Hey everyone! Welcome to Devlog #08
When Crops Go Bad
As mentioned in the recent July Content Update News we will be introducing a new weather system. Bad weather is going to affect the yield of your crops. To start with this will be limited to wheat fields but will be expanded on in the future.
It would be easy to just have those crops disappear or just less production but we want to heighten immersion. With this in mind, Claudine our Senior Artist has been working on rotten crops. Nice!
Below you can see the contrast between a healthy crop and a rotting wheat field during bad weather.
Fish Schools
How on earth do those fishermen and woman find those fish that they bring back? It's a good question and more importantly how do you, as a player, know the best place to position a fishing hut? This is something that Loup-Gabriel (FX Artist) has been recently working on. In the future you will be able to identify fishing spots by the schools of fish and plan your production around them.
Resource Analytics
The upcoming update will bring with it a number of balancing changes. To help with this, Christopher (Game Programmer) has been working on a Resource analytics tool which will allow us to track the overall cost and revenue of every resource in game.
We have had a lot of feedback from the community and this tool will prove invaluable to help get the balance right and fine tune the game.
Balancing
With the aid of Christopher's new Resource Analytics tool, we will be able to balance production costs and trading values much more easily and efficiently. Phil (Creative Director) and Nicolas (QA Manager) have begun to work on the balancing of the estate progression costs as well as looking at balancing for the new weather system.
Timeline Tool
Ben, our new Engine Programmer has been working on improving some internal processes with the aid of a timeline tool. This tool will allow the artists to easily transition and blend between animations/FX. Previously this would have required a Game Programmer to write any changes into the code.
With this tool, there will be much less requirement for the Game Programmers involvement in the animation/FX process which will help to streamline workflow.
As an example, the new weather system will require a transition between sunny and rain effects. The timeline tool will allow a more automated process which can be changed on-the-fly to see the changes and effects of any animation or FX.
Military Animation
A future update will be looking at the military quest system and we are also looking at some more visual improvements for the soldiers. Michaël (Animator) has been working on some new soldier training animations.
Soldiers will not always be training though, you will also find them patrolling your cities
Improving Particle System Performance & Functionalities
To better support the new Weather System Léo (Technical Director) has been improving and optimizing the Hurricane particle system.
The Weather system has required the addition of new particles, with these additions he has also been working on optimization to reduce the load on your PC from the particle system. These optimizations will help to offset the new additions so you can all get to see the gloomy ambiance when the bad weather hits.
There will be more news soon on the July Content Update ETA so keep an eye out for announcements.
Have a great weekend everyone
-Ash