Hearthlands News

Just a quick little update:

- Horsemen barracks are no longer invisible.

- Spanish translation updated to the latest version (thanks, Joaquin!).

- Forgot to say in the previous update: since fletcher's workshop became 4x4
instead of 3x3 it disappears when you load a game from 0.8.7 or earlier. Make
sure to rebuild it.

- Saved games are compatible with previous versions.

Thank you for your support!

A big, big change, which I've been waiting a long time for - we've got new music! The main theme was re-recorded and expanded and there are two more peaceful themes and two combat themes. One of the combat themes is only played when you fight undead and it is even a bit scary.

I managed to persuade a good friend of mine to spend lots of time with me digging up our old songs and coming up with new ones, rewriting and recording them properly. There are several more songs in the works, so I hope we'll be able to add more music to the game in the next updates.


Military buildings were redrawn and now look even better. Several new buildings were added. From left to right: barracks, berserker barracks, war pig rider barracks, cleric barracks, horsemen barracks, armorer's shop, fletcher's shop, weaponsmith's shop, stables and war pig ranch.




Every culture now has a special powerful unit! From right to left:



Southerners have horsemen, which are now unique to southerners but otherwise unchanged.

Northerners have berserkers, which lack any armor, but are fast, can throw axes and have a bonus against monsters. Berserker requires two axes and 4 loads of mead.

Westerners have clerics, which can heal friendly units, launch magic missiles with splash damage and do 50% more damage to undead. Cleric requires 2 loads of clothes and 2 loads of beer.

Easterners have war pig riders, which are well protected mounted archers. War pig rider requires a chainmail, a bow and a war pig (yep, that's a new resource).


New building: war pig ranch. Produces 4 war pigs a year and requires 6 loads of turnips per pig.


Other changes and improvements:

- Fixed possible crash when loading game saved in 0.8.6 or earlier.

- Fixed a number of typos.

- Healing spell now correctly uses percentages.

- Houses now have smaller stockpile which makes them react quicker to a change in resources availability.

- Destroying a dwelling will no longer make its inhabitants disappear.

- You can cast a second copy of a spell without clicking its button again.

- Added a popup window when mega construction finishes.

- Added credits window:



- Rewrote sounds/music engine, which became much more reasonable and also now uses compressed music. No more limit on the amount of sounds.

- Gardens have a proper appeal effect now.

- One load of logs is now required to build a stockade.

- Stone is now required for horsemen barracks and other special units.

- Fixed a bug with enemies getting stuck on a canal bridge.

- Some decorations became walkable, some gained HP value. No more defensive lines made of flowers (sorry, hippies).

Thank you for your support!

Serveral buildings have been redrawn, including (mega constructions, stone walls, guard towers, watch towers, magic towers and gatehouses).

More variations for fancy trees and flower pots have been added.



A bug with stone tiles has been fixed. Stone tiles can now be demolished properly.

Peddler's tents now have proper size (3x3). Note that all your peddler's tents will disappear when you load a game created in 0.8.6 or earlier. Make sure to rebuild them.

Abandoned mines now have a proper appeal after they've been restored.

More balance changes concerning difficulty and power ratings of monsters and characters.

Stocks panel has been changed and shows two numbers (or one if they are equal). The first number is a total amount of a resource in the city (excluding stored in peddler's tents, houses and apothecaries) that can be used immediately (as a gift for example). The second number includes resources that are reserved by a hauler or are being moved around. Resources that were put in peddler's tents and apothecaries are now counted as spent.

Logic of peddler's tents has been changed. Peddlers now target houses that lack resources available in the tent, which allows several peddlers to work in the same hosing block without interfering with each other. This also makes peddlers work better overall.

Resource focus. You can now click a resource in the stocks panel to 'lock it'. Locked resources won't be spent or traded away allowing you to create a temporary stockpile (for example to fulfill an outstanding request). This does not affect resources already in houses, peddler's tents and apothecaries or resources on their way there. Locked resources are still being moved around and delivered to workshops, but not used.



Overall difficulty calculation on New Game screen has been changed. Also 'Default' button has been added which resets the settings to default values (and 100% difficulty).



Thank you for your support!

In case you've missed it, here's a new trailer of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZRe8NZ2J8g

And here's what's new in the new update:

- Several building have been redrawn: tax office, peddler's tent, apothecary, constabulary, town hall, temple, minstrel's guild, library, manor and estate.

Since minstrel's guild now has a different size it disappears from the map when you load a game saved in 0.8.5 or older.

New vs old:



- Also high-appeal road now looks more fancy.

A number of decorative objects added (most of them increase appeal):

- Bench. The bench rotates automatically to face the road.

- Garden crate.

- Garden.

- Metal fence (works the same as wooden fence and let's monsters in as well).

- Stone tiles.

- Canals and canal bridges. Canals are 3x3 tiles and only connect to each other on a 3x3 tile grid. Canal bridge must be built between two canal pieces (press R to rotate it) and it counts as a road. Enemies can use canal bridges too.











- Fixed bug (hopefully) with enemies getting stuck under gatehouses.

- Character screen now shows damage value correctly according to character's level.

- Invaders now have greater range and are less likely to hang out on the edge of the map (which isn't necessarily good).

- A number of other fixes.

I'm also in the process of migrating to LWJGL 3, which will improve a few things, but there's a lot to rewrite so it'll have to wait until one of the next updates.

Savegames from 0.8.5 are compatible with 0.8.6 (don't forget to rebuild your minstrel's guilds though).

Thank you for your support!

- Chancellor can now be female as well! Big thanks to Anais (http://youtube.com/anaisbelieve) who recorded the voice of the chancellor and female citizens.



- Female citizens now have female voice:)

- New title screen!



Title screen alternates between the old one and the new one each time you restart the game.

- Map generation has been reworked to make sure the landmass in contiguous (no more troops stuck on an island hopefully). It may take a bit longer now and map seed taken from an older version of the game may not produce the same map in 0.8.5 due to these changes.

- Now you can comfortably play the game on a 4K monitor! 'Big screen' mode has been added which scales up the UI to x1.25 or x1.5. You can enable it on the Settings screen. The game needs to be restarted before changes are applied.



You can also edit 'config.txt' file and set 'big_screen' to 0 (off), 1 (x1.25 scale) or 2 (x1.5 scale).

- Citizens will no longer wander through entire city and will stay closer to their homes.

- Roadblocks are no longer hidden in 'Hide buildings' mode.

- The sound for trade notifications has been changed to make it less annoying:)

Thank you for your support!