Hey everyone. In this episode we take a look at how the Sandbox Player is shaping up, run through the Sandbox UI overhaul filling in some of the details of gameplay mechanics, before wrapping up with a review of new assets.

For larger screenshots and more info, please visit http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2014/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-21.html.


The fixed build plots of the Tutorial are gone as promised, and free placement is in, providing precise control over the design of our village. We can freely move the building around; a green transparent cube means we're over a valid place for construction, while a red cube means we're too close to an obstruction. As you might expect we can also rotate buildings. We've also added a radius of influence, shown by the dotted circle surrounding the building ( see video ). Resources need to be located within this radius to be accessible by the building. Capturing multiple mines can result in a greater maximum output for the building.




For Sandbox, we're overhauling the UI and adding new elements. As a multi-genre village builder RPG RTS, there's a lot of information to condense and optimize to reduce screen clutter, especially at lower screen resolutions. In fantasy 4X games you might be used to seeing resources on the top bar, for example wood, stone, and iron. We forecast how much time players would be spending in each genre, and the information they'd need immediately to hand. In village building for example, resource stock levels are important, but when you are out in the wilds with your Hero Party, they aren't. Taking into account the complex nature of the economy and number of resources, it wasn't feasible to pack them all into a static top bar ( we tried! ). So we're adding an expand/contract toggle to show a separate resources dialogue that if you choose you can leave open permanently should you wish.



We've taken the Special Abilities / Portrait UI from the bottom left of the Tutorial and condensed it further, adding in new features at the same time. Under Misc Controls & Info we've added an Aggressive/Defensive Toggle to exert greater control over your villagers, preventing them from charging into combat, and the Auto-AI Toggle to place special abilities under AI control. Hardcore players will want to turn this off and have full control of heroes, but for your first few sessions it's a helpful feature to reduce micro-management during battle.

We're also adding short cuts for Health and Power Potions providing direct access to your global inventory stocks during combat, making it faster to save your villagers from death.



The Character Sheet has been condensed by removing personal storage ( not required when you have global inventory ) and adding Resistances. There are also tabs for professions ( workers ) and special abilities ( heroes ).



As your Heroes level up, you can spend Ability Points on powering up their abilities in the order that you prefer. By level 20 you will have a fully powered hero.



With more economy buildings and resources added each month, the new Building Dialog provides control over each building and it's role in the economy. We're adding a second way of training Peasants in professions through the Worker Tab. You can now review a list of candidates and hire them into available vacancies. For players not wanting to micro-manage, Auto-Recruit can be set and will automatically hire from the pool of Peasants as they become available. Character Traits make Peasants more or less suitable for each profession.



The Production Tab crunches a number of stats and presents them in an easy to understand format. Worker Productivity is the average of how effective all the workers are, taking into account Profession Experience, Tool Bonuses ( Loot and Crafted Gear ), Traits, and overall Happiness.

Maximum Output is determined by how many sources of resource exist in the building's Influence Radius, and the current tier of the building.

Workbench Bonuses act as a multiplier to the Maximum Output, and can be obtained by installing Workbenches to the inside of each production building.

Actual Output is calculated by combining the three previous stats, and can be split between production ( producing more finished goods ) and research ( adds points to the research pool to be later spent on new technology ).



One of the recurring pieces of feedback we've received from the Tutorial is that finding your villagers can sometimes be tricky. To improve discoverability, we're implementing the Civics Dialog, a central view of all the activity going on in your village. From here you can view everything that's going on with your villagers, buildings and resources, allowing you to quickly identify any problem areas.




The Art Team have entered a period of polishing up leading up to Patch 0.3 ( a few more 0.2.x releases to come yet ), so a lot of production work is the boring stuff like adding physics colliders, navmeshes, and level of detail ( LOD ) models. That's not at all interesting for a blog, so instead we have the male and female Sandbox versions of the City Watch ( formerly Militia ), Monks and Stonecutters.

Hey everyone. In this episode we take a look at how the Sandbox Player is shaping up, run through the Sandbox UI overhaul filling in some of the details of gameplay mechanics, before wrapping up with a review of new assets.

For larger screenshots and more info, please visit http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2014/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-21.html.


The fixed build plots of the Tutorial are gone as promised, and free placement is in, providing precise control over the design of our village. We can freely move the building around; a green transparent cube means we're over a valid place for construction, while a red cube means we're too close to an obstruction. As you might expect we can also rotate buildings. We've also added a radius of influence, shown by the dotted circle surrounding the building ( see video ). Resources need to be located within this radius to be accessible by the building. Capturing multiple mines can result in a greater maximum output for the building.




