Workbench, the node-based visual scripting environment in Folk Tale promising to democratize modding.

For larger clickable images, please visit:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-33.html


With the village building, economy and RTS controls maturing into a very playable state, and Load/Save added a few patches ago, team effort is firmly focused on delivering assets and systems to support the RPG side of Folk Tale. That means storyline, questing, heroes and factions. It's the juicy campaign goodness often missing from sandbox that provides context, purpose and flavor.

Campaign and sandbox are not mutually exclusive; campaign can sit comfortably within a sandbox framework and players can dip in and out of both as they please. Having developed the sandbox framework to drive world mechanics, I'm pleased to be revealing Workbench, our visual modding tool for Folk Tale. We've removed the need for writing lines of complex programming code, democratizing modding by lowering the barriers to entry.



Workbench is a node-based visual scripting environment similar to those found in game development engines as an alternative to programming. It's an easy to grasp visual environment that's great for level designers who don't have technical skills, but whom still require fine control and power over their environment.

Nodes provide access to objects, events, and commands within the game. For example, you might want the player to meet an NPC, fire off a branching quest dialogue, remove ingredients from the player's inventory, walk to a crafting anvil and forge an epic weapon, before returning to give the player their reward. Or perhaps a helpless traveller needing an escort through bandit territory to safety? That's all possible with just a few clicks, no programming required.

By investing heavily in framework and editor tools, we're building in replayability, longevity and value from the ground up. Had Folk Tale development continued as a linear campaign game, players would have played through the game a couple of times, before relegating it to the virtual shelf to collect dust. By empowering players to create worlds, the community can enjoy new experiences by downloading new maps and worlds.

I'm genuinely stoked about the possibilities Workbench brings to Folk Tale. It's the modern day equivalent of sitting down as a Dungeon Master with a pencil and graph paper, planning out environments and encounters for players to enjoy.

Workbench will be available in a patch update at the end of April.


Of course, we need content to deliver a superb RPG experience. So today we're also taking a first look at factions. In Folk Tale, each biome (grassland, swamp, snow etc.) has two opposing factions, each with fleshed out storyline, quests and heroes for players to unlock and add to their adventuring party. We're working on the first two factions that reside in and around the grassland biome, namely the Withering Dead, and the Gladefolk.

Spoiler alert. You may not want to read beyond this point if you want some of the storyline to remain a surprise. Please note that storyline may be subject to change.



Withering Dead

The Withering Dead are a necromantic faction residing in the dank, dark recesses of the world where the dead are laid to rest. Mordich, gatekeeper to the Plane Of Shadows, is raising a legion of undead to work in his cheap sandals factory in an attempt to pay the bills. With people living longer following the publication of the bestselling Tome Of Healthy Living, times have become hard, and moonlighting from his regular job of reaping seems like a great option.



After suffering the loss of her husband Brom at the hands of bandits, Lilith sealed a deal with Mordich that saw her summon him to the Physical Plane. In return Mordich would teach her the ways of Necromancy so that she could summon Brom's spirit and return him to life. As months turned to years, the shadow magic corrupted Lilith's soul, and her good natured spirit was replaced by something much more sinister.



Having arrived in the Physical Plane, Mordich summoned the spirit of Bonefinger, an ancient dragon from the Plane Of Shadows, binding it to the corpse of a recently dead and rotting dragon. From the primeval era, Bonefinger is a truly grueomsome behemoth capable of spewing acid breath, causing terror with it's roar, and slaming down opponents en masse with its powerful wings.



While Mordich's sandal factory is filled with an army of animated skeleton workers, Mordich also controls zombie harvesting gangs that raid the Gladefolk's Everbloom Pastures in search of the magic flowers that contain the energy he needs to power his factory.



Gladefolk

Over in the Glade, Nara, Earth Mother, is enraged by Mordich's raids, and is pushing back against the rot and decay that the zombie harvesting gangs leave in their wake.



With the help of her daughter, Willow, Nara plots to put Mordich out of business and banish him back to the Plane Of Shadows.



Summoning the behemoth Mossclaw to defend the Everbloom Pastures, Nara sends Willow on an epic journey into the underworld, where she'll resist the corruption of her soul and discover the Bone Phylactery that channels Mordich's life force between planes.



It's up to players to choose their moral stand point and help whichever side they please. Help the Withering Dead, and Mordich will lavish players with otherworldly items of immense power while corrupting the natural world. Help the Gladefolk, and you'll have Nara's thanks and Willow's restorative magic. It's never black and white in Folk Tale.

Neutrals

Not all heroes the players meet will be aligned to a faction. Some pursue their own agenda, and players can unlock them by helping neutral heroes on quests. Ser Gregory, a heavily armored tank, will be the first hero to be added to the game.

Workbench, the node-based visual scripting environment in Folk Tale promising to democratize modding.

For larger clickable images, please visit:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-33.html


With the village building, economy and RTS controls maturing into a very playable state, and Load/Save added a few patches ago, team effort is firmly focused on delivering assets and systems to support the RPG side of Folk Tale. That means storyline, questing, heroes and factions. It's the juicy campaign goodness often missing from sandbox that provides context, purpose and flavor.

