Greetings players! The newest patch (0.16.2) is now live on all platforms on the experimental branch. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. Once it is properly tested, we will push it live in the official update! Here are the notes for what awaits you in this version, but first, a warning:

Please note: if you are using unofficial mods you might experience crashes or even an inability to start the game. If you do, turn the mods off before starting the game. If the problem persists, be sure to delete everything in the steamapps\common\Going Medieval and then verify the game files.

Now, onto the update:

Water is finally in the game. It will appear on almost every map type as bodies of water like lakes and rivers, as long as a new game is started. There's a chance for a map to not have a river or a lake on it, but that’s because the seed is randomly generated and calculated.

It will move when given the chance, so digging a hole next to a lake or river will make the water go to that empty spot. The way water is simulated is not supposed to be very realistic, but is simplified and follows some basic logic.

Water is consistent, meaning that a full voxel of water will spread out on more voxels while lowering its core level. For the gameplay purposes of Going Medieval, water will have 3 levels: Shallow, Low and Deep. This will also make it clear if water can be traversed by foot or is it deep enough to swim. Here are key notes for each level:

Shallow water

• About 30cm real world depth (1/10 of the whole voxel).
  
• Settlers, raiders and animals can walk/run through it (yes, even rats and small animals. We are ok with this. :D).
  
• Settlers can construct stuff, pickup piles, eat & drink, they can also harvest/slaughter/train animals.
  
• Production buildings and beds don't work in this depth.
  
• Leisure activities (praying and backgammon) and furniture are allowed in this depth.
  
• All plants and trees start to lose HP in this depth except reeds & willow trees.
  
• Crop Fields can't be placed on this depth except willow trees.

Low water

• About 170cm real world depth (around 3/5 of the whole voxel).
  
• Settlers (regardless of their height), raiders and animals swim in this depth.
  
• Leisure activities (praying and backgammon) and furniture are not allowed in this depth.
  
• Settlers can still construct stuff, pickup piles, eat & drink (they will not use chairs in low water).
  
• Settlers, raiders and animals can’t climb out of low water without ladders or stairs/slopes.
  
• If there is a floor that above low water, settlers, raiders and animals will swim under it,
  
• Settlers can’t harvest/slaughter/train animals while the animal is in low water (or deeper).
  
• Enemies can't attack prod buildings that are in low water.
  
• Traps will not work on this depth.
  
• Torches and braziers will not work on this depth, but wall torches will.

Deep water

• 3m of water (one whole voxel).
  
• Settlers (regardless of their height), raiders and animals swim in this depth.
  
• Settlers can still construct stuff, pickup piles, eat & drink.
  
• Settlers, raiders and animals can climb out of deep water without ladders or stairs/slopes.
  
• Animals can't eat bushes that are in deep water, can't eat piles or carcasses that are in deep water.
  
• Enemies can't attack prod buildings that are in deep water.

Different water levels can be layered on top of each other, so you might have deep water (3m) and shallow water over it. In that case, settlers will behave as in deep water.

Water will flow if there is available space for it. It can be blocked by the ground, but also some buildings.

• Water will flow through open doors, grated doors, wicker doors and barn doors.
  
• Water can go through grated and wicker floors.

• Fish can spawn in rivers and lakes and can be marked by the player to be fished and used as a resource. Fishes spawn logic is similar to plants in a way that they spawn on a location (in this case water) and the settler comes and harvests them.Here is what you need to know about this process:
  
• Animal handling skill will influence fishing performance.
  
• Fishing is a part of the hunting job and is performed via order located in the bottom right side of the screen or right clicking on fish after you’ve selected a settler.
  
• Fish spawns in all bodies of water.
  
• Fish will die if the water is drained and will drop a small amount of resources in its place.
  
• You can fish for pike, trout and eel.
  
• Pike is just one fish and offers a larger chance of failure during the fishing process, but provides more meat if caught.
  
• Trout flock offers multiple fishes to catch and a smaller chance to fail, but there is not that much meat in the flock.
  
• Eel is somewhere in-between pike and trout when it comes to chance failure and resource gain.
  
• Map types can have a different combo of fishes. For instance, marsh maps have more eels and other maps have a combination of trouts and pikes.
  
• Location in relation to the shore is also influencing what type of fish it spawns.
  
• Once fished, you can smoke and salt them and turn them into corresponding meals.

What makes a marsh different from other map types (valley, hillside and mountain) is that their terrain will be covered with 50% of shallow water. Here are other notable things you can expect on the Marsh map:

• Marsh soil - similar to the regular soil, but leaves shallow water where it is dug out. It appears only on marsh maps and gives only 1x soil instead of 3x like regular dirt voxels.
  
• Willow trees - similar to regular trees, but mostly present on marshes,
  
• Reeds - located mostly on marshes. They offer hay, albeit less when compared to tall dry grass.
  
• Water Vole - similar to a rat. Gives good leather and mostly spawns in marsh map types. Can be held in pens.
  
