• Bug Fix: Trader walking animation is restored.
  
• Bug Fix: Monks can no longer be assigned to a non-monk job through the “...” menu.
  
• Bug Fix: Rare crash when destroying buildings.
  
• Bug Fix: Wheat Farms "No Farming Zone" notification message no longer appear for no reason.
  
• Bug Fix: Upkeep cost for new parts are not charged while editing an already existing monument.

Hey everyone! Welcome to devlog #07!


With the introduction of the recent content update, we will next be focusing on improving the core experience. Here are a few of the things that we have been working on.


Eagle-eyed players might have noticed weather effects in the Early Access trailer… These weren’t just for show and we are currently working on the introduction of the first weather system to Foundation. Of course, I like to tease a little, so you might be interested to know that weather won’t be purely aesthetic!




We have previously mentioned that we are working on an updated mission system for the Kingdom Estate. We will be looking at this for a future update but we have started work on the concept art for soldier levels.




As we add more production chains through development we will need to constantly update balancing in the game. There is still much more balancing to do and it will need continuous tweaking during development. For this end, we are working on an internal tracking tool for the cost per resource, which will help us for future balancing of the game.


The level of detail in Foundation (call me biased if you like) is already quite incredible but we are striving to always increase the level of immersion. We are currently working to improve and increase this with more detailed and varied construction steps.




New updates do, of course, inevitably bring with them new bugs. The community have been feeding back to us any issues created by the last content update and we are currently in the process of preparing a new patch for release in the next few days. We will announce more details and changelog once the patch is ready for distribution.


Part of the recent update introduced many new modding features, including the possibility for modders to create their own monuments. The modding community have risen to the occasion and have themselves been working hard on new mods since the update. Check out this creation from Paddy Fitzgerald using the new ‘Stone Gate Set’ mod by vjraymon:



If you have created a mod for Foundation in a previous version please don’t forget to update your mod and change it’s status to 'public' for the newly released update.

We hope everyone is enjoying the new Wine update! Feedback has been very good and the community have been sharing their creations on Discord. These screenshots from Milinia and SLy particularly caught our eye!





Thanks for checking out this weeks' devlog and we shall see you soon for more news on development!

-Ash

*Savegames from the previous version are compatible!****
*All mods need to be updated by modders to make them compatible with this new version. See the Migration documentation****
*All mods from the previous version are unsupported and may cause crashes.****

• New wine production chain:
  
• New building: Monastery Vineyard
  
• New building: Monastery Winery
  
• New building: Cooperage
  
  
• Production of workplaces can now be paused, halving maintenance cost
  
• Villager window now displays distance between home and workplace
  
• Improved job selection UI
  
  
• Destroying a building under construction will refund upfront cost
  
  
• Add severities to warning window (low, high) to distinguish stuck agents from full workplaces.
  
• Farm have separated farm fields, zonable through the workplace window. All fields need to be zoned on previous savegames. You also need to press the "Start production" button once you have finished zoning.
  
  
• Change in balancing (WIP):
  
• Reduce production rate of honey
  
• Reduce production rate of herbs
  
• Reduce the value on herbs and honey on the market compared to wine
  
• Wine is tradable
  
• Texture uniformisation on Stone Bridge, Small Stone Wall and Large Stone Wall
  
• Changes on some Monastery building part cost
  
• Update localization

• mod:registerPrefabComponent to add component to FBX nodes
  
• adding workplaces
  
• adding monuments and bridges
  
• adding walls
  
• expose particle systems features
  
• overriding game assets
  
• individual log files for mods
  
• new example mod: Mithril Factory
  
• mod IO functions
  
• mod dependencies
  
• mod sandboxing: hide some potentially dangerous lua function from mods
  
• msgbox function will only log and won't display a messagebox, unless enabled in usersetting.config
  
• log and crash as soon as a circular parenting is detected
  
• lua will use mod relative path when logging lua error instead of long path
  
• expose game textures to lua materials
  
• fix: generate generated_ids.lua sooner if inexistent
  
• fix: COMP_BUILDING_PART.FeedbackComponentListToActivate on certain type of production buildings
  
