Six month of progress - second edition!

Hey all!

The new playtest should have gone live ages ago, unfortunately, I am a slow poke or I just blame that I am working solo on the project. ːsteammockingː It just takes a lot of effort to make a switch to a new design mid-development I guess. ːsteamsadː

New Voxel Importer

I implemented a new voxel importer, which can handle animations inside models. This was not possible before. All the animations of multiple units can now live in a single Vox file. Finally, the model names are now converted correctly from Magica Voxel to Unity, which is a great help.

It was quite a big unplanned task, but in light of needing to add more units in the future, it was a decent decision to invest the time.

Better dev console

I wrote a better developer console, which has more flexibility. It eases debugging and improves the speed of testing the game.

UI redesign, tooltips

• Improved the look of the UI.
• Removed a lot of clutter and made it more readable.
• Removed any overhead UI from objects as it was not consistent with the rest of the UI.
• Reworked most of the tooltips and added new tooltips for hamlets, equipment, special attacks, battle stances and more etc.

Planting and growing trees

Once a forester is placed and built, the player can choose between planting and chopping trees.
Don't forget that chopping down trees will make your base look awful. Your local population might hate this.

Foliage is moving in the wind again. This feature got lost over several unity updates and changes. Fortunately, it's back now.

Alchemist Building Changes

The alchemist has been reworked to fit the new design. It is an important building for bases focussing on mining or crop fields. Alchemists are not very popular among the population as they drain the beauty of bases significantly. More upgrades for certain magic realms, like monster creation, are coming.

• Adds research points to the player every game tick.
• Has a negative morale modifier for the base it lives.
• Only one alchemist building per base is allowed.
• Converts Mana to Gold.
• Upgrade to improve Mana to Gold Conversion.
• Upgrade to convert Ore to Gold.
• Upgrade to improve Ore to Gold Conversion.
• Upgrade to improve the fertility of a base by sacrificing some of the base's beauty.
• Upgrade to improve the mining of a base by sacrificing some of the base beauty.

Hamlet Feature

The hamlet is an undertaking and still needs more work. A few features are missing, like the annexation of surrounding land and the upgrading process to towns and cities.

• Clicking on a base will show the Hamlet UI if a town hall is available.
• Hamlets can only be created on bases with a decent population.
• Hamlets can be named, taxes can be adjusted, the population space increases and the population happiness improves.
• Taxes influence population happiness, depending on the political research and the current state of the empire.
• Hamlets can annex directly neighbouring bases and cannot be found next to each other. (Planned)
• Hamlets have either the status loyal or revolting. Revolting means that it has a chance to convert to neutral depending on different factors.
• Revolting hamlets can mainly occur due to a mad population or enemy wizard spells.
• Depending on the size of the population, militia squads are automatically recruited.
• Militia units cannot be controlled by the player. They will fight only in the interest of Hamlet's population.
• Militia gets automatically added to the build queue of town halls, depending on the size of the population.
• When the players remove the added militia units from the training queue, the population happiness decreases significantly.
• Added gold building upkeep label to hamlet UI.
• When the town hall gets destroyed, Hamlet will disband shortly afterwards. The UI shows a timer when the hamlet disbands.
• When a hamlet disbands, the remaining population not fitting in residential houses is now distributed to the rest of the empire bases.
• When a hamlet with an ongoing revolt disbands, the revolt calms down.

Hamlet revolts and militia squads

Hamlet Revolt happens when your population gets mad for a long time. Successful revolts can lead to independent bases.

