Firstly, check out the new Forces Of Nature Trailer to celebrate the move to the Beta phase of development!

Also, we now have a Wiki page where you can find helpful tips for playing the game!

The first new thing you will notice is the lightning. Lightning can cause wildfires which can spread when it’s not raining, so they can be particularly dangerous. Luckily lightning only happens when it rains, so usually the rain will put out the fire before it spreads too far. I have made it optional on the world generation page.

There are now two types of traps, the spike trap and the snare trap. A snare trap will immobilise any animals that walk over it, if they are under 100kg. Heavier animals will still set off the trap, but will not be caught in it. Once an animal is stuck in a snare trap, you can wait for it to starve and then collect the carcass, or attack it.

A spike trap works differently. Instead of trapping the animal, it does damage to all animals that walk over it. To reset a trap, there is now also a new button on the side menu which works similarly to the extract, gather and butcher buttons.

Also in this update are smoother animations when objects are created/destroyed. Below you can see the animation of a carcass disappearing and materials appearing when it is butchered. The same principle applies when crafting objects, cutting down trees, etc so everything should look better overall.

I’ve also improved the battle reporting for your Pokians. You can get a better idea of how damaged arms/legs are affecting a fight by opening up a tribe member’s query panel and going to the “Thoughts” tab.

So what’s next? I still have a few improvements to make in Tribe Of Pok, and maybe adding more content depending on how well the game does. With the new traps system the game can be considered feature complete.

Here’s a full list of the changes:

Features

• Turned off automatic trap resetting
• Added reset trap button to the side menu
• Added maximum weight variable for traps to work
• Added progress bar for resetting trap task
• Display animal weights and max trap weights in query panel
• Added checkbox on world generation page for lightning
• Added lightning strike news event
• Added previous name to carcass query panel
• Allow hiding lists on right side of screen
• Added battle reporting to include damage reduction due to appendage effectiveness
• Added note to harvestig tutorial to not assign too many tasks at once
• Smoothed spawning of objects animation when created on map
• Added ability to select stockpile border image
• Added ability to select work area image
• Added checkboxes for borders to designation side menu

Gameplay

• Added reward for decreasing precipitation by 100% and changed increasing precipitation to 100%
• Soil chunks decay over time
• Decaying objects animate away instead of instantly disappearing
• Lowered tundra biome base river height and added period of no water flow
• Added humanoid meat
• Added spike trap
• Added decay and durability loss for traps
• Halved time taken to reset trap
• Increased water decay of charcoal and added bacteria decay
• Modified average foreign tribe size increase to remain static
• Reduced animal stacking on same hex when fighting close quarters
• Modified scared check for animals to avoid mammoths running from humans
• Added borders to display stockpile and work areas
• Increased amount of time some news items stay in list
• Allow people to step on hex where pole fire burning, but not camp fire
• Added check to prevent trees/bushes growing on construction sites
• Add mention of waterskin to water tutorial

Bug Fixes

• Fixed rectangle select doesn’t work in combat mode for some orientations
• Fixed object shrinking not accumulating when it’s supposed to
• Fixed tool tip not appearing for gen world checkboxes
• Fixed statistics page chart positioning
• Fixed carcass buried in burial plot not having proper name
• Expanded shaman initiation notification to include how to activate
• Fixed can’t combat mode set move position where objects already present
• Changed the query panel status tab cuts/bruises tooltip to indicate effect of damage
• Fixed damage reporting so proper amounts are reported
• Fixed side submenu checkboxes alignment adjusting based on scale
• Fixed crafting objects being counted towards objective even when only probability of success
• Remove debug height from query panel
• Prevent resources from spawning over buildings
• Fixed tree saplings not appearing
• Fixed wild fire not going out when spreading to burning things under water

Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com

Major changes to world generation this update means you can now dig into the ground for resources! The world is now composed of geological layers, which can be easily edited in the xml data files. If you dig through the soil layer, you can reach the clay layer, and then the gravel layer, and so on. It is different for each biome. Each layer has its own characteristics such as water absorption, fertility, hardness, movement speed, etc. The world looks much more natural with this new system, and I’m especially excited by the flexibility of adding ground layers for each biome with only several lines of xml!