• Mallard - medium-sized waterfowl species that spawns on marsh maps. Can be held in pens.
  
• Metal and limestone are not present on this map type so you’ll have to acquire them via trading.

More water related info:

• Humans and animals can fight on all water levels.
  
• Piles rot and decompose much much faster if in water (except fish piles, their decay is slowed down in that case).
  
• Flora doesn’t spawn in water (except willow trees and reeds).
  
• Reed will start dying if it’s deprived of water.
  
• If you start a trade with another village located in the marsh map type, expect that the stock of that village will probably lack limestone but will offer more herbs.

Urgent Haul is a new order type located in the Jobs panel that is separated from the (regular) haul. This will give you more control when it comes to prioritization and which settler will respond to the Urgent Haul order. Here is how it works:

• There is a new “Urgent Haul” button located in the lower right corner of the screen.
  
• Settlers that have only urgent haul on (regular haul off) will only haul urgent marked piles and not the ones that are not marked.
  
• Settlers that have haul on (urgent haul off) will haul urgent marked piles too, but they will not prioritize them during the hauling process.
  
• Pets will follow urgent haul orders, too, regardless of their owner’s priorities.
  
• A pile can't be forbidden and urgent haul marked at the same time.
  
• A pile that's on a stockpile can't be marked as an urgent haul except if the pile can be moved to a better stockpile.
  
• Shelved piles cant be marked for urgent haul.

• Limestone (impure) is a new type of the voxel we’ve added. It looks exactly like the regular limestone but gives less resources, has less HP and is faster dug. It will be only found on mountain maps. This is so players can dig those maps faster and not have a gazillion limestone around. Don’t worry, ordinary limestone is still present on mountain maps and is the same as before.
  
• Using the Overview tab now pauses the game.

• Fixed the bug that indicated that food reserves are low, even when they weren’t.
  
• Fixed the bug where installing a rug under a bookshelf would cause the books to fall down.
  
• Fixed the issue that occurred when the settler with a high enough skill (10) to smoke meat returns from a caravan, during which time no other settler could have performed an ongoing order to smoke meat, the smoke house order does not update. It will continue to say no settlers with enough skills are available.
  
• Fixed the issue where the high motor function would slow down certain activities.

• Right clicking and prioritizing fishing is controlled by the cut plant job.
  
• Animals are lacking in animation when swimming (they’ll appear as walking on water).
  
• Pathfinding penalty is doing some weird calculations when humans/animals are walking on shallow water and is not working properly.
  
• Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  
• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30. If that doesn’t work, turn the V-sync off.

DISCLAIMER: We sincerely suggest that you start a new map to properly experience water and terrain adjustments that accompany it. If you have an old save that you really want to add water to, you can find the guide below. If you try to use Dev Tools and report bugs in the process, those reports will be ignored simply because dev tools can be buggy, we can’t cover all of the custom scenarios made by these tools and because the game is not experienced the way it was intended. Since we are a small team, this is made so we can focus on the core experience and prioritize our bug fixing to the real bugs. But we also want for you to have fun, and create fun experiences and screenshots.

To add water to the existing maps, you will need to enable Dev Tools first. This is done on the experimental branch (only on Steam). For it to work, you'll have to change two files:

1) Find your game within steamapps in this location: SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Going Medieval\Going Medieval_Data\StreamingAssets\Data\ . Find file named GameSettings.json and open it with notepad. Look for the devTools line and change false to true . Save the file.

2) Go here: %userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\ . Find file global.config and open it with notepad. Look for the devtools and change false next to it to true . Save the file.

Now start the game and go to Options > Game > Dev tool.


In the upper part of the screen, a new tab titled DEV TOOLS will appear next to the Region tab.


When you select it, a new window will appear showing various commands. Look for the TOGGLE WATER DEBUG UI and select it.


This will add a new window that allows you to add and control water. To use this window, you’ll have to select “Enable Draw/Edit”. We’re going to explain what each function does:


Add water - selecting it will add water to the voxel where your mouse is. You can use the click and hold function to draw water across the area. If the area is flat and the amount of added water is modest, there is a big chance that the water will disappear after some time.
Fill to cursor - will add water depending on the cursor positioning. Be careful when using this as it may overflow the map. Take into consideration the angle of the camera, too.
Add flow in - this will add a voxel that will constantly emit water from its positioning. When you see a map with a river in it, this is the type of voxel located on one edge of the map.
Add flow out - this is the type of voxel located on the other side of the river that ‘swallows’ the water and stops it from overflowing in that case. By default, map edges are surrounded by these voxels.
Water level to set - indicates the amount of water that will be placed on start when using the add water function.
Draw vertical offset - offsets water placement in relation to the cursor.
Refresh All Obstacles, DBG Visualize Obstacles, Hide DBG Obstacles - this doesn’t have practical use as we used it for debugging purposes early on.
Clear water - Removes all water from the map.
Clear inflow - Removes all inflow voxels from the map, even ones that create rivers.
Enable water sim - turning this off will essentially freeze water movements. Trying to add water in this state will create water blurbs that will stand in one place until this option is turned on.
Tick Water Sim - simulates water movement one tick at a time. Can be used when the water sim is turned off or the game is paused.
Backup Water State - use this to save current water positioning.
Restore Water State - if you make a mess with water experimentation, use this to restore water state to your backup point made above,
Clamp Water Levels - turning this off was used for debugging on our side.
Show water mesh - hides/shows water. It doesn’t erase its functionality, just hides the visuals.