Campaign and sandbox are not mutually exclusive; campaign can sit comfortably within a sandbox framework and players can dip in and out of both as they please. Having developed the sandbox framework to drive world mechanics, I'm pleased to be revealing Workbench, our visual modding tool for Folk Tale. We've removed the need for writing lines of complex programming code, democratizing modding by lowering the barriers to entry.



Workbench is a node-based visual scripting environment similar to those found in game development engines as an alternative to programming. It's an easy to grasp visual environment that's great for level designers who don't have technical skills, but whom still require fine control and power over their environment.

Nodes provide access to objects, events, and commands within the game. For example, you might want the player to meet an NPC, fire off a branching quest dialogue, remove ingredients from the player's inventory, walk to a crafting anvil and forge an epic weapon, before returning to give the player their reward. Or perhaps a helpless traveller needing an escort through bandit territory to safety? That's all possible with just a few clicks, no programming required.

By investing heavily in framework and editor tools, we're building in replayability, longevity and value from the ground up. Had Folk Tale development continued as a linear campaign game, players would have played through the game a couple of times, before relegating it to the virtual shelf to collect dust. By empowering players to create worlds, the community can enjoy new experiences by downloading new maps and worlds.

I'm genuinely stoked about the possibilities Workbench brings to Folk Tale. It's the modern day equivalent of sitting down as a Dungeon Master with a pencil and graph paper, planning out environments and encounters for players to enjoy.

Workbench will be available in a patch update at the end of April.


Of course, we need content to deliver a superb RPG experience. So today we're also taking a first look at factions. In Folk Tale, each biome (grassland, swamp, snow etc.) has two opposing factions, each with fleshed out storyline, quests and heroes for players to unlock and add to their adventuring party. We're working on the first two factions that reside in and around the grassland biome, namely the Withering Dead, and the Gladefolk.

Spoiler alert. You may not want to read beyond this point if you want some of the storyline to remain a surprise. Please note that storyline may be subject to change.



Withering Dead

The Withering Dead are a necromantic faction residing in the dank, dark recesses of the world where the dead are laid to rest. Mordich, gatekeeper to the Plane Of Shadows, is raising a legion of undead to work in his cheap sandals factory in an attempt to pay the bills. With people living longer following the publication of the bestselling Tome Of Healthy Living, times have become hard, and moonlighting from his regular job of reaping seems like a great option.



After suffering the loss of her husband Brom at the hands of bandits, Lilith sealed a deal with Mordich that saw her summon him to the Physical Plane. In return Mordich would teach her the ways of Necromancy so that she could summon Brom's spirit and return him to life. As months turned to years, the shadow magic corrupted Lilith's soul, and her good natured spirit was replaced by something much more sinister.



Having arrived in the Physical Plane, Mordich summoned the spirit of Bonefinger, an ancient dragon from the Plane Of Shadows, binding it to the corpse of a recently dead and rotting dragon. From the primeval era, Bonefinger is a truly grueomsome behemoth capable of spewing acid breath, causing terror with it's roar, and slaming down opponents en masse with its powerful wings.



While Mordich's sandal factory is filled with an army of animated skeleton workers, Mordich also controls zombie harvesting gangs that raid the Gladefolk's Everbloom Pastures in search of the magic flowers that contain the energy he needs to power his factory.



Gladefolk

Over in the Glade, Nara, Earth Mother, is enraged by Mordich's raids, and is pushing back against the rot and decay that the zombie harvesting gangs leave in their wake.



With the help of her daughter, Willow, Nara plots to put Mordich out of business and banish him back to the Plane Of Shadows.



Summoning the behemoth Mossclaw to defend the Everbloom Pastures, Nara sends Willow on an epic journey into the underworld, where she'll resist the corruption of her soul and discover the Bone Phylactery that channels Mordich's life force between planes.



It's up to players to choose their moral stand point and help whichever side they please. Help the Withering Dead, and Mordich will lavish players with otherworldly items of immense power while corrupting the natural world. Help the Gladefolk, and you'll have Nara's thanks and Willow's restorative magic. It's never black and white in Folk Tale.

Neutrals

Not all heroes the players meet will be aligned to a faction. Some pursue their own agenda, and players can unlock them by helping neutral heroes on quests. Ser Gregory, a heavily armored tank, will be the first hero to be added to the game.

Folk Tale Patch 0.2.14 and 0.2.15 add Sandbox Load/Save, sickness, balancing, bug fixes, and a host of improvements.

Due to limits on the size of Steam announcements, the blog is continued at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-32.html

Load/Save

By far the most frequently requested feature in recent months has been Load/Save. We've had a working save system in the console for some time for testing, which we're now happy its in a stable state. When you're in a game, simply press escape and hit save. When save is successful you'll hear a bright sparkle sound, and an error dialog will show if there was a fault. In time we'll add a text confirmation to the screen as well. Having saved a game, next time you start Folk Tale, the continue menu option will be enabled in white.

