Building equipment stores, a performance boost, and an editor overhaul.


Community feedback is an important part of the Early Access process and a common theme is reducing any micromanagement burden. As your population grows, managing the gear on every unit can be tiresome. In the pre-release of Alpha 22 that is no longer the case.

Opening the new Equipment tab on a production or military building now enables players to drag and drop gear from the village inventory and assign it for use by the building's workers. Workers will automatically equip gear based on ordered priority. For now, equipment further to the top left is given higher priority. In time, we hope to implement an internal gear rating stat to help us compare items to determine which is better.



Each item shown in a building's Equipment tab stacks and shows how many have been allocated. Darkened icons may show 0/2, indicating there are 2 of that item in stock, but workers aren't currently using that item. As one becomes equipped (1/2), the icon fills up until to half way with normal brightness, and when all are equipped (2/2), it becomes full.

Items can be dragged directly out of a building's equipment tab back into the village inventory, and will be removed from any worker who has it equipped. The worker will then try to equip another item into that slot should one exist in the building Equipment stores based on the priority rule.


June saw a challenging engine migration from Unity 4.6 to 5.1. Major code changes were required to the way we manage assets, shaders, and third party products. While that has limited the time we had available to work on other areas of the game, one of the key benefits is a performance boost of 25-37% depending on machine architecture. Players should now enjoy improved frame rates across the board, and may be able to increase their settings.

There is however a known issue preventing the game from running on Snow Leopard. We've filed a bug report with Unity (the engine developer) so hopefully we'll have a fix in the coming weeks.


The Editor was running a legacy UI framework (NGUI) to drive the toolbar and a number of the dialog boxes. As part of the engine migration, it was time to purge NGUI from the project, and while re-implementing the dialog boxes, add some extra touches.



The Kits and Kit Pieces dialogs are now merged into one. A kits popup organizes kits into categories for quicker selection, while the addition of search enables level designers to search for pieces across all kits.

The new favourites tab lists kit pieces added by toggling the star in the inspector dialog, and the recently used tab does as you would expect.

We've also fixed the horizontal scaling of the toolbar, which would have affected players running at high resolutions.

One of the headline features we are launching in Alpha 22 is the terrain generator tool. Since it's first reveal in Dev Blog 35, we've added more options including support for the new volcanic biome.

The final Editor improvement is marquee selection. Being able to select objects by dragging a selection rectangle (aka marquee) is a huge time saver. Previously, you had to hold down left shift and click each item. The addition saves time, and will become the primary method for selecting objects, before grouping them and eventually saving them off as a prefab. At least that's what Alan is moving on to now that the terrain generator is all but finished.


Both have benefited from improvements, and are included in Alpha 22. We're working on an exterior location to test the pieces, and will be streaming level design sessions on Twitch.




A little teaser of something we're working on...

Building equipment stores, a performance boost, and an editor overhaul.


Community feedback is an important part of the Early Access process and a common theme is reducing any micromanagement burden. As your population grows, managing the gear on every unit can be tiresome. In the pre-release of Alpha 22 that is no longer the case.

Opening the new Equipment tab on a production or military building now enables players to drag and drop gear from the village inventory and assign it for use by the building's workers. Workers will automatically equip gear based on ordered priority. For now, equipment further to the top left is given higher priority. In time, we hope to implement an internal gear rating stat to help us compare items to determine which is better.



Each item shown in a building's Equipment tab stacks and shows how many have been allocated. Darkened icons may show 0/2, indicating there are 2 of that item in stock, but workers aren't currently using that item. As one becomes equipped (1/2), the icon fills up until to half way with normal brightness, and when all are equipped (2/2), it becomes full.

Items can be dragged directly out of a building's equipment tab back into the village inventory, and will be removed from any worker who has it equipped. The worker will then try to equip another item into that slot should one exist in the building Equipment stores based on the priority rule.


June saw a challenging engine migration from Unity 4.6 to 5.1. Major code changes were required to the way we manage assets, shaders, and third party products. While that has limited the time we had available to work on other areas of the game, one of the key benefits is a performance boost of 25-37% depending on machine architecture. Players should now enjoy improved frame rates across the board, and may be able to increase their settings.

