This update brings changes and an expanded framework for technologies that will drive the future expansion of progression features. (I know this sounds a bit abstract and wishy-washy and this update is a little bit all over the place.) In short, I added a bunch of technology-related stuff.
Key changes
The big change is the way the knowledge is gained. A new Scholar building will generate research points. However, it won't just "magically" produce points. The worker will have to visit nearby production buildings, observe their operation and return with their findings. This will earn them a knowledge point.
So the player will have to actively "produce" knowledge. And the bigger the settlement, the more the opportunity for knowledge (as it realistically should be) and thus quicker expansion. So while it's perfectly possible to have a village with a minimal number of buildings (and I'm sure I'll add an achievement later), it's not as fast.
To that end, there's an obvious restriction to production buildings that can be observed -- they must have generated enough "observable knowledge" by being actively worked. In other words, you cannot learn from idle buildings. To help visualize this, I added appropriate icons to observable production buildings when selecting a scholar:
Once papermaking is unlocked, the Scholar can use Paper to record Notes about their observations:
These notes are now required by the Scribe to make the Codex books for knowledge:
Previously, these got "magically" written up with knowledge. So if Scholar learns from practice, then Scribe works out the theory, so to speak. The goals will still provide small knowledge boosts, but much less for later techs than before. So the player needs to build Scholars. I feel it's an opportunity to add more depth to technology/discovery mechanics in a way that actually explains where the knowledge comes from. I'll see how it goes and may be add more flavour to these interactions later.
Another big change is that there are now several (future) technology trees:
These are production, civics, economy, and culture. The current techs are all in the production branch for now. I might still rename or change the new ones, depending on what future features make most sense. The new trees are basically empty, but I will be adding and adjusting techs as I add the relevant features.
The tech trees unlock automatically based on the population:
This is primarily so that I don't overwhelm the player with a hundred techs at the start. But this works intuitively too -- the community has to advance far enough to worry about more than just survival. First, civics or population needs; then trading and economic growth; and finally culture and entertainment and such. Kind of like that needs pyramid. At least that's the rough idea, we'll see how it goes.
I also made a dynamic arrow system that can connect everything neatly:
Except, hold up... does Cheesemaking require Linen? 🤔 I didn't realize I would have this problem, so I needed some special cases and tons of extra sprites:
Such a small change making all the difference. In fact, the number of sprites I ended up making is rather ridiculous (and I didn't even make "exotic" combos for things I don't expect):
All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:
This also made me appreciate the work that must go into making tech trees and such in other games.
The Monument now requires a few more techs, one from each branch:
This will be the direction I will be heading and expanding until it's a sufficiently epic project to become a "world wonder" objective. I am avoiding just adding tons of techs for now, because I want them to feel sufficiently diverse.
I've also been working on various delivery-related backend improvements. One notable addition is that buildings now have "demand" for deliveries. This demand can be thought as priority for buildings that have less items than others. However, distance is still a considerable factor. Previously and when there aren't many items available, only the closest building will get items:
However, once there are more items, the further buildings will also start getting items:
This isn't efficient for immediate processing, but I think it feels more natural and intuitive. So I'm happy to sacrifice some marginal efficiency for more spread-out deliveries.
The settlement's starting layout has changed as well to a more ragtag arrangement (town hall and warehouses are now unlockable):
I did a whole lot of additional UI work, including standardizing many UI elements, adding icons, and various QoL improvements. Here's an icon creation example:
I have also added automated tests for various simple gameplay scenarios. This adds a bit of time to development, but it also saves me a lot of time should I accidentally break something (this has happened quite a few times already):
And of course, the most important update, a cobweb:
As always, I did a good chunk of work on the backend as to not accumulate technical debt and to keep updating on a steady (if not as frequent as I would want) schedule.
Iterations
I don't usually go into detail about iteration and features that don't make it in. But I think it's important to mention the direction I considered but decided against, because it sort of explains what kind of game this is. (And because this update is twice as late due to redoing a bunch of things.)
