Oct 6, 2020

Foundation - Ash

Hey everyone!

As you may have read in Devlog #13, we are currently working on a patch for the recent 1.6 Minerals & Craftsmanship update. This patch will provide some polish to the 1.6 update as well as bring with it some highly requested quality of life improvements.

The 1.6 content patch is now close to being ready, so for this Devlog we will be taking a closer look at what the team has been working on for the upcoming patch...

More Names!

Yes, you read that right... With 1000 new names being added to the game, no more will you be seeing Male #007 or Female #42, well, at least for some time anyway. As a side note, there will be further work on names, in the future, as part of the planned family system.

Another highly requested feature being introduced with the patch is the option to rename villagers. Streamers rejoice! This feature is not just for streamers though, now we can all have Auntie Bob in our villages.

Promotion Sorting

We have received many requests for this one and your wish is our command… Lords and Ladies, we bring you promotion sorting!

You will be able to sort the population by various parameters whilst also being able to easily focus on a villager’s workplace, their house, and the villager themselves, making it much easier to identify those you wish to promote.

Melody Composer

“What’s this?!” Is the burning question we hear on your minds. Well... a brand new feature will be introduced with the patch that will see a Melody Composer added to buildings that contain musical parts.

You will find a simplified version in churches however, one particular musical Masterpiece will allow you to flex your musical talents or make a crescendo of noise if music is not your thing. Either-way lookout for this as you unlock the Masterpieces.

Masterpiece Polish

You may have already read the notes regarding the work we are doing on the Gate Masterpiece in Devlog #13. This, however, is not the only Masterpiece to see some changes and polish in this patch.

As mentioned above one of the Masterpieces will see the new Melody Composer added. We have also taken a look at the Masterpiece effect conditions that are randomly assigned to Masterpiece sets, for example, the stained glass masterpiece will be tied to conditions that are more relevant to its use.

Additionally, more information regarding masterpieces, effects and their conditions can now be found by hovering over the Masterpiece in the build menu.

If you are new to Masterpieces you will be able to find further information about them in a new help topic that can be accessed at any time in the in-game help (?) menu.

Quarry Depots and Visuals

The content patch will see a new function added to the quarry parts. The large crane will now act as a resource depot allowing mined resources to be stored locally rather than requiring a warehouse for storage nearby your quarries.

The stored resources within these depots will also come with improved visuals making it easier to identify the resources at-a-glance.

New Animations

Mooooar animations! With the addition of the new workplace/workstation integration that came with the 1.6 content update, we have been able to open up a whole new range of possibilities for workplace animations.

The Tailor eyeing up his new fashion line:

Sparks flying in the Smithy:

Liquid gold (Work in progress):

Bug Fixes and More

A big thank you to everyone that has been sending in bug reports and offering feedback. All of your reports have allowed us to fix a number of issues that will be resolved with the content patch.

As you can see above this patch will apply some polish as well as bring new additions, bug fixes, and more improvements, including:

New sounds for mining and other workplaces
Some UI tweaks such as an improved resource list order
A pop-up when exiting the game, so no more accidental exits
Changes to the mineral distribution system when prospecting mineral nodes. For example, Iron will be much easier to find earlier in your searches.
Builder's proximity priority during work-cycle
Multiple pathfinding fixes
And more (A full changelog will be available on release)

If testing goes well, we hope to get the patch out within the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for further announcements.

- Ash

Aug 19, 2020

Devlog #13

Foundation - Ash

Hey everyone and welcome to Devlog #13!

The Mineral & Craftsmanship update added some big content and systems to the game and the team have been working to fix any remaining bugs but also to polish the content that was added.

Consequently, we are now working on a content patch that will add some further improvements to the recent update. This patch will not only improve on some of the visuals but will also expand the masterpiece parts.

1.6 Content Patch

More specifically the 1.6 content patch will include:

Visual improvements to the quarry depots
Visual improvements to the mineral deposits including improved textures
Improved mineral distribution
Visual tweaks to Masterpieces
New parts for the Gate Masterpiece
New sounds for mining and workplaces
New animations including workshop and building animations

I am sure you will be as excited as i am to hear that the 1.6 content patch will also include the following QoL improvements:

Promotion window sorting
Many more villager names and the option to rename villagers (planned)

With that, let's take a closer look at what the team are currently working on…

Buildings & Masterpiece Polish

Claudine and Loup-Gabriel have been enhancing some of the building visuals, polishing current buildings with improved basements and grounded doors as well as working on the new Masterpieces.

The Gate Masterpiece, in particular, will see a new wall part as well as even more parts for you to build that perfect entrance to your city.

More Visual Polish

Enhanced textures are being worked on for the Mineral Deposits with Claudine currently working on a more refined Gold texture. You can expect to see more improvements to the deposits and quarry depots for the upcoming content patch.

Quality of Life Improvements

Christopher has been busy on a number of improvements including, updating the notification panel to remember your severity choice and refining the action button and warnings. These changes can be seen live right now in last week's hotfix which also included Christoper’s work to allow multiple Masterpieces on the same monument.

