Hey everyone!
Welcome to the first issue of the Foundation devlog!
Q. So what is this devlog thing all about?
The community is requesting more information about updates and the progress of the game and this and the future devlogs will hopefully help to keep you updated on what we are working on.
I plan to bring you a weekly (or at least every 2 weeks) devlog with information on what the team have been working on and as we get closer to a major content update, maybe share a few sneak peeks of the new content.
Q. When will you be releasing updates?
Each update we put out will need to be tested and balanced as much as possible and as such if we keep putting out minor updates with small content patches this will ultimately take longer to create fix and balance them all.
Due to the nature of the game and genre it is more efficient for us to build and test major updates with as much content as we can fit in. So expect larger gaps between major updates though we will put out smaller bug fixes and balancing tweaks between major content updates.
Q. So what have you been up to?
Well, it has been a very busy period since the Early Access release, which was followed by a flurry of bug fix patches. The art team have been busy through all this creating new content, animations and environmental effects. We have also been showing the game at PAX east as well as expanding the team to not only increase the speed of production but also to create a better feedback system to you, the community.
We plan to have a new testing and feedback system for each update to try to ensure as bug free releases as possible whilst also feedback to the community regarding any issues that may be found.
The bug/suggestion tracker will be used to its full capability so if you have any bugs please report them to our bug tracker where we can review them and feedback information regarding fixes: https://www.polymorph.games/tracking
We have expanded the team
Since the start of this project the team has grown from the original beginnings with our two co-founders Phil & Leo to a fantastic team of 10 talented people. One of the (not so) new members to the Team is Michael...
Michael has been working tirelessly on new animations for the villagers plus other more hardy beasts 😉
As mentioned above we are working on a better feedback system to the community. Leading this project is Nicolas our new QA Manager, along with myself the Community Manager we will do our best to feedback as much information as possible to keep you all in the loop.
About those updates
As you may have already heard we are working hard on the next major content update, which will see a major overhaul of the mission quest system. This, plus more content will take some time. We will bring you more news regarding the content update in future devlogs.
We are also working on a smaller quality of life update which will be coming soon! The plan is to release the update next week but this will depend on how testing goes and if we find any major bugs in the build.
With the minor update we will be focusing on some food production balancing issues. Fish consumption will be lowered (halved) and flour production will be increased. We also plan to look at some of the costs for buildings, decorative items and in particular Fish trading.
More QoL changes coming with this update will see:
- Windowed mode and resolution selection
- Auto-save and quick-save cloud options
- Auto assign will assign the villager with the closest house
There will also be a variety of fixes and optimisations:
- Building will turn red and be forbidden to place. This is currently not working correctly on some buildings
- Prevent doors being blocked on higher density housing
- Prevent planting in water
- Optimise wall rendering
- Optimise wheat rendering
These last 2 points should help out some fps issues.
There will be more improvements and fixes to add but as you can see this next minor update will bring some needed fixes and changes.
To close the devlog we will add that the Soldiers and monks will now have seperate needs… Talking of monks…
That’s it for this week, look out for more news next week and if testing goes well we should see an update!
All the best
Ash
Community Manager