Folk Tale Patch 0.2.13 introduces significant change with an overhaul of the first hour of gameplay.


Players starting Folk Tale for the first time often arrive with an implicit knowledge and expectation from other RTS games. To make the game more intuitive, we have to acknowledge and design to this. Having watched Let's Play Folk Tale and Twitch streams, one of the most common first time actions of new players is to select a villager and right click on a tree, expecting them to go and chop it down. That wasn't happening, so we introduced sweeping changes.

Peasants can now gather resources from the environment (thereby clearing areas for future construction) by selecting and right-clicking on a resource, including chopping trees, quarrying small stone deposits, mining iron ore deposits, and foraging for berries. The iron and stone are new assets that are now dotted liberally around the starter location. After several visits, the resource will become depleted and will be removed from the world.



Peasants cannot access Quarries, Iron Mines, and the (possibly) soon to be added Lumber Mill. These will in time require Works to be constructed that can only be operated by Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths who are far more efficient than their Peasant peers. If you examine the current Quarry, we'll be removing the crane and wooden platform to make Works, an upgrade that becomes available once you have constructed the corresponding Profession building, which in this case would be the Stonecutter Lodge. You'll then be able to construct Works on Quarries, and assign Stonecutters to commence work there.

Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths can also clear areas, and are more effective than Peasants, requiring fewer swings of an axe/pickaxe/hammer and yielding more resources each time they drop off resources.

Enabling Peasants to gather resources presented a new design challenge: where should they drop off the collected resources? Henceforth, the very first thing players need to do when starting a new game is place a Supply Wagon containing a few rations and basic clothing to keep your Peasants happy for a short while. The Wagon also acts as a low capacity Storehouse.



These changes took gameplay further back in the life of a settlement, to where you start with very little and have to find what you need in the environment. There's a degree of urgency and survival. With food being a priority, and the Bread economy chain taking a while to get up and running, we've added foraging for Berries by selecting a Peasant and right clicking on a Berry Bush. Berries can be stockpiled and eaten by Peasants when they get hungry, and satiate a small amount of the need for carbohydrates.



Watching some of the recent Let's Play videos and playing ourselves, we noticed that it was easy to get into a situation of having lots of Planks, and not much Firewood. To address this (prior to the implementation of the Marketplace building), we added a crafting recipe to the Woodcutter's Hut for converting Planks into Firewood, available immediately once the building is constructed. With some further balancing, we'll get the Firewood situation under control.


In the last patch Peasants would frequently complain via the Advisor about being hungry and needing food, even though inventories would be brimming with supplies. This wasn't caused by mass hunger, but rather individual units - especially Hunters - wandering far from town and becoming hungry while doing so. To solve this, we've changed the Needs system to monitor averages, and added some useful charts to the Civics dialog that can be accessed via the topbar button to support forward planning. In times of bountiful harvest, Peasants are able to gorge themselves to fend off hunger for longer. They also take longer to get really hungry, reducing the frequency of them leaving.

New peasants will now only arrive if happiness is in the yellow or green.




We were dissatisfied with the way the economy was working in regard to Villagers buying goods for gold. While it sounds logical, this could lead to unacceptable delays waiting for gold to be generated. We've not removed the exchange of goods for gold, and replaced it with a new taxation system. In the Civics Dialog (see image above), you can now set the tax rate in gold. Taxes are levied every 30 seconds, and are dependent on Cottages. Setting low taxes will lead to increased happiness, while heavy taxation will lead to decreasing happiness unless you are taking steps to offset that.


The whole concept of accruing Research Points didn't feel natural, so we scrapped 'em. Now, you choose which research you want to undertake, and as workers deliver resources to the building, part of that work effort can be allocated towards research, progressing the percentage complete. Once you reach 100%, the research is unlocked. Multiple buildings of the same type can contribute to the same research at the same time to unlock it faster, or research something completely different in parallel. For example, one Blacksmith might research Leatherworking. Building a second Blacksmith, you can set it to contribute towards the existing research into Leatherworking, or research Plate Armor in parallel.



Moving to a progress model however presents some redesign challenges for non-production buildings including the Barracks and Storehouse. For the Barracks, we'll be introducing a villager need for security, which can be satiated by stationing City Watch in locations frequented by villagers (by the Storehouse and Wagon would be great!) As Peasant's pass by, they gain an increased sense of security, and that generates a tick in the progress towards any active research in the Barracks. Having City Watch behave in this manner also plays into the original plan for their role as law enforcement, and opens up the possibility of implementing crime and thieves.

Research at the Storehouse will be redistributed to other buildings including the Workshop.

Due to a word limit on Steam announcements, this blog continues at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/02/folk-tale-dev-blog-31.html

Folk Tale Patch 0.2.13 introduces significant change with an overhaul of the first hour of gameplay.


Players starting Folk Tale for the first time often arrive with an implicit knowledge and expectation from other RTS games. To make the game more intuitive, we have to acknowledge and design to this. Having watched Let's Play Folk Tale and Twitch streams, one of the most common first time actions of new players is to select a villager and right click on a tree, expecting them to go and chop it down. That wasn't happening, so we introduced sweeping changes.

Peasants can now gather resources from the environment (thereby clearing areas for future construction) by selecting and right-clicking on a resource, including chopping trees, quarrying small stone deposits, mining iron ore deposits, and foraging for berries. The iron and stone are new assets that are now dotted liberally around the starter location. After several visits, the resource will become depleted and will be removed from the world.



