as the main purpose of these changes is to maintain excitement in the very late game. If this fails, we will have to think about other alternatives.
The specific thresholds we have chosen to increase the difficulty are still up for debate. If this approach works, we will also ensure that the milestones achieved are presented in a more rewarding way than is currently the case (currently, UI crowns are displayed above the score after a threshold was reached).

[h2]Incentive for infinite runs[/h2]
We realize that for many of you, infinite runs where you have to create your own goals as a challenge (while the tile stack no longer offers any) are also a very enjoyable way of playing. With the upcoming Community Mode, planned for 1.0, we will include configurations that allow for such a play style. For classic mode, however, we want to make it very difficult or impossible for runs to last indefinitely.

💛 Thank you for helping us with your feedback and testing new features!