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Foundation

A New Era of Organic City-Building Simulation!

Modding Mondays Episode 4: Crime & Punishment with the Security mod

Hello everyone and welcome to this fourth episode of our Modding Mondays series.

This week, we’ll share the discovery of Batyuski’s Security mod. This prolific creator has been credited for over 60 mods and shows no signs of slowing down.

What exactly is the Security mod, anyway?

The main idea behind the Security mod is to add a new layer of realism to our city builder while beefing up its challenge.

At the time of writing, Foundation’s vanilla experience (i.e. without mods) does not offer crime in any form or fashion.

Batyuski took this opportunity to add a whole new dynamic to the game: players are now able to protect their village from outlaws and punish them accordingly.

I have a huge list of mod ideas and spend a lot of time thinking about ways to make Foundation more true to medieval life while also keeping it fun. Castles and security played a central role in medieval towns and I always wanted to make a mod to replicate both the visuals and the functionality of a castle, and to introduce some mild challenges to the game in the form of outlaws.

-Batyushki

How do you protect your village?

When playing with the Security mod, you will have access to new buildings once you reach a population of 20 villagers. The most important one is undoubtedly the Constable’s Keep, which includes a prison part where outlaws will eventually be housed before being released a week later, jobless and with the Newcomer rank.

The mod also adds guard towers. Guards assigned to them will patrol the surrounding streets: a powerful deterrent to crime! You are free to change their route with special arrows placed on your territory.

Each keep, tower, wall, barrier or guard adds to the overall sense of security in your village. It is therefore important to place them in strategic locations to prevent the crime rate from increasing.

At any time, you can check the security level of a given building by clicking on it:

  • Green: fully protected
  • Orange: prone to theft
  • Red: might encourage new outlaws

Outlaws

If a workplace is located too far from the above-mentioned security buildings or patrol routes, after two weeks workers will be tempted to steal food, goods and gold.

When a villager commits a crime, he becomes an outlaw. But this is not the only factor that can make them fall to the dark side: being unemployed for more than two weeks can also be the spark that leads to crime.

In this mod, villagers turn Outlaw if they are unemployed for too long or work in an area with low security. Outlaws live in forest camps and come back to the town to steal from other villagers. The player can build keeps, towers, walls and gates to increase security. Guards capture outlaws and go out on missions to destroy outlaw camps.

The genesis of the Security mod… and its future!

Mods require a ton of preparation, testing and patience. This was certainly the case with Security.

In 2021, working with another modder, Minotorious, I learned more complex modding techniques, including behaviours (making villagers act in a certain way) and how to overlay information above buildings. These made possible my second Security mod which is now available at foundation.mod.io.

While we strive to create the best possible modding environment with Foundation, there are times when creators find themselves in a bind and have to really think outside the box.

One significant obstacle I faced was how to spawn Outlaw camps away from the village but in places that the outlaws could reach. By using a behavior script I was able to send an invisible pathfinder to potential locations, to verify that outlaws could get there without being blocked by water or mountains.

Other ideas will have to wait, despite all our best intentions:

There are still more things to be done for the Security mod, once Foundation releases a few new features to modders. One would be to improve the way the player can view the security of each building, similar to how they can now see residential desirability. Another would be to zoom in on an area where outlaws have stolen something, when the player clicks a theft notification.

To conclude, Batyushki looks forward to the future of Foundation’s modding:

Even with its current limitations I am delighted at how the mod has turned out and really enjoy building my own castles, seeing the guards go on patrol, and watching the outlaws travel through the forest to their camps. Someday I hope to have entire villages of outlaws, Robin Hood style, living their own lives in the forest.

Foundation is truly a unique game and an amazing platform for modders!

Download the Security mod today!

 

A Look at Foundation’s Future

Hi everyone!

Now that the holidays are decidedly behind us, it’s time to think about what the future holds.

There’s little doubt that 2022 will be a pivotal year for Foundation. We know you’re eager to learn more about the game, hence why we’re sharing an exclusive look at what’s going on behind the scenes…and hopefully answer some of your burning questions!

Laying down the cards

After three years in Early Access (time flies!), we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Looking back, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, but acknowledge that there’s still a lot of work left to do. Still, we’re confident that we’ll cross the finish line before long.  

