Last month was reserved for various bug fixes, game improvements, and QA testing. So no new features, at least not yet. Keep reading to find why that needed to happen.
Improved Tutorialisation of Draft & Combat Mechanic
We have added a tutorial pop-up window (note: If you turn off tutorials in the options menu, this pop-up window will not appear)
The first pop-up window appears when you start the game. It has a welcome screen, explanation of camera controls, layer controls, and game speed
After the first raid event has started the game will pop-up the second tutorial window with instructions on selecting, drafting, equipping and moving your villagers
Standalone pop-ups will appear for the first time when opening the job, schedule, and research panel
Videos have been added to all tutorials
Additional UI/UX
We’ve added additional tooltip information for resource categories
Added hyperlinks to stability and decomposition almanac to help players understand how both systems work
Added additional tooltip to books in research panel to help understand how negative value of books functions
Building blueprint will change color when it’s out of reach (also added text “out of reach” when clicked on)
Drafted go-to position arrow is now red when the player tries to order villager to an unreachable location
Additional Changes
Fixed several issues with quitting to the main menu and resuming the game
Fixed issue with placing a building on a forbidden pile resulting in villagers freezing
Added new input controls and made it cleaner when remapping (in categories now)
ESC key now closes all windows and opens the in-game menu
Drag select now works with priorities (if a villager is in the selection box, that villager will be selected every time, after that - an item, and after that, resources. Trees and buildings can’t be selected with drag-select by design)
Shift + click now also deselects stuff
“New villager” events now have randomized: health, sleep, hunger, wounds, and equipment
Enemies now have randomized HP of equipment
Villagers carry unconscious villagers properly now
When enemy upon dying leaves carcass and equipment dropped - they will be forbidden by default
Added basic combat sound effects
Added several more UI sound effects: pause, notification, event, etc.
Buildings now instance properly making it less CPU heavy
Attack animations are slowed down so the player can tell what's going on
Attack animations are now randomized between 3x different animations
Added randomized heraldry to heraldry editor (all random heraldries are created by discord users during Alpha, their names are credited underneath)
Added Trebuchet projectile VFX
Enemies will have a bubble of defeat when running away
Fixed several problems with counting resources on stockpile and map
Villagers are in the flee mode by default
Trebuchet projectile, animals, and fists now inflict wounds
Floors and walls hide differently now when hiding and showing layers
Fixed several bugs with roofs, beams, and floor
Fixed several bugs with stockpiles and building on stockpiles
Fixed several issues when renaming a villager (not appearing in a text later as the renamed villager)
Added leaves blowing in the wind
Animals will try and stay away from villagers when idling
Fixed camera restart problem and default camera position issue
Rebalancing
Book piles now hold 100 books instead of 50
Limestone, wood, and iron piles hold 200 instead of 100 resources
Equipment decays faster when not worn
Equipment decays slower on a villager
Rebalanced the nutrition value of food in the game:
Raw food now has a nutrition value of 0.5 while cooked has 0.8-1.0
Villagers will prioritize higher nutrition food
Villagers will prioritize food when sleeping
Villagers will prioritize food when in a sleeping hour (making them eat before going to sleep)
Villagers will eat at tables now (Animation is still work in progress)
Human meat added to the game. All meals can have a human meat version to it (forcing villagers to eat them will result in harsh mood penalties)
Changed how much food costs to cook
Less raw food is given from hunting/harvesting
And we’ve fixed a bunch of tasks regarding optimization, save/load problems, and all sorts of other things that our QA found. Like you can tell - we did a lot of work. Why is that? Because…
Beta starts on August 10th!
That’s right. The day has come - The Going Medieval beta will run on August 10th at 4PM BST / 5PM CEST / 8AM PT - August 17th 4PM BST / 5PM CEST / 8AM PT and it will be on Steam via a Steam key. We will provide your key to you during the day on August 10th! So please keep an eye on your inboxes then (if you have any issues with your Steam key when it arrives, please let us know).
Everyone that applied so far for it will receive the beta key. You can share your opinions and thoughts on Twitter (and tag us in the process) and head over to our Discord server - there you’ll be able to share your thoughts, give us feedback, and post some sweet gameplay screenshots.
