Here's it is! The start of the biggest series of content patches Retro-Pixel Castles has ever seen, starting with InDev 18 and wiggling it's way through to InDev 20 and possibly beyond! Introducing, The Village Update!
Overall, these updates will add more maps, tile set, mobs, map regions, buildings, better AI and just all around flesh out the existing game play mechanics. The first in the series being focused on one of the most requested features; more buildings and better villager AI!
InDev 18 Road Map
Complete harvester and Builder Overhaul
- No longer allow harvesters to deliver resources to construction sites. (To make sure the storage buildings actually have resources in them to be refined, even if demand for the base resource is high.)
- Allow harvesters to deliver resources to any building that can store it. (Meaning if you have 2 Lumber Mills, workers can deliver to either mill instead of just their own. They will tend to pick the Lumber Mill closest to them, regardless if it's theirs.)
- The Villager Center will now be allowed to store wood, stone and food.
- The Lumber Shack, Small Crystillery and Stone Shack will all be removed from the game, and the Lumber Mill, Large Crystillery and Stone Masonry will no longer require refined resources to be built. Leaving only one "Harvesting" building for each resource. (This is mainly because future plans involve building upgrades and tech trees, so having multiple harvesting buildings just doesn't seem to make sense.)
- All resources will get storage buildings you can build. That way you only "need" 1 Lumber Mill, but you can build a bunch of overflow storage around the village as needed. (Think: Silos in the original Command and Conquer, but for RPC resources).
- Harvesters will stop harvesting if all available storage is full. (To increase idle/downtime with less micromanaging)
- Harvesters will have to refine materials themselves at the harvesting building, rather than it just happening automatically. (It's more for show than anything, the process will go fairly quickly, you'll just see a villager inside the building hammering away as refined resources are produced.)
- Builders will be allowed to grab resources from any building. (So they'll be picking up resources and delivering them now, this goes along with my first point up top. This purposely funnels resources through the storage buildings so they have time to be refined, even if the demand for the base resource is extremely high.)
The overall plan is to make a more streamlined system that requires less micromanaging, and allows refined materials to be created even if you're having a hard time keeping your supplies up because you're building several expensive buildings at once. I also feel it'll be easier to understand whats going on as a new player, because you wont wonder why all your harvesters are "working" on buildings (even though they're just delivering resources). It should also speed up production, because your harvesters will spend less time running around.
New Buildings!
Several other new buildings will be added between InDev 18 and InDev 20, some that have been planned for quite some time and others than the community has suggested. Here's a few coming down the pipeline;
- Workshops - Basically be a mini-village center, allowing you to have more builders.
- A tavern - This building will be a fun place villagers can go to relax. It will boost happiness, and while in the tavern, encourage people to interact (and thus, partner up for mating)
- A church - A place to boost happiness, and while it's being used you'll also get a boost to your influence bar. The more people there, the more influence you'll gain on top of the usual gain rates.
- A hospital/clinic - You can assign villagers to work there and they'll become "field medics" who will run around healing fellow villagers. Later, this will also be a place pregnant villagers can go to give birth and their child will get some bonus experience for being born there, rather than at home or on the fields.
- Schools - A place where children villagers can go get educated. Children will gain experience when they visit the school, so they might get to start their adulthood a few levels higher than what they were when they were born.
- Store-all building of some kind - This building will allow the villagers to store overflow resources in it, it'll take any kind of resource in the game.
- Farming changes - The farming buildings will be changed somewhat, your workers will be able to boost growth speed by bringing nearby water to the crops, or by tilling/caring for the soil. This will give you a reason to keep workers at your farm, since most of the time they just sort of sit there and idle until something is grown.
- More towers - I'd like to get more towers added, starting with traditional Tower Defense tower types, like a slowing tower, an AOE type tower, etc. (Tower ideas would be great to hear!)
- Guard building - Guard buildings will be removed from the game.
- Golem buildings - These will replace the guard buildings. They will be completely automated and function as assistant-buildings to the towers producing "disposable" friendly mobs.