Peasants cannot access Quarries, Iron Mines, and the (possibly) soon to be added Lumber Mill. These will in time require Works to be constructed that can only be operated by Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths who are far more efficient than their Peasant peers. If you examine the current Quarry, we'll be removing the crane and wooden platform to make Works, an upgrade that becomes available once you have constructed the corresponding Profession building, which in this case would be the Stonecutter Lodge. You'll then be able to construct Works on Quarries, and assign Stonecutters to commence work there.

Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths can also clear areas, and are more effective than Peasants, requiring fewer swings of an axe/pickaxe/hammer and yielding more resources each time they drop off resources.

Enabling Peasants to gather resources presented a new design challenge: where should they drop off the collected resources? Henceforth, the very first thing players need to do when starting a new game is place a Supply Wagon containing a few rations and basic clothing to keep your Peasants happy for a short while. The Wagon also acts as a low capacity Storehouse.



These changes took gameplay further back in the life of a settlement, to where you start with very little and have to find what you need in the environment. There's a degree of urgency and survival. With food being a priority, and the Bread economy chain taking a while to get up and running, we've added foraging for Berries by selecting a Peasant and right clicking on a Berry Bush. Berries can be stockpiled and eaten by Peasants when they get hungry, and satiate a small amount of the need for carbohydrates.



Watching some of the recent Let's Play videos and playing ourselves, we noticed that it was easy to get into a situation of having lots of Planks, and not much Firewood. To address this (prior to the implementation of the Marketplace building), we added a crafting recipe to the Woodcutter's Hut for converting Planks into Firewood, available immediately once the building is constructed. With some further balancing, we'll get the Firewood situation under control.


In the last patch Peasants would frequently complain via the Advisor about being hungry and needing food, even though inventories would be brimming with supplies. This wasn't caused by mass hunger, but rather individual units - especially Hunters - wandering far from town and becoming hungry while doing so. To solve this, we've changed the Needs system to monitor averages, and added some useful charts to the Civics dialog that can be accessed via the topbar button to support forward planning. In times of bountiful harvest, Peasants are able to gorge themselves to fend off hunger for longer. They also take longer to get really hungry, reducing the frequency of them leaving.

New peasants will now only arrive if happiness is in the yellow or green.




We were dissatisfied with the way the economy was working in regard to Villagers buying goods for gold. While it sounds logical, this could lead to unacceptable delays waiting for gold to be generated. We've not removed the exchange of goods for gold, and replaced it with a new taxation system. In the Civics Dialog (see image above), you can now set the tax rate in gold. Taxes are levied every 30 seconds, and are dependent on Cottages. Setting low taxes will lead to increased happiness, while heavy taxation will lead to decreasing happiness unless you are taking steps to offset that.


The whole concept of accruing Research Points didn't feel natural, so we scrapped 'em. Now, you choose which research you want to undertake, and as workers deliver resources to the building, part of that work effort can be allocated towards research, progressing the percentage complete. Once you reach 100%, the research is unlocked. Multiple buildings of the same type can contribute to the same research at the same time to unlock it faster, or research something completely different in parallel. For example, one Blacksmith might research Leatherworking. Building a second Blacksmith, you can set it to contribute towards the existing research into Leatherworking, or research Plate Armor in parallel.



Moving to a progress model however presents some redesign challenges for non-production buildings including the Barracks and Storehouse. For the Barracks, we'll be introducing a villager need for security, which can be satiated by stationing City Watch in locations frequented by villagers (by the Storehouse and Wagon would be great!) As Peasant's pass by, they gain an increased sense of security, and that generates a tick in the progress towards any active research in the Barracks. Having City Watch behave in this manner also plays into the original plan for their role as law enforcement, and opens up the possibility of implementing crime and thieves.

Research at the Storehouse will be redistributed to other buildings including the Workshop.

Due to a word limit on Steam announcements, this blog continues at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/02/folk-tale-dev-blog-31.html

PC, Mac*

Sandbox Player: First Building Is Now A Mandatory Supply Wagon
Sandbox Player: Peasants Can Now Chop Trees, Pick Berries, Remove Small Stone/Iron Deposits (New Assets)
Sandbox Player: Nesting Spiders Now Added
Sandbox Player: Civics Dialog Charts (Ugly WIP But V.Useful)
Sandbox Player: Overhauled Needs System
Sandbox Player: New ‘Adventure’ Map: Crypts Level 1 (Work In Progress)
Sandbox Player: Research Is Now Progressed With Each Delivery Of Resources. Research Points Will Be Removed.
Sandbox Player: Navmesh System Improved, Fixing Numerous Pathing Edge Cases
Sandbox Player: Taxation Added Under Civics Dialog. Requires Cottages. Affects Happiness.
Sandbox Player: Added Dungeon Soundtrack
Sandbox Player: Rebalanced All Maps
Sandbox Editor: Added Classic Dungeon Kit