To dig into the ground, just use the extract button just like you would for extracting trees and rocks. As an example, extracting gravel can provide us with granite chunks, along with giving a chance to find some flint chunks.

Another exciting feature of this update is coastlines! I spent about two weeks working on refactoring and improving the water generation algorithm yet again to get this working. I think it was worth it, as now we have working tides! That’s right, the water level rises and falls over the course of a day in the new Rocky Beach biome. When the tide recedes, crab holes may appear in the sand from where you can extract sand crabs. But don’t set up too close to the sea, or the high tide will wet all your tribe’s belongings. This new biome requires some balancing, but it’s there to be played around with for now.

On the usability front, I have continued improving task indicators to help the player better understand reasons why something isn’t being done. In the task panel you can now see the reason a task isn’t being completed, whether it is missing materials or no Pokian available with the ability to complete that task.

With a task query panel open, you can also see arrows pointing to the materials that are assigned to that task. In the below image, we have a Spear weapon crafting task that required a stone knife, log wood and animal tendon as materials.

Finally, I’ve done a major crafting rebalance so object values, required crafting materials and required abilities are more consistent. In general, crafting an object will increase the value of base materials by 2 to 3 times. Monument construction has also been split up to allow more Pokians to work towards building it at the same time. First you need to craft stone slabs and dyes, and then use those subcomponents as the base materials for a monument.

There’s lots more in this update, but I’m not here to write a novel! Here is the full change list for Alpha 16:

Features

• Created functionality for unlimited ground layers
• Major refactoring of land generation code
• Added layering for ground types in default biome
• Add functionality for digging into terrain using extract button
• Added checkboxes to turn off ground extraction in side menu
• Refactored abilities so they can be defined from xml without restriction
• Refactored image reading to allow separate male/female children images
• Added randomiser for tattoo and colour sprite on game setup
• Added trinket collection mission
• Hardness added to ground layers
• Added reason for task not being performed to task panel
• Map generation page includes option for coastline
• Add tutorial for gaining diseases and viewing tribe status
• Added arrows on map when query task panel open indicating materials for the task locations
• Implement rocky beach biome
• Added crab resource
• Added object ambient sound functionality
• Added task “cooldown” as reason for non-completion of task
• Added bipedal height/wideness difference for individuals

Gameplay

• Tundra reduced daily temperature fluctuations, increased daily temperature fluctuations
• Added movement cost modifiers based on terrain types
• Gravel no longer extractable, will be replaced by diggable
• Changed moss from resource object to ground layer
• Extracting resources from the ground lowers terrain now
• Rebalanced weapon abilities and effect on extract/gather/craft speed
• Added water table for generating water below certain height
• Added soil object from digging grass
• Added more animal wandering when idle
• Added Digging Stick object specialised in digging into ground
• Implemented children sprites
• Added burin tool with carve ability
• Statues changed to require carve ability instead of chop
• Reduced time taken to start a fire
• River/coast height determined by water table height
• River/coast direction on map fixed instead of random
• Major rebalance of all object values
• Major rebalance of object crafting time and crafting materials
• Removed deep water alpha colour change
• Reduced number of flint pieces available from quartz rock
• Modified some tutorial requirements to streamline them
• Split extract stone tutorial into two parts
• Split monument construction to include crafting subcomponents slab and dye