Start Screen

Speaking of the continue button, an overhaul of the start screen was long overdue. The new background is a place holder and in time we hope to replace it with a living village scene. Hopefully the refresh brings much needed modernization. We've yet to add background music, which I'll come onto next. We also took the opportunity to add a quit to desktop option, which had been missing for quite a while. No more forced quitting!



Retiring The Old Tutorial

The old tutorial has long become tired and irrelevant, having deliberately not been updated since launch. Sandbox village building, economy and RTS controls passed it a long time ago. It was only the storyline campaign feel that differed. Now that the team is moving across to develop the RPG side of the game - the main delivery mechanism for storyline and questing - it's time to look to the future.

For months the Tutorial has been a dead weight on our shoulders. Firstly, early buyers of the game would often boot into the game, and fire up the old tutorial only to discover nothing had changed, since all the work was going into sandbox of which there was little awareness. It no doubt contributed to negative reviews. Secondly, every time we prepared a release candidate, the tutorial would require a complete play through to make sure we hadn't broken anything. That added several hours to each release cycle, and my threshold finally broke in February. Finally, we've had to write a lot of duplicated classes with similar names so as not to break the Tutorial. From a project structure point of view, it was getting silly. Retiring the old tutorial will enable us to clean up the project, and streamline some of the scene loading process.

For players still wanting to play the old tutorial, it remains available via an opt-in build on Steam.

Sickness

Sickness provides another layer of depth to village life. Sickness can arise because of poor hygiene or diet, and depending on the rate of infection, can rapidly spread through your village. There are 3 types of sickness identified by mild sneezing, coughing, and projectile vomiting. Each type can be cured respectively by producing lesser medicine, medicine, and greater medicine manufactured at a Herbalists.



UI Improvements

In the Workers tab of the building options, previously there was no feedback when you selected a Peasant for training. Now their portrait get added to the vacancy slot in the left column, and in the right column 'on his/her way' gets added until they arrive to take up their new profession. In time I think we'll remove assigned Peasants from the right column altogether, but for now it's a welcomed improvement.



Throughout the UI we've added more tooltips with helpful advice on how things work, and this work will continue in future patches.

Watching community YouTube videos and streams, and from our own play testing, we noticed it was too easy to accidentally destroy buildings. To address this we've added a Yes/No confirmation dialog to prevent this from happening.

For players on retina and 5K monitors, and laptop players on small screens, the addition of UI scaling should be a useful addition. Being careful with finances, I went into an Apple Store and persuaded them to let me run the game on a 5K iMac (thank you Apple store staff!). Needless to say the fixed-size UI was minuscule, so later that week we implemented it without having to shell out thousands of dollars. Still, it's a beautiful piece of kit and in a few years when they give the GPU more power, I'd love to get my hands on one.

Over in the settings menu, we'd had community reports of frustration in the carousel behaviour of some settings - for example the UI scaling - whereby players would be wanting to max out the scale, but repeated clicking would cause the setting to loop back around so the UI would snap between maximum and minimum scale. On a 5K monitor, that's incredibly small, making it a little more difficult to recover back to the setting you wanted. So now options are clamped at their min/max and don't wrap around.

General Improvements

On OSX we'd received numerous reports of problems, and I'm pleased that we now have a fix for the crashing that was preventing some Mac players from enjoying the game.

A widely requested feature has been a way to find Peasants, usually when your village is larger and Peasants are a minority. We've always intended this to be available via the Civics dialog, but as an interim step the 'F' key shortcut now cycles the camera between Peasants. We've made it more functional than that however, and if you have a profession such as a Woodcutter selected, pressing F will cycle you to the next Woodcutter. Pressing SHIFT+F will expand your current selection to also select the next profession.

Characters are now easier to see at night and in dungeons, as we added in day/night emissive values to the Ambience system. This allows us to adjust the emissive values of characters per biome. In bright outdoor locations, we can pull this right back, whereas in dark dungeons we can ramp it up.

Anyone with a gaming PC constrained by their CPU (aka CPU bound) should experience an improvement in frame rate of up to 18% in Patch 0.2.15 after we moved the distance culling code to it's own thread.

The Tavern can now sell Mead, clearing the way for enabling the need for Entertainment. Several members of the community had reported issues of being inundated with moaning peasants, and finding it difficult to get past that stage. To improve pacing, we've tied several events to your village's culture value. For example, the need for Basic Clothing now kicks in when culture passes 150. Sneezing sickness doesn't start until 200, with more serious sickness at 300 and 400. This provides for great pacing as new players can learn the ropes and won't get overrun too early, while experienced players can rapidly expand and hit the challenges far sooner.

Due to limits on the size of Steam announcements, the blog is continued at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-32.html

...

Folk Tale Patch 0.2.14 and 0.2.15 add Sandbox Load/Save, sickness, balancing, bug fixes, and a host of improvements.

Due to limits on the size of Steam announcements, the blog is continued at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-32.html

Load/Save

By far the most frequently requested feature in recent months has been Load/Save. We've had a working save system in the console for some time for testing, which we're now happy its in a stable state. When you're in a game, simply press escape and hit save. When save is successful you'll hear a bright sparkle sound, and an error dialog will show if there was a fault. In time we'll add a text confirmation to the screen as well. Having saved a game, next time you start Folk Tale, the continue menu option will be enabled in white.