On top of these changes, he is currently working on the villager promotion window to show more information in addition to some added control in the form of a sortable promotion list!

Building & Workshop Animations

Something we have been wanting to add for some time is more interaction between workers and the buildings, for example, the gold smelter pouring liquid gold from the cauldron when smelting.

Up until recently it hasn’t been possible… but now it is! With this newly created ability, Michaël has been working on new interactions between buildings and workers that includes moving parts on the buildings themselves.

Winepress now in action:

Is the sheep checking in on the weaver?:

A training dummy being pummelled:

Modding

In the past few weeks, we have been gathering feedback from the modding community to see what new features and content they would like to see unlocked. Armed with this feedback Max has been busy opening up new options for modders to create extra content.

For example, last week’s patches saw a new behavior tree for custom guard behavior. This will allow modders to create custom locators for guards so that they can patrol your villages.

Additionally, the recent patches have exposed a whole host of assets for modders to play with, such as building functions for the new quarries and workshops, masterpiece parts, villager jobs and much more. Full modding changelogs can all be found on the modding wiki pages.

Alongside this, Max has been working to add in some quality of life improvements and bug fixes for both modders and players alike. Modding logs have been augmented to catch errors in created mods and a useful QoL update has seen a new prompt when a player loads a save that might be missing mods. This will allow you to download the missing mods directly when starting a save game.

Both Max and Leo continue to work on performance optimizations improving the game for players and modders alike.

And Finally...

Vincent has been working on a top-secret project for a future update. Unfortunately, I can’t bring you more news on this just yet but it will bring some extra life to your villages.

To wrap up this Devlog I have some particularly exciting news that I know you will all be very happy to see. Dan has been working on the UI redesign whilst also improving the user experience wherever possible. The design phase is progressing very well and thanks to the UI tool that is being created by Ben, integration will start soon.

Once that big chunk of work is done, we will iterate both on the UX and the style of the menus, so expect changes along the way.

We are excited to reveal to you an exclusive sneak peek of the work so far:

You can see more samples of the work in progress UI in the recent article from Rock Paper Shotgun.

We would love to get your feedback, so feel free to leave a comment and don’t forget you can join us on our Discord server and let us know your thoughts.

Cheers!
- Ash

Jul 14, 2020

Minerals & Craftmanship 1.6 Update is now live!

Foundation - Ash

Lords and Ladies, we are excited to present to you the Minerals & Craftmanship 1.6 Update, now live on Steam!

It’s a big one, so let’s take a look at some highlights of what you can expect in the new update and let you get quickly into discovering the new minerals and crafting up some masterpieces!

Savegame compatibility warning: 1.5 saves will be compatible but some of your buildings may be removed if they were placed on one of the new mineral deposit sites. Also, note that your builders will now require a Builders’ Workshop.

WHAT’S NEW

Discover and Extract New Minerals!

New Mineral deposits can be found scattered throughout the maps, containing nice shiny new minerals, from gold-rich veins to glittering quartz nodes. These deposits can be prospected by your Bailiff in order to identify the ore they contain.

Inside the Mineral deposits your Bailiff will find both rare minerals as well as more common ones such as Iron. Once discovered the minerals can be extracted by clicking the deposit and building a quarry.

Extend your Buildings and Build Masterpieces

Buildings can now be extended with new parts. The first building extensions will take the form of crafting workstations that can be added to the Builders’ Workshop. These crafting workstations will allow your builders to craft various objects such as sculptures and stained glass.

Note that Builders' Workshops are now mandatory for the building of any construction.

Masterpieces are sets of specific parts that can be added into a monument or be built as a standalone building. They are unique creations that will give your village unique perks once built. In total, there are 9 Masterpieces to discover and build.

Each masterpiece will unlock when specific conditions have been met. For example, this could be when your soldiers emerge victorious from a faraway mission.

New Productions

All of the new minerals can be used in production buildings as well as in the new Masterpieces. Further, new production buildings have been introduced to refine these minerals to be ready for use, such as the new Gold Smelter that turns Gold ore into Gold bars, the Glassworks that will work quartz into glass as well as a Jeweler who will make good use of any gold and gems you might find.

Bailiff Mandates

The Bailiff’s role has been expanded and can now undertake Mandates. These mandates will range from prospecting the new resource deposits to gaining influence with an Estate or researching blueprints. Yes, the scholar was unhappy and has now left!

Pathing Inside Buildings

Villagers can now path through monuments! This means that Monks can now get to those inner courtyards and soldiers can protect the pass. Pathing inside buildings will allow particular villagers to enter and exit through separate monument doors. Pathing will have conditions so that only those that should be allowed through can get through.

Visits

Word of your settlement is growing stronger. Not only will there be visits from envoys but there will be new visitors arriving at your village. Pilgrims might visit your shrine masterpiece and one of your monuments, that is perfect for taking in guests, might also receive a visitor under certain conditions.

Even More New Features

As you may know, we are working on a full UI overhaul. In the meantime, you will notice a new notification panel that will help to see warnings of potential issues in your village as well as a log of your missions and quests including currently active quests.

Bridges can now be raised in height as well as length. Yes m’lord, you can now raise your bridges up high, the sky is the limit!

