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

Folk Tale Patch 0.2.13 introduces significant change with an overhaul of the first hour of gameplay.


Players starting Folk Tale for the first time often arrive with an implicit knowledge and expectation from other RTS games. To make the game more intuitive, we have to acknowledge and design to this. Having watched Let's Play Folk Tale and Twitch streams, one of the most common first time actions of new players is to select a villager and right click on a tree, expecting them to go and chop it down. That wasn't happening, so we introduced sweeping changes.

Peasants can now gather resources from the environment (thereby clearing areas for future construction) by selecting and right-clicking on a resource, including chopping trees, quarrying small stone deposits, mining iron ore deposits, and foraging for berries. The iron and stone are new assets that are now dotted liberally around the starter location. After several visits, the resource will become depleted and will be removed from the world.



Peasants cannot access Quarries, Iron Mines, and the (possibly) soon to be added Lumber Mill. These will in time require Works to be constructed that can only be operated by Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths who are far more efficient than their Peasant peers. If you examine the current Quarry, we'll be removing the crane and wooden platform to make Works, an upgrade that becomes available once you have constructed the corresponding Profession building, which in this case would be the Stonecutter Lodge. You'll then be able to construct Works on Quarries, and assign Stonecutters to commence work there.

Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths can also clear areas, and are more effective than Peasants, requiring fewer swings of an axe/pickaxe/hammer and yielding more resources each time they drop off resources.

Enabling Peasants to gather resources presented a new design challenge: where should they drop off the collected resources? Henceforth, the very first thing players need to do when starting a new game is place a Supply Wagon containing a few rations and basic clothing to keep your Peasants happy for a short while. The Wagon also acts as a low capacity Storehouse.



These changes took gameplay further back in the life of a settlement, to where you start with very little and have to find what you need in the environment. There's a degree of urgency and survival. With food being a priority, and the Bread economy chain taking a while to get up and running, we've added foraging for Berries by selecting a Peasant and right clicking on a Berry Bush. Berries can be stockpiled and eaten by Peasants when they get hungry, and satiate a small amount of the need for carbohydrates.



Watching some of the recent Let's Play videos and playing ourselves, we noticed that it was easy to get into a situation of having lots of Planks, and not much Firewood. To address this (prior to the implementation of the Marketplace building), we added a crafting recipe to the Woodcutter's Hut for converting Planks into Firewood, available immediately once the building is constructed. With some further balancing, we'll get the Firewood situation under control.


In the last patch Peasants would frequently complain via the Advisor about being hungry and needing food, even though inventories would be brimming with supplies. This wasn't caused by mass hunger, but rather individual units - especially Hunters - wandering far from town and becoming hungry while doing so. To solve this, we've changed the Needs system to monitor averages, and added some useful charts to the Civics dialog that can be accessed via the topbar button to support forward planning. In times of bountiful harvest, Peasants are able to gorge themselves to fend off hunger for longer. They also take longer to get really hungry, reducing the frequency of them leaving.

New peasants will now only arrive if happiness is in the yellow or green.




We were dissatisfied with the way the economy was working in regard to Villagers buying goods for gold. While it sounds logical, this could lead to unacceptable delays waiting for gold to be generated. We've not removed the exchange of goods for gold, and replaced it with a new taxation system. In the Civics Dialog (see image above), you can now set the tax rate in gold. Taxes are levied every 30 seconds, and are dependent on Cottages. Setting low taxes will lead to increased happiness, while heavy taxation will lead to decreasing happiness unless you are taking steps to offset that.


The whole concept of accruing Research Points didn't feel natural, so we scrapped 'em. Now, you choose which research you want to undertake, and as workers deliver resources to the building, part of that work effort can be allocated towards research, progressing the percentage complete. Once you reach 100%, the research is unlocked. Multiple buildings of the same type can contribute to the same research at the same time to unlock it faster, or research something completely different in parallel. For example, one Blacksmith might research Leatherworking. Building a second Blacksmith, you can set it to contribute towards the existing research into Leatherworking, or research Plate Armor in parallel.



Moving to a progress model however presents some redesign challenges for non-production buildings including the Barracks and Storehouse. For the Barracks, we'll be introducing a villager need for security, which can be satiated by stationing City Watch in locations frequented by villagers (by the Storehouse and Wagon would be great!) As Peasant's pass by, they gain an increased sense of security, and that generates a tick in the progress towards any active research in the Barracks. Having City Watch behave in this manner also plays into the original plan for their role as law enforcement, and opens up the possibility of implementing crime and thieves.

Research at the Storehouse will be redistributed to other buildings including the Workshop.

Due to a word limit on Steam announcements, this blog continues at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/02/folk-tale-dev-blog-31.html

Folk Tale Patch 0.2.13 introduces significant change with an overhaul of the first hour of gameplay.


