Goblins of Elderstone News

Another big update for you all. This one took long because we added TWO new jobs and buildings and updated tons of stuff and fixed a mountain of bugs.

We now have a Kindler building with the Kindlers job turning logs into firewood. This means you will now be able to separate and control the amount of firewood your clan produces which deals with a lot of the issues we've had with sticks and then logs being used for different things.


We also finally have the Enforcer who's building is a jail. The Enforcer will beat down rioting and mischievous goblins and lock them up for a while. He will also "encourage" goblins to work harder :D


We've also spent a lot of time refining some of the artstyle and we're working on a whole new shiny set of animations and updates to some of the goblin uniforms and some of the environment art - this will all appear bit by bit over the next few updates.

Next update is planned for a little bit smaller (to make sure we get it done in a more reasonable time) and with some more bug fixes as well.

We're making really good progress at getting the village gameplay done by getting the remaining buildings in. Expect to see more buildings and more enemies over the next few updates and then we will also slowly start focusing on some of the "meta" game elements like the story events stuff, the region map with its diplomacy and raiding as well as the gods mechanics.

Here is a little video we put up last alpha showing off some of the new features and look
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Please join us on discord and help us improve the game :)

Thank you for your support and hope you enjoy this alpha.


Patch notes:

-Added a kindler building which allows the log cutter to be hired to make firewood. This will now be used as the singular heating resource.
-Goblins who riot over item/food needs not being met will now attempt to steal the items from storage before they murder a fellow goblin for his goodies.
-Enforcer can now be hired at the new building the Stockades, he will punish lazy and stealing goblins, will jail any rioting goblins.
-Added in wind to the world which effects particles and materials now.
-New Cloud Shadows that are much softer on the environment.
-New Save/Load system, apologies, but we are deleting your old save files as we cannot support the conversion to the new system.
-Added progress bars for when fighting fires to see how close it is.
-More work done on the look and feel of our thermal view, now has a toasty glow.
-Added a new Selection shader for when hovering over selectable objects in the world.
-Start of game allows for changing your starting resources.
-Updated all trees in the game to use Morph Targets to allow for more interesting diversity between young and old trees, added new dissolve transition for season changes.
-Trees under a certain age can no longer be harvested for Logs.

Balance Changes:
-Goblin carry capacity is now altered based on not just the job, but also what type of resource is being transported.
-Resource priority harvests have been bumped up in the decision weighting.
-Goblins now move slightly slower when carrying resources.
-Goblins will steal twice as many resources as they need when doing a steal action.
-Goblin years as babies is now not longer than the breeding cycles, to keep things simpler.
-Goblins under interaction by a healer, if able, will move towards the healer to receive the help.
-Goblin work priorities changed from hauling logs to kindling.
-Goblin movement speed has been slightly increased ( roughly 60% )

Bug Fixes:
-The goblins first starting year is advanced slightly so its just past daybreak.
-Manually moving the camera while following a goblin, will now break the follow.
-Peons now have the correct clan colors when you first place down the campfire.
-Ground clutter near trees (shade meshes) have been tidied up.
-Fix for the physics on the bridge used on some hexes with rivers.
-Fixed the rotation of the characters during combat to be much smoother.
-Fixed rotation issue with fallen trees and stopped shade meshes spawning when a tree was felled.
-Portraits for goblins have been retouched up with outlines for better readability.
-Fixed the Tutorials UI to be beneath Building UI's, also updated with icons and highlighted keywords.
-Building UI will now a note on their popup panel if you currently don't have access to enough resources to complete construction.
-Fix for rehousing issue so that goblins get the correct debuffs and get housed correctly (no warren / overcrowding).
-Delayed input for story moments to avoid accidentally skipping dialogue
-Fixes for clouds on game start to already be spawned.
-Campfire altered so Walkways cannot spawn quite so close.
-Crash fix when destroying a warren.
-Fix for rioter’s torch collisions with buildings.
-Lighting settings for the region map has been fixed into a day setting.

