In this update we have lots of changes, including graphics replacements, more visual effects, a new tribe name generator, user experience improvements, more tutorials, I could go on and on!
Firstly, graphical updates. The Pokian figures have been replaced with proper characters. They match the rest of the game better now. You can still select their tattoo and colour, and foreign tribes will still be generated with a random tattoo and colour. More of my lingering placeholder UI has also been replaced with visuals that match the game better, like the weather and season sprites. Finally, the terrain transitions have been improved so there are no more sharp divides between hexes.
Fish have been added as a resource that can be extracted from rivers (requires water to be flowing to spawn fish). Also, mosquitoes spawn in areas of the map when the humidity and temperature are high enough. They can give your Pokians malaria if they hang around infested areas for too long. To accommodate these two “resources”, I’ve made some underlying changes to the resource generation system, so you might notice resources spawn slightly more/less than in the previous version.
There were some parts of the tutorial which needed improvement, in particular the stockpiling tutorial. Stockpiles are a very powerful tool and I don’t think that came across clearly enough, so I’ve modified it to better show what you can do with them. There’s also a tutorial for the task panel, where you can now set the priorities of different tasks. While I was looking at this, I also improved task assignments. Tasks are now done in order of assignment after they are sorted by priority.
The last thing I’ll talk about is the epic tribe name generator! It picks a random word from three lists and combines them to give tribes their names. You can still rename your own tribe of course, though foreign tribes will now be more memorable with names like “Crimson Foot Lovers”. I might have to come up with a similar system for human names.
Here’s the full change list for Alpha 15.
Features
- Add shivering visual effect for anyone who is cold
- Display total change of relation/discovery effects on diplomacy panel
- Added sound for human dying
- New task request created an icon notification on task button
- New relation influencer creates an icon notification on diplomacy button
- Add current human abilities to status page of query panel
- Human query panel stays on current tab when switching between humans
- Add stockpile button to side menu to replace map menu stockpiling
- Added average durability of food to charts
- Added epic tribe name generator
- Added items hair string and flax fibres (no use yet)
- Add temperature/humidity/water range functionality for when resources can appear
- Added gaining/losing a sickness to timeline
- Ability requirement added to tooltip for extract/gather/butcher
- Implemented new human sprites with colour changes and tattoos
- Added tracking of certain player inputs
- Added objective descriptors to xml file
- Added tutorial for storing objects and material collection
- Implemented better transitions between terrain tiles
- Added changeable task priorities from task panel
- Added tutorial for task panel
- Added tutorials for building materials requirements
- Added functionality for events panel closing triggering next tutorial
Gameplay
- Make plants/resources much less likely to grow on influence hexes
- Disallow children from performing any tasks
- Balanced tribe relations effects so will no longer have all good/bad influencers
- Made most items decay in water
- Foreign tribes select random homo species and name when generated
- Removed restriction from extracting from deep water
- Added fish spawning as resource
- Added mosquitoes with malaria sickness
- Removed restriction requiring large area for meeting point
- Changed stockpile tutorial so need to create a pile that stores wood
- Modified task queuing so less frequent shuffling of jobs in queue
- Added current pregnancies to prosperity check for future pregnancies
- Massively reduced the number of checks per day for getting pregnant
- Implement hourly and daily temperature fluctuations from the average
- Added extra cost modifier to Pokian pathfinder for water
Fixes
- Fixed raids being launched from two different functions
- Fixed Pokians fleeing from foreign raids instead of helping fellow tribesmen
- Fixed selection box jumping around sometimes when objects moving
- Fixed query panel can’t scroll list of thoughts
- Fixed flashing when snow melting
- Fixed animal sound effects when fighting not playing occasionally
- Fixed the long-standing malformed characters bug for random text (finally!!)
- Fixed hut request counting already constructed huts, instead of only newly constructed ones
- Fixed pregnancy news item keeps reappearing and making noises
- Changed out of stamina thought bubble to be animation
- Fixed activating renaming Pokians textbox causes shortcut keys to stop working
- Added preventative measure to avoid phantom sprite bug for objs outside FOV
- Refactored resource spawning for more flexibility
- Added initial image randomiser for animated objects
- Fixed certain variables in spawndata not being saved
- Fixed Pokians losing skin colour when underwater
- Made default food stockpile more obvious and apply to all new storage buildings
- Refactored starting fire and placing buildings functionality
- Fixed tattoo scroll buttons so they are more responsive
- Fixed objects in left hand not facing correct direction
- Fixed clicking outside game window assigning tasks
- Fixed charts not scaling properly with UI
- Fixed loading game sometimes crashing due to visual effects
- Fixed allowing butchering and stockpiling carcass at the same time
- Fixed cancelling task from taskpanel causes priorities list to double-load
- Tweaked hunger and thirst algorithm for better AI when both values are low
- Added check for number of Pokians before automatically creating store object tasks
- Fixed bug with animals navigating to wrong hex sometimes
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Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com