There is however a known issue preventing the game from running on Snow Leopard. We've filed a bug report with Unity (the engine developer) so hopefully we'll have a fix in the coming weeks.


The Editor was running a legacy UI framework (NGUI) to drive the toolbar and a number of the dialog boxes. As part of the engine migration, it was time to purge NGUI from the project, and while re-implementing the dialog boxes, add some extra touches.



The Kits and Kit Pieces dialogs are now merged into one. A kits popup organizes kits into categories for quicker selection, while the addition of search enables level designers to search for pieces across all kits.

The new favourites tab lists kit pieces added by toggling the star in the inspector dialog, and the recently used tab does as you would expect.

We've also fixed the horizontal scaling of the toolbar, which would have affected players running at high resolutions.

One of the headline features we are launching in Alpha 22 is the terrain generator tool. Since it's first reveal in Dev Blog 35, we've added more options including support for the new volcanic biome.

The final Editor improvement is marquee selection. Being able to select objects by dragging a selection rectangle (aka marquee) is a huge time saver. Previously, you had to hold down left shift and click each item. The addition saves time, and will become the primary method for selecting objects, before grouping them and eventually saving them off as a prefab. At least that's what Alan is moving on to now that the terrain generator is all but finished.


Both have benefited from improvements, and are included in Alpha 22. We're working on an exterior location to test the pieces, and will be streaming level design sessions on Twitch.




A little teaser of something we're working on...

Hi Folks,

OSX SNOW LEOPARD USERS, PLEASE DO NOT OPT IN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I'm pleased to provide community members with access to a new opt-in experimental beta. This is a pre-release of Alpha 22.

We are taking this step due to risk associated with upgrading the game engine to Unity 5.1. While we've performed internal tests, running a test among active community members allows us to capture any remaining issues prior to a public release.

I am especially keen to hear about any crashes from game sessions exceeding 30 minutes.

Patch Notes:
http://www.gamesfoundry.com/patches/#patch032

Accessing the Experimental Build
1. In your Steam Library, right click on ‘Folk Tale’ and select Properties
2. Click the fourth tab labelled ‘Betas’
3. In the dropdown list, select experimental and click close
4. Wait for Steam to auto-update
5. If the update fails to download, quit and restart the Steam Client

Best wishes,
Simon

Hi Folks,

OSX SNOW LEOPARD USERS, PLEASE DO NOT OPT IN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I'm pleased to provide community members with access to a new opt-in experimental beta. This is a pre-release of Alpha 22.

We are taking this step due to risk associated with upgrading the game engine to Unity 5.1. While we've performed internal tests, running a test among active community members allows us to capture any remaining issues prior to a public release.

I am especially keen to hear about any crashes from game sessions exceeding 30 minutes.

Patch Notes:
http://www.gamesfoundry.com/patches/#patch032

Accessing the Experimental Build
1. In your Steam Library, right click on ‘Folk Tale’ and select Properties
2. Click the fourth tab labelled ‘Betas’
3. In the dropdown list, select experimental and click close
4. Wait for Steam to auto-update
5. If the update fails to download, quit and restart the Steam Client

Best wishes,
Simon

PC, Mac

Player: Heroes: Added Ser Gregory And Special Abilities (Taunt, Shield Bash, Power Slam, Iron Skin, Decisive Victory)*
Player: Mechanics: Woodcutters Now Automatically Plant Seeds**
Player: Mechanics: Trees Have 100% Probability Of Dropping Seed When Felled**
Player: Character Portrait System Added***