Firstly, I was going to split techs into tiers/levels:
And these tiers would have to be unlocked. And for that I added a bunch of town milestones or "town stages":
Gameplay-wise, this would stop oneself from rushing technologies before having established a stable settlement, including an adequately-satisfied population. It also would stop the village from advancing with just a tiny population or only satisfying basic hunger needs.
This felt too artificial and not really the sort of "milestones" that a real settlement organically goes through. Or rather, such stage labels normally come as a consequence of organic development and not because the population decided to "advance to the next stage".
So I added "civic branches" that would drive the direction of development that closer represents the sort of governing decisions and planning that might be done:
One would have to choose what direction to take once all requirements are satisfied.
This meant the town stages would gradually "unlock" when enough civic development has taken place:
At this point, I was unhappy with the whole premise. These are features that artificially limit progression. It's a blurry line of what is "artificial", but a menu window telling you to "get X things" for undisclosed reasons likely fits. I think a game can easily become unfun if such restrictions are overdone. At the same time, they can serve as concrete goals. So I wasn't sure what to do at this point.
So I decided to get rid of town stages and just leave the unlocks:
But after playing around with it, it still just didn't feel right. I am having trouble just explaining it succinctly. In fact, none of this felt right and was just taking steps away from in-world gameplay and into menus. Now, I don't consider heavily UI- and menu-based games to be bad design or anything. I am sure this could work in a different game. But I don't think such direction fits MicroTown.
So, in the end, I made the call to scrap most of this and go back to focusing on in-world features and fewer separate menus. At least, nothing that feels too artificial. At this point, I had also planned and designed a whole load of future civic branch features and I am going to implement them as part of technology unlocks instead.
Future plans
I am not completely over some sort of civic development direction. One such path is adding "policies", which would allow the player to shape the high-level development of settlement in different directions (as opposed to tech tree(s), which are basically linear). However, with hindsight of the iterations above, this will not limit the progression, but rather enhance or change it. This would be a pretty large feature (and it will likely not be in the next few updates).
I also want to work on a bigger objective building than the current monument. But this requires me to rewrite the building and construction logic to allow larger building footprints, construction stages/upgrading and multiple builders. This would be a whole update by itself in terms of work. But I feel it is necessary to make buildings feel grander.
Some of the new buildings, like bursar or hospice, hint at the sort of "city service" management direction I plan to work on. This involves a lot of individual moving parts, so I will be adding them gradually one at a time. I have mentioned before that I dislike the current "happiness" system, because it is too broad and too vague. So I will be replacing and expanding it into more logical "sections", like health, education, entertainment, etc. — the sort of stuff you would expect a population to need and care about. This way the player has clear targets, such as "raise health", and ways to accomplish this that vary from specialty features to mixing together with all the other needs and production chains.
I also need to make a "bonus system", broadly speaking. If policies or special buildings add or deduct some sort of bonuses (like work efficiency from happiness at the moment), then I need to show this in a consistent manner and this means having a solid system to begin with.
I will also likely do a couple minor updates with smaller feature sets, because I've been working on random stuff in parallel. For example, I've made some cool weather effects ages ago, but still have not added them. There is no "weather" or "climate" or "seasons" in-game (yet) and having it rain or snow wouldn't change anything practically. So on one hand, making such additions is only for some visual variety and I could add them sooner than later. But on the other hand, I really want there to be gameplay difference (like crop growth or something), so I've been postponing finishing it.
In short, there are a lot of plans and much work to be done. But I do have concrete goals and designs for the steps to reach them.
Price change
I will raise the price of the game from 8$/6.6€ to 10$/8.2€ at some point. I believe the game is in a solid state and offers enough content to warrant a higher price point.
