Going Medieval - A 3D Voxel Colony Sim, now in Early Access.

[Johannes]

How are the combat mechanics? Is it varied / challenging?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

can I kidnap raiders, amputate their limbs, and surgically remove their organs to sell on the black market?

 

[Zombra]

How are the combat mechanics? Is it varied / challenging?

I can't really say yet as I only had one fight so far. On normal difficulty the early game is easy.

As mentioned before, archers get hard bonuses when elevated, so that's cool.

I've read that the AI is very exploitable in terms of "killboxes" - if you leave one entrance open enemies will all go that way. Then in late game they start using trebuchets to knock down all your walls instead, which changes things completely, and I have seen a lot of complaints that trebs are OP, with just as many people saying "then attack the trebs moron".

 

[Gerrard]

This, or the beaver game? From just a short look over the materials seems like that one has more content at the current stage.

 

[Zombra]

This, or the beaver game? From just a short look over the materials seems like that one has more content at the current stage.

Timberborn looks good too, probably better for a larger scale city game, certainly more polished. Personally I am more into the smaller scale of this where I know every colonist's name and what their specialties are. Having 500 workers whose only distinguishing feature is how hungry they are seems dull to me.

 

[Zombra]

If anyone wants to see the game in "action", I'm streaming for the next couple hours. Happy to show you what the interface looks like, answer questions, try things etc., just ask in chat. Stream link in my sig.

 

[SmartCheetah]

I've been following this project for a few years now, bought in on day one, and here are some of my current thoughts adding on other people points:
- A lot of things is basicly taken from Rimworld/DF, which isn't a bad thing realy because they just work.
- A lot of things are still missing. They are adding Trading in next content update (and more sophisticated character creator, think of. "Prepare Carefully mod" for Rimworld) and they just hired a guy who works on making the game fully moddable.
- "Monday updates" are meh. Basicly every monday they are teasing some stuff they are working on... Problem is, whole month all the teasers were about trading which basicly looks almost the same as Rimworld trading. I'm afraid those teasers consist of everything we will see in this next content update, while they should be adding small features like additional items, new wall types etc. Ladders were in the early alpha, and we're still missing them in the early access. Which sucks. Lack of content is the game worst nightmare right now, which brings me to:
- Slow developement cycle. This game has been out for few months already and only content update we saw was the one with weapon racks/shelves (nice addition, but pretty small one) and next thing coming is trading. But why would I bother with trading if most of my colonies are self sustainable in 3 years and I have most if not all top tier items? They really need to speed up the process of adding more "smaller things"

Lack of "bodies of water" in the roadmap is kinda worrying. I want a fucking fishing village.

 

[Jenkem]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1029780/view/4624626247917358232

Update #2 | Merchants & Diplomacy
New update is officially here!
Greetings medievalists!

The new major update titled
“Merchants & Diplomacy”
is now live on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. All those fixes and improvements from the experimental branch are now stable, tested, and present in this update! These include advanced options when it comes to starting settlers’ customization, the option to relocate buildings, our new trading and faction systems and various other tweaks and improvements. Read about all the exciting new changes, here!

Faction System

The Faction tab is located within the
Historical Records
panel in-game. It shows you what alignments you have with other factions and which faction is at war with who. You can change alignment with other factions by trading with them, gifting them things during trading/caravan gameplay, attacking traders, returning runaways or refusing to do so (more info in the event segment!).

New Region Map

To unlock the Region map, you will have to research
“Cartography”
in the Research tab. Once you do that, you’ll be able to build a new furniture type - the
Cartography Table
which will, in turn, give you access to the Region tab. You can now select other settlements on the region map and see their basic information, as well as send caravans to them.

Spoiler

Bartering

Merchants, as an event, will arrive at the player’s base over time. You can start the bartering process by selecting one of your settlers and right-clicking the trader NPC. Only resources on stockpiles/shelves will be available for trading from the player’s side.

Trading is based on the value system of resources/equipment and the value of each resource differs depending on time of year, merchant, if the player is giving or taking, etc.

You can attack merchants and lose alignment points with the trader’s faction, but be careful - they will usually come with bodyguards. If the merchant turns hostile, both the trader and their bodyguards will act like raiders.

Merchants will not trade weapons/armors/shields if they have neutral alignment with you, and certain traders (like weapon merchants and large goods merchants) will not appear if the player has no friendly factions on their region map.

Caravan System

Right now, the caravan system is only utilized for trading and gifting purposes. Attacking other settlements via caravans is not currently in the game, but will be supported over the course of the development.

You can now send caravans by selecting other settlements in the region map and choosing the ‘send caravan’ option. However, for that to work, you will have to choose which settlers to send and what goods to send with them.

The caravan won't start if there are no settlers chosen, the mass is too great or there is not enough nutrition for the trip to and from the destination settlement.

Sending a caravan will give you the ability to trade with the settlement when the caravan arrives at the destination.

Bartering with settlements is the same as regular trading, except that the prices are in favor of the player and not the faction.

Caravans can’t return home if the player has bought more mass than can be carried or if the amount of nutrition is not met for the way back.

Relocate Structures - [Community Request]

We’ve also implemented a feature where you can turn almost any production building/furniture/decoration/trap into a pile allowing for the relocation of a structure. Once turned into a pile, it can be moved onto stockpiles or be installed anywhere else (if there is space for it!)

Installing and reinstalling a structure takes ⅓ of the time it takes to build it, but this process doesn’t have a minimum level requirement, nor does it give XP to settlers. It’s also worth mentioning that you will be able to buy some structures (as piles) from merchants, even though they’ve not been previously researched.

Event System Overhaul

To adapt to newly introduced trading and faction systems, we decided to do some tweaks to events. Beyond introducing new trader events, we’ve overhauled how existing raid events work. Before there were 3x different raid events for 3x different factions in the game. Now there is only one raid event and the faction is chosen randomly from hostile factions.

Dev note:
If you load the save that is currently experiencing a raid in the
0.5.31.15
version of the game, that raid will disappear. All the raids that come after that one should work properly.