Player: Idle Characters Will Now Move Away From Other Characters They Intersect
Player: Salvaging Implemented
Player: Added Zombies
Player: Added Beetles
Player: Special Abilities Can Now Be Queued
Player: Special Abilities Now Have Cooldown Timers
Player: Weapons Can Now Apply Buffs On Hit (Positive Or Negative)
Player: Disabled Experimental Anti-Kiting Code
Player: Weapons/Shields Now Scale Properly Depending On Character
Player: Stun Implemented
Player: Modified Some Labels To Remove Silliness
Player: Added Poison Visual Effects
Player: Added Distance Culling To Corpse Sparkles
Player: Forced Characters To Rotate First Before Move When Requiring > 90 Degree Change For A More Natural Feel
Player: Beasts And Spiders Den No Longer Drop Seeds
Player: Decreased Culture Cost Of Tier 2 Buildings From 350 To 275
Player: Workers No Longer Walk Long Distances To Reach Work Points e.g. Fishing
Player: Beastmen No Longer Drop Treebane Or Rare Weapons
Player: Adjusted Soundtrack Volume Range And Default Volume
Player: Adjusted Keyboard Sensitivity Default For Faster Panning
Player: Added Setting For Ambient Sound Volume (Tweeting Birds, Howling Winds etc)
Player: Changed Mead And Honeycomb Production Amounts
Player: Villagers Need For Entertainment Enabled When First Tavern Is Built Rather Than Waiting For Culture Level To Be Reached
Player: You Can No Longer Sell The Supply Wagon/Storehouse If It’s The Last One
Player: Supply Wagon Capacity Now Properly Capped
Player: Tweaked Costs Of Bakery, Bee Yard, Butchery And Fishing Hut
Player: Disabled Medium And Severe Diseases Temporarily
Player: Only Announce Disease Outbreak If No Medicine In Stock
Player: Most Maps Updated
Editor: Light Intensity Can Now Be Changed In Inspector
Editor: Object Scale Factor Now Shown In Inspector
Editor: Added Missing Armor Crafting Recipes
Editor: Added Lots More Loot Items
Editor: Added Bone Kit Heaps And Decals
Editor: Added Beetles, Zombies, Alternative Spider, Spider Queen To Wave Spawner
Editor: Workbench: Added Node SetAllegiance
Editor: Workbench: Added Node Console
Editor: Workbench: Added Node InstantiateCharacterAt
Editor: Workbench: Added Node AddAttributePoints
Editor: Workbench: Added Node To Set Attributes On Spawned Character
Editor: Workbench: Added Node CameraMove
Editor: Workbench: Added Node InstantiateBuildingAt
Editor: Workbench: Added Node CharacterToWorldObject (Converts, Enabling Use Of Destroy)
Editor: Workbench: Added Support For Boolean Variables
Editor: Workbench: Added Active Output (Boolean) to Quest Node
Editor: Workbench: Added CharacterHealth Node
Editor: Workbench: Added CharacterAlive Node
Editor: Workbench: Character Portrait Can Now Be Set Via An Input On Conversation Nodes (However Implementation Will Change In Alpha 22)
Editor: Workbench: Modified Gate Node To Include Initial State Toggle
Editor: Workbench: SpawnedCharacter Can Now Get Character From Wave Spawner

#0182 Sandbox Player: Destroying Supply Wagons Leads To Unrecoverable Problems
#0184 Sandbox Editor: Entering Editor Second Time Breaks Bounding Boxes
#0185 Sandbox Player: Some Particles Are Being Affected By SSAO
#0186 Sandbox Player: Duplicate Civics Bars For Vegetables
#0187 Sandbox Player: Some Sounds Not Playing Or Very Quiet
#0188 Sandbox Player: Most Weapons, Rings And Necklaces Not Stacking
#0189 Sandbox Player: Scale And Halberd Recipes Not Unlocked By Blacksmith Research
#0190 Sandbox Player: Villagers Sometimes Get Stuck Outside Cottages
#0191 Sandbox Player: Peasants Near Cottages Ignore Command To Chop Tree

Crafting recipes found in loot aren’t showing their icons, but are appearing in the crafting menu.
Ser Gregory really needs a rage meter rather than taking power from the Mind stat.

Alpha 21 has a strong focus on heroes, special abilities, and combat improvements. It includes all the code to support heroes including queueing abilities, applying buffs on hit, combat AI

*Level Designers please note that Ser Gregory should be created via workbench using the new InstantiateCharacterAt node, which also allows you to set his allegiance.

**Automatic seed planting is now in. Woodcutters will plant saplings if there are 5 or fewer trees within the boundary of the Woodcutter Hut, or if you have an abundance of seeds. Felled trees automatically grant 1 seed, at least until we implement the Marketplace building. We have removed seeds from monsters and spider dens.

***Everything but profession uniforms are in. There’s a missing male beard, and the female herbalist hairstyle which are known issues.