Start Screen

Speaking of the continue button, an overhaul of the start screen was long overdue. The new background is a place holder and in time we hope to replace it with a living village scene. Hopefully the refresh brings much needed modernization. We've yet to add background music, which I'll come onto next. We also took the opportunity to add a quit to desktop option, which had been missing for quite a while. No more forced quitting!



Retiring The Old Tutorial

The old tutorial has long become tired and irrelevant, having deliberately not been updated since launch. Sandbox village building, economy and RTS controls passed it a long time ago. It was only the storyline campaign feel that differed. Now that the team is moving across to develop the RPG side of the game - the main delivery mechanism for storyline and questing - it's time to look to the future.

For months the Tutorial has been a dead weight on our shoulders. Firstly, early buyers of the game would often boot into the game, and fire up the old tutorial only to discover nothing had changed, since all the work was going into sandbox of which there was little awareness. It no doubt contributed to negative reviews. Secondly, every time we prepared a release candidate, the tutorial would require a complete play through to make sure we hadn't broken anything. That added several hours to each release cycle, and my threshold finally broke in February. Finally, we've had to write a lot of duplicated classes with similar names so as not to break the Tutorial. From a project structure point of view, it was getting silly. Retiring the old tutorial will enable us to clean up the project, and streamline some of the scene loading process.

For players still wanting to play the old tutorial, it remains available via an opt-in build on Steam.

Sickness

Sickness provides another layer of depth to village life. Sickness can arise because of poor hygiene or diet, and depending on the rate of infection, can rapidly spread through your village. There are 3 types of sickness identified by mild sneezing, coughing, and projectile vomiting. Each type can be cured respectively by producing lesser medicine, medicine, and greater medicine manufactured at a Herbalists.



UI Improvements

In the Workers tab of the building options, previously there was no feedback when you selected a Peasant for training. Now their portrait get added to the vacancy slot in the left column, and in the right column 'on his/her way' gets added until they arrive to take up their new profession. In time I think we'll remove assigned Peasants from the right column altogether, but for now it's a welcomed improvement.



Throughout the UI we've added more tooltips with helpful advice on how things work, and this work will continue in future patches.

Watching community YouTube videos and streams, and from our own play testing, we noticed it was too easy to accidentally destroy buildings. To address this we've added a Yes/No confirmation dialog to prevent this from happening.

For players on retina and 5K monitors, and laptop players on small screens, the addition of UI scaling should be a useful addition. Being careful with finances, I went into an Apple Store and persuaded them to let me run the game on a 5K iMac (thank you Apple store staff!). Needless to say the fixed-size UI was minuscule, so later that week we implemented it without having to shell out thousands of dollars. Still, it's a beautiful piece of kit and in a few years when they give the GPU more power, I'd love to get my hands on one.

Over in the settings menu, we'd had community reports of frustration in the carousel behaviour of some settings - for example the UI scaling - whereby players would be wanting to max out the scale, but repeated clicking would cause the setting to loop back around so the UI would snap between maximum and minimum scale. On a 5K monitor, that's incredibly small, making it a little more difficult to recover back to the setting you wanted. So now options are clamped at their min/max and don't wrap around.

General Improvements

On OSX we'd received numerous reports of problems, and I'm pleased that we now have a fix for the crashing that was preventing some Mac players from enjoying the game.

A widely requested feature has been a way to find Peasants, usually when your village is larger and Peasants are a minority. We've always intended this to be available via the Civics dialog, but as an interim step the 'F' key shortcut now cycles the camera between Peasants. We've made it more functional than that however, and if you have a profession such as a Woodcutter selected, pressing F will cycle you to the next Woodcutter. Pressing SHIFT+F will expand your current selection to also select the next profession.

Characters are now easier to see at night and in dungeons, as we added in day/night emissive values to the Ambience system. This allows us to adjust the emissive values of characters per biome. In bright outdoor locations, we can pull this right back, whereas in dark dungeons we can ramp it up.

Anyone with a gaming PC constrained by their CPU (aka CPU bound) should experience an improvement in frame rate of up to 18% in Patch 0.2.15 after we moved the distance culling code to it's own thread.

The Tavern can now sell Mead, clearing the way for enabling the need for Entertainment. Several members of the community had reported issues of being inundated with moaning peasants, and finding it difficult to get past that stage. To improve pacing, we've tied several events to your village's culture value. For example, the need for Basic Clothing now kicks in when culture passes 150. Sneezing sickness doesn't start until 200, with more serious sickness at 300 and 400. This provides for great pacing as new players can learn the ropes and won't get overrun too early, while experienced players can rapidly expand and hit the challenges far sooner.

Due to limits on the size of Steam announcements, the blog is continued at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/03/folk-tale-dev-blog-32.html

...