The Runaway event has a slightly different outcome now. Refusing to give the settler back will not necessarily initiate a raid, but it will set -50 to the alignment with the faction that is looking for the runaway. This can result in the faction potentially turning neutral from friendly or hostile from neutral.

Character Creation

We’ve enabled the option to customize starting settlers if you choose to do so - by selecting the Advanced Customization option, the settlers screen will expand and you will be able to choose things like their looks, backgrounds, pseudonyms, religious alignments, ages, weights, heights, what perks they have and what skills they excel at.

There are some limitations to the creation points used to “build” your settler - they are not infinite. They are randomly distributed to every settler and the players can change where they want those points to go. The number of points it costs to alter a skill, perk, background, passion, etc., varies.

You are able to save your settlers as presets, so you can use them in other scenarios.

Additional fixes/features

• Certain crop fields now have a minimum botanical skill in order to be sown.
  
• Trap prices and damage have been changed - they are a bit expensive to make now and need a higher minimum skill.
  
• 14 new heraldry symbols added to the heraldry editor.
  
• Level up particle effect added when settlers gain a level.
  
• All dust effects are replaced with a new dust shader.
  
• Added particle effect when production buildings are complete.
  
• Added dust effect when a pile spawns on the ground.
  
• Added dust effect when settlers run.
  
• Changed the way layer transparency works (the annoying transparent 0.5 layer has been removed).
  
• Perks have been tweaked in terms of balance and conflict with others perks.
  
• Added tooltip information for perks if they conflict with some other perks.
  
• Fixed issue with loading screen not showing text properly in non-English languages.
  
• Fixed several Community-noted translation issues.

We hope you enjoy experimenting with the new features and continue to let us know if you come across any more bugs or issues.
Remember, F10 is your friend!

 

[Zombra]

I was REALLY excited when I read "relocate buildings", but relocating furniture and crafting stations is good too.

 

[Galdred]

Diplomacy and being able to attack settlements sound promising. I really hope we get AI that tries to mine under the walls instead of happily running into killboxes.
But at least, there is a chance we might be able to do some mining assaults ourselves in the future (as wall collapsing if the underlying foundations are too weak is already present).

 

[Jenkem]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1029780/announcements/detail/4499660870257424736

Update #3 | New Resources & Cultivation
New update is officially here!
Greetings medievalists!

The new major update titled “New Resources & Cultivation
is now live on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. All those fixes and improvements from the experimental branch are now stable, tested, and present in this update! These include new resources, new buildings, more harvesting options, fueling system, new settler’s modifiers and various other tweaks and improvements.

Watch the video below to see the update’s highlights, and if you want to go into more detail, beneath the video are the full patch notes:




Seeds and Saplings

We have made some major changes to crops. You won’t be able to magically conjure them from thin air anymore and we’ve added a new phase to the life cycle of plants. Saplings are also in the game. Here is how it’s all going to work:

• To sow crops, you will need new resources - seeds and saplings.
  
• Agriculture now unlocks all crop fields, but they will not appear in the crop field panel unless you have the seed for that crop somewhere on the map.
  
• One seed/sapling occupies one grid space.
  
• One settler can carry a maximum of 300 seeds | 30 saplings in their inventory.
  
• Some crops, like barley and redcurrant, are sown with their produce (one redcurrant, as a resource is used to plant one redcurrant bush).
  
• All plants drop seeds in their ripe phase, but there are certain plants like cabbages, carrots, and beets, that give more when in flowering and seeding phases.
  
• Trees drop saplings whenever they are cut, except when in the dead phase.

Crop Blight

Blight is the new event in the game and will appear during summer and autumn. It will occasionally occur on random sections of the field and will destroy your crops if it isn’t dealt with.

• Blight can affect only flax, barley, cabbage, carrots, and beets.
  
• When the blight appears, you will want to cut contaminated crops before it’s too late, as it will spread to nearby crops.
  
• Strategic crop placement will also prevent the blight from spreading - the size of the crop fields, as well as their shapes, play a big role in blight control.

Spoiler

New flora

To make things a little easier and interesting, we added some new flora elements.

• Apple trees are added to the game and can be sown with apple saplings. You can't find those saplings in the wild, but they can be bought from merchants or settlements. These trees have several harvest cycles and produce apples, wood, and sticks.
  
• Wild flax and wild barley are here (or, as we’d say it: growing wild!). Look at them as a starting point from which you will obtain seeds. They look a bit different and give fewer resources than regular flax and barley.
  
• Even if your scenario starts with zero wild flax and barley, over time they should appear all over the map. The amount will depend on the map type and size.

NOTE: Wild flax and wild barley will not grow on maps from an old save.


New resources

With the latest update, we are bringing some useful new resources that can be utilized across your settlement.

• Bread - produced as a meal if you use barley as a singular cooking resource.
  
• Apple pie - produced as a meal if you use apples as a singular cooking resource.
  
• Redcurrant pie - produced as a meal if you use redcurrants as a singular cooking resource.
  
• Honey crisps - produced as a meal if you use honey as a singular cooking resource.
  
• Apple cider - produced from using apples in the brewing station.
  
• Mead - produced from using honey in the brewing station.
  
• Honey - produced from skeps. It can be eaten raw, used for cooking and used as a basic medkit (like herbs.)
  
• Wax - produced from skeps. Used to refuel candles.
  
• Tallow - produced when butchering some animals. Also used as a basic medkit (like herbs). Can also be used to refuel candles.
  
• Ice blocks - made from ice boxes. They can only be produced if the temperature around them is -1 or less. Ice blocks lower the temperature of the room around them when stored in any room.
  
• Silver - mined from voxels.
  
• Silver ingots - made from silver in the smelting station, like other ingots.

NOTE: silver voxels can't be found on old save maps. Only when starting a new game


New equipment

We’ve added new weapon materials for you and your enemies:

• Silver versions of weapons, armors, and shields are in the game. When it comes to quality for weapons, silver is a bit better than gold, but still worse than iron or steel. Silver items have a greenish tint to them, so they look like rusted silver. It’s a design choice to make them different from gold, iron, and steel.
  
