Update 4 - now on the experimental branch!

Hello everyone!

This time, we won’t tease you with what’s coming in the next big update because it’s right here (part one, at least - we will be making further changes as needed). And guess what, Update 4 is all about addressing your, the players’, feedback!

You will probably be happy to hear that we’ve removed district limits entirely, reworked the distribution to make it truly automatic, and massively boosted the game’s performance.

On the content side, we’ve got a new map (Craters) and multiple faction-specific changes. This includes an entirely new Iron Teeth food production chain, complete with many new crops and buildings. We have also replaced all monuments and updated several other buildings to make each faction more unique. On top of that, we have quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.

Switch to the experimental branch as explained here, try all that out - preferably by starting a new game - and let us know what you think!

Food production changes

The “making factions more unique” project began with Update 3 but today, we’ve got a heavy hitter. In Update 4, the Iron Teeth receive a new, exclusive food production chain, with most of the existing crops becoming exclusive to Folktails. We designed the new Iron Teeth crops and buildings to reflect the faction’s industrial nature. For them, food is all but another cog in the great lumberpunk machine. They want their eatables produced efficiently and on a large scale and now have the tools for that. Let Folktails keep their tasty organic food nonsense!

Please note: if you load an old IT save on an Update 4 build it should work but things won’t be the same anymore - as detailed below. As all Iron Teeth know, progress sometimes requires sacrifice. If possible, please start a new game.

• New crop: Kohlrabi (can be eaten raw; Iron Teeth only) - this starting food keeps the belly full, but that’s about it.
• New crop: Canola (Iron Teeth only) - used to produce a new good, Canola oil.
• New crop: Cassava (Iron Teeth only) - fermented in the Fermenter.
• New crop: Soybean (Iron Teeth only) - fermented in the Fermenter.
• New crop: Corn (Iron Teeth only) - turned into rations in the Food Factory.
• New crop: Eggplant (Iron Teeth only) - turned into rations in the Food Factory.
• New tree: Mangrove Tree (grown in shallow waters; Iron Teeth only) - yields tasty fruit, and in an emergency, can be cut for some logs.
• New crop: Coffee Bush (grown by Forester; Iron Teeth only) - yields beans that are then roasted to make coffee, duh.

• New building: Fermenter (Logs x 25; Iron Teeth only) - with the unique process known only to the Iron Teeth, it produces Fermented Cassava, Soybean, and Mushrooms.
• New building: Oil Press (120 SP; Logs x 20, Planks x 20, Gears x 20; Iron Teeth only) - squeezes oil out of Canola seeds.
• New building: Hydroponic Garden (200 SP; Planks x 20, Gears x 10, Metal blocks x 5; stackable; Iron Teeth only) - with a steady supply of water and over the course of a long period, this stackable garden grows algae and mushrooms, used to create highly nutritious rations and fermented food.
• New building: Food Factory (300 SP; Planks x 40, Gears x 15, Metal blocks x 10; Iron Teeth only) - produces nutritious rations from corn, eggplants, and algae.
• New Building: Coffee Brewery (500 SP; Treated planks x 25, Gears x 10, Metal blocks x 15; Iron Teeth only) - brews coffee from gathered coffee beans.
• New tree: Oak (takes 30 days to fully grow, yields 8 logs). These mighty trees may take a while to grow but the reward is grand!
• Wheat, Carrots, Potatoes, Sunflowers, Cattail, and Spadderdock are now Folktails-exclusive. On existing Iron Teeth saves, ground crops are replaced with Kohlrabi, and aquatic crops are gone.
• Chestnut Tree and Maple are now Folktails-exclusive. On existing Iron Teeth saves, these trees are replaced with Pines and Oaks, respectively.
• Lowered Maple’s log yield.
• Aquatic Farmhouse, Grill, Gristmill, and Bakery are now Folktails-exclusive. On existing Iron Teeth saves, these buildings are gone, with related goods replaced with various new goods. For example, Bread is replaced with Fermented Soybean.

New monuments and more

In addition to the above, we’re updating several other buildings to make Folktails and Iron Teeth playthroughs feel different, both in terms of gameplay and visuals. Notably, all six monuments were replaced and are now faction-specific.

