Hello everyone!
Today we are announcing the release of Alpha 1.6.23.1021!
If you have been reading the recent Devlogs and News you will have seen that we have been working on a content patch for the recent 1.6 Mineral & Craftsmanship update.
This patch will provide some polish to the 1.6 update and bring with it some highly requested quality of life improvements as well as additional features. You can check out the summary of the patch contents below, which includes a full changelog.
Promotion Sorting
We have received many requests for an improved promotion window more specifically the ability to sort promotions.
This content patch will now allow you to sort the population by various parameters whilst also being able to easily focus on a villager’s workplace, their house, and the villager themselves, making it much easier to identify those you wish to promote.
More Names!
Another request that has been high on the agenda has been for more names. You will now find 1000 new names added to the game, so you should not be seeing Female #44 or Male #808 for some time. Note: More work on names will come with a planned family feature in a future update.
Additionally, we have added the ability for you to rename villagers. You can now have all your family, friends or community members living in your villages.
Masterpiece Polish
Masterpieces were introduced in the recent 1.6 Content Update and this patch aims to polish up the Masterpiece systems as well as some visuals and an added bonus feature.
Masterpieces are sets of specific parts that can be added into a monument or be built as a standalone building. They are unique creations that include a bonus once built to meet certain conditions. The conditions for the bonuses have been tweaked with this patch to better suit the Masterpiece it relates to.
The Giant Gate Masterpiece has seen a little polish and now comes with additional parts for you to build the perfect entryway to your city. There is also the addition of a new wall for the Gate that will for now, be available via the walls menu once unlocked.
Melody Composer
A new melody composer can now be found in the Automated Fountain Masterpiece which will allow you to flex your musical talents and create beautiful music.
Additionally, you can now customize your church bells, controlling when the bells toll as well the tone of the bells.
Quarry Depots and Visuals
Quarries will now require a large crane be built which will act as a resource depot for the extracted resources of that quarry. Miners will store resources at these depots where they can then be used or transported to warehouses closer to your production buildings.
The stored resources within these depots will also come with improved visuals making it easier to identify the resources at-a-glance.
Improved AI
Villagers have got cleverer… bigger smarts… more intelligent, yes!
Builders will now prioritize a building site’s proximity to their builder’s workshop when looking for work. This will keep them from traveling unnecessary long distances and consequently, it also gives you a better opportunity to optimize the positioning of your builder's workshops.
Needs fulfillment has also been improved with new AI behavior that will see villagers searching out close-by needs based on the fulfillment of their previous need. This should improve the overall behavior flow and efficiency of villagers in their free time.
New Animations
The team is always looking at ways to improve the Hurricane engine and one such improvement has enabled us to integrate animations into moving workstation parts. This new tool will allow us to bring a whole new level of immersion into your villages.
You will find a number of new animations with this patch including a couple of both new and improved, thanks to community feedback.
Help Menu Additions and Tooltips
The help menu has been tweaked overall and now includes a new section on Masterpieces. We have also added new tooltips for Masterpieces and warehouses to help explain their functions and relevant conditions.
Additionally, you will find a prompt when quitting to the menu or exiting the game. No more unintentional loss of game-time!
Bug Fixes and More
Alongside the changes above, this patch will come with a number of bug fixes and other improvements, including:
- New sounds for mining and other workplaces
- More UI tweaks, such as an improved resource list order
- Changes to the mineral distribution system when prospecting mineral nodes. For example, Iron will be much easier to find earlier in your searches.
- Multiple pathfinding fixes
- And more… a full changelog can be found below
Modding wiki
Modding documentation and changes can be found over on the modding wiki.
Changelog
Thank you to everyone that has provided feedback, crash and bug reports. All of your reports have allowed us to fix a number of issues as well as make improvements as we continue to develop Foundation.
- Add: Allow villager renaming
- Add: Church tower bells control
- Add: Fountain sound
- Add: Giant wall - unlock wall when unlocking the masterpiece
- Add: Masterpieces topic to Help Menu
- Add: Menus - Add a "Data will be lost, are you sure?" before Exiting the game or returning to the main menu.
- Add: Missing parts of the legacy church
- Add: Musical Fountain - Musical Composer
- Add: New workstation animations & VFX
- Add: Promotion list sorting
- Add: Quarry Depots - Inventory Visual+Gems Texture
- Add: Quit to Main Menu and Exit to Desktop confirmations - Adjust texts
- Add: Utility Agent - Villager AI improved for needs fulfillment
- Add: Various tooltips
- Add: Villager Names
- Add: Warehouse/Granary tooltip
- Add: Warning panel should remember last severity selected
- Update: Art - Various Masterpiece polish
- Update: Army Manager - "Army" and "Battle History" should be sticky at the top while you scroll down.
