Over the last few weeks, we’ve recognised that since the v2.0.5 update, an increasing number of players have found Godus’ Settlement mechanics to be a bit unintuitive and, well, just not as fun as they ought to be.

So, a core group of us went away and brainstormed a few solutions to this dilemma and in the process, we rediscovered some of our original ideas.

We’re not quite ready to share the full details of how we are going to be bringing these ideas to fruition – some of the new features and functions we have in mind for the Settlements revamp are quite advanced and we think it’s better to let you know precisely what we’re cooking up once everything has been locked down and proven to be technologically viable.

However, since we’re very excited and enthusiastic about these advancements, we do want to let you in on our thinking and demonstrate that we have read your comments, digested your feedback and are sprinting hard to bring them into reality.

PLACING SETTLEMENTS

What drives our thinking about Settlements is the course of human history itself. We want to give you a way to take your initially small group primitive followers and take them into the agricultural age while accounting for considerable growth in population.

While the current system does make specific areas within your Homeworld more distinct and civilised, we would prefer to do so in a way that’s less restrictive and more naturalistic, all while amplifying your abilities as a god.

When placing a settlement with the current system, it can be challenging to create farms around it due to the dense population you will have created up to that point. Additionally, all settlements tend to look a bit too similar to each other for our liking.

We know that that current system can lead to confusion over how to get the most out of your Settlements and even over the size of your Settlement before it is placed into the world. What we want is to give you a more accessible way to further the development of your Followers’ habitation and one that doesn’t rely on being menu driven or needing a lot of intricate GUI elements.

The new system we’re currently working on will add much more diversity to your Settlements. We’re developing an inventive (surprising, even) solution to make Settlements more charming, more efficient and more aesthetically pleasing… and makes you feel more like you’re playing with god-like powers, too.

BUILDING SETTLEMENTS ON HILLS AND VALLEYS

We want to deliver on our vision of a world as presented in our original concept art for Godus, where Settlements can thrive across multiple layers of the landscape.

Creating Settlements under the current system does make good use of Godus’ trademark sculpting mechanics and allows you to bring life to flat areas, however we’ve seen that for many players, this tends to lead to the whole of their Homeworld being flattened as they expand their population.

We would prefer there to be more visual variety in how you evolve your Homeworld and between the Settlements you create for your Followers. We want to enable you to build Settlements in a less restrictive and uniform way.

Our goal is to enable you to see your followers build vertically as well as horizontally in harmony with a beautiful, undulating landscape.

GOVERNING YOUR FARMS AND FARMERS

We want to make the involvement of farming in the Bronze Age and mining in the Iron Age feel more compelling and challenging without forcing you to worry about too much micromanagement.

We’re quite fond of how the current system works for Builders – we think it’s clear, simple and fun to play. We also like the current balance between building houses and farms, as it neatly reflects how we humans behave in the real world.

That said, the current way you assign roles to your Settlement’s workers is too clunky and fussy – we have seen that it has led to confusion, especially with the Buffer class of follower.

Our new designs focus on making the way you govern your farmers and miners more immediate, instinctive and cohesive by extending existing, proven systems as well as doing a better job in how we describe them.

GROWING AND HARVESTING CROPS

The way we think about crops is as a resource that makes sense without us needing to describe it in too much detail. We want you to think of them as behaving just like they do in the real world – people need food to work, after all.

As such, we like how the production of wheat is tied to building new Abodes. However, it’s become very clear that the current mechanics can be quite hard to grasp and require too much explanation, especially for less advanced players.

While the logic behind how wheat works at the moment is sound, it’s obviously not as fun as it could be. Also, the fact wheat disappears instead of being a resource you collect is in conflict with how we think about it as a resource in the first place.

We’re exploring new lines of thought as to how your followers harvest wheat as a resource for building and have this mechanic be as intuitive and engaging.

ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

One of the most requested features from the community is for a way to automatically collect Belief. We’re now in the process of implementing a Statue of Collection, which will collect all the Belief generated by your followers within a given area.

OTHER GUI IMPROVEMENTS

We’re also looking into ways to increase the level of detail for the information you can gather about your Followers and Settlements as a way to enhance your god-like omniscience.