Alpha 12.0

This update we focused on a new warmth system which will hopefully be more intuitive and clear as well as having a cool visual overlay to see your heatmap of your village. Look forward to everyone's feedback on this new design.

We also added a lot of quality of life improvements, graphics improvements and several small new features as well as the usual batch of bug fixes!


Patch notes:

New Features:
-Major rework to how heating for goblins is done, each building now has a heat source that you will need to keep fueled, and the heat source will keep an area surrounding the building warmed.
-New Heatmap shader when you click on the campfire, will show the how large of an area the heatsources are heating and how hot/cool each of your goblins are.
-Building torches and lights are now driven by the availability of fuel.
-Buildings under construction can now be set as priority in their construction menu for gaining resources and being built by goblins (only one building prioritised at a time).
-Players can set a default banner for use in all subsequent clan creation.
-Many new sound effects have been tuned and changed throughout the game.
-Goblin conditions have many new icons displayed when active.
-Goblin Needs now have a notification for when a new one is unlocked for the village.
-Woodcutter now has new tree cutting sequence.
-Updated Enemy UI to display stats and show who goblins are targeting.
-Overhaul of lighting and post process effects in the world, including new setups for each season.
-Updated Credits menu.
Balance Changes:
-Logs are now delivered to each building for generating warmth.
-Building heatsources can burn Logs at differing rates.
-Traits and War/Trade/Faith levels are now visible when selecting a goblin for a role from their portrait.
-Goblins which gain the freezing debuff will now drop whatever they are doing to seek warmth.
-Building/Worker needs are now displayed from most building UI.
-Goblins can only have a single trait for now.
-Building UI which deal with resources that you currently do not have much of are now highlighted red.

Bug Fixes:
-We bumped up engine versions (quite a few) and have seen a large improvement in our framerate.
-The Mouse Cursor now reacts correctly to clickable objects in the world and UI.
-Refactor of all game object physics in the environment to make sure we have uniform settings across all assets moving forward.
-Fix for the overlap events when placing down a building so overlaps will be much more difficult to achieve.
-Music will now transition correctly between seasons regardless of what timescale is being used.
-Refactor of all UI to manage some of our higher screen resolutions.
-Buildings now have HP bars which will show up like their goblin versions when they are no longer 100%.
-Scavangers will now cancel their marathons to harvest an item if winter has hit mid journey.

Thank you to everyone's patience in this update. It was a tough one as we transitioned to a new studio back into full Independence. We added a wandering merchant who you can trade with, which should make the game less frustrating if you're missing certain resources. We also tracked down and fixed some of our longest running (and hardest to fix) bugs. Hope you enjoy the new update and you can expect more updates more frequently going forward!

New Features:
-The Spring Trader is here allowing goblins to trade resources each spring.
-The Spring Trader can only be accessed if the player has built a Trade Hall and hired a Trade Prince.
-Added starting resource icons to the map before you place down your campfire to identify the best starting places faster.

Balance Changes:
-Merchant will tax resource sales so repurchasing a sold item will cost the player.
-Moved all Iron/Stone resource nodes on all levels further apart.
-Goblin Priests will now prioritize clearing corpses before curing diseased goblins or using heals.
-The Threat level on a region hex now has a greater impact on how many enemies will spawn during Winter if chosen as your starting area.
-Added in ability to completely turn off enemies during winter within the Clan creation screen (Dead goblins will no longer rise in winter either).
-Corpse distance weighted more heavily for priest corpse cleanup.
-Increased the Clan Optimism buff to reduce aggression of goblins, so beserkers are less likely to cause early problems.
-Diseases will now run out their lifetime after 2 years (previously infinite), on a corpse or goblin, after which they will dissapate.
-Gold no longer occupies space in the Storage Huts.

