Nov 21, 2019

Farmer's Dynasty - Release and Update 1.0

Farmer's Dynasty - SwordsOfTheSouth

Final changelog to 1.0 full release version:

added fade in on hero dialogue camera change
improved distances and angles of external vehicle cameras
improved collision of external vehicle camera
more stable display of vehicle speed (in HUD)
proper vehicle engine sounds volume
proper vehicle engine sound frequency based on RPM
when quest-ordering NPC is home asleep, quest waits until (s)he wakes up and exits the home.
proper quest waypoint icon is displayed on the screen when such NPC is asleep
fixed rare issues with saving/loading long quest texts (esp long in UTF-8, like Russian).
fixed eastern greenhouse bugs (double tables, missing one of the markers)
added 3 coffee shops in the world.
coffee shops are open 24/7
coffee shops, being new, detect player vehicles in their spot and teleport them out to the nearest road. However, they don't do it with the player itself. This may cause inconvenience if someone is saved where coffee shops will appear with the update, but only once. However, this makes saving in coffee shop possible.
coffee shops bartenders cannot be married (their likeness level never exceeds 60%). They are there to work, period. No compliments too.
NPCs tend to visit coffee shops themselves too. More often on Sundays.
improved prob weights that help NPCs decide whether they want to go fishing, relax, to church or to coffee. Should avoid bigger gatherings, especially on working days.
improved conditions on whether NPCs should involve into dialogues between each other.
improved dialogue voice ranges.
adjusted NPC speed while running
new item: honey. Can be gathered at beehives or bought at coffee bars.
new item: coffee cup. Can be bought at coffee shops. When drunk, coffee gives a little food but also extra energy level above usual sleep (but does not raise actual sleep level). This allows the player to run and work faster while the coffee effect lasts.
coffee level has its own additional indicator in the working menu.
a bit better-outlined texts in player food/sleep/coffee display
render of projectors (cone lights with projected texture) unified with a main deferred shader. This means more fps at night (a lot of lamp projectors) and no more projector blinking when camera distance equals projector range.
projectors are fully PBR calculated so more natural lighting and reflections with these too.
Fixed misplaced terrain in the wedding scene.

bees can be seen flying near beehives (only on a sunny day). And can be heard too.
Beehives produce honey sometime in the evening of a sunny day - with some probability. Basically the more flowers around, the bigger probability for honey appearing that evening. Naturally, bees keep the honey in their beehive.
Honey can be collected from a beehive if produced.
sitting on a bench by a lit fireplace makes player rest, but also speeds day/night speed 16 times.
reformatted prompt position and player condition info while sitting on the bench to not obscure view so much.
when sitting by the fireplace (not just on a bench), clock and date are displayed as well.
Fixed bug allowing to place two beehives close by using one Action key press.
permanent crosshair can be turned on in options menu.
when sleeping in bed and the next day has different weather, it is already set when waking up. So - when going to sleep on a sunny evening and rainy weather forecast for the next day, it is already raining the next morning - not slowly going to rain as it was.
weather forecast extended to 7 days. Displayed on hud as it was.
weather forecast properly moving on when sleeping one or seven nights
weather forecast is not compatible with older saves. When loading from older save you get 7 sunny days in a row, and then it moves on and saves properly.
new building material: solar roof panels.
Solar roof panels are expensive, but on sunny days they increase player's money and social points (depending on how many there are).
changed tractors' light cycle to front lights -> front lights+working lights -> working lights only -> lights off
slightly increased field prices
prices for fields (not owned) shown on the map.
added new kind of worker for hire: plane to spray the field with Fertex(R) (raising both artificial and natural fertiliser state on the whole field at once).
plane properly saved/loaded also during flight
added festival market near town (between town and fuel station/coffee bar).
festival market is active the whole of September, between 8am and 8pm every day.
festival seller buys only goods player produces (higher foods, mushrooms, apples, fish, honey, greenhouse vegetables) for twice the normal prices. If the player is much into collecting apples, mushrooms, eggs - or his wife into cooking - he may earn much more here.
festival has a proper icon and description (on map and ES), but only when active.
Salesmen no longer offer level 2 foods (canned food that player can make). These can be sold at the festival, so buying them would be a bit cheat. While basic food can be bought too, this doesn't offer that much money jump so it is acceptable.
many smaller fixes of world, terrain, vegetation and other assets.