• fix: QUEST.OnFailCallback was never triggered
  
• fix: EVENT_CALLBACK_TRIGGER_EVENT with delay 0 was never triggered
  
• expose PROFILE_ENVOY_CLERGY and PROFILE_ENVOY_ROYAL
  
• rename DELAYED_QUEST.QuestResource into DELAYED_QUEST.AssetQuest
  
• rename WALL_CONFIG.UvTillingWall into WALL_CONFIG.UvTilingWall
  
• rename WALL_CONFIG.UvTillingTop into WALL_CONFIG.UvTilingTop

• Construction will cancel if builder profile change to monk
  
• Use S3TC compressed texture when supported
  
• Forbid zone painting outside of player territory
  
• Zone cleaning when abandoning tile
  
• Occasional crash when leaving a game containing a bailiff office
  
• Fix various crashes
  
• Zoning tool optimization & interpolation between two frames
  
• Tree shadows are now dynamic

Hi everyone!

We are extremely excited to share some big news with you today!!


That’s right! The next update will include the Wine production loop, the Quality of Life changes that were voted on last week, and the new modding capabilities that the community have been recently testing.



https://youtu.be/gscC1F1-Fmg

So why are we bringing you an early content update?

Going forward we have decided to make some changes to our update strategy. This will bring more frequent, but smaller updates to you on a regular basis.

Our original strategy, that we took through the pre-Early Access alpha stage, was to release larger more significant updates with major changes and content updates but with larger time frames between updates. We made large strides in development during this time and the game evolved significantly to what you see today.

We have been following the community feedback since the Early Access release and we recognise that the community would prefer smaller more regular updates. With our expanded team (including 2 new programmers) we feel that we are in a position to deliver this change to you.


Ideally, we’ll target an update every month or so with bug fixes/patches in between.

We hope this news brings you as much excitement as it does to us!


Best regards,
-The Whole Polymorph Games Team

Hi everyone and welcome to Devlog #06!

Let's dive straight in to the news...


As you may have seen, last week we submitted 10 community Quality of Life suggestions for you to vote on. The results came in and work is already under way to implement your chosen suggestions:

• Button to pause production in production buildings

A great suggestion and one that will make managing resources easier. To add to this suggestion paused buildings will have their maintenance cost reduced by half.

• Add 'unemployed only' filter to worker assignation drop down
  
  
• Villager Pane displays the Workplace/Home Distance

Managing your villagers work/home distances and optimising travel distances will be much improved with these suggestions. Great choices!

• Return resources for buildings that have building work cancelled

We have taken this suggestion and plan to expand upon it. When destroying buildings you will get 50% of the resources back that were used in the initial construction.
Additionally placing a building accidently will no longer be a drain on your gold reserves. Cancelling a construction that has not yet started will return the gold outlay for that building.

• Farms have separate fields defined

Another great suggestion which will allow you more control over the placement and segregation of your fields. We are also reworking and optimising the production cycle of fields and we will hopefully add this to the QoL update depending on testing.


We continue to work on modding functionality. We are changing when mods are loaded so rather than being loaded as Foundation starts they will be loaded at the same time as a save game, additionally we have been working on more changes to allow mods to be loaded mid game as apposed to the current situation where once a game has started no more mods can be added.
There are also still a few optimisations being worked on to ensure mod dependencies are handled correctly as well as a few bugs that needed to be fixed.

If you would like to try your hand at modding you will need to use the Lua programming language to create any mods in Foundation. Documentation for the Modding Preview (1.2.0) can be found here.

You can also join in the modding chat on our Discord server.


As you saw in Devlog #05 we have been working on some new farms and fields. The two crops that you saw in the last devlog were grapes and hops. Well done to those that guessed correctly!

