About 0.4.2

This is perhaps the most comprehensive update we've ever released.

Bricks and clay pit

From now on all buildings also require bricks for construction. They still require wood, but not as much as before.

Bricks must be harvested from a clay pit. You need to construct a clay pit on at least one marshland tile, which is also new to this update.

Pathfinding and group movement

Pathfinding is improved in almost every way. It's faster. Selected units now try to get to the same location as a group. We fixed a lot of bugs. Also, units who are idle now give way to moving units so that moving units don't get stuck.

Connect to any region

In previous builds you were restricted to the region you automatically connected to, based on ping. Now you can connect to any region (AU, EU and US).

We're also showing some extra data on the connecting screen like the game version you're connecting with, the region you're connected to and your ping to the connected region.

Map changes

The map generator has been balanced and spawn rates for resources changed. For example, your tribe will always spawn next to some fertile land, and at least one marshland tile so you can easily construct a clay pit. We've removed obsidian. The map is also slightly larger.

Bronze Smelting

The road to equipping units is now shorter. Metal Smelting has been renamed to Bronze Smelting (you're able to harvest gold for wealth from the beginning, so it makes sense), and you can now construct a Furnace and equip units with copper equipment before researching Bronze Smelting.

Other improvements

Some examples are new art for Dwelling and updated art for some other buildings, adding check sums to tell all players when a multiplayer game goes out of sync (which is hopefully never!), attack trigger radius of ranged units has been set to same as vision range, hotkeys no longer interfering with each other, you can now select 22 units (up from 18) at once, and more.

Bug fixes

We've also fixed tons of bugs. Check the full change log at the bottom for more!

Roadmap

A couple of updates ago we described 5 main areas that we wanted to address first: pathfinding, group movement, base defence, team games and learning missions. We've addressed two of these in this update (pathfinding and group movement). 

Our next focus will be on adding a base defence structure. Probably some sort of early-game watch tower. However, our programmer will be travelling abroad with his family soon, so we can't give an accurate estimate of when the next update will be uploaded.

Connect

Feel free to join our Discord to give feedback, just chat or find someone to play online against: 

https://discord.gg/9nGpUe2

Change Log 0.4.2

Brick resource
- New resource 'bricks' that is required for constructing buildings
- New building 'Clay Pit' that lets villagers harvest bricks
- Clay Pit must be placed on top of at least one marshland tile
- Bricks has same harvest difficulty as wood (75)

Pathfinding
- If a building is placed on a unit's path the unit will no longer just walk through the building, but attempt to find a new path around it
- If a building is placed on a unit's destination the unit will no longer walk through the building and stop on top of it, but instead attempt to find a new destination node close to the original destination node
- If a unit is standing on another unit's destination node, then the second unit will no longer look through the entire map to find a path (which couldn't be found so it caused performance hicks), but now instead idle
- Any idle units will now step aside for moving units (example: idle units standing in a choke point will no longer cause moving units not to find a path through them)
- Having lots of units try to get to the same destination no longer causes no paths to be found and following performance hicks
- Flooding algorithm: no longer using A* to see if a path is reachable or not (huge performance gain)
- If units are surrounding an enemy unit that a friendly unit want to reach, then the friendly unit will still find a path (so no performance hits anymore) and wait for a path to clear
- Units in groups are better at avoiding units in other groups so that no one gets stuck
- General optimisations to A* (it's about 15-35% faster in most cases)

Group movement
- Units that are selected and ordered to move at the same time now seek to reach the same destination and move in a group to reach it

Connecting to server
- Can now pick region if automatic region connected to is not the preferred region
- Now showing which server you automatically connected to
- Now showing ping to the server you connected  to
- Now showing which game version is used to connect to server
- Can no longer press 'Continue' until lobby has been successfully joined

Map changes
- Now start the game with 80 Bricks and 60 Wood
- New tile type 'marshland' with fertility level 3
- Renamed 'wetland' to 'grassland'
- There will always spawn at least some fertile land (and at least 1 marshland tile) close to all player starting locations
- Starting units start sightly closer to each other and in an improved formation
- Changed values used for fertilising tiles to make the map more balanced in general
- Removed obsidian
- Gold now contains 500 worth of Wealth
- Gold now has a slightly higher chance of spawning on dessert tiles
- Gold now has a small chance of spawning on plain tiles
- Increased Small map size from 90x90 to 90x90
- Increased Large map size from 100x100 to 120x120

Bronze Smelting
- Changed name of 'Metal Smelting' to 'Bronze Smelting'
- Can now construct Furnace before Bronze Smelting is researched
- Can now equip units with copper equipment before Bronze Smelting is researched

Other improvements
- Updated art for Village Center, Dwelling, Barracks and Archery
- Added sprite for Farms that have 10 harvesting rate (apples) (values 9 and 10 used to show same sprite)
- Attack trigger radius is now set to same as vision range for all ranged units
- Changed hotkey of Slinger og Spearman so they aren't the same as hotkey for 'Stop Production'
- Villagers will automatically seek closest berry bushes and start foraging after constructing Granary
- When villagers are selected it's easier to select resources that units are standing in front of
- To avoid certain cases of confusion and make the game feel more responsive placing building and moving unit actions now occurs on mousedown instead of mouseup
- Added click sound to production queue buttons
- Added sound for when equipment is successfully produced in the Furnace
- Sending check sums so that both players will be notified straight away if game goes 'out of synch'
- Can now select 22 units at once (up from 18)

Balance
- Axeman HP reduced from 210 to 190
- Harvest difficulty of Gold reduced from 150 to 125 (faster mining) 
- Harvest difficulty of Metal reduced from 200 to 150 (faster mining) 
- Villagers can carry same amount of metal as other resources (used to be 5 less)

New building costs
- Barracks costs 120 bricks and 10 wood
- Archery costs 80 bricks and 30 wood
- Clay Pit costs 30 wood
- Dwelling costs 40 bricks and 5 wood
- Furnace costs 100 bricks and 50 wood
- Granary costs 50 bricks and 20 wood
- Resource Camp costs 25 bricks and 15 wood

Bug fixes
- Now showing correct values for steps it takes to construct buildings and produce units and equipment
- Moving mouse from resource to UI element will now reset mouse cursor to default (used to keep harvest symbol)
- Farm's health bar no longer renders behind other types of resources
- Fixed a bug that happened when attempting to place a farm you couldn't afford
- No longer have to deselect and select the Tribe Center before it's construed to see the 'Waiting for Tribe...' message
- Fixed Furnace build time
- What you equip soldiers with in your Furnace no longer affects what other players can equip in their Furnace
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused enemy shadows to be visible in Fog of War
- Can no longer press DELETE to raze Village Center
- Fixed some problems with setting rally point
- Fixed a rare case where villager wouldn't transition animation from carrying or moving animation to gathering animation
- Fixed a rare case where villager wouldn't transition correctly from moving animation to idle animation
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you clicked rapidly multiple times to cancel production
- Fixed several UI bugs that could occur if you started or cancelled a production and then quickly selected another building in a high latency game
- If villagers drop resources on a building that is damaged they will no longer start repairing instead of dropping resources and continuing their harvesting task (you have to manually ask them to repair the damaged building if that's what you want)
- Fixed bugs that had to do with repairing damaged farms
- Now correctly removing stop action tool tip when nothing is produced and stop production button gets hidden
- Fixed a bug that caused multiplayer games to go out of sync