Greetings, medievalists!
Update (0.24.2) is now live on the experimental branch and modding branch. It is compatible with the old saves. Once it is properly tested, we will push it live in the official update! Here are the notes for what awaits you in this version, but first - a warning:
Mods might not work
Please note: if you are using mods you might experience crashes or even an inability to start the game. That might happen because the mods you are using have not adapted to this update, because we added many new functionalities to the moddable jsons. More about that in the Modding Meshes section. Contact mod owners and let them know and turn off those mods until the issue is resolved.
Now, onto the update:
New Enemy AI
Enemies now have a new group AI that we refer to as the Commander AI. The Commander AI uses a pathfinding system different to the one enemies use and can search through walls, doors, gaps and ground. This way the commander AI will give orders to enemies to dig, build and destroy obstacles on their way. Here is how that relates to the enemy behavior:
- Destroying walls, windows, floors, roofs: The Commander AI will determine what enemy unit has the best weapon to combat buildings and will send that unit to take down the building.
- Building floors and ladders: Enemies will build small floor bridges to traverse gaps in order to enter your stronghold. To traverse vertical obstacles, enemies will build stick ladders. Enemies magically spawn resources to construct these buildings
- Install siege structures: Enemies will spawn with siege structures in their inventory and deploy siege structures on the map.
- Cut vegetation: If the siege weapon is placed where there is a tree in the way the enemies will clear that area first.
- Use siege weapons: The enemy will use siege weapons and target points of interest the commander AI determines important to destroy.
- Dig Voxels: Enemies will dig voxels if the player chooses to use terrain as a way of defending their base.
- Destroy furniture: The destruction of players' valuable furniture and structures is now a way for raiders to have victory. Because of that, enemies will target furniture in valuable rooms and destroy it. Speaking of victory…
Battle Scales
To make the win-lose situation a bit more clear we’ve added a scale to the UI that shows the player how the battle is going. Before, the situation was not clear as there were a bunch of situations where you would kill (a lot of) enemies and still lose. Now, the enemy units are given points and killing a unit will move the scale in the victory section while losing structures and settlements will move the scale in the defeat section.
- “Tie“ outcome has been added to cover the situations where neither you nor the enemy didn't do much.
- We plan to add different thresholds to the scale where there would be different consequences depending on how severe the defeat was. Sometimes you may lose resources, but in a massive defeat unconscious settlers might be taken as prisoners by the enemy.
This battle balance scale is important for the addition of different types of battles like player attacking the enemy and caravan ambushes that are coming up in later major updates.
Siege Weapons
Siege weapons have been totally overhauled and the old trebuchet that appeared instantly with the raiders is gone. Siege weapons are now constructible things for you to place on your walls or wherever you see them fit.
NOTE: Turning off trebuchets in the options is no longer a thing. Enemies should use all sorts of siege weapons and since you have the means of defending against them now, this option within the custom difficulty has been taken out.
The siege weapons you can build are:
- Trebuchet: A long-range siege weapon that fires slowly but does massive damage to a single point. It doesn’t have an infinite range nor huge area damage like before. The trebuchet has 3x various ammunition types - regular round stone projectile, flammable oil ammunition and a Greek fire variation of flammable oil.
- Onager: A mid-ranged siege weapon that fires a bunch of smaller stones in an area. Good for raining down on enemy groups. Does mid damage to structures. Onager also has 3x variations of its ammunition: regular, flammable and Greek fire.
- Ballista: Mid-range precise siege weapon. Fires fairly fast. Has a massive boost to its range when on higher ground making it ideal for anti-siege purposes. Right now, ballista only has one variation of ammunition. This will be updated later on.
What you need to know about siege weapon usage:
- Siege weapons can be installed and uninstalled. That way they can be moved around the map.
- Settlers need to bring one ammunition instance and load the machine before firing, so keeping a stockpile of ammunition nearby is important.
- Siege machines will not fire automatically. They need to be given a target by the player. The target can be one-time or continuous.
Modding Meshes
Modding 1.5 is part of this update, too. With it, you are now able to add meshes, sprites and textures into Going Medieval.
All of the necessary instructions can be found on our website or the Steam guide that received an update.
Our github covers all of this, too, and is a good starting point.
A bunch of json files are now changed and include MeshVariations for loading custom meshes, textures and setting shader parameters.
In addition to that, we've also added a new batch of moddable jsons.
