Citizens,
It's been just over 2 months since we launched Dream Engines: Nomad Cities in early access. Sadly, since that launch, it's been one crisis after another for us at Suncrash (one of which I told you about). It took a little longer than we planned, but I do feel we managed to create a decent update here despite all the difficulties.
I want to once again thank all of you early access players for your very valuable feedback. A lot of the changes and quality of life improvements here are directly related to things we saw and heard from you. Also thank you for your understanding regarding the delays.
Here are some of the larger changes in this update, and you can find the full list on our patch notes page.
New biome: The Ashfall Range
The new Ashfall Range biome is a fiery biome full of ash, fire and molten rock. This is a late game biome that appears in 4-skull difficulty or higher, and it contains a new resource unique to this biome called Liquid Fire.
This new resource comes with new production recipes, some of which create brand new construction materials, and others are alternative recipes for existing construction materials - adding more valid options and freedom when choosing your next landing destination.
Spreadbow, Spreadgun, and higher tier equipment
To better survive in the higher difficulty maps, we added new higher levels of equipment, including weapons and armor.
We also added a new type of weapon that shoots several projectiles in an arc, useful against stronger enemies that are nearby if you can hit them with the entire burst, and also against weaker enemies that are spread out.
Better Dream Archives
We improved our in-game encyclopedia so it provides more information that is easier to access. You can now see resources in these archives, and for each resources you can see how to get it, and the different uses it has. More resources and uses will be displayed as you unlock them with research.
We also fleshed out the other pages, and improved navigation by adding a filter and sorting the subjects alphabetically.
Modding Support
We now officially support modding for Dream Engines and we opened the Steam Workshop for uploading and downloading of mods.
The current level of modding support lets you change configuration files that determine the game's content, balancing, and many systems. You can also upload custom sprites that can be used for example for adding resources or equipment. All language files are moddable too so you can add community-based translations for the game.
Support for additional modding functionality will be added later down the road if there is demand for it.
This subject deserves a separate, more detailed post, which I'll make in the next few days. For more information, you can check our Modding Guide (work in progress).
Tier 3 enemy creatures
When you reached 5 skulls or high threat levels, you may have noticed that we used larger & stronger versions of the tier-2 enemies. In this update we added new tier-3 enemies, which will improve the balance and overall feel of the late game.
Balancing and quality of life improvements
Lots of balancing and quality of life improvements were made, most of them based on your feedback. Some of the more important ones:
* Tiny can now move between buildings
* When raids split and attack using different paths, you will now see them all in the minimap
* We added fuel caches in some maps as another way to get fuel early on
* When buildings are attacked their position will now appear in the minimap
* Depleted resources now suffer a larger penalty, but resource nodes start with more resources
Performance Improvements
We've identified and improved some performance bottlenecks, especially in the late game when the map is full of carts travelling to resource drop-offs.
We know we still have more optimizations to do, and will keep improving in future updates. If you encounter a situation where the game's performance is bad, please follow the instructions in this post and send us the save file, it will really help if we can identify those poor performance situations so we can improve and optimize them.
Saves from previous builds
Saves from previous builds are supported and should work fine for the most part, but there may be balancing issues and some of the changes will only take effect when you switch maps.
Future Plans
In this update we implemented some of the features in our roadmap, and we will now start planning our next update and which features it will include. You can probably expect a couple smaller patches as we collect feedback about these latest changes, while we work out which major additions/changes to tackle next.
Know that we are always listening to all feedback channels, and that your feedback is very much appreciated. We invite you to hop onto our discord server and chat with us directly, leave your feedback in the Steam discussion forums, or in-game feedback form.
If you are enjoying the game, please don't forget to leave us a review on Steam. Positive reviews are a great way to support games that you enjoy and developers that you like. It helps our motivation and lets other players know what you like about the game.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on all these changes.
The Suncrash team