• Hamlets get into a revolting state when the population is mad for a certain amount of time and with a certain chance.
• The militia training increases (currently doubles) if enough resources are available.
• The player has no access to training queues of any building in the hamlet.
• The player cannot destroy any buildings.
• The player cannot place any military building.
• The population immigration to the hamlet stops.
• All militia squads convert to a neutral AI and attack stationed military units and buildings.
• If no defensive buildings or units are at the base, the militia will change the hamlet to a neutral/independent state over time.
• Revolt has a minimum time. Once it starts, it takes at least a certain amount of time to end.
• The revolt ends when no militia is left or the population gets happier.
• During a revolt, the Militia is trained using the Hamlet draft resource. The draft is calculated by the available population and a special revolt multiplier. A 50% revolt multiplier and 100 population means that 50 "draft" resources are available for the revolt.
• If a militia costs 5 "draft" the hamlet trains up to 10 militia with a maximum of 5 militias parallel due to population limits.
• After a revolt the happiness of the population is reset to calm. A cooldown is set to make sure to prevent a chain of revolts.
• The tax slider is not enabled during a revolt. No taxes are paid to the empire.
• During a revolt all troops will leave the reserve tent.
• Workers cannot moved from the base during a revolt.
• Workers cannot sent to a revolting hamlet and don't get attacked.
• Workers can build buildings during a revolt to improve the beauty of the base.
• Placing of civilian buildings is allowed during a revolt, but military buildings are not.
• A revolt tooltip describes all consequences of the current revolt.
• The militia trained during a revolt reduces the population. The amount is defined by the militia unit draft cost.
• The Hamlet UI shows if a revolt happens after a certain amount of game cycles.

Population and resource upkeep

Finally the population and the buildings are now connected to the resource upkeep.

• Missing upkeep for buildings is now damaging buildings over time.
• Missing upkeep (food) for the population is decreasing happiness over time, growth rate and immigration are reduced to 0.
• Longer food shortages can lead to a starving population.
• Missing upkeep (gold) for Hamlet's administration decreases the population's happiness over time.
• Added population and hamlet upkeep to tooltips.
• Hamlet's upkeep drops to 0 during a revolt, though food upkeep for the population stays the same.
• Population starvation: immigration and growth of the population stopped for the whole empire.
• Once a certain threshold is reached, parts of the population will die from starvation each update cycle.
• The starvation status is shown in the population tooltip.
• Taxes influence the happiness of the population. This incorporates the hamlet tax and its expenses for troops and buildings as well as the overall income and upkeep of the empire.
• Taxes which are too low (upkeep is higher than income) or too high (income is a lot higher than upkeep) will affect happiness.
• Indicators showing if the population mood is going up or down at several places in the UI.
• The node info tooltip shows why the population mood changes in detail.

Research

The research system has been reworked and is now similar to the one in Stellaris. The player gets 3 - 4 random research options. Each research has a rarity. Epic and legendary research options are harder to get and cost more research points.

• Research points are generated by different buildings like Alchemist, Wizard Laboratory, Blacksmith, Architect and others.
• Each wizard has a different amount of research points it generates.
• The more research points are generated, the faster the research is done.
• Research points are not collectable as they only apply when a research is active.
• Research can stop and resume anytime.

During the upcoming playtest, I will collect feedback and see how it affects gameplay and fun. The idea of the change was to make every playthrough a bit more interesting, as it's not possible to use the same build multiple times.

Worker Assignment

• Removed the overhead assignment worker UI and integrated it into the building UI.
• Automatically assigned workers are also shown below the auto-assign slider.
• When the manual assignment is activated, each worker can get assigned to a building or job.
• This will enable worker specialization in the future e.g. farmers, tree planters.
• Switching between auto and manual assigning does leave the workers in place as far as possible.
• Buildings which have workers assigned and get damaged are now repaired by the already assigned workers.
• Workers who get into a specific state like burn/freeze or pushback now stop their work animation correctly.
• Workers whose jobs get reset while manually assigned (due to different circumstances) get reassigned after a short period.
• Killed workers get automatically removed from manually assigned jobs.
• Destroyed job objects like resources, buildings or units, get their manually assigned workers removed automatically.

Magic Realms and the spell system

Magic schools are now called magic realms. Wizards cannot level up in a realm like before. They need to collect realm books to learn more spells from a realm.

The balance sheet shows how realm books affect the number of spells a wizard can learn. This idea is borrowed from the wonderful game Master of Magic.

Here is an example of the Nature Realm and all the spells it includes.

