This UI-focused update adds Micropedia, a browseable in-game information "encyclopedia". Together with improvements to tooltips and presentation as well as nicer-looking icons for all the important buildings and items.
Icons
Over time, I have been drawing icons for buildings in the main construction menu. I wanted to replace them because of how unrecognizable they are. It's one of the first things a player sees in the game and it remains the primary mechanic, and all new building unlocks appear here. So it sucks when the sprites are so interchangeable and it takes clicking and reading tooltips to find what one is looking for. (And it is unlikely that the in-world sprites could ever not only be distinct enough but also fit in the small buttons.)
Long story short, here's a comparison between an old and new construction menu page:
Even if not immediately obvious, these should be infinitely more memorable and recognizable. You don't even have to play the game to guess most of these. There are still tons of auxiliaries, but these mainly appear under their own parent buildings, so it's not such a big problem.
Originally, I was trying to come up with unique icons only for buildings in the construction menu. I was mostly using their tools (pickaxe for quarry, saw for sawmill, etc.) as icons:
But I very soon ran out of tools, so to speak. Some buildings I could still represent with unique objects (like an anvil for smith), but others I had no idea how to represent (e.g. an icon for paper mill that isn't paper). So I ended up just drawing the primary items produced. And this actually worked out better than tools, so I drew items for most buildings instead.
Before long, I had about 70% of in-game items drawn, so at that point I might as well draw the rest. So now I had icons that I can use in all the HUD/UI elements with items, "automatically" improving these:
Tooltips
The majority of the work was actually for the tooltips. Micropedia is just a consequence of creating a structured easily-browseable repository for "all the tooltips". It has a bunch of extra information, but the data backend is the same.
Now, old tooltips did and still do their job:
Not great, not terrible.
However, my primary goal was to create extremely simple tooltip presentation that is also visually appealing. Like construction menu, this is the first place where a player looks to understand a building or item or anything. For example, the first thing a new player might learn is these:
Lumberjack and sawmill aren't exactly complicated, but a player who has learned this "language" can look at a more complex tooltip and understand what is required:
Then, from there I can use the same formula and expand until I have, for example, cheese inspection:
There's a whole lot of different things I can show. My main design problem was actually limiting which info I show. For example, tooltips are limited to the most important stuff.
Micropedia
And so the Micropedia is a separate in-game window that has an organized list of every entity and concept in the game. (Well, not every every one, but all the main ones anyway and then some.)
I expect that Micropedia would serve two primary use cases - (1) looking up something specific and (2) just browsing.
For the (1) case -- the player likely has a question about something, probably what some entity is or does or needs. If Micropedia can actually answer such question, then the quickest way to the answer is most likely through a search:
Opening Micropedia instantly focuses on the search bar and you can start typing. Hit Enter and it will go to the best result.
Or alternatively for (2) browsing, everything in Micropedia is broken down by categories (items, buildings, animals, techs, etc.) and then each item is listed (mostly, alphabetically). So you can see and browse all entries.
Currently, Micropedia is rather technical and doesn't list many specific values or go into explainations. I will be adding more of these in the future.
Intermediary items
I combined several buildings, and removed all intermediary items (see the full notes for the list). This may or may not break some games, depending on how those building were arranged. The merged building are Brickyard, Paper Mill and Textile Mill:
There are a few items in the game that are "intermediate". For example, Cheesemonger first brews Milk into Curd and then pressed Curd into Cheese. This Curd item is a real in-game item with all the related features. Then there's buildings like Brickworks and Brickyard which not only have intermediate Grout, but also Unfired Bricks delivered between them.
I think it was a cool idea to show these items and to see them carried around. The problem is that these clutter up the UI -- every place that lists items, like item report, also lists these items. (And if I were to just hide them, then what's the point of having them?)
I also adjusted the inspection HUD to better show to the player that there's a "virtual" item that gets transferred between auxiliaries. For example, Brick Moulder:
Future plans
This update was a little more chill in terms of workload. It still took twice as long than I had planned. And the UI work is always tricky. But it was still "holiday reduced workload update". However, I do need to get back to some of the tough changes.
I want to get back to expanding the end goal and making the monument a larger objective. And there are numerous steps along the way. I'm not even sure how large and complex each step would be. For example, I have to make multi-tile buildings. I need to change how construction tasks work and allow multiple builders. Builders need to be able to carry items. I need to rework how construction input items are stored and used/reclaimed/counted. I want to add multi-step construction for the monument. This probably means building upgrading. Likely I need foundation/platform construction. I need to add more and new materials for all of it. Etc. In short, my main goal for "endgame" has a lot of mini-goals that I will likely add one at a time.