We’re sprinting hard as a team to get this new functionality into your hands as quickly as we can – we can’t wait to show you in full just what we’re creating for you. We hope that the new Settlement designs will not only address some of your concerns, but also lead to a more enjoyable and empowering Godus experience.

We’re eager to hear your thoughts, so please share your impressions in either our Kickstarter backer forum or in our Steam Early Access forum here.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve recognised that since the v2.0.5 update, an increasing number of players have found Godus’ Settlement mechanics to be a bit unintuitive and, well, just not as fun as they ought to be.

So, a core group of us went away and brainstormed a few solutions to this dilemma and in the process, we rediscovered some of our original ideas.

We’re not quite ready to share the full details of how we are going to be bringing these ideas to fruition – some of the new features and functions we have in mind for the Settlements revamp are quite advanced and we think it’s better to let you know precisely what we’re cooking up once everything has been locked down and proven to be technologically viable.

However, since we’re very excited and enthusiastic about these advancements, we do want to let you in on our thinking and demonstrate that we have read your comments, digested your feedback and are sprinting hard to bring them into reality.

PLACING SETTLEMENTS

What drives our thinking about Settlements is the course of human history itself. We want to give you a way to take your initially small group primitive followers and take them into the agricultural age while accounting for considerable growth in population.

While the current system does make specific areas within your Homeworld more distinct and civilised, we would prefer to do so in a way that’s less restrictive and more naturalistic, all while amplifying your abilities as a god.

When placing a settlement with the current system, it can be challenging to create farms around it due to the dense population you will have created up to that point. Additionally, all settlements tend to look a bit too similar to each other for our liking.

We know that that current system can lead to confusion over how to get the most out of your Settlements and even over the size of your Settlement before it is placed into the world. What we want is to give you a more accessible way to further the development of your Followers’ habitation and one that doesn’t rely on being menu driven or needing a lot of intricate GUI elements.

The new system we’re currently working on will add much more diversity to your Settlements. We’re developing an inventive (surprising, even) solution to make Settlements more charming, more efficient and more aesthetically pleasing… and makes you feel more like you’re playing with god-like powers, too.

BUILDING SETTLEMENTS ON HILLS AND VALLEYS

We want to deliver on our vision of a world as presented in our original concept art for Godus, where Settlements can thrive across multiple layers of the landscape.

Creating Settlements under the current system does make good use of Godus’ trademark sculpting mechanics and allows you to bring life to flat areas, however we’ve seen that for many players, this tends to lead to the whole of their Homeworld being flattened as they expand their population.

We would prefer there to be more visual variety in how you evolve your Homeworld and between the Settlements you create for your Followers. We want to enable you to build Settlements in a less restrictive and uniform way.

Our goal is to enable you to see your followers build vertically as well as horizontally in harmony with a beautiful, undulating landscape.

GOVERNING YOUR FARMS AND FARMERS

We want to make the involvement of farming in the Bronze Age and mining in the Iron Age feel more compelling and challenging without forcing you to worry about too much micromanagement.

We’re quite fond of how the current system works for Builders – we think it’s clear, simple and fun to play. We also like the current balance between building houses and farms, as it neatly reflects how we humans behave in the real world.

That said, the current way you assign roles to your Settlement’s workers is too clunky and fussy – we have seen that it has led to confusion, especially with the Buffer class of follower.

Our new designs focus on making the way you govern your farmers and miners more immediate, instinctive and cohesive by extending existing, proven systems as well as doing a better job in how we describe them.

GROWING AND HARVESTING CROPS

The way we think about crops is as a resource that makes sense without us needing to describe it in too much detail. We want you to think of them as behaving just like they do in the real world – people need food to work, after all.

As such, we like how the production of wheat is tied to building new Abodes. However, it’s become very clear that the current mechanics can be quite hard to grasp and require too much explanation, especially for less advanced players.

While the logic behind how wheat works at the moment is sound, it’s obviously not as fun as it could be. Also, the fact wheat disappears instead of being a resource you collect is in conflict with how we think about it as a resource in the first place.

We’re exploring new lines of thought as to how your followers harvest wheat as a resource for building and have this mechanic be as intuitive and engaging.

ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS

One of the most requested features from the community is for a way to automatically collect Belief. We’re now in the process of implementing a Statue of Collection, which will collect all the Belief generated by your followers within a given area.

OTHER GUI IMPROVEMENTS

We’re also looking into ways to increase the level of detail for the information you can gather about your Followers and Settlements as a way to enhance your god-like omniscience.

We’re sprinting hard as a team to get this new functionality into your hands as quickly as we can – we can’t wait to show you in full just what we’re creating for you. We hope that the new Settlement designs will not only address some of your concerns, but also lead to a more enjoyable and empowering Godus experience.

We’re eager to hear your thoughts, so please share your impressions in either our Kickstarter backer forum or in our Steam Early Access forum here.

Today we thought it might be worth talking about the Abodes and different layers that you can build on. After reading through a couple of messages we received though our Support portal as well as over Facebook and Reddit, we thought it might a good idea to create a little guide to give you all a clearer picture.

OKAY, SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

When you get to a certain part of the game, you may notice that you can no longer build Abodes on high level ground (the dark green layer to be exact, or eleven layers above the first layer of grass to even more exact). Some believe that this could possibly be a bug – however, that’s not the case as you can build above the dark green layer!

BUT...HOW?

Simples, but it will take a little bit of work to do – in fact, you’ll need to unlock the Mining Settlement and gather 30 ore to unlock the Stone Lodge. After you get past this point, you’ll be able to build to your heart’s content.



In Godus, there are many layers you can build on, but you may be asking yourself which Abodes goes where.

Starting off with the sand layer, your Followers will start off building Shelters. Once you have reached a population of 10 you’ll unlock the Straw Hut Abode and your Followers will start building this type of Abode instead of Shelters. A bit later in the game, once you’ve unlocked the Farming Settlement and gathered 9 Wheat, you will unlock the Wooden Hut and your Followers will start building these Abodes on the sand layer instead of Straw Huts. This wraps up any Abodes for the sand layer.

Next up, the grass layer (or the light green layer). Once you reach a population level of 27 you’ll unlock the Mud Hut Abode and this will allow your Followers to make the transition from sand to grass. Upon reaching the 115 population level, you’ll unlock the Mud Cabins – this Abode will really help in building up your population and in no time you’ll unlock the Farming Settlement. Once your Farmers have gathered 9 Wheat you’ll unlock the Wooden Hut Abode and this will take over the Straw Hut and Mud Hut Abodes. Once you have gathered 24 Wheat you’ll unlock the Wooden Cabin Abode and this will take over the Mud Cabin Abode.

Next up is the Wooden Lodge Abode, which unlocks at 70 Wheat – this will immediately start to increase your population level. Once you have reached 900 population level, you’ll unlock the final Wooden Abode called Wooden Cottage and this is the last Abode you can build on the grass layer. Once you have unlocked the Wooden Hut, Wooden Cabin, Wooden Lodge and Wooden Cottage, you’ll be able to use these from the first grass layer and ten layers above. Once you have reach the eleventh layer (dark green) above the first grass layer, you will no longer be able to progress with these Abodes.

At this point, you’ll need to unlock the Mining Settlement and gather 30 Ore to unlock the Stone Lodge Abode, after 140 Ore you’ll unlock the Stone Cottage Abode. Once these Abodes have been unlocked, you’ll be able to continue building past the dark green grass layer, up until you reach the snow layer (or the top white layer). If you try to build these type of Abodes below the dark green grass layer, you’ll just end up building more Wooden Abodes.

That about wraps things up this guide. We hope you find it helpful and if you need any extra help, you are always welcome to drop us a message at support@22cans.com.

Today we thought it might be worth talking about the Abodes and different layers that you can build on. After reading through a couple of messages we received though our Support portal as well as over Facebook and Reddit, we thought it might a good idea to create a little guide to give you all a clearer picture.

OKAY, SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

When you get to a certain part of the game, you may notice that you can no longer build Abodes on high level ground (the dark green layer to be exact, or eleven layers above the first layer of grass to even more exact). Some believe that this could possibly be a bug – however, that’s not the case as you can build above the dark green layer!

