Mar 7, 2015

Folk Tale - Games Foundry

Platforms

PC, Mac

Major Changes

Sandbox Player: Only Peasants Now Carry Firewood, Freeing Workers To Get On With What They Should Be Doing - Big Impact On Economy

Minor Changes

Sandbox Player: CPU Performance Improved By Moving Distance Culling To Separate Thread (Up To 18% FPS Improvement On CPU Bound Machines)
Sandbox Player: Moved Spider Dens In Easy Map Further From Start Area
Sandbox Player: Improved Building Construction Option Tooltips
Sandbox Player: Fixed Tooltip Order On Research Requirements In Research Tab
Sandbox Player: Doubled The Taxation Happiness Modifier
Sandbox Player: A Building Has Been Destroyed No Longer Plays When Manually Destroying
Sandbox Player: Added Setting To Control Advisor Commentary Volume **
Sandbox Player: Doubled Speed Of Salmon Steak Production
Sandbox Player: Supersampling Console Command Fixed
Sandbox Player: Settings No Longer Carousel Loop, Now Clamped At Min/Max
Sandbox Player: City Watch Are Now Tougher (Base Armor Of 10 And Double Health)
Sandbox Player: Reduced The Rate Cottages Burn Firewood
Sandbox Player: Increased Amount Of Firewood Villagers Can Carry In One Trip
Sandbox Player: ‘F’ Key Now Cycles To Next Worker In Same Profession As Current Selection***
Sandbox Player: SHIFT+F Now Adds Next Worker In Same Profession To Selection
Sandbox Player: Reduced Infection Rates
Sandbox Player: Removed Some Old Tutorial Code/Assets Reducing Memory Footprint And Time To Start A Game
Sandbox Editor: Fixed Wave Spawner and Chest Inspector Corruption
Sandbox Editor: Max Stalk Distance Now Clamped To Be GTE To Max Wander Distance*

Bug Fixes

Sandbox Player: Fixed Disease 03 Having A Minimal Outbreak Interval
Sandbox Player: Fixed Load/Save Bug When Saving Long Walls
Sandbox Editor: Fixed Spawn Points Showing Too Small Wander And Stalk Distances
#0146 Sandbox Player: Wandering Monsters Don't Attack

Developer Comments

This was meant to be just a quick service release to fix one bug in the Editor, but it rapdily grew into more than that. It now addresses bug fixes, balancing, and UI improvements. Many thanks to our community testers for providing the feedback that lead to many of these changes.

* Caused some enemies to run around the map ignoring you and any attacks
** Secondary Voice Volume while added, is not yet functional
*** If you have a Woodcutter selected, pressing ‘F’ will find the next Woodcutter. If nothing selected, will default to next Peasant.

Update

Service Patch 0.2.15.1 is now live and fixes 3 bugs reported this morning. Please report any issues with the minimap in the forums.

Mar 7, 2015

Folk Tale Alpha 18 (0.2.15)

Folk Tale - GF

Platforms

PC, Mac

Major Changes

Sandbox Player: Only Peasants Now Carry Firewood, Freeing Workers To Get On With What They Should Be Doing - Big Impact On Economy

Minor Changes

Bug Fixes

Developer Comments

Update

Service Patch 0.2.15.1 is now live and fixes 3 bugs reported this morning. Please report any issues with the minimap in the forums.

Feb 28, 2015

Folk Tale Alpha 17 (0.2.14)

Folk Tale - Games Foundry

Platforms

PC, Mac

Major Changes

Sandbox Player: Load/Save Added To UI
Sandbox Player: Sickness Added
Sandbox Player: Start Screen Refreshed, Quit Menu Item Added
Sandbox Player: Inventory System Rewritten
Sandbox Player: Saving Games Is Now Significantly Faster
Sandbox Player: Need For Entertainment Activates When Culture Passes 300*
General: DirectX11 Support Added, Set As Default, Fallback To 9.0c (Win Only) Update 1: We're overriding back to 9.0c due to a crash on Exit likely to be a Unity bug. Update 2: T'Was indeed a Unity bug. Fixed in 5.0, waiting for 4.6.x patch before reinstating.

