… but first we would like to take this opportunity to thank every single one of you!
We have recently surpassed 200,000 sales of Foundation and thanks to all of your support and feedback we are able to realize the game of our dreams, and hopefully yours too.
From the whole team… Thank you!
The December Update
As you can probably tell from the title we are planning to release the next update before the end of the year. We will bring you more news and more details on the update once we are closer to release but in the meantime here are some of the things that will be making it into the next content update:
Villagers will move house when too far from their workplace. The lord will also have the authority to force them to move.
Jobs will be directly linked with villager status where you as the Lord will have more control over status promotion.
Improved military system with stats, levels, and equipment.
New production chain with two new buildings; The Hop farm & the Brewery.
New buildings parts and function for the Wooden Keep.
New Character visuals including new job outfits.
New weather visuals.
New sounds including workplace animation SFX as well as UI SFX.
New modding capabilities: Custom components and behavior trees .
The changes to job roles and villager status will be major and due to this, we are planning to release a preview build in order to test and gather player feedback on the new feature. Keep an eye out for further announcements on the preview build release.
We have even more planned for the December Content update and we will bring you more information soon.
And finally…
We are excited to announce our attendance at MEGA & MIGS 2019 this coming weekend!
If you are in and around Montreal this weekend then you can check out more here.
We look forward to seeing you there! -The Polymorph Games Team
We have a lot of exciting new content in the Fall Update as well as new features, changes and fixes.
You can check out the full changelist below:
Dairy Farm
The Fall update sees the addition of a new production chain starting with the Dairy Farm.
Produces Milk from Cows
Added: CowsAdded:
Milk resource
Cheese Maker
The Cheesemaker is the next progression in the new production chain. Milk, produced at the Dairy Farm will be processed into Cheese by the Cheesemaker.
Cheese can then be sold at the market as a food resource to satisfy villagers’ food needs.
Produces Cheese from Milk
Added: Cheese resource
Tavern
The Tavern will be a place for your villagers to relax after a hard days work, where they can purchase some wine and also get themselves a hot meal if there is one available.
The Tavern, as all other Monuments, consists of multiple Monument including a Service Counter, for storage and staff, which combined with the Public Lounge will allow you to sell wine to your citizens. The Kitchen will provide meals that will be bought (if available) when wine is purchased.
There are also many decorative items that you can place on your Tavern which will give you even more creative options to decorate and personalize your creations.
Bridge decorations
The stone bridge now includes a host of new decorative items added that you will can snap to the bridge. With gates, a portculis and bridge towers, to name but a few, you will be able to make an impressive waterside entryway to your cities.
Added: Bridge decorations
Improved Bridge Collision and pathfinding
Added: Warning of incorrect placement
Monument functions will see some changes in the new update, these changes bring a new feature to Monuments which will allow you to choose which Monument part is assigned a particular function.
Some factors of the Monument parts will have an influence on the Monument functions, for instance, the capacity of the part and the quality of the materials used.
The Fall update will also see the introduction of the Great Hall, where you will host any Envoys that visit your settlement but will also bring an added bonus of doubling the Splendor for the Monument part that it is assigned to.
The Horse
For now, the Horse will only be used by the Envoy to bring you quests but there will be more functions for the Horse in future updates.
Added: the Horse
Envoy visits the Great Hall
Another new feature on its way in the Fall Update will see the introduction of multiple workstation animations which will increase the number of animations within a production building.
We have also updated and improved on some of the previous animations.
Added: Envoy animations
Added: Grindstone animation
Added: Bakery oven animation
Added: Market tender animations
Improved: Harvesting animations
Fixed: Some animation character rotation
Monuments now have 3 tabs:
General – General Information
Edit – Edit Monument
Parts – Shows parts; allows function assignation. – New delete option per part
Within the Parts tab you will be able to assign varying functions to some of the parts using the new assignable functions feature.
Some functions will require extra maintenance costs, hovering over the function will show the effects of the function being assigned.
Other changes to the UI and UX include:
Updated Tutorial
Confirmation popup on part deletion
Taxes collected now show in the budget window
Major improvement to the Monument assemblage experience
– Monument parts can now be attached in 3D, so players only need to place the mouse to a node to have the part attach.
New Immigration factors
Immigration is now governed by:
Happiness
Employment
Residency
Buildings
Added Capacity to some building parts
Bonus to bailiff depending on building part splendor
Updated maintenance costs to include capacity
Resources
Removed: Leather
Map importer
For the first time, modders will be able to import their own map in the game.
Added: Map importer – Allows for the import of heightmap data for the creation of custom maps
Here’s an example of a Quebec City imported map:
Other Modding Additions
Livestock and tool prefabs are now exposed and usable for modding
New buildings, building parts, resources and jobs assets are now available.
A resource can now have multiple resource types
The market tender behavior is now available
Building part functions are now assets, declared individually. – Core building part functions have also been exposed to the API.
Fix: Infinite loading on low-end computers
Fix: Bridges (pathfinding / collision)
Fix: Do not remove bridge pathfinding connections when placing an obstacle under it
Fix: Removed housing lvl 2 door at the wrong location
Fix: Adjust housing collider sizes
Fix: Warehouse & granary resource visuals
Fix: Granary Collision
Fix: Forester planting multiple trees standing at the same spot
Fix: Fishing spot heights (all maps)
Fix: Rustic Church Basement
Fix: Beekeeping entrance
Fix: Avoid crashes when mods are disabled or changed
We are excited to bring you news on the plans for the upcoming content update!
This update will bring a plethora of new content to the game, so without further ado let’s take a look at what is to come in the next update.
New Monument: The Tavern
If you have seen the recent teaser you may have already guessed it but the next update will see the introduction of a new Monument, The Tavern!