BUT...HOW?

Simples, but it will take a little bit of work to do – in fact, you’ll need to unlock the Mining Settlement and gather 30 ore to unlock the Stone Lodge. After you get past this point, you’ll be able to build to your heart’s content.



In Godus, there are many layers you can build on, but you may be asking yourself which Abodes goes where.

Starting off with the sand layer, your Followers will start off building Shelters. Once you have reached a population of 10 you’ll unlock the Straw Hut Abode and your Followers will start building this type of Abode instead of Shelters. A bit later in the game, once you’ve unlocked the Farming Settlement and gathered 9 Wheat, you will unlock the Wooden Hut and your Followers will start building these Abodes on the sand layer instead of Straw Huts. This wraps up any Abodes for the sand layer.

Next up, the grass layer (or the light green layer). Once you reach a population level of 27 you’ll unlock the Mud Hut Abode and this will allow your Followers to make the transition from sand to grass. Upon reaching the 115 population level, you’ll unlock the Mud Cabins – this Abode will really help in building up your population and in no time you’ll unlock the Farming Settlement. Once your Farmers have gathered 9 Wheat you’ll unlock the Wooden Hut Abode and this will take over the Straw Hut and Mud Hut Abodes. Once you have gathered 24 Wheat you’ll unlock the Wooden Cabin Abode and this will take over the Mud Cabin Abode.

Next up is the Wooden Lodge Abode, which unlocks at 70 Wheat – this will immediately start to increase your population level. Once you have reached 900 population level, you’ll unlock the final Wooden Abode called Wooden Cottage and this is the last Abode you can build on the grass layer. Once you have unlocked the Wooden Hut, Wooden Cabin, Wooden Lodge and Wooden Cottage, you’ll be able to use these from the first grass layer and ten layers above. Once you have reach the eleventh layer (dark green) above the first grass layer, you will no longer be able to progress with these Abodes.

At this point, you’ll need to unlock the Mining Settlement and gather 30 Ore to unlock the Stone Lodge Abode, after 140 Ore you’ll unlock the Stone Cottage Abode. Once these Abodes have been unlocked, you’ll be able to continue building past the dark green grass layer, up until you reach the snow layer (or the top white layer). If you try to build these type of Abodes below the dark green grass layer, you’ll just end up building more Wooden Abodes.

That about wraps things up this guide. We hope you find it helpful and if you need any extra help, you are always welcome to drop us a message at support@22cans.com.

22cans has an iterative, suck-it-and-see approach to Godus’ design, where new features are designed, implemented, improved and refined in sequence after extensive play testing. Whilst this practice may appear a bit over-adventurous and unstructured when exposed so openly with the nature of Steam Early Access, this is a legitimate development practice that has aided innovative designers such as Peter Molyneux throughout his entire career in creating bold, unique experiences.

With Godus, we’re focused on delivering a creative experience with intuitive, clean gameplay for both core and casual gamers that connects people together and provides a consistently surprising and ever-expanding tail-end of the game.

We really want players to treat Godus like a hobby, where they will be so proud of the results of their time spent in the game that players will want to show off the results to their friends, families and peers.

There is still a long way to go with the development of Godus. For those who felt that the game has yet to meet their satisfaction, let us reiterate that the average development cycle for a modern game can be between 2 and 4 years! Godus was released a shy 9 months into development on Steam via Early Access, far ahead of the average Kickstarter first-playable turnaround. So the build you can play today is still very much on the way to becoming a truly great PC game.

Want to see where the game is headed? Click here to check out the roadmap!

22cans has an iterative, suck-it-and-see approach to Godus’ design, where new features are designed, implemented, improved and refined in sequence after extensive play testing. Whilst this practice may appear a bit over-adventurous and unstructured when exposed so openly with the nature of Steam Early Access, this is a legitimate development practice that has aided innovative designers such as Peter Molyneux throughout his entire career in creating bold, unique experiences.

With Godus, we’re focused on delivering a creative experience with intuitive, clean gameplay for both core and casual gamers that connects people together and provides a consistently surprising and ever-expanding tail-end of the game.

We really want players to treat Godus like a hobby, where they will be so proud of the results of their time spent in the game that players will want to show off the results to their friends, families and peers.

