These 2 weeks we focused on UI improvements and gameplay tweaks, ending in 0.25.2 (with 0.26.0 very close to release)
Gameplay
Quest towns will now give rewards as they join the alliance (including Suamox), and explorers are also now available at towns to join your party.
Normal “trade” in towns using “gold value” as currency has been removed; only barter is available now. The gold “tejuelos” (Muisca coin-likes) have been added as a tangible trade good.
Consequently, the current way to add people to your expedition (“buying” them) has been replaced with a system where you have to spend “story points” to have them join your party; you earn story points in battle and also by completing quests, making discoveries or exploring the land.
User Interface
The round compass has been replaced with the compass bar at the top of the screen, and it’s now oriented to the camera to prevent confusion with mouse movement. In the place where it used to be, the “current biome” indicator has been added, in the future, it will contain information about the bonuses and modifiers on exploration caused by it. The scale of the minimap has also been changed to make it actually useful.
The “Take All” button has been added to the loot screen, and the Expedition Status has been improved a bit to be able to use items quicker and with the units sorted by type.
Scenario
The “ravaged towns” mechanic was added, as days go by, towns will be ravaged by the invasion force, so you’ll no longer be able to have their inhabitants join your party or restock supplies.
With the guidance of our linguistics advisor, we added some basic Muisca words in some dialogs. This will become more elaborate in the future, but we want to start introducing some elements.
We also put some work in the ending sequence to give the players some gratification (IF they manage to win!)
Combat
We added the Crossbowman unit, replacing the historically inaccurate military archers we had in place for the Spanish forces. Indigenous archers also saw their range increased so now they are more useful.
World and Procgen
Added more vegetation to wetlands, which involved big changes in how forests are grown (now using cellular automata instead of brute-force growing in random directions)
Did some tweaks for weather to be less rainy, and disabled “foam” for rivers and lakes since it was causing them to look bad sometimes due to the low resolution of our terrain.
Finally, we added a bit of variety to the towns with the inclusion of more types of huts (bohíos).