The List Goes On…

The Minerals & Craftmanship update will also include:

New animations
New modding functions and capabilities
New sounds
New improved grass and cliff visuals
9 new achievements
Plus many fixes and improvements

You can check out the full changelog below:

Changelog

Gameplay

New features

New: Minerals sources that can be prospected and extracted
New: Production chains related to minerals
New: Masterpieces
New: Productions chains
New: Buildings can now have multiple placeable parts
New: Builder now has his workshop
New: Builder's workshop can be extended with crafting extensions
New: New unlockable builder's workshop parts
New crafting feature: craft sculpture and stained glass
New: Bailiff can have mandates assigned like prospecting minerals and influencing estates
New: New notification panel
New: Pathing can now go through buildings that have multiple entrances

Improvements

Add: Completed monument parts activate its function, (no need for an entire monument to be built before it becomes usable)
Add: Gold has been separated in two new resources: Gold Coins and Gold Bars
Add: Improved performance when editing a monument
Add: Transporters will now carry materials to construction sites
Add: New uniformized build flow between buildings and monuments
Add: "getting started" section to help menu
Add: Davenport now sells gems
Add: Allow multiple transporters to carry materials to construction sites
Add: localization

Art

Buildings

New Builder's workshop and crafting extensions: sculpture, stained glass, jewelry
New mineral sources and quarries installations
New Glass Smelter
New Gold Smelter
New customizable fountain, stained glass

Characters and animations

New miner's job outfit and animations
New Glass Smelter & Gold Smelter animations

Environment

New grass texture
New cliff texture

Bug fixes

fix: soldier/monks could get stuck on bridges
fix: Wooden Keep Door B
fix: tavern bridge bug
fix: transporters and builders flow (pause & builder allocation)
fix: missing tavern chimney texture
fix: path finding issues when house upgrading
fix: crash when the same game file is empty
fix: crash when closing the game due to unsupported OpenGL version
fix: rare crash with promotion
fix: clear preview on bridge
fix: freeze on clear preview
fix: wooden bridge entrance PATH & slope locator position
fix: showing bulldozer button on destructible building when under construction
fix: mod list disappearing when scrollbar is added/removed
fix: crash when destroying building too close to map edges
fix: rare crash during tax collector collection
fix: drop-down scroll bar behavior
fix: wooden keep stair colliders
fix: a crash in mod list menu
fix: rare crash in workplace list window
fix: building parts are not child of the core part anymore
fix: crash with public lounge function activation
fix: crash with notification window

Modding

Add: mods hot-reload with Ctrl+Shift+R
Add: creation of new asset and data types, and extending existing asset, component and data types
Add: creation of behavior trees and custom behavior tree nodes
Add: access to events

Update: example 02 mod bridge
Update: Remove Mover from Building Part Asset
Update: Batch all Modding logs in a single file to avoid opening too many files
Update: Foundation log file and mod log file are now readable during execution

fix: asset retrieval by scripting ID was not allowed in some cases
fix: VS Code snippets
fix: restore some missing textures

The full modding changelog can be found on the modding wiki.

Let us know what you think or discuss the game with our awesome Foundation community on our official Discord server.

- The whole Polymorph Games team

Jun 26, 2020

1.6 Minerals & Craftmanship Update: Release Date News

Foundation - Ash

Exciting news everyone!

The Minerals & Craftmanship Update will be released on Tuesday, July 14

The 1.6 preview build has now been thoroughly tested and the additional content is coming together. All this means we can today announce the release date for the upcoming Early Access 1.6 update.

Announcing a New Addition: The Masterpieces

In addition to the content previously announced we have also been working on a new feature coming in the 1.6 update… Masterpieces!

Masterpieces are unique sets of parts that will become available via inspirational events that will occur during gameplay. Once obtained the masterpiece parts set will be available to incorporate into any monument, transforming it into a unique monument.

Each Masterpiece can only be built once and will make full use of the new minerals and crafting stations now available.

There will be a total of 9 Masterpieces for you to discover and build in the 1.6 update release. All 9 Masterpieces will come with their own exclusive effects such as the work in progress, Shrine Masterpiece pictured below.

Pilgrims visiting the Shrine

The Shrine will be unlocked via a miracle event and once built will become a place of pilgrimage for people far and wide and will come with the added effect of increasing immigration to your settlement.

New Achievements

To complement the new Masterpieces, each one will unlock a related Steam achievement. This will take the take number of achievements available in the game to 21.

New Animations

As well as all the new content coming in the new update we have also been working to increase the immersion. The 1.6 update will additionally come with new workstation animations to bring the new buildings and content to life.

The Jeweller checking the quality of her work

A builder scrutinizing new plans

A new statue takes shape

Finally...

If you hadn’t already seen the previously news, here is a brief summary of what you can expect in the Minerals & Craftmanship Update, coming on July 14!

New feature: Masterpieces
New discoverable mineral resources
Bailiff Mandates (Including prospecting for minerals)
New buildings capabilities
Artisan workshops
New production chains
Pathing inside buildings
New modding features

- The Polymorph Games Team