World Turtles News

• I'm now emitting all "dust" and "water spray" visuals from a single pair of particle systems, changing its parameters before emitting specific particles, where previously I placed a copy of the system at each point where dust / spray needed to be visualized, and then destroyed the system to get rid of the visuals. The central particle systems now emits particles for all locations specified in a dynamic list. Rain, clouds and snow emission have been working like this for a while.
  
• Finding locations for Fracture Springs when Fault Lines erupt now runs on one of the parallel threads, getting rid of the most notable (and very noticeable) temporary stuttering in frame rate when Fault Lines erupt.
  
• Some "take small steps over time until all is done" changes are now made instantaneously if the Fault Line isn't explored by the player (and thus not visible), further reducing frame rate stuttering.
  
• I've improved memory management by implementing list pools across all threads to reduce the strain put on garbage collection, reducing temporary frame rate drops.
  
• I've reduced "Set Pass Calls" and "Batches" to reduce the amount of communication required between CPU and GPU.
  
• I've reduced excessive triangles in the Food Ball and Snow Comet models.
  

• An alternative terrain triangulation for a much smoother look.
  
• Relaxing restrictions on building placement, making it easier to find suitable locations.
  

• Added an "Auto: Balance" option to the Building UI, which will let the building always select the task with the smallest percentage experience, which allows you to have an automated balanced progression through the experiences and allow the building to upgrade as soon as possible. When all tasks' experience has run full, it falls back to the set task priorities.
  
• Fields, Animal Camps and Shoals that have not been set are highlighted in red (on the terrain itself) in addition to the existing target icon on black background. The previous temporary warning message when deselecting a building with some unscheduled foodstuffs also remains in place.
  
• "Game Saved as...." message does not contain full path anymore (privacy reasons).
  
• Save/Load Menu contains a button to open the saved game path.
  
• Border Flags display even when the terrain they're on is unexplored.
  
• Slight tint on building floorplans makes it easier to know which hexes are occupied by buildings.
  
• Added doodad models to some buildings to also make it easier to know which hexes are part of their floorplans.
  
• Objective Target Icons are now created closer to the proposed area of application, rather than randomly around the Founders Hex.
  
• The first time the game is run, the Personalize segment of the Game Options menu is loaded automatically, so that the player is aware of the available languages.
  
• Disabled icons are not quite as dark anymore, to make them easier to distinguish.
  
• More time between Fault Line eruptions, so there's more time to build "dam walls" to protect your realm.
  
• When displaying the cost of buildings or tasks, values for which there aren't enough resources are printed in red.
  
• All Tooltips now update their text every second to make sure these colored amounts reset back to white when enough resources are available, and all other functions displayed in the tooltip also update.
  
• The temporary change in Tooltip that tells you which resource is lacking now remains for 3 seconds rather than just until the cursor is moved (which often caused the message to be missed).
  
• Fixed a bug when loading a leader board without any current entries.
  
• Changed the message when path-finding takes too long to not mention CPU speed (since that isn't technically the issue), but rather mention it's an unexpected path-finding issue. For reference, if none of these crop up, I can run the game at 18x speed for a long time before the CPU gets overloaded.
  
• Added stand-in auto-translated German and Chinese phrases (as well as proper Afrikaans ones) for the few UI elements I've added. These will be updated in the next localization round.
  

City-builders come in all shapes and sizes and now you can build on the back of a massive turtle flying through space in World Turtles.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/world-turtles-is-a-city-builder-on-the-back-of-a-space-turtle-out-now

• Tasks: As before, the player sets task priorities, order roads and upgrades the building on this tab.
  
• Research: The research "wheel" (as currently on the Research Overview panel) is displayed here, but for this building type only, allowing the player to focus on, and change, the research of this building type in isolation.
  
• Annexes: Displays (and links to) all currently existing Annexes commissioned by this building, and also shows how many Annex slots are still available. A list of all Annexes commissioned by this building type is also displayed and the player can order an Annex straight from this panel.
  
• Resources: For Farms and Fishmongers, this panel displays all the workable hexes, as well as what livestock / seafood / crops are currently growing on them. The player can also schedule crops straight from this panel, and a color-coded frame around foodstuff icons now show the suitability of each crop given the climate of the specific building. When scheduling foodstuff on the map, these frames are now also present on the icons there.
  

• Some of the zooming on certain UI elements (especially when they appear) have been removed to make them snappier and feel less laggy.
  
• Farming, Research and Combined Tutorial achievements did not fire.
  
• Builder's Yard Achievements did not fire (this was a fix on the Steam backend, so they would have already started firing without the game update).