cats sympathy towards player drops a little bit every few days.
cat can be fed with fish to restore his sympathy towards the player. Cannot be fed if a player has no fish, or if cat's love is at highest level.
if cat's sympathy towards the player is very low, he may not catch mice that well. Proper info is shown in the morning, suggesting cat should be fed.
it should not be done every day - every week or two is enough. Cat is not very hungry (he hunts), he just feels lonely and not liked.
a lot of ranges and volumes for 3D sounds have been reset/rebalanced. Also better handling of 3D sound volumes in space. Vehicle engines, dialogues, ambient 3D sounds should sound more natural.
old vehicles can be restored anew and repainted in the players home garage. The first operation costs 500 Eur as this requires new metal parts in place of rusty ones. After that colours can be changed free of charge as in new vehicles.
old vehicles with capacity (old grain trailers, old harvester, old sprayers/fertilizers) increase the capacity by 25% after being restored.
old harvester header, when fixed, loses much less grain. 10% better harvest.
properly saving/loading restoration states and colours.
added 9 more complicated recipes, 3 ingredients each. These produce food better than original canned goods, almost as good as wife's cooking.
These recipes are unknown to the player at the beginning. There are 3 cookbooks to be bought somewhere in the world. Each contains 3 recipes out of its group (egg, fish and honey). Player has to buy the book and read it to gain knowledge of the recipes.
both level 2 foods (canned) and cookbook foods can also be sold at the festival
cooking menu (player kitchen) reformated to accommodate both canned foods on the left and new cookbook recipes on the right.
left column shows now what is missing (if something's missing).
shorter food title in the left column
right column shows quantities for each ingredient if one or more is missing.
After loading a save-game which was made in other languages, player inventory and pantry menus were in the save-made language. This is fixed now.
shorter and more idle animations for both men and women. Besides diversity, they will react to the player faster.
fixed fishing rod casting animation so that it does not cut into camera
improvements to focal range, focal distance and cell size for Depth of Field effect
new calculation of drone acceleration, speed, inertia and air resistance. Drones should be a bit more responsive (esp new one), easier to control at angles and - first of all - not depending on framerate.
added new racing drone to buy at John's. Expensive, but faster and more agile. Different model, different camera placement.
new game activities: sporting events. Currently 4: drone race (along the air-placed track made of rings), drone race against opponents (again through rings), rebuilding house against time, collecting mushrooms against time.
some of these have different difficulty.
events require some (little) money to take part in.
events won give financial and social reward
events are one or two in a week (but weeks without events are also possible. Never two in the same day.
events are marked and described on the map. They are also marked in hud (weather forecast).
events are visible in the world as a golden chalice icon. ES shows description and event activate area (circle). Entering the circle allows for event activation (if a player meets requirements - money & drone when needed).
starting any of drone races launches automatically player's faster drone.
drone race tracks are generated randomly, but rather smart. There are straights, gentle or steep curves, going up and down. It also detects obstacles and goes around or above them.
proper countdown on starting a race (3 to GO)
camera fly-around when the race ends and score is displayed
during any of races working menu is blocked (can't disable flying drone by mistake).
during any of races trying to turn on the main menu (ESC on keyboard) enables quit race menu instead. Race can be stopped or continued. When race is stopped, it is still active on the map and can be repeated (again for the fee).
finishing the race succesfully ends it (deletes from the map and event calendar). You need to wait for another race.
Failure to complete an event does not delete it, as with quitting the event. It can be tried again.
drone race against time does not have global time limit. It has per-ring limit, which gets increased again after passing the ring.
races against time vary in difficulty by a number of rings (20 to 100), time limit per ring (20 to 6 seconds) and time added after each ring. Easy is really easy. Hardest requires new drone and you have to fly rather well.
races against opponents don't have a time limit. Position on finish line matters. However you still have to fly through rings on your path, or the next one won't unlock.
there is distance limit from the next ring in both drone races. Flying off too far from the next ring ends the race with failure.
next ring is the green one. Also pointed with a yellow waypoint marker with distance on it. Hard to miss.
if there is a huge vertical difference between current and next ring (to fly over an obstacle), player is given extra 2 seconds for this ring, or highest difficulty would be annoyingly impossible in places.
rings avoid tree trunks, but can go through tree leaves where the player won't physically collide.
vignette (ES) cannot be turned on when flying drone
if a player didn't win any drone race yet, he will be proposed races of two lower difficulties. He has to win at least one to have chance for higher difficulty races.
opponents in a race can also use basic or race drones.
in lowest difficulty all use basic drones. in the highest difficulty, all use racing drones.
Number of opponents also varies per race, regardless of difficulty. 1 to 4 opponents is possible.
modern drones in the race have distinct colours
race opponents' drones have their owners name above in their distinct colours
opponents' drones are fully physical, can be pushed, can push player and each other. And they do.