There is still a long way to go with the development of Godus. For those who felt that the game has yet to meet their satisfaction, let us reiterate that the average development cycle for a modern game can be between 2 and 4 years! Godus was released a shy 9 months into development on Steam via Early Access, far ahead of the average Kickstarter first-playable turnaround. So the build you can play today is still very much on the way to becoming a truly great PC game.

Want to see where the game is headed? Click here to check out the roadmap!

Last week we saw v.2.0.5.122 hit the main branch for all Steam users and we saw some new features make their way into the game, such as:

• Storms now have a chance to re-spawn chests within your world.
  
• Settlements had been redesigned to feel more like Settlements instead of a sprawl.
  
• The new infamous Settlements mechanics (that has caused mass confusion for a lot of people).

In the spirit of keeping our promises to the community we'll be releasing a new patch on the Opt-In branch but please be warned that they isn't much in the way of improvements this week except we have added new art for the Event Dock. There is a possibility that there could be even more bugs this week. Such is the case with active development - it's not always a straight line of progress, sometimes it's a little bit more like two steps forward, one step back!

If you would like to play a more stable build we recommend that you opt-out this week and either continue playing with .122 or .165. However, if you're a fearless bug hunter then please do feel free to dive into v2.0.5.178 and report any new bugs and glitches you encounter.


BUG FIXES:

• Champion area of influence will move with the Champion.
  
• Mines will convert to Abodes in a Mining Settlement if destroyed by Finger of God.

KNOWN ISSUES:
For the full list of known issues feel free to read through our Known Issues thread.

• Click on the chest tutorial issue
  Possibly the biggest issue players come across when starting a new game. We urge all players starting a new game not to click on the chest until the tutorial asks you to.
  
• Freeze upon quitting
  The most consistently reported bug is that the game freezes upon quitting and has to be closed via the Task Manager. This is due to middleware issue and a workaround is being investigated.
  
• Maximum number of Monuments that can be placed is 36
  When you get to a certain point in the game, you will start to notice that you can’t place any more Monuments and that it will still cost you Belief.

We've noticed on the Steam forums that some players may be holding back their bug reports because of duplicates and that players do not email support@22cans.com because there is no way of knowing whether the bug has already been reported or not. We urge everyone to report bugs via the forums and the support e-mail - the more people who report a bug, the more complete an idea of the number of people being affected by it we get. This helps us prioritise which bugs get fixed first.

That about sums up this week's update. If you have any more questions please feel free to drop our support team a message at support@22cans.com.

Happy bug hunting!

Last week we saw v.2.0.5.122 hit the main branch for all Steam users and we saw some new features make their way into the game, such as:

• Storms now have a chance to re-spawn chests within your world.
  
• Settlements had been redesigned to feel more like Settlements instead of a sprawl.
  
• The new infamous Settlements mechanics (that has caused mass confusion for a lot of people).

In the spirit of keeping our promises to the community we'll be releasing a new patch on the Opt-In branch but please be warned that they isn't much in the way of improvements this week except we have added new art for the Event Dock. There is a possibility that there could be even more bugs this week. Such is the case with active development - it's not always a straight line of progress, sometimes it's a little bit more like two steps forward, one step back!

If you would like to play a more stable build we recommend that you opt-out this week and either continue playing with .122 or .165. However, if you're a fearless bug hunter then please do feel free to dive into v2.0.5.178 and report any new bugs and glitches you encounter.


BUG FIXES:

• Champion area of influence will move with the Champion.
  
• Mines will convert to Abodes in a Mining Settlement if destroyed by Finger of God.

KNOWN ISSUES:
For the full list of known issues feel free to read through our Known Issues thread.

• Click on the chest tutorial issue
  Possibly the biggest issue players come across when starting a new game. We urge all players starting a new game not to click on the chest until the tutorial asks you to.
  
• Freeze upon quitting
  The most consistently reported bug is that the game freezes upon quitting and has to be closed via the Task Manager. This is due to middleware issue and a workaround is being investigated.
  
• Maximum number of Monuments that can be placed is 36
  When you get to a certain point in the game, you will start to notice that you can’t place any more Monuments and that it will still cost you Belief.