• Bucklers, kite, and regular shields now have all-metal variations (gold, steel, iron, and silver.)
  
• Enemies and visitors have some new equipment that you can't create. Things like armor made from bones, animal headpieces, headbands, etc. Nothing stops you from taking those forcefully, though.

New structures

New production buildings, as well the ones that are going to make trading easier, are now in the game.

• Icebox - produces ice blocks. Temperature around the structure influences the speed of production. The production will stop when the temperature becomes higher than -1. The lower the temperature, the faster the production.
  
• Skep - produces honey and wax. Skeps are also influenced by temperature and will not produce if the temperature is too low.
  
• Merchants stall - merchants will go to this structure once they appear on your map. Their goods will appear on the stall when they reach it, and you will be able to start the trading process either by the right-clicking merchant or the stall.
  
• Caravan Halt - settlers will gather at this structure when forming a caravan. Forming caravans also works as before. When settlers return, the resources will spawn around the nearest halt instead of on the edge of the map.

Visual variations to structures

You can now change visual variations to some structures. NOTE: This type of change will have no impact on gameplay. It only impacts the visuals of the game.

• Elements that have variations are: roofs, walls, floors, fences, merlons.
  
• Beyond shape variations, roofs now have material variations, too. These are strictly visual differences.
  
• By using a rotation of these variations, only the visual representation will be affected.

NOTE: Corner merlons and corner fences are included as variations of merlons/fences now. This move creates empty spots in the places you used previous corners.


Research panel changes

The research panel had to be reorganized a bit due to the integration of the elements mentioned above.

• Beekeeping and Ice Making research nodes are now in the research panel - unlocking these nodes will allow you to build Skeps and Ice Boxes.
  
• The research panel received a bit of visual rearrangement due to the integration of these elements.

New harvesting control and behavior

Crop fields have an additional panel next to the selection panel now. Within that panel there are a couple of options that you can select:

• Crop field priority - You can change the priority of crop fields, just like you do with stockpiles. All crop fields with the same priority will be treated the same as before (the closest one has the highest priority). Priority influences sowing, cutting, and harvesting.
  
• Don’t Sow - Settlers will still harvest the existing crops on the field but will not sow another round while this box is checked.
  
• Harvest Phase - You can now choose in which phase a crop gets harvested. The phases you can choose are only phases where a harvestable resource is present (note that barley plants only have one harvest phase.)
  
• Cutting Phase - This option appears when you select tree crops. Some trees, like apple trees, have both cutting and harvesting phases within this panel.
  
• Changing crops - You can change the type of crops that are sown on the selected field. Changing a crop type will order the crops on that field to be cut down so the new ones can be sown.

Other notable changes in this area:

• Plants now die if they are under a roof. A message will appear in a plant’s selection screen when this happens. If you place crop fields under the roof, it will not trigger settlers to sow there
  
• Resource amount dropped after harvesting/cutting is now multiplied by the percentage of HP the plant has. For example: if the hailstorm, frost, or blight hurts the plants, they will give fewer resources because of it.

Fuel system

Light and heat sources now require refueling in order to emit heat/light. Once these buildings are out of fuel, settlers will need to use one of the fuel types to refill them.

• Structures like braziers, torches, and candles need refueling to emit heat.
  
• Each structure can have a different kind of fuel. Torches and braziers use coal, wood, and sticks, while candles use tallow and wax.
  
• Each fuel resource has an assigned fuel strength, meaning they will not offer the same fuel amount. More tallow is needed than wax to refuel a candle. You will also need more sticks than coal or wood.
  
• Settlers that have the Steward job turned on will do the refueling.
  
• Once refueled, those buildings can be turned on/off without settlers.

NOTE: The fuel system is used on furniture that gives heat (braziers, candelabra, torches). We are not using them on production buildings (even though they give off heat as well).


New modifiers for settlers

Settlers now have different modifiers as they age (some of the attributes are different if they are young, adult, middle-aged, or senior). These modifiers are also affected by the settler's height and weight.

• Settlers gain random perks (sometimes) when they have a birthday. The perk is given in the same rule set as randomizing a settler when creating them.
  
• Some perks (for now only the cannibal perk) can’t be received with birthdays.
  
• Settlers can now die of old age. Every time it’s time for them to wake up (if they are older than 65 and after at least 3h of sleep) there is a chance they will die. As they grow, their chances of dying will increase. If you really want to see the odds and edit them, you can do so within the WorkerBase.json file.

The rebellious state and merry modifiers have been changed.

• Rebellious - Before, when a settler’s mood would drop under a certain threshold, the settler would become rebellious. Now, when the mood drops under a certain threshold, there is a 50% chance the settler will become rebellious, with each negative mood modifier that happens. There is a cooldown where the settler can't become rebellious sometime after being rebellious.
  
• Merry - Before, while a settler’s mood was over 80%, the settlers were merry by default. Now, when the mood is over 80% settlers have a 50% chance of getting the merry effector, with every good mood modifier that triggers.

Settlers are dreaming.

• Settlers can now have good or bad dreams. (there is also a chance they do not dream.)
  
• Settlers that have some perks, like glutinous, cannibal, and bloodlust can also have different dreams.
  
• Settlers with the bloodlust perk now get a mood modifier when killing someone.

Enemies

Enemies now have new equipment that relates to the factions they are tied to - this is an aesthetic choice as we think it adds a bit more personality to the factions.

• Shields and plate armors now have heraldry on them. They will have the enemy heraldry while the enemy has them equipped and the player’s heraldry while the player has them equipped.
  
• Factions now have a percentage of female visitors and/or enemies.

Music:
New songs, yay!

• Added two music tracks and changed music playlist logic.

Other notable introductions and improvements

• The Animal Husbandry job type has been added to the JOBS panel. At the moment, it is only used for beekeeping.
  
• The camera will not move to the merchant location once the event appears in the game.
  
• Clay brick and Limestone Brick arches are in the game, due to the popular demand
  
• The Bartering and Caravan screen has sorting arrows now - you can sort items by alphabetical placement, value, amount, etc.
  
