Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles News

So this update has been simmering on BETA long enough and last night with the help of some frustrated Mouse and Keyboard players I finally managed to wrangle a decent freely panning WASD camera out of the gamecode.

This was literally some logic switch in the code I had been trying to achieve with hard math,(which I'm obviously not smart enough for;). Basically smoke and mirrors that work just as good..

The effect is most noticable on the ground, you can now pan all across a single island and then if you select a tower instead of the camera being warped all over the place cuz of the panning it now mostly stays on what you had focuses. This gives a proper detached camera feel, while not allowing for panning across the entire world and it also removes all the camera bouncy nastiness I had before which was inhibiting me from pushing this camera further.

so hurrah for giving this ol' gamedev a bit of a kicking to do better ;) Let me know if its as good an improvements as the beta testers found it..

Here's the complete list, there's a few items here , straight from the forums and user reviews.

• reduced war requirement to 400 population and an escort of 4
  
• depletion also returns a wood for level 1 towers and wood and stone for level 2(command) towers
  
• prevented a "we need stone to build here" message when clicking to fast"
  
• prevented players from building within a reasonable distance of another npc settlement (and thus claiming it conquered)
  
• Reduced overlap distance where you can build to 50 , need to be really close before a settlement gets confused
  
• prevented wonder placement message from repeating
  
• trade posts don't show the text "depleted"
  
• inventory shows total unit cap
  
• bug prevented for infinite spawning capital ships
  
• show the amount of units and unit cap in inventory
  
• pie shaped foundations won't drop off till below the water and have logical bottoms (for future hanging situations)
  
• you can no longer build walkways or walls right thru the stormy waters of the maw or the future edge
  
• Reduced the nr of units in waves if there are already a lot of war units (in non total conquest)
  
• removed hammer sound when something cannot be built
  
• reworked WASD camera panning to reset smoothly
  
• reworked WASD camera panning to be snappier and wider
  
• fixed chinese localisation not doing proper line breaks and cutting of sentences
  
• fixed that the bannerless wonder requires the player to be bannerless aligned or dominant.
  

As always please report any bugs or failures ;)

Hi everyone,

I've got another hotfix in the works , this one fixes a fair amount of critical things and reworks how WASD panning works.

so i'll be leaving it on the BETA PATCH branch for the coming week.. so it can get tested before it gets distributed.

• reduced overlap distance where you can build to 50 , need to be really close before a settlement gets confused
  
• reduced war requirement to 400 population and an escort of 4
  
• depletion also returns a wood for level 1 towers and wood and stone for level 2(command) towers
  
• prevented a "we need stone to build here" message when clicking to fast"
  
• prevented players from building within a reasonable distance of another npc settlement (and thus claiming it conquered)
  
• prevented wonder placement message from repeating
  
• trade posts don't show the text "depleted"
  
• inventory shows total unit cap
  
• bug prevented for infinite spawning capital ships
  
• show the amount of units and unit cap in inventory
  
• pie shaped foundations won't drop off till below the water and have logical bottoms (for future hanging situations)
  
• you can no longer build walkways or walls right thru the stormy waters of the maw or the future edge
  
• Reduced the number of units in waves if there are already a lot of war units (in non total conquest)
  
• removed hammer sound when something cannot be built
  
• reworked WASD camera panning to reset smoothly after changing focus
  
• reworked WASD camera panning to be snappier and wider
  

Now the console patches are progressing thru certification as we speak, so they won't have these changes. They will be added with the next major free content update (no name for that yet, but the edgy one I teased)

GOG/EGS similarly will get this hotfix in the next update, and are receiving the evolution update at the same time as the console patches go out.


To try out the beta patch , just right click on game properties, go to BETAS and select the beta patch.
wait for the game to update and you should be good to go.

Please report any bugs , the quicker I can fix and get this one out to everyone, as it contains a few hot topics from the forums addressed.

The following fixes are in beta on the beta branch

go to game properties/betas and select "beta patch".

this is a savegame safe update;)

• reduced war requirement to 400 population and an escort of 4
  
• depletion also returns a wood for level 1 towers and wood and stone for level 2(command) towers
  
• prevented a "we need stone to build here" message when clicking to fast"
  
• prevented players from building within a reasonable distance of another npc settlement (and thus claiming it conquered)
  
• prevented wonder placement message from repeating
  
• tradeposts don't show the text "depleted"
  
• inventory shows total unit cap
  
• bug prevented for infinite spawning capital ships if at max unit cap
  

let me know if any issues arise from these.

And now for something completely different.

Did you know the Ursee might not be an entirely normal place? Perhaps Oberon's refuge or Oberon's Prison is a better term (depending on how you interpret the ancient myths from the Falconeer). There's Star-gates and gravitational anomalies. There is a story to these things.

One thing I could never get to work for the Falconeer, back in the day, was an actual "edge of the world". I did intent to , hence that game's major expansion being called that.

But as I was unwinding today I kinda solved the major issues there. So here as a tease for a future update perhaps, the results of today's experiment.



now I know lots of folks folks want a better trade-management screen and other major features, but sometimes you gotta re-energize and make something fun and crazy. I can kinda imagine this edge being a lawless area ,with crime lords and mercenaries for hire. Perhaps a bit more mongress culture down south.

Anyways certainly the next update will contain QoL features and improvements, but should it contain this "edge of the world" , would it excite you all to build on the edge of the literal abyss?

If so let loose with some like so I know you all are up for it ;)

Cheerio,
Tomas

I wanted to to give a quick shout out to all of you who have been playing the game, leaving feedback and reporting bugs. This Evolution update was so mighty, I've been doing hotfixes daily.

There were balancing improvements and bugs and everything in between.

[h2]oops[/h2]
And last night even made a mistake that prevented connections from being demolished, causing all kinds of issues. Luckily this was fixed as soon as I woke up.

(make sure to restart steam fully to see the hotfix roll in).

I'll be winding down updates as this isn't normal nor ideal, but I feel the game is in a good spot and your positive reception has done a great deal to motivate me for future content.

I know trade screens are highly requested, also saw some cool suggestions for mercenary captains and units which kinda sounds like a fun pallet cleanser to make. But before that I little calm to make sure all changes are good and focus on the console version of the update.

But thanks everyone, this was a big one.



I just updated the demo to evolution as well. Cuz the tutorial is slightly better and there have been multiple requests for a slightly larger build limit. So that is both there to try for people curious about the game. I think the old demo was too generous with some players reporting they had 200 hours in it (lol), and it might have overshot.

The build limit is now 20 towers, which should allow 2 separate colonies to be build. Most of the world content though has been locked out as before,, but one buy-able location and one small faction settlement have remained intractable.

I think that demos that are live after the game have launched are a tricky thing to get right. Hope it feels a bit better now.


Cheerio, Tomas

And please as soon as you spot a potential bug, don't hesitate to report and I'll get right on it.