Coloniser News

General Notes
We're making great progress on several impactful system changes that will gradually start to roll out into the Playtest these next several weeks and onwards. This patch includes improved projectiles (more below).

[h2]Gameplay & Mechanics[/h2]

• New Projectile System: Added non-homing projectiles with group and area-of-effect (splash) damage. (note: temporary vfx for splash projectiles)
  
• Projectile Pathing: Updated to appear more natural and consistent.
  
• Improved Animation Systems: Timing and Sequence Adjustments
  

[h2]Visuals & UI[/h2]

• Updated Homestead Visuals
  
• Updated Turret Visuals
  
• Enemy Healthbars: Now visually respond to incoming damage.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Unit Cancellation: Fixed bugs related to unit cancellation and receiving your resources back.
  
• Farm Animations: Colonists inside farms now use correct animations.
  
• Healing Animations: Should now play correctly.
  
• Scipio / Justiciar Animations: Gathering animations are now functioning as intended.
  
• Death Animations: Should now trigger and play properly.
  
• Attack Animations: Fixed issue where animations were getting cut short.
  
• SFX Bugs: Minor sound effect bugs have been fixed.
  
• Typos: A large number of small text/tooltip typos have been corrected.
  

General Notes
Playtest is still going full swing so please join the waitlist for access. We've paused the Demo in order to get the newest updates delivered to the playtest quicker. Our team has been working hard on the feedback from Steam Next Fest and we've started to push out updates to address those items. Some of the smaller visual/performance tweaks will show up this month, but larger items like the new server waitlist/higher player counts will take more time.

This is another smaller patch with minor visual improvements, notably to farms, and bug fixes. Our next patch will be out early this week with several more noticeable changes.

[h3]Improvements/Adjustments[/h3]

• New Farms (note animation needs continued work)
  
• Improved Stronghold design with additional details
  
• All buildings with modest texture improvements
  
• Added some new main menu sprites
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where players could get stuck connecting when the server was full
  
• Non-aggresive and domestic animals are stuck in a looping death animation
  
• Text for selecting multiple buildings has a grammar issue
  
• Debug text #SEARCH_OPTION and #HOME is visible in the menu
  
• Chat lacks option to send a direct message to other player
  
• Audio sliders are reset upon entering the Settings menu for the second time or restarting the game
  
• The glow effect is too slow for Stone, Food & Ore resources
  
• HP bar for animals is missing
  

Note: We will begin moving people over from the Demo to our Playtesting next week when we have our next updates. We will pause the demo sometime next month so we can test further updates on Playtesting (We have room for everybody). Atfter we pause the Demo will re-release it this Summer once we have our next big updates with all the Feedback we've recently collected.


We've spent the last few weeks adjusting our roadmap and planning some more big overhauls to our backend code. In particular we're working to make big improvements to our tech tree, player count, and combat/animations that require some big changes to our code. This is in addition to a fairly extensive number of things we're working on in parallel (extra tribes, and so on).

These are really big system changes and are well underway. Some of these improvements will begin showing up in our bi-weekly playtesting patches (like this one) and others will arrive towrads the end of this rebuild. We'll update our public roadmap as that occurs although we're still largely on track for everything we've planned.

[h2]Adjustments/New Features[/h2]

• Multiple loading screen tips now display while the game loads.
  
• Resource deposit notifications/visuals now use a pooling system for better performance
  Slight In-Game UI Tweaks
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fog of War (FOW) multiple issues have been resolved
  
• GPU Animation System has been improved with some bugs no longer happening
  
• Animal walking animations are now working
  
• Steam authentication issue has been resolved
  
• The start-up loading screen issue where players could get stuck has been fixed
  
• House placement bugs have been resolved — houses can now be placed freely again
  
• Multiple tech and hitbox issues resolved.
  
• UI sometimes showing incorrect resource data
  
• Line of Sight bugs from killing domestic animals or placing gates (FoW)
  
• Invisible buildings after rejoining AWS sessions (connected to FoW)
  
• Units losing tech bonuses after rejoining servers
  
• Reappearing researched techs in menus
  
• Loading screen hang-ups
  
• Farm animation missing in Era 1
  
• Construction HP bars not disappearing
  
• Camera and MiniMap bugs
  
• Steam and non-Steam account login errors
  

Hope you're well! We've just released a major patch on both our Playtesting and Demo branches. We'll concentrate on hotfixing small issues & bug fixes this next week during Steam NextFest before continuing with our regular patches. We will also be publishing an updated roadmap on feature and content releases towards early access as well as soon after.
[h2]New items[/h2]

• Updated server selection screen with both regional server selection and map selection.
  