Minor Changes

Sandbox Player: ‘F’ Key Moves Camera To Next Peasant (aka Find)
Sandbox Player: Confirm Yes/No Added To Building Destroy
Sandbox Player: Wood Yield From Trees Temporarily Doubled Until We Add Woodcutter Plant Sapling Ability
Sandbox Player: Added UI Scale Graphics Setting For Accessibility And Retina Displays
Sandbox Player: Character’s Are Now Easier To See At Night And In Dungeons
Sandbox Player: Upgraded SSAO + Works Better On AMD Cards**
Sandbox Player: Spider Den Attack Waves Only Trigger When Culture Passes 200
Sandbox Player: Need For Basic Clothing Starts When Culture Passes 150
Sandbox Player: Added 10 Planks To Supply Cart To Unlock First Woodcutter Hut Sooner
Sandbox Player: Firewood Consumed At Faster Rate In Cold Climates (Snow)
Sandbox Player: Mead Is Now Sold From The Tavern
Sandbox Player: More Tooltips Added Throughout UI
Sandbox Player: Production Cycles Are More Frequent And Use Smaller Batch Sizes
Sandbox Player: Arbalist And City Watch Armor Visual Appearance Improved
Sandbox Editor: Terrain Tiles Moved To Single Core Tiles Kit - Use Paint Tool
Sandbox Editor: Auto-Migration Code Added To Remap Existing Community Maps
Sandbox Editor: Grassland, Snow and Swamp Kits Now Have Their Own Quarries And Iron Mines
Sandbox Editor: Lights Kit Now Has Common Torches, Sconces, Braziers Memory Optimized For Use In All Biomes.
Sandbox Editor: Added Position and Rotation Snap Overrides To Inspector
Sandbox Editor: Added Toggle For Locking Props To Topbar
Sandbox Editor: Added Toggle For Enable/Disable Camera Colliders
Sandbox Editor: Added Ice Kit (Cliffs, Ice Stalagmites)
Sandbox Editor: Added Ice Palace Kit

Crafting Changes

Added Common Scale Recipes (Need Blacksmith Scale Armor Research)
Blacksmith Halberd Research Unlocks Halberd (Common), Better Than Simple Halberd
Halberd (Common) Damage Changed From 12 To 16

Bug Fixes

#0059 AO Graphical Glitches on AMD Graphics Cards
#0135 Sandbox Player: Deer Aren't Animating When Carried By Hunters
#0139 Sandbox Player: Loot Fails To Drop After Restarting Via Menu
#0140 Sandbox Player: Green 'Clear Resources' Icons In Inventory
#0141 Sandbox Player: Workers Deposit Default Weapons Into Inventory When Being Demoted Or Retrained
#0142 Sandbox Player: Taxes Generated While Game Paused
#0143 Sandbox Player: Armor Not Return To Inventory On Villager Death.
#0144 Start Screen: No Exit To Desktop Option
#0145 Sandbox Player: Bridges In Sandbox Have Collider And Navmesh Issues
#0147 Sandbox Player: Wagon On Medium LOD Settings Vanishes Too Soon
#0154 Sandbox Player: Monastery Confession Research Has Wrong Icon
#0155 Sandbox Player: OSX Crashing Or Freezing At 90%
Sandbox Player: Furthest Quarry In Grassland (Easy) Map Inaccessible
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Tab Hover Effects Not Working

Breaking Changes and Known Issues

Please note that save games from previous versions cannot be loaded in this version.

There is a known issue with the Inspector in the Editor when viewing Wave Spawners. We'll fix this shortly and issue a minor patch. We didn't want this to hold up the release with so many good things to share. Our apologies to Level Designers for the temporary inconvenience.

How Load/Save Works

When in-game, hit escape and press the 'Save' button. After about 1 second there will be a bright sparkly confirmation sound plays to indicate success. You can then continue or exit. In the event of an error, an on-screen dialog will appear. We'll add a text notification in the next patch.