Sandbox Player: Improved Reliability Of Load/Save (Accessed Via Console)
Sandbox Player: Cursors Added For Foraging/Clearing Small Deposits
Sandbox Player: Maps Enhanced With Clearable Resources
Sandbox Player: Hard Snow Map Tweaked To Spawn Wolves Less Frequently
Sandbox Player: Werefu Loot Chests Added To Hard Snow Map
Sandbox Player: Change Camera Angle Key Remapped From LeftAlt to V
Sandbox Player: Pumpkins Replaced By Carrots (For Future Ecology Reasons)
Sandbox Player: Villagers Now Consume Carrots To Meet Need For Vegetables
Sandbox Player: Peasants Who Are Clearing Resources Will Prioritize Construction After They Complete Current Task
Sandbox Player: Monster Damage Re-balanced
Sandbox Player: Berries Satiate A Small Amount Of Carbohydrate Need
Sandbox Player: Fields Now Show % Grown In Title
Sandbox Player: Experimental Anti-Kiting System Added (Monsters Return And Heal)
Sandbox Player: Monster Highlighting Now Consistent Across Resolutions And Downsampling
Sandbox Player: Added Conversion Recipe To Woodcutter Hut Crafting Tab (Convert Planks->Firewood With Penalty)
Sandbox Player: Added Queen Spider
Sandbox Player: Added Rarer Yellow Spider
Sandbox Player: Camera Now Constrained Within Map Boundary
Sandbox Player: Assigning Workers Via Building Worker Tab Or By Direct Assignment Now More Reliable
Sandbox Player: When Starting New Research, 25% Of Work Effort Is Auto-Allocated Into Research
Sandbox Player: If A Villager Leaves, They Return Loot To Inventory
Sandbox Editor: 30+ New Loot Items Added (Werefu Armor Set, Rare Cloth Armor Set, Common Scale Armor Set, Faction Keys, Berries, Carrots)
Sandbox Editor: Portal Added To Systems Kit
Sandbox Editor: Added Lighting Kit (Intended For Use In Dungeons)
Sandbox Editor: Iron Ore Resource and Stone Resource Added (For Peasants To Clear)
Sandbox Editor: Iron Mine Updated
Sandbox Editor: Grassland Kit: LOD Models Added To Oak Trees
Sandbox Editor: System Kit: Added Sarcophagus Chest
Sandbox Editor: Dungeon Soundtrack Mood Added To Environment Settings

#0130 Sandbox Player: Fish Not Removed From Inventory When Converting To Salmon Steaks
#0131 Sandbox Player: Alt+Tab Causes Camera To Look At Sky When Resuming
#0132 Sandbox Player: Large Amounts of Armor Make Characters Invulnerable
#0133 Sandbox Player: At 1376x720 on OSX, Global Inventory and Character Sheet Are Behind The Portrait And Minimap
#0134 Sandbox Player: Weapons/Gear Are Floating When Villagers Consume Food
#0135 Sandbox Player: Deer Are Animated Again When Carried By Hunters
#0136 Sandbox Editor: Grid Lines Not Aligned To Snap Grid
#0137 Sandbox Player: Bear Walk Animation Not Looping

Patch 0.2.13 introduces major changes to gameplay, too many in fact to describe here. Instead, please visit the Getting Started section in the website Game Guide.

Known issues include bugged chest inventory UI (scroll mousewheel to fix), unreliable ornate bridges in the Snow zone, bugged menu system, Walls not load/saving correctly, Guard Mode broken, and a couple of navmesh edge cases.

There appears to be a sporadic issue with Bread. If you are out of bread, make sure you forage for berries, as they also meet a small amount of villagers' need for carbohydrates.

Following the implementation of the new approach to Research, it is no longer possible to complete research in buildings such as the Storehouse and Barracks. We need to put some more thinking in on this.

*We are experiencing crashes on older Mac's with 512MB video cards. Mac's with newer 1GB cards or HD5000 integrated graphics cards are working fine. We are trying to identify the cause of this problem with an aim of pushing out a fix ASAP. Our apologies if you are affected by this.

We’d like to remind players that the default build for Windows is now 64-bit, which the vast majority of players are using. Players with older 32-bit versions of Windows will need to opt in to the 32-bit build. For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744474771635312/

We’ve also made some key binding changes. While key mapping is not yet implemented in the UI, can you define your own by editing the StreamingAssets/Data/keymap.json text file.


#0138 - FIXED - Sandbox Player: Stonecutters Are Snagging On The Quarry In the Easy Map

Also renamed the maps to emphasize the playable maps and downplay the Preview-Only WIP Crypts Level 1 map.

PC, Mac*

Sandbox Player: First Building Is Now A Mandatory Supply Wagon
Sandbox Player: Peasants Can Now Chop Trees, Pick Berries, Remove Small Stone/Iron Deposits (New Assets)
Sandbox Player: Nesting Spiders Now Added
Sandbox Player: Civics Dialog Charts (Ugly WIP But V.Useful)
Sandbox Player: Overhauled Needs System
Sandbox Player: New ‘Adventure’ Map: Crypts Level 1 (Work In Progress)
Sandbox Player: Research Is Now Progressed With Each Delivery Of Resources. Research Points Will Be Removed.
Sandbox Player: Navmesh System Improved, Fixing Numerous Pathing Edge Cases
Sandbox Player: Taxation Added Under Civics Dialog. Requires Cottages. Affects Happiness.
Sandbox Player: Added Dungeon Soundtrack
Sandbox Player: Rebalanced All Maps
Sandbox Editor: Added Classic Dungeon Kit