• Non-tradable items will be always at the bottom of the screen by default.
  
• We’ve introduced daily maximum attainable level experience for a skill per settler. On a daily basis, settlers will be able to earn 1600XP for one skill. If that number is passed, the settler will earn 10% of the XP for that skill (meaning, if they earned 50XP for cutting trees, now they’ll earn 5XP). When the day starts anew, XP that was 1600/1600 will return to 0/1600. The cap limit is influenced by various factors, so settlers will differentiate among themselves. We also introduced skill decay - once a settler reaches level 5 with a skill, XP for those will start to decay. Decay will be slower but over time, as settlers age, decay numbers will increase. Decay will not affect their current skill level - skill level cannot decay under the last level gained.
  
• A new tooltip system has been implemented. Tooltips should no longer stay active on the screen and appear dubbed from time to time. Tooltips will now follow the mouse cursor in order to look a bit more fluid.
  
• World layer level is now written in the save data - upon loading, the game will remember the layer on which you were on.

Bugs & Fixes
We have also fixed a bunch of things:

• Fixed the issue that caused roof textures to flicker and overlap when different combinations are made (next to one another) and the camera is rotated.
  
• Fixed the issue where settlers would get multiple birthdays in some cases.
  
• Fixed the issue where surrounding textures can be seen through the Kiln texture.
  
• Fixed the issue where "Some custom images have been deleted, “Your heraldry design might lack the custom image used." message would appear in the Heraldry edit menu.
  
• Fixed the issue where some perks were addable to the body types that didn’t make sense.
  
• Fixed the issue where the shadow texture of tools and weapons did not display properly.
  
• Fixed the issue where merchants’ storage capacity is sometimes out of proportion without trading/gifting anything, and the "Accept" button is greyed out.
  
• Fixed various tooltip issues.
  
• Fixed various text issues.
  
• Fixed issue where editing resources in the production building would edit resources in the next building you select.
  
• Holding down CTRL for layer jumping will no longer deselect what you have selected.
  
• Holding down CTRL for layer jumping will no longer place buildings in construction mode.
  
• Adjustments are made for the click-through system (clicking on the same thing to select the object behind it). Click through issues have been fixed (in certain situations the player would select a floor element instead of a settler)
  
• Fixed issue of production being paused resuming after lading that session.

 

[SmartCheetah]

Good update, I'm having a blast. Good thing that they've started to throw a lot of smaller stuff to the updates as well (In first two updates it wasn't really the case) so it keeps you entertained for a longer period of time.

 

[Jenkem]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1029780/announcements/detail/3339995286933570505

Update #4 | Animals & Pets

Spoiler

New update is officially here!
Greetings medievalists!


Animals & Pets
All the fixes and improvements from the experimental branch are now stable, tested, and present in this update! There’s still some fine-tuning required and we plan to post more patch notes in the upcoming weeks.

Watch the video below to see the update’s highlights, and if you want to go into more detail, check beneath the video for the full patch notes:




But before you check the full log, we have a couple of important warnings:


Old saves will not work with this update

Once you update the game on the main branch, existing saves become incompatible, as indicated by an in-game warning (“Can’t load this game.”). We mentioned that this would happen due to code restructuring - we're sorry, but it simply isn't possible to play old saves with this update. Please, start a new game!

If you want to continue building pre-update settlements, without the new content and changes, we have added a pre-update branch called “
legacy
”. You can access it the same way you enable the experimental branch, as explained here.

Disable Mods if you have them

Please note:
if you are using unofficial mods, you might experience crashes or even an inability to start the game. If you do, turn the mods off before starting the game. If the problem persists, be sure to delete all of the folders in the
steamapps\common\Going Medieval
and then verify the game files.

Old custom scenarios

If the game doesn't show some of your custom scenarios, it should give you a warning. To fix this, most likely you need to change just a couple of lines:

1. Go to "%userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\UserData\Scenarios\" directory and open a custom scenario in a text editor
   
2. Paste the snippet below into your code and copy values from the old strings 'title' -> 'title', 'info' -> 'info', 'description' -> 'narrative'
   "locKeys": [
   {
   "language": 1,
   "name": "",
   "info": "",
   "description": ""
   }
   ],
   "startingAnimals": [],
   
3. You can now delete the old 'title', 'info', and 'narrative' entries.
   
4. Before saving and testing it in-game, validate the file by copy/pasting all content to some online JSON validation tool.

Now, on to the fun part.

Animal husbandry

Global animal behavior changes
Animal naming
- All animals can be named now.
New animals
- Goats, sheep, chickens, dogs, foxes, boars, cows, and rats are all present in the current build of the game. More will come later.
Gender
- Animals can be male or female
Age
- Animals can be young or old. They have a randomized life span and will die when reaching it.

This will influence which type of resource, and in what amount, you’ll get from them.

Sleep
- Animals have to sleep now. Some animals, like deer, are active during the daylight hours. Others, like foxes, are nocturnal.
Hunger
- Animals will seek food (they can eat) when they get hungry.
Forbidden eating
- Animals will ignore forbidden orders on food piles.
Carcass eating
- Carnivores will eat carcasses.

Animal breeding
- Animals mate among themselves (same species, males and females). The breeding process is influenced by a couple of things: The number of animals on the map and in the pen, the sizes of pens, or if the pen is crowded, the animals will not breed.

We’re separating their states into Wild, Domestic, and Pets.

Wild animals

The existing behavior of wild animals has been overhauled and improved.

• They’ll roam across the map, but will actively try to avoid your settlement.
  
• Herbivores will look for plants to eat.
  
• They will avoid food located in the player’s settlement, but if they’re very hungry and there is no food present, they’ll try to sneak in and take the food.
  
• If a wild animal enters a starvation phase, it’ll start losing health.
  
• Map type will influence what animals appear on it.
  
• All animals currently in the game are tamable.

Taming

Taming is a process of turning wild animals into domestic ones.

• Upon the selection of a wild animal, a tame button will appear.
  
• Settlers with the Animal Husbandry job turned on will go to these animals and initiate taming.
  