If you still can't find Dev Tools after the instruction above: It might be because you have at one point used unofficial modding tools that modified game's files. Since we don't know what they change, we suggest that you to certain folder and file cleanup. Go to Steam Library > Right-click on Going Medieval > Properties > Local Files > Browse.

This should open a new folder and you should delete all of the files located in there. After you do that, go to Steam Library > Right-click on Going Medieval > Properties > Local Files > Verify integrity... Wait for it to finish and start the game. Don't worry, this will not delete your save files, but you'll still have to change again devtool within .json. Find your game within steamapps in this location: SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Going Medieval\Going Medieval_Data\StreamingAssets\Data\ . Find file named GameSettings.json and open it with notepad. Look for the devTools line and change false to true. Save the file and start the game and see if you can see Dev Tools within the game's options. If the answer is still no, then...

Go here: %userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\ and delete everything there. Note: This will also delete your saves so be sure to back them up somewhere before you do so. Start the game and exit it. Go back to that folder and find file global.config and open it with notepad. Look for the devtools and change false next to it to true. Save the file. Check if you can see dev tools in game now.

If the answer is No, the last thing we can suggest is to reinstall the game. Again, we're sorry that you are experiencing this issue, but using unofficial tools can lead to unexpected problem like these. :(

Use these tools at your own risk, as they are not perfect nor meant to be used for sandbox experience (but we might focus on that once everything is working as intended). And when you are done, don’t forget to turn the dev tools off so you can report proper bugs, if that is your thing. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMERS:
⚠️ We decided to keep Dev version of the game on the experimental branch, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur.
⚠️ Also, at the moment, the experimental and the main branch are very different. You should not play saves from the experimental branch on the main one as it can cause various bugs - please avoid doing this.

As always, use F10 and/or the experimental bug subforum for reporting experimental issues. Thank you!

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

As mentioned in the previous MMT, we’d like to discuss some of the challenges we are facing with the incorporation of water and why working on it took time. Hopefully, this might give a better understanding of our process, but also our problem solving approach.

It’s worth noting that with the water update, the layout of existing map seeds will be changed if you start a new game. Basically, this means they will have a new layout and old images will not be a proper representation of those maps. This is partly due to implementation of rivers and lakes on maps and partly due to the terrain calculation of those areas. It's nothing game breaking, but it's good to know. In the images below is the map seed 1845052011 hillside, medium size. Left side is the current live build (0.15.8) while the right is created with Update #10. If anything, the new version is a bit richer in levels even when you take water out of the equation.



So how did we get here? How are the positions of rivers, lakes and water overall, calculated for each map? Well, as the latest addition to the game, it made sense that water positioning should be a last step of map generation.

From the start, we had three things in mind: rivers, lakes and a new type of map (marsh) where the whole map is flooded with shallow water and there are islands on the map.

Marsh was a bit different from your regular map as it required a global water level and under this level, everything should be flooded. With that in mind, what happens if you dig down in the marsh area? It makes sense that such a terrain would be wet by all the water around it, right? Digging such land would have to be a bit different. So that’s why we added marsh soil - it offers less soil and can spawn water in case you dig them out; so that if you dig a deep hole, you might find water, and the deeper you dig the more water you may have in that hole. This ground type has a darker and wetter appearance on Marshes.



Okay, but what does it mean for spawning points for animals/merchants/raiders on marshes? Since water gives a penalty to those that traverse it, humans/animals would seek to avoid it when possible. We also had to make sure that events are differently balanced on this map. So there will be no situations where a bunch of deer would appear suddenly (silly deer).

Back to the regular maps. Lake generation sounded simpler, so we started with that. We used so-called 'brushes' during map generation. Think of brushes as a small texture akin to stamp. The lighter the color of the brush, the deeper the lake. They could raise and lower height, set materials inside the terrain, and make holes to the map. Cool. But we had to add water too.



The first iteration of pasting a 'lake brush' did just switch the top voxels of the terrain with water. So a water voxels would cover the designated area of an “empty” lake and would fill it out accordingly. It worked just as intended on flat maps, but on those with more elevation such created lakes would flood half of the map. Yeah. This was because there were no clear limiters to the present system.



