The Dwarves of Glistenveld News

Hi everyone! I know it's been a while. We've been working on some core stuff over the past few weeks and wanted to wait until that was done before publishing a new version. Some cool new features in this one!

New Features:

1. Abilities - When your dwarves level up, you now get to choose which ability they get instead of being chosen at random. We've also introduced 10 new class abilities to go with this change: Hard-hat, Gravel-panner, Rock-tosser, Root-salvage, Dirt-tracker, Keystoning, Hard-hammer, Duelist, Shield-warrior and Survivalist.
   
2. Tech Tree - We've redesigned the tech tree UI to make room for new tiers and techs. We've introduced 2 new 'tier 2' techs to go with it. A tier 2 tech requires 2 schematics, and is unlockable once its associated tier 1 tech has been unlocked.
   
3. Farming - The first new tier 2 tech is farming, which introduces 2 new 'buildings'; a root sapling and a mushroom sapling. You can build any number of these and they'll steadily grow into fully grown roots or mushrooms.
   
4. Lamp Posts - The second new tier 2 tech are lamp posts, which are an upgraded version of support posts. Lamp posts also prevent cave-ins but provide light and an area of visibility as well, so you can keep an eye on things.
   
5. Ballista - You can now 'use' a ballista by selecting a dwarf and right clicking the ballista to fire a single bolt. This is essentially a manual way to fire them, without requiring pressure plates.
   
6. Iron Pickaxe - The old tech 'Advanced Forging' has been replaced with 'Smithing', and a new recipe has been added to the Anvil: the iron pickaxe. Along with a colour change in mining gear, the iron pickaxe is now an upgraded tool which provides +1 attack and slightly faster mining speed, as well as being able to mine tougher rocks like Granite (see below).
   
7. Granite - A new mineral now exists called granite, which is too hard to mine without having given your miner an Iron Pickaxe. Granite does not yet feature in the campaign, but we'll be adding more of this mineral in the next few updates.
   
8. Items - When a unit drops items there's now a 'dropping' animation, where the items are thrown into storage. This addition goes alongside the new miner ability 'Rock-Tosser'.
   
9. Stats - Health, stamina & hunger now display more intelligently in the game view. Stat bars are hidden when they're full. HP of buildings on your team now display if they're damaged.
   
10. Unit Selection UI - Cleaned up the selection UI, arranging stances, inventory slots and commands more neatly.
    

Fixes:

1. Unit Movement - Units on different teams now properly 'occupy' the tile they're on, preventing situations where a goblin walks through your dwarf or vice versa. Units on the same team can still walk past one-another.
   
2. Targeting Enemies A - Firstly, the pathfinding to an enemy has been improved so that when an enemy moves the path to them is recalculated as needed. This stops your dwarves wandering when they're a shorter path to their target.
   
3. Targeting Enemies B - Secondly, fixed a bug where units would sometimes re-engage in battle even though the player has ordered them away. Warriors are now more consistent in auto-engaging enemies.
   
4. Objectives List - The objectives in the objectives UI are smaller now, so that the list takes up less space.
   
5. Dialog - Was occasionally entering a semi-enabled state and throwing exceptions that could cause soft-locks. Also made events more robust so that they work regardless of any problems with dialog.
   
6. All Items UI - Phantom items were appearing in the list.
   
7. Save & Load UI - Unit counts are now working, so when you look through your list of saves, you can see how many units you have.
   
8. Dialog UI - Now hides any temporary UI until dialog is finished to prevent confusion, since other UI is uninteractable anyway.
   
9. Tile Rendering - Tiles now only render wall segments if they're visible. Provides a slight performance improvement.
   
10. AI Performance - Various optimisations to AI behaviour, especially mobbits and bats.
    
11. Map Editor - Provided a number of fixes to the map editor including culling music, improving performance and added an AI tab to the teams UI.
    
12. Engine Robustness - Various engine features have been made more robust, including retaining references between saving & loading.
    

We've also released a blog post talking about the changes with a few screenshots, as well as our progress with the Mac release: Marching into 2020.

The team will be breaking for Christmas now, but we'll continue to patch the game if anything crops up. See you in the new year!

Hi everyone, hope November has treated you well so far! In this post we outline some new sound effects, a cave-like ambience track and a number of fixes.

New features:

1. Cave Ambience - Background ambience will now play in the game! This was intended to be a feature on launch but was delayed due to some technical difficulties.
   
2. Construction SFX - We've updated the engineer's building animation and added SFX for both crafting and assembling.
   
3. Fishing & Harvesting SFX - More subtle than the construction SFX, but now you can hear your forager work as well. Also a ripple will appear on the water where the forager is fishing.
   
4. Dialog Voice-cues - Characters will now make a voice cue when there's dialog. The current lines are placeholder and we'll be replacing them at a later date, once we've recorded some new ones.
   

Fixes:

1. Force Rest/Eat - The two buttons in the UI to force a unit to rest or eat are now much more responsive.
   
2. Units at low health, low stamina or a low-ish combination of both will rest of their own accord. Resting is now given priority over eating when a unit needs both.
   
