Ymir News

[p][/p][p]I've invested a lot of effort into increasing the feeling of immersion into the world: Extra work on more biome specific animals, birds, atmospherics, weather, citizens talking, sound ambiance...[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Finally it's there: the basic core of battles is functional again.
That includes battle resolutions on the server side, and display on the client side.
This wasn't just repairing the old code, because the changes in terrain (which now has slopes and not just vertical edges between tiles) also requires an overhaul of how movements and pathfinding works for troops during battles.

A big change is that movement speed of troops is now variable: they will slow down proportionally on slopes.
That means archers on top of a moat will get much more time to fire at incoming enemies, even if they aren't protected behind a built wall.
[/p][p][/p][p]Cavalry visuals have also been improved compared to legacy: now they move with inertia, which makes their movements feel more natural and also gives their charges much more visual impact as they accelerate and pass through the enemy.



Melee behavior of units in general has also been improved, notably to better prevent the problem of all units piling up into a single tile, making things visually confusing.

However, only the most basic battle systems are functional. I'm still missing many more specific mechanics: embarking on rafts to cross water, climbing walls, and breaching palisades.
Because of how pathfinding has been modified, these mechanics have to technically remade from scratch instead of just updating/repairing the old code, so there's significant work remaining to get battles fully functional again.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I have added a facultative mod to the game called 'Sentient Swine'. It's an option that you may choose to tun on in the game options if you wish.

If turned on, and provided you have installed on your machine a tool called 'Ollama', it will toggle the ability for your Porcos to express themselves: speech bubbles in-game will occasionally show you what a Porco is saying or thinking about.



Each Porco has its own personality traits, background, and opinion of the player's leadership (based on the overall loyalty of the territory). They will comment on Policies they don't like, current events, or their personal stories and woes.




But on top of that, you can actually choose to respond and chat with any of them.
And after some discussions, you may receive a small notification telling you if you've actually improved or reduced this Porco's opinion of your leadership, which makes you earn or lose a symbolic 1 Politic Point (this feature might be limited only to solo & realtime games though, for obvious reasons).



This is just an option to make the game feel more lively, and to have fun with.
I'm aware this feature might not be for everyone, and if anything, I did it mostly for myself because if you had told me as a kid than one day you'd have the possibility to play a city-building game where you can actually chat with your citizens, it would have felt like an awesome scifi fantasy... so i did it.



This option also significantly increases your system requirements if turned on, because with Ollama the model runs entirely on your machine and nothing goes online.
Running a local LLM consumes a lot of VRAM in particular and therefore requires a good modern graphics card.

[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]A big part of the last 3 months of work has been spent working on various technical optimizations.
Not much to show here, despite it being a LOT of work.
I've completed these main projects amongst other things: [/p]

• [p]optimized things related to camera movements and collisions, increasing framerate and fluidity of movements.[/p]
• [p]implemented a 'contraction hierarchy' for pathfinding. It's an essential feature to optimize battles because it allows to instantly know the movement cost between 2 points in a territory. During a battle, each troop has to repeatedly do that to assess the priority of all its possible objectives.[/p]
• [p]significantly optimized loading times of larger cities with lots of elements.[/p]
• [p]optimized collisions with terrain (used for the mouse and for the camera).[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p][/p][p]Many new animal types have been added, to finalize making each biome more unique.





Hippos will sometimes appear on shores of freshwater in Savanas.




[/p][p]You'll also find alligators (which can be exploited for leather), in savannas and tropical climates.

[/p][p][/p][p]
[/p][p]Gazelles have been added in Savannas.


[/p][p]Giraffes, a mostly cosmetic animal for savannas.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Bisons, found in the steppes.



White Yaks, found in cold tundras.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Beavers, in continental and colder climates, will be a source of a new resource type: fur.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Seals, in nordic sea shores, will be source of fat and oil.[/p][p][/p][p]
Penguins, in the glacial poles.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]All the previous animal types have also been reworked and re-rendered with higher resolution, to match the new animals.
Below are some examples:


New Elephants, 50% more angry.


New Cows, redesigned to look less domesticated.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New Buffalo.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New Capybaras.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New rabbits, new animations!

[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Fishes are back ingame, but there's now more than one type of fish.
However to keep resources simple, they all still produce the same single common 'fish' resource.




