The Dwarves of Glistenveld News

We noticed in some playtests spiders can get a bit out of hand!

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]

• Fishbeard's Mining Operation - Updated and added a second spring to try to balance the difficulty. Fixed potential soft-lock scenario.
  
• Spiders - Tweaked combat agility & worked on burrow behaviour to stop too many leaving their nest.
  
• Game-speed Fixed bug where game-speed would sometimes go too fast during dialog & in-game cutscenes.
  

[h3]Halloween Mode[/h3]
Glistenveld is getting spooky once again as Halloween Mode is now enabled!
In Halloween Mode, you will experience the following changes to the game:

1. Atmosphere - The colour and atmosphere of levels have become a little spooky!
   
2. Pumpkins - You will find random pumpkins in each level. You can harvest these to get a tasty pumpkin stew, which dwarves will treat like meals!
   
3. Webs - You will find random webs that stick to your dwarves and slow them down!
   
4. Bats - When you start a new skirmish mode game, you'll find a few more bats roaming the tunnels!
   
5. Bubbling waters and mist - Water has turned greenish and bubbles, and you will find mist emerging here and there.
   
6. Green blood - Units and creatures flash green when injured, instead of red.
   

As usual, seasonal modes can always be disabled in the options menu under Gameplay > Seasonal.

[h3]Fishbeard's Mining Operation[/h3]

To help celebrate this spooky event, we have released a new map: Fishbeard's Mining Operation. Fishbeard is one of the other clans you encounter in your journeys under Glistenveld, and in this scenario you step in the shoes of one of their expedition groups, but not all is what it seems about this particular venture... Find it in the list of scenario maps under New Game > Scenarios!



[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]

1. Various AI Fixes - Includes some warrior AI improvements. We're still not entirely happy with when units decide to rest or fight. This might be worthy of a blog post, we'll see.
   
2. Spider AI - Spiders were not properly utilising burrows and would occasionally get stuck. The spider mother should mostly keep to its original nest.
   
3. Unit Buried/Drowning - When dwarves end up buried in a wall they will now take damage and jump to a nearby ground tile if able. When dwarves end up in water, they will start losing stamina and then health until a friendly unit stands next to them, at which point they are rescued and jump out. (This update will become more relevant in future content)
   
4. Campaign World Map - Polished up the interface for the world map. New/unexplored maps are given an outline. Refined code behind the scenes in preparation for an upcoming feature.
   
5. Bats - Should no longer fly through doors.
   
6. Ballistas - Which pressure-plates automatically link to ballistas has been improved. Rather than first-come first-serve, they now switch according to which ballista is closest. This is the case unless they've been set by the player or were already existing before the game was last loaded.
   

Not too much in terms of updates this month, and I know we haven't released a blog post in a while. We've been focusing on chapter 2 content, mostly grind-work and spoilers at the moment, so we don't have a lot to share, but rest assured we're still working hard and making progress!

Until our next update, Happy Halloween!

Fellow Dwarves! Our engineers have made two important discoveries in the world of Glistenveld! First, a new technique of organising storage spaces that blows previous designs out of the water! Second, a new technology that reprocesses materials for industrialisation, such as repopulating fish!

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]
Features & Design Changes:

1. Storage Arrangements - Instead of toggling individual resources for each tile of storage, the configure button now takes you to a new UI that allows you to create arrangement templates where you can configure what items are permitted as well as the arrangement's priority. You can then easily set which storage corresponds to which arrangement. Newly placed storage tiles copy the arrangement of their neighbours.
   
2. Game Speed SFX - When fast-forwarding using the cog, sounds and voices should now play back sped-up to correspond with the game-speed.
   
3. Unit Aggro - Warriors should attack enemies on sight more, rather than relying mostly on defend zones or being idle. This change also applies to other classes, but at a much smaller radius. We're still experimenting with aggro cooldowns, so this may be adjusted in future patches, we'll see.
   
4. New Tech: Farming II - The first tier-3 technology unlocks 2 buildings: the charcoal kiln and fish lure. The kiln turns piles of wood into coal by burning them under a mound of dirt. Keep your dwarves out of its vicinity however, as it produces lingering toxic smoke. The fish lure consists predominantly of algae that is found on growing green mushrooms, and can be placed near waterfalls to spawn fish. This tech also unlocks the ability to harvest growing green mushrooms, just tread carefully!
   
5. Idle Dwarves - When dwarves are idle, they will stop themselves from crowding certain buildings including: tables, beds, doors, tracks, storage and food barrels.
   
6. Skirmish Mode - 'Random cave' setting will no longer spawn empty caves. Setting a team number to '0' will now match the species, for example if a dwarf camp spawns there, they will be allied with all other dwarves.
   