• Once the taming attempt has been made with a specific animal, that animal will have a one-day cooldown (in-game), before the settlers can attempt to tame it again. There is no limit to the number of animals you can attempt to tame (as many as there are on the map).
  
• The taming attempt can be successful or not. Taming attempt success chance (and duration) is determined by the animal type and the settler's Animal Handling skill.
  
• Each animal has a minimum requirement for Animal Handling skill if you want to try and tame it.
  
• If the taming attempt fails, there is a chance that the animal will attack the tamer.
  
• If the taming attempt is successful, their tamed stat will increase by a certain amount.
  
• Over time, the tamed stat will slowly decline. If that animal is attacked by a settler, the tamed stat will instantly revert to zero.
  
• Once the tamed stat is maxed, the animal will be domesticated.

Domestic animals

Domestic animals are animals that roam around your settlement and among your settlers without concern. Settlers can use them for harvesting resources, but there are also other ways they can be utilized. Here is everything important about domesticated animals:

• By default, they’ll idle around your settlement.
  
• They can't go through doors (unless they are set to ‘Open’).
  
• When it's time for sleep, they’ll look for roofed areas.
  
• They need to eat food - if they are roaming around the settlement, they’ll take any food they can reach (even if it’s outside of the settlement).
  
• Starvation can befall domesticated animals, too. If that happens, they’ll start losing health.
  
• Domestic animals (and pets) can be slaughtered - Slaughtering is the process where a settler goes to an animal and kills it instantly. The result of the slaughtering is the carcass left by the animal and Animal Handling skill increase for the settler that performed this action.
  
• To contain animals in one place, you’ll have to build an animal pen.

Animal pen

An animal pen is an enclosure for holding domesticated animals. To create such space, you’ll need to make an enclosed area with a fence or a wall and put a Pen Marker in it.

• To move domestic animals from an open space to the pen, settlers will use roping - an action where they go to an animal, link them with a rope, and lead them to the desired location. This is part of the Animal Handling job type.
  
• While roped, the animal will follow the settler and will be able to pass through doors.
  
• Animals like wolves, foxes, and rats can’t be in pens. Check animal availability by selecting the pen marker.
  
• Animals will eat food that’s located in that pen area. You can use a Trough to place food for animals.

We’ve added new buildings to help you with pen control.

Fence gate
- Similar to doors, fence gates can be set to always open or default. The difference is that this building replaces the fence, but not the wall. You will not be able to use the Fence gate to build upon it (to use it for stability purposes).

Barn door
- Can’t be locked and can’t be set to always open. This door type can create a room, but can’t be used for creating a pen. They keep the temperature isolated and are best used to separate the outside from the inside part of the pen. Animals can go through it with no issues.

Pets

Domesticated animals that go through a training process will turn into pets.

• As of now, all animals can be turned into pets.
  
• The training system is similar to the taming system, minus the chance for retaliation if the training fails.
  
• Pets can go through unlocked doors and don't need to be roped to do so.
  
• Pets roam freely around the settlement.
  
• Certain pets that can attack will automatically engage enemies if enemies are nearby.
  
• Pets that can haul will from time to time haul any resources needed to be hauled.
  
• The frequency of the hauling and the size of piles they haul will depend on animal type.
  
• Once the pet is assigned to its master, it will have the same sleeping schedule as them.

New Resources

Animal feed - this resource is produced at campfires/stoves and is used only for feeding animals. This is preferred animal food, but animals can eat regular resources if the players construct small stockpiles in the pens.

Each animal will give you some resources upon harvesting, and all animals will give meat in different amounts. Here are the new resources:

• Eggs (provided by chickens)
  
• Milk (provided by goats, cows, and sheep)
  
• Wool (familiar resource, but now also acquired by sheep harvesting)
  
• Stuffed eggs (a meal made with Eggs as a Cooking material)
  
• Junket (a meal made with a Milk as a Cooking material)
  
• Curdling milk (made by fermenting Milk)
  
• Cheese (Curdling milk turns into cheese via fermentation process).
  
• Tart De Bry (a meal made with a Cheese as a Cooking material)
  
• Aged wine (Rough wine turns into Aged wine via fermentation process)

Spoiler

New buildings

Besides adding the Fence gate and the Barn door (mentioned in the Animal pens part), we also added Fermenting station.

Fermenting station
- An area for managing all fermentation, from fruit juice, to alcohol and cheese production.

We’ve replaced Wall Deer Head Decoration with a Trophy rack. Wall Shield Decoration now works differently and we also added Decorative Weapon Rack.

Trophy Rack
- Racks are built with wood but to place a trophy on it, you’ll need to produce them within the butchering table and you’ll need carcasses for that. The type of the trophy rack will be influenced by the carcass you submitted for butchering. All animals are supported, humans too.

Decorative Shield Rack
- All of the shields you manufacture, take, or buy can be stored on these types of racks. Settlers can also take shields from these racks when the battle happens.

Decorative Weapon Rack
- All of the weapons you manufacture, take or buy can be stored on these types of racks. Settlers can also take weapons from these racks when the battle happens.

New features
Fermentation
- Some resources can ferment if the temperature is right. Resources that ferment will turn into new resources after the fermentation process is completed. Example: Fruit juice will turn into rough wine.

Select Next
- When you select settler/enemy/building/item, a new button will show in a selection panel that appears. Select Next will allow you to jump to the next thing of the same type as your initial selection. The default keybind for this is TAB.

Resource list selection
- Clicking on any of the resources located in the list in the top right part of the screen will select that resource instantly.

General changes
Days are longer now
- A lot of you wanted an in-game day to last longer. Good news - one in-game day at a normal speed is close to 20 minutes now.

Traps functionality
- Walking over traps can hurt your villagers and animals now if those traps are activated (5% chance of activation, but still - it can happen). By design, settlers and domestic animals will try to avoid them if possible (if a clear path is detected). Merchants will follow the same logic. Remember, as long as a clear walkable path to the destination is detected, you need not worry about activating traps.

Fodder group added
- we’ve added a ‘Fodder’ resource group. Fodder group resources are (for now) hay and animal feed.