Full changelog
Changes
• Remove Brickworks, Grout and Unfired Bricks
• Grout Mixer and Brick Moulder are now part of Brickyard
• Brickyard now directly receives Sand and Clay instead
• Remove Pulp Mill and Paper Pulp
• Pulp Vat is now part of Paper Mill
• Paper Mill now directly receives Hemp and Water instead
• Remove Carding Mill
• Carding Machine and Spinning Mule are now part of Textile Mill
• Textile Mill now directly receives Hemp and Wool instead
• Remove Linen Sliver, Linen Yarn, Wool Sliver and Wool Yarn
• Remove Unfired Pottery
• Remove Clean Fleece
• Remove Curd
• Remove Honeycomb
• Add Micropedia window - an organized information repository - split into categories and their entries
• Add categories for Micropedia - concepts, items, buildings, roads, villagers, animals, props, tiles, technologies and seasons
• Each entry in Micropedia shows its information - description, sprite(s), usage and some hard-wired related info
• Entities and links are clickable in Micropedia, switching to the corresponding entry
• Add unique recognizable icons for all items, roads and most buildings
• Most places in UI/HUD use the new icons for entities
• Expand entity tooltips to include usage/production information and other most-relevant information
• Add various new concepts
• Add and tweak various icons
• Add and tweak various sprites
• Change descriptions for all the changed buildings, items and others
• Remove Water Tower
• Add "Hide UI" button to pause menu that hides UI/HUD in-game (and prevents input for the duration of it)
• Building workers are now more reluctant to carry their own items
• Beehive now shows a warning when no Flowers are in the operating range
• Add a privacy notice and some extra info to save upload window; make toggle for optional Steam ID submission
• Remove the Population count requirement to unlock the Technology Branches
• Add a goal for building Town Hall
• Add wild Animals - Deer, Boars, Foxes, and Wolves
• Wild animals will spawn in Animal Habitats up to a limit
• Animal Habitats spawn and despawn in the world based on surrounding forest "score"
• New worlds and worlds loaded from older saver will have up to the default number of Animal Habitats spawned
• Animal Habitats show an in-world indicator and the mouseover tooltip provides additional information
• Rename Pork to Meat and Ham to Roast
• Add Hunting technology available for research from the start
• Add Hunter's Lodge building unlocked with Hunting
• Wild animals can be hunted - the worker will approach, shoot and harvest the animal for Meat
• Recently deceased wild animals can be skinned - the worker will harvest the animal for Meat
• Hunter's Lodge can individually toggle which animals are hunted
• Wild animals that die leave corpses instead of despawning immediately; the corpses eventually decay
• Add Game Warden's Lodge who will tend nearby habitats
• Herding now requires Hunting instead of Farming
• Smokehouse and Drying Rack now unlock with Hunting instead of Herding
• Add more particle effects to Drying Rack
• Add Animal and Animal Habitat concepts
• Trees no longer grow during Winter
• Forester and Florist no longer plant during Winter
• Various text and sprite adjustments
• Add wild Animal "baby" versions
• Only grown Animals can be hunted or skinned by the Hunter's Lodge
• Animal Habitats in new worlds generate with the appropriate number of Animals
Fixes
• Animal Habitat improved quality score from Game Warden's Lodge not being deducted after the improvement time runs out
• Workers at some buildings with multiple auxiliaries would not complete work at auxiliary but run off to another auxiliary
• Tooltips showing "through" opaque/blocking UI elements
• Mouse scroll wheel no longer zooms in/out when over HUD/UI
• Keyboard numpad +/- zoom keys now have a reasonable delay to zoom in/out one "step" at a time
• Water not being "unlocked" from the start and inspection HUD not showing Well items
• Barn is no longer unlocked if none of the items it stores are unlocked yet
• HUD pause menu button not playing a "click" sound
• Incorrect distance calculation for pending deliveries
• Farm, Gardener and Arborist planting and collecting their production entities on unfinished auxiliary buildings and on untilled tiles
• Transit toggle buttons blocking storage selection in storage building inspection HUD panel
• Fix Water Tower being treated like a Tavern and fulfilling Houses tavern resident sentiment
• Fix rare exception/stall bug when a worker switches a harvest task at the same as the target plant decays
• Fix rare exception bug when an animal regains its product at the same time as dying
• Fix Gardener and Arborist occasionally not tilling a tile just after planting in all other tiles
• Fix wrong Drying Rack meat sprite layer
• Correct Unfired Pottery plural name typo
• Play the correct UI sound for road upgrading via the U shortcut
• Fix a very rare error where a task for livestock animal is assigned right as it is dying
• Fix animal inspection HUD box lingering after animal leaves the selected tile
• Fix Windmill starting milling and creating Flour without any Wheat
• Fix Hunter's Lodge workers sometimes running on the spot when approaching animals
• Fix Farms, Gardeners, Arborists planting things in the wrong Seasons
• Fix building workers occasionally not doing anything (because they had another task planned, which is no longer valid), for example Farm workers not tilling a field
• Animals in new Habitats start aged proportionally (instead all dying at the same time)
• Closing early access intro window with Esc doesn't open patch note or link window with main menu
Balancing
• Wild Animals spawn a bit slower in Animal Habitats
Optimizations
• Faster tile border and indicator re-drawing and minimize the lagspike on swapping/relocating them
• Buildings to not look for tasks for disabled worker slots
• Remove redundant task condition checks when first deciding on a task
• Add delay between buildings failing to assign potential tasks
• Remove expensive periodic task checks that can instead be aborted later
• Check building tasks according to priority to avoid unnecessary checks
Rudy
Snowy Ash Games