PC, Mac

Sandbox Player: Only Peasants Now Carry Firewood, Freeing Workers To Get On With What They Should Be Doing - Big Impact On Economy

Sandbox Player: CPU Performance Improved By Moving Distance Culling To Separate Thread (Up To 18% FPS Improvement On CPU Bound Machines)
Sandbox Player: Moved Spider Dens In Easy Map Further From Start Area
Sandbox Player: Improved Building Construction Option Tooltips
Sandbox Player: Fixed Tooltip Order On Research Requirements In Research Tab
Sandbox Player: Doubled The Taxation Happiness Modifier
Sandbox Player: A Building Has Been Destroyed No Longer Plays When Manually Destroying
Sandbox Player: Added Setting To Control Advisor Commentary Volume **
Sandbox Player: Doubled Speed Of Salmon Steak Production
Sandbox Player: Supersampling Console Command Fixed
Sandbox Player: Settings No Longer Carousel Loop, Now Clamped At Min/Max
Sandbox Player: City Watch Are Now Tougher (Base Armor Of 10 And Double Health)
Sandbox Player: Reduced The Rate Cottages Burn Firewood
Sandbox Player: Increased Amount Of Firewood Villagers Can Carry In One Trip
Sandbox Player: ‘F’ Key Now Cycles To Next Worker In Same Profession As Current Selection***
Sandbox Player: SHIFT+F Now Adds Next Worker In Same Profession To Selection
Sandbox Player: Reduced Infection Rates
Sandbox Player: Removed Some Old Tutorial Code/Assets Reducing Memory Footprint And Time To Start A Game
Sandbox Editor: Fixed Wave Spawner and Chest Inspector Corruption
Sandbox Editor: Max Stalk Distance Now Clamped To Be GTE To Max Wander Distance*

Sandbox Player: Fixed Disease 03 Having A Minimal Outbreak Interval
Sandbox Player: Fixed Load/Save Bug When Saving Long Walls
Sandbox Editor: Fixed Spawn Points Showing Too Small Wander And Stalk Distances
#0146 Sandbox Player: Wandering Monsters Don't Attack

This was meant to be just a quick service release to fix one bug in the Editor, but it rapdily grew into more than that. It now addresses bug fixes, balancing, and UI improvements. Many thanks to our community testers for providing the feedback that lead to many of these changes.

* Caused some enemies to run around the map ignoring you and any attacks
** Secondary Voice Volume while added, is not yet functional
*** If you have a Woodcutter selected, pressing ‘F’ will find the next Woodcutter. If nothing selected, will default to next Peasant.

Service Patch 0.2.15.1 is now live and fixes 3 bugs reported this morning. Please report any issues with the minimap in the forums.

PC, Mac

Sandbox Player: Only Peasants Now Carry Firewood, Freeing Workers To Get On With What They Should Be Doing - Big Impact On Economy

Sandbox Player: CPU Performance Improved By Moving Distance Culling To Separate Thread (Up To 18% FPS Improvement On CPU Bound Machines)
Sandbox Player: Moved Spider Dens In Easy Map Further From Start Area
Sandbox Player: Improved Building Construction Option Tooltips
Sandbox Player: Fixed Tooltip Order On Research Requirements In Research Tab
Sandbox Player: Doubled The Taxation Happiness Modifier
Sandbox Player: A Building Has Been Destroyed No Longer Plays When Manually Destroying
Sandbox Player: Added Setting To Control Advisor Commentary Volume **
Sandbox Player: Doubled Speed Of Salmon Steak Production
Sandbox Player: Supersampling Console Command Fixed
Sandbox Player: Settings No Longer Carousel Loop, Now Clamped At Min/Max
Sandbox Player: City Watch Are Now Tougher (Base Armor Of 10 And Double Health)
Sandbox Player: Reduced The Rate Cottages Burn Firewood
Sandbox Player: Increased Amount Of Firewood Villagers Can Carry In One Trip
Sandbox Player: ‘F’ Key Now Cycles To Next Worker In Same Profession As Current Selection***
Sandbox Player: SHIFT+F Now Adds Next Worker In Same Profession To Selection
Sandbox Player: Reduced Infection Rates
Sandbox Player: Removed Some Old Tutorial Code/Assets Reducing Memory Footprint And Time To Start A Game
Sandbox Editor: Fixed Wave Spawner and Chest Inspector Corruption
Sandbox Editor: Max Stalk Distance Now Clamped To Be GTE To Max Wander Distance*

Sandbox Player: Fixed Disease 03 Having A Minimal Outbreak Interval
Sandbox Player: Fixed Load/Save Bug When Saving Long Walls
Sandbox Editor: Fixed Spawn Points Showing Too Small Wander And Stalk Distances
#0146 Sandbox Player: Wandering Monsters Don't Attack

This was meant to be just a quick service release to fix one bug in the Editor, but it rapdily grew into more than that. It now addresses bug fixes, balancing, and UI improvements. Many thanks to our community testers for providing the feedback that lead to many of these changes.

* Caused some enemies to run around the map ignoring you and any attacks
** Secondary Voice Volume while added, is not yet functional
*** If you have a Woodcutter selected, pressing ‘F’ will find the next Woodcutter. If nothing selected, will default to next Peasant.

