Hi everyone,
As usual, thank you very much for your feedback throughout the week! We have just uploaded the latest patch, which fixes some issues, and adds a new UI feature.
The new UI feature can be found just under the inventory in most buildings, and shows you which villagers are scheduled to interact with the building. This means you can now tell that someone is already on their way to bring wood to a construction site, or to pick up stone from a Quarry - which helps be a bit more aware of what is happening.
While we like the functionality, it does make some of the building book a little more cluttered than we’d like, so we have been thinking about moving this function to its own tab in the book, so you have a cleaner overview of the key functions of the building, and can get into the details only if you choose to. If we do this, we would probably also move the worker tabs to the same page to make room on the right of the building book. Let us know what you think about those ideas!
(The new outstanding tasks UI can seem a little cluttered at times)
We have also finally caught up with updating the port on Opal Reef, getting rid of the old “port” building (which, for the nostalgic of you was actually labelled "the courthouse’ and was the first model that John made for the game in Sketchup - back when this game design idea was very much being prototyped - and before he fell in love with Blender), and replacing it with the new one that was already in Spike Ridge. This has necessitated moving the port down to the waterfront, which changes the layouts of the starting areas and increases the distances from the warehouse to the port.
As a result, the map feels quite different to Spike Ridge with its closer proximity between the two. We are happy with this for the moment though will consider making the path a little easier to connect the two if there is enough feedback for it. Warning: This change will actually break any games you previously saved on Opal Reef. If anyone wants to finish a game they saved on there, let me know and I will try to help.
(New position of the port in Opal Reef)
We have also had a lot of feedback telling us that the existing trailer and screenshot didn’t really reflect the depth of the game, and asking us to do a sort of “developer playthrough” to show how it can be played. While neither of us has ever done anything like this, we decided to give it a shot - which did not work out very well in our first try. The second time we already saw improvements, and the third time was pretty much spot on. So of course, I had forgotten to hit “record” on that one.
That means we still have the sound but not the video, and while I would love to spare John having to record it with me again, the randomness of resources would make it rather strange to hear us talking about metal mines close-by when there aren’t any in the video. We will try to do our fourth take this weekend, and hopefully I will press record this time. (It is also amazing to me just how many things we have to do that aren’t actually game development at this stage.)
We will continue with bug fixing (at this point, it’s mostly elusive bugs, but some of which are pretty consistent), adding keybindings (being able to save settings has made this possible now), and I will be adding options for players to define their grid snap (how buildings align to others) and angle snap (how finely you can rotate buildings) - that way the city builders among us will have a few more options!
Until next week!