For Sandbox, we're overhauling the UI and adding new elements. As a multi-genre village builder RPG RTS, there's a lot of information to condense and optimize to reduce screen clutter, especially at lower screen resolutions. In fantasy 4X games you might be used to seeing resources on the top bar, for example wood, stone, and iron. We forecast how much time players would be spending in each genre, and the information they'd need immediately to hand. In village building for example, resource stock levels are important, but when you are out in the wilds with your Hero Party, they aren't. Taking into account the complex nature of the economy and number of resources, it wasn't feasible to pack them all into a static top bar ( we tried! ). So we're adding an expand/contract toggle to show a separate resources dialogue that if you choose you can leave open permanently should you wish.



We've taken the Special Abilities / Portrait UI from the bottom left of the Tutorial and condensed it further, adding in new features at the same time. Under Misc Controls & Info we've added an Aggressive/Defensive Toggle to exert greater control over your villagers, preventing them from charging into combat, and the Auto-AI Toggle to place special abilities under AI control. Hardcore players will want to turn this off and have full control of heroes, but for your first few sessions it's a helpful feature to reduce micro-management during battle.

We're also adding short cuts for Health and Power Potions providing direct access to your global inventory stocks during combat, making it faster to save your villagers from death.



The Character Sheet has been condensed by removing personal storage ( not required when you have global inventory ) and adding Resistances. There are also tabs for professions ( workers ) and special abilities ( heroes ).



As your Heroes level up, you can spend Ability Points on powering up their abilities in the order that you prefer. By level 20 you will have a fully powered hero.



With more economy buildings and resources added each month, the new Building Dialog provides control over each building and it's role in the economy. We're adding a second way of training Peasants in professions through the Worker Tab. You can now review a list of candidates and hire them into available vacancies. For players not wanting to micro-manage, Auto-Recruit can be set and will automatically hire from the pool of Peasants as they become available. Character Traits make Peasants more or less suitable for each profession.



The Production Tab crunches a number of stats and presents them in an easy to understand format. Worker Productivity is the average of how effective all the workers are, taking into account Profession Experience, Tool Bonuses ( Loot and Crafted Gear ), Traits, and overall Happiness.

Maximum Output is determined by how many sources of resource exist in the building's Influence Radius, and the current tier of the building.

Workbench Bonuses act as a multiplier to the Maximum Output, and can be obtained by installing Workbenches to the inside of each production building.

Actual Output is calculated by combining the three previous stats, and can be split between production ( producing more finished goods ) and research ( adds points to the research pool to be later spent on new technology ).



One of the recurring pieces of feedback we've received from the Tutorial is that finding your villagers can sometimes be tricky. To improve discoverability, we're implementing the Civics Dialog, a central view of all the activity going on in your village. From here you can view everything that's going on with your villagers, buildings and resources, allowing you to quickly identify any problem areas.




The Art Team have entered a period of polishing up leading up to Patch 0.3 ( a few more 0.2.x releases to come yet ), so a lot of production work is the boring stuff like adding physics colliders, navmeshes, and level of detail ( LOD ) models. That's not at all interesting for a blog, so instead we have the male and female Sandbox versions of the City Watch ( formerly Militia ), Monks and Stonecutters.

PC, Mac

#0067 Ambient Sound Effects No Longer Play

Character Studio (Access From Launch Screen)
Sandbox: Buildings: Barracks Updated (Work-In-Progress)
Sandbox: Buildings: Tavern Building Added
Sandbox: Buildings: Smelt Updated
Sandbox: Buildings: Stonecutter's Lodge Added (3 Tech Tiers)
Sandbox: Buildings: Storehouse Added
Sandbox: Buildings: Woodcutter Hut Added (3 Tech Tiers)
Sandbox: Buildings: Walls Removed From Farmers Field
Sandbox: Characters: Baker Added
Sandbox: Characters: Peasants Added
Sandbox: Characters: Woodcutter Added


Known issue with vsync in the Editor where it is capped at 30fps. This can be reset to 60fps by pressing 'V' twice.
Known issue on sandbox characters with gaps between skin and uniform
Known issue with ear rotation in Character Studio
Cows and horses temporarily removed from sandbox buildings
Where buildings have been added, it includes all 3 tech tiers