Our current focus is on Core Game II (1.9), which we’ve actually already talked about last year. We can’t stress enough just how much of a game changer this new release will be. We’ll have more details to share about it very soon. In the meantime, here’s some up-to-date info about the new features being worked on right now by the team for this massive update:

Gameplay Types & Progression

Prosperity

As part of our overhauled progression system, your village will now score points according to various metrics (territories, population, etc.). We’re calling this system Prosperity (which is not to be confused with Splendor). The idea behind it is to allow you, the player, to progress in the game without imposing a specific playstyle. For example, you will be able to progress by focusing on a large populated city, but you’ll also be able to progress by focusing on a prolific monastery. Aiming for higher scores isn’t just for bragging rights: you’ll unlock new buildings and put in place new politics (edicts) along the way.

Estates

The Estates are evolving and will be closely tied to different gameplay types. Each Estate will have their specific advantages over some core features of the game. For instance, the Labor Estate will fare well in villager taxation, the Clergy Estate on luxury resources and the Kingdom—you probably guessed it—on military campaigns. Also, get ready as having a high Splendor with an estate will negatively impact influence with other estates. This is just a quick overview of our intentions. More on that later! 

Victory conditions

We know several players would love to see endgame content added to Foundation and 1.9 will deliver on that front. Victory conditions are late game objectives you can complete to score rare player celebrations in Foundation—and their own achievements. Pick one or more victory conditions to track and try to complete all the prerequisites…if you dare! 

Narrative

If you’ve been following us on social media, you know we hired a talented narrative designer a couple of weeks ago. Core Game II will be the first occasion to see his work applied to the world of Foundation. What does that mean?

Well…we’re not ready to spill the beans quite yet, but here’s a nugget of information for you: our new narrative events aim to make your experience more open-ended. Since 1.9 redefines our global game progression, we wanted to establish the first step of what we could describe as a “dialogue” between players and Foundation. In that sense, the game will feel a lot more responsive by serving events tailored to your play style.

New onboarding

Core Game II is an opportunity for us to review Foundation’s early game and more precisely its onboarding. Since we’re introducing a lot of new features to the game, it’s important that our tutorials and in-game messaging are on point. We’ve put a lot of effort into explaining our systems and helping players understand the steps they need to take in order to build—and maintain—successful villages. 

And more! Look forward to our new blog series that will delve deeper into upcoming features included in 1.9

The Core Game II (1.9) update is scheduled for release in the first half of 2022.

Looking even further

Apart from the work being done on Core Game II, our team is working in parallel on other important additions that will see the light of day before/at release. Here’s a few of them:

Residential Revamp

We are rehauling the residential experience to make it more fluid and informative while improving the game’s overall organic layout. Villagers will still build and upgrade (up to a 3rd level) houses by themselves but through blood, sweat, and tears, they’ll be better at it than ever!

Gone are the days where unused space could really hinder your village’s development. Improvements to our painting tool will help determine more precisely where districts are formed and ensure residential space (as defined by the player) is sufficient. The tool will be able to predict how many villagers can be housed within a specific zone.

Map Generator

We already gave you a glimpse of our Map Generator. Work on this feature has progressed steadily since then and is already showing promising results. We know this is one of the most anticipated features and we want to make it right, hence why we’re keeping things a bit under wraps for now.

New Terrain Biomes

One way to add more uniqueness to maps is by making sure biomes are different enough from each other. How are we going to do it? Well, for starters, we want to improve vegetation a lot—even going as far as having different vegetation depending on elevation. Think leafy on lower altitudes and coniferous on higher altitudes. What we’re not aiming for is to add tropical or desert biomes, as we feel they don’t quite fit with our design.

Accessibility

We strive to make Foundation more functional, accessible and enjoyable by all types of players. Expect even more accessibility options in the future, including improved colored text contrast and colorblind-friendly signs/feedback.

Modding

We will continue to support the modding community. One way to do so will be by exposing more real-time interactions, but we also plan to let modders edit the user interface (UI), among other things.

Quality of Life (QOL)

Delivering a smooth gameplay experience has always been a top priority for us. On that point, we can say this year will introduce a number of interesting QOL changes, included but not limited to: more tooltips, improved handling of panels and ESC key behavior, new Book shortcuts and UI customization (resize).

We are doing everything in our power to get Foundation our of Early Access before the end of 2022. We will keep you updated as we go.

 

Patch 1.8.1.4 Is Now Available!

Lords & Ladies, it’s time for a new patch! 