Constructables/ConstructableQualitySettings.json
Constructables/StabilitySettings.json
Constructables/ThermalModels.json
Constructables/UniversalStorage.json
Data/DaysFromStartMultipliers.json
Data/DifficultyOptions.json
Data/GameDifficulty.json
Data/ObjectActionData.json
Data/PlantShapeRepository.json
Data/ReligionConfig.json
Data/RoomTypes.json
Data/StartingEventSchedule.json
Data/WeatherEvents.json
GOAP/JobPriority.json
GOAP/Job.json
Worker/GenerationRules.json
For those of you wanting to play with the shader parameters, we started documenting them here.
And again, it’s worth pointing out:
For the older mods that some of your mods may not work with this update, so be sure to check them and adjust the code accordingly.
If you have a mod to share, feel free to post it in our Workshop, our social media and within our Discord server.
New Structures
- Stick ladder - Same as a wood ladder, only less healthy and has a lower aesthetic. Used by raiders when they build stuff
- Trebuchet (Siege Engines III in the Research window, appears in the Warfare category)
- Onager (Siege Engines II in the Research window, appears in the Warfare category)
- Ballista (Siege Engines II in the Research window, appears in the Warfare category)
New Items
- Balista bolt (Siege Engines II in the Research window, produced at Woodwork Bench)
- Trebuchet projectile (Siege Engines III in the Research window, produced at Stonemason's Bench)
- Onager projectile (Siege Engines II in the Research window, produced at Stonemason's Bench)
- Incendiary Trebuchet projectile (Incendiary Ammunition in the Research window, produced at Oil Press)
- Incendiary Onager projectile (Incendiary Ammunition in the Research window, produced at Oil Press)
- Incendiary Trebuchet projectile (Greek fire) (Incendiary Ammunition in the Research window, produced at Oil Press)
- Incendiary Onager projectile (Greek fire) (Incendiary Ammunition in the Research window, produced at Oil Press)
- Wooden mechanical parts (Wooden Weaponry in the Research window, produced at Woodwork Bench) - used for constructing siege weapons and some other things (replacing metal mechanical parts in some parts)
Quality of Life Improvements
- Sling, sling staff and javelin have a bit lower damage against buildings. They were a bit overpowered.
- The range of ranged weapons is no longer influenced by rain, snow and fog. Only precision is influenced by those elements. The range is influenced by the amount of wetness the person using the weapons has on them.
- Throwing weapons are not influenced by wetness. They’ll have the same range regardless of the wetness.
- Plate armor does not provide that much of a slow-down effect on settlers when worn. Now, it is only 5% and not 15% like before.
- Plate armor influences the speed of ranged weapons by around 20%. Only Crossbows are exempt from this debuff.
- Crossbow reload speed is no more scaled with Marksman skill. This makes them a more suitable weapon of choice for low-level settlers. Keep in mind that a regular bow will shoot much faster on higher levels of Marksman skill when compared to the crossbow.
- Wet humans and animals don't catch fire that easily.
- Constructions now have a “can't fail construction” parameter in the BaseBuildingRepository.json. We’ve added this to several buildings so they don't punish the player that much. This is added especially to the siege equipment that needs a bunch of resources and a high level of construction skill to be constructed. Having them fail the construction after 15h of construction would be frustrating. This parameter has been added to walls and floors as well.
- Drop Pile on Stability loss - We’ve added a parameter that if set to true, will allow for a structure tied to the destroyed wall/floor to be turned into a pile variation. So, if you destroy a wall with a picture on it, that picture will be turned into a pile.
- Structures now have parameters that decide how much resources are dropped when the structure is destroyed and how much is dropped when it is deconstructed.
Known issues
- Enemies don't set stuff on fire anymore. (this is temporary because the setting on fire stuff and commander AI don't play that nice at the moment :) )
- Having underwater grated doors might confuse the enemy AI resulting in enemies just standing at the edge of the map.
- If your settlers are experiencing weird animations with some actions, be sure to turn off V-sync and cap the game's FPS in the game's options. Cap it to 60fps. If the issue persists, cap it at 30.
- Some items are missing icons and localization values.
- Player-triggered events don't have sound effects
- Settlers will not refuel torches if there is no floor/ground beneath them.
- Settlers will not choose the closest production building (if there are more of the same type), but the one that has a production set first in the global list of productions.
That’ll be all for the update notes. New patches and improvements will be deployed accordingly. As always, use F10 and/or the experimental bug subforum for reporting experimental issues. If you want more dynamic/direct communication - head over to our Discord server. Even though we might not reply, we are reading everything. Thank you!
DISCLAIMERS:
⚠️ We decided to keep Dev version of the game on the experimental branch, and that means that a Dev log with red text will appear from time to time. This will help us get more info from your side when crashes and bug reports occur.
⚠️ Also, at the moment, the experimental and the main branch are very different. You should not play saves from the experimental branch on the main one as it can cause various bugs - please avoid doing this.