Sandbox Player: Improved Reliability Of Load/Save (Accessed Via Console)
Sandbox Player: Cursors Added For Foraging/Clearing Small Deposits
Sandbox Player: Maps Enhanced With Clearable Resources
Sandbox Player: Hard Snow Map Tweaked To Spawn Wolves Less Frequently
Sandbox Player: Werefu Loot Chests Added To Hard Snow Map
Sandbox Player: Change Camera Angle Key Remapped From LeftAlt to V
Sandbox Player: Pumpkins Replaced By Carrots (For Future Ecology Reasons)
Sandbox Player: Villagers Now Consume Carrots To Meet Need For Vegetables
Sandbox Player: Peasants Who Are Clearing Resources Will Prioritize Construction After They Complete Current Task
Sandbox Player: Monster Damage Re-balanced
Sandbox Player: Berries Satiate A Small Amount Of Carbohydrate Need
Sandbox Player: Fields Now Show % Grown In Title
Sandbox Player: Experimental Anti-Kiting System Added (Monsters Return And Heal)
Sandbox Player: Monster Highlighting Now Consistent Across Resolutions And Downsampling
Sandbox Player: Added Conversion Recipe To Woodcutter Hut Crafting Tab (Convert Planks->Firewood With Penalty)
Sandbox Player: Added Queen Spider
Sandbox Player: Added Rarer Yellow Spider
Sandbox Player: Camera Now Constrained Within Map Boundary
Sandbox Player: Assigning Workers Via Building Worker Tab Or By Direct Assignment Now More Reliable
Sandbox Player: When Starting New Research, 25% Of Work Effort Is Auto-Allocated Into Research
Sandbox Player: If A Villager Leaves, They Return Loot To Inventory
Sandbox Editor: 30+ New Loot Items Added (Werefu Armor Set, Rare Cloth Armor Set, Common Scale Armor Set, Faction Keys, Berries, Carrots)
Sandbox Editor: Portal Added To Systems Kit
Sandbox Editor: Added Lighting Kit (Intended For Use In Dungeons)
Sandbox Editor: Iron Ore Resource and Stone Resource Added (For Peasants To Clear)
Sandbox Editor: Iron Mine Updated
Sandbox Editor: Grassland Kit: LOD Models Added To Oak Trees
Sandbox Editor: System Kit: Added Sarcophagus Chest
Sandbox Editor: Dungeon Soundtrack Mood Added To Environment Settings

#0130 Sandbox Player: Fish Not Removed From Inventory When Converting To Salmon Steaks
#0131 Sandbox Player: Alt+Tab Causes Camera To Look At Sky When Resuming
#0132 Sandbox Player: Large Amounts of Armor Make Characters Invulnerable
#0133 Sandbox Player: At 1376x720 on OSX, Global Inventory and Character Sheet Are Behind The Portrait And Minimap
#0134 Sandbox Player: Weapons/Gear Are Floating When Villagers Consume Food
#0135 Sandbox Player: Deer Are Animated Again When Carried By Hunters
#0136 Sandbox Editor: Grid Lines Not Aligned To Snap Grid
#0137 Sandbox Player: Bear Walk Animation Not Looping

Patch 0.2.13 introduces major changes to gameplay, too many in fact to describe here. Instead, please visit the Getting Started section in the website Game Guide.

Known issues include bugged chest inventory UI (scroll mousewheel to fix), unreliable ornate bridges in the Snow zone, bugged menu system, Walls not load/saving correctly, Guard Mode broken, and a couple of navmesh edge cases.

There appears to be a sporadic issue with Bread. If you are out of bread, make sure you forage for berries, as they also meet a small amount of villagers' need for carbohydrates.

Following the implementation of the new approach to Research, it is no longer possible to complete research in buildings such as the Storehouse and Barracks. We need to put some more thinking in on this.

*We are experiencing crashes on older Mac's with 512MB video cards. Mac's with newer 1GB cards or HD5000 integrated graphics cards are working fine. We are trying to identify the cause of this problem with an aim of pushing out a fix ASAP. Our apologies if you are affected by this.

We’d like to remind players that the default build for Windows is now 64-bit, which the vast majority of players are using. Players with older 32-bit versions of Windows will need to opt in to the 32-bit build. For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744474771635312/

We’ve also made some key binding changes. While key mapping is not yet implemented in the UI, can you define your own by editing the StreamingAssets/Data/keymap.json text file.


#0138 - FIXED - Sandbox Player: Stonecutters Are Snagging On The Quarry In the Easy Map

Also renamed the maps to emphasize the playable maps and downplay the Preview-Only WIP Crypts Level 1 map.

With the relatively short period between the content-rich November release of Patch 0.2.11 and the holidays, efforts were focused on improving gameplay and fixing bugs so that we could release the much improved 0.2.12 build in time for the festive break.

At the top of the community-requested improvements is Load/Save. While it's been available in game for several patches via the console, it wasn't functionally complete which rendered it unusable. Throughout December, Load/Save received much love, and in Patch 0.2.12 it is now stable. We've left it accessible via the console to allow for a period of both internal and community testing, so if you run into a problem please let us know, and submit your output_log.txt file (Player.log on OSX). Pending positive test results, we'll soon be moving forward with integrating Load/Save into the main UI.