Fixes

• Fixed some query items not disappearing when updated while filter is on
• Fixed timeline scroll not working on win page
• Fixed timeline event for gaining sickness repeating too often
• Reimplemented ice forming similar to snow forming
• Smoothed tundra and semi-arid temperature fluctuations
• Fixed missing edible lichen image
• Fixed item abilities not being read properly in task panel crafting tooltip
• Reduced saving/loading time by 80%
• Tweaked human sprites so outline colour retained
• Reduced saturation of humanoid skin colours to look more pleasant
• Fixed clothing position on children
• Refactored extract/gather/craft tooltip to standardise format
• Fixed construction required abilities not being taken into account
• Tweaked ground saturation to reduce “pulsing” water
• Major optimisation of water flow
• Fixed crafting bone statue incorrect material names
• Fixed plants growing on non-fertile terrain
• Fixed starting fire ability not being taken into account
• Fixed bug with selecting attack targets
• Fixed mammoth unable to cross river
• Fixed diplomacy panel priorities alignment
• Add tooltip when trying to assign stockpile hex without selected stockpile
• Fixed starting fire task failing instead of waiting when twigs being stored
• Tweaked effect of exposure and wetness on human internal temperature
• Replaced first names with more easily pronounced names
• Fixed animals not aging properly

Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com

Along with this month’s update, we are also launching onto Steam Greenlight and would appreciate votes! Spread the word! Here’s the Greenlight Trailer:

I’ve been spending a lot of my time working on promotional materials for Greenlight and polishing the user experience this month. This includes adding keyboard shortcuts for certain UI elements, which actually helped me to make a better trailer since I could hide the UI but still interact with the game. There’s no interface yet for changing the shortcut keys, but they can be modified via the xml files.

Some game functions have also been moved around to be more intuitive. For example, the crafting menu can now be accessed from the side UI menu, rather than from the Task button at the top UI menu. To me this makes more sense, since all the other assignments/building construction are made from the side menu.

The Stone Henge monument has also been completed, and you can now build it in-game from the various pieces. There’s still a display issue where the pieces overlap incorrectly if built in the wrong order and it looks a bit funny. It doesn’t affect gameplay, but it’s one of those things that keeps me up at night.

Tribal tattoos have also been improved. The placeholder images are replaced with about 30 different characters from the Vinca Symbols. The Vinca Symbols are a set of symbols that were found in Europe, believed to be from the Neolithic Era. I thought they looked pretty cool and would make good symbols to stick on Pokian’s chests. You can also adjust the colour of your symbol separately from the colour of your tribe members!

Here’s the full change list for Alpha 14:

Features

• Move timeline from tribe panel to win page
• Improved colour selection for tribe members
• Added functionality for resource regeneration
• Added crusty lichen and green moss to Tundra biome
• Include time taken for extract/gather in tooltip
• Added keyboard shortcuts for side menu
• Added filter on craft panel for only showing objects we have materials available
• Add base animal spawning rate to xml to biomes
• Add hide/show UI functionality into keyMap
• Side menu shortcut keys can be modified in xml
• Allow access of crafting panel from side menu
• Added Stone Henge alternate images
• Tattoo colours are now adjustable
• Added about 30 tattoos to list
• Added separate cooldown functionality between weapons and fistycuffs

Gameplay

• Changed Bunch type objects to Grass type
• Changed some object crafting requirements from Grass Bunch to Any Grass
• Foreign tribe relations are influenced by hue instead of rgb colours
• Changed available map sizes on world generation page to be more sensible
• Rebalanced all relation and discovery modifiers
• Rebalanced tundra resource spawning
• Axe, bow and spear cooldown time increased from 20 to 30

Fixes

• Modified tribe panel display to be more informative for each tribe member
• Fixed two objects of same type but different category not being used correctly
• Fixed craft tasks being assigned on top of existing buildings
• Fixed multiple craft tasks on same workshop hex
• Fixed keyboard shortcuts working while textbox is active
• Fixed combat music not looping when in combat mode
• Fixed combat mode selection not registering humans correctly
• Fixed super lag in combat mode when sending Pokians to unnavigable position
• Fixed diplomacy panel ??? colour changing when switching from known tribe to unknown tribe
• Fixed misaligned saved game page when too many save games
• Fixed deer not fleeing when attacked
• Fixed cooking meat on fire poles when no camp fire available
• Fixed unable to assign fire task when no material available
• Fixed rare crashing bug when assigning tasks while game was not paused
• Fixed cloud effects using wrong image when game loaded
• Optimised building layer drawing
• Fixed godray movement for main page
• Updated tutorial for Crafting
• Fixed assigning stockpile from stock panel not selecting side menu properly
• Fixed ticking/unticking query panel filter not sticking between panel changes
• Fixed sand texture red border sometimes appearing when scrolling map
• Fix gather time in tooltip not displaying properly
• Fixed crashing notifications when moving to the front
• Fixed discrepency between diplomacy panel relations display and actual value changes
• Fixed occasional crashing bug when loading game with weapon in another object
• Fixed scrolling crash when applying filter on second page