There are now 4 main fish types: Carps and Trouts for freshwater, Herring and Salmon for sea water.
Carps and Herrings are 'small' fishes, and they will now spawn globally on all water shores. It means you're pretty much guarantee to have a baseline of exploitable fishes on all bodies of water.[/p][p][/p][p]
The 'larger' fishes, Salmons and Trouts, still work in a more similar way as in Legacy: territories have random amounts of resource spots, sometime none, and therefore you'll find them in 'spots' in deeper waters.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
Butterflies appear over bushes, adding a more bucolic ambiance to green landscapes.[/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]Noisy frogs will spawn around reeds and other freshwater plants.


Tiny crabs sometime appear on sea shores.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Birds are back, with their own unique behavior! [/p]

• [p]they can land on trees and favor them as landing spots.[/p]
• [p]then also like to join other nearby birds (and sometimes curious of any other animal)[/p]
• [p]they get spooked when a nearby bird flies off, causing them to often move in groups.[/p]

[p] [/p][p]Sparrows are the main basic bird. In tropics, they are replaced by noisy parakeets.

[/p][p][/p][p]As bigger birds, Herons will appear near freshwater shores whenever frogs are present. [/p][p][/p][p]
It might seem like a useless low priority thing to focus on, much like all the 'useless' cosmetic animals, but i believe it was worth focusing on the sky atmosphere as it ends up adding a lot to the feeling of immersion into a unified world.

First i added a clouds system, which combines a flat cloud sheet and 3d cloud models, giving a lot of depth and perspective to the landscape views.[/p][p]
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I have also added volumetric lighting to my 3d engine, which adds a lot to the ambiance especially when cloudy or overcast.

The "depth-of-field" blurr has been reworked: blurr is now separated between atmospheric and camera focus and you can disable the camera 'tilt shift' minuature effect, while keeping the blurr from the atmospheric distances.



The atmospheric blurr is based on humidity, so visibility will tend to be sharper in a sunny nordic tundra compared to a humid rainforest.




Fog has also been added, with various combined types of fog to create more diverse atmospheres.[/p][p]


[/p][p][/p][p]Dynamic weather has also been added to the game.[/p][p] [/p][p]Each territory now has a weather type assigned to it, which will evolve dynamically in time.
Sunny, cloudy, overcast, rain... These weather types will change the ambiance of your city and will also eventually be connected to gameplay mechanics in the future.[/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]With rain, the ground becomes wet and reflective, the atmosphere thicker, and wind increases the foliage movements.
I have particular attention to the sound ambiance, with different rain sounds based on intensity, or forest vs opened area.
Distant thunder can be heard from storms happening multiple territories away.

The clouds and atmospherics fade when you zoom out, so that the camera view never collides with the clouds sheet.
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Road networks are now implemented, meaning that only the roads connected to the 'road stele' building will count as valid in a settlement.
Buildings with no road access will display a warning icon.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]As work progress on New Dawn, focus on graphical content will increase, to replace the placeholder 2D buildings of Legacy.

I worked on many new props, especially a set of pottery themed ones, and primitive tents for all the level 1 camps.
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]Thanks to these i've used my Asset editor to make new buildings such as the level 1 Hunter.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]New level 1 gathering camp[/p][p][/p][p]

[/p][p]New wood gatherer
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New clay camp & potter[/p][p][/p][p]The editor has also been reworked, with now a new right side panel with previews of props and models, and the ability to drag and drop objects into the scene.
This will facilitate my work on building assets, but also improves a tool that could be used for modding in the future.

[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
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.
It is rewarded with a special Discord room where i discuss and share daily updates about the progress of "New Dawn" with my Patrons, and an exclusive access to the New dawn WIP builds so you can see it for yourself on your PC![/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p][/p][p]A new game will start this Friday around 12:00 Paris time on Server 1.[/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The graphic systems for logic 'display layers' have been completed, allowing players to easily access information about their terrain and city.
This system allows me to control, for each display layer, whether to display a specific map as colors on the terrain, or colors on tile edges, or if i want to toggle off the display of buildings, roads, walls etc, or if i want to display built platforms as 'blocs'.
This greatly facilitates the creation of easily readable display layers and will make the logic of fortifications far clearer for players.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]A new "Movement cost" display layer has been added, which specifically focuses on displaying the path-finding grid logic. It clearly shows the tile movement cost, but also the tile edges costs from walls, and the platforms/bridges thanks to the bloc display.
That will make complex fortifications much more intuitive to build and analyze, especially thanks to the 3d display as well, compared as the current legacy version.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Deployment tools have been repaired and are functional again. That includes the systems to display military troops, a key milestone towards the bigger picture that is having a functional battles system again.
Overall, the deployment tools work in the same way as in legacy.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I've slightly improved the associated "Areas" display layer, which now more clearly communicates the status of an area between exterior, protected, navigable or inaccessible.
Bridges heights impact the accessibility of navigable areas, as showcased here: low pontoons can bloc water passage (even though its currently not used by the game as there's no navigation game-play).[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]After so many years, it's finally here: road access implementation.
Buildings (most of them) will finally require a proper road access.
The feature is not fully implemented yet, but the basis is completed, and its design is set.