Service Patch 0.2.15.1 is now live and fixes 3 bugs reported this morning. Please report any issues with the minimap in the forums.

PC, Mac

Sandbox Player: Load/Save Added To UI
Sandbox Player: Sickness Added
Sandbox Player: Start Screen Refreshed, Quit Menu Item Added
Sandbox Player: Inventory System Rewritten
Sandbox Player: Saving Games Is Now Significantly Faster
Sandbox Player: Need For Entertainment Activates When Culture Passes 300*
General: DirectX11 Support Added, Set As Default, Fallback To 9.0c (Win Only) Update 1: We're overriding back to 9.0c due to a crash on Exit likely to be a Unity bug. Update 2: T'Was indeed a Unity bug. Fixed in 5.0, waiting for 4.6.x patch before reinstating.

Sandbox Player: ‘F’ Key Moves Camera To Next Peasant (aka Find)
Sandbox Player: Confirm Yes/No Added To Building Destroy
Sandbox Player: Wood Yield From Trees Temporarily Doubled Until We Add Woodcutter Plant Sapling Ability
Sandbox Player: Added UI Scale Graphics Setting For Accessibility And Retina Displays
Sandbox Player: Character’s Are Now Easier To See At Night And In Dungeons
Sandbox Player: Upgraded SSAO + Works Better On AMD Cards**
Sandbox Player: Spider Den Attack Waves Only Trigger When Culture Passes 200
Sandbox Player: Need For Basic Clothing Starts When Culture Passes 150
Sandbox Player: Added 10 Planks To Supply Cart To Unlock First Woodcutter Hut Sooner
Sandbox Player: Firewood Consumed At Faster Rate In Cold Climates (Snow)
Sandbox Player: Mead Is Now Sold From The Tavern
Sandbox Player: More Tooltips Added Throughout UI
Sandbox Player: Production Cycles Are More Frequent And Use Smaller Batch Sizes
Sandbox Player: Arbalist And City Watch Armor Visual Appearance Improved
Sandbox Editor: Terrain Tiles Moved To Single Core Tiles Kit - Use Paint Tool
Sandbox Editor: Auto-Migration Code Added To Remap Existing Community Maps
Sandbox Editor: Grassland, Snow and Swamp Kits Now Have Their Own Quarries And Iron Mines
Sandbox Editor: Lights Kit Now Has Common Torches, Sconces, Braziers Memory Optimized For Use In All Biomes.
Sandbox Editor: Added Position and Rotation Snap Overrides To Inspector
Sandbox Editor: Added Toggle For Locking Props To Topbar
Sandbox Editor: Added Toggle For Enable/Disable Camera Colliders
Sandbox Editor: Added Ice Kit (Cliffs, Ice Stalagmites)
Sandbox Editor: Added Ice Palace Kit

Added Common Scale Recipes (Need Blacksmith Scale Armor Research)
Blacksmith Halberd Research Unlocks Halberd (Common), Better Than Simple Halberd
Halberd (Common) Damage Changed From 12 To 16

#0059 AO Graphical Glitches on AMD Graphics Cards
#0135 Sandbox Player: Deer Aren't Animating When Carried By Hunters
#0139 Sandbox Player: Loot Fails To Drop After Restarting Via Menu
#0140 Sandbox Player: Green 'Clear Resources' Icons In Inventory
#0141 Sandbox Player: Workers Deposit Default Weapons Into Inventory When Being Demoted Or Retrained
#0142 Sandbox Player: Taxes Generated While Game Paused
#0143 Sandbox Player: Armor Not Return To Inventory On Villager Death.
#0144 Start Screen: No Exit To Desktop Option
#0145 Sandbox Player: Bridges In Sandbox Have Collider And Navmesh Issues
#0147 Sandbox Player: Wagon On Medium LOD Settings Vanishes Too Soon
#0154 Sandbox Player: Monastery Confession Research Has Wrong Icon
#0155 Sandbox Player: OSX Crashing Or Freezing At 90%
Sandbox Player: Furthest Quarry In Grassland (Easy) Map Inaccessible
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Tab Hover Effects Not Working

Please note that save games from previous versions cannot be loaded in this version.

There is a known issue with the Inspector in the Editor when viewing Wave Spawners. We'll fix this shortly and issue a minor patch. We didn't want this to hold up the release with so many good things to share. Our apologies to Level Designers for the temporary inconvenience.

When in-game, hit escape and press the 'Save' button. After about 1 second there will be a bright sparkly confirmation sound plays to indicate success. You can then continue or exit. In the event of an error, an on-screen dialog will appear. We'll add a text notification in the next patch.

After saving, the next time you start the game, the 'Continue' button will be enabled on the start screen. If you wish to load a different save, start a New Game, and using the File Browser move up one folder and then into the Session folder where all you save games are now located.

Load/Save in sandbox has received lots of fixes and promoted into the UI via the escape key pause menu. You can continue your last game from the start page.

