Steam version number: 2959440
New features
- We analyzed the current pathfinding system and ultimately decided to revise it completely. As you may have guessed, this intervention was not trivial, since pathfinding is related to many other systems (such as actions, NPC behavior, and AI). Many of the bugs that currently cause characters to stand motionless on the streets are not related to pathfinding. Nonetheless, we ask you to pay close attention to the new pathfinding.
- With the new pathfinding system, characters try to side step. But if that's too much of a detour, characters move through others. As you can see in the game, pathfinding is much more natural and fluid. Another positive effect is that characters should not push each other anymore.
- As you have probably noticed, in the past it was often not possible to send the character to certain places on the street. This problem has occurred especially often at intersections. As part of the conversion to the new pathfinding system, we have now corrected this. You should now be able to move your character anywhere on the streets without any problems.
- One point that we have also improved with this version is the use of actions. As soon as an action is selected, the corresponding action icon is now displayed next to the mouse cursor. If you move the mouse pointer over an invalid target, the icon will be crossed out and a text will appear that explains why the target is not valid. At the same time, we have replaced the previously too-large tooltips of characters and buildings with smaller ones, as these often had hidden important elements in the HUD and were obstructing the view. Now it should be much easier for you to find a valid target for an action and then to select it.
- With this patch you can now get important information about dynasty characters right in the world: names, dynasty crests, the favor of your dynasty, the status of the character within the family, and the office. Employees are displayed only with the coat of arms of the dynasty. We think that the new "plaques" are very helpful, but you want to give you the freedom to decide for yourself: in the options you can set whether you want to see the "plaques" on characters, buildings, both or not at all. Furthermore, you can set whether you want to show the "plaques" only for your own dynasty or for all dynasties.
- We have reworked the system, which generates the water reflections and thereby among other things improved the performance. Furthermore, we have significantly improved the creation of the minimap when loading a scenario map, which has also shortened the loading times.
Bug fixes
- The game no longer crashes when certain characters can not be displayed.
- The game no longer crashes when you equip your characters with carts.
- We finalized another set of bug fixes and improvements for AI controlled dynasties:
- AI controlled dynasties should now be able to build businesses.
- AI controlled dynasties should now also buy building extensions for businesses and upgrade their buildings if they meet the requirements.
- AI controlled dynasties should now have stronger ambitions to expand their businesses, build new businesses, and compete in public office
- The Master AI is now able to “have work” for all employees over a longer period of time. To achieve this, the following problems were solved:
- The budget that the AI has available now depends on how much money the dynasty has.
- The AI now changes the production orders of the employees when the raw materials have gone out.
- The AI for the transporters has been revised and should now be less error prone.
- The problem with invalid products should be fixed
- Building levels 2 and 3 have been adjusted slightly to ensure that there is enough space for all raw materials of high quality products without the purchase of additional inventory slots.
- The prioritization of which products the Master AI produces has been optimized
- If you switch the operation from automatic (Master AI) to manual, products are no longer placed in different storage slots.
- In some cases, transporters have not picked up the right items, even though they should be transported. This should now be solved.
- If more than one employee produces the same product, they will no longer be placed in different inventory slots.
- Different names for new buildings are proposed again.
- If special characters occur in a building name, which can not be displayed, then the building can be built anyway.
- The calculation of text lengths has been corrected to allow the size of the background texture of tooltips to be automatically created. Tooltip texts should therefore no longer be cut off and also displayed correctly centered. Furthermore, many texts that were previously shifted too far up or down, should now be properly aligned. Please keep your eyes open for further texts whose alignment we may need to correct.
- Characters no longer crash through bridges in certain places.
- Characters can now attack characters preparing for a ambush.
- Many characters (NPCs) did not move because they had been waiting for some action. This should now occur less frequently.
- Characters participating in interactions, like conversations or a fistfight, will now play the correct animations.
- Carts can now drive on all roads. This fix solves some horse cart and market issues. In some cases it does not look perfect yet, but we chose this step so that characters do not get stuck just because they are equipped with a horse cart.
- We have made several corrections in the localization system, which now displays a large number of missing names and labels within texts correctly. In most cases these were names of characters, buildings and measures. Please see if you notice any missing text.
- The buttons in the character creation should now all be displayed even at lower resolutions.
- The scroll bar in the overview of items when creating trade routes now works correctly.
- When changing the main residence your family members in the previous home building will move now to the new one.
Art
The following buildings have been optimized and each provided with 3 different LOD stages:
- Herbs hut
- Apothecary 1 to 3
- Scholar 1 to 3
- Hospital 1 to 3
- Robber camp
- Cathedral
- Well
- Quarry
- Mine
- Lumberyard
- Grove
- Cemetery
- More city walls and towers
Known Issues
- Larger objects such as ships and horse carts are still wiggling when they try to dodge each other.
- If you attack characters that are lurking for an ambush, they will most likely start another counter attack after the fight is over. At the moment this is a bit too common. Please let us know how you see it.
- Crowds of NPCs sometimes overlap one another right now. This mainly affects horse carts. We’ll checking that issue.
- In some cases NPCs may still get stuck when they are being interacted with. This is also the case in previous versions and does not have its cause in the pathfinding changes. We just wanted to mention this, so you know it does not have to be reported.
- Currently, NPCs fight each other very often and do not shy away from kids. We will adapt this.
- Children are currently trying to sit on benches. Since they have no animations for them, they stay on the bench and move in the state. The same applies to fighting.
- Character plaques adjust their length only to the name of the character, but not to its political position (e.g. mayor).
- If you still have other problems with the new pathfinding, please create a bug in Redmine, describes the situation, the location and attach the score to the ticket. So we can look specifically at the problems.
Important Information
Due to the changes to the pathfinding system old save games are not compatible anymore and loading an old save game will lead to errors.
If you have trouble loading or saving, then you can try to delete all files from the "Games" folder in the installation path of The Guild 3.
It is quite possible that some problems that you have in your game are caused by missing or corrupted files. In this case, the following can help: right-click on "The Guild 3" in your Steam library, then Properties - LOCAL FILES - REVIEW FILES TO ERROR
What we plan for the next patch...
- We want to fix the bug that causes AI-controlled NPCs to stop working after being interacted with.
- Through various measures we want to reduce the loading times of scenario maps.
- We want to further improve the performance. With special attention to savegames, which are stored / loaded.
A short outlook...
As already announced, we are currently working on rebuilding the action system for our designers so that actions and items will be easier to create in the future. This is a big change that will keep us busy for a bit longer. We hope to be able to create gameplay elements faster in the future.
Your feedback is important to us!
We would greatly appreciate it if you have time for the following quick poll about the changes in patch EA 0.5.3: Google Form
Please note: We do not collect any data other than your feedback - it remains completely anonymous. This poll ends on August 8, 2018