3. Starting Dwarves - The traits belonging to your starting dwarves are no longer hidden in-game.
   
4. AI Performance - Various fixes to reduce the potential for lag spikes when AI units get stuck.
   
5. Fullscreen/Windowed - Attempted to fix a bug where swapping between fullscreen and windowed mode might make the game go black. We had a hard time reproducing this but we might have found the cause.
   
6. A few more tutorial updates, mostly aesthetic this time.
   
7. Map Editor - Music and ambience are muted while in the editor.
   

Also, those of you wondering where the mac release is, we haven't forgotten you! We'll probably talk about progress with the mac release in our next blog, but we're working on it.

That's all for now!

Hi everyone! Getting cold out there isn't it? This is a short post detailing this week's fixes and some small feature updates.

Patch notes:

1. You can now click the items in the All-Items display (on the left) for a short description of what each item is used for.
   
2. We received feedback of a bug affecting some users playing in full-screen. Each time a decision was issued, the screen would flicker black. We've made an attempt at fixing this, if this problem persists, please let us know.
   
3. A significant change to how walls are built. Now when you tell your engineers to build walls where stone minerals already exist, they will pick up the difference and build over the top, rather than mining out the minerals first. This change applies to stone, while ores will still be mined as usual.
   
4. Units will no longer dump more than the available capacity of a storage building, and will distribute their items more intelligently now.
   
5. Configuring a storage's 'allowed items' will now raise the priority of that storage. e.g. units with gold will prefer placing gold in storage that is restricted to that item. Any storage left unconfigured will be treated as overflow for items that don't fit anywhere else.
   
6. We've also updated the third tutorial to remove the build bridge section from it, since it was confusing and interrupted the flow. We've replaced this with hints about building bridges in Bridge-It Lake.
   
7. Various minor fixes, including missing sounds, etc.
   

Halloween mode will still be enabled for another week. We may keep the option available for longer as well, you'll be able to find it under Options > Gameplay > Seasonal.

We're also working on a new unique scenario map, inspired by sandbox games. We're not sure yet when this will be released, we may save it for the chapter 2 release so that it has all the new features. We'll keep you posted!

That's all for this week, stay warm out there!

Hi everyone, hope you're all ready for some scares tonight! This is a short post detailing some of the bugs that were fixed over the last few days, plus we've added a halloween mode to the game, which will be active over the next week or so!

Patch notes:

1. Loading game saves - A bug mentioned last week where a game save would load incorrectly every now and then. This one wasn't easy to track down, but I think we've fixed it!
   
2. Save/load UI - With this open, you were able to click on buttons in the escape menu through the UI, meaning that if you clicked in the wrong place you could quit to the desktop. Whoops.
   
3. Skirmish mode - Fixed some performance issues due to goblins getting in each others' way.
   
4. Mobbit traps - A building destruction sound was being played instead of the trap sound when triggered.
   

Now for the exciting part: Halloween mode!

1. Atmosphere - You may notice the game's colour and atmosphere 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!
   
3. Webs - You will find random webs too which are sticky and slow units 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.
   

If you'd rather play the game normally, you can turn halloween mode off by going to options, gameplay and unchecking Halloween Mode in the Seasonal section.

We'll keep you informed of any future updates. If you come across any bugs yourself, or would like to request a feature, let us know!

Happy Halloween!

Hi everyone! This is a short post detailing some of the bugs that were found and fixed over the last few days, as well as a couple of requested quality of life improvements.

Patch notes:

1. Bugs revolving around the victory screen and other UI. The fanfare would sometimes play twice, and input wouldn't always be restored after leaving the map or after a new save.
   
2. On linux builds, you couldn't travel to later levels of the campaign. Sorry about that linux users!
   
3. Once in a blue moon, the form alliance options wouldn't resume the dialog and soft-locked the level. If anyone is experiencing this issue, let us know and we'll patch your save files for you.
   
4. Saving & reloading in floody hell could soft-lock the level.
   
5. Placing a building instruction somewhere inaccessible would cause an Engineer to get stuck trying to build it.
   
6. In full-screen mode, tooltip was sometimes turning into a small square after the cursor leaves an entity or tile.
   
7. Various descriptions for buildings, scenery or traits were missing.
   
8. With the cursor in certain positions, pressing down and left/right would move the camera up instead of down. This was caused by a conflict with mouse-edge panning.
   
9. The list of levels on linux builds, for example the tutorials, were displaying in the wrong order.
   
10. In Bridge-It Lake, added various signs to remind players of the fundamental mechanics in the game. Also made it a little clearer how to reach the fishbeard outpost.
    
11. Double tapping a number key will now centre the camera on that unit.
    
12. Under all-items, there will now be a summary of how full your storage is.
    

We've also noticed occasionally a saved game won't load correctly, but that it can reload again without issue. We'll try to have this resolved next week.

We'll keep you informed of any future patches. If you come across any bugs yourself, or would like to request a feature, let us know!