Something had to be done before pasting the brush process. The solution for this was to flatten out the terrain where the lake was and then carve the lake into the terrain. An additional layer of ground voxels, a wall on the level of the water surface was needed around the lake to make sure that water doesn't flow out of the flat area. This had to work for every map type, even mountains.



The next step was to handle the situation where we want to place multiple lakes on the map. The brushes which carve the lake into the terrain and fill it with water are placed randomly and may overlap, and this meant that lakes could overlap, too. To fix this, we placed ground to work as a divider of water between different elevation levels at this point of map generation voxel. This means no waterfalls inside a lake.

But we also had to consider what YOU want to do here. Would you like to deplete lakes by covering them with dirt voxel? You can try to do that. It might appear as a Sisyphean task, but it can be done. Additionally, what if you want to connect those two lakes? Again, it is possible, but plan it properly and be ready for potential consequences. These scenarios are better when they are player made. What we try to set up at the start is a balanced experience regardless of the map type and size. Which, hopefully by now, you can see that it is not as simple a process as it may look.

That’s just some of the marsh and lake trivia. You know what was more challenging? Rivers! Those are a completely different can of worms (hehe) in which there are no brushes, only perlin noise, angles, curves, waterfalls and a whole new set dimension of problems to solve. Are you curious to hear about this too? Just check this funky river curve and volume calculation:



If there is enough interest, we might dedicate another MMT to it, but if not, we understand (and our programmer thanks you).

As mentioned before, we have an idea when the water update is going live on the experimental branch. Currently, our internal QA team is testing it and things are looking stable and promising. If everything goes well, expect it to appear on the experimental branch in 10 days or so. As it goes with these things, it will stay there until we are confident that everyone is having a proper experience, which usually takes us a couple of weeks. But things are looking neat so far!

Foxy Voxel
(we have a dev page on steam now, yay)

Greetings medievalists!

You know what we never introduced, since the game launched in Early Access? New map type. Time to change that. Say hi to Marshes.



What makes a marsh different from other map types (valley, hillside and mountain) is that their terrain will be covered with 50% of shallow water, and limestone and metal will not be present throughout that land. This map type is considered a bit challenging because digging cellars/basements will be tricky, since water could easily fill them (and we mentioned that production buildings stop working in shallow water).

We also mentioned that the majority of trees and plants will not be able to grow in shallow water, so let’s talk about the ones that can: New flora and fauna is coming in the next update!



White willow is a new tree that will be present on all of the map types, but marshland will have the majority of these trees. And yes, you will be able to cultivate them on water voxels, but just on the ones with shallow depth.

Reeds are a plant similar to tall grass in a sense that harvesting it will provide you with hay. Like white willow, they’ll be on all map types, but they’ll be most common on marshes. You will not be able to cultivate reed, but they will spawn organically (as the tall grass does) at random, in shallow waters.



Water voles are a semi-aquatic rodent. They are often informally called the ‘water rat’ and while they look like rats, they will provide you with a solid amount of meat and leather if you decide to hunt them, among other things.

Mallard is a medium-sized waterfowl species that is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks. It will be exclusive to the marsh map type and will be idle in water, regardless of its depth.

It’s worth mentioning that almost every new map created after the Update 10 launches will be generated with some water source like a river, pond or lake. The majority of water sources will be destroyable by building dirt voxels in their place. However, those sources located at the edge of the map will persevere due to them being located in the forbidden zone where you can’t build. Old map saves will not have water magically appear on them, but once the update goes live we’ll post a guide on how you can integrate water there. More on that when Update 10 is officially released.

There are some challenges that we are currently facing with these new features, hence why we don’t have a date for the update yet. This was not unexpected, but it is worth talking about. Water is a big undertaking for us and as such, we want to set proper logistics that we can expand down the road.

In the next MMT we’ll talk about these current issues. Maybe then we’ll have a date for the Update #10, or at least for the experimental branch Update. It’s gonna stay there for a couple of weeks until the majority of bugs are fixed and we feel confident in its release. Until then,

Stay medieval

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

We’ve talked about water interaction with constructions and surfaces, now it’s time to talk about water and organic stuff. To talk about this is to talk about depth levels and how it affects humans, animals and plants.

When it comes to flora, the majority of plants and trees will not be able to grow in water. If water covers them, they’ll slowly start to lose hitpoints. We plan to introduce some simple irrigation systems eventually, through wetness caused by water, but we’ll focus on that once all the planned stuff works as intended.



Animals will be able to walk, haul and eat on shallow water, but the majority of them will not idle nor sleep on such surfaces. The same logic is applied when they swim on surfaces with low depth (previously referenced as medium). Deep water (the deepest water level) will not allow them to pick stuff from the ground nor eat.

Humans follow similar logic as animals but with additional options. They can walk on shallow water, but they can also build on it, play games, eat, pick stuff and cut trees and plants (that can grow on such depth). Low depth allows them to just swim and pick stuff up. In this depth they can swim beneath floors that are positioned on a level above them, but they can’t climb onto it. Deep water allows them just to swim, but they can climb onto surfaces and floors of the same level.