The previous Mac problems have now been fixed. If you participated in the OSX Experimental Build Beta earlier this month, please opt-out of that beta so that you can continue to receive patch updates.

Sickness now activates once your culture score (the happy/sad faces on the topbar) passes 200. Diseases have differing rates of infection, and may spread through your population. As your culture expands, more serious diseases start to outbreak, and must be tackled with medicine created by the Herbalists. Sickness affects worker productivity, happiness, and can lead to them losing health. So while a disease may not be fatal, it does impact your village.

Villagers now need entertaining at Taverns once your village’s culture value passes 300. Mead is produced from Honeycomb gathered from Bee Yards by Monks, and brewed into Mead at the Monastery. Tavern Innkeepers then collect Barrels Of Mead from either a Storehouse or direct from a Monastery.

DirectX 11 is now the default on Windows, falling back to 9.0c when not supported. This delivers a number of benefits including improved memory management which can help 32-bit Windows players, and better clarity in text rendering. This is a big technical change, so if you experience any problems, please let us know via a post in the community forum. We suspect there might be a Unity (engine) problem with DirectX 11, and if it's widespread we may revert back to 9.0c later in the day.
Update 1: We're overriding back to 9.0c due to a crash on Exit likely to be a Unity bug. Update 2: T'Was indeed a Unity bug. Fixed in 5.0, waiting for 4.6.x patch before reinstating.

UI scaling has been added to the graphics settings for improved accessibility. Players on Retina displays will benefit from scaling up, and those on laptops will benefit from scaling down to prevent overlap. There is a known issue with blip rendering on the minimap at larger scales.

**SSAO has been enhanced and should now work much better on AMD cards. There are glitches on Intel HD 3000 cards, but this gpu is way below minimum spec and isn’t powerful enough to run SSAO anyway. Please report any visual glitches in the forums including your graphics card make and model.
Update: Reported problems on AMD Radeon HD 7870, R9 270X

We've removed the old Tutorial from this point onwards. It is however still available should you wish to play it:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/617329150697740673/

We’d like to remind players that the default build for Windows is now 64-bit, which the vast majority of players are using. Players with older 32-bit versions of Windows will need to opt in to the 32-bit build. For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744474771635312/

We’ve also made some key binding changes. While key mapping is not yet implemented in the UI, can you define your own by editing the StreamingAssets/Data/keymap.json text file.

PC, Mac

Sandbox Player: Load/Save Added To UI
Sandbox Player: Sickness Added
Sandbox Player: Start Screen Refreshed, Quit Menu Item Added
Sandbox Player: Inventory System Rewritten
Sandbox Player: Saving Games Is Now Significantly Faster
Sandbox Player: Need For Entertainment Activates When Culture Passes 300*
General: DirectX11 Support Added, Set As Default, Fallback To 9.0c (Win Only) Update 1: We're overriding back to 9.0c due to a crash on Exit likely to be a Unity bug. Update 2: T'Was indeed a Unity bug. Fixed in 5.0, waiting for 4.6.x patch before reinstating.

Sandbox Player: ‘F’ Key Moves Camera To Next Peasant (aka Find)
Sandbox Player: Confirm Yes/No Added To Building Destroy
Sandbox Player: Wood Yield From Trees Temporarily Doubled Until We Add Woodcutter Plant Sapling Ability
Sandbox Player: Added UI Scale Graphics Setting For Accessibility And Retina Displays
Sandbox Player: Character’s Are Now Easier To See At Night And In Dungeons
Sandbox Player: Upgraded SSAO + Works Better On AMD Cards**
Sandbox Player: Spider Den Attack Waves Only Trigger When Culture Passes 200
Sandbox Player: Need For Basic Clothing Starts When Culture Passes 150
Sandbox Player: Added 10 Planks To Supply Cart To Unlock First Woodcutter Hut Sooner
Sandbox Player: Firewood Consumed At Faster Rate In Cold Climates (Snow)
Sandbox Player: Mead Is Now Sold From The Tavern
Sandbox Player: More Tooltips Added Throughout UI
Sandbox Player: Production Cycles Are More Frequent And Use Smaller Batch Sizes
Sandbox Player: Arbalist And City Watch Armor Visual Appearance Improved
Sandbox Editor: Terrain Tiles Moved To Single Core Tiles Kit - Use Paint Tool
Sandbox Editor: Auto-Migration Code Added To Remap Existing Community Maps
Sandbox Editor: Grassland, Snow and Swamp Kits Now Have Their Own Quarries And Iron Mines
Sandbox Editor: Lights Kit Now Has Common Torches, Sconces, Braziers Memory Optimized For Use In All Biomes.
Sandbox Editor: Added Position and Rotation Snap Overrides To Inspector
Sandbox Editor: Added Toggle For Locking Props To Topbar
Sandbox Editor: Added Toggle For Enable/Disable Camera Colliders
Sandbox Editor: Added Ice Kit (Cliffs, Ice Stalagmites)
Sandbox Editor: Added Ice Palace Kit