The camera is now at a fixed angle, which becomes more shallow as you zoom in closer to the ground. There are numerous reasons for introducing this, the most important of which is maintaining frame rate. By angling down towards the ground in typical RTS fashion, we're able to reduce the amount of geometry in the camera frustum, which means lower frame rendering times and higher FPS. When we launched in Early Access we deliberately set the minimum specification quite high, with the intention of lowering them as development progressed. As optimizations continue to be added, its looking increasingly promising for being able to lower the minimum spec towards launch. We're now able to play a meaningful game at 25fps on an old Macbook pro with an Intel HD3000 graphics card. If you're not a fan of the new camera system, that's not a problem. You can disable camera locking under Settings and return to the previous camera setup.



Referring back to the Let's Play videos and streams we watched post-0.2.11, we noticed players weren't rotating their buildings as much as we expected due to convoluted controls. Revisiting the controls, we've opted for the more expected behaviour of placing rotation on the scroll wheel, overriding the normal zoom function when in construction mode. We also noticed some confusion over how close economy buildings had to be placed to resources. To address this, when placing buildings we added icons over nearby resources, setting them 100% opaque when they are within the building's boundary, and 50% opaque when they are outside but nearby (and therefore likely to be captured once the player unlocks the Expanded Boundary research).

Being able to watch play sessions is so incredibly useful to us in learning how players engage with the game, and where improvements are needed. It's one of the primary benefits of being in Early Access.

If you played Patch 0.2.11, you'll know that the Needs system we introduced expanded playability, but lead to some confusion because of a lack of information provided in the UI, and a likelihood that villagers would start leaving. Throughout December the team worked on improving the UI, adding quick-glance indicators to buildings so players can see if a building is missing workers, or how many workers out of the maximum are currently trained. Missing workers is the primary cause of not being able to meet villager needs later on, so knowing when there's a problem helps players address the issue before it starts affecting villager happiness. We also expanded the number of event notifications, and added advisor voice over to tell players when a worker had left or a building didn't have any workers (more on this later).



Digging deeper into the Building Dialog, the Workers tab received much needed attention, enabling players to recruit directly from the list of available Peasants (villagers without a profession), demote workers, and find them (thanks to the newly added camera panning system for event notifications). Auto-Recruit was enabled, easing micro-management demands for those wanting to simplify their tasks by automatically filling vacancies. This isn't quite perfect, and in the next patch we'll be adding checkboxes that appear allowing to you check which slots are to be auto-recruited; useful for early stages when you don't have enough villagers to be employing a full compliment of professions.



The Research tab in the Building Dialog became functional, especially for the Blacksmith buildings. You might recall the misleading "We don't have enough Iron Ingots" advisor line that would play when trying to unlock research. This was indicative of an increasing number of missing lines from the original tutorial; it was meant to be "We don't have enough research points." So this month we set about recording a new set of advisor lines scripted specifically for Sandbox, broadcast live in one of the Sunday Dev Hangouts. 7 hours of material recorded over two sessions was condensed into 70 minutes of candidate takes, from which 600 individual lines were then selected and dropped into game. These include lines for future features that will be coming online in the next several patches.



If you'd like to read all the improvements made in Patch 0.2.12, they are fairly self-explanatory in the Patch Notes.

Looking to the New Year, we have a number of short-term objectives:

- Sickness, death, and medicines - the Herbalist get their functional purpose, while the Monks will receive a second function (in addition to brewing Mead), to collect dead corpses and bury them in a new village Graveyard. Expect outbreaks of coughing and vomiting.

- The Needs system will be iterated and expanded, adding ranting behaviour leading to rebellion where some villagers run around setting fire to your buildings. Wells will become functional to help fire fighting.

- Clearing areas of Trees/Stone/Iron Ore deposits - we need more interaction with the environment. Being able to clear areas to make way for village expansion contributes to a feeling of progression and further investment in the ownership of what we as players are doing.

- Quest Designer - being able to trigger quests will allow handholding tutorial quests to ease new players into sandbox, as well as prototyping how the player will progress into the RPG side of the game. This eventually leads to portals, the hero party system, and the World Editor combining multiple location maps into a single playable experience.

- Monster Dens - these are a natural progression from the wave spawning system. On the Hard snow map especially, the wolf packs present a constant and frequent threat. It makes sense for such creatures to have a home/nest/den with health that can be attacked. Attacking a nest will cause any monsters inside to come out and fight, and destroying the nest will prevent future waves from attacking your village. Leaving a nest alone will result in a 'settler' monster spawning that goes looking for a site to establish a new nest.

- Enable the selling of Mead and Pumpkins.

- Implement the Crooked Cauldron, Stables, Jeweller's Shop and Marketplace with their associated professions.

- Enable building upgrades.

For a look further ahead, it's worth taking a look at the Development Roadmap.

That's it for 2014. From us all on the Folk Tale dev team, we hope you've all had a great holiday.

With the relatively short period between the content-rich November release of Patch 0.2.11 and the holidays, efforts were focused on improving gameplay and fixing bugs so that we could release the much improved 0.2.12 build in time for the festive break.

At the top of the community-requested improvements is Load/Save. While it's been available in game for several patches via the console, it wasn't functionally complete which rendered it unusable. Throughout December, Load/Save received much love, and in Patch 0.2.12 it is now stable. We've left it accessible via the console to allow for a period of both internal and community testing, so if you run into a problem please let us know, and submit your output_log.txt file (Player.log on OSX). Pending positive test results, we'll soon be moving forward with integrating Load/Save into the main UI.

