Hi everyone,
I have managed to get a decent bit of work done on the settlements, but for now, I want to talk about some of the smaller changes I made (and uploaded) along the way.
First of all, with all of the changes to the settlements, warehouses are now the main center of the village, which means that all buildings need to be placed within range of a warehouse, rather than a market. This just makes more sense, as not all buildings use food, but having access to logistics is important across the board. This does, however, mean that some buildings need to be placed in multiple ranges: The house, for example, now needs to be placed within range of a warehouse AND within range of a market, which required some changes to the UI.
As a result, the game can now accommodate considerations of up to three different ranges (ranged towers need the warehouse, market, and ammo depot in range). When there is overlap between all three ranges, the ground is shown as green - otherwise the ground within range of warehouses is shown as red (today's image). I also added a bit of UI text on the left of the screen (also in today’s image), showing you exactly which of the requirements are fulfilled and which are not.
Beyond that, I also added corners to all buildings, which show you the extent of a building's blueprint. This means that the dimensions of buildings with outside areas (garden, shed, paths) should be easier to understand, and you should also have an easier time aligning buildings with each other. The corners are only shown while you are in construction mode, so they won't affect the visual immersion of the settlement.
Finally, I was also able to fix some bugs and do some optimisation along the way, including to the maps. For example, the map on Pirate’s Peak will no longer show up as dark as it did before, which was a problem with some competing lighting settings. Performance of the maps should also be slightly improved, which should help with lower end machines during command of your armies.
In terms of the settlements, I have recreated the consumption buildings, and made development points work at this point for each settlement at this point, so the next step is to create research to have a use for them. More on that in the next post!
Until next time!