• Spells have a rarity and can be researched.
• Spellbooks can be found in loot.
• Scrolls can be found in loot and used even though the spell has not been researched before.
• Realm books are integrated into the loot system.
• Chests can contain realm books.
• All realm books have a legendary rarity.

Wizard Selection

Players can select a wizard at the start of the game. Currently, six different wizards are available. More wizards will be added after the EA launch.

Checkout the video below:

Additional features like selectable traits, a broader selection of spells and realm books are planned. Selected magic realms might exclude each other, like Water and Fire, Nature and Arcane as soon as more realms are added to the game.

Wizard Character UI and levelling

The Empire UI now has a wizard button to open the wizard character UI. The character UI shows the wizard and its attributes, skills and learned spells.

A wizard can now earn experience points and level up. Experience Points are now given to the wizard for the following activities:

• Automatically.
• Casting a spell (with a cooldown, to prevent spamming).
• Conquering a base.
• Winning a battle.
• Placing buildings.
• Recruiting units.
• Researching spells.
• During incarnation.
• Creating a hamlet.
• Solving quests.

The following wizard modifications can be raised during a level-up:

• Power Costs
• Casting Range
• Area Of Effect
• Projectile Speed
• Incarnation Upkeep Costs
• Damage
• Healing
• Enchantment Duration
• Curse Duration

Forest Fires rework

• Forest fires spreading is less likely now - this might change for games with a higher difficulty.
• When a tree burns, the fire ramps up and then slowly reduces the size of the tree while the fire stays at a specific scale.
• The navigation mesh is updated once a part of the forest fire is extinguished, otherwise performance hits would be too significant.
• All fire settings are configurable and can be adjusted with specific difficulty modifiers.
• When growing trees are burning, growth will stop.
• When the burning has stopped, and the tree hasn't burned, it will grow back to a normal size again.
• When a fire is extinguished with a spell, the area is calculated more generously than when starting a fire.
• Some projectiles (ice sphere) can now stop a fire at a grid position it's shot at.

More changes for forest fires coming with seasons:

• Worker will automatically extinguish fires.
• Rainy weather will also stop the fire.
• Scorched earth decals will be placed underneath fires and vanish over time once the fire is out.
• Fires close to buildings will reduce the health of buildings.
• Fire can burn down crops and destroy crop fields completely.
• Seasons: In the winter season fires are very unlikely. In the summer season a lot more likely.

Scrolls

Scrolls can be found in loot drops or inside treasure chests and are one-time usage spells. Scrolls don't have any realm book requirements.

Message UI

The message UI has been completely changed and is looking like this:

• Messages get sorted into a category.
• Once right-clicked on, the player can dismiss it.
• Left-clicking opening the message text again and jumping to the location of the event.
• Up to 512 Messages will be saved in a history log and can be accessed via the Empire UI.
• Critical Messages will open a message dialogue right away. This will be configurable in the settings later.

Here is a small video showing off the features.

Strategy UI removed

The strategy UI is gone, and there are currently four different attack types when sending troops to enemy territory.

Conquering:

The army will attack all military buildings and units and try to conquer the base. Economic buildings don't need to get destroyed to conquer bases.

Resource Raid:

The army will try to raid as many resources as possible from economic building. The raid loot will be dropped into chests when the raid is successful.

• At the beginning of a raid, a resource pool is calculated, depending on the player's resources and the buildings and resource nodes at the base.
• Raiders will only attack economy buildings, and when a building gets to 50% health or below, each hit from a melee unit will steal resources instead of doing any damage.
• Siege weapons and any ranged units will stop attacking once the building reaches 50% health, as only melee units can raid.
• The remaining health of the building is used as a resource pool. Each time the building is raided it's reduced.
• Depending on the number of units, the raiding formation can only carry a certain amount of resources.
• If the whole formation gets destroyed during a raid, the stolen resources will spawn as loot at the last valid position.
• Once the formation dissolves at its home base, the resources will drop as loot. Players will get a message about the successful raid.
• It might be interesting to add a well-armoured wagon unit, which could increase the number of resources a formation can carry. This role is currently taken by the ram unit, due to its big carry capacity.
• After a raid, buildings get a visible raid cooldown and cannot be raided until the cooldown wears off.