Voxel with low depth water is reached by ladders, stairs and slopes, while deep water voxel is reached from the upper ground level.



Settlers will be able to fight in water, but keep a few things in mind; Shallow water will offer a bit more flexibility, since settlers will be able to use all their weapons and shields as usual, but when it comes to other depth levels, that will only allow for melee combat. Shields will be ineffective and rangers will use fists. With this being water and all, certain penalties will follow combat, related to critical chance, damage, and speed. Simply put, people will fight slower when in water.

Overall, all living things that pass through water will get speed penalty and effectors that will lower their body temperature. Combine that with colder environments and it’s a recipe for getting Hypothermia.

People will be able to pass out on every depth level, but doing so in low and deep water will result in slowly losing health followed up by drowning. When it comes to drowning, yes, you will be able to trap a settler/enemy/animal in a room and fill it with water.



You’ll be happy to hear that fishing is coming to Going Medieval. Fishing is a new order type with which your settlers will be able to catch pike, trout and eels. Pike is just one fish and offers a larger chance of failure during the fishing process, but provides more meat if caught. Trout flock offers multiple fishes to catch and a smaller chance to fail. However, there is not much meat in the whole flock (one pike will give more meat than the entire trout flock in an area. Eels are somewhere in-between these two. You will notice their flocks in water areas close to shores. Settlers with a “Hunt'' job will go and fish in these areas. Once caught, you will be able to directly cook them, smoke them and use them to create various meals.

Unfortunately, boats (nor any water based vehicles) will not appear in the update. Again, to simplify the reasoning behind this: it is not an issue of water logic, rather pathfinding logic. A settler occupies a space of one voxel. If we create a boat, it would have to be lengthy in size, let’s say 3 voxels. Objects of that size wouldn’t be able to pass through narrow passages that players tend to construct in our game. And that’s just if we talk about a boat for one person which… doesn’t look/sound fun. Now, if the boat had a capacity for 4 people, that would be something else. But then comes another problem. What if each person on a boat wants to do something different? What if they want to use a boat automatically so they could pass on the other side? Should they wait for others to board first? If not, that means a settler will try to reach a boat and might miss it, causing them to recalculate their new route to the destination. These are just a few scenarios, but there are many, many different ways these scenarios could occur and developing one system to cover all of it might not be worth the final result.

You will notice that we didn’t mention anything about drinking water. Simply said, that will not be possible. We made a conscious decision to not turn water into a resource. That means settlers will not be able to drink it, harvest it nor use it for say… washing purposes. While we are aware of the common myth that said that people only drank alcohol in medieval times, we also allowed ourselves a bit of flexibility here since our game is set in alternative history where 95% of the global population has perished due to rampant plague. There is also a thing where water as a resource would have to retroactively be integrated with existing systems, which would in turn cause a bunch of unpredictable issues. We might revisit this idea again, but for now we chose to opt out of it.

You might be surprised by this decision, but once you experience all of the available options in the next Update, maybe it will become clear why we choose to do so. While these Medieval Monday Talks are here to give you insight into the game development process, they are also a nice opportunity to set proper expectations.

One more MMT awaits us and it’s coming in two weeks. Maybe then we’ll have a clear date when you can expect this Update. Until that day,

Stay medieval

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

Let’s continue the water discussion: First, we’ll talk about how it will affect buildings.

Water will not be able to pass through walls, floors and roofs. Now, since these elements have variations (like rounded walls), it may appear as water should pass through, but keep in mind that variations are just cosmetic and don’t change anything regarding their functionality. Certain types of these construction elements will allow water to pass through, like: grated floors, wicker, barn and grated floors.


Things that don't block water (above) & things that block water (below)

Open doors will let water in, regardless of door type. Open windows, on the other hand, will let water in but only a certain amount, resulting in shallow water on the other side (e.g. room).



When it comes to production buildings, being in water will stop their production. Yes, even shallow water will stop production, so be careful with your experiments. How can you remove water from such places? Dig holes, place barriers, because, if you don’t do so - water is there to stay.



With water comes wetness, so even if you get rid of it, the marks and effects will stay for a short period of time. Water affecting the temperature will be evident during summer, as it will emit coldness.

Upon hearing news about the water, many of you mentioned drawbridges as a must-have thing. We agree, but they will come a bit later, as we still have to work on them.

We’re aware that many of you suggested introducing watermills. That’s a nice idea, but we’ve thought about its incorporation and, from our perspective, it would increase the production chain side of the game. Put bluntly: if you imagine a gameplay spectrum with Factorio on one side (as a representative of production heavy games) and Sims on the other (as a representative of life simulation games), we want to lean more to the Sims side. It would look cool, we admit, but we want to make them a smart integration to the rest of the systems. Since we’ve already planned this update carefully, we decided that watermills are not a priority at the moment, nor are fountains. We’ll definitely notify you once we get back to them.