After saving, the next time you start the game, the 'Continue' button will be enabled on the start screen. If you wish to load a different save, start a New Game, and using the File Browser move up one folder and then into the Session folder where all you save games are now located.

Developer Comments

Load/Save in sandbox has received lots of fixes and promoted into the UI via the escape key pause menu. You can continue your last game from the start page.

The previous Mac problems have now been fixed. If you participated in the OSX Experimental Build Beta earlier this month, please opt-out of that beta so that you can continue to receive patch updates.

Sickness now activates once your culture score (the happy/sad faces on the topbar) passes 200. Diseases have differing rates of infection, and may spread through your population. As your culture expands, more serious diseases start to outbreak, and must be tackled with medicine created by the Herbalists. Sickness affects worker productivity, happiness, and can lead to them losing health. So while a disease may not be fatal, it does impact your village.

Villagers now need entertaining at Taverns once your village’s culture value passes 300. Mead is produced from Honeycomb gathered from Bee Yards by Monks, and brewed into Mead at the Monastery. Tavern Innkeepers then collect Barrels Of Mead from either a Storehouse or direct from a Monastery.

DirectX 11 is now the default on Windows, falling back to 9.0c when not supported. This delivers a number of benefits including improved memory management which can help 32-bit Windows players, and better clarity in text rendering. This is a big technical change, so if you experience any problems, please let us know via a post in the community forum. We suspect there might be a Unity (engine) problem with DirectX 11, and if it's widespread we may revert back to 9.0c later in the day.
Update 1: We're overriding back to 9.0c due to a crash on Exit likely to be a Unity bug. Update 2: T'Was indeed a Unity bug. Fixed in 5.0, waiting for 4.6.x patch before reinstating.

UI scaling has been added to the graphics settings for improved accessibility. Players on Retina displays will benefit from scaling up, and those on laptops will benefit from scaling down to prevent overlap. There is a known issue with blip rendering on the minimap at larger scales.

**SSAO has been enhanced and should now work much better on AMD cards. There are glitches on Intel HD 3000 cards, but this gpu is way below minimum spec and isn’t powerful enough to run SSAO anyway. Please report any visual glitches in the forums including your graphics card make and model.
Update: Reported problems on AMD Radeon HD 7870, R9 270X

We've removed the old Tutorial from this point onwards. It is however still available should you wish to play it:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/617329150697740673/

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.

Feb 28, 2015

Folk Tale Alpha 17 (0.2.14)

Folk Tale - GF

Platforms

PC, Mac

Major Changes

Minor Changes

Crafting Changes

Added Common Scale Recipes (Need Blacksmith Scale Armor Research)
Blacksmith Halberd Research Unlocks Halberd (Common), Better Than Simple Halberd
Halberd (Common) Damage Changed From 12 To 16

Bug Fixes

Breaking Changes and Known Issues

How Load/Save Works

Developer Comments

Feb 7, 2015

Folk Tale Dev Blog 31

Folk Tale - Games Foundry

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

Starter Wagon and Resource Clearing

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.

Improving Villager Needs

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.

Taxation And Changes To Economy

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.

Research

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.

Continued...

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

Feb 7, 2015

Folk Tale Dev Blog 31

Folk Tale - GF

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

Starter Wagon and Resource Clearing

Improving Villager Needs

Taxation And Changes To Economy

Research

Continued...

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

Jan 31, 2015

Folk Tale Alpha 16 (0.2.13)

Folk Tale - Games Foundry

Platforms

PC, Mac*

Major Changes

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

Minor Changes

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

Bug Fixes

#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

Developer Comments

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.

Patch 0.2.13.1

#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.

Jan 31, 2015

Folk Tale Alpha 16 (0.2.13)

Folk Tale - GF

Platforms

PC, Mac*

Major Changes

Minor Changes

Bug Fixes

Developer Comments

Patch 0.2.13.1

#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.