Full Controller Support & Steam Big Picture Mode
We’re starting off the year by working on the 0.5.0 update, with emphasis on difficulty settings, UI and gamepad controls . As always, this update will include bug fixes.
Our main focus for the next update will be the improvement of the game’s accessibility. Part of that is reworking the gamepad controls in order to be able to control all aspects of the game - something that, according to a lot of feedback we’ve received, will come in handy for many of you. Concurrently with this we’re updating the UI for better gamepad support.
We’re in the process of designing and developing a radial menu that allows you to access and control all User Actions very quickly. In order to keep the menu uncluttered, the User Actions will be divided into several groups. Our example has the vehicle’s most important actions, such as turning on the machine or unloading, in the first ring, and functions like doors, windows or the steering console in another one.
The radial menu will be controlled with the right stick and the primary buttons, allowing you to continue driving with the left stick and the triggers.
Difficulty Settings
In order to be able to offer a better introduction to the game, we’re drafting a handful of new tutorials. We’ll let you know at a future time when these will be available. Simultaneously we’re fixing and improving the translations, which also led to separating the unit settings (metric vs. imperial) from the language selection. In addition to that we’re extending difficulty levels.
Plant Growth System & Balancing
We’d like to add another insight into a different part of CNC’s development: fruit growth in relation to fertilizing.
It is mainly nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) that’ll drive fruit growth, and they’ll have to be provided optimally over the different growth stages. But there’ll also be a few additional parameters that’ll influence fruit development, such as weather, seed bed quality, soil compaction and more.
The following image shows a possible development progress of silage maize. We’ve built a tool for the internal development which enables us to simulate the fruit growth with adjustable parameters. This example only considers the fertilizing element, which consists of three fertilization points (“fertilizing events”). The first application (“1”) provides a large amount of potassium (200 kg K/ha / 178 lbs K/ac) via under-root fertilizing during the sowing. The second one (“2N”/“2P”), which happened a little too late, provided the much needed nitrogen and phosphorus (170 kg N/ha, 20 kg P/ha / 152 lbs N/ac, 18 lbs P/ac) to really induce the growth. In order to ensure proper fructification, we had to re-apply phosphorus (“3”) shortly before fruit formation (40 kg P/ha / 36 lbs P/ac). The maize reached BBCH level 89 (EC) after a total of 175 days and was ready for harvesting.
We’ll provide you with more details concerning fruit growth and according parameters in the near future.
Last but not least, a couple of quick answers to questions concerning our previous status update. The quick slot system will stay, of course, and extended with a few functions. In addition we’re working on implementing key combinations for different functions (both for keyboard and for controller usage ).
Embrace the weekend.