Here is a video of a raid. The feature is still in development:

Economy Attack:

The army will destroy the economic infrastructure of the base, leaving military buildings alone and focusing on civilian buildings. Once the troops achieve it's, goal they will leave the base.

Military Attack:

The army will destroy the defence and military buildings of the base, leaving economic buildings alone. Once the troops achieve their goal, they will leave the base.

Battle UI

While reworking the attack strategy, I realized that it's sometimes hard to follow a battle. That is why the new UI was introduced.

It shows the enemy units, destroyed/lost gold values and the morale and health of the attacking or defending squads. The updating health bar of attackers and defenders also helps to understand how well or poorly the battle is going.

For attacking armies, the option to merge formations or command them to flee altogether was added, as well as buttons to incarnate a wizard to a selected formation or stop the incarnation.

Battle Stances

Battle stances are an alpha feature, which means they might disappear again if they don't add enough fun to the game. They can influence the following attributes of your formations/base defending army and can be changed in the battle UI.

• Attack speed of melee weapons.
• Attack speed of ranged weapons.
• Casting speed for magic units.
• Shield protection.
• Critical attack change.
• Health regeneration.
• Armor regeneration.
• Morale buffs/debuffs,

Additional stances can be gained by research (for now) or a hero skill (later). The three common stances are available from the start.

Common Stances

• Balanced Stance - No changes.
• Offensive Stance - Attack Speed +25%, Shield protection -50%, Critical Attack Chance +2%
• Defensive Stance - Attack Speed -25%, Shield protection +50%, Critical Attack Chance -2%

Uncommon Stances

• Ranged Stance - Attack Speed Ranged +50%, Attack Speed Melee -50%, Shield Protection +15%
• Melee Stance - Attack Speed Ranged -50%, Attack Speed Melee +50%, Shield Protection -15%
• Magic Stance - Casting Speed +50%, Melee Speed -25%, Ranged Attack Speed -25%, Shield Protection +15%

The current stances are in the game for testing. More stances with different rarities will be introduced if it proves to be a fun feature.

Hundreds of smaller changes/bugfixes

The list would be too long. During the testing phases, hundreds of issues and bugs were fixed, and performance improved. The amount of "technical debt" has been reduced significantly as the project is getting into is seventh year of development... ːstressː

When to expect the new playtest?

I have tried to make predictions several times and failed. I guess it's a few weeks, probably two months away. Once all the features below are completed, the playtest will go in its first iteration.

• Scouting and exploration feature.
• Polish the following buildings: Architect, Guard Building, Town Hall, Temples, Blacksmith, Forester and Wizard Laboratory.
• Apprentice Unit - Unit with a magic spell, depending on the wizards main magic realm.
• 30 newly designed spells and at least as many research options.
• AI Enemy rework to cope with all added features.
• Adding a skirmish test map.
• Balancing and polishing.

The second iteration of the playtest will be conducted, once the randomly generated maps are in. All the other listed items are optional and a lot smaller.

• Randomly generated maps - not started yet and will take at least a month.
• Adding more biomes to the map generation.
• Quest UI rework.
• Solved quests will spawn specific loot or chests.
• Further UI improvements and polish.
• Skirmish UI will include map generation parameters and configurable AI enemies.
• Adding a variety of military, support and npc units.

A few features I talked about in my last update will probably not make it into the playtest:

• Seasons
• Different types of crop fields.
• Animal hideouts.
• Arda Firin Gates and the forces of the dark (skeleton, zombies, ghouls etc.)

When to expect the EA launch?

During the playtest, I will collect feedback from the players and evaluate what needs to be changed to make the game as much fun as possible. I will post news once the roadmap has been updated. The current goal is to release the EA this year.

I have changed the visible release date to 2024, as I am still not sure when in 2024 I can finally release the EA version.

Thanks for reading!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368160/Heart_Of_Muriet/