Heyho everyone,

We really don't know how to start this, other than saying "We are sorry". We are sorry for the months without an official blogpost or patch. We had hoped that people would have seen our dedication and passion for the game in the months prior to the silence while we worked on multiple topics at once, so that they could trust in us working further without frequent "We are still on it" updates - this is definitely no excuse - which is why we will adjust some major points in our development processes, especially regarding the visibility of next steps - but more about that in the following, very long patch notes - we hope this answers what we have been up to in the recent months:

We are pleased to announce the 3rd major update (Alpha 25.400). This update combines brand new content with the content of the previous major update from the ‘Experimental’ branch to form the new ‘Default’ version of New Cycle. To fresh up your memory, this is the key content from the experimental branch that is now coming to default:

• Physics-based water mechanic and new vehicles: Ships

• New Maps and extended map scale

• New Buildings and Products

• Vast graphical and performance improvements

You can find more content and the detailed overview here

Like we already did in the past, we will move the current version of the game over to the rollback branch, which will allow you to finish your games - since due to the extensive changes to the game, 'old' savegames won't be compatible with this release. To find more about this topic, please take a look at this post.

As detailed in the announcement below, there are new structures, side mechanics, a series of  changes and game engine updates. We have also implemented a series of improvements to our backend systems. These are primarily performance improvements and preparations to lay the groundwork for new mechanics included in future updates. New features and enhancements not present in previous versions naturally cause inherent differences in save file contents.

Also, we are looking into new ways to share the progress of our development with you, since we follow an approach where we are working on multiple topics simultaneously, while only safely releasing those that have reached the necessary maturity. We will return to you very soon with a solution to share this with you in a way that we can also receive feedback from you regarding your thoughts on our plans.   

Additionally, our Community Managers ‘Yxsver’ and ‘Kirisaki’ have handed over their duties to our new colleague ‘BK’ due to a job change. We thank them for their efforts and contributions. Lastly, we have also activated a new account named ‘CoreEngage’ on Steam for communication purposes. This account will be used by our authorized personnel on a rotating basis and will be kept active for uninterrupted communication.

But now let's take a look at the completely new content coming with this update:

Civil Reflections of Industrial Progress

A new era in which advanced communities have begun to produce more complex, high-rise living spaces and service buildings, particularly in civil structures. Traditional brick use is giving way to cement, and these new architectural examples, which are more resistant to disasters, have a lower risk of complete collapse, and can safely accommodate more people with their multi-story structures, will also offer multiple visual variant options. While it is becoming easier to achieve a more organic cityscape that fits the normal flow of life with aesthetically differentiated structures, this will be entirely dependent on user preference.

New High-Tire Houses

Additionally, the ‘Waste’ production side mechanic we added to the game with this update will also be active in these new residences. However, we intend to partially change this part with a new, more complex structure in the future for more complex waste management.

Advanced housing with increased capacity will allow for the management of a much larger population by using more compact and smaller surface areas, while this transformation maneuver, which will take place in the Mid-End game stages, will allow you to obtain new vacant land in the heart of your settlement, offering you the opportunity to follow a more dynamic path of development.

New Buildings And Visual Customization Feature

This update primarily consists of social-living units. These units, which expand the End-Game range of the universe and will now form the new end-level structure stock, will also be customizable in the future.

House IV Models

Bakery II - Hospital III - Pub III - Store III

Visual Customization Feature

You can now customize specific surfaces of buildings with new coatings however you like.

This new feature was a request frequently voiced by our community. From the moment brick structures began to exist in the universe, you will be able to change the exterior surfaces of certain buildings according to your level of advancement, using any material, pattern, and adjustable color options you desire.

Currently, brick structures offer this feature. (The cement/Steel structures are being worked on)

We attempted to group cladding materials according to the universe's naming methodology and their actual material origin. For example, producing a decent amount of Lumber or Brick will trigger the unlocking of related cladding materials.

You can choose from ten different cladding options in the main groups, with nearly thirty color alternatives. We hope that this visual add-on, which we have prepared while remaining faithful to the overall atmosphere and color palette of the universe (Relatively cleaner surface alternatives are still available.), can offer more variety and freedom of styling.

New City Props and a Small Aesthetic Experiment

12 new placeable city props have been added. These objects, with an industrial theme and late-stage focus, will help reflect a more organic metropolis look and production site aesthetics.

New Outdoor Props

We have also added the ‘Metal Fence’ and ‘Log Fence’ structures for a functional wall experiment. This props can be used with either ‘grid or Free’ placement methods as desired and allows you to create interconnected fences. This fence, which also allows you to place functional gates, directly affects the passage routes and navigation of vehicles and people.

