Hey everyone and welcome to Devlog #13!
The Mineral & Craftsmanship update added some big content and systems to the game and the team have been working to fix any remaining bugs but also to polish the content that was added.
Consequently, we are now working on a content patch that will add some further improvements to the recent update. This patch will not only improve on some of the visuals but will also expand the masterpiece parts.
1.6 Content Patch
More specifically the 1.6 Content Patch will include:
- Visual improvements to the quarry depots
- Visual improvements to the mineral deposits including improved textures
- Improved mineral distribution
- Visual tweaks to Masterpieces
- New parts for the Gate Masterpiece
- New sounds for mining and workplaces
- New animations including workshop and building animations
We are sure you will be excited to hear that the 1.6 content patch will also include the following QoL improvements:
- Promotion window sorting
- Many more villager names and the option to rename villagers (planned)
With that, let’s take a closer look at what the team are currently working on…
Buildings & Masterpiece Polish
Claudine and Loup-Gabriel have been enhancing some of the building visuals, polishing current buildings with improved basements and grounded doors as well as working on the new Masterpieces.
The Gate Masterpiece, in particular, will see a new wall part as well as even more parts for you to build that perfect entrance to your city.
More Visual Polish
Enhanced textures are being worked on for the Mineral Deposits with Claudine currently working on a more refined Gold texture. You can expect to see more improvements to the deposits and quarry depots for the upcoming content patch.
Quality of Life Improvements
Christopher has been busy on a number of improvements including, updating the notification panel to remember your severity choice and refining the action button and warnings. These changes can be seen live right now in last week’s hotfix which also included Christoper’s work to allow multiple Masterpieces on the same monument.
On top of these changes, he is currently working on the villager promotion window to show more information in addition to some added control in the form of a sortable promotion list!
Building & Workshop Animations
Something we have been wanting to add for some time is more interaction between workers and the buildings, for example, the gold smelter pouring liquid gold from the cauldron when smelting.
Up until recently it hasn’t been possible… but now it is! With this newly created ability, Michaël has been working on new interactions between buildings and workers that includes moving parts on the buildings themselves.
Modding
In the past few weeks, we have been gathering feedback from the modding community to see what new features and content they would like to see unlocked. Armed with this feedback Max has been busy opening up new options for modders to create extra content.
For example, last week’s patches saw a new behavior tree for custom guard behavior. This will allow modders to create custom locators for guards so that they can patrol your villages.
Additionally, the recent patches have exposed a whole host of assets for modders to play with, such as building functions for the new quarries and workshops, masterpiece parts, villager jobs and much more. Full modding changelogs can all be found on the modding wiki pages.
Alongside this, Max has been working to add in some quality of life improvements and bug fixes for both modders and players alike. Modding logs have been augmented to catch errors in created mods and a useful QoL update has seen a new prompt when a player loads a save that might be missing mods. This will allow you to download the missing mods directly when starting a save game.
Both Max and Leo continue to work on performance optimizations improving the game for players and modders alike.
And Finally…
Vincent has been working on a top-secret project for a future update. Unfortunately, we can’t bring you more news on this just yet but it will bring some extra life to your villages.
To wrap up this Devlog we have some particularly exciting news that we know you will all be very happy to see. Dan has been working on the UI redesign whilst also improving the user experience wherever possible. The design phase is progressing very well and thanks to the UI tool that is being created by Ben, integration will start soon.
Once that big chunk of work is done, we will iterate both on the UX and the style of the menus, so expect changes along the way.
We are excited to reveal to you an exclusive sneak peek of the work so far:
You can see more samples of the work in progress UI in the recent article from Rock Paper Shotgun.
We would love to get your feedback, so don’t forget you can join us on our Discord server and let us know your thoughts.
– The whole Polymorph Games team
