Hey friends!
Moments ago, I finished uploading the new version, 1.1.0 Darkest Depths, to the steam beta branch.
For those of you that want to help find bugs, provide feedback for tuning, or just poke around, please check it out. Fair warning, as this is a beta, there are going to be lots of bugs and little things that we will be addressing over the coming weeks that the version is being beta tested. So, please keep that in mind before trying it out. As well, there are lots of things I will be adding during the beta that I didn't get the chance to add before it came out. Here are some of those:
-Additional Tomek Portraits
-Additional Tomek Foods
-Limiting certain jobs based on kingdom population limit.
-Using Ren to trade for automated party trade orders.
-Settler migration request from other settlements.
-Additional cave, surface, and dungeon templates.
-Cave Mip bomb fruit.
-Room Quality tuning - This is a big one I'll focus on.
-Additional tutorial tuning and guides.
-Additional research nodes for the five races.
-Additional dialogue for raids and other events.
The above might look like a lot but I've already started most of these things and they just need to be finalized.
Here is a tentative patch notes for the build. This doesn't quite show all the changes as I need to go through with a fine-tooth comb and update it. But it does cover the bulk of things:
Content: Tomek playable race. The Tomek have the unique perk of starting a new settlement with caves near the surface revealed from the start. This lets players start in caves rather than the surface. The Tomek also have a unique reproduction mechanic where you sacrifice one adult Tomek to make three. The Tomek also do not eat normal food. Instead, they eat foods made from ores and gems.
Content: Sentrene Bow - This is an automated sentry turret that fires arrows at hostile enemies.
Content: Stone Chest - You can now make stones chests from stone.
Content: Apiary Room - You can now designate the Apiary which allows players to collect honey from bees they’ve captured.
Content: Bee Hive - Where honey is collected from bees.
Content: Machix - A new Ancient entity that serves as a builder.
Content: T’Igwir - A new room where Gwdir make things with Wir.
Content: Exonaut - A new Ancient summon that serves as a defensive fighter.
Content: Transmute To Dirt Job - Turns any block into dirt.
Content: Transmute To Water Job - Turns any block into water.
Feature: Claim tiles with parties. Claimed tiles allow players to build roads and settlements.
Feature: Build roads with parties. Roads provide faster movement for parties.
Feature: Build settlements with parties. Settlements can be traded with.
Feature: Raid settlements with parties to plunder items. Raids have a small chance to lose party members.
Feature: Create automated trade routes for parties. Parties will go back and forth between settlements collecting items.
Feature: Enter a tile with their nation leader.
Feature: Rotate blueprints with Shift+Scroll Wheel.
Feature: Draw jobs in a line by holding Alt.
Feature: Added a tab to Entity Info called Life Story. This shows the entity’s family, and any events in their life that may or may not add buffs/debuffs.
Feature: Added settings to notification window so players can edit notif visibility.
Tuning: Chests now only hold trinkets. Chest item capacity now scales with material type.
Tuning: Merchants now leave the settlement after 10 real time minutes instead of 30.
Tuning: “Failure” checks for jobs is now done when progress is applied to the job instead of when the job finishes. This is to allow a job to eventually finish regardless of failures. Failures will, now, just slow the process down.
Tuning: Added Wisdom attribute which adds job and combat XP gain.
Tuning: New settlers and animals that spawn will have random ages closer to the entity’s min age for their adult tuning. So, instead of humans spawning with an age between 16-60, they will spawn ~16-24. This is to keep new games from having animals and settlers dying right away.
Tuning: All entity starting health has been increased.
Tuning: Renamed “Kingdom Points” to “Edicts”.
Tuning: Clay and fiber blueprints are now unlocked by default with “The Basics”. This is due to the fact that there was no real need to spend Edicts (Research Points) on those over wood/stone research.
Tuning: Caves are now more “cave-like” with better branching tunnels.
Tuning: Ore now generates in proper vein formations, not scattered around randomly in single blocks.
Tuning: Increased new animal arrival frequency.
Tuning: Decreased time that NPCs stick around on the map.
Tuning: Cave and surface props no longer spawn in grid patterns.
Tuning: Hostile entities will no longer b-line for player entities. They will now only move towards player entities if they’ve sighted them or if they are already at war with the player’s nation.
Tuning: Entities will now consume health potions they carry in their utility slot if their health drops below 50%.
Polish: UI improvements across the board. More info on tooltips and various windows. Better consistency with layouts and visual language.
Polish: Utility list buttons are now aligned to the left instead of the right.
Polish: Cleaned up and improved tooltips. Unified overall layout and content.
Polish: Added notification for unclaimed items.
Polish: Cleaned up and improved entity info window. Uniform tab is now called Equipment. Items are now equipped directly from the inventory window. The inventory window can be open by clicking item slots.
Polish: Entities that die of old age will have a notification that says, “Died of old age” instead of “Killed by elder”.
Polish: Time menu now shows the current timescale when stopped. Whereas, before, all four indicators would turn red. This was confusing as it indicated the timescale was set to 4 before pausing. Now, players will know what timescale they are on when they unpause.
Polish: Drop shadow (black outline around sprites) is now only show when an object is on the ground. This is to better communicate when something is in the air/falling.
Polish: Added additional SFX for several entities, notifications, and in-game actions.
Polish: Action text (numbers that appear when entities do work) will now scale with camera zoom.
Bug: Entities were not moving to all 8 idle locations. Instead, they’d move to just four.
Bug: Stoneleaf was requiring stonework instead of farming.
Bug: Some game over scenarios weren’t spawning entities on island maps.
Bug: Items could be auto equipped by issuing a move order while the entity was moving to the equip item.
Bug: Small inaccurate pathing issue when pathing through water.
Bug: Nyctium had no assigned item slots for equipping but stated it gives a move speed buff for it.
Bug: Generating a new map caused max kingdom counts to decrease.
Bug: Entities could get stuck in hold position state trying to get to the position, but not actually moving to it.
Bug: Depth fog was visible for underground tunnels.
Bug: Some fx would not start playing correctly.
Bug: Blueprints were blocking skylight and killing plants.
I'm hoping to have 1.1.0 out of beta and into production for June. Please feel free to join our discord to discuss the beta. Always happy to hear about your experience, any issues you find, or just chat about the game.
Thanks for reading and have a nice weekend!
Waylon