Bug Fixes:
-Fixed the issue with the iron miner goblins not crafting at iron nodes.
-Issue with resources which despawned in winter causing problems with unresolved goblin jobs has been fixed.
-Mouse icon has been recentered correctly.
-Fix for bug where goblins interrupted by attacking enemies while performing a construction action would halt construction on a building forever.
-Fixed some sounds in the UI which were 3D that should not have been.
-Crash fix that was caused occasionally when a building or resource node was destroyed by fire.
-Fix for bug on healing/curing mis-match for priests.
-Spelling fix for Beserker trait.
-Fix for the 2m high stairs as part of a walkway that was blocking traffic.
-Construction site pathfinding weights tuned more in line with other weights to avoid goblin path steering issues.
-Perception of enemies has been cleaned up to cancel jobs better, making reactions to enemies improved.
-Fixed some issues with healing priorities of priests, should now mostly go for closer enemies but triage based on lowest life.
-Rioting goblins have been fixed to properly stop at murdering a single goblin instead of continuing a murder spree.
-Fixed a crash in loading a save file with food rioting goblins.
-Removed UI focus settings from all our UI, allowing the game to be paused/unpaused with spacebar and not activate UI.
-Fixed the joins at the ends of walkways to be leveled correctly.

Today we have an exciting announcement regarding the future of Goblins of Elderstone.

As you know we've been working hard on the game patching and updating it with new content since it's launch. The launch of the game however was not as successful as we wanted due to some issues with the Steam Launch and some bugs and issues that were stopping some people from having the most fun in the game. We’ve struggled since the launch and have been looking for additional funding over the last 6 months. However we have recently found a wonderful solution with a studio I work with. This studio is jumping in to help develop the game and Crytivo agreed to transfer publishing rights to this company because we all believe in the project and that this new home will increase the chance of success for our game and help us scale up development and deliver on our commitments.

We at Lost Goblin and all the goblins involved want to deeply thank Crytivo for all their hard work they have done in the past and they are super guys to work with. The Universim is a project I personally backed when it was on Kickstarter and we all wish them the best success for their game and their publishing endeavours.

Our new situation also means that the old team has been re-assembled and we will be able to deliver updates regularly again and with higher quality. I am grateful for everyone’s patience and understanding as we transition to this new home can confidently continue the development of our ambitious crazy little game.

This latest update focuses on bug fixes, AI improvements and balance changes.

New Features:
-Added in a burnt building husk which disappears overtime, after being burned down.
-Destroyed buildings, (either burnt or done through menu) now drop resources.
-Dead goblins now drop their items as resources to the ground.
-Dropped resources now have a UI to display how many in a stack.

Balance Changes:
-All Buildings now drop 50% of their construction cost on destruction, if still under construction they will drop 100%.
-Storage Buildings will drop 50% of their contained resources (25% if two are owned)
-Warrens Buildings will drop 50% of their contained resources (25% if two are owned)
-Undead are now weaker and spawn less each winter.
-Birthrate changed from every 3 years to every 2.
-Changed the spawn age for your starting village so you get some adults, so that breeding starts sooner.
-Cloth and Tool needs now unlocked slightly later in building construction order.
-Needs now unlock on building completing instead of placement.
-Updated the Message Panel colors for readability.
-Riot Madness chance dropped down slightly.
-Plank cost reduction on all buildings.
-Fire is now easier to extinguish and does not last as long.
-Trees now produce more sticks and logs, other nodes have also been bumped in line with this.
-More items needed for work are now stored in warrens and work buildings.
-Resource node randomization has been tweaked to stop clustering of same type nodes on a single hex.

Bug Fixes:
-Fixed a crash when buildings were destroyed.
-Fix for Scavengers stuck at the work building during winter.
-Another update for goblins stuck in geometry.
-Fix so goblins complete madness action without cancelling out early.
-Fix so goblins would not chain kill other goblins during an item riot madness action.
-Fix for incorrect physics set on one of the hexes in the plains biome.
-Fix for goblins not completing construction on a building after having to flee an enemy, mid construction.
-Fix for resource nodes spawning inside some physics that they should not have.
-Murder message duplication fixed.

We hope you enjoy!