All settlements will require this small "road stele" building, which can only be built once and cannot be destroyed.
It's role is simply to be a reference point to define the starting point of your roads network: any road not connected to this stele will be considered invalid.
Besides that, buildings simply need a road on one adjacent tile, and the addition of dirt paths allows you to do so from the game's start.
The lack of building access will be greatly reduce the efficiency of production buildings.

[/p][p]The "roads" display layer will show you easily which buildings are missing road access if any, as well as the quality of roads and if road networks are invalid.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]But beyond simple yes/no road access, the most interesting new feature built on roads is the addition of the 'traffic map'.
Cities will now simulate organic traffic on the roads, to compute a 'traffic heatmap' that you can visualize as a new display layer.
[/p][p][/p][p]This 'sim city' like feature will show which roads are being saturated with traffic beyond their capacity, which will depend on the road type players have built: improving roads will increase their traffic capacity, thus allowing for more traffic before 'turning red'.
This means you'll be able to design a road network adapted to your traffic needs, instead of having to mindlessly upgrade all roads to the highest tier: a single home isolated in the country side will probably remain fine just with a dirt path.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The traffic heatmap is calculated by averaging the paths taken by new 'traffic agents'.
Instead of just spawning cosmetic random 'road wanderers' citizens, the game will now also spawn traffic agents citizens: units with an objective, and who actually pathfind on the roads network.
For now, there is only one main type of traffic agent: production buildings will spawn citizens that deliver their productions or get materials.
In the future, more types of "traffic agents" will be added, to create a more accurate model of traffic in the player cities.[/p][p]It also makes the cities feel more lively, seeing porcos traveling through the streets with an actual goal, which you can also see by selecting them.

The traffic map will then have a global effect on your whole territory: if traffic overall gets bad, it will start to negatively impact the efficiency of all production buildings, and the quality of life of all houses.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Speaking of houses: another new mechanic is finally introduced (albeit basic for now): the desirability map.
It can also be viewed as a display layer.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Buildings can now have a positive or negative desirability effect (and range).
For example: tanneries have a strong negative effect with a large range while things like water sources, palaces, doctors or forums have positive effects.
This defines a global desirability map, and the desirability value where houses are placed now affects the Quality of Life they provide to their residents.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Some long standing QOL features have finally be implemented, notably a new 'copy' tool.
[/p][p]This tool, available from any building's menu, will copy this building's settings to any other building of a similar type. [/p][p]
[/p][p]By clicking on the 'copy' button, you'll be able to then select an area of terrain.
Any building of a matching type will be highlighted in green and once released, the settings of your original building will get copied to all of them.

This allows you to easily copy the material and production choices of your workshops, or to easily copy the particular storage settings of a warehouse.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Another long requested QOL feature has been added: it is now possible to mass upgrade all buildings of a similar type at once, simply by holding "shift" when clicking on the upgrade button, in the building menu.[/p][p]
[/p][p]The upgrade popup will also preview the number and total cost of upgrading all.
It will only upgrade buildings of the same type.
if the total cost is higher than your current material stocks, it will only upgrade the maximum amount possible, meaning some non-upgraded buildings will remain.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]It is now possible to limit the maximum amount of workers in any building.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]By clicking on the number of workers in the building menu, you can now not only hire/fire one worker, but also increase or decrease permanently the cap of workers.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]It is now possible to easily toggle 'production sources' in production buildings. [/p][p][/p][p]In the production building menu, you simply click on the production source to toggle it on/off.
This also works for annexes (ex fields): it will auto set to sleep/wake all the relevant annexes.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
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.
It is rewarded with a special Discord room where i discuss and share daily updates about the progress of "New Dawn" with my Patrons, and an exclusive access to the New dawn WIP builds so you can see it for yourself on your PC![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p]

Ymir is getting a new dedicated server!
For one it's because to be honest i can no longer afford the renting of the previous dedicated server, and it was very expensive for its aging hardware.

The new server has a much better hardware in preparation for the needs of New dawn, and even the current Legacy servers should benefit with possibly noticeable improvements in performances.

