Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles News

Hi everyone

I've been reading up on the feedback, user reviews and so forth, and your comments have impressed upon me the need to change up a few things, especially to make the entry into the game easier and clearer.

First off as some people made clear the build limit is preventing folks from finishing the tutorial and experiencing more of the depth of the game. So I've gone and done the following

• Increased the build limit to 35 if you haven't finished the tutorial and 25 if you have.
  
• Unlocked the Mancer Temple north of the player and Stargazer southwest of the starting area
  
• Unlocked a few of the minor settlements.
  

This will allow tutotiral players to have a bit more interaction, grow their settlements to unlock some better units and even have a bigger conflict or just more trade. I also understand that the demo is also probably the only version of the tutorial a lot of folks play so best to make sure they can finish it.

This is off course a tricky situation, but I can say the amount of work to keep the Demo afloat is substantial , it's like a whole separate branch to keep afloat, and between the delays on console and EGS/GOG it is also a bit on the chopping block, so I hope these changes have a positive effect .

WIth regards to the general onboarding I've changed some of the store text and am working on making a playlists of new explanatory short videos and have that up in a few days.

As someone in Discord said, Bulwark is somewhere between a townscaper-like chill builder and a grand strategy game, but this can make it feel like neither. But there is a lot of love from gamers looking for something in the middle of those. So beyond the store I am also adding a new FAQ section to the ingame help and I've added some tips 'n tricks to the menu. (the FAQ will take a few days to get localized). On top of that I felt that the early grind for population is now rewarded too late. So a the lower tier captains and commanders should now come a lot quicker..

here's the changelist of the patch as it now sets on the public beta branch

• added some random tips 'n tricks (existing texts for now) (this will be a new FAQ page in the game help as soon as its been localized)
  
• move crabtoon +naval harbour to later cuz too hard to beat and blocks other encounters
  
• removed the continuesly VO about mawspring placement after you get the wonder
  
• increased population of faction citadels and outposts (to give a bit of a jumpstart to unlock new content)
  
• lowered the requirements for the lower tier captains and commanders
  
• added a setting to turn of the advisor completely (and my intros) (cept for the tutorial)
  

Here's my FAQ/list of top things you should know. I hope once it's ingame (and localized) it will help folks get those tidbits of knowledge I haven't successfully been able to get across to everyone.

1. Grow your population to unlock more content and capabilities
   
2. Workers build houses and thus increase population
   
3. Stone houses get more population then wood houses
   
4. New population gains you splinters (credits)
   
5. the number above an extractor is the range at which it provides its resources.
   
6. You increase the range of your resources by attaching more walkeays with access to workers .
   
7. You can buy more extractors in the inventory screen
   
8. Command towers serve to house commanders, and spawns guns along their walls
   
9. Higher population unlocks new commanders and captains from the soultree screen
   
10. Captains and Commanders are found in the world by explored after being unlocked.
    
11. you can buy more units or set a defensive or escort stance in the commander screen
    
12. Bigger command towers have a higher unit cap
    
13. Building citadels, command towers and harbours to other factions inceases the population of that faction
    
14. trading with other factions also increases your alignment with them.
    

This is still an experimental game, a real genre bender so likely not the last update on this subject ;) Hope folks can let me know if the beta is safe and without bugs, so I can upload it for all and improve the first experiences for more players..

I've been crunching a bit too much so no update on the "edge of the world" content , everything is console porting and onboarding atm. Doing my best;)
Cheerio, Tomas

parking your command flagship next to a faction settlement, and then flying off with your surveyor would block settlements from spawning or being interactive near your surveyor. As the system assumed the command flagship was closest.

now fixed, likely a bug present since evolution's release. ;)

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.