Idle Together News

Here comes a solid update, packed with many of your suggestions. So, without further ado, here’s what’s changing:

• Added a system that sets a maximum number of villagers in the village, which increases based on the number of houses visible in the HUD.
  
• Added a mining system that limits the number of miners to 3 per mine.
  

Both of these improvements will later be tied to constellations related to these mechanics...

• The information panel for all buildings now dynamically adjusts to the text length in all languages.
  
• New information has been added, especially regarding a building's work capacity or how it increases the village's villager limit.
  
• Now, when a villager loses their job, a message appears in the center of the screen with the reason (e.g. lack of a workplace).
  
• For foresters, as long as at least one camp is present in the village, they all keep their job.
  
• Fixed behavior mostly related to fields, where villagers could endlessly circle around their assigned field instead of settling and working.
  
• In the management tool, it’s no longer possible to assign more villagers than there are available workspaces.
  
• A system has been implemented in preparation for future features, tracking certain stats cumulatively, such as total villagers recruited or total resources collected by type. These stats are already being tracked today and will later be viewable in a full stats screen.
  

I’m very close to finishing part 1 of the roadmap, so I’ll soon be able to work on adding an entirely new constellation.

Here’s the first patch since the roadmap was published. Completely reworking my code is starting to become necessary. I've made a lot of progress in programming since I started this project, and many lines of code were really outdated.

I was able to rework almost 50% of the villager code, and I can tell you it's now nearly twice as optimized. Low-end setups will be happy! Especially since the arrival of high-quality animations, which significantly increase the resources needed to run the game smoothly.

Heads-up: there are still some bugs — some are quite strange — but I’m confident I’ll get through them with a bit of time. Generally, these bugs aren’t even noticeable and tend to benefit the players. For example, when a villager plants a tree, the animation might not play, so they do it faster. Still, I care about immersion, so it’ll be fixed.

There are probably bugs I haven’t anticipated, so feel free to report them on the Discord server.

I think I still need a few more days before I can move on to adding new content.

Speaking of content, I also took the opportunity to deeply rework how crafting professions function. I was often told that having multiple buildings was pointless — so now, each crafting building can only host one person.

Eventually, mines will allow around 3 workers, and each house will increase the maximum number of available villagers — something like 1 house for 5 villagers.

Another behavior change: now, if you drop a villager on a building and they’re carrying resources, they’ll first go drop them off before starting work. Also, for crafting professions, there's no longer a need to go to a sawmill before going home to pick up materials — now they’ll fetch the resources first, then go to the building like the sawmill. It’s much more optimized for production.

Hope you’ll enjoy it !

Today, I’d like to share with you the progress of the game and what’s planned for its future until the full release.

Initially, I was aiming to leave Early Access by the end of the month. However, I’ve come to realize that the level of quality expected from a finished product is far beyond what I had imagined. That’s why I’ve decided to push back the full release and follow the roadmap attached here.



It will be broken down into several steps :

[h2]🔧 Code Refactor[/h2]
First, I’ll be refactoring the current code to fix all remaining bugs. Recent additions have increased the memory usage quite a bit, so I’d like to optimize what already exists to ensure a smooth experience for everyone before adding more content.

[h2]🌌 New Constellations[/h2]
Next, I plan to add three new constellations to the game. These will be released in separate content packs, one after the other.

[h2]🌐 Multiplayer Optimization[/h2]
Then, I’d like to rework the multiplayer mode. I’ve received very little feedback on this feature, which is why it appears later in the list. Even though multiplayer was originally what set this game apart from other idle games—and the very reason I created Idle Together, because I wanted to play with friends—it turns out that less than a quarter of sessions are actually played in multiplayer.
If anything is causing issues with multiplayer, don’t hesitate to let me know! If the bug is major and easy to fix, I’ll take care of it.

[h2]🖥 UI/UX Overhaul[/h2]
Finally, I want to rework the game's UI/UX to make everything clearer and more consistent. This part is a bit harder to plan ahead, but I’ll do my best with the budget I have when the time comes.

These are the main points of the roadmap. They are not tied to specific dates, because I don’t want to impose deadlines on myself. That way, I can fine-tune the game properly without putting too much pressure on myself. I want developing this game to continue being a joy, not a burden.

So yes, I’m taking things at my own pace.

I’m making this announcement because I respect you and I enjoy sharing what I’m working on. I hope you’ll like what’s planned for the final release of Early Access. And don’t worry—many more features will be coming after that, too! For example, I’m already thinking about adding more decorative elements for those who’ve asked for them.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3468430/

I published it very late last night—a version that works but isn’t well optimized—so you could already enjoy the improved visuals. But now I’ve put in the work: everything has been polished and optimized to offer you the best gameplay experience with the villagers.

As you can see, villagers currently have a single default skin. Variations for each profession are in the works. In the meantime, a colored aura indicates their profession.

I hope you like the new visuals! I can’t wait to show you the upcoming ones !

By the way, this update significantly increases the PC power needed to handle all the new animations. Feel free to let me know how many villagers it takes for your PC to start slowing down. That way, I can tweak the performance setting to lower resource usage at the cost of some visual quality.

For reference, I start lagging when there are about 200 villagers on the field. If I’m not looking at them, performance returns to normal.

The artist sent me the animations for all the villager actions. I haven't received the skins yet — they're coming later. But it already adds something nice!
I’ve kept the colored aura around the villagers for now so it's still possible to tell what their job is.
Animations are currently getting cut off when rotating, and the code isn’t fully optimized yet. It’ll take me some more time, but at least I now have a v0.1 of what it could look like.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments!