Hey everyone. Thanks for checking out this Devlog. Here’s what the team has been up to this past November. The devbranch should have builds with these changes and updates.
Also here’s the roadmap for Early Access if you’re interested in what we have planned out.
Population Growth
Zomawia
I’ve changed a lot for population growth and reproduction. We have two major problems with population growth:
1. Losing population doesn’t matter in late-game. Waves of births can counteract anything negative we throw at the player. Eventually the majority of your population doesn’t do anything.
2. Unlimited population is a viscous cycle of performance and optimization. The more we optimized the game, the more population waves grow until performance tanks again. Rinse and repeat.
To solve these problems birth rates have been clamped per day and there will be a maximum population set. This new max population will be the standard for balancing any future end-game features. I realize there is not enough content to necessitate a population limit, so for now it will be unlockable once you reach the limit. The plan is tie Tech progression closely to population and add more features and gameplay that compliment that max population.
There are several more changes to population growth:
- Daily population growth clamped to 1% of population (5 maximum)
- New Villager Growth clamped to 300 population
- Maximum population can be disabled in Policies -> Laws
- Allow Villager Growth law (default on), villagers lose extra happiness per day if turned off.
- Celebrate Life action temporarily disables the daily growth clamp
- The player can still go above 300 population with rescuing and recruitment
- New villager starting stats lowered (they are hungry and slightly unhappy)
- Villagers dying from old-age disabled
- Older villagers walk slow and don’t contribute to new villager growth
- Extreme Pop Control selects the oldest villagers first
In summary these changes mostly affect larger cities, and early gameplay should remain fairly the same.
Low Happiness overhaul
Zomawia
Previously if a villager’s happiness reached 0 they would try to steal a resource, then teleport out of the city. Low happiness now has different events that can trigger depending on the happiness level. These events are: Throw Away Resources, Be Lazy, Riot, Start Fires, Murder, Steal Resources. Villagers guilty of these crimes can be Arrested, Forgiven, or Banished.
Here are some other changes and edits:
- Villagers leaving city or banished will spawn a boat and move away from the city
- The boat can crash into stuff and spawn a refugee raft with any stolen resources
- Villagers walk slower the lower their happiness is
- Villagers with low happiness have new idle, walk animation
Random Minor Events
Zomawia, Kobey
Because old-age death is disabled there wouldn’t be any funny notifications for villager deaths. We created a small system to cause deaths, injuries, fires, sickness, stat gains/losses, etc. during normal gameplay. Rough collisions, building operation, and eating stuff can trigger events. This should add a little spice and randomness during gameplay.
Beliefs
Shawn
An upcoming feature to be added is the Belief system. Beliefs will provide new ways to play the game with passive bonuses, holidays, and excluded and unique buildings. They are discovered through exploration of the world and interactions with other cities that hold certain beliefs. After a belief is discovered and certain criteria are met, the player can adopt it as their own – gaining both positive and negative traits. But once locked in, a city’s belief cannot be changed so players should choose carefully. Due to the random nature of discovering them, we are also discussing how and if there will be a method to carry all discovered beliefs to future cities. Currently there are 6 beliefs that players will be able to discover with the possibility of more in the future.
Building Concepts
Kevin
For the Forager I was given the idea for it to be more of a sweeping building to skim resources off of the water.
Once again I changed the motor, leaning more towards what was originally planned
Prison asset
Kevin
The prison is modeled and ready to be textured. So it can hold those undesirables ahem “Martin”
Medicine Hut v2
Elliott
The med hut has gotten a big change from its counterpart, the old hut resembled a shape we felt was too generic, and lacking identification. The new design should help players easily recognize the hut among their growing cities once sickness starts to develop.