Steam Greenlight – Vote for this game
Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com

I’ve made a gameplay video talking briefly about getting started in the game, specifically getting water, extracting and gathering resources:

New Biomes

In this update I’ve focused on adding new biomes. This means refactoring some of the world generation algorithms to support a wider variety of features. Rivers can now experience daily and seasonal flooding. For each hour we can increase or decrease the level of water entering the map. For example, we can increase the water level during spring to simulate ice melting upstream and flooding the map. There’s a lot of flexibility in this system since these numbers can be set and tweaked in xml data files. In future when simulating coastal areas, I could use the same system to simulate hourly tidal changes.

One of the new biomes is the Tundra. This is a very cold, flat biome where plants find it hard to grow. This was implemented by adjusting the daily temperature variations, height levels, resource distribution, etc in the data files. Then I experimented with the world generation until the numbers produced some nice looking maps.

One issue I had was with snow. In this cold biome, snow was a lot more frequent and it also melted in spotted patches. This constant snowing/melting didn’t look very nice in the previous version, so I had to rework the graphic effect to make it nicer.

Besides tundra, I’ve also created a semi-arid biome. In contrast to the tundra, this one is hot and dry most of the year. They will each have unique animals and plants that make surviving a different experience. For example, in the tundra there are very few trees, so you will have to rely more on hunting animals for food and construction materials. Both of these biomes probably need more balancing in terms of resources and weather. This is a first pass at getting the functionality in for that.

Extracting Resources

Speaking of functionality, I’ve made a slight tweak in the way resources are extracted. When you extract a resource, there might be different outcomes depending on the type of resource. So for example, extract a granite rock and there is now a 20% chance of getting a piece of flint instead of just a granite rock. The beauty of the system I’ve created is that I can apply this to almost any other action when designing the game! I can make starting a campfire have a 20% chance to create an uncontrollable wild fire (I won’t do that – but I could). Or maybe extracting a tree could have a 5% chance of spawning a Giant Sloth who was sleeping in it! The possibilities are endless.

Anyway those are the main points for this month. Below is the changelog for the Alpha 12 Update:

Alpha 12

Features

• Added exclamation marks to Stockpile panel when nothing allowed in pile
• Added first pass of tundra and semi-arid biome
• Improved snowing animation appearance and disappearance
• Added fluctuating river heights over a year
• Removed scenery colour changing in Autumn and Winter
• Added spawn density for resources in xml
• New sand ground type
• Add ability to choose seed on world generation page
• Harvest % chance success displays in tooltip
• Added increase rainfall chance reward
• Added random generator for world seed and tribe name
• Added vsync to options menu

Gameplay

• Animals move adjacent to water instead of on top to drink from it
• Water flows downhill faster
• Soil saturation flows downhill slower
• Adjusted quartz rock spawn variables
• Bear, tiger and mammoth carcass have specific butcher remains
• Improved gravel generation
• Height shown when placing meeting point
• If snow present on cell, extracting task is slower
• Improved river flow speed via teleportation
• Bushes slow down movement
• Sand slows down movement
• Humanoids can swim over deep water
• Extract now has probabilities for extra materials

