Hi, I hope you've all had a good Easter break!
I'm excited to announce that Alpha 0.5 is available for all builds with a variety of new features detailed below. One of the biggest changes to this update is the new kingdom level system. This is something that I think really helps bring the game together and begins to draw some focus on what to achieve. Basically as you gain more followers, your kingdom will grow in level and in-turn you'll be able to unlock more buildings and features for your kingdom.
This update also adds in the scoring mechanic to the end-game. As you play you'll be constantly gaining scores for the things that you achieve and how far you progress and when the game is over you'll be presented with a break-down of your score. It's kind of similar to the way that game dev tycoon and other games do it but I'm excited because it adds a little element of competitiveness to the game, trying to do better with each play-through to get a better score. It's pretty basic and doesn't score you on everything, but as the updates continue I'll no doubt continue to add in scoring mechanics.
I'm also really proud to announce better support for 4:3 and 16:10 resolutions with this update as well as support up to 4K with a new options menu and resolution picker. The game will automatically fit best for your screen, but I'd suggest looking in the menu, hopefully your resolution will be listed with a (*) when you're running in full-screen. This will show that it's your recommended desktop resolution.
Finally, I overhauled a number of the saving and loading mechanics locating and fixing a number of the bugs that people were coming across due to the lacklustre saving system.
Update Notes
New Features
- New Title and Options Screen
- Ranger Class Added
- Witch Class Added
- Medium Quarters Added
- Up to 6 Heroes now Available for Hire (with Medium Quarters in Kingdom)
- New Adventurer Skins
- More Adventurer Names Added
- Improved Messages
- Added new objectives
- Two new music tracks added (courtesy of composer Chris Lucca)
- All Messages can now be cleared with the new red close button
- New Info Box Added
- Buildings and Heroes can now be renamed via new Info Box
- New Unified Look to Stores
- Wishing Well Added
- Armour Shop Added
- Stone Walls Added
- Troughs Added
- Stables Added
- Adventurer Facilities Added (Inn & Bank)
- New Stables Training Added to Training Menu
- Updated Library / Research System
- Added End-Game Scoring
- Improved Villain Tracker
- Buildings now Level Up with use making them more profitable
- Updated Help menu with new features
- New Achievements Added
Optimisation
- Roads now affect speed again
- Custom Quests re-named to Quick Quests
- Various UI Improvements
Balance
- Renown permanently removed
- Blacksmith temporarily removed
- Improved Adventurer AI
- Boosted Experience and Rewards from Epic Quests
- Nerfed Kingdom Requests
- Frequency of Adventurers now relate to Attractiveness & Kingdom Level
Bug Fixes
- Hero AI Improved to visit Facilities
- Fixed annoying Radio button hitbox in Quest Menu
- Fixed Various Building Placement Bugs
- All Heroes can now be trained
- Fixed Bug Causing Messages to disappear off-screen
- Fixed Bounties constantly being listed as expired
- Fixed various saving and loading issues
- Fixed layout issues with Objectives
- Fixed layout issues with 4:3 and 16:10 resolutions
As always the Save Files will be completely useless with this update and will cause your game to crash. So starting a new game is advised.
What's Next?
0.6 will be focusing on improving the Quest system. It's still not quite right and I'll be going back to the drawing board to try and tweak a few areas to really bring the whole thing together.
With that, I'll also be looking at improving the Kingdom AI systems and allowing you to influence and interact more with them, and vice versa. I really want it to feel like there's a world outside of your own kingdom.
Finally, the weapons system has been long neglected. So I'll be trying to improve and implement that much better too as well as various other smaller changes to other systems. I'll probably try and get some new stores and facilities added too so that there's more stuff to build.
I'm not sure how long the next update is going to take, I'm taking a few days off this week to recharge and then it depends how much I have to change of the quest system. If you're interested though, feel free to sign up to the newsletter on the new website to keep updated more frequently with blog posts and videos.
Enjoy the new update.
All the best,
Matt
IF FOR ANY REASON YOU'D PREFER, YOU CAN ACCESS THE PREVIOUS MOST STABLE BUILD VIA THE "ROLLBACK" BETA IN THE BETA TABS OF THE RPG TYCOON PROPERTIES IN YOUR STEAM LIBRARY