Other quality of life improvements:

• Settler's Idle Warning sound has been disabled. It will be missed.
  
• Loading of the scenes has been optimized.

Pathfinding overhaul

We mentioned before that we’ve overhauled our pathfinding system. We’ll try to elaborate on what happened and what it means for you.

The game has a whole new pathfinding system. It should look and feel the same as before. What we have now is a custom system that is more optimized and easier to track down bugs when they happen.

Goals (the things setters do, like sleep goal - tells them to go to bed and lay down, construct goal tells them to get resources, bring resources and construct) now use a different way of looking for anything to interact with.

Settlers now search in a more optimized way for world objects to interact with through a system we call “regions”. The game map is now split into regions and each region knows what it has in it. When a settler searches for food first it will ask the region it is in if there is a food pile in it. If there is not a food pile in it, it will flood fill adjacent regions and so on. When it finds a region with food in it only then will the game pathfind to that pile. This is a faster way of searching for things and scales up better giving us the opportunity to optimize even more in the future.

.JSON modding cleanup

The game still doesn’t support official modding, but we want to make current systems easier for manipulation. We discussed this in more detail in our last Medieval Monday Talk, but here are some of the things that we did:

Text in-game - We have changed the way the text is used in-game. Let’s take an item like a sword as an example: Before, that item would be in the JSON file and then you would need the same-named text key in the localization. This meant that the player could mod in a new sword but couldn’t add its name to the localization file, having it appear as “code text”. Now, the player can easily add this.

Visual assets in-game (models, icons, etc) - Before, to create a gold_short_sword you needed to have the same-named icon and the same-named mesh for it to work. Now, this is not necessary - items can share the same mesh if needed.

You can see the example for this in the Resources.json (located in the
StreamingAssets\Resources
). Have fun.

Known issues

• Regions and Areas of the map do not refresh properly sometimes - this results in settlers sometimes not being able to get to mineable voxels or go through newly built doors. Most of the time a culprit is a staircase where the grid spaces under it are flagged as walkable, but settlers can't walk through the staircase resulting in paths being blocked, but the AI doesn’t know that it’s blocked. If something like this happens, search for places where staircases are built, and try to arrange mining job around the staircase in a different way
  
• Settlers will bring resources one by one for the purpose of production.
  
• Settlers prioritize things that are on the same floor, even if that goal is far away from their current location.
  
• Enemies will sometimes stop attacking doors if one of their buddies that was attacking those doors dies.

 

[Zombra]

Jenkem any sense of how close they are to full release? I had a blast playing this for a few hours when I first discovered it but it had a long way to go and I'm not really interested in starting over every few months when everything is overhauled again.

 

[Jenkem]

no idea probably only 33% at this point based on the roadmap

 

[Jenkem]

Zombra

 

[SmartCheetah]

It's already quite a while after Animal Husbandry and they released handful of fixes so they are probably working on something new right now. I wonder what that might be. Some people were suggesting Social Interactions + something smaller. Hopefully it will come with Prisoner system and some things like ladders, rooms for specific settlers etc.

 

[Jenkem]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1029780/view/3303977270414844674

Update #5 | Animal Trading
New update is officially here!
Greetings medievalists!

The new major update titled “Animal Trading” is now live on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. All those fixes and improvements from the experimental branch are now stable, tested, and present in this update! These include: the option to trade animals, food pouches, signs, and various other tweaks and improvements.

ANIMALS

Animal Trading
You can finally trade animals with other settlements/merchants.

Trading with merchants:

• Every once in a while, a merchant will appear, accompanied by some animals that they can trade.
• Both domestic animals and pets can be traded from your side. The animals you get from merchants will be domesticated.
• Merchants can have animals that are not for trading (their own pets).
• Animal type (domesticated/pet) will not influence barter value - you will not get a better value if you use pets for bartering.
• Animals can be taken with settlers in caravans. In that case, they (animals) will not need food for a caravan trip. Also, some animals will increase the carrying capacity of the caravan.
• Animals that are locked away will appear gray in the trading menu.

We wanted to emphasize each animal type more especially to make having pets for combat fun. We had to be careful not to make animals overpowered when retaliating.
Depending on the type (domestic, wild, pet), animals have different stats:

• Pets deal more damage, heal faster and bleed less from wounds.
• Domestic animals bleed less from wounds but don’t deal more damage.
• Wild aggressive animals deal more damage than regular wild animals.

FOOD

Food consumption and nutrition adjusted
Here are the notable changes:

• When hungry, settlers will look for food with the most nutritional value.
• Depending on their hunger state and location in relation to chairs, settlers might want to sit while eating.
• Sitting in a chair with no table will give different mood effectors, as opposed to a chair & table.
• Settlers will look to sit and eat in the great hall first, then a room, then under a roof, then outside. Of course, their search will depend on their location in relation to the aforementioned places. If there is no such place nearby, they’ll stand and eat.
• We rebalanced the amount of nutrition that the settler gets from meals and raw food (before a meal would bring around 85-100 nutrition, now it is set to about 80-90 while raw food has been lowered from 25-40 to 10-15 nutrition).
• Due to the rebalance of nutrition the amount of dropped meat and raw resources from plants has increased by 20-40%. Because of this, the amount of raw food for cooking meals has doubled (for meals, packaged meals, and lavish meals).
• Since the consumption of raw food offers low nutrition, settlers will eat multiple piles of it (if the food of better quality is not present) to satisfy their hunger.

Settlers have food pouches now
These function as a small storage space attached to them, where settlers can store food for later. This should solve the problem of settlers abandoning their work and traversing major distances to get to their settlement, just to eat something. Some things to note, settlers will only store:

• Food enabled in their Manage panel.
• Food in the meal category (so no raw foods, only packaged, lavish, stew, etc).
• Food that is on shelves and or stockpiles.