• Steam Tags live with your units/building as well as opponents. You can now see other players units labeled as such.
  
• Unit/building stats including health, armor, and other parameters display in bottom left UI.
  
• Additional settings options in main menu
  
• Improved water visuals
  
• New wooden wall/gate visuals (known issue with the wall not displaying the endcap)
  
• New stone wall/gate visuals (known issue with the wall not displaying the endcap)
  
• New building icons (still a work in progress)
  

[h2]Balance changes[/h2]

• Resources adjusted to slow game speed and improve the overall pacing
  
• Spawn points tweaked based on playtesting feedback
  
• Caravan/marketplace/trading adjustment to resource calculation
  

[h2]Bug fixes/adjustments[/h2]

• Updated hovertext descriptions for some units/building
  
• Servers reboot automatically overnight to help with some connection issues
  
• Animal animations fixed
  
• Visuals/textures more balanced across eras
  
• Adjusted lighting (fewer harsh shadows) and camera angles
  
• Faster camera move speed
  
• Shelters no longer incorrectly occupying 3x3 grid instead of 2x2
  
• Settings tab is opened when user launches the game or leaves the match
  
• Player is unable to place and build turrets in Era 3
  
• User cannot destroy a turret on Era 3 with a destroy button
  
• Era 3 turret colours don't match player colour
  
• Multiple buildings are placed unevenly or go out of their selection grid box
  
• Buildings built after placing a turret and advancing to Era 3 disappear after rejoining
  
• Unit recruitment stops working for the player after recruiting and losing multiple units
  
• Name and capacity of Stone/Ore resources are inconsistent with their model sizes
  
• Mute FX button lacks functionality in Audio Settings
  
• Ambient sounds are tied to the music slider in audio settings
  
• Voice lines of units play loudly and are clipping when selecting multiple units of the same type
  
• Areas in grey fog of war are hidden by black fog of war after player rejoins or reconnects to server
  
• Hotkey Info Panel covers the minimap
  
• Already built University lacks techs for research after reconnecting to a stopped server
  
• Hover text of Population Counter shows 888/888 Max
  
• Some resource gathering SXF are missing
  
• Multiple units are missing SFX
  
• Hovering a mouse over a tree results in highlighting an adjacent tree
  

This patch has numerous critical bug fixes for server connection/disconnection issues and quite a few smaller fixes as well.

[h3]Improvements/Adjustments[/h3]

• Combat sounds added
  
• UI hover overlays show more information
  
• Support for Steam Tags in additional languages (Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, Arabic)
  
• Some building and unit names have been adjusted
  
• New Chat UI
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Players can hear other players resource gathering sound effects
  
• Players sometimes can't join server when several players join at once
  
• Resource bar shows text instead of actual resource values the first time a server is joined
  
• Build hover info missing resource requirements and descriptions
  
• Chat Panel cannot be closed with 'C' button
  
• Diplomacy flag, Chat & Shortcuts icons don't open intended tabs
  
• Insufficient resources toast notifications are missing for buildings/recruitment
  
• Minimap doesn't display discovered area
  
• Empty UI squares have SFX when user hovers the mouse over them
  
• Users can hear each other's SFX for constructing action, finishing construction and destroying a building
  
• Unit recruitment stops working while in a session in which another player has been defeated on same server
  
• Defeated Users are invisible to other Players after rejoining
• Changing the resolution in a windowed mode creates a tiny game window after relaunching and accessing Settings again
  
• Sometimes fog of war breaks and player is unable to control units after rejoining a server
  
• Mobile Artillery tech grants significantly higher movement speed bonus for Artillery units
  
• The diplomacy system stops working for Users who receive diplomacy request when they are away from an instance
  
• User gets a Timed Out error when trying to connect to the server which had no activity for 5 minutes
  
• Sometimes loss conditions don't apply when user loses all production buildings and units on server
  

[h3]What's coming soon?[/h3]

• New Server/Game Selection UI
  
• UI Stats properly loading unit stats (e.g. health, strength, armor, and so on)
  
• UI Correctly labeling units with the player's steamtag.
  
• Region specific server filter
  
• Improved Era 3 building visuals
  
• New Homestead design
  
• New Stone Walls and Stone Gate design