New demo available!

The most exciting change in this update is the introduction of huts! You can now build huts out of wood or bone, depending on what is more readily available. Huts take many resources and a long time to build, so they are not essential to your tribe’s survival. If you want to play as if your tribe is nomadic, you can do so. However, huts have a large storage area and your Pokians will sleep in a hut if there is room.

Last update I introduced the first pass of an objectives system. In this update I’ve improved upon that. Requests can come from either your Pokians or foreign tribes (once they are discovered). If you complete the request, you gain a minor reward. This can be for example, everyone crafting faster for the next 48 hours. My favourite request at the moment is sacrificing an animal carcass at an altar.

I’m always trying to think of new, fun objectives to implement. Also, I’ve changed the way fires light up the surrounding area so it’s softer and looks better. Wild fires also spread up to two hexes away, which means more FUN when things get out of control!

Finally I’d like to mention animations! When plants spawn or die there is now a short animation that plays.

A full list of changes for Alpha 9 is below:

New Features:

• Spawnable resources and plants is read from xml for each biome
• Added huts and altar buildings
• Reintroduced twigs object in wood category
• Stockpile settings applicable to buildings
• Tribe requests from Pokians are now in a panel under Tasks
• Notification buttons darken when they have been viewed
• Add tutorial for tribe requests panel
• Added trading objective with foreign tribes
• Added News section to the UI with various news items
• Added option to limit framerate to 30 FPS for slow computers
• Added news item when Pokian is fighting
• Added functionality for rotating objects
• Added animations for plants dying and sprouting

Gameplay

• Humans will seek hut to sleep in if available
• Add limit to how much huts can store
• Allow plonking buildings without all required materials
• Fuelling fires uses twigs now instead of logs
• Include buildings in influence area in prosperity calculation
• Added timer to objectives so they can expire
• Improved resource deposit generator
• Created herb bush for gathering edible herbs
• Increased range of wild fire spread to 2 hexes
• Halved flammability of plants
• Burn carcass mission needs to be done at an altar
• Reduced volume of carcasses by 2.0
• Modified effective speed formula so heavy carcasses easier to carry
• Added “Great Hunt” objective
• Removed alert text from UI
• Added object status ‘dead’
• More dynamic calculation for plant deaths
• Massively reduced tree growth in winter
• Increased deterioration due to old age in all living things to 75%

Fixes

• Fixed human unable to get off hut once built
• Changed map menu button for building to yellow
• Added image icons for query panel action buttons
• Humans can drop objects from adjacent cells now
• Fixed humans exiting huts from incorrect cell
• Disable deleting ability for primary objectives
• Refactored object statistics in xml for better organisation
• Added extra check to prevent duplicate possible requests
• Fixed large building selection in building menu
• Water transitions smoother
• Fix loading game drawing clothing for off map humans
• Fixed cancelling task while Pokian off map makes them disappear forever
• Fixed human returning from trade mission dropping objects on edge of map
• Fixed loaded game not remembering task’s required materials
• Fixed scout going off map when not even on map edge
• Fixed animations looking the same when game loaded
• Fixed drawing clothing on animals twice
• Fixed secondary light sources not displaying unless first light source displayed
• Fixed cancelling stored object task not stopping Pokian from storing object
• Fixed bed not recognised as building
• Fixed changing meeting point causes bits of old meeting point to be left over
• Fixed can’t bury humanoid carcass
• Fixed rain noise volume was scaling based on humidity
• Fixed disease symptoms sound effects playing when zoomed out
• Reduced animal decision making frequency by 66% to improve performance
• Fixed snowing and raining stopping every hour in winter
• Fixed loading game food pit with unassigned stockpile reassigning stockpile

If you would like to support development you can purchase and play the Alpha or sign up to the newsletter

Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com

Alpha 7 is ready and posted, with a new Demo as well as a new Gameplay Video. In this update the main focus is on improving the Tutorial and adding an Objectives System.