Another thing we want to mention that is not happening is Ice voxel. We know what you think, once the winter comes, your nearby river/lake should freeze. Freezing lakes should be walkable and mined and extracted into ice blocks which you would use for cooling down your storages/rooms. It’s a wonderful and realistic idea! But our recently introduced depth levels pose an issue: if we allow water freezing, that means every level should be turned into an ice block. That would result in 3 different levels of walkable surfaces within one voxel. The thing is, our technology and gameplay is not set up to support that. Without going too much into logistics and potential code issues, our hard surfaces are all positioned as one voxel. That’s why we’re unable to introduce things like half-walls - they would offer only aesthetics but not functionality, and we already have nice alternatives for them (merlons).

Just to clarify - we’re not saying this is impossible. We’re saying that given our available technology, we’ve chosen to focus our priorities elsewhere. So yeah, our core setup opted us out of this feature.

Alrighty, that is enough talk about water and hard surfaces. Next time we’ll talk about how water affects all living things - humans, animals and even plants. There is a lot to say in that area. See ya in two weeks!

Stay Medieval,

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

It’s not uncommon for you to influence our development process. That is happening all the time, in both big and small ways. Among all of your suggestions, one feature stood out as the most requested, and we always thought about it, but wanted to tackle it once the game’s roadmap is done. Well, you continued to voice your opinion about this feature and we couldn’t put it aside anymore. It had to be done, at least in some capacity. So that’s what we are doing at the moment.

We’re happy to announce that water is coming to Going Medieval.



First, we want to talk about options we considered and challenges they posed, before we go into discussing the system we’ve chosen.


We had to establish clear 2d rules before we could move to 3D.

The first thing we had to decide is water distribution mechanics. Its speed, weight, amount distribution, etc. We didn’t want to turn the game into a realistic water simulation, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t experiment. We tried to experiment with fast simulation and distribution (voxel to voxel), but this would unnecessarily be taxing for the CPU. Water pressure posed a similar issue - initially we consider water pressure as an attribute, which would lead to creation of underwater caves (and even building destruction by water) and while it seemed cool, you would not be able to clearly understand what was going on while layer calculation would work full time, again, taxing the CPU.


Showcase of some of our 3d experiments.

After some trial and error, it was decided - water should be simulated just enough to keep and maintain predictable behavior, while offering additional control from the player (e.g. for creations of dams and lakes). Think Minecraft, where it would fill empty spaces (if available) step by step. So, in a way, water will most of the time appear as static and not simulated. Allow us to explain.



Water voxel has the same size as your regular voxel, meaning 1x1x3m. Water voxel will have a depth value which will be filled out as the water voxel moves to the empty space. This depth will have 3 different levels (four if you count being empty), and depending on the amount of water, will provide certain limitations for settlers, but more on that in another MMT.



“What about the traversal of water between the levels?”, some of you might ask. Well, if water reaches the end of the level (height-wise) and needs to “fall down”, in that case, a waterfall will appear.



Does this mean water will be infinite? Not exactly. Water will be spawned by a water inflow voxel. Think of inflow voxels as water sources for rivers and ponds - they will constantly deploy water until that water covers the inflow voxel. Inflow voxels will not be buildable as their number is calculated based on the map seed and optimized for average CPU performance. You will be able to spawn them with dev tools, and this way you will be able to add water to the old maps that don’t have generated rivers (use it at your own risk).

Okay, this is a good point to stop this blog, but don’t worry - there is still a lot to talk about. How water affects buildings and settlers, new map type, and a couple more surprises. We’ll continue this topic in two weeks, but until then, feel free to discuss potential scenarios and how you wanna use what you read here.

Stay medieval,

Foxy Voxel

Hello, everyone. The newest hotfix (0.15.8) is now live on all platforms. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. If you have any problems, please let us know.

• Fixed several crash occurrences.
  
• Fixed the issue where all settlers would attack animals marked for hunting despite their job priorities and their orders.

• Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  
• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.

NOTE: If you are experiencing crashes and inability to send reports, please send us your save files (that caused crashes, we just need one .sav file) and Player.log file to support[at]foxyvoxel[dot]io . Player.log is located here: %userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\ and save file here: %userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Foxy Voxel\Going Medieval\VillageSaves .

DISCLAIMER: The experimental and the main branch have the same version of the game. However, on the experimental branch, we decided to keep Dev version of the game, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur. If you are annoyed by this, please switch to the main branch to experience the game without the red text.

Hello, everyone. The newest patch (0.15.7) is now live on all platforms. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. If you have any problems, please let us know.

• Fixed several crash occurrences.

• Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  
• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.

DISCLAIMER: The experimental and the main branch have the same version of the game. However, on the experimental branch, we decided to keep Dev version of the game, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur. If you are annoyed by this, please switch to the main branch to experience the game without the red text.

