Heya merchants!
We have a bigger update this time due to a longer dev cycle for this build, so enjoy!
Settlement & Environment
The following gameplay improvements have been made to the interactive elements in settlements and environments.
Many other improvements have been made according to player feedback to help with gameplay elements and quality of life, such as:
- Randomly Encountered Merchants - random merchants and traders met in settlements now are more full-fledged, meaning a better system at managing goods available for trading, and also retain their data in save games and are not just one-time randomly generated NPCs.
- Trader Types - These merchants are also split into two types: local traders and travelling traders. The main difference is that local traders are local settlers who will have the same needs at the settlement itself (e.g. the settlement itself is short on tools), while travelling traders are only stopping by and have their own very different needs and what they’re looking for.
- Move & Interact - We have made improvements to the pathfinding system so that when interacting with elements in the environment, only a single click is needed (as opposed to the old code, where another click to interact is needed)
- Rumours - Rumours from interacting with locals have improved by changing it so that most rumours will either reveal some info about trading goods value in another settlement or wilderness events nearby, as well as give a bit of merchant experience.
Combat System
- Game Over After Defeat - Defeat in combat used to take away some trading goods or coins and allow the player to continue on, but often than not, the amount of goods taken away is enough to set the player back to fail the job objective, hence leading to game over anyway. This has been changed back to the default game over in Story Mode, or retreat back to the merchant company in Company Mode.
- Bug Fixes - Various combat system bug fixes have also been made thanks to playtesting.
UI and Quality of Life
- Minimap - A fully working minimap system has been implemented for every settlement, showing the player’s location in the settlement and nearby buildings of interest. This was a heavily requested addition from playtest feedback.
- Trading Goods UI - Each settlement now also has a UI element that shows the type of trading goods they produce and need next to the minimap
- Hide/Reveal UI - The minimap, objective UI, and trading goods UI can all be toggled to hide or reveal with a click at the player’s discretion.
- World Map - The world map has also been improved with better UI labels for objectives and events, as well as UI pointers added to show the distance between settlements relative to the player’s current position. These were also a requested addition from feedback and should’ve been implemented much earlier, but were easy to miss for us developers.
Content & Timeline
- We have also been working hard behind the scenes with assets and content development (many of which will be a secret until release)
- Another good news is that we have finally locked in a solid release window for the game based on our development timeline. More news will be announced in the coming months!
Until next time,
Cynthia
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