The camera is now at a fixed angle, which becomes more shallow as you zoom in closer to the ground. There are numerous reasons for introducing this, the most important of which is maintaining frame rate. By angling down towards the ground in typical RTS fashion, we're able to reduce the amount of geometry in the camera frustum, which means lower frame rendering times and higher FPS. When we launched in Early Access we deliberately set the minimum specification quite high, with the intention of lowering them as development progressed. As optimizations continue to be added, its looking increasingly promising for being able to lower the minimum spec towards launch. We're now able to play a meaningful game at 25fps on an old Macbook pro with an Intel HD3000 graphics card. If you're not a fan of the new camera system, that's not a problem. You can disable camera locking under Settings and return to the previous camera setup.



Referring back to the Let's Play videos and streams we watched post-0.2.11, we noticed players weren't rotating their buildings as much as we expected due to convoluted controls. Revisiting the controls, we've opted for the more expected behaviour of placing rotation on the scroll wheel, overriding the normal zoom function when in construction mode. We also noticed some confusion over how close economy buildings had to be placed to resources. To address this, when placing buildings we added icons over nearby resources, setting them 100% opaque when they are within the building's boundary, and 50% opaque when they are outside but nearby (and therefore likely to be captured once the player unlocks the Expanded Boundary research).

Being able to watch play sessions is so incredibly useful to us in learning how players engage with the game, and where improvements are needed. It's one of the primary benefits of being in Early Access.

If you played Patch 0.2.11, you'll know that the Needs system we introduced expanded playability, but lead to some confusion because of a lack of information provided in the UI, and a likelihood that villagers would start leaving. Throughout December the team worked on improving the UI, adding quick-glance indicators to buildings so players can see if a building is missing workers, or how many workers out of the maximum are currently trained. Missing workers is the primary cause of not being able to meet villager needs later on, so knowing when there's a problem helps players address the issue before it starts affecting villager happiness. We also expanded the number of event notifications, and added advisor voice over to tell players when a worker had left or a building didn't have any workers (more on this later).



Digging deeper into the Building Dialog, the Workers tab received much needed attention, enabling players to recruit directly from the list of available Peasants (villagers without a profession), demote workers, and find them (thanks to the newly added camera panning system for event notifications). Auto-Recruit was enabled, easing micro-management demands for those wanting to simplify their tasks by automatically filling vacancies. This isn't quite perfect, and in the next patch we'll be adding checkboxes that appear allowing to you check which slots are to be auto-recruited; useful for early stages when you don't have enough villagers to be employing a full compliment of professions.



The Research tab in the Building Dialog became functional, especially for the Blacksmith buildings. You might recall the misleading "We don't have enough Iron Ingots" advisor line that would play when trying to unlock research. This was indicative of an increasing number of missing lines from the original tutorial; it was meant to be "We don't have enough research points." So this month we set about recording a new set of advisor lines scripted specifically for Sandbox, broadcast live in one of the Sunday Dev Hangouts. 7 hours of material recorded over two sessions was condensed into 70 minutes of candidate takes, from which 600 individual lines were then selected and dropped into game. These include lines for future features that will be coming online in the next several patches.



If you'd like to read all the improvements made in Patch 0.2.12, they are fairly self-explanatory in the Patch Notes.

Looking to the New Year, we have a number of short-term objectives:

- Sickness, death, and medicines - the Herbalist get their functional purpose, while the Monks will receive a second function (in addition to brewing Mead), to collect dead corpses and bury them in a new village Graveyard. Expect outbreaks of coughing and vomiting.

- The Needs system will be iterated and expanded, adding ranting behaviour leading to rebellion where some villagers run around setting fire to your buildings. Wells will become functional to help fire fighting.

- Clearing areas of Trees/Stone/Iron Ore deposits - we need more interaction with the environment. Being able to clear areas to make way for village expansion contributes to a feeling of progression and further investment in the ownership of what we as players are doing.

- Quest Designer - being able to trigger quests will allow handholding tutorial quests to ease new players into sandbox, as well as prototyping how the player will progress into the RPG side of the game. This eventually leads to portals, the hero party system, and the World Editor combining multiple location maps into a single playable experience.

- Monster Dens - these are a natural progression from the wave spawning system. On the Hard snow map especially, the wolf packs present a constant and frequent threat. It makes sense for such creatures to have a home/nest/den with health that can be attacked. Attacking a nest will cause any monsters inside to come out and fight, and destroying the nest will prevent future waves from attacking your village. Leaving a nest alone will result in a 'settler' monster spawning that goes looking for a site to establish a new nest.

- Enable the selling of Mead and Pumpkins.

- Implement the Crooked Cauldron, Stables, Jeweller's Shop and Marketplace with their associated professions.

- Enable building upgrades.

For a look further ahead, it's worth taking a look at the Development Roadmap.

That's it for 2014. From us all on the Folk Tale dev team, we hope you've all had a great holiday.

