Ymir News

Following community suggestions, I'm going to test posting notifications here when new games are Schedule for a start on the official servers.

A new game will be starting on Official Server 1, on April 29th at 12:00GMT.
It will be on a single continent, 120 players, all-biomes map.

The new graphics -after being designed as shown in the previous update- are now being slowly 'reconnected' with the actual game, repairing mechanics one by one.
This is the slow part.
After repairing the basic initialization of client and server, client connection, server lobby and character creation, I finally reached the world map and repaired the core mechanics of it and also completed the basics of the new units display (remaining as 2D animated sprites, but within the 3d environment) used here for formations.

For buildings, a new ingame editor has been created to manage 3d models and visually combine them into assets used by the game.






A new ingame editor has been added: the asset editor.
As buildings will now be 3d based (instead of building types just calling a simple 2D sprite as graphics), buildings will now call an asset file made by this new editor.
An Asset can then in itself contain a composition of 2d sprites, textures, 3d models and animations, all controlled and placed in this editor.
I'm using it myself for the actual buildings of the game, but this editor will be public and in the game itself which will be an important tool for potential future modding: combined with an integrated database editor (which remains to be done) it could for example allow to create new buildings: the building stats in the database editor, and the building's graphics in that asset editor.



New level 1 slum models, to replace the old tents.


The asset editor can control the randomness of individual elements. This allows to randomize props or extensions around a main building model, making similar buildings less visually repetitive. Here, a slum model is used as a random building extension in the asset of a primitive hut.



The legacy buildings are being recreated in 3d from the same source models and designs to preserve the game's visual style as much as possible. Here a comparison between the legacy 2d sprite and the new 3d version of the same hut.











The new style of the world map now features a light grey for unexplored tiles instead of plain black. It also reveals basic landmass near explored tiles while fading to a plain color with distance.
As for explored but currently invisible tiles (fog of war), they are slightly greyed out as before, but lighter.



How the worldmap looks at different zoom levels.



The UI is also going through technical changes to make it more adaptative and scalable without all the artifacts currently in the legacy version.
The design of menus themselves isn't changing that much, updating the menus to this new system is a slow ongoing task in parallel with everything else.



The world map no longer being grid-based meant also developing a new different 'pathfinding' system that would work not only for hexagonal tiles but also in the context of a sphere.
Finally one can circumnavigate the globe instead of being stuck on one edge of a rectangle map. Or take pole shortcuts.
This is now completed and funcional.



Interestingly, this node-based pathfinding also allows for costs based on the origin tile, which will for example allow for reduced costs when moving along rivers. It is also a requirement for the future possible implementation of road connections between territories, so that's a good thing done.


Avatars have been updated with more pieces, and also a new system allowing for dynamic background/clothing that will allow the characters to change through the ages, or to adapt to their hierarchical roles in nations.






This marks the completion of step 3/5.
Now i'm about to begin work on the main piece of resistance: the local territory display.
First that means repairing the loading and display of buildings, using the new system of assets managed by the editor.
It also means repairing the display of units, and organizing a new system to display infrastructures such as walls, roads, etc... Lastly, there's also the terrain editing mechanics to repair and recreate within the new system.
All that will be step 4/5.
Step 5/5 will be repairing battles.
Once this is done, the very core foundation of the game will be updated allowing for very basic functionalities. Then the tedious work of completing all the smaller missing things will begin, as well as bugs of course, and optimizations.

After many months of work on Ymir "New Dawn", the basics of the new engine and graphics framework are now completed and I can finally share all my progress and more details about the new coming features.


First of all, what does Ymir "New Dawn" refers to exactly?
More than just an update to the existing game, New Dawn is basically a new game due to the extent of changes: migration to an updated engine with my own 3D graphics framework built on it.
It is built around the idea of trying to streamline as much as possible loading times, which currently kill the UX of the game.
It will however not be released as a separate product but will instead gradually replace the 'legacy' game when it is ready. Therefore people who already own the current game will basically get this "Ymir 2" for free (the last legacy version will then remain available as a separate custom branch in Steam for those who want it).




The game graphics will now be 3D based, which allows for more optimizations down the line and to make better use of computer hardwares.
The world, terrains and buildings will now be in 3D while other things like trees or units will remain 2D "billboards" but within a 3D environment.
This in turn allows for dynamic cameras and to finally have camera rotations which will make bumpy terrains or complex fortifications much easier to understand.