So as the beta date approaches we’ve added a bunch of stuff. Really. Like, A LOT - as you’ll be able to tell. We’ve focused on combat behavior and raids as the biggest feedback from the alpha concern these things. So without further ado:
Villager management during combat and combat itself received a major rework
We’ve implemented a more sensible approach of unit control and behavior during the battles. Now it’s more like your classical RTS experience in that area. Really, there are a bunch of things implemented in this area that would take quite a lot of time to explain… But we’ll try our best!
We’ve added a weapon icon in the villager panel to indicate who is an archer and who is not
The “Draft” indicator next to the icon in the villager panel (also villager panel turns a bit blue when a villager is drafted)
We’ve also added red flashes on villagers icon in villager panel when they take damage
Added prominent red overlay when the villager is damaged
Enemies and villagers now have an indicator when the camera is zoomed out (basically turning your view into a mini-map). Zooming out will emphasize every character’s circle (of enemies and your villagers) and it will become visible through walls. That way, you’ll know where everyone is at every point in the game
Added range indicator to selected archers. Selecting a drafted archer will show his range radius (represented in a yellow circle around them)
HP bar over the worker and enemy heads (with the health bar flashing with the amount of health reduced) HP bars show when taking damage, when damage is taken a white slower bar appears that indicate the amount of damage taken
We’ve removed numbers indicator when the damage is being dealt, but text like “miss, blocked, evade” is still present. If you are a numbers guy, will leave that as an option to turn it on
Special text will appear when one of your villagers gets unconscious or killed
You’re now able to select multiple trees, stones, and other materials with double click feature - this will make manipulation of materials much more convenient
Raids became much smarter!
So one of the most common complaints was that the raids are not fun & they are too hard. Behold - we’ve implemented the system that balances the raids based on the behavior of your settlement. Call it an adaptable difficulty, if you want. Without giving away too much info, rest assured that this system will allow for different scenarios for all of the players. Sure, there will be similar events here and there, but the content of those events will vary. Here is what we did for raids and enemies overall:
Enemies will walk 50% of the way towards the target
Added cheering animation to your villagers when enemies are defeated
Villagers will keep attacking enemies when enemies are running away
There are now different types of enemies (for now: melee, archer, heavy and siege equipment)
Only the first event in the game is hardcoded (will happen to everyone), but the way you handle it will lead you down a different path. This is done as an introduction of the system, and also to show the consequences of the events overall
We’ve added a couple of new raid variations - cannibals attack, twisted crusaders and mindless assassins
We’ve added new events for the introduction of new villagers into your community
Things can get intense.
Additional Features!
Without going too much into details, we’ll list some interesting stuff we’ve also implemented. Hopefully, you’ll like it.
Human corpses added. Now when a human dies he leaves behind a carcass (same height, same features, and same body structure as when alive)
Added “ctrl + click” and “shift + click” to the production panel. This way the player can add +10 and +100 of a product to the production of a certain thing, avoiding unnecessary clicking for a long time. Alternatively, you can type in the number of products in the production panel
The “Research” panel now shows all 3x types of books needed for research. It also shows additional info on the tooltip. Research evolved big time
Instead of assigning jobs for your villager with an “on” or “off” button, they can now have a higher priority or lower priority (5x priorities)
Added see-through effect to trees and buildings to make it easier to move around
Added various graphical options (the ones that were easiest to implement but had a nice boost to performance)
Health tab added to the villager’s auxiliary panel where all the info for wounds and health are presented to the player
Added various graphical options
Added the option to turn off the tutorial from the options menu
Added blue vignette to screen when the game is paused
Added constructions having variations in appearance when producing
Workers no longer come to the corner of the production construction to produce, they have hand placed spots where they stand
Floors will now carve crop fields
Those are the important ones worth mentioning.
That is a lot of things for the beta build, right? And we’re still looking for the beta players! if you know someone who still did not registered there, be sure to send them this link:
We really want you to have some unique experiences within our game, and we are striving to make sure you’re informed about the game development. Here is what we’ve been working on:
Map Borders have special constraints now!