Further work has been done on the wine production chain, including the Vineyard building which is currently being worked on



Here is a first look at the Winery! It's soooo cute!!



https://youtu.be/Gxao1NxLN5w?autoplay=1
Of course wine needs a suitable storage vessel. We are not talking wine bottles here, we are talking bigger scale storage! Below you can see work in progress on the Cooperage.



Thanks to everyone that got involved in the voting last week and if you have suggestions that you would like to share you can add them to our tracker here.

-Ash

The QoL Poll results are in!

The top 5 have been chosen by you and have been prioritized for the next QoL update!!

Welcome all to an all new Devlog!

Firstly I would like to start with word on a new Quality of Life Update!

Since the Early Access launch, we have received a bunch of great QoL improvement suggestions from the community. We'd like to know which ones are most important to you.

We have submitted 10 suggestions for you to vote on and we will prioritize the top 5 for a QoL update!!

Voting is now open!!

If you have any suggestions that you would love to see implemented, you can add yours for review on our tracker here.

Back from voting? Let’s tell you what we have been working on!


In the last Devlog we announced the release of the modding preview. Thanks to the modding community testing has gone well with only a few small bugs that were quickly fixed.

We still have some more work and testing to do on the modding update but we hope to release it on the main branch within the next couple of weeks. Though this will depend on further testing and fixes.


We have already hinted that we will be introducing some new crops into the game. With these new crops will also come new farm buildings! Here is a little visual hint to those crops the team have been working on. Can you guess what they are?






In the last couple of days we have begun initial testing of the new military quest system that will be the focus of the Kingdom Estate progression.

We will start out by testing the basic mechanics of the system with a single multi-level mission. Once we are happy that the quests are acting as they should we can begin to add more missions and depth.

One new aspect of these missions is the probability of success and failure. To increase the chances of a successful mission you will need to train your soldiers or they could end up like this…



or worse!

Of course, the soldiers will need weapons and those weapons won’t make themselves




As you can see, we continue to work on the animations that will make the game even more immersive.

For all the equestrians out there, here’s a little peak of a beautiful moment between man and horse



There has also been some great work done on a new monument! That’s just a teaser though as there is still more work to do. I’ll let you know more in a future devlog.

I will bring you more news in the next couple of weeks, all that’s left to do, if you haven’t already, is go and vote on the QoL update! Voting closes on Monday 6pm EDT (11pm GMT) so don’t delay to have your say… did i just rhyme that?!

Enjoy your weekend everyone!
Ash

Hello everyone,

We’d like to share with you some news about the next content update and what’s going on at Polymorph Games.

Since the launch, feedback from the community has been incredibly positive. Despite the early crashes, bugs and rough-edged features, people have been appreciative of the core experience.

After the Early Access launch, the focus for the first month was to handle game crashes. The variety of different PC configurations that came with the increased player base was a challenge to support, however we updated the game with fixes as frequently as we could to allow as many players to play uninterrupted from crashes as possible.

With no internal Quality Assurance (QA) specialist at the office and updates now affecting tens of thousands of extra players, QA was adding to the workload for the team which was something that we needed to address. Another matter that we wanted to rectify was the art style and workflow. With no senior artist in the team, a certain lack of cohesion between different art assets became apparent. Before continuing to develop new assets and content, these concerns needed to be addressed.

Long story short: We made our priority to hire a QA Manager and a Senior Artist, which we did with the addition of Nicolas and Claudine.
Since his hiring, Nicolas has been working on an internal and external QA workflow. He’s been acknowledging bugs received from the community on our public Mantis and adding and prioritizing them in our own internal bug base, which has relieved our programmers and our community manager from doing that.

With the addition of Claudine, the art team has been working on improving the cohesion of models and textures and standardizing some buildings design as well. This was a necessary step prior to designing and adding new buildings in the game, to ensure the cohesion will be respected in the future. This task progresses steadily and we have started to create new buildings and monuments again.