Other things to note about the pouch:

• When a settler gets hungry, they’ll primarily eat the food from the pouch. Refilling their pouches is a new goal we’ve added to settlers.
• Settlers will prioritize refilling their pouches during a non-working schedule.
• You can order settlers to consume food from their pouches within the settler’s inventory. If you do that, settlers will not search for chairs or random spots, etc - they’ll eat where they stand. This will happen even if settlers are drafted.
• Settlers can store 1x from the food pile in the pouch,
• Food stored in those pouches will rot/decay. If it reaches 0 hp, it will disappear from the settler's pouch. If it reaches 0% freshness, it will turn into a pile of rot and the settlers will drop it on the ground. The only meal that will drop as rot will be roasted meat, but the chances for that happening are close to none. You have to put the meat that is already close to rotting in the pouch and hope that the settler doesn't eat it.

Think of the pouch as a personal pile that is one-time use, easy to refill, and near your settler.

HAUL
Hauling logic has been recalculated
- You’ve probably experienced situations where a bunch of animals in your settlement, along with settlers, were hauling stuff all the time. That created situations where settlers would stand still for 3-10 seconds while they calculated what to do next. Our quickfix up until now was to limit the number of animals that can haul per their species - they did not haul as frequently, and would have a big cooldown until the next haul goal. While there is no need for that anymore, we think some balancing is in order. So, the animals will haul faster now, but some are still nerfed when it comes to their frequency.

Added hauling priority for the resource type
- All of the resources have a haul priority located in the Resources.json file. The setup at the moment is that items and resources have the highest hauling priority. Fret not - the stockpile/shelves priority is still valid and will not clash with this priority. These items will be hauled to the closest/highest priority free stockpile.

Multi-pile haul is implemented
- If a settler picks a small pile during their haul goal, they’ll look for the piles of the same type nearby and pick as many as they can (and if they were not reserved by another settler). This prevents scenarios where settlers would go back and forth just to pick a bunch of small piles of the same type. Note: This will not occur if the hauled piles are dedicated for production.

Overweight hauling
- Settlers and animals can now haul singular piles over 60kg, but in doing so will slow down.

BUILDING

New building type: Signs
- These wooden constructs do not add anything to the game, except give a bit of personality to your settlement.

• You can place them on the ground or attach them to a wall
• There are 4 different shapes in total and you can put a symbol on them and choose a color for that symbol.
• Messages can be left on signs. Typing in a message will show as a tooltip when hovered over the sign.

Quality of life improvements

• Optimized the game a bit and improved performance mid to late game.
• Animal number control during animal events has been modified as well. Now animal events will be rare as you have more of the same animal. Domesticated dogs will stop appearing when you have around 10x dogs.
• Animals now have type info when clicking on them (to clear the confusion for players about why pets can't be in pens).
• Animals in the “Animal” panel can now be sorted by species, type, age, etc.
• Added ‘mark/clear all’ for hunting, taming, training, hauling, and battling (basically, any tickable/markable thing in the Animal panel). This way you can mark all of the animals to be hunted or clear of all hunt orders etc.
• Tooltips and hover effects are added to the Animal panel.
• Animals should not spawn on 'islands' they cannot get off from.
• Players will not be able to use hay/fodder/seeds as nutritional elements for settlers on caravan anymore. That was silly.
• Harvest and cut markers are hidden on crop fields. Now the field itself determines when the crop should be harvested/cut and the orders of the player will override this in all cases.
• Auto equip and drop item changed: now settlers will not drop forbidden items but will only auto equip things that are on stockpiles.
• Added BBT message when a piece of equipment is destroyed on the settler (ex settlers have a shield, the shield gets hit and gets destroyed).
• NPC characters will leave at once if you attack them.
• Deconstruct order will cancel uninstall order.
• Uninstall or move order will cancel deconstruct order.
• Cider is removed from the game. With the introduction of fermentation, we decided that you’ll get Fruit Juice from the fermentation of fruits. That fermenting pile will turn into a rough wine after some time. Since any fruit can be used for this process, it also means all of them will turn into rough wine.
• Text for raid appearing is now translated into all languages.
• Additional text has been added that explains that animals don't waste food when in caravans.

Bugs and fixes

• Fixed the issue that caused drafted settlers to ignore orders.
• Fixed the issue that caused settlers to ignore animals that they didn’t manage to kill the first time.
• Fixed the issue that prevented a merchant event from ending upon save/load, if that merchant turned aggressive in the meantime.

Known issues

• In some cases, settlers will stop while hauling from one stockpile to another (or shelf to shelf) - this does not break the game but looks weird and annoying.
• Settlers will sometimes refuse to harvest ripe fields. solved with save/load
• Several messages are still in English for all of the languages.
• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some of the actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it to 30fps.

 

[Jenkem]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1029780/view/3435710744929653992

Update #6 | Terraforming & Cats
New update is officially live!
Greetings medievalists!

The new major update titled “Terraforming & Cats” is now live on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. All those fixes and improvements from the experimental branch are now stable, tested, and present in this update! These include: terraforming, custom difficulty, new animals and behavior, as well as various other tweaks and improvements.

Terraforming

The ability to create natural dirt voxels and slopes has been added to the game. To unlock them, you’ll have to research “Terraforming” in the Research tab. Here are a couple of things to know about this feature:

• A new resource has been added to the game: Dirt.
• Dirt is acquired by mining dirt, grass, and rock voxels.
• Dirt piles will also appear on the map when you start a new game.
• Building dirt voxels/slopes is similar to building walls/stairs, with the main difference being that upon its creation, you will not be able to select it.

New animals and behavior

Animal population has expanded! Say hello to your little friends: pheasants, donkeys and cats. Also, say hello to the upgraded logic for all animals.

• Cats and Donkeys will appear as domestic animals, while pheasants will appear as wildlife on the map.
• Animals like dogs, wolves, cats, foxes will attack other animals when hungry.
• Foxes, dogs and cats only attack small animals.
• Wolves, on the other hand, will attack different targets depending on their hunger level. If they are just a little hungry, they’ll go for smaller animals. But if they are starving, they will go for bigger ones, maybe even settlers. They can even attack other wolves.
• All wild animals will target domestic animals rather than wild ones.
• Foxes will randomly trigger a need to hunt down small domestic animals when awake, even if they are not starving, just hungry. They can even go through fences (let's imagine that they jump over), so tread carefully.
• When cats, wolves, foxes and dogs are turned into pets, they will have the option to do vermin control (pest control) just like some animals haul and battle.
• Pest control allows those pets to randomly target wild rats, rabbits or pheasants from time to time (cats do it most often), to help clean the map of those… well… pests. Turning this option off will, of course, make them not do this.
• Yes, you can make trophies out of the new animals, too.

