Hi Everyone,
So it has been 12 solid days work since release now, and I think we have the worst of the bugs and quality of life issues under control. Thanks very much for your patience and bug reports. Those of you on the testing branch have been a huge help as well!
Let's dive into the changes.
Hotter Fireplaces
I have increased the amount of heat that the fireplaces will emit from a 5 tile to a 6 tile radius for optimal heating. This amounts to a heating area of 75->108 tiles. As rooms get bigger than that, the heating power is proportionally reduced. Also keep in mind at 108 tiles, the most heating improvement a single fireplace can give is +10 degrees over those 108 tiles. So if it is -20 outside and you have a lot of floor space you will still need multiple fireplaces (just not quite as many)
New Wood Ash Recipe
I had never anticipated the need for so much Wood Ash, but some of you have quite the major farming and tanning operations and Wood Ash gets low. The Charcoal Kiln now has a recipe to turn Bark from the Timbery into Wood Ash. I chose the Charcoal Kiln for this recipe since in most cases players will already have auto stack set up from the Charcoal Kilns to a nearby Ash Bin.
If you don't know about Auto Stack, if you place a storage object within two tiles of a crafting object, the crafted items will auto stack to the appropriate storage. It can save a lot of clutter and haul time.
Better Planting
A common problem was people trying to plant crops in Fall, and there was no feedback as to why the Clanfolk were ignoring the orders. They actually would not plant because the crops would not grow and the seeds would be lost. I have made this much more obvious now.
So in Seasons where the crops cannot be planted, they will show up with a red X in the menus. To make it clear it is not planting time. Also planting jobs that cannot complete will clean themselves up in Fall.
Musical Beds Fixed
Sorry for this one. The Clanfolk were always trying to find the best bed to sleep in, and while no one could sleep in someone else's bed, anyone could sleep in an unclaimed bed. This lead to Clanfolk sometimes not picking the beds they owned and blocking unassigned beds.
Now Clanfolk see their owned beds as 1000x more attractive than other beds.
Berry Parades (Mostly) Fixed
So Clanfolk want to eat the food that is going to spoil the most to prevent waste, however they were not taking distance into consideration enough, which could lead to "Berry Parades."
A Berry Parade happened when berries had been left out in the wild and were about to spoil somewhere across the map. The Clanfolk being thrifty Scots wanted to save them and trekked out in the rain to eat those berries instead of eating the fresher food nearby.
In some cases this behavior is desirable, so it remains, but the distance is taken much more into consideration now before attempting this.
Info Mode (Left Shift + F1)
This one is more for the testing branch, but everyone can use it. If you see odd behavior, please use info mode and click on the object or person who is misbehaving. There will be extra info in their description box when selected that may shed some light on the problem and could be useful in a bug report.
Even just out of curiosity, some of the info in there may be interesting to people. So have fun :)
Nursing Baby Fire Fighting Juggle Fixed
So this was a weird case, but the babies will not nurse anymore when the mother is fighting a fire. This baby juggle was quite funny to watch while it lasted. Mother throws off baby, Mother to fight fire. Baby jumps back on. On Repeat. Not A Good Time Baby!
Load Game Not Loading Fix (Very Rare)
This one is worth calling out here. There was in issue with the Windows System Culture sometimes preventing saved games from loading due to their different time/date format. This is now fixed. Sorry about that! Only saw this in the case of Arabic Windows, but there may have been others.
Auto Water Gather
I have set the Winter Ice Jug filling active in all seasons. So if there is less than 201 water and there are empty jugs available, someone will go fill those jugs.
The natural way to get this done is to set a Clanfolk's Gathering skill high (Water Collection is Gathering) and set the Drink Zone to High Priority. With this task though, you can rely on at least having a small stable water supply no matter what.
Easy To See Long Paths!
So this was a quick one but a popular one. The paths no longer fade out near the Clanfolk, so you don't have to guess where the path is going on the long ones, searching for that blue line.
Red X's on the Troughs
I finally have the troughs looking like the stockpiles when you disallows certain seed types. This issue was reported so often that I am calling it out here as well. This also works for the Graves and Composts. Speaking of Graves.
Auto Burial is here!
Burial has been a huge problem. To bury a body, it had to be assigned to a grave using a button list just above the main rack of buttons at the bottom of the screen. It was not intuitive and lead to a lot of frustration.