However the downside is that it's located in a less convenient location, which means connectivity will be worse (about 50ms more ping in average).
Given the type of game, this should hopefully not matter that much.

The client has been updated to point to the new server.
However note that your games history ("my games" tab in Join games) will no longer point to the correct IP the first time you reconnect to your games: you will have to rejoin your server from the server list.

Most of the basic required graphic systems are now in place!









Fields display is completed. They work pretty much the same way as in the legacy game.






Roads display is completed. A new type of earlier game road has been added: "paths", which are much smaller than the dirt road and will be available right away from the start.



Fences now work on a completely new layer: instead of occupying the tiles, they occupy tile-edges allowing you to control intuitively on which edges you want to place them.
Because they no longer occupy a tile, it also allows you to combine them with other regular objects such as placing them between a road and a building or creating nice garden separations around houses.






Resources display using the legacy resources sprites is completed.
New warehouses use my new system of asset editor and randomization to make them visually less repetitive with additional props randomly appearing.
The new fences system also allows you to further customize the esthetic of storage areas by surrounding them with a wall or fence of your choice.






There are now much more platforms types than in the legacy game, using a wider range of materials:
A primitive mud and wood platform will be available earlier ingame.
Then, new platform types include mudbricks, basic stone, and bricks on top of previously existing planks and stonebloc ones.

"Double height" platforms are now separate infrastructures, which will allow for these to have different tech requirements and unlock later than the basic versions.
Also, only brick and stonebloc platforms will have a "double height" version.

Platforms no longer snap to height levels, instead they deform to follow the ground slopes and thus always add the same height offset from the ground.
It's up to the player's control via terrain editing tools to decide if he wants to build them over a flattened ground or not.






Walls, stairs, battlements, and gates are now placed on the "tile-edge" layer like fences thus making the creation of forts much more visually intuitive and giving you more control on fort designs.

Like fences and platforms, walls follow the slopes of the terrain.







Bridges are now a separated type of infrastructure from platforms.
They can only be built on water, can't be built over, but they will be available sooner than platforms and cheaper.
There are 3 types of bridges: small pontoons, taller plank bridges, and stone 'roman style' bridges.
They will possibly have water depth limitations, with the stone bridges allowing to cross the larger rivers and pontoons being for shores and shallow waters.




Multi territories are now functional, allowing you to seamlessly go from your city to its surrounding countryside.

Being able to fly across your lands in a few seconds from city to villages is pretty satisfying and addictive!






The systems to display buildings in construction is completed. It now includes animated builders, and an additional step of progress blending the building with the construction site.
The display of abandoned buildings is also completed as well.




Finally, the new system of terrain editing is also completed.
It now includes 4 different tools, which will each unlock separately and might also have different limitation upgrades connected to knowledges.



* Smooth simply averages the tile height of each tile of the selected area based on its surrounding tiles.
* Flatten will flatten the selected area of terrain at its average height, but it cannot create hard slopes meaning that its slopes will spread around the flattened area if needed.
* Rise will increase or decrease the height of the selected area, but like flatten it cannot create hard slopes meaning slopes will spread around the affected area as well.
* Level, finally, is the most powerful terrain editing tool but will also be the most costly. It sets all tiles to the same height of the first selected one.

Unlike other tools, Leveling does create hard slopes if required.
When these hard slopes around the affected area are required, they automatically appear as stone retainment walls.
This tool will allow you to create clean flat terraces to build your fortifications on elevated defensive positions.

Terrain tools are now instantaneous, they no longer work with a system of preview and planned construction.
Terrain editing can also be done under any existing structures for convenience, so you can modify the terrain under your existing buildings and roads without having to delete/move them every time.

Repeatedly using terrain rise created a natural pyramid, as slopes spread around the affected area.

Using the terrain leveling tool to create defensive terraces on top of a hill and combined with defensive palissades.


Testing the level tool (during wip) to create large terraces surrounded by stone containment walls, and with cosmetic fences placed on the edges.





Implementation of audio has been repaired and is under way.
That includes volume options in the main menu being finally working!
I'm also reworking the UI sounds to add more diversity and feedback to players.




Next, work will begin on a new big chapter: battle display and resolution.
Includes redoing systems of path-finding to work with the new terrain systems, finding solutions to display armies during battles, and reworking battle calculations on the server side.
It will be a long and complicated chapter, but it will bring New Dawn completion close!







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.
It is rewarded with a special Discord room where i discuss and share daily updates about the progress of "New Dawn" with my Patrons, and an exclusive access to the New dawn WIP builds so you can see it for yourself on your PC!