PC, Mac

Player: Heroes: Added Ser Gregory And Special Abilities (Taunt, Shield Bash, Power Slam, Iron Skin, Decisive Victory)*
Player: Mechanics: Woodcutters Now Automatically Plant Seeds**
Player: Mechanics: Trees Have 100% Probability Of Dropping Seed When Felled**
Player: Character Portrait System Added***

Player: Idle Characters Will Now Move Away From Other Characters They Intersect
Player: Salvaging Implemented
Player: Added Zombies
Player: Added Beetles
Player: Special Abilities Can Now Be Queued
Player: Special Abilities Now Have Cooldown Timers
Player: Weapons Can Now Apply Buffs On Hit (Positive Or Negative)
Player: Disabled Experimental Anti-Kiting Code
Player: Weapons/Shields Now Scale Properly Depending On Character
Player: Stun Implemented
Player: Modified Some Labels To Remove Silliness
Player: Added Poison Visual Effects
Player: Added Distance Culling To Corpse Sparkles
Player: Forced Characters To Rotate First Before Move When Requiring > 90 Degree Change For A More Natural Feel
Player: Beasts And Spiders Den No Longer Drop Seeds
Player: Decreased Culture Cost Of Tier 2 Buildings From 350 To 275
Player: Workers No Longer Walk Long Distances To Reach Work Points e.g. Fishing
Player: Beastmen No Longer Drop Treebane Or Rare Weapons
Player: Adjusted Soundtrack Volume Range And Default Volume
Player: Adjusted Keyboard Sensitivity Default For Faster Panning
Player: Added Setting For Ambient Sound Volume (Tweeting Birds, Howling Winds etc)
Player: Changed Mead And Honeycomb Production Amounts
Player: Villagers Need For Entertainment Enabled When First Tavern Is Built Rather Than Waiting For Culture Level To Be Reached
Player: You Can No Longer Sell The Supply Wagon/Storehouse If It’s The Last One
Player: Supply Wagon Capacity Now Properly Capped
Player: Tweaked Costs Of Bakery, Bee Yard, Butchery And Fishing Hut
Player: Disabled Medium And Severe Diseases Temporarily
Player: Only Announce Disease Outbreak If No Medicine In Stock
Player: Most Maps Updated
Editor: Light Intensity Can Now Be Changed In Inspector
Editor: Object Scale Factor Now Shown In Inspector
Editor: Added Missing Armor Crafting Recipes
Editor: Added Lots More Loot Items
Editor: Added Bone Kit Heaps And Decals
Editor: Added Beetles, Zombies, Alternative Spider, Spider Queen To Wave Spawner
Editor: Workbench: Added Node SetAllegiance
Editor: Workbench: Added Node Console
Editor: Workbench: Added Node InstantiateCharacterAt
Editor: Workbench: Added Node AddAttributePoints
Editor: Workbench: Added Node To Set Attributes On Spawned Character
Editor: Workbench: Added Node CameraMove
Editor: Workbench: Added Node InstantiateBuildingAt
Editor: Workbench: Added Node CharacterToWorldObject (Converts, Enabling Use Of Destroy)
Editor: Workbench: Added Support For Boolean Variables
Editor: Workbench: Added Active Output (Boolean) to Quest Node
Editor: Workbench: Added CharacterHealth Node
Editor: Workbench: Added CharacterAlive Node
Editor: Workbench: Character Portrait Can Now Be Set Via An Input On Conversation Nodes (However Implementation Will Change In Alpha 22)
Editor: Workbench: Modified Gate Node To Include Initial State Toggle
Editor: Workbench: SpawnedCharacter Can Now Get Character From Wave Spawner

#0182 Sandbox Player: Destroying Supply Wagons Leads To Unrecoverable Problems
#0184 Sandbox Editor: Entering Editor Second Time Breaks Bounding Boxes
#0185 Sandbox Player: Some Particles Are Being Affected By SSAO
#0186 Sandbox Player: Duplicate Civics Bars For Vegetables
#0187 Sandbox Player: Some Sounds Not Playing Or Very Quiet
#0188 Sandbox Player: Most Weapons, Rings And Necklaces Not Stacking
#0189 Sandbox Player: Scale And Halberd Recipes Not Unlocked By Blacksmith Research
#0190 Sandbox Player: Villagers Sometimes Get Stuck Outside Cottages
#0191 Sandbox Player: Peasants Near Cottages Ignore Command To Chop Tree

Crafting recipes found in loot aren’t showing their icons, but are appearing in the crafting menu.
Ser Gregory really needs a rage meter rather than taking power from the Mind stat.