Currently, two fence types have been added: Log and Chain-link. If the community is satisfied with the planning and aesthetic benefits that fences and walls offer to the city layout, we intend to support this variety with different types such as sheet metal, brick wall etc.

Academic Foundations

As a new sub-mechanic accessible in the mid-game phase for working-class education, a new structure and interface representing the regular education system is being introduced.

This structure offers a new gameplay experience that allows players to assign the number of ‘Craftsmen’ and ‘Specialists’ they want to keep constantly available in the universe, and enables selected educational structures in the city to continuously train workers through autonomous education in line with this direction. Additionally, different training methods have been added, introducing new paths that players can choose based on their preferences, such as success rate, training duration, and training content, supported by various factors in the city.

Furthermore, the standard training method has been redesigned to operate in three different ways.

Specifically, to logically overcome the tediousness of a repetitive microtask for training new workers in the later stages, this new system, shaped by community feedback, will undergo a minor update in the future to ensure the necessary flow for the education of the young population and their direct assignment to an educated class after childhood.

• Educational buildings had classroom sizes according to their levels.

• A method with additional requirements has been added to ensure the training is successfully completed for all participants. (In craftman and specialist training, a random structure will be allocated for practical training purposes, and the structure's other activities will be suspended during the training period.)

New Auto-Training UI

Introduction to waste management and first steps toward environmental pollution

With this new mechanical system, residences and some production facilities will generate ‘Organic Waste’ as a result of consumption and human activities. This resource will not be transferred directly to storage facilities but will be collected and processed by personnel at a new production facility called the ‘Waste collector’.

The ‘Organic Waste’ added to the universe in the previous experimental update serves as a base resource, primarily for fertilizer production, and will continue to serve as a base for certain elements within the framework of the Chemical Production Tree to be added in the future.

New structural variants and changes

The structure of ‘Kaleyard’, which is responsible for vegetable and herb production, has changed. While its surface area in the universe has decreased, the cultivated area will now feature models belonging to multiple species.

This will allow us to have gardens in different variants, aiming to achieve a more authentic and characteristic agricultural region appearance.

New Kaleyard and vegetable varieties

The Barn structure has also changed. The new structure, which covers a larger area than the old surface area, has been expanded to potentially host local animations and perhaps different species in the future.

New Barn

Changes to the Trader Mechanics:

Traders will no longer visit your city after Cycle IV.

The current trade infrastructure is based on a simple one-to-one exchange system. We have advanced our work on regions and other factions, and in future updates, we will announce periodic trade agreements, diplomatic agreements, and other related mechanics.

Until these features are released, we have implemented this temporary measure because the current trading system only generates a ‘message to pass through’ burden for our players after a certain stage.

New UI Additions

The main structure menu's operation has been slightly modified. Due to the increasing number of structures as the universe progresses, you can now scroll through this area while viewing your structure inventory for each ‘Tier’. ‘By scrolling or clicking on auxiliary UI elements’.

The Day Cycle Management Panel has been changed. This area allowed you to manage general lighting, sun/moon position, and all related ambiance factors according to set times of the day. To make it easier to use and more understandable, we have completely redesigned this panel and added extra explanations.

New Engine Upgrade and Performance Gain

As is known from our approach in the previous two major updates, we closely follow significant developments and new technological advances in the Unity game engine.In this context, over the past two months, we have made upgrades to integrate some new technologies released within the Unity game engine, with the aim of reducing the workload in our production processes and improving our runtime performance.

Without getting into too much technical detail, we would like to highlight two of these features in particular. The first is the new inengine LOD system. We have to produce fewer assets that need to be prepared in advance. In the old system infrastructure's workflow, especially in cities with a large number of buildings, there was intense performance pressure on the CPU during runtime. With the new workflow, the CPU process is no longer involved.

New methods have been implemented that improve the way multiple animated entities work simultaneously. This has led to improvements in both GPU and CPU performance, particularly for New Cycle, which requires rendering a large number of buildings, people, and objects.

Minimum system requirements have changed

We had previously declared our intention to expand the game's universe beyond the originally planned version due to the community's support and request.

As of today, with the inclusion of the new major update content, we have expanded our initial playable content volume by approximately 40%. (New structures, Maps, raw materials/products, mechanics, textures, etc.)

And naturally with at least four major and dozens of minor updates planned ahead, is causing us to exceed our technical requirements.

Graphical Enhancements

We have a new add-on that directly affects the appearance of the entire universe and can be turned on or off as desired. Imitating real time light reflection and water surface reflections!