A special area that consists of 10 blocks from the map edge is marked red, indicating that it will not be possible to mine, place buildings or add crop fields there.
This is done to balance some game features and also to allow events to happen properly. Don’t worry - there is still plenty of space to use for your settlement!
Wounds can have real consequences now!
You think that health depletion is the only thing that occurs when people get wounded in Going Medieval? Think again, because we expanded that system too!
Health is no longer just a hitpoints bar. It's now expanded to HP, blood, pain, and consciousness. Here is some info regarding those stats:
Blood
If blood runs out, the villager will die.
As blood runs out at certain thresholds, the villager will lose chunks of consciousness.
Wounds have amounts of bleeding. Take care of those injuries or the villagers will bleed to death.
Pain
A villager will have pain inflicted with every hit.
At every pain threshold, the villager will lose some consciousness and have negative mood modifiers.
Pain at its maximum will only result in a large amount of consciousness being lost due to shock from the pain.
Consciousness
If consciousness reaches 10% the villager will faint.
Villagers will have impaired motor functions (working, walking, fighting) when consciousness is damaged.
Not eating for a long time or not sleeping will result in the loss of consciousness.
Certain weapons like blunt weapons deal a massive amount of damage to consciousness but don't inflict bleeding.
When your villagers get wounded, they'll have to receive care from others. Based on wound severity, they might start losing consciousness too.
But that's not all…
Each weapon has a list of wounds it can inflict to the head or the body of the target. Each wound has a threshold parameter that determines if the wound will be inflicted when a strike happens.
This way we make sure that heavy wounds won't be inflicted by the stab of a dagger that has 1x damage. Each wound has a list of effects like; slowing down walk speed, increasing miss chance (if a hand is hurt), amount of bleeding, amount of pain inflicted, etc. This is awesome as it opens the possibility of adding crazy effects to some weapons. Think about it! Magical daggers! Flaming swords! Poisoned arrows! We’ll just leave the file that controls those things unprotected somewhere, so you can dabble in it… if you want, of course.
All effects from the wound scale down proportionally with the severity of the wound. Severity can be decreased by a healing procedure.
All of this seems a bit overwhelming, and you might be asking yourself - How the heck do we handle this? Here is a bit info on the healing:
Hitpoints replenish 2x faster while sleeping. Blood and Pain replenish (diminish) faster while resting. Sleeping is important! We’ve added a new type of job - Resting!
Resting is an order to use work hours to rest in a bed.
Resting in bed results in wounds healing faster
Only a worker resting can be tended by a doctor
If a villager is unconscious, another villager that has the Tend job marked will pick up their body and bring them to a free bed and tend their wounds. Tended wounds don't bleed but still have other effects. Tending quality depends on medicine skills and the quality of the healing kit used. There is also a chance someone with a low medicine skill will fail to tend a wound that will result in the severity being increased. A wound is tended for 24h, after that it needs to be tended again.
We have a tutorial database!
So you are playing the game and want to learn some features and commands faster on the go? Good news - we’ve added a functional almanac in the game that acts as an in-game Wikipedia/database of everything in the game. It acts as a tutorial at the same time.
At the moment it only provides basic tutorials via pop-up notifications, and we’ve added only resources and construction info. We will continue filling it with the content as we go. Also, the information given in every entry will be expanded.
Almanac has a functional search segment to search any keyword player might look for.
As you can tell, we are working on the beta build of the game big time! Do you want to play it? Sign up here:
It's been a hell of a month! Alpha testing and fixing, partnership announcement, and some new things we managed to implement based on your feedback!
Let's start with the new stuff, shall we:
The event scheduler received a significant upgrade!
We've listened to your feedback regarding some raids being too frequent, too hard, and weird event pacing overall. We've implemented a new system that considers the player's actions, and as a result, triggers a particular event.
This way we can give breathing room to the player, while also providing a sensible pace and progress as time goes on. We plan to tie this system to the difficulty control (when we implement that) so that everyone can play the game the way they want.
Production building penalties are a thing!