Patch 1.8.1.4 fixes a number of issues that have surfaced lately. Here’s the complete rundown:

Changelog

General

  • Buildings using production recipes had doubled outputs
  • Ressource tracker: simple production buildings had the wrong input icon in certain cases
  • Cows walk animation was missing: they are back to being gracious while moving around!
  • Some mod.io mods were not fully displayed in the “Installed mods” window
  • Even more updated localizations for builders all around the globe!

UI

  • Work assignation dropdown could appear partially out of screen
  • Updated Tavern and Luxury needs descriptions
  • Updated Treasury description
  • Added description for public lounge
  • Restored unlockable button sound
  • Adjusted building description style
  • Adjusted time string readability
  • Adjusted Warehouse and Granary refuse icon color

Crashes

  • Fail to load corrupted saves instead of crashing
  • Avoid crash when unassigning the bailiff’s office part function from the monument while the bailiff mission window was open
  • Avoid crash when a quest instance is not linked to any asset quest anymore (on load of a savegame)
  • Avoid crash when inputting (way) too many characters in any text editor (villager name, monument name, quote, etc…)
  • Avoid crash when logging an error related to wrong building function type on workplace
  • Avoid rare crash while switching job
  • Avoid crash when starting more than one game with certain mods
  • Avoid a bunch of useless logs
  • Avoid crash when closing game during certain loading steps
  • Avoid crash with some usage of resource tracker from mods

Modding

  • Possibility to remove Need type per villager status
  • Expose COMP_AGENT:setProfile()
  • Gatherer can produce multiple resources even if one resource `isFull`
  • Call of parent function for extendable class in Lua
  • Mod components now have last priority (for init, update & enable order). This ensures core game components are ready to be interacted with from mods

As always, we are interested in reading your comments about this new patch. Feel free to come and discuss on Discord with us!

 

Modding Mondays Episode 3: Day – Night Cycle

Hello builders and welcome to this third episode of our Modding Mondays series

Today we have the pleasure of showing off the very fresh Day – Night Cycle mod from Minotorious. 

If you’ve been hanging around on our Discord, you know just how involved Minotorious is in the community. With more than 10 mods under his belt, we felt like it was time to share one of his own creations here.

Adding even more immersion to Foundation

The Day – Night Cycle mod adds a new and immersive gameplay feature to Foundation. By using a sundial (see below), you’re able to adjust various settings:

  • Turn the sun on or off
  • Set the camera shader
  • Set the shadow direction (default: 12 o’clock direction)
  • Set whether you want dynamic simulation or not
  • Set the dynamic simulation’s speed

The sundial needs to be built like any other building in Foundation. Keep in mind that in order to use the Day – Night cycle mod, you’ll need to install the Foundation Extended Building Functions dependency, also from Minotorious. 

If you’d rather not toy with all these settings, you can instead install the automatic version which does the same thing only, well, without your input!

As is often the case with original creations, the Day – Night Cycle mod happened a bit randomly:

The Day – Night Cycle mod was more of a happy accident than something actually planned. I was checking what objects I could access inside the game that the developers had not exposed to modding yet when at some point I came across the game’s Sun. From that point on I made a little plan on how to implement the Day – Night Cycle and got to work. A few workarounds and 1-2 days later the mod and the little sundial controller started taking shape.

-Minotorious
The Day – Night Cycle mod in action

Empowering modders since day one

From the beginning, we’ve believed in community-driven content for Foundation. In fact, it’s a must for this type of game, as it adds a ton of creativity and replay value. As we’ve said in the past, we want our players to be able to let their creativity free and for them to have a platform with which they can share that creativity with the world. All of that begins with mod support.

That being said, we took the opportunity to ask Minotorious how his experience been like creating mods with Foundation.

With one word, amazing! Foundation is so simple to mod but also has so much depth if someone wishes to create something very new and very custom in it. Polymorph Games and especially Léo and Maxime are always eager to answer questions and help modders bring their projects to life. To be honest, the Day – Night Cycle mod is a prime example of the dev team listening to the modding community and implementing features we asked for. Without them implementing some methods related to attach nodes so quickly the Day – Night Controller wouldn’t have been possible at all!

-Minotorious

Aspiring modders are welcome to join our community at any given time. We have channels dedicated to mod development where members share tips and tricks along the way. Take a look, it’s worth it!

Download the Day – Night Cycle mod now!

 

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