With the innovations we've made to our lighting processing and rendering paths, the entire universe now operates with more powerful ‘Reflections’. This allows all surfaces and wet surfaces (depending on weather conditions) to reflect light differently and enables the base lighting to achieve a more organic appearance.

This new plugin, which adapts to the day and night lighting cycle, has also been developed to actively function on the surfaces of large bodies of water. This further enhances the stylized realistic spirit we aim to reflect in the universal appearance.

Enhanced real-time weather changes and Shaders

The current day cycle and weather change system transition sequences have been reorganized. Based on your feedback, more organic weather transitions and their universal effects have been attempted to be presented with a stronger configuration.

The wetness gain and loss of surfaces (both structures and environmental components) based on precipitation rates has been reorganized to provide more options and smoother transitions.

Sky components (clouds, lighting, general fog, global fog height, volumetric light range, and aurora) have been redesigned to provide a more organic transition while maintaining more flexible reactions to seasons and biomes during seasonal changes.

Biomes containing rivers and seas now feature wave length, current intensity, and light-dependent color change properties based on seasons and weather changes within those intervals.

Thanks to new infrastructure developments, all universe trees now feature a proximity-sensitive dither effect. Branches and leaves will fade in and out of the render slightly along their assigned radius beyond a certain distance from the camera position.

Also we had the opportunity to make a series of improvements in universe physics calculations and their visual feedback tools.

We improved and developed our generic features such as real-time dynamic wave generation and driving feel feedback based on the physics calculations of water and land vehicles. (For npc and player)

Lastly, some fabric surfaces, coverings and primitive electrical cables, which were early-stage three-dimensional objects, have now transformed into components that move in proportion to wind strength according to changing weather conditions.

Sound system improvements

Over 40 new sound effects have been added, and improvements have been made to the universal sound level system based on the player's position and surrounding elements.

The maximum distance range for sound output from existing structures has been increased, and sound transitions based on camera movements have been designed to flow more organically.

New supporting content

We have added a new series of video materials containing practical examples, in addition to the tutorial section and the Encyclopedia page.

These videos cover topics such as shortcuts and important functions, features, etc.

For example, holding down the ‘Shift’ key and clicking on any structure quickly switches to build mode to create a copy of the selected structure or you can change the order and number of ‘items’ displayed in the top tab as you wish.

We aim to show videos explaining these and similar features to players who never use them, via one-time pop-up in-game messages. These messages will not be repetitive and will not be sent to players who already use these features.

New Achievements

7 new achievements have been added.

Fixes and Balancing

• Adjusted collision functions for some assets in the 3D universe

• Improvements have been made to saving and save file volume management. The save file capacity for very large cities has been significantly reduced, and reload speed has been increased.

• Corrected the positions of 3D objects and door entry/exit points in some structures

• The environmental and weather-related interactions of some structures have been reorganized. (Grass removal rates on the terrain, improvement of interior areas to be covered during snowfall, etc.)

• Reduced the cumulative accumulation factor of the ‘General Health’ effect on age-related death calculations

• Increased the positive effect of high-quality food and good health conditions on lifespan. An extra positive multiplier has been added to this ratio for the Specialist class.

• Farm productivity calculations have been slightly modified and improved.

• An issue that could occur when clicking on structures placed on the ‘Square’ component of the City Probe has been fixed.

• Improvements have been made to some image processing methods for crowded cities with many structures, resulting in improved endgame level performance.

• Animations and positioning of workers inside certain structures have been improved.

• The area where the GreenHouse fire effect works on the structure surface has been corrected.

• Some translation errors have been fixed and missing text has been updated.

• The 3D model of the Inland Fish farm structure has been renewed.

• Sky illumination rates that work in parallel with the day-night cycle have been reorganized, and a series of new autonomous functions have been added to enable a more realistic nighttime feel.

• Excessive collision errors experienced during the placement phase of the Refinery structure have been fixed.

• The loud explosion sound effect that plays when lightning strikes the Forge II structure has been re-adjusted.

• Corrupted audio and visual effects in the washing pool section of the Processing Yard I structure have been fixed.

• The part that keeps the outer surfaces of boats in contact with the water surface looking wet has been readjusted.

• Alternative formulas containing Manure for ‘vegetable’ and ‘herb’ production have been added to the Kaleyard structure.

• Water input has been reduced in the primitive soap production formula.

• Water input has been reduced in the Manure production formula.

• The construction requirements for several bunker structures have been modified.

• Capacity yield and requirement values for ‘Dormitories’ units in the Bunker structure have been modified.

• Recycling Facility (temporary Endgame water production solution) water production formula requirements have been lowered and production time has been revised.

And more on the way!

We would like to thank our entire community once again for your patience and support, stay tuned for further insights!