Other positions also needed to be filled to release other bottlenecks, the gameplay being the most important. Why is that so? Our CEO and Creative Director happens to be our only gameplay programmer on the team. Since the Early Access, with the need to hire new staff, planning work for the team, ensuring the vision for the game is respected and other “non-programming-the-game” tasks, he has been extremely busy. The good news is, we have just found a new gameplay programmer who will join us in two weeks. This will have a positive impact on our velocity!

Our two engine programmers have been working to fix bugs and on optimisations of the game. One of them is now mostly focused on improving modding capabilities. It is very important for us to make progress in modding whilst the game evolves as it allows us to ensure our architecture is modding-friendly and allows us to make adjustments as we identify any problems. Soon, we’ll allow the community to mod more of the actual content of the game: productions, monuments, resources etc...

We know many of you crave for new content, and as much as we’d like to make it happen fast, the next content update has no official date yet, and is at least a couple of months away. The new content is not just about adding new resources and production lines. We are working to add depth to the gameplay as well, especially by expanding the Estate and Event system. For instance, we are expanding the Military Quest System so it becomes the main focus of the Kingdom Estate progression path. It will be more challenging but also more rewarding. Each Estate will have its own playstyle, so the other two progressions need to be implemented as well. We are also adding the first achievements in the game, that will be awarded when achieving specific challenges. Furthermore, there’s a lot of work to be done in the actual system that we lacked time to do. There’s a huge list of QoL and balancing improvements, like adding desirability effect to all buildings, improve how the villagers chose their home location, being able to pause productions, rehaul the UI, improve the capabilities of the monument system etc. All those changes will have a large impact on the game balancing, thus the importance of take the time to tweak and test thoroughly before deploying the update.



Since the Early Access launch, 4 new members have been added to the team, making a total of 12 people at Polymorph Games. This team is 100% dedicated to Foundation as we speak, working on all fronts: gameplay, art, modding, and tools, with the objective to deliver our dream game to you. We are so excited to be working on this game and can’t wait to officially present you the next content update! In the meantime, expect more QoL updates!

Friday is upon us once again and it’s time for another Devlog!

This week I am going to focus in on modding… Everyone loves a good mod, including us!

Whilst work continues hard on the Major Content Update we have also been working on opening up the modding capabilities. Over the past weeks, some of the team have been working on the modding tools, code and API to give modders a plethora of new tools and options.

As I write this the team are hard at work on a preview build that includes some major modding features that will allow the modding community to take their mods to a whole new level.

This preview build (1.2.0) will be available on a public preview branch in Steam (Betas) whilst we work with the modding community to stress test the new features.

If you are a modder and would like to test the new update, you can provide feedback and chat with other modders on our Discord Server where we have a dedicated channel for feedback of the preview build.

To gain access to the preview build on Steam:
-> Right click Foundation in your game library
-> Click Betas tab
-> In the drop down choose modding_preview

Some of the new features include:

• Create workplaces
  
• Create monuments and bridges
  
• Create walls
  
• Create particle effects

We have also included a new mod example that will show the possibilities of new modding features.

And there’s more! You can check out the full list of new features as well as check out the modding documentation on the modding wiki here.

Good question! Any mods created for the preview build will not be available in the main branch of the game but both the preview build and test channel on Discord are open to all players so you can keep an eye on progress and if you would like to test the mods and the build you are welcome to join us.

Once the preview has been thoroughly tested (and fixed if needed) we will move it to the main branch and modders will then be able to add their new mods to https://foundation.mod.io/ for integration into the game.

Here is a first look at one of the new buildings you will find in the upcoming Content Update.
It’s thirsty work out in the fields but a good local beer can help quench that thirst...



Check out the full 360 view of the Brewery!
https://youtu.be/V0UCmssxIK4
Our QA Manager has been testing Foundation to its limits this week and sometimes the question ‘What will happen if?’ can get out of hand!



A couple of weeks ago I commented on the devastating fire in Paris and the community’s reaction. This week I would like to follow up on that with this outstanding reproduction by MajesticIX.



We hope you enjoyed this weeks Devlog and have a great weekend everyone!

Ash