Thanks to feedback I received, I learned the game was a bit overwhelming to the new player with all the different systems interacting at once. It’s hard to experience your own game like a new player when you’ve worked on it for thousands of hours! On the left-hand side of the screen, it now lists the current objective based on the current active tutorial.

The update also includes the first iteration of the main objectives for the player. These are increasing Prosperity and discovering all neighbouring tribes, which now begin as “Unknown”. A new Scout profession allows you to select which Pokians can go on Scouting missions. A summarised list of changes is below. If you like more detail, weekly progress is listed here, here, here, here or here.

New Features

• Implemented nomads joining your tribe event
• Implemented achievements/objectives for tutorial
• Added various event-related notifications
• Added more tutorials and made the transition smoother
• Added minimap rectangle to let player know current viewing area
• Refactored game engine to allow for new games without restarting
• Events panel can be moved around and position is remembered
• Added scout task for human AI to explore surrounding area
• Added some diplomacy-related tasks
• Added sound effects for eating, drinking and shivering
• Added food security and burning carcass objectives
• Pokians won’t perform any tasks if their primary needs are too low

Gameplay

• Nomad appearance chance based on current tribe size relative to prosperity
• Doubled water update frequency
• Added main objectives for discovering all tribes and becoming most prosperous tribe
• Diplomacy panel disabled and blacked out until first main objective complete
• Modified Career class so Pokians can have multiple professions
• Added foreign tribe discovery stages
• Moved scouting action from tribe-specific action to global action in diplomacy panel
• Foreign tribe prosperity fluctuates in proportion to foreign tribe size
• Halved day length to fit new update frequency
• Reduced severity of hunger and thirst effects due to sickness
• All animals eat and drink twice as fast
• Change notification sound to achievement completion sound
• Decreased rate of gaining symptoms from sickness
• Increase base influence area around camp
• Made data overlay for forbidden movement hexes clearer
• Animal spawns are less aggressive overall
• Change animal decision to migrate to take into account crowdedness
• Changed animals to disengage targets if they are out of breath
• Reduced severity of food decay

Fixes

• Notifications now show most recent first
• Fixed changing combat move direction not immediately removing previous move order
• Fixed tutorial and event notifications bugs
• Tutorial notifications now have green text
• Fixed duplicate water supply hexes
• Fixed crashing when closing game with human off map
• Refactored object destruction to be more stable
• Fixed filter broken on task query panel
• Fixed combat mode tutorial achievement appearing even when no tutorial
• Fixed migrating animals not being properly deleted off map
• Minor objectives only activate when tutorial over
• Fixed humans not using fists when no weapons to hold
• Fixed filling water skin from river not giving clean water
• Improved debug panel
• Fixed move forbid cells not remembered when saving game
• Fixed if human can’t reach extract/harvest task, performing task via telepathy
• Fixed herbs counting towards food stockpile even though no hunger reduction
• Fixed humans sleeping and storing objects in shallow water
• Fixed when zoomed out, combat mode selection not scaling as well

If you would like to support development you can purchase and play the Alpha or sign up to the newsletter

Twitter – ParsleyPWG

Website – PokingWaterGames.com

Been working on battle reporting lately. When a Pokian swings an axe, throws a spear, causes damage or gets attacked the event is recorded. Information about each hit can be found by hovering over the actions in the query panel. Damage to weapons and clothing durability are also recorded.

To go with this, I made some combat mode improvements to how unit and target selection work. You can now also specify which Pokians you want to choose to move, even if there are multiple standing on the same tile. Right-click the name to de-select that Pokian.

Then when you click on a hex with possible targets, a pop up appears allowing you to select which animal to attack

It’s also more obvious when you’ve entered Combat Mode now. Battle music will start playing and the UI changes colour. I’ve also made some menus and panels auto-close when switching between modes to keep things clean.