Alpha 21 has a strong focus on heroes, special abilities, and combat improvements. It includes all the code to support heroes including queueing abilities, applying buffs on hit, combat AI

*Level Designers please note that Ser Gregory should be created via workbench using the new InstantiateCharacterAt node, which also allows you to set his allegiance.

**Automatic seed planting is now in. Woodcutters will plant saplings if there are 5 or fewer trees within the boundary of the Woodcutter Hut, or if you have an abundance of seeds. Felled trees automatically grant 1 seed, at least until we implement the Marketplace building. We have removed seeds from monsters and spider dens.

***Everything but profession uniforms are in. There’s a missing male beard, and the female herbalist hairstyle which are known issues.

Ser Gregory, the first hero built on a growing RPG code base, Dwarven culture, and the terrain randomization tool.


While the last release cycle was all about village building and economy, the team are now focused on expanding the RPG side of Folk Tale. As you explore the world you'll meet heroes entwined in an evolving story. Help them with their goals, and they'll become available for selection in your adventuring party.



Building on existing RPG mechanics including inventory and stats, our first foray into RPG adventuring begins with the addition of hero systems, and in Alpha 21 we're introducing Ser Gregory. As a heavily armoured tank, Ser Gregory's abilities place him at the heart of melee action. His abilities are designed around defence (Iron Skin), crowd control (Taunt and Shield Bash), area of effect damage (Power Slam) and being able to finish off opponents with low health (Decisive Victory). Each ability is detailed on the website (link above). Abilities can be queued to be executed one after another, have cool down timers, and power costs to prevent you from spamming special abilities which would be totally OP. We've added all the supporting systems for character states including stunned and knockdown, and will be rolling these out across new and existing characters in Alpha 21 and beyond.

For now we've enabled all Ser Gregory's abilities for community feedback, but in a future release you'll unlock abilities as Ser Gregory levels up, and then level up each ability to make it more powerful. For now, pick your battles carefully and save regularly as there's perma-death. We'll be adding revival to respawn dead heroes back in your village, but that's not in yet.

Combat feels a little smoother now we've reduced the interval between attacks from 3 seconds to 2 seconds. The anti-kiting code has been removed so there's no more insta-heal enemies, and characters no longer stand on top of each other, moving apart if it occurs. We've also made characters rotate before running in a direction. It's a subtle change, and it might feel a little different for a few minutes, but ultimately adds a little bit of extra quality.

And what to do with all that junk loot? Salvage it of course in exchange for a little gold! You can now drag unwanted inventory items onto the salvage icon.


The days of looking at the bald male villager placeholder in the character wheel are over. We now have a new portrait system showing the actual appearance of villagers in a nice hand-painted portrait. While heroes, bosses and behemoths all have their own unique beautifully hand-painted portraits, villagers are a little more challenging. Due to the number of permutations of hair - including beards and moustaches on men - we layer up the features and use tinting. We start with the background and uniform, then add skin (ranging from light to dark), beard, moustache, head hair and finally any hats/helmets. For now, villagers will all have the peasant uniform. We expect to have the other profession uniforms including hats added for Alpha 22.




If you've played a long session, you'll be familiar with the impending doom that awaits due to deforestation. We previously added seed drops to spiders, bears and boars, but your feedback told us this didn't really solve the problem. So in Alpha 21 each felled tree now drops a seed (added to your inventory), and when a Woodcutter's Hut has 5 or fewer trees in it's boundary, Woodcutters will automatically plant a seed. This completely removes the micromanagement burden, however you can still use the Woodcutter ability to plant saplings where you please. In time we may link this ability to the Forestry research. We'll have to see how well this scales with a Tier 3 upgrade.




Attaining Tier 2 building upgrades needed to happen a little sooner in gameplay, so we've reduced the culture cost from 350 to 275. We've still got to implement the reasons for upgrading, including tying research with better bonuses and effects to higher building tiers.

One community reported issue was that workers could end up walking a long way to reach a workpoint within a building's boundaries. For example, a Fisher may have to walk a ways to reach a bridge to cross a river to get to the other side. This could take them into enemy territory leading to their death. We now check journey distance to determine if a work point should be used or not.