• New building: Farmer Monument (1000 SP, 200x Logs; Folktails only). Folktails salute the workers who ensure they have something to put in the oven.
• New building: Brazier of Bonding (3000 SP, 400x Planks; Folktails only). Because in these trying times, family is all that matters.
• New building: Fountain of Joy (12000 SP, 400x Planks, 100x Treated Planks, 300 Metal blocks; needs to be placed in water to operate; Folktails only). Having an abundance of water is definitely a reason to rejoice.
• New building: Laborer Monument (1000 SP, 200x Logs; Iron Teeth only). Work hard, work hard!
• New building: Flame of Unity (3000 SP, 300x Planks, 50xMetal blocks; Iron Teeth only). How many Iron Teeth do you need to change the lightbulb refuel a brazier? Four, apparently.
• New building: Tribute to Ingenuity (12000 SP, 400x Gears, 100x Treated Planks, 300x Metal blocks; needs power to operate; Iron Teeth only). The burden of the world lies heavy on an Iron Teeth’s shoulders.
• On existing saves, most old monuments are replaced with new versions. The only exception is Tribute to Ingenuity (Folktails) which simply disappears. It’s huge, and a fountain built a hundred feet above ground would be weird even by beaver standards.

• Updated building: Farmhouse was renamed Efficient Farmhouse (Logs x 25). It is now exclusive to Folktails and has three workers.
• New building: Farmhouse (Logs x 20; Iron Teeth only; 2 workers). It is a smaller (2x2) version of the building previously known under that name.
• New building: Industrial Lumbermill (Logs x 20). This Lumbermill variant is exclusive to the Iron Teeth and has a new, twice as sawwy model. Also, has two workers.
• Updated building: Lumbermill (Logs x 15; Folktails). It is now Folktails-exclusive.
• Updated models for the following buildings, with different variants for each faction: Campfire, Forester, and Tapper’s Shack.

Districts rework

The introduction of districts solved many problems Timberborn had in the past, including but not limited to, original performance woes. However, we heard a lot of feedback about this feature and specifically, district range limits. Over time, we’ve optimized the game’s code to make the range less of a performance hog, and in Update 4, we’re removing range limits entirely. If you want to cover the entire map with a single district, you can! Just remember that if a worker spends half their day commuting, their efficiency and well-being take a hit. You still may optimize and specialize your colonies with districts, but it’s now optional and way more straightforward.

• Districts no longer have range limits.
• Colored range lines remain on paths to inform you that a building might be too far from the District Center to operate efficiently.
• Added a colored heatmap to better communicate ranges across the district. The heatmap is visible after clicking any path tile within the district.
• Added colored numerical range indicators to the Settlement Panel and individual building panels to further help you identify buildings that might be too remote.

Distribution rework

Here’s another reason to continue using districts - we’ve completely reworked the distribution mechanics to make it (truly) automatic. By default, your workers will distribute goods to districts with a warehouse for a particular good, or a factory that consumes it. Some basic goods such as water, food, and logs are always imported, even if the district does not have dedicated storage for them. While those default settings should work for most cases, you can customize the rules for import and export in the new Distribution tab added to the Settlement Panel.

• New building: District Crossing (1000 SP; Logs x 30, Planks x 15). This two-sided building replaces the District Gate. Each side of the building connects to a different district and has dedicated workers responsible for moving goods between the Crossing and the rest of their district.
• Removed Distribution Post and Drop-off Point from the game.
• Added an additional toggle (“Supply”) to all storage buildings. When set to “Supply”, it employs haulers and District Crossing workers to pick up the goods from the storage and redistribute them to other warehouses, while continuing to accept new goods.
• Goods are distributed across districts proportionally to the capacity of storage and factory inputs for a particular good. Warehouses set to “Empty” or “Supply” are excluded from the import demand calculations.
• Added the “Distribution” tab to the Settlement Panel. Use it to set per-district, per-resource export thresholds and enable or disable import from outside. If the import is enabled, you can also choose whether the good should be imported even if the district does not have any warehouses that store it or factories that need it. That’s the default setting for key goods such as water.
• “Labor” category on the bottom toolbar received a new icon and was renamed “District Management”. It also houses District Center (and District Crossing) now.

Maps

If the excellent selection of player-made contest maps is not enough, it’s finally time for a new built-in map - Craters (192x192)! Fire up this medium-difficulty map and find your way across three treacherous craters, starting next to the map’s border. We also made some tweaks to older maps (which will only apply when starting a new game).

• New map: Craters (192x192).
• Tweaked the layout for Plains, Meander, Waterfalls, and Lakes so that these maps are not too easy play better after the removal of district limits.
• Since Maple and Chestnut Tree are now faction-specific for Folktails, all built-in maps have been updated to replace the faction-specific trees with other plants.
• Removed a misplaced berry bush in the Thousand Islands starting area.

Optimization

Making optimizations that help rather than break something is a lengthy process. We needed to thoroughly test different approaches and today, we’re proud to publish a batch of changes that greatly improve the game’s performance. We aimed to reduce lag spikes, cut loading times, and increase the framerates, especially on larger maps and settlements with hundreds of units. Your mileage may vary depending on a save and your configuration but based on our benchmarks, Update 4 increases the average FPS by up to 80% on Windows and 60% on macOS. Let us know your results!