Fixes & Improvements:

1. Engine Crash Fix - Stability fixes for the sound engine, which includes a multi-thread fix that was causing most of the game's (rare) crashes.
   
2. Pick-up Instruction - Placing an instruction over storage will stop units from dropping items there until the job is complete.
   
3. Move Instruction - Telling an engineer to prioritise this instruction should now work as intended.
   
4. Minecarts - Units will now drop all their items on the pick-up location, instead of on neighbouring tiles when the pick-up location has a full stack.
   
5. Caverns Mode v0.54 - Enemy spawn balance improvements, and improvements to some cave spawns, in an attempt to ensure every type of cave has a purpose.
   
6. Dead Units - The deceased unit tab of the dwarf-list should now correctly show unit portraits, and gravestones should now retain their text.
   
7. Windy Rivers - Fixed some soft-lock bugs that were recently introduced at the beginning segment of this level.
   
8. Mobbits - Some mobbits were frozen in place after loading a save game or wouldn't leave their warrens.
   
9. Assembling - Fixed bug where engineers might build the wrong building on top of another instruction, during major batch constructions.
   
10. Building Sprites - Buildings that you own outside of visible light will now still appear opaque, rather than transparent, to be more easily recognised.
    
11. Scenarios & Skirmish - Polished up and fixed some bugs in scenario maps & skirmish mode.
    
12. Various other fixes including a change to how save-file icons are generated, FPS drops caused by pathing issues with scripted movement, and inconsistencies with selection in one-button mode.
    

Next month we will be focusing mostly on preparing chapter 2 content. The next patch will feature Halloween mode, but probably won't have too much else in terms of features.

That's all for now, stay safe out there!

Fellow Dwarves! A small bit of news today. Our engineers have figured out how to use less stone when paving, and our foragers have reworked their food production strategies!

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]
Features & Design Changes:

1. Borderless Window - Added borderless-window mode as a third option alongside full-screen and windowed. Due to occasional issues with fullscreen this is now default.
   
2. Cooking Station - The third meal recipe no longer requires fish, it now requires 4 mushrooms and 2 meat instead. This means when fish sources are depleted, you can still make meals using more than just mushrooms!
   
3. Farming Plots - No longer harvests all grown mushrooms, but instead leaves at least 1/3 of mushrooms in its radius to ensure re-sporing can continue.
   
4. Battle - Units can escape from battle more easily now when clustered together, pushing past other friendly units.
   
5. Cobblestone - Rebalanced to cost 2 stone instead of 3. This should cause less of a stone shortage each time you are paving your bases.
   
6. Autosaves - Instead of autosaving every 5 minutes, the game will now autosave every 2 minutes using 3 different autosave files. We will eventually provide settings for autosave features.
   

Fixes & Improvements:

1. Minecarts - No longer jump tracks on very large track lines, or drop more food than tables / food barrels can hold. Units riding minecarts will now jump out at the end of a track.
   
2. Hardware Mouse - The mouse pointer will now automatically switch to a hardware rendered mouse whenever the FPS is low. This means moving your cursor should remain relatively smooth.
   
3. Frenzied Allies - In rare situations, frenzied ally dwarves could be unfrenzied but continue to attack your buildings. This should no longer happen.
   
4. Warrens - Mobbit & bat warrens were spawning a new mobbit/bat between each load & save, regardless of whether one already existed, causing large numbers to exist.
   
5. Textures & Sprites - Updated various graphics including iron ore, iron hammer and some traits.
   
6. Saving - Certain creatures like mobbits were getting stuck in a decision loop, which significantly slowed down saving times due to large amounts of retained data.
   
7. Recipe Info UI - Should no longer vanish periodically while the game is playing.
   
8. Floody Hell - Some data was being lost in the properties of water after a load & save, which could cause this map to be incompletable.
   
9. Survival - The survival map under scenarios has been updated with the ability to buy schematics using a trade stall, to reflect the changes to schematics in a prior patch.
   
10. Various fixes including screenshot mode not interacting correctly, building sprites disappearing and AI fixes.
    

That's all for now, stay safe out there!

Hear ye Dwarves! Our engineers have been hard at work to make your bases into well-oiled machines! Reduced loading times, reduction of lag spikes during gameplay, a lot of minor quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes, a snoring sfx for sleeping dwarves and a way to temporarily increase the game speed!

[h3]Patch Notes[/h3]
Features & Design Changes:

1. Game Speed Cog - You may not have been aware, but the little cog in the bottom-right corner of the minimap was a button that paused/unpaused the game. You can now click and hold this cog to speed up the game-time! We deliberated on this design a lot, and are happy with our choice for the 'hold' mechanic, but we'll be fully explaining our reasoning in our next blog post.
   
