Celebrating the last day of the demo (for now) with some new features

Hi everyone,

this has been an eventful week, getting a game in front of players for the very first time is scary and exhilarating. Especially something as odd as Bulwark.

But where the rubber hits the road is where you get real feedback, positive and negative.
Much has been said on the controls and MKB especially and hope everybody who paid attention can tell from the 50 changes over a dozen or so updates that this area will keep getting the best of my attention, beyond the fairly massive changes done this week in this area.

And with the addition of the MMB mouse orbit option as some of you have pointed out, it is getting closer to other 3D sandbox and strategy games, which hopefully helps with some of the genre confusion.
Bulwark has aspects of city builders and colony sims, but at it's core it's a 3D sandbox, something I had not been able to articulate properly. I have changed the tags to put 3D sandbox up high to help future games classify the game that way for gamers.

As a little parting gift (and don't worry in not to long a new version of the demo will re-appear) I've uploaded a version with some experimental features. This will remain available for the rest of the day and evening.

• a worldmap (from the pause menu) , be lost no more!
• custom color trim, change the trim colors on your surveyor, ships an some buildings from the settings menu
• small bridges, those small bits of deep water that would block your progress and felt un-intuitive, they now spawn small bridges, so a negative made positive.

I'd like to thank everyone for a great pre-alpha test in this week+ long period. I hope you've seen the potential for the game and stick around to watch it develop.

Don't forget there's a discord and I regularly get people onboard for closed testing on the development version.

https://discord.com/invite/falconeer

Cheers and thanks
Tomas

Here is the final changelist for this week!

1. Camera inversion can now be set per axis (so vertical or horizontal control inversion)
2. edge scrolling setting moved to controller screen
3. edge scrolling is no longer affected by camera inversion
4. in multi-display mode the mouse cannot leave the game window when it has focus
5. when you alt-enter the mouse can leave in windowed mode
6. pressing the build button on a harbor will open the captain screen,
7. pressing on the build button on a end-harbor will open the captain screen, AND select the start harbor (move the camera there as well).
8. changed texts around harbors to indicate you need to switch to surveyor
9. added some text to the captain screen to clarify things
10. f you move away from a command tower with a commander it will update all the props (if you changed something). The bigger and more expansive a tower the more commander props it gets, this thus gets more updated if you changed something.
11. a few edge areas between the water and the rocks in the starting area had hidden 'depth's to them preventing easy building of walkways, but in some "stepping stones" to prevent issues
12. Added a beacon effect when you command your surveyor and made it urgent..
13. can no longer build a harbor where its nearest neighbour is also a harbor.. (prevents people building useless chains of harbors)
14. traderoutes are build only in the deep water, preventing them from hitting your settlements in the shallows
15. beacon also on building spot
16. captains for hire stop being active after 300 seconds , if it borks it will work again
17. surveyor doesn't pirouette when you stop
18. the compass homing beacon back to your base wasn't gold and blinking anymore
19. the sun was dipping too low
20. a worldmap (from the pause menu) , be lost no more!
21. custom color trim, change the trim colors on your surveyor, ships an some buildings from the settings menu
22. small bridges, those small bits of deep water that would block your progress and felt un-intuitive, they now spawn small bridges, so a negative made positive.
23. removed some jitters from the airborne cursor, it's not getting every jitter and bump of the surveyor translated to itself. Should feel less bumpy.
24. Changed that the ground cursor is placed on the level of the ground , this makes it on top of any build line icon. And thus no depth or height difference when trying to select, you need only aim at one spot, sure to fix some mis-selections and mis-builds
25. turned on the resource numbers!! lets do it.. more clarity less fumbling..
26. tried to remove the captain encounter reset of the gui that would happen after a second sometimes
27. same for random encounters
28. after building from the surveyor the cursor will reset, so it doesn't randomly jump when done.
29. issues with encounter text being identical fixed
30. encounter buttons acting strangely fixes
31. surveyor hanging on harbor after building fixed
32. fortress harbor doesn't extend an auto walkway
33. first outpost in freemode does get autoswitch to ground to get you started
34. captains lost in campaign doesn't effect freemode captains
35. nullref fixed when you demolish harbors quickly in succession
36. increased draw distance to hide ugly horizon line
37. set voice over repeat interval from 20 seconds to 200 seconds ! (shut him up)
38. removed jank from scrollwheel zoom
39. added mouse orbit on MMB not the default (kept that to edge scrolling) change it in the controller screen
40. added auto connect, walkways on new towers are automatically built and connected.
41. fixed some things in the imperial outpost/citadel
42. fixed some collision issue with the freehouse big platform foundations
43. changed some texts
44. a worldmap (from the pause menu) , be lost no more!
45. custom color trim, change the trim colors on your surveyor, ships an some buildings from the settings menu
46. small bridges, those small bits of deep water that would block your progress and felt un-intuitive, they now spawn small bridges, so a negative made positive.