All production buildings have various penalties for production speed. The environment in which the building is located is the thing that calculates those penalties. Modifiers are:
Inside (placed in a room)
Outside (not placed in a room or under roof)
Roofed (under roof or floor or dirt voxel)
Outside in Rain
Outside in Snow
Outside in Fog
Why is this important? Well, it only makes sense for a smithing station to work a bit better outside than on the inside. Other things, like research benches, will be 20% slower in the rain. Consider these things if you want to create a perfect settlement.
Feedback is super important!
Alpha testers on our Discord server managed to play the game for a couple of days, and in that time, provided us with various bugs and feedbacks that needed fixing/implementation. We managed to fix a lot of things in that period, but we also fixed some things post alpha. Here you go:
New perks with icons added to the game.
All resources and items have descriptions now.
Villager's backstories and backgrounds are combined properly now.
Origin town of villagers has a proper name now
Created a new way of determining where enemies will spawn (in the process we fixed the problem of enemies that spawned on the top of the hills and couldn’t get down).
Added combat VFX when an arrow hits an obstacle.
Solved floating villagers problem when mining.
Archers will no longer be able to shoot through doors when standing on the doorstep.
Player is able to place buildings on to crop fields now.
Crop fields and stockpiles can be placed on trees and bushes (workers will remove them before bringing the stockpile).
Does this pique your interest? Great! Because you can sign up for the beta here:
This is a big moment for us - We have a publisher now! That’s right, amazing people of The Irregular Corporation are the publishers of Going Medieval! They will help us bring our vision to fruition. Read more about it in their official announcement.
For new people here, here is a little bit about the game: Going Medieval is an alternate medieval history colony survival sim, where you can build a multi-story fortress out of clay, wood, and stone. Your villagers will have needs, feelings, and agendas shaped by the world and its history, and it's up to you to keep them content and sane. Help your villagers claim and defend their own piece of land!
We’ve got a brand new announcement trailer to celebrate - check it out below!
Partnership with The Irregular Corporation means a lot to us - besides helping us on the publishing front, we will be able to share our game with their community, as well as our own! Stay tuned for more exciting stuff! Check out The Irregular Corporation on Twitter or jump into their Discord to say hi.
Also, BIG NEWS. You can sign up for the beta version of the game! That’s right! Sign up {LINK REMOVED}HERE! We will be hosting a closed beta later this year for Going Medieval after the great feedback we received during our alpha test a few days ago.
Don’t forget to join our Discord too and talk to the team and other extremely cool people there. Follow us on Twitter for some sweet gameplay videos. Things are bound to get interesting!
A lot of different things can be found in this update. Let’s start with the simplest one:
You can banish villagers now
Villagers can be banished now. Maybe you are not satisfied with their contributions to the settlement, perhaps they are slowing things down, or just looking at them makes you nervous. If you choose to do so there will be a prompt text that asks you, ‘are you sure about that decision?’. If the answer is yes, the selected villager will take some food and leave the settlement. Other workers will have a mood penalty because of this...so keep that in mind. We hope you are happy with this addition to the core gameplay features. Also, while we are talking about moods…
Additional Mood effectors are added
In previous updates, we talked about how villagers will have different moods. Those with a very low mood will disobey the player’s schedule and try to satisfy needs on their own. If the mood reaches 0, a villager will disappear from the settlement.
Now with the changes, everything modifies your villagers’ mood! We mean things like sleep quality, performing passionate jobs, deaths of the fellow villagers, and much, much more!. A villager will get mood modifiers from different beds, for example, sleeping in the rain, on the ground, and so on. If they are doing the job they love, this will also affect their mood. We added thought bubbles when a mood modifier hits, so keep an eye out for these. You’ll want to keep them in a really good mood because...
Raiders are here!
Look at those raiders! When they attack, you’ll get an in-game announcement (see March Update for this). Depending on the progress of your settlement, they might have different goals: killing villagers, destroying buildings, or simply stealing food. But they can bring firepower...and so can you because...
Trebuchets are in the game!
Any worker can be manned for some trebuchet actions. At this point in development, they use limestone as ammunition. So we will see how that goes.
That is everything for this update, we hope you’re enjoying seeing the ongoing development of Going Medieval!