Mead and Entertainment were bugged in Alpha 20. For the next release, we've made sure that villager need for entertainment begins when you first construct a Tavern, even if you haven't yet attained a culture score of 300. A barrel of mead also now converts to 4 tankards of mead at the tavern instead of 2, helping with supply shortages. To address the over-production at Bee Yards, 30 honeycomb are now required per barrel productions instead of 5, although the yield of honeycomb has been increased to be inline with other buildings. Further rebalancing may well be required, so please share your experiences in the community forum.


Development of the dwarven culture is progressing well, including the dwarven fortress of House Hraun (faction), under siege by the exiled Cult Of Pyros (faction) and it's leader, Archmagus Brimstone. There's a mountain of work goes into developing each culture, including modelling and painting weapons and shields that appear on characters, loot icon illustrations including armor and jewellery, environment props, textures and visual effects, script writing, voice acting, character modelling, painting and animation, sound effect design, and of course soundtrack composition.

Expect to see Dwarven content make it's way into the game in Alpha 22 or 23.




Story will feature prominently in Folk Tale, delivering a campaign like feel similar to the original tutorial, but within a sandbox environment. The Grassland starting story script is now complete, which leads into the Withering Dead and Gladefolk faction storylines. We completed voice actor casting a few months back, and are now working our way through the recording sessions.




Building large terrains in the Editor can be time consuming. To help increase productivity, we're working on a terrain randomization feature that automatically generates a terrain based on settings. It's able to generate mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and waterfalls, place trees, generate coast line, and apply splatters of paint. It utilises the full range of core tiles available, including full, half and quarter height tiles.



All being well, by the time you've read this Alpha 21 should be in final testing ready for launch.

Ser Gregory, the first hero built on a growing RPG code base, Dwarven culture, and the terrain randomization tool.


While the last release cycle was all about village building and economy, the team are now focused on expanding the RPG side of Folk Tale. As you explore the world you'll meet heroes entwined in an evolving story. Help them with their goals, and they'll become available for selection in your adventuring party.



Building on existing RPG mechanics including inventory and stats, our first foray into RPG adventuring begins with the addition of hero systems, and in Alpha 21 we're introducing Ser Gregory. As a heavily armoured tank, Ser Gregory's abilities place him at the heart of melee action. His abilities are designed around defence (Iron Skin), crowd control (Taunt and Shield Bash), area of effect damage (Power Slam) and being able to finish off opponents with low health (Decisive Victory). Each ability is detailed on the website (link above). Abilities can be queued to be executed one after another, have cool down timers, and power costs to prevent you from spamming special abilities which would be totally OP. We've added all the supporting systems for character states including stunned and knockdown, and will be rolling these out across new and existing characters in Alpha 21 and beyond.

For now we've enabled all Ser Gregory's abilities for community feedback, but in a future release you'll unlock abilities as Ser Gregory levels up, and then level up each ability to make it more powerful. For now, pick your battles carefully and save regularly as there's perma-death. We'll be adding revival to respawn dead heroes back in your village, but that's not in yet.

Combat feels a little smoother now we've reduced the interval between attacks from 3 seconds to 2 seconds. The anti-kiting code has been removed so there's no more insta-heal enemies, and characters no longer stand on top of each other, moving apart if it occurs. We've also made characters rotate before running in a direction. It's a subtle change, and it might feel a little different for a few minutes, but ultimately adds a little bit of extra quality.

And what to do with all that junk loot? Salvage it of course in exchange for a little gold! You can now drag unwanted inventory items onto the salvage icon.


The days of looking at the bald male villager placeholder in the character wheel are over. We now have a new portrait system showing the actual appearance of villagers in a nice hand-painted portrait. While heroes, bosses and behemoths all have their own unique beautifully hand-painted portraits, villagers are a little more challenging. Due to the number of permutations of hair - including beards and moustaches on men - we layer up the features and use tinting. We start with the background and uniform, then add skin (ranging from light to dark), beard, moustache, head hair and finally any hats/helmets. For now, villagers will all have the peasant uniform. We expect to have the other profession uniforms including hats added for Alpha 22.