As the Tavern is a monument it will consist of multiple parts. These parts will include a Public Bar room, Kitchen, Sleeping Room, Stables and many decorative items.
The Tavern monument will have limited functionality in this update but more functions will be added in future updates.
New Production Chain
A new production line will be introduced in the next update which will see the addition of the Dairy Farm and Cheese Maker.
These new production buildings will add both Milk and Cheese resources into the game, as well as new buildings and of course Cows!
A first look at the new Dairy Farm
Assigning Monument Functions
One exciting new feature, coming soon, will be the ability to assign functions to monument building parts.
With this new feature, the player will have the ability to assign some generic parts a function that is relevant to that monument type, allowing players much more control over their monument building functions and overall creativity with building parts.
The Lord Manor monument set, for example, currently includes a treasury building and a Bailiff office. These building parts will become generic and the players will be able to assign the treasury and Bailiff functionality to the generic parts.
The new update will also see the addition of the Great Hall to the Manor monument functions. The Great Hall is where you will host any Envoys that visit your settlement. Assigning the Great Hall function to a building part will have the added bonus of doubling the splendour for that building part.
Some factors will have an influence on the Monument functions, for instance, the capacity of the part and the quality of the materials used.
Further Monument functions are planned to be added in later updates.
New Immigration Factors
Currently, new villagers join a players village in pairs, with the time between immigration waves being governed by overall villager happiness. The new update will bring some major new changes to immigration, we will be introducing new factors to govern the size of the immigration wave giving you more control over the growth of your city.
In a change to the current system, ‘Happiness’ will affect the immigration count rather than the time between waves. A happier populace will increase the number of new villagers joining a settlement.
In addition to this, ‘Employment’ will also factor in to the quantity of new villagers arriving in a settlement. Having more unemployed villagers in a settlement will reduce the amount of new arrivals in the next immigration wave.
A third factor being introduced will see a players homeless villagers having an impact on new arrivals. The ‘Residency’ factor will require villagers to be housed and if they aren’t, each homeless villager will be factored in to the next immigration wave, reducing the number of new settlers joining a village.
More Workstation Animations
We will be adding even more animations in the next update alongside a workstation animation feature.
The new feature will bring multiple animation to workstations which will increase the number of animations within a production building. For example, the bakery will see a new workstation where one villager will be working the bread whilst a second villager is working the oven.
In a similar vein, the blacksmith will see a new grindstone workstation animation added that will have a second villager grinding tools whilst the first works with a hammer on the anvil.
Coal hut workstation animation
Weather variation
With the new update we plan to add some weather variation to the standard gaming environment.
The new weather effects won’t have the same impact on the challenge to the game as the bad weather event but will increase the level of immersion with variations in the weather environment between sunny, cloudy and rain effects.
Bridge Improvements
Bridges will be getting more detailed with the addition of bridge decorations! There will be a whole host of additional options to improve the look of your bridges, from simple banners to more ornate gates and towers.
Additionally we are looking into improving pathfinding and collision for bridges to ensure they are usable once built and placed correctly.
A Horse of course!
That’s right, we will be introducing the horse into the game, starting off as a vehicle for the Envoy.
And finally…
We will be adding in the possibility to import heightmap data! Initially this will allow modders to include custom maps with their mods or even create a mod that is just a map.
We will be including more villager outfits and applying many bug fixes and improvements, including fixes to improve blocked pathing issues.
Release schedule
We plan to have the update ready for release within the next few weeks so keep an eye out for further announcements.
We are happy to present to you what you can expect in our next content update!
For this update, we are focusing on improving the core game experience as well as adding new features and buildings. Expect major changes in the gameplay meta!
Bad Weather
A weather system will be added in the next update, starting with the introduction of rain. Not only will this add to player immersion with suitably gloomy clouds, lighting and of course rain effects but the weather is also going to bring with it additional challenges.
Rain will indeed impact your crop yields, but will improve fish yield! You will need to be careful to produce enough food to sustain your population needs during this period.
A new building: The Granary
The bad weather and reduced yields are going to require you to plan ahead as poor preparations will see your people starve and leave. To aid in this we will be introducing a new building: The Granary!
This new building will allow you to store a reserve of food resources. It will prove useful when undergoing bad weather. In addition, the Warehouse has been modified to only stock non-food resources. Don’t worry about food trading, the traders will visit your granaries as well.
Major changes to balancing
Balancing will be a large focus for the next update. As we add more content to the game, the economics and flow of balance is evolving as well.
One of the things you can expect is having a limit to berry bushes and schools of fish yields. They will replenish over a time cycle. As such, fulfilling your population with berries will be more challenging.
Further balancing changes will focus on a building’s desirability. There are a number of buildings that we have introduced to the game during the alpha phase, that are missing their desirability influence.
Desirability has an effect on housing upgrades, whether negatively or positively, and as such will have an influence on where you choose to zone housing for your villagers. Not only that but desirability gives you some control over housing upgrades by making an area more (or less) desirable to live.
With that in mind, we will be adding desirability influence to those missing buildings, such as the Rustic Church & Lord Manor buildings as well as those that negatively influence desirability.
We’ve also improved the desirability visual representation.
Building Construction
In order to make them more immersive, we’ve been improving the visual of building construction steps. We will be integrating a couple of those in the next update.
Warehouse resource visual
Currently, many of the resources stored in the warehouse are stored in boxes. This makes it somewhat difficult to identify, visually, which resources are being kept in each warehouse.
It has always been our intention to allow easy identification of warehouse storage and the next update will bring a couple of new visuals to help you see ‘at a glance’ what a warehouse is stocking.
Modding
We will be adding support for modding dependencies. While downloading a mod, you’ll be able to download all dependencies from that mod in a single click.
Release schedule
The update release date will be announced soon, so keep your eye out for more news on the ETA.