PC, Mac*

Sandbox Player: The camera is now a fixed angle to aid performance on lower end machines. The angle can be changed by holding LeftAlt and moving the mouse. Free camera rotation can be enabled under Settings->Gameplay
Sandbox Player: Console: Load/Save improved a lot
Sandbox Player: Added first batch of new advisor voice over lines
Sandbox Player: Improved building health UI with productivity and assigned worker count
Sandbox Player: Buildings with no workers now show permanent hover icon overhead
Sandbox Player: Field hover name now shows which crop is planted
Sandbox Player: Clicking event notifications zooms to focal point for some event types
Sandbox Player: Mouse scroll wheel now rotates building when in placement mode
Sandbox Player: during construction placement mode, resources nearby building will be shown as 100% opaque if the resource is within the building’s boundary, 50% opaque if outside and close by
Sandbox Player: Selecting an existing economy building will show resource icons over resources within the boundary
Sandbox Player: When the last worker at a building abandons the village, the Advisor will tell you
Sandbox Player: Massively reduced gold earned from selling finished goods
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Worker highlight fixed
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Find button enabled
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Auto-Recruit enabled
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Correct profession portraits now showing
Sandbox Player: Advisor now warns when you are trying to train your last peasant and prevents you from doing so (otherwise you can’t build more cottages)
Sandbox Player: Workers are now demoted to peasants when their building is destroyed
Sandbox Player: Stockpile dialog updated with recently added resources
Sandbox Player: Reactions tweaked when mobs attacked at range
Sandbox Player: Fixed ranged units facing targets during weapon reload
Sandbox Player: Performance optimizations for character animations (16% FPS boost on CPU-bound machines)
Sandbox Player: Added Jeweller hammer props in preparation for activating Jeweller profession
Sandbox Player: Added LOD1, LOD2, LOD3 models for Toadkin Warrior and Worker
Sandbox Player: Weapons now have correct stats (see website)
Sandbox Player: Settings And Exit To Main Menu buttons added to pause/escape menu
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Chainmail research now unlocks 4 crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Leather research now unlocks 4 crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Axes research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Daggers research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Maces research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Swords research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Tailor’s Emporium Clothmaking research now unlocks 4 crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Herbalist’s Den Elixir research now unlocks crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Herbalist’s Den Poisons research now unlocks crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Herbalist’s Den Herbalism research now unlocks crafting recipes

#0120 Sandbox Player: Characters Weapons Breaking When Being Retrained Or Demoted
#0123 Sandbox Player: The Fog Of War Is Bright Blue
#0126 Sandbox Player: Maps Often Stop Loading At 35% Progress
#0127 Sandbox Player: Research Not Lowering Building Costs
#0128 Sandbox Player: Workers Dropping Off Resources Ignore Production/Research Split
#0129 Sandbox Editor: Water Bank Tiles Aren't Paintable

Our focus this patch has been on improving existing gameplay and fixing bugs. Load/Save has received a good deal of attention, but will remain accessible via the Console for now to allow for a period of community testing. Please try it, and report any save related bugs in the Steam forum under the Bug Reporting sub-forum so that we can get them fixed and roll out load/save into the main UI.

Plenty of UI improvements have been made to provide information about villager needs. These should make it easier to respond to economic production challenges and prevent villagers leaving en masse.

At the start of a new game, you’re likely to manually assign workers by clicking on the building and clicking on the train profession button. As your village gets larger, and in the absence of the civics dialog for finding peasants, you’re best to use the Workers tab and recruit directly. Auto-AI is also added this patch, and is worth setting on critical economy buildings once your population reaches as decent size. In a future patch we'll be adding the ability to define how many worker vacancies should be auto-recruited.

We haven’t implemented the Advisor speech queue yet, so he can end up speaking multiple lines at the same time. We’ll aim to fix this in the next patch.

Mead and Pumpkins cannot currently be sold.

Guard Mode is broken in this patch.

If when Alt+Tabbing, the camera is left facing the sky, hold down LeftAlt again and re-orient the camera by moving the mouse. If this is frustrating, the keymap.json file can be edited to change the keybinding (see below).

There is a known problem when exiting sandbox editor or player and trying to start the Old Tutorial. As a temporary fix, please restart the game and go directly into the Old Tutorial.

We’ve disabled Sandbox Terrain-Cam in this patch temporarily while we fix a few bugs with the new camera system.

*We are experiencing crashes on older Mac's with 512MB video cards. Mac's with newer 1GB cards or HD5000 integrated graphics cards are working fine. We are trying to identify the cause of this problem with an aim of pushing out a fix ASAP. Our apologies if you are affected by this. You may wish to consider turning off auto-updates and staying on Patch 0.2.10 until a fix is available. UPDATE: Installing Yosemite can fix the problem.

We’d like to remind players that the default build for Windows is now 64-bit, which the vast majority of players are using. Players with older 32-bit versions of Windows will need to opt in to the 32-bit build. For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744474771635312/.

And finally, ‘tis the season to be jolly, so from all of us on the Folk Tale Dev Team, have a very happy holiday!