If you've played a long session, you'll be familiar with the impending doom that awaits due to deforestation. We previously added seed drops to spiders, bears and boars, but your feedback told us this didn't really solve the problem. So in Alpha 21 each felled tree now drops a seed (added to your inventory), and when a Woodcutter's Hut has 5 or fewer trees in it's boundary, Woodcutters will automatically plant a seed. This completely removes the micromanagement burden, however you can still use the Woodcutter ability to plant saplings where you please. In time we may link this ability to the Forestry research. We'll have to see how well this scales with a Tier 3 upgrade.




Attaining Tier 2 building upgrades needed to happen a little sooner in gameplay, so we've reduced the culture cost from 350 to 275. We've still got to implement the reasons for upgrading, including tying research with better bonuses and effects to higher building tiers.

One community reported issue was that workers could end up walking a long way to reach a workpoint within a building's boundaries. For example, a Fisher may have to walk a ways to reach a bridge to cross a river to get to the other side. This could take them into enemy territory leading to their death. We now check journey distance to determine if a work point should be used or not.

Mead and Entertainment were bugged in Alpha 20. For the next release, we've made sure that villager need for entertainment begins when you first construct a Tavern, even if you haven't yet attained a culture score of 300. A barrel of mead also now converts to 4 tankards of mead at the tavern instead of 2, helping with supply shortages. To address the over-production at Bee Yards, 30 honeycomb are now required per barrel productions instead of 5, although the yield of honeycomb has been increased to be inline with other buildings. Further rebalancing may well be required, so please share your experiences in the community forum.


Development of the dwarven culture is progressing well, including the dwarven fortress of House Hraun (faction), under siege by the exiled Cult Of Pyros (faction) and it's leader, Archmagus Brimstone. There's a mountain of work goes into developing each culture, including modelling and painting weapons and shields that appear on characters, loot icon illustrations including armor and jewellery, environment props, textures and visual effects, script writing, voice acting, character modelling, painting and animation, sound effect design, and of course soundtrack composition.

Expect to see Dwarven content make it's way into the game in Alpha 22 or 23.




Story will feature prominently in Folk Tale, delivering a campaign like feel similar to the original tutorial, but within a sandbox environment. The Grassland starting story script is now complete, which leads into the Withering Dead and Gladefolk faction storylines. We completed voice actor casting a few months back, and are now working our way through the recording sessions.




Building large terrains in the Editor can be time consuming. To help increase productivity, we're working on a terrain randomization feature that automatically generates a terrain based on settings. It's able to generate mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and waterfalls, place trees, generate coast line, and apply splatters of paint. It utilises the full range of core tiles available, including full, half and quarter height tiles.



All being well, by the time you've read this Alpha 21 should be in final testing ready for launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DRVWnpnVrY
Hi Folks,

Interested in following development of Folk Tale more closely? Did you know that for the last 9 months we've been streaming Dev hangouts?

In each stream we take a look at the latest internal dev build and cover work from the last week or so. Dev Hangouts provide a way for community players to chat with us live and have questions answered on air while catching up on the latest developments.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744937017373582/

For those who can't make the live hangout, we post videos to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfbRgg_s65Xez6fgTuWtIeTICYCqj6XH6

• To provide direct access to the dev team
  
• To investigate current issues in the forum
  
• It's an opportunity for us to test the latest code!
  
• To raise awareness of the constant progress being made

Because we use the daily builds, please note that bugs are to be expected and streams don't always go smoothly and to plan.

Hopefully we'll see you in the next hangout!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DRVWnpnVrY
Hi Folks,

Interested in following development of Folk Tale more closely? Did you know that for the last 9 months we've been streaming Dev hangouts?

In each stream we take a look at the latest internal dev build and cover work from the last week or so. Dev Hangouts provide a way for community players to chat with us live and have questions answered on air while catching up on the latest developments.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744937017373582/

For those who can't make the live hangout, we post videos to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfbRgg_s65Xez6fgTuWtIeTICYCqj6XH6

• To provide direct access to the dev team
  
• To investigate current issues in the forum
  
• It's an opportunity for us to test the latest code!
  
• To raise awareness of the constant progress being made

Because we use the daily builds, please note that bugs are to be expected and streams don't always go smoothly and to plan.

Hopefully we'll see you in the next hangout!