PC, Mac

#0067 Ambient Sound Effects No Longer Play

Character Studio (Access From Launch Screen)
Sandbox: Buildings: Barracks Updated (Work-In-Progress)
Sandbox: Buildings: Tavern Building Added
Sandbox: Buildings: Smelt Updated
Sandbox: Buildings: Stonecutter's Lodge Added (3 Tech Tiers)
Sandbox: Buildings: Storehouse Added
Sandbox: Buildings: Woodcutter Hut Added (3 Tech Tiers)
Sandbox: Buildings: Walls Removed From Farmers Field
Sandbox: Characters: Baker Added
Sandbox: Characters: Peasants Added
Sandbox: Characters: Woodcutter Added


Known issue with vsync in the Editor where it is capped at 30fps. This can be reset to 60fps by pressing 'V' twice.
Known issue on sandbox characters with gaps between skin and uniform
Known issue with ear rotation in Character Studio
Cows and horses temporarily removed from sandbox buildings
Where buildings have been added, it includes all 3 tech tiers

We're making solid progress in the 0.2.x release cycle, and today we're able to take an early look at two major improvements in the pipeline. We have a working Player breathing life into custom maps designed in the Editor, and Character Studio where we can experiment with character randomization.


One of the key requirements for Patch 0.3 is the ability to play a custom map designed by us in the Editor. Internally we're now able to run Sandbox maps and test dynamics including character movement and construction. Testing pathfinding is particularly important as we've deprecated the memory inefficient grid based graph system in the Tutorial and developed a faster Tile-Based Navmesh system that supports updating during gameplay.



Developing a new pathfinding solution helps reduce the overall game footprint in addressable system memory ( reduced probability of a memory related crashes on marginal systems ), while making path calculations faster ( better frame rate ).

The blog video demonstrates a test case of running one group of villagers over a bridge while the other group run under it. This wasn't possible in the Tutorial ( anyone notice the rubble blocks in the Old Forge blocking access to the ramparts above the portcullis entrance? ), but for Sandbox it opens up lots of design options.


One of the frequent pieces of feedback we received following launch ( particularly in Let's Play videos ) concerned all the villagers looking like drones. Given that a major feature of Folk Tale is the detail of the lives of your Villagers and the adventures they become involved with, it's important that we give them an identity.

In the Sandbox Vision Presentation I explained why it wasn't possible to achieve full RPG level of visual customization due to memory constraints ( GPU texture memory and overall system memory ). Instead, we set out to give each villager a unique face, and show their currently equipped hand items ( tools and weapons ). In Dev Blog 10 I highlighted early development on facial customization, and since then we've expanded the customization system into something that is usable and will be included in Patch 0.3.



There's a lot more going on under the hood of Character Studio than first meets the eye, specifically to address technical objectives:

Minimal Memory Footprint

We've designed the character system using minimal base geometry and a single hair/skin texture to keep memory requirements down. We have one universal skeleton for all humans, two master head models - male and female - and a number of uniforms. We have a range of hair styles, eye brows, and facial hair, that we'll continue to add to throughout development to add more variety. All the geometry is combined at runtime into a single skinned mesh with just two materials: one for the uniform and one for the skin and hair, both of which are color tinted separately in the shader.

Performance

The more bones included in the skeleton the longer it takes the CPU to calculate the position of each vertex in each frame of animation before sending to the GPU, and that means lower frame rates. To achieve both a unique appearance AND good performance, we're baking appearances and then removing the influence of certain bones ( e.g. facial bones, 2nd-4th fingers ), reducing the bone count down from 140+ to around 60. This wasn't something we did in the Tutorial, and should achieve a performance boost.

Baking appearances does mean character faces won't be animated during normal gameplay, but will be during cinematics where facial animation can add a lot of emotion. We have implemented bake quality, so it might be possible on higher specification systems to enable facial animations during gameplay. It's something we'll be exploring after Patch 0.3 but is not something we're committing to at this stage.

Combining multiple meshes ( head, hair, facial hair, eye brows, uniform, exposed skin ), optimizing out bones and baking into one skinned mesh at runtime needs to be extremely fast considering how many characters we have and the possibility for changing weapons and tools, so we've invested time up front in optimizing the process. From very early proof of concept code taking 500ms per bake, within a matter of hours it was reduced to under 2ms. That means we can bake several characters at once ( for example when new villagers are created ) without significant impact on frame rate. In reality this only happens a few times every minute, or when hand-held gear is swapped out, so we are well within acceptable performance targets.

Universal Skeleton

Having a universal skeleton for all human characters means we can play any human animation on any human character. For example we can have men walking like women, but that's not the real use. The main strength lies in how we implement weapons. We're creating combat animations around weapon types: one-handed, two-handed, and dual wield. A pitch fork and halberd are somewhat similar in that they are held with two hands and look perfectly acceptable using the same combat animations. A sword and mace are also similar and can use the same one-handed combat animations.