Some other improvements to combat:

• AI improvements. When you select a target for your Pokians to attack, they will keep attacking it until they are too weak, even if you exit Combat Mode. Previously if you exited Combat Mode while they were still fighting, they would run away immediately.
• All animals now have natural slash, blunt and pierce protections, so some weapons are more effective against certain animals
• All animals now have a body, not just bipedal animals (means front paws can be damaged separately from the head for example)
• Damage is not fixed anymore, instead it varies around a base level. This is to overcome the 20 pierce defense clothing providing immunity from the 20 pierce attack weapon problem

It’s been over three years since I started working on Tribe Of Pok. Over that time I’ve grown as a developer and found better ways of doing things. One example is water flow mechanics. It’s one of the first things I worked on and has undergone several iterations.

When I was a newbie programmer with barely any experience, I was creating a new object for every unit of rain that fell and then destroying it when it evaporated or soaked into the ground. If you have any experience as a programmer, you’ll know how disastrously bad of an idea it is to create/destroy hundreds of objects every second. That implementation was quickly scrapped when my frame rate dropped to 10 FPS every time it rained.

Next, I tried storing the amount of water in each tile and performing water calculations only on the tiles. Performance was much better. All I had to do was +1 for every unit of rain that fell and -1 for every evaporation/saturation event. Simply calculate the height of each tile to determine if water can flow into it from an adjacent tile.

However when it rained, the ground would become blanketed in a layer of water. Hills would be just as saturated as valleys and there was nowhere for Pokians to hide. As a side effect, dry ponds would never completely refill since much of the water was stuck on higher ground. I fixed this by introducing movement to saturation. In effect, the water in the soil was “flowing” downhill just as the water above ground did.

Now water was flowing somewhat realistically and wasn’t hampering gameplay.

A year or so later I added rivers. Rivers form long, narrow paths that move in one direction. However with the simulation as it was, water moved in a random direction with each update. Sometimes water would flow into an adjacent hex. Then on the next update it would randomly decide to flow back into its starting hex. The result was water taking too long to go downriver. For particularly long rivers, the water evaporated before it even reached the other end of the map!

To fix this, I’m cheating by teleporting water from the high points to the low points along the river. Eventually I’ll replace teleporting water with a better method. In the meantime, I’m iterating and improving other aspects of the game.

Firstly, there are some new ways I’ll be communicating to the community. You can now follow me on Twitter via @ParsleyPWG for more regular updates on what I’m working on. I’ll also be posting a weekly work log on the website blog. Remember, you can also sign up to be notified when new Early Access versions are available.

Combat mode

Combat Mode was something I put in a while ago, and took out when it became too confusing. When entering Combat Mode, the tribe members stop what they are doing and wait for the player to give orders. Several improvements have been made to the point where I’m happy to put it back in the game.

It works much like in an RTS game now, left-click drag to select and right-click to give move or attack orders. If someone is under attack, you can enter Combat Mode and send other tribe members to help them fight. Much more intuitive than in the previous iteration.

Prosperity

Once a tribe’s food and water needs were met, I didn’t feel there was a strong enough force driving the gameplay forward. While testing the game, I got to a point where everyone was happy and thought to myself, “ok… now what?” Something was needed to tie everything together. There had to be a goal the player could aim for in addition to survival. So I did some thinking and came up with a single measure to handle all this – prosperity.

Prosperity is a measure of how well your tribe is doing. Currently it is affected by factors such as the size of your tribe, amount of food available, the value of items and severity of diseases. In general, the value of items will only count if they’re located within your “circle of influence”. The circle of influence is an area around the tribe that can grow or shrink. I implemented it a while ago as a way to prevent roaming animals from constantly wandering into the player’s campsite and starting fights. I wasn’t sure whether to display this influence area or leave it as a bit of a mystery, but with the introduction of prosperity, the effect needs to be made clear. The influence area can be expanded by building additional fire poles, which need to be occasionally maintained by adding animal fat to them.

The intention is to have prosperity fluctuate as the fortunes of your tribe change. I have some ideas to build on this mechanic in terms of progression and unlocking advanced crafts. It needs a bit more work though before I say any more.