• Made multiple CPU and GPU optimizations that greatly improved framerates.
• Decreased loading times by 15% on average.
• Selecting large numbers of objects (for example when marking tree-cutting areas) should no longer cause frame drops.

Quality of Life and UI

• It is now possible to select goods for warehouses using dropdowns available in the storage overlay view.
• “Hanging” buildings (Water Pumps, Showers, Gravity Batteries, Bridges, and Lidos) are now easier to correctly place on the grid.
• Tooltips for several buildings such as Water Pumps and Lidos now inform you that the building needs water access.
• Added new information to crop tooltips to indicate whether a crop can be eaten raw.
• Farmhouses, Flags, and other gathering buildings now adjust their inventory capacity based on resources in range so they no longer skew the fill-rate indicators.
• Ruins now display a number of goods “in stock” in a way similar to other places.
• Added progress bars for Engines, Irrigation Towers, and Medical Beds to indicate how long their supply will last.
• Tweaked all in-game progress bars to be consistent across the UI.
• Made the font sizes more consistent across the UI.
• The scroll bar is now highlighted when hovering a cursor over it.
• Tweaked the tooltip position relative to the cursor position.
• Fixed click sounds and highlights that were not aligned with the actual clickable areas on the toolbar.
• Added good icons to dropdowns.
• Reordered needs in beaver panels to align them with how the game usually progresses.
• Names for goods across the UI should now correctly use the plural form.

Balance

• Default difficulty settings have been rebalanced in tune with Update 4 changes.
• Ruins can no longer be demolished, making them an obstacle map creators can use to pace the player’s progress.
• Power Wheel’s power output is now affected by the worker’s Walking Speed. That makes sense, right?
• Dandelion is known to be an unwelcome party guest so we’ve lowered the speed at which it self-spreads.

Audio

• Added new sound sets for the following buildings and objects: Water Source, Ruins, Underground Ruins, Inventor, and Forester.
• Added a new sound effect for the dynamite explosion.
• Added a missing click sound for Barriers.

Visual

• Some crops’ models are now randomly rotated on spawn.
• Particle effects are now only turned on for working buildings (rather than having a minor particle effect for idle buildings).
• Added the antialiasing checkbox to Settings.
• Tweaked preview models for Dandelions and Blueberries.
• Tweaked models for Teeth Grindstone, Refinery, and Sunflowers.
• Added the “Update 4” bar to the main menu so you can’t miss what you’ve just launched.
• The lights at Campfires, Rooftop Terraces, and other self-lighted buildings are now less prone to bugging out.

Misc.

• Tweaked the save validation mechanism. The game now recognizes “soft” and “hard” incompatibility. When trying to load a save with a “soft” incompatibility, you will be warned about possible issues but the game will still let you load the save. When the save is too old and the “hard” incompatibility is detected, the game refuses to load it.
• Goods recovered from deleted buildings are now split more evenly across rubble piles.
• Added new studio employees, Eager Beavers, and Masterful Architects to the credits section.
• Removed the “Empty storage” toggle from Engines and Irrigation Towers.
• Resources used by factories are now consumed right at the start of production.
• Fixed rounding errors, for example for tree growth, displayed as 100% despite being slightly lower.
• It is no longer possible to build a platform over a Medical Bed.
• Fixed the Breeding Pod’s collider.
• Fixed the Small Industrial Pile’s collider.
• Whenever a new beaver is born, something special may or may not happen.

Bug fixes

• Fixed “path not available” prompts appearing on construction previews when the path itself is at the construction stage (for example to be built on platforms).
• Fixed a bug with Gatherer displaying the “Nothing to do in range” error.
• Fixed blurred status icons.
• Fixed blinking status icons on Scavenger flags.
• Fixed a bug with incorrect range indicators on stairs.
• Fixed beaver/bot toggles that sometimes would be displayed incorrectly.
• Fixed range lines on paths messing up with buildings’ blueish range indicators.
• Fixed a game crash caused by setting priorities for numbers of objects that were dam too high.
• Fixed beavers so thirsty they would break through water tanks’ back walls.
• Fixed overzealous farmers and foresters that would sometimes try to plant something on an already occupied slot.
• Fixed a bug with warehouses being emptied to make room for a new good that wouldn’t be added to the storage count for that new good.
• Fixed a bug with selfish beavers that called dibs on a stocked good and wouldn’t let anyone touch it.
• Fixed tutorial highlights not disappearing in certain situations.
• Tweaked the model for the Beaver Statue (Iron Teeth) so that it no longers boops itself with the hammer. Ouch!