In a game with lots of buildings, lots of characters, and lots of weapons, there's lots of creativity and trickery required in striking a balance between the quantity of assets and achieving an acceptable quality and accuracy of animations. The hard constraint of memory means eventually you hit limits, and you can't increase one without reducing the other.



While we only need randomization, baking and bone optimizations working for Patch 0.3, beyond that there's lots of potential for Character Studio. Here are just a few low-priority ideas we'll be considering at a later date:

• sharing configuration text strings with others in the community forum to recreate characters;
  
• naming and adding personality traits for inclusion in your games ( e.g. if you always want Henry The Coward to be one of your villagers );
  
• uploading NPCs to Steam Workshop.

We're keeping up character production momentum with the addition of the male and female Peasant, Woodcutter and Baker. They Peasant and Woodcutter follow the visual style established in the Tutorial, but remade to fit the new customization system while standardizing the look of the villagers.








Three more sandbox-spec buildings are finished ready for inclusion in the next patch: Stonecutter Lodge, Storehouse and Tavern. With the Player advancing at pace, the next step is to enable Resources ( Logging Camp, Iron Mine, Stone Quarry ) and early stage Sandbox gameplay ( resource collection and processing ).

We're making solid progress in the 0.2.x release cycle, and today we're able to take an early look at two major improvements in the pipeline. We have a working Player breathing life into custom maps designed in the Editor, and Character Studio where we can experiment with character randomization.


One of the key requirements for Patch 0.3 is the ability to play a custom map designed by us in the Editor. Internally we're now able to run Sandbox maps and test dynamics including character movement and construction. Testing pathfinding is particularly important as we've deprecated the memory inefficient grid based graph system in the Tutorial and developed a faster Tile-Based Navmesh system that supports updating during gameplay.



Developing a new pathfinding solution helps reduce the overall game footprint in addressable system memory ( reduced probability of a memory related crashes on marginal systems ), while making path calculations faster ( better frame rate ).

The blog video demonstrates a test case of running one group of villagers over a bridge while the other group run under it. This wasn't possible in the Tutorial ( anyone notice the rubble blocks in the Old Forge blocking access to the ramparts above the portcullis entrance? ), but for Sandbox it opens up lots of design options.


One of the frequent pieces of feedback we received following launch ( particularly in Let's Play videos ) concerned all the villagers looking like drones. Given that a major feature of Folk Tale is the detail of the lives of your Villagers and the adventures they become involved with, it's important that we give them an identity.

In the Sandbox Vision Presentation I explained why it wasn't possible to achieve full RPG level of visual customization due to memory constraints ( GPU texture memory and overall system memory ). Instead, we set out to give each villager a unique face, and show their currently equipped hand items ( tools and weapons ). In Dev Blog 10 I highlighted early development on facial customization, and since then we've expanded the customization system into something that is usable and will be included in Patch 0.3.



There's a lot more going on under the hood of Character Studio than first meets the eye, specifically to address technical objectives:

Minimal Memory Footprint

We've designed the character system using minimal base geometry and a single hair/skin texture to keep memory requirements down. We have one universal skeleton for all humans, two master head models - male and female - and a number of uniforms. We have a range of hair styles, eye brows, and facial hair, that we'll continue to add to throughout development to add more variety. All the geometry is combined at runtime into a single skinned mesh with just two materials: one for the uniform and one for the skin and hair, both of which are color tinted separately in the shader.

Performance

The more bones included in the skeleton the longer it takes the CPU to calculate the position of each vertex in each frame of animation before sending to the GPU, and that means lower frame rates. To achieve both a unique appearance AND good performance, we're baking appearances and then removing the influence of certain bones ( e.g. facial bones, 2nd-4th fingers ), reducing the bone count down from 140+ to around 60. This wasn't something we did in the Tutorial, and should achieve a performance boost.

Baking appearances does mean character faces won't be animated during normal gameplay, but will be during cinematics where facial animation can add a lot of emotion. We have implemented bake quality, so it might be possible on higher specification systems to enable facial animations during gameplay. It's something we'll be exploring after Patch 0.3 but is not something we're committing to at this stage.

Combining multiple meshes ( head, hair, facial hair, eye brows, uniform, exposed skin ), optimizing out bones and baking into one skinned mesh at runtime needs to be extremely fast considering how many characters we have and the possibility for changing weapons and tools, so we've invested time up front in optimizing the process. From very early proof of concept code taking 500ms per bake, within a matter of hours it was reduced to under 2ms. That means we can bake several characters at once ( for example when new villagers are created ) without significant impact on frame rate. In reality this only happens a few times every minute, or when hand-held gear is swapped out, so we are well within acceptable performance targets.