We want to talk a bit about archery in our game. It is super essential for us that we make archers fun factor of our game, but avoid feeling over overpowering them. So this is what we did.
Attack switch
Archers now attack with fists when an enemy is near them (2m). This will make them less OP, but also - it would be pretty silly to attack a person up close with shooting arrows.
The environment can block arrows in their path
Arrows now have a chance to hit certain objects when the trajectory is through them (trees, bushes, constructions, merlons). A broken arrow icon pops up when an arrow hits something along the way. NOTE: if something is 2m in front of the archer, it will not be taken into the equation for obstacle hit chance. This is to prevent your archers on walls from hitting merlons all the time.
High ground matters
Workers with ranged weapons can now target and shoot targets from other levels (from a cliff, wall, platform). "It's over Anakin," some might say.
"Arrow to the knee" is super effective
Enemies and workers will slow down (for a minor time) when damaged. This is implemented so the enemies will run away a bit harder if hit by an arrow. When an arrow misses a target, it will check a radius of a few grid spaces and run the calculation again for targets in that radius. This is to simulate potential friendly fire and bad archers getting a hit when firing on a group of enemies that are next to each other.
So yeah, show some love for your archers, and we’ll see you soon!
Time to explain it a bit in more detail. Selecting this tab opens the research panel (shown in the gif above). Do you want to learn new things? You’ll need books for that! That’s right! Books are the main resource for this tab. You can produce them via the research table that you create within the game. Convenient, right? Well, like any other resource in this game, it can be lost due to a player’s misplacement. Yup. Leave it out in the open, and the rain will destroy them eventually. It makes sense to put them inside the buildings, right? True, but don’t put them near the fire, you know how that goes. And if you want to learn all those nodes, you’ll need a LOT of books - you see, since the books are not “spent”, you’ll have to manage them properly. The short story is - love your books, and they’ll love you back.
The event system is working
So your village is doing good? Others will want to join your little utopia (or cannibalistic cult if that is their/your thing). Regardless, you’ll have options to accept or reject them, as you are in control.
Buuuut, you’ll attract enemies too! But don’t worry, we have a proper alert for that too!
That’s it for now, we’ll have more to say in a couple of weeks! Thanks!
Don't worry, you'll get your regular monthly update soon, but our community is growing, and we want to address that.
Twitter rises slowly, but surely!
We’ve passed 300 followers on Twitter! Twitter is a great place to be since there are all sorts of short videos from the game we are posting there. Also, our devs pop in there from time to time with some nifty gifs. Check this video of Somerhild struggling to hit a deer with a bow:
There are more than 1000 members on our Discord Server! Those patient people support us from the very start, just like you. While more things will happen there eventually, for now, you can jump into #going-on-a-journey and #going-on-a-journey-discussion to experience a unique medieval story in which you decide an outcome by voting. By discussing it, you’ll get experience points! If that sounds interesting to you, head over to GM discord server here:
And last but not least - you, the Steam audience. Your likes, comments, and questions showed us that what we are doing makes sense, that we are on the right path. We will continue to work on Going Medieval and make it great because you deserve it.
Greetings medievalists! Onto new updates, shall we?
Hunting Gameplay Loop
Hunting is ready, but it will require some balancing. Let’s take bows as an example - workers with higher marksmen and animal handling skills will be better hunters. Marksman skill will give them higher DPS and better precision along with the ability to equip themselves with better bows. Animal handling will lower the chance of the animal retaliating against the hunter, and also reduces the chance that the animal will flee if the hunter misses (also, higher animal handling will give a higher chance of dealing critical damage to… you guessed it - animals).
RTS worker control
Player can take control of any worker like in a real-time strategy game - they can move him/her to any given location, order them to equip a specific item, or point where to attack if that is your thing. Selecting a worker and right-clicking on a piece of equipment or food will give the player a menu of actions.
Worker jobs are improved
Crafting jobs have been split into several different types depending on the skill set and production type. AI of the workers is polished now for these situations. Sequence prioritization and planning are evident and fully functional.
That’s it for now, we’ll have more to say in a couple of weeks! Thanks!