Fixes/balances to race opponents steering and waypoint selection

fixes/balances to race opponents speed selection/change. There should be no situation when one is just too fast (and bursts forward without a chance to catch him) or too slow. Difficult opponents are still a bit faster though.
general race opponent speed now more aligned to player's speed (depending on drone type of course)
fixes/balances to race opponent drone inertias and dampings.
upon a collision between race opponent and a ring (which may happen especially in tight corners) they return to the track more easily. They should never get stuck in a ring.
properly synchronised race opponents attachments (rotors). Used to have the last frame position due to wrong post-physics synchronisation.
wider detection of trees when creating a track (rings). Rings should be even less in trees, more above them.
opponent drone sounds change pitch depending on their speed.
added speed motion blur effect when flying a drone (intensity depending on speed, so will be less noticeable with a slower drone).
rings at races (race waypoints) are now translucent and more visible.
rings have even much less friction, not likely to get stuck on them (just slipping by on collisions).
new HDR->SDR tone mapping. More natural colours, less over bright (esp. sky), better visible sunrays and blooms.
more "rounded" clouds, not so jerky. Higher, whites are more white, bottoms are darker.
Event launch remapped to CMD_ENTER to CMD_ACTION ('E' by default).
Second place in opponent race scores too (half the prize), but it must have more than one opponent. If it's a duel, 2nd place is still a failure.
Fixed incorrect time display after finished race. also displayed are hundreds of a second instead of tens.
improved water waves and sun reflection on the water
EVENT_COLLECT_MUSHROOMS fully functional
depending on difficulty, collecting mushrooms requires 1 or more forest areas to collect mushrooms from.
during the event, ES shows these areas surrounded by a green circle. It also displays waypoints to the centre of each area with a current number of mushrooms in.
berries don't count as mushrooms.
forest areas to collect mushrooms from are (in the same event) rather close, not scattered across the map.
player can collect mushrooms from ANYWHERE during the event, he is not limited to suggested mushroom areas. However these preselected are the closest ones, so potentially fastest (easiest).
while collecting mushroom event, mushrooms are displayed additionally from 2x wider distance, and bigger, blinking yellow intensity. This event was just too hard without extra help.
mushrooms in the event areas are respawned when the event starts to ensure these are there actually.
mushrooms collected during the area are kept by the player after the event. Additional benefit.
during drone races, racing music is played.
improved shadow casting transition for huge objects (trees, large buildings)
fixed bug of engine sounds being heard when the sound was off
engine sound volumes scalable with volume settings
NPCs can go to a nearby event to cheer. It can take them quite a while to get there though as they walk or run.
NPCs stay at the event until the event is over (won by the player, or until evening comes). Also they don't just turn around and go immediately, they may stay there a bit to talk.
further improvements to HDR tone-map and colour hues
further long-distance for trees on small vegetation distances.
game was, in general, favouring cloudless weather (full sun). This has changed and small to mid clouds are favoured now (still no rain). Cloudless sky or degrees of rain are of course still possible, just not that preferable.
improvements to sun rays while inside buildings.
internal cleaning and some memory tweaks.
properly saving and loading player's custom map waypoint.
added period before ending sports event and possibly opening menu.
fixed few floating trees.
fixed floating house.
fixed gas station sign at the coffee house tree.
fixed: it was possible to fall down through the roof after piloting drone from a roof.
fixed wrong light cycle for tractors without working lights (Jack Bear)
fixed hair going through cap when driving the grass mower
slight improvements to shadows on ultra setting
fixes to external camera when driving a combine
bigger scale for mushrooms in ES for mushroom collect event. They also blink yellow to purple.
fixed: too many (or sometimes too few) social points were awarded at events success
further improvements to tonemapping, bloom params, sunrays, color hues, lighting params.
rearranged starting scene to make more comfy and pretty first impression (7am, better lighting, better shadow placement, a bit better player and Oliver placement, better overall scene light intensity and colors).
improved idle engine sound volumes and frequency for player vehicles

Some fixes to new greenhouses (empty table, plants in the air). These may* not appear when loading a saved game though.