3d based graphics allow for proper camera rotations at last.

3d graphics will also allow for more immersion, seeing your territories with perspective.

The update to a more recent version of the underlying engine also FINALLY allows for x64bit builds, which basically means the game can at last use all the available hardware memory instead of being limited to 2Gb.
This means the possibility for more graphical content such as much more diversity in environment, decorative objects, buildings etc...





Worlds are now true spheres with hexagonal (and pentagonal) territories. Hexagons are the only way to divide a spherical surface evenly, and it also fixes the issue of diagonal adjacencies between territories causing them to only share a tiny corner.
It also makes more organic looking worlds.




The priority of this new version of the game is to streamline loading times, which have been the main factor ruining the player experience in the legacy version.
A core new feature of New Dawn will be the absence of loading times between the worldmap view and the local territories: once initially loaded, you'll be able to freely zoom in and out of it seamlessly "à la google earth".
Not only that, but instead of having only one territory loaded at a time, you'll be able to have your whole region (city and all its attached territories) displayed at once, allowing you to simply pan the camera to your countryside to manage it instead of having to load back the world, select the countryside territory and then load the tile again.
This should hopefully drastically change the playing experience, making things feel less time consuming and cumbersome to manage in the later phases of the game.


No more loading times: when you'll zoom in on one of your territories, it will simply transition between "worldmap" mode to "local" mode, displaying the fully detailed territory


With this new engine, environments will be much more detailed than the legacy game: more diversity in trees, bushes, grass, rocks.
On top of new things, all previous graphical assets are being reworked with more details as well.
3D graphics also allow for dynamic lightning, which means a possible daylight cycle. Additionally, the world being truly spherical means day/night cycles would be realistic with timezones and durations, with for instance a lower sun the closer you are to the poles (but that could have gameplay repercussions so it might be something i'll keep disabled at first).



The new procedural generation of territories also now better matches the worldmap, has more relief, and creates much more original looking territories. It also makes adjacent territories match with one another, which was required as now more than one may be displayed at once.


New Dawn will also include more climates than the legacy version: What was "Nordic" will become split into 3 different climates: "Tundra", "Taiga" and "Steppes".
What was "Tropical" will be split into "Humid" (represents china / South US type of climate), "Monsoon" (represents tropical savanna climates), and "Jungle" (equatorial types of climates).

The screenshots showcased in this news show the new "Mediterranean" climate (now renamed "Dry" for a more generic name), which is the first climate to be updated with new graphical assets.

Buildings will gradually transition to 3D models. The old sprites will remain used in the meantime, although it will probably look weird.



The 3d huts seen here were spawned manually to test the model graphics which is why they are not centered on the grid and have no surroundings.
Actual buildings will be a composition of a main model and other decorative surroundings to recreate a similar look of the legacy sprites.


Multiple territories can now be displayed at once, which mean you'll be able to see your capital and its surrounding countryside at the same time, and to manage them all seamlessly.



As you can imagine, making such a new game will take a lot of time.
It's quite a desert crossing for me as it leaves the legacy game un-updated for all that time (causing a natural drop in interest and sales) while this 'new game' still has a long way to go.
Any support on Patreon is REALLY more than welcome nowadays. It is rewarded with a special Discord room where i discuss and share daily updates about the progress of "New Dawn" with my Patrons.

As those who follow news on the Ymir discord probably already know, since the beginning of this year I've been focused on upgrading the game to a newer version of the engine (gms2).
Yes, it is still Gamemaker but this newer version opens up much more possibilities (such as finally 64bit builds removing the memory limitations).



As i started focusing on QOL features last year, it became clear to me that above all else the biggest problem of the game is... loading times, which compound with all the other QOL flaws making it feel tedious and too time consuming.
Everything else would feel much more streamlined if the loading times were reduced between swapping from territory to world map, or going from city to its countryside territories.
Unfortunately because of how graphics were organized and the engine limitations this could not be improved upon without rethinking the whole graphics from scratch.

This upgrade meant redoing graphics rendering from scratch anyways, and I thought that instead of wasting time redoing the same overall system as in the current version of the game, it made more sense to take this opportunity to design something much more ambitious focused around the idea of optimizing loading times as much as possible.