PC, Mac*

Sandbox Player: The camera is now a fixed angle to aid performance on lower end machines. The angle can be changed by holding LeftAlt and moving the mouse. Free camera rotation can be enabled under Settings->Gameplay
Sandbox Player: Console: Load/Save improved a lot
Sandbox Player: Added first batch of new advisor voice over lines
Sandbox Player: Improved building health UI with productivity and assigned worker count
Sandbox Player: Buildings with no workers now show permanent hover icon overhead
Sandbox Player: Field hover name now shows which crop is planted
Sandbox Player: Clicking event notifications zooms to focal point for some event types
Sandbox Player: Mouse scroll wheel now rotates building when in placement mode
Sandbox Player: during construction placement mode, resources nearby building will be shown as 100% opaque if the resource is within the building’s boundary, 50% opaque if outside and close by
Sandbox Player: Selecting an existing economy building will show resource icons over resources within the boundary
Sandbox Player: When the last worker at a building abandons the village, the Advisor will tell you
Sandbox Player: Massively reduced gold earned from selling finished goods
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Worker highlight fixed
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Find button enabled
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Auto-Recruit enabled
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Worker Tab: Correct profession portraits now showing
Sandbox Player: Advisor now warns when you are trying to train your last peasant and prevents you from doing so (otherwise you can’t build more cottages)
Sandbox Player: Workers are now demoted to peasants when their building is destroyed
Sandbox Player: Stockpile dialog updated with recently added resources
Sandbox Player: Reactions tweaked when mobs attacked at range
Sandbox Player: Fixed ranged units facing targets during weapon reload
Sandbox Player: Performance optimizations for character animations (16% FPS boost on CPU-bound machines)
Sandbox Player: Added Jeweller hammer props in preparation for activating Jeweller profession
Sandbox Player: Added LOD1, LOD2, LOD3 models for Toadkin Warrior and Worker
Sandbox Player: Weapons now have correct stats (see website)
Sandbox Player: Settings And Exit To Main Menu buttons added to pause/escape menu
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Chainmail research now unlocks 4 crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Leather research now unlocks 4 crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Axes research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Daggers research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Maces research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Blacksmith Swords research now unlocks 1 crafting recipe
Sandbox Player: Tailor’s Emporium Clothmaking research now unlocks 4 crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Herbalist’s Den Elixir research now unlocks crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Herbalist’s Den Poisons research now unlocks crafting recipes
Sandbox Player: Herbalist’s Den Herbalism research now unlocks crafting recipes

#0120 Sandbox Player: Characters Weapons Breaking When Being Retrained Or Demoted
#0123 Sandbox Player: The Fog Of War Is Bright Blue
#0126 Sandbox Player: Maps Often Stop Loading At 35% Progress
#0127 Sandbox Player: Research Not Lowering Building Costs
#0128 Sandbox Player: Workers Dropping Off Resources Ignore Production/Research Split
#0129 Sandbox Editor: Water Bank Tiles Aren't Paintable

Our focus this patch has been on improving existing gameplay and fixing bugs. Load/Save has received a good deal of attention, but will remain accessible via the Console for now to allow for a period of community testing. Please try it, and report any save related bugs in the Steam forum under the Bug Reporting sub-forum so that we can get them fixed and roll out load/save into the main UI.

Plenty of UI improvements have been made to provide information about villager needs. These should make it easier to respond to economic production challenges and prevent villagers leaving en masse.

At the start of a new game, you’re likely to manually assign workers by clicking on the building and clicking on the train profession button. As your village gets larger, and in the absence of the civics dialog for finding peasants, you’re best to use the Workers tab and recruit directly. Auto-AI is also added this patch, and is worth setting on critical economy buildings once your population reaches as decent size. In a future patch we'll be adding the ability to define how many worker vacancies should be auto-recruited.

We haven’t implemented the Advisor speech queue yet, so he can end up speaking multiple lines at the same time. We’ll aim to fix this in the next patch.

Mead and Pumpkins cannot currently be sold.

Guard Mode is broken in this patch.

If when Alt+Tabbing, the camera is left facing the sky, hold down LeftAlt again and re-orient the camera by moving the mouse. If this is frustrating, the keymap.json file can be edited to change the keybinding (see below).

There is a known problem when exiting sandbox editor or player and trying to start the Old Tutorial. As a temporary fix, please restart the game and go directly into the Old Tutorial.

We’ve disabled Sandbox Terrain-Cam in this patch temporarily while we fix a few bugs with the new camera system.

*We are experiencing crashes on older Mac's with 512MB video cards. Mac's with newer 1GB cards or HD5000 integrated graphics cards are working fine. We are trying to identify the cause of this problem with an aim of pushing out a fix ASAP. Our apologies if you are affected by this. You may wish to consider turning off auto-updates and staying on Patch 0.2.10 until a fix is available. UPDATE: Installing Yosemite can fix the problem.

We’d like to remind players that the default build for Windows is now 64-bit, which the vast majority of players are using. Players with older 32-bit versions of Windows will need to opt in to the 32-bit build. For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744474771635312/.

And finally, ‘tis the season to be jolly, so from all of us on the Folk Tale Dev Team, have a very happy holiday!

Set your alarm this Sunday when we'll be recording a voice acting session live on air. Watch @Trendane on camera as he performs the Advisor's lines for Sandbox.

Sunday 14th December:
03:00 Sydney (Monday, AEDT)
00:00 Hong Kong (CST)
19:00 Moscow (MSK)
17:00 Europe (Western, CET)
16:00 London
11:00 New York (EST)
08:00 Los Angeles (PST)

http://twitch.tv/gamesfoundry

Please Follow the channel, and you'll receive an email from Twitch when we start broadcasting.

See you then!

If you missed the hangout, you can catch it again over on our YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvs2Sul5xNw&list=PLfbRgg_s65Xez6fgTuWtIeTICYCqj6XH6&index=1