Players starting Folk Tale for the first time often arrive with an implicit knowledge and expectation from other RTS games. To make the game more intuitive, we have to acknowledge and design to this. Having watched Let's Play Folk Tale and Twitch streams, one of the most common first time actions of new players is to select a villager and right click on a tree, expecting them to go and chop it down. That wasn't happening, so we introduced sweeping changes.

Peasants can now gather resources from the environment (thereby clearing areas for future construction) by selecting and right-clicking on a resource, including chopping trees, quarrying small stone deposits, mining iron ore deposits, and foraging for berries. The iron and stone are new assets that are now dotted liberally around the starter location. After several visits, the resource will become depleted and will be removed from the world.



Peasants cannot access Quarries, Iron Mines, and the (possibly) soon to be added Lumber Mill. These will in time require Works to be constructed that can only be operated by Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths who are far more efficient than their Peasant peers. If you examine the current Quarry, we'll be removing the crane and wooden platform to make Works, an upgrade that becomes available once you have constructed the corresponding Profession building, which in this case would be the Stonecutter Lodge. You'll then be able to construct Works on Quarries, and assign Stonecutters to commence work there.

Woodcutters, Stonecutters and Blacksmiths can also clear areas, and are more effective than Peasants, requiring fewer swings of an axe/pickaxe/hammer and yielding more resources each time they drop off resources.

Enabling Peasants to gather resources presented a new design challenge: where should they drop off the collected resources? Henceforth, the very first thing players need to do when starting a new game is place a Supply Wagon containing a few rations and basic clothing to keep your Peasants happy for a short while. The Wagon also acts as a low capacity Storehouse.



These changes took gameplay further back in the life of a settlement, to where you start with very little and have to find what you need in the environment. There's a degree of urgency and survival. With food being a priority, and the Bread economy chain taking a while to get up and running, we've added foraging for Berries by selecting a Peasant and right clicking on a Berry Bush. Berries can be stockpiled and eaten by Peasants when they get hungry, and satiate a small amount of the need for carbohydrates.



Watching some of the recent Let's Play videos and playing ourselves, we noticed that it was easy to get into a situation of having lots of Planks, and not much Firewood. To address this (prior to the implementation of the Marketplace building), we added a crafting recipe to the Woodcutter's Hut for converting Planks into Firewood, available immediately once the building is constructed. With some further balancing, we'll get the Firewood situation under control.


In the last patch Peasants would frequently complain via the Advisor about being hungry and needing food, even though inventories would be brimming with supplies. This wasn't caused by mass hunger, but rather individual units - especially Hunters - wandering far from town and becoming hungry while doing so. To solve this, we've changed the Needs system to monitor averages, and added some useful charts to the Civics dialog that can be accessed via the topbar button to support forward planning. In times of bountiful harvest, Peasants are able to gorge themselves to fend off hunger for longer. They also take longer to get really hungry, reducing the frequency of them leaving.

New peasants will now only arrive if happiness is in the yellow or green.




We were dissatisfied with the way the economy was working in regard to Villagers buying goods for gold. While it sounds logical, this could lead to unacceptable delays waiting for gold to be generated. We've not removed the exchange of goods for gold, and replaced it with a new taxation system. In the Civics Dialog (see image above), you can now set the tax rate in gold. Taxes are levied every 30 seconds, and are dependent on Cottages. Setting low taxes will lead to increased happiness, while heavy taxation will lead to decreasing happiness unless you are taking steps to offset that.


The whole concept of accruing Research Points didn't feel natural, so we scrapped 'em. Now, you choose which research you want to undertake, and as workers deliver resources to the building, part of that work effort can be allocated towards research, progressing the percentage complete. Once you reach 100%, the research is unlocked. Multiple buildings of the same type can contribute to the same research at the same time to unlock it faster, or research something completely different in parallel. For example, one Blacksmith might research Leatherworking. Building a second Blacksmith, you can set it to contribute towards the existing research into Leatherworking, or research Plate Armor in parallel.



Moving to a progress model however presents some redesign challenges for non-production buildings including the Barracks and Storehouse. For the Barracks, we'll be introducing a villager need for security, which can be satiated by stationing City Watch in locations frequented by villagers (by the Storehouse and Wagon would be great!) As Peasant's pass by, they gain an increased sense of security, and that generates a tick in the progress towards any active research in the Barracks. Having City Watch behave in this manner also plays into the original plan for their role as law enforcement, and opens up the possibility of implementing crime and thieves.

Research at the Storehouse will be redistributed to other buildings including the Workshop.

Due to a word limit on Steam announcements, this blog continues at:
http://blog.gamesfoundry.com/2015/02/folk-tale-dev-blog-31.html