Foxy Voxel

Hello, everyone. The newest patch (0.15.5) is now live on all platforms. Please save your progress and restart your game client to update. You should be able to load normally and continue playing. If you have any problems, please let us know.

• Fixed several crash occurrences.
  
• Fixed the issue where deconstructing large areas of floor would cause either one or both alerts for “research available” and/or “not enough food” to be received in a loop.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused a settler to lose bed ownership if that settler was out of the settlement with a caravan, and the player would save & load while the caravan is out.
  
• Fixed the issue that prevented drafted settlers from attacking animals.
  
• Fixed the issue where a settler with a Hauling job set to 0 would still haul an animal that they’d hunted.
  
• Fixed the issue where a drafted settler would proceed to haul the animal that was manually selected for hunting.
  
• Fixed the issue where clicking on the Chest (Wood) icon would open up the Trough almanac page.
  
• Fixed the issue where a Campfire blueprint arrow was displayed on the wrong side.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused both settler and an animal to appear as stuck if that settler tried to slaughter that animal on a ladder.
  
• Fixed some minor text issues.

• Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  
• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.

DISCLAIMER: The experimental and the main branch have the same version of the game. However, on the experimental branch, we decided to keep Dev version of the game, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur. If you are annoyed by this, please switch to the main branch to experience the game without the red text.

Foxy Voxel

Greetings medievalists!

August’s mini update, officially titled “Coin Bartering” (0.15.4) is now live on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG. All those fixes and improvements from the experimental branch are now stable, tested, and present in this update! We call this one a “mini-update” because it doesn’t have new features, rather a much needed overhaul of existing ones.

But first, for an optimal user experience, we suggest that you:

Please note: if you are using unofficial mods you might experience crashes or even an inability to start the game. If this occurs, turn the mods off before starting the game. If the problem persists, be sure to delete all of the folders in the steamapps\common\Going Medieval and then verify the game files.

Now, onto the update:

Look at this update as a couple of smaller QoL improvements that will in no way revolutionize the way you play the game, but it might give you “hey, this is a cool moment”. We’ll categorize them and try to explain the general idea behind some of the choices made. Let’s get to it.


A lot of players reported that it's frustrating that foxes and polecats would just simply go into your settlement and kill small animals. So we added a few things:

• Pet dogs/wolves/bears (while awake) now protect animals in their proximity. Regular domesticated animals will not perform this function.
  
• Torches, braziers, and production buildings (while the flame is on) also protect animals around them. NOTE: they’ll protect them, even through walls.
  
• Settlers (while awake) also protect small animals.

The protection works as follows:
When the small animal enters the proximity zone (emitted by the stuff we mentioned above), they'll get protected. During that time in that area, they’ll not be attacked by predators.


Leaving the proximity will still have them protected for the next 2.5 hours
If the small animal is targeted by a predator and that small animal goes back to the protector's range, the predator will back off immediately.

Some things to note:

• Animals that come with traders can't be targeted by wild animals
  
• Animals that come with traders will never sleep
  
• Animals returning with the caravan if returning at night will be protected from predators for some time
  
• Animals returning with caravans will not fall asleep in the next 8 hours
  
• Animals purchased from merchants will not fall asleep for the next 8 hours

Now let’s talk wound tending and healing QoL!


We haven't touched wounds and wound tending since the Early Access launch, so we wanted to add a set of changes to make everything a bit more QoL-fy :)

Patient Job


The Patient job type is now added to the JOB panel. This job just makes settlers go to beds and wait for their wounds to be tended. So it's basically like convalescence but if convalescence is not active or is a low priority that settler will continue doing other stuff. This solves the issue of wanting your settlers to be tended but you don't want them to convalesce so they can get stuff done :)

Self Tend


Players can turn this on in the MANAGE panel. It's self-explanatory - settlers can tend their own wounds. If they choose to do so, they’ll get a bit less XP for that and the tend quality will have a low quality.
NOTE: If you turn off the Tend job in the jobs panel, this will disable self-tend as well.

Healing Kit in pouch


Settlers will carry healing kits in pouches now (only healing kit items - not herbs, tallow or honey) and use them when tending instead of going to get healing kits somewhere far.

Jobs have different priority depending on hour type

Some of you reported that it doesn't make sense that wounded settlers would not convalesce while in leisure/any hour type. Well, in the old system, “rest” was considered a job and jobs get low priorities in these hour types. It was… a messy system. But check it now!

We now have the option to forcefully set priorities and also enable jobs per hour type.

• Carry wounded’s goal: settlers will carry wounded even if they don't have a tend job turned on and in leisure/any hour. This makes them a bit more natural at acting and saving their friends even if they are in leisure mode.
  
• Tend wounds will have higher priority than, let's say, needing to play backgammon, because community. BUT, they’ll still be willing to ignore the call if the player turned off tend job for that settler.