Added Common Scale Recipes (Need Blacksmith Scale Armor Research)
Blacksmith Halberd Research Unlocks Halberd (Common), Better Than Simple Halberd
Halberd (Common) Damage Changed From 12 To 16

#0059 AO Graphical Glitches on AMD Graphics Cards
#0135 Sandbox Player: Deer Aren't Animating When Carried By Hunters
#0139 Sandbox Player: Loot Fails To Drop After Restarting Via Menu
#0140 Sandbox Player: Green 'Clear Resources' Icons In Inventory
#0141 Sandbox Player: Workers Deposit Default Weapons Into Inventory When Being Demoted Or Retrained
#0142 Sandbox Player: Taxes Generated While Game Paused
#0143 Sandbox Player: Armor Not Return To Inventory On Villager Death.
#0144 Start Screen: No Exit To Desktop Option
#0145 Sandbox Player: Bridges In Sandbox Have Collider And Navmesh Issues
#0147 Sandbox Player: Wagon On Medium LOD Settings Vanishes Too Soon
#0154 Sandbox Player: Monastery Confession Research Has Wrong Icon
#0155 Sandbox Player: OSX Crashing Or Freezing At 90%
Sandbox Player: Furthest Quarry In Grassland (Easy) Map Inaccessible
Sandbox Player: Building Dialog Tab Hover Effects Not Working

Please note that save games from previous versions cannot be loaded in this version.

There is a known issue with the Inspector in the Editor when viewing Wave Spawners. We'll fix this shortly and issue a minor patch. We didn't want this to hold up the release with so many good things to share. Our apologies to Level Designers for the temporary inconvenience.

When in-game, hit escape and press the 'Save' button. After about 1 second there will be a bright sparkly confirmation sound plays to indicate success. You can then continue or exit. In the event of an error, an on-screen dialog will appear. We'll add a text notification in the next patch.

After saving, the next time you start the game, the 'Continue' button will be enabled on the start screen. If you wish to load a different save, start a New Game, and using the File Browser move up one folder and then into the Session folder where all you save games are now located.

Load/Save in sandbox has received lots of fixes and promoted into the UI via the escape key pause menu. You can continue your last game from the start page.

The previous Mac problems have now been fixed. If you participated in the OSX Experimental Build Beta earlier this month, please opt-out of that beta so that you can continue to receive patch updates.

Sickness now activates once your culture score (the happy/sad faces on the topbar) passes 200. Diseases have differing rates of infection, and may spread through your population. As your culture expands, more serious diseases start to outbreak, and must be tackled with medicine created by the Herbalists. Sickness affects worker productivity, happiness, and can lead to them losing health. So while a disease may not be fatal, it does impact your village.

Villagers now need entertaining at Taverns once your village’s culture value passes 300. Mead is produced from Honeycomb gathered from Bee Yards by Monks, and brewed into Mead at the Monastery. Tavern Innkeepers then collect Barrels Of Mead from either a Storehouse or direct from a Monastery.

DirectX 11 is now the default on Windows, falling back to 9.0c when not supported. This delivers a number of benefits including improved memory management which can help 32-bit Windows players, and better clarity in text rendering. This is a big technical change, so if you experience any problems, please let us know via a post in the community forum. We suspect there might be a Unity (engine) problem with DirectX 11, and if it's widespread we may revert back to 9.0c later in the day.
Update 1: We're overriding back to 9.0c due to a crash on Exit likely to be a Unity bug. Update 2: T'Was indeed a Unity bug. Fixed in 5.0, waiting for 4.6.x patch before reinstating.

UI scaling has been added to the graphics settings for improved accessibility. Players on Retina displays will benefit from scaling up, and those on laptops will benefit from scaling down to prevent overlap. There is a known issue with blip rendering on the minimap at larger scales.

**SSAO has been enhanced and should now work much better on AMD cards. There are glitches on Intel HD 3000 cards, but this gpu is way below minimum spec and isn’t powerful enough to run SSAO anyway. Please report any visual glitches in the forums including your graphics card make and model.
Update: Reported problems on AMD Radeon HD 7870, R9 270X

We've removed the old Tutorial from this point onwards. It is however still available should you wish to play it:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/617329150697740673/

We’d like to remind players that the default build for Windows is now 64-bit, which the vast majority of players are using. Players with older 32-bit versions of Windows will need to opt in to the 32-bit build. For more information, please visit http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/540744474771635312/

We’ve also made some key binding changes. While key mapping is not yet implemented in the UI, can you define your own by editing the StreamingAssets/Data/keymap.json text file.

Hi Folks,

It's that time of year when we ask everyone how we're doing with a short 1-2 minute survey. The survey is completely anonymous, and helps us identify areas for improvement. The results will be published in a blog post.

The survey runs from 10th Feb until 31st Mar.

https://www.surveyplanet.com/54da38a12ad0533f4857017b

Hi Folks,

It's that time of year when we ask everyone how we're doing with a short 1-2 minute survey. The survey is completely anonymous, and helps us identify areas for improvement. The results will be published in a blog post.

The survey runs from 10th Feb until 31st Mar.

https://www.surveyplanet.com/54da38a12ad0533f4857017b