So now we have Auto Burial. New Graves are set to priority 9 and will automatically select a body to be buried in them. This can still be overridden by stopping the grave you don't want used for the body if you have multiple graves too.
Remember, Burial is a Repair task as well so you have a Clanfolk with high Repair priority (you should always have at least 2.)
Change Logs
V0.236
- Baby animals will no longer nurse their mother to death like vampires as a final farewell when sold to traders.
- Increased fire heating optimal radius from 5 -> 6 tiles. This is an increase of 75->108 tiles
- Fix for case where butcher blocks could stall out permanently
- Added Bark -> Wood Ash recipe for Charcoal kiln
- Mulch paths (bark) now have an environmental bonus
- Renamed Dirt Path, Gravel Path, and Mulch Path to better describe their function and why they don't touch walls.
- Fixed ice jugs breaking when emptied.
- Fixed Wells duplicating water jugs if on tilled soil
v0.237
- Planting menu will show red X on items that can not be planted due to current season
- Planting jobs will clean themselves up in the fall and winter when they cannot complete.
- Automatic cleanup of automated tasks improved
V0.239
- Musical Beds and Berry Parades Resolved? + Info Mode for Bug Reports
- Clanfolk give 10x more choosing weight to items they own when filling attribute bars
- Clanfolk give 1000x more weight to beds they own.
- Clanfolk take the distance much more into account when deciding which thing to eat next. Was too heavily weighted to what would perish next which lead to treks across the map to eat a berry that was going bad.
- Less weight given to perishables on their last day. Was overwhelming other picks too much causing far travel for that last berry.
- In all cases owned objects are 10x higher weighted for picking than non owned ones.
- Enable Info Mode with Left Shift + F1 this will provide internal info for bug reporting when clicking on entities. Many bugs fix themselves on reload, but this info can help track down problems.
- If possible enable Info Mode, select the entity causing trouble and take a couple of screenshots showing all the info in the info pane for the entity (scrolling may be needed)
v0.240
- Fixed Gravel Path, Dirt Path, Mulch Path so they do not default back to English in other translations
- Updated French Translation
- Updated Hungarian Translation
- Fixed babies continually latching on to mothers fighting fires to nurse. No fire fighting baby juggle
- Fixed issue where hauler could try to move an items from a stockpile that they were locked out of
- Optimization for validation of hauling tasks between stockpiles when boosted. Could get really ugly in some cases
- Fix for loading games with different Date/Time culture formats for the OS
- Objects will clear the grass out from under them on load. There cannot be grass under objects as it prevents their normal use.
- Fixed grass being able to be planted under objects
- Fixed Plants reseeding themselves under other jobs causing weird states. Seen with reed planting job on top of reseeded reeds.
- Made long paths easier to see near the starting point (Unit) - No more fade out
- Grain Troughs and Composts use the red X's to show the items that are not allowed now instead of just the darker button
- Graves no longer allow ownership as burial does not use that system and dead units cannot own things
- Graves have a default priority of 9 so they get picked quickly when a person dies.
- Auto Burial now works. If there are more bodies than graves (oh no) then you can still pick the permanent resident
- Set the auto gather of water to be available in all seasons, not just Winter. So if less than 201 water someone will fill jugs. Remember, water collection is a gathering task.
Next Top Priorities
- Getting Hunters to Haul Bunnies when they are cold [DONE Update 2]
- Preventing personal needs from breaking chained tasks [DONE Update 2]
- Keeping fires lit overnight [DONE Update 3]
- Automating burying loved ones [DONE Update 4]
- Fixing bed owners stealing unclaimed beds, blocking them [DONE Update 4]
- Wells duplicating water jugs somehow [DONE Update 4]
- Upgrading the Boost System to also read skill ordering for decision making
- Any and all cases of a movement stuck problem causing starvation
- Carrying Tools back home better
Thanks again people on the testing branch. It helps keep the main branch stable. If you like quicker daily updates, come join us in the testing branch too :)
Library->Clanfolk->Properties->Betas->testing
Diving back into the code now.
Andrew Hume (Blorf)
MinMax Games Ltd.
p.s. Fun fact, as of this morning, Clanfolk's combined play time is now over 47 years!