Custom Difficulty

We have added the option for you to choose custom difficulty when choosing game mode. This will allow you to fine tune some parameters of the game session. Here is the explanation of the parameters:

• Event Strength Multiplier
  - Change the strength of the events like blight, weather events and raids. The higher the number, the more challenge the event will provide.
• Wound Severity Multiplier
  - Adjust the severity of wounds inflicted upon your settlers. The higher the number, the harder it is to tend the wounds and they’ll have more severe effects on attributes.
• Animal Spawn Rate Multiplier
  - Change the rate of new animal spawning on the map. Higher numbers indicates faster spawn rate.
• Plant Yield Multiplier
  - Adjust the amount of resources you get from cutting/harvesting plants.
• Mine Yield Multiplier
  - Adjust the amount of resources you get from mining voxels.
• Settler Mood Value
  - Change the chance of settler rebelling. If you lower this value, they’ll rebel more frequently.
• Enemy Hitpoints
  - Want to give more health to your enemies? (Why?) Increase this value.
• Hitpoints Recovery
  - Change the speed of health recovery. Higher numbers indicate faster recovery.
• Rotting Speed
  - Indicates how fast the food will rot and lose freshness. Increase this value if you want to experience rotting hell. Dev’s note: Rotting hell is not suggested.
• Decomposition Speed
  - Indicates how fast the resources/equipment will lose health based on factors like rain and temperature.
• Barter Value
  - Set this number higher if you want better bargaining deals.
• Chance Quarry Retaliates
  - You know how when you try to attack/train wild animals, there is a chance for it to fight back in the process? Lower this value if you want to avoid those situations.
• Global Work Speed
  - Want your settlers to work faster? Increase this number.
• Thunderstorm
  - Turn on/off Thunderstorm event.
• Blighted Crops
  - Turn on/off Blighted Crops event.
• Hostile Animals
  - Don’t like those aggressive wolves appearing on the map? Turn them off here.
• Domestic Animals Event
  - You don’t like that friendly animals spawn on your map? Turn them off here. Also, why would you do that?
• Hailstorm Event
  - Turn on/off Hailstorm event.
• Cold Snap
  - Turn on/off Cold Snap event.
• Heat Wave
  - Turn on/off Heat Wave event.
• Enemy Raid Events
  - You’ve started the game in Standard or Survival mode and don’t like the idea of enemy spawning? Maybe you need more time to prepare your settlement before the battle? You can control that here.
• Use Seeds
  - Some players didn’t like the introduction of seeds and how the farming process evolved. Shame. We really like it. Turn off this option if you want to take farming to the original version where no seeds are required. Keep in mind that this will essentially make seeds useless.
• Enemies Have Trebuchets
  - Some people don’t like when enemies appear with trebuchets in regular raids. In those cases, this option will disable them. HOWEVER, if the enemy can’t find a clear path to a door that leads to your fort, the AI will see this as turtling and will spawn a siege version of the raid that will have trebuchets.

Two things to keep in mind:

• You will be able to change these options at any point in the game’s options.
• If you are playing in a peaceful mode, you will not be able to spawn raids/enemies.

Changing some parameters mid-game can create weird behavior. Example: Turning off trebuchets will not work if the raid that's already happening has trebuchets. Or - you can turn off the raid completely, but they will not turn off attacks from factions coming to get a hostage back etc.

Bugs and fixes

• Fixed the issue where, if two or more shrines (of the same type) are constructed next to one another, settlers will use just one for praying purposes.
• Fixed the issue where a beam would prevent stockpile/crop placement/expansion.
• Fixed the issue that caused animals to freeze, if the player would uncheck hauling during their haul goal.
• Fixed the issue with room detection - if the room only had stairs coming to it, the game would not see it as a room.
• The issue where animals would get stuck on slopes should be fixed. Please report if the issue still occurs.
• Fixed the issue where some beams would float in the air upon loading the game, causing stability issues.

Quality of life improvements

• Plants in the wild have gained more nutrition. This way, wild animals will not eat all of the saplings and young plants as soon as they spawn.

Known issues

• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.

 

[Gerrard]

Has anyone been keeping up with this and can sum up if the devs are doing good work with updates?

 

[SmartCheetah]

Has anyone been keeping up with this and can sum up if the devs are doing good work with updates?

They were doing pretty good up to the point when water update came out (November 2023) - after that point we had one significant "report" on upcoming features, but so far a lot of silence and bugfixing is going on. So basicly, 5+ months without any meaningful update and with almost total lack of teasers.

I mean - they are pretty active on GM discord and they said it's all because how hard water was to implement (and how many problems it created).

We'll soon introduce a new, much better, save system that will pave the wave for future updates.

Recently they've did some major changes to the save game system. People are speculating that it's a part of the code restructurization and preparation for modding (They've hired a guy who was supposed to work on implementing modding into the game - and it was like 2 years ago)

Next update is supposed to bring fire, prisoner and negotiation system and some other stuff. They teased it here -
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1029780/view/3883856311464402850

So basicly - Devs are silent and (most probably) working hard on next meaningful update. They are also doing terrible job at informing people what's going on currently.

IMO they should really focus on preparing the code for modding as it will make the game feel much more alive, while they could slowly work on the rest of the features.

 

[Gerrard]

I bought the game. I fucking hate Unity. That is all. How can a game with these graphics be so demanding on the GPU? Are these objects actually made up of thousands of polygons and just look low poly?


Ye olde whack-a-mole

Also, the visibility with multi floor buildings is a nightmare, the game shows a semi-transparent image of things that are on the floor above unless you remove all walls, if you don't have your walls exactly in the same place on each floor you can't see shit.