Main takeaway here’s are:

Patient/Convalescence Job - These jobs have a pretty high priority in leisure/any hours and are forcefully enabled even if the player disables them in the jobs panel.
This way the jobs panel is 100% efficient only in Work hours.

Now let’s talk wounds...


Wounds can now be categorized 3x different ways:

• First category will not trigger the settler need to be tended. This is used for wounds like bruises that can't be tended with medicine and time will heal itself.
  
• Second category is used for wounds like scratches. They need to be tended sure, but the settlers do not need to lay down in order for that wound to pass.
  
• Third category is Minimum Wound Severity. Like before, as time goes by wounds lose severity and are weaker in their effects. But now, let's say the settler breaks a leg. They will need tending and rest for a few days but then when the wound heals 90% it will hit the minimum severity threshold and will still be there with some small effects on walk speed etc, but will heal on its own over time with no need for further tending or rest.

Wounds can now be tended anywhere! Settlers can tend to other settlers anywhere, no need for them to be in a bed. Just two small notes here:

NOTE 1: The settlers still prioritize taking them to a bed and then tend them. Also the tend wound anywhere only works if the settler that is being tended has fainted and is laying bleeding on the ground and there are no beds available to tend.
NOTE 2: Player can right click priorities tend on any settler anywhere and that should work without a bed for the patient to be in.

Now let’s talk more fun stuff:




We added gold coins as resources to the game

Yes, at the end of the 14th century, 95% of the global population perished due to rampant plague. While the pure survivor and willingness to persevere at any cost were on the minds of those folks, you just know that at one point someone would try to reintroduce familiar monetary systems, because the current value can be deemed to abstract at some crucial points.

Coins are in the game!

• Coins can not be produced, only acquired through trading
  
• Coins always have a value of 1 and never change when bartering like other resources do.
  
• Almost all Merchants have some amount of coin
  
• Coins appear at the top of the bartering list when merchants arrive (if the player and merchants have no coins then it will not appear)
  
• Coins can be smelted into gold ingots (if you want to do that)

This basically means that all wealth has been rebalanced. Everything is a bit less valuable now. But all other wealth parameters (attack size and strength, influence, room impressiveness, expectation etc) have been scaled down accordingly. This is done so we can keep the simple rule of 1 gold coin being 1 wealth/value equal. We’ll see how and if the system will continue to expand but this seems like a good starting place. Maybe you’ll want to keep your wealth only through value which you can easily manipulate? Maybe you like your dungeons filled with coins because that’s how old school you are? Maybe, down the development, certain quests will only be done via the old good coin deed. Now, now, we’re not promising anything here nor anytime soon - just leaving your imagination to potential scenarios.




This is 100% a visual thing and has nothing to do with gameplay. NOTE: Environmental effects need to be turned on in the graphical options for birds to be visible.

• Birds sometimes fly over the map - depending on the time of year and time of day, also their type and direction change with time of year.
  
• Birds sometimes fly out of trees and bushes when settlers start chopping them down. This is random and just happens sometimes (also dependent on the time of day and year).
  
• Birds should not appear at night. This can sometimes happen if they appear 1s before sundown and fly over when the night has started.
  
• Crows will sometimes fly around carcasses of humans and larger animals after a while.
  
• Only for piles that are not in the home area (this is about 10x grid spaces around a player's building) and that are not under the roof.
  
• Crows will sometimes spawn as they eat the carcasses (has no gameplay effect).
  
• Will fly off when a settler is nearby or when animals haul the carcass away.
  
• If a flock of crows appear while the settler is in the proximity of the pile the crows will not fly away until the settler a) picks up the pile, b) exits the proximity and enters again.

We have new Paintings and Tapestry variations. We added 3x new variations to paintings and 2x new tapestry variations.


You might even recognize some of them as certain designs are inspired by modern memes and situations here and there.

We also updated the portrait art for various factions:


Now all factions have unique portraits except mountain bandits, looters, river bandits, Ravagers, and Society of Fellows. This will be changed in the later updates.

• Fixed the issue where unconscious settlers would sometimes spawn in the middle of a voxel, essentially making them stuck in torment.
  
• Fixed the issue where sometimes wild Foxes would sleep in pens, and they feed from inside pens during the day even though other sources of food are available on the map
  
• Fixed the issue where Wild polecats would sleep in stockpiles in the settlement on voxels on which there is something deposited already.
  
• Fixed the issue where If a caravan returns at night, the animals in the caravan will immediately fall asleep. This would lead to small animals like chickens being killed by predators.
  
• Fixed issue where shelves would drop stockpiled items when building floors below them.
  
• Fixed several text issues
  
• Fixed huge stuttering with late game settlements that had a large amount of piles.

• Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
  
• If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.

That would be all for the official update notes. New patches and improvements will be deployed accordingly. In the meantime, feel free to post your experience regarding the new update on Steam discussions. If you want more dynamic/direct communication - head over to our Discord server. Even though we might not reply, we are reading everything.

Foxy Voxel

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