2. Support/Lamp Posts - Before placement and when selected, these now show the radius within which they support against cave-ins.
   
3. Combat Exp - Non-warrior units now also gain exp while in combat, though to a lesser degree than warriors. Also corrected some errors in combat calculations and abilities.
   
4. Claims - Allies were claiming springs too aggressively in caverns mode. Now any springs you've fought for are considered yours until a certain cooldown ends.
   
5. Caverns-mode Options - The menu at the start has been revamped to be more flexible. You can now both choose a starting condition and tick extra options like 'more schematics' as well. A new option has been added that prevents other dwarf clans from spawning anywhere near you.
   
6. Tech Table - Can now craft schematics at the tech table using 6 old artefacts. This is in addition to being able to trade for them with gold at trade stalls (in certain modes only). The kindlewick trade stall still trades for 5 artefacts.
   
7. Skirmish-mode - Smaller update introducing some resource balance changes, updated region design & colour-schemes.
   
8. Iron Roots - Now provide 2 wood & 1 iron ore when harvested.
   
9. Sleeping SFX - You can now hear dwarves snoring in beds.
   
10. Star bars - When a unit is particularly low health/stamina/hunger, that bar will now have a red outline, so you can more easily identify when units may be in need of assistance.
    
11. Upgraded Hinges - The ballista part of this technology has changed. Instead of ballistas triggering in groups, pressure plates are now given the option to trigger a second ballista. We feel this is more intuitive, and allows for greater flexibility and strategy.
    
12. Gravestones - A new building under Infrastructure that allows you to bury the dead with dignity. This is in combination with a new tab in the dwarf-list that allows you to browse through your fallen dwarves. For now this is only an aesthetic/sentimental feature, there are no mechanical benefits to building gravestones yet. Please note that units that died prior to this patch will not show, as they were not maintained in pre-existing saves.
    
13. Auto-Pause - Added toggleable option to gameplay settings that automatically pauses the game when a unit becomes low-health.
    
    

Fixes & Improvements:

1. Multi-threaded Pathfinding - It took a lot of work, but pathfinding now runs on a separate thread outside of the game loop, which should stop many of the fps judders experienced while playing medium-large maps. There may still be some for other reasons, we will continue to track these down. There may also be some new quirks in unit behaviour, for this reason we've provided a checkbox in gameplay options to toggle multi-threaded pathfinding on/off.
   
2. Assembling & Prioritising - Engineers should behave a bit more intelligently when assembling, and prioritising buildings should work as expected. Before, when another engineer was already working on the job, the chosen engineer would refuse to do it. You can now select additional engineers and right click an assembling building to assist with it.
   
3. Saving & Loading - Fixed UI flickering with the save & load game list. Unit counts for new saves should now work. Also reduced loading time by pushing certain graphically generated content to run later.
   
4. Manual Mining - When telling a miner with a full inventory to mine a new tile, they will now drop the items where they stand instead of returning to storage.
   
5. Caverns-mode Generation - Balanced mushroom spawning, fixed bug with quests not ticking off, added a couple of new cave types.
   
6. Double-clicking - Some mice have an issue where clicking one of the buttons will sometimes fire 2 click events instead of 1. Although this isn't an issue with TDoG specifically, we decided to try to account for it anyway. The game should now detect and ignore double-clicks of this kind.
   
7. Crafting UI - The crafting options shown when a building like a forge or claim is selected will now update as items are added or removed from storage.
   
8. Doors - Mobbits, fireflies, and other little bugs should no longer be able to interact with doors.
   
9. Items - Items on the ground now have shadows. Items carried while in battle are given transparency since they're less important in those moments.
   
10. Feedback form - Fixed various bugs involving the feedback form, including unclickable send button, too limited writing box, malformed screenshots and a certain 'socket timeout exception'.
    
11. Ballista - Was behaving as if there was a shot remaining even though ammo is depleted.
    
12. Dwarf-list - Clicking dwarves in the list no longer immediately centres the camera on them. To centre the camera on them now, click them a second time.
    
13. Fixed various other intermittent bugs including a couple involving achievements & stats, and one very rare bug that had a pandora's box of outcomes. If you've ever seen a 'peeper' talk or a unit spontaneously combust, this is the bug we're talking about. I don't know who let Loki into the script engine but he's now banished back to Asgard!
    

We've also been working hard scripting the levels for the chapter 2 release. We can't give too much detail about that, but we might be sharing a teaser about one of them in an upcoming blog!

That's all for now, stay safe out there!