- Update: Improve builder's priority system
- Update: Improve trade quantity inputting for high numbers
- Update: Masterpieces - Prevent unusual combinations of conditions and masterpieces
- Update: Mineral Depots - Add entrance arrows for the crane.
- Update: Monument - Legacy Rustic Church - shape and collision adjusted
- Update: Monument - Market - Market Table, of any type, should be a mandatory part of the construction.
- Update: Resource list order
- Fix: Anim - Glass Smelter - missing tool
- Fix: Audio - Different behavior when reaching speed 0 using the "-" and the "spacebar" button.
- Fix: Bailiff - Prospection tools are missing from the animation.
- Fix: Churches - Remove the priest text
- Fix: Core - Never Block House Entrance
- Fix: Deserialize and reapply crop yield bonus
- Fix: Farm Fields - Performance takes a hit when switching from Sowing to Growing.
- Fix: Fisher - Bonus is not adequately applied during bad weather, reducing the yield instead of augmenting it.
- Fix: Goldsmelter - Worker from the indoor workstation exits the building through the wall when the work cycle is done.
- Fix: Knight Statue - missing marble texture
- Fix: Major Performance issues when opening the Low Warning notifications on a large city.
- Fix: Masterpiece - Barracks construction steps can be seen floating when attached to the top of another part.
- Fix: Masterpiece - Fountain can still be unlocked even if a villager leaves during the bad weather event.
- Fix: Masterpiece - Lush Garden bonus effect is not functional and does not increase the splendor of the building.
- Fix: Masterpiece - Standalone masterpiece with the Maintenance effect will display it in the global game rule when it shouldn't.
- Fix: Masterpiece condition - Must be part of Great Hall not updating in general tab when assigning function
- Fix: Military Quests - User can receive hard and extreme difficulty missions without having met the requirements.
- Fix: Mineral Deposit - Rare - Sometimes unrelated materials are deposited into the quarries.
- Fix: Monastery - Doors attached to herb garden are preventing the monks from entering the building.
- Fix: Monks - Incorrect situational message when working
- Fix: Monks - Monk leaving winery work station doesn't use path
- Fix: Monument - Changing the material set apply the last choice
- Fix: Monument and Building window seems to open far away from building and to expand out of screen.
- Fix: Need Cycle - Villager will stop going for needs under specific circumstances, resulting in multiple needs to be skipped even if plenty are available.
- Fix: Need unfilling on load game (housing and church)
- Fix: Pathfinding - Pathing through the wooden keep for soldiers issue, depending on the setup.
- Fix: Pathfinding - Rare situation where the builders cannot path to build decoration onto the bridge.
- Fix: Pause Game - Possible to have state in which the game does not resume from pause.
- Fix: Prevent soldiers and bailiff from lossing happiness while on mission/mandate
- Fix: Prospection Mandate - Ensure window has a maximum size and a scroll bar to allow for large number of deposit.
- Fix: Rustic Church - Door C does not allow to enter the church core if placed on a tower
- Fix: Rustic Church - Specific setup will prevent villagers to path properly into the core.
- Fix: Save and Load - Noticeable dip in happiness when reloading a save game.
- Fix: Sheep Statue - Impossible to build a sheep statue, the statue is never delivered to the building's location.
- Fix: Some masterpiece game conditions are very CPU expensive when moving the whole building
- Fix: Statue - If a building containing a statue is cancelled during construction, the statues orders are not cancelled.
- Fix: Stone Quarry - Initial construction posts are floating when the construction begins.
- Fix: Various visual FX tweaks and fixes
- Fix: Warehouse / Granary - Possible to exceed maximum capacity.
- Fix: Warning pannel - Some workplaces aren't showing the "full workplace" warning
- Fix: Wooden Keep - Height adjustment arrows are located too high
- Crash Fix: Crash when mod dependency is hidden on mod.io
- Crash Fix: Rare crash - Game crashes when deleting an Automated Fountain when there's nothing else built in the game.
- Crash Fix: Rare crash - Game crashes when deleting part of the tavern bridge and reload the save.
- Crash Fix: Rare crash with no space for housing notification
We can’t wait to hear your melodies! Join us on our official Discord server and join in the conversation.
- The Polymorph Games Team