We've noticed on the Steam forums that some players may be holding back their bug reports because of duplicates and that players do not email support@22cans.com because there is no way of knowing whether the bug has already been reported or not. We urge everyone to report bugs via the forums and the support e-mail - the more people who report a bug, the more complete an idea of the number of people being affected by it we get. This helps us prioritise which bugs get fixed first.

That about sums up this week's update. If you have any more questions please feel free to drop our support team a message at support@22cans.com.

Happy bug hunting!

Good news, everybody! Today we’re releasing not one but two updates:

Firstly, we’re releasing v.2.0.5.122 onto the main branch of Steam (at last!). Secondly, we’re releasing v2.0.5.165 on to the Opt-In branch. For people that are completely new to v2.0.5, follow this link to find out what’s new and even find a guide to the new Settlement Mechanics.



The new Opt-In build will officially be labelled as v2.0.5.165 in the Options screen, this update is primarily a small bug fix that will squish a couple pesky bugs. For information on how to access the opt-in developer builds, please follow this link.

Please find below the change list for the v2.05.165 update. As always, If you find any new bugs or issues please be sure to send a report to Support@22cans.com or http://support.22cans.com/ and please feel free to discuss features for future updates on the Steam forums.

FIXES:

• Speed up button in the Voyage of Discovery missions has been temporarily disabled until the feature can be properly implemented.
  
• Timers will only appear over building site when you have selected them.
  
• Storm Chests should spawn in your area of influence.
  
• Shrines will now only buff abodes.
  
• Trees will no longer show buffs over field.

KNOWN ISSUES:
For the full list of known issues feel free to read through our Known Issues thread.

Maximum number of Monuments that can be placed is 36.
When you get to a certain point in the game, you will start to notice that you can’t place any more Monuments and that it will still cost you Belief.



We also grabbed some time with Peter and Jack earlier today to talk about the design process behind GODUS (as well as all of Peter’s previous games) and respond to some of the most recent comments from the community.

Check it out to discover fresh details about what we’ve currently got in production, some of the upcoming content that will soon be playable and what the future holds in store for GODUS.

http://youtu.be/yMrzxuzIx6I
Quite exciting, we are getting closer to a major update where new features will be released! That’s all for now, rest assured we’ll keep you posted of all the latest developments right here on our blog.

Good news, everybody! Today we’re releasing not one but two updates:

Firstly, we’re releasing v.2.0.5.122 onto the main branch of Steam (at last!). Secondly, we’re releasing v2.0.5.165 on to the Opt-In branch. For people that are completely new to v2.0.5, follow this link to find out what’s new and even find a guide to the new Settlement Mechanics.



The new Opt-In build will officially be labelled as v2.0.5.165 in the Options screen, this update is primarily a small bug fix that will squish a couple pesky bugs. For information on how to access the opt-in developer builds, please follow this link.

Please find below the change list for the v2.05.165 update. As always, If you find any new bugs or issues please be sure to send a report to Support@22cans.com or http://support.22cans.com/ and please feel free to discuss features for future updates on the Steam forums.

FIXES:

• Speed up button in the Voyage of Discovery missions has been temporarily disabled until the feature can be properly implemented.
  
• Timers will only appear over building site when you have selected them.
  
• Storm Chests should spawn in your area of influence.
  
• Shrines will now only buff abodes.
  
• Trees will no longer show buffs over field.

KNOWN ISSUES:
For the full list of known issues feel free to read through our Known Issues thread.

Maximum number of Monuments that can be placed is 36.
When you get to a certain point in the game, you will start to notice that you can’t place any more Monuments and that it will still cost you Belief.



We also grabbed some time with Peter and Jack earlier today to talk about the design process behind GODUS (as well as all of Peter’s previous games) and respond to some of the most recent comments from the community.

Check it out to discover fresh details about what we’ve currently got in production, some of the upcoming content that will soon be playable and what the future holds in store for GODUS.

http://youtu.be/yMrzxuzIx6I
Quite exciting, we are getting closer to a major update where new features will be released! That’s all for now, rest assured we’ll keep you posted of all the latest developments right here on our blog.