This is going to be much more than a simple upgrade to a more recent version of the engine.
In fact it will probably feel much like a new game rather than an update, although the game mechanics themselves are not going to be modified.

But its going to take many months to complete, so much that i can't give any timeline but it could very will be this whole year.
This also means the current version of the game is going to remain unchanged in the meantime, also why there hasn't been any new update recently.

You may ask "why not take this opportunity to finally move on another engine?".
Well: graphics are only a small part of the game. By upgrading, i "only" have to redo graphics but i can mostly keep everything else unchanged.
Moving to a different engine would have implied redoing and translating everything else. Instead of a year, it would be 3. And that's just too much time to leave the current game standing still in the meantime.



As i make progress on the gms2 transition, I am feeling more confident about my most ambitious plan and it is time for a first teaser so you guys can get a better idea of the scope of the changes and why it's going to take so long.
I will reveal more as i keep making progress, but you can probably already speculate on the scale of changes based on this first screenshot!








The first feature announcement of this update -which was already announced on the discord a while ago- is the transition to not only hexagonal tiles but also to true spherical worlds.
And yes, there will still be procedural worlds as well!
There's a reason spherical worlds are rare in games: it adds considerable headache to everything else.
But I always dreamed of it , and so that trumps everything else.
Plus, as seen in this screenshot, it will allow to make an actually accurate custom Earth map with real proportions, and that's pretty cool as well.



These are going to be exciting changes that will renew the experience of the game, but it's going to be a long wait. I hope it will be worth it and that you will forgive the time it will take to complete this change.

This update adds a new map editor to create custom maps and also include the first official custom map: a giant map of Earth.
It also contains world map display optimizations (already patched in a while ago).


The new map editor allows you to create custom world maps. You can also preview the list of procedural resources that will appear on each territory and override it with a custom list of resources to control where you want strategic resources to appear.




[h2]Earth map[/h2]
The update also contains a new official custom highly detailed map of Earth which even includes some customized resources to match historical data (only partial).
It can be viewed and modified with the editor for your own games as well.




For the occasion, today Server 2 is being restarted as the "Earth server", with a new game using the new custom Earth map. This is experimental due to the size of the map compared to the traditional ones used in other games, and the max limit of players is also being pushed to 120 instead 100.



The way to setup servers has been reworked and the .ini files have been reorganized and extended to allow setuping new server games purely through .ini files.
Refer to Porcopedia for more details here.



Worldmap display has also been optimized to better handle larger maps such as the Earth map.





The Map editor update
v0.6.3

- implemented map editor
- implemented starting games with custom maps
- added giant "Earth" custom map
- starting a server with no game argument now auto starts a new game with default settings (old server UI to start/load games is deprecated)
- made it possible to fully setup new servers through .ini files
- in server game save folders, game_settings.ini is renamed server_settings.ini for coherence.
- repaired client logic not updating properly when terraforming heights
- fixed probably cause of abnormal tech speed development in persistent servers
- fixed bug of resource satisfaction quality not working
- fied bug of annexation target in war not turning to "unadministered" when won
- fixed bug of war declare invalid target when declaring through character menu
- fixed bug causing a project failure loop
- fixed bug with war resolution treaties starting with engagement period showing as "engagement over"
- added more informations about engagement period and current status in treaty UI
- fixed bugs with war escalation not working properly

Previous Patches:
- implemented worldmap display optimizations
- fixed exploit of using "lowres" cached worldmap to see fully explored worldmap
- migrants formations now suffer a permanent attrition and will disappear if not settled
- fixed issue with mission "Thriving agriculture" and required amount of fields
- fixed bug with restoring field cost
- fixed bug of discrepancies between farm building menu and real server production
- fixed placement UI showing wrong cost when building walls
- fixed crash when settling from inside territory
- corrected "new game" menu looking wrong for 1080p resolutions
- fixed missing agricultural food resources in some arid/desert spawns
- fixed problem of fields over inaccessible tiles (ponds, lakes)
- fixed bug of decreased production gains from natural sources with production skills
- corrected natural source factor of natural plants to better match pre-patch balance
- fixed issues with resizing field costs
- fixed "unload all" button appearing on non-controlled formations