Full changelog
Changes
• Scribes now require Scribe's Desks and Research Notes from Scholars
• Technologies now come in 4 branches - Production Technologies (where most of current techs are), Civics Technologies, Economics Technologies, and Culture Technologies
• Tech branches require a Population threshold to unlock
• Tech costs increase as more techs are unlocked (there are still several cost "tiers")
• Rename "knowledge" when referring to unlocking techs to Technology; keep the term Knowledge as the "currency" for unlocking; adjust tutorial and other texts
• Add additional UI for technology panel, such as branch tabs and tech connection/progression arrows
• Goals still award some Knowledge, but not enough after first few techs
• Add Scholar building that continuously gathers Knowledge from nearby active production buildings
• Separate Papermaking tech (i.e. Paper) from Bookbinding (i.e. Blank Book)
• Add Research Notes production from Paper at Scholars once Papermaking is unlocked (without Paper, they will still gather knowledge, but not produce notes; this can be disabled on a per-building basis)
• Scribes now have auxiliary Scribe's Desks required for operation
• Scribes now require Research Notes in addition to Blank Books to produce Codices
• Scribe's operation now takes significantly more time, but 3 workers can work from the same building
• Library now produces 2 Knowledge per Codex
• Town Hall is now (de)constructible and unlocked by Town Hall. however only one can be built
• A new settlement starts with a Tent (instead of Town Hall) and Stockpiles (instead of Warehouses and Granaries)
• Add a Camp Site starting/default tech to "standardize" what technologies lead to what; Dirt roads now require this tech
• Roads now require Stoneworking and Camp Site technologies (practically, this doesn't change anything, because those are unlocked from start)
• Add Storage tech that Warehouses and Granaries now require; add corresponding goal
• Monument now requires Monuments technology (instead of just Monument Schematics, previously "Monument Construction"), which itself requires Monument Schematics, Monument Design, and Monument Financing from all the tech branches
• Add Architecture tech unlocked by Papermaking and required by Monument Schematics
• Various minor technology changes
• Update tutorial to include building a Scholar
• Deliveries are now prioritized to buildings that have none to fewer items and deprioritized if they have a lot, effectively leading to a wider item distribution rather than nearest/most effective
• Certain buildings, like Scholar and Market Square can now receive items even at long distances
• Add separate sprite for when Crop Field, Garden Plot and Tree Nursery are harvested but not yet collected
• Indirect outputs (currently, Pigs from Ranches) are shown with other "real" output items in building inspection HUD
• Add U shortcut key to upgrade the selected entity (currently, Roads)
• All buildings now require holding Shift to continue building multiple; explain in tutorial
• Add gameplay option to always build multiple by default
• Add various additional concepts with tooltip explanations
• Change various UI sprites and icons; adjust many tooltips, texts and UI elements
• Construction HUD button column now always shows all buttons (practically, village/town building button is now always shown)
• Item report window selected item overview label with the total amount and storage amount versus capacity
Fixes
• Buildings that have auxiliaries producing items as input not working (Potter, Beekeeper, Brickyard, Wool Scourer, Carding Mill, Cheesemonger)
• Villagers not delivering multiple items to Market Square stalls.
• After loading a save, villagers being reported as ready for tasks when they are not yet, then sometimes failing delivery assignments
• Villagers bundling Market Square distribution deliveries that are too far away from each other (practically, different market)
• Villagers bundling deliveries of items on the ground that are too far away
• Construction occasionally halting when both stone road and building sites are pending and a bundled material delivery is scheduled
• Deliveries not being assigned with items remaining waiting and carriers remaining idle potentially forever on busier worlds where generated delivery count exceeded the update capacity
• Fix flag wave animation "direction"
• Fix mistakes in various texts and tooltips
• Construction HUD window becoming laggier after repeated world entering
• Fix tooltip panel text alignment issues
• Fix item report button clickable area overlapping nearby buttons
• Fix villager not holding carried item properly after picking it up for certain actions
Optimizations
• Deliveries are assigned faster on busier worlds
• Displaying texts that contain formatting/links/icons is now much faster and allocates comparatively very little memory
Rudy
Snowy Ash Games