Fixes

• Major optimisation of fight or flight AI
• Fixed great hunt achievement asking for too many animals
• Fixed hut objects not registering in Stock panel
• Fixed selection box not following walking human
• Fixed humans not finding food inside huts when not already inside
• Tweaked plant death animations
• Fix not scrolling properly through tribe member list
• Optimised water saturation
• Optimised water flow calculation
• Improved river generation algorithm
• Animals no longer immediately drown in deep water
• Fix resizing window causes loss of framerate limit and vsync
• Fixed weather patterns starting on day 2 instead of day 1

Support development via Itch.io

Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com

Introducing the first trailer for Tribe Of Pok:

Trailer Production

It’s amazing how long it takes to make a one-minute video. You have to plan out each scene, then go in-game and shoot it. Then you realise you need special debug functionality to capture the scenes you want, so you have to program those in. Luckily a few of the scenes happened naturally in the course of gameplay (and I happened to have a recent save handy so I could replay it over and over). Add in effects and overlays, and you end up with a good chunk of time taken.

It was an enjoyable learning experience, I think I might create a few more tutorial-type videos showing how to play the game. As for trailers, I probably won’t make another for a while unless an awesome idea grips me.

Of course this month wasn’t just spent making videos, there’s also been a few substantial changes to the game.

What’s New?

Animations have been improved using the animation system I implemented last month. Animals push and shove as they fight. Trees sprout into existence and fall over when they die. The good thing about this system is I can stretch, shrink, offset and transform existing images to create the illusion of movement/action without having to create lots of separate sprites. I can use mathematics to bounce, wiggle and shake objects which I’m more comfortable doing rather than blowing the budget on animations.

Some work was done on the new player experience as well. Tutorials pop up now to ensure the player doesn’t miss them, and I’ve also added more tooltips. One fairly big addition is tooltips for extracting, harvesting and butchering. When you hover over a hex with a designation active, the tooltip will tell you what the output will be if you assign a task there. E.g. click on the Extract designation, hover over a tree and it will list wood and twigs as the product. Once you’ve cut down the tree, hover over that same hex again and if there’s fertile ground, it will list grass as the product. The tooltips are context sensitive. Here we have an example of hovering over the same tree when Extracting vs Harvesting. You can see the different outputs depending on the context:

Here’s a full list of updates:

Features

• Added animation for living thing maturing
• Added first pass of ruins on map as a resource
• Animal spawning is now biome-specific
• Added automatic settings for first time playing
• Added scrolling and zooming acceleration
• Added cloud particle effect
• Added tutorial for stockpile window choices
• Added tooltip when in extract and harvest mode for materials produced
• Added tooltip for required materials to start fire

Gameplay

• Implemented different species for foreign tribe members
• Player can choose reward after completing objective
• Changed displaying animal cooldown when fighting to displaying health
• Replaced pierce, slash, blunt with just damage
• Replaced individual protection with just armor
• Reworked sprint and movement speed
• Reformulated attack/defense calculation
• When fighting on same hex, added goal for animal to move off cell if lighter than opponent
• Change default starting families to 3
• Add butcher button to sidemenu and remove from querypanel
• Raw meat now produces two cooked meat
• Flowing water increases plant death chance

Fixes

• Set up blackouts on diplomacy panel for tasks that can’t be done yet
• Tutorial now pops up screen all the time
• Fixed tooltip hidden under mouse cursor
• Added cooldown for animal noises so not so repetitive
• Fix gaps between tiles when zooming sometimes
• Fixed constant sound repeat for news items
• Fix fighting news report appearing and disappearing really quickly
• Fixed camera slightly offset when zooming to locations
• Blackout speed buttons when no meeting point set yet
• Fixed mid-navigation path recalculation off by one
• Smoothed out volume changes from scrolling around map
• Fix combat arrows not following humans smoothly
• Reward events panel now pops in front of normal events panel
• Fixed animal leaders jumping around when they should be idling
• Fix human getting distracted by animal when not actually scared of animal
• Fixed navigation to adjacent square not possible in certain circumstances
• Make save icon stay on screen longer
• Fixed animal not drinking water when on top of it

By the way, the game is now also available via Itch.io!

Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com