Universal Skeleton

Having a universal skeleton for all human characters means we can play any human animation on any human character. For example we can have men walking like women, but that's not the real use. The main strength lies in how we implement weapons. We're creating combat animations around weapon types: one-handed, two-handed, and dual wield. A pitch fork and halberd are somewhat similar in that they are held with two hands and look perfectly acceptable using the same combat animations. A sword and mace are also similar and can use the same one-handed combat animations.

In a game with lots of buildings, lots of characters, and lots of weapons, there's lots of creativity and trickery required in striking a balance between the quantity of assets and achieving an acceptable quality and accuracy of animations. The hard constraint of memory means eventually you hit limits, and you can't increase one without reducing the other.



While we only need randomization, baking and bone optimizations working for Patch 0.3, beyond that there's lots of potential for Character Studio. Here are just a few low-priority ideas we'll be considering at a later date:

• sharing configuration text strings with others in the community forum to recreate characters;
  
• naming and adding personality traits for inclusion in your games ( e.g. if you always want Henry The Coward to be one of your villagers );
  
• uploading NPCs to Steam Workshop.

We're keeping up character production momentum with the addition of the male and female Peasant, Woodcutter and Baker. They Peasant and Woodcutter follow the visual style established in the Tutorial, but remade to fit the new customization system while standardizing the look of the villagers.








Three more sandbox-spec buildings are finished ready for inclusion in the next patch: Stonecutter Lodge, Storehouse and Tavern. With the Player advancing at pace, the next step is to enable Resources ( Logging Camp, Iron Mine, Stone Quarry ) and early stage Sandbox gameplay ( resource collection and processing ).

PC, Mac

#0067 Multiple Building LOD Models In Tutorial Visible
#0068 Minimap Not Updating

Location Editor: Align Button Icons Added To Below Transform Gizmo Move Mode
Torches behave better with Fog Of War

This is a bug fix for the previous patch.
There is a known issue with vsync in the Editor where it is capped at 30fps. This can be reset to 60fps by pressing 'V' twice.

PC, Mac

#0067 Multiple Building LOD Models In Tutorial Visible
#0068 Minimap Not Updating

Location Editor: Align Button Icons Added To Below Transform Gizmo Move Mode
Torches behave better with Fog Of War

This is a bug fix for the previous patch.
There is a known issue with vsync in the Editor where it is capped at 30fps. This can be reset to 60fps by pressing 'V' twice.

PC, Mac

#0066 Rivet In Construction Kit Has Broken UVs

Location Editor: Replaced Cloud System
Location Editor: Mirrored Sky Dome
Location Editor: Added Kobold Kit
Location Editor: Added Grassland Animals Kit
Location Editor: Added Humans Kit (Miner, Farmer)
Location Editor: Added Beastman Kit
Location Editor: Added New River Tiles ( Community Request )
Location Editor: Ground Shaders Changed To Rescale Textures Closer To Camera

This patch updates the Location Editor. No changes have been made to the Tutorial.
The character kits are currently art assets with their idle animations, and will come to life in a future 0.2.x patch.
We strongly recommend reading the comprehensive guide to the Location Editor available at

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=204512410
You cannot currently delete roads ( use Undo instead ). This will be fixed in 0.2.3.0.
Updating the terrain shaders is ongoing and may result in some visible UV seams and blurred decal textures ( in comparison to the now higher resolution tile textures )

PC, Mac

#0066 Rivet In Construction Kit Has Broken UVs

Location Editor: Replaced Cloud System
Location Editor: Mirrored Sky Dome
Location Editor: Added Kobold Kit
Location Editor: Added Grassland Animals Kit
Location Editor: Added Humans Kit (Miner, Farmer)
Location Editor: Added Beastman Kit
Location Editor: Added New River Tiles ( Community Request )
Location Editor: Ground Shaders Changed To Rescale Textures Closer To Camera

This patch updates the Location Editor. No changes have been made to the Tutorial.
The character kits are currently art assets with their idle animations, and will come to life in a future 0.2.x patch.
We strongly recommend reading the comprehensive guide to the Location Editor available at

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=204512410
You cannot currently delete roads ( use Undo instead ). This will be fixed in 0.2.3.0.
Updating the terrain shaders is ongoing and may result in some visible UV seams and blurred decal textures ( in comparison to the now higher resolution tile textures )