White Shining Rock Logo
White Shining Rock Logo

Working on an update...

February 27, 2014 | Dukus | 214 Comments

Yikes! It's a busy time. Releasing a game is crazy. I've been busy with feedback, support, and bugs, so updates to the devlog have been slow.

I've been trying to get through some of the more fatal bugs – there's a save crash – it's rare, hard to reproduce on demand, and after it occurs the game crashes at some indeterminate time in the future when a player starts to save. That's been most of my focus.

Anyway, there's a test patch available. It should fix most all save games. If you're interested in testing the new version, I'd love to get some feedback.

If playing on Steam you can opt into the Test beta version. If you've got a save game that won't save after a few minutes of play, this will probably work for you. To do this, right click on the game in your Steam library, select Properties, and then pick the BETAs tab. You can switch to the Test version.

If you've got a standalone version of the game, you can download new exe's and dlls. Just replace the ones in the game directory.

I may also add a few more fixes to this update before pushing it live to everyone – there's a few bugs dealing with multiple adapters and refresh rates which cause people to be unable to start the game. I thinking I might add a front end launcher where you can select video modes and settings.

After that I'll be looking at some of the gameplay bugs.

Here's the full list of changes in the test build.

  • * Fixed a bug causing save games to fail.
  • * Fixed a crash in the music player.
  • * Fixed a startup crash when a video card doesn't support depth sampled textures.
  • * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.
  • * Added a command line switch /dx9 to force the game into dx9 mode.
  • * Added a command line switch /dx11 to force the game into dx11 mode.
  • * Added a command line switch /windowed to force the game to start windowed instead of fullscreen.

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214 comments on “Working on an update...”

  1. Maybe you should search for partner in crime to help you with the bugs/checking the forums for post of bugs etc πŸ˜€

  2. i am very glad to hear that your working on the save bug. i lost a good game bycose of that. keep up the good work.
    you have created a very good game

  3. Make a habit of updating your blog every 7 days from now if you don't want people "killing" each other in your forum.

  4. Yeah I actually thought the start screen showing your last spot when you were playing was a feature, not a bug. It's neat.

  5. Keep up the good work! I'd rather have this fixed instead of the magic water-breathing chickens.

  6. Luke !!! "Yikes!" is right !!!

    You will become legendary !!

    Keep up the amazing job, but stop reading the comments... get to work fixing those bugs !!

    πŸ™‚

  7. Love the game. No problems with running. Only suggestion I have is to have a workers camp. If my laborers are collecting resources a long way from their home, they starve or freeze to death before they reach their own home even though I have plenty of food, clothing and firewood. they need just a small shelter to warm and eat.

  8. Thanks for making this game and continuing to deal with bugs. I realize it's hard as a one-man team. Please don't gun and run with this game like other developers, you've done what EA has completely failed to do in making a sensible city-builder, and the numbers show this is what people want.

    Please keep developing and don't let people sway your ideas of what you should do, because you obviously have the right idea.

  9. Thought the menu screen showing last screen was pretty awesome. Could you make that a feature to turn on at least?

  10. Awesome game! Nice update, hope it will fix many problems, and that you have more on the way. We have not given up on you to fix this yet!

  11. Just uploaded the patch and gave a quick run, I'm running Vista 32 bit, and I think the game's running slightly faster and a bit smoother than before πŸ˜€

  12. Something that would be useful is a recommended hardware list to make use of the graphics options such as High shadows and High reflections.

    I find with my 7950 at 1440p I can hear the fans ramp up on those settings.

  13. Just want to say this is a tremendous game and thank you for putting it out. Also thank you for being dedicated despite limited time to fixing these bugs.

  14. I am going to miss the last seen area animation! I thought that was a very clever detail, and makes me admire your design sensibilities even more!

  15. Thanks for the update. Have had no problems, except Im so hooked on your game!

    keep up the good work.

  16. Nice to see we are recieving updates! Keep up the good work! I'm already enjoying the game!
    Cheers!

  17. Great game, I have 3 villages going.
    I lost two villages first, then started one on easy now have one on hard but no disasters, still learning.
    I get the dreaded triangles of death after an hour or so of play so now I save and exit every hour.
    The windowed mode does not work for me because I can only move up but not down on the screen using the mouse or arrow keys.

  18. I have a strange request. Some day when you get bored. Or something.

    Wacom tabled (Intuos). Single click doesn't work. You need to double click everything for the game to notice.

    Yeas, I know...

  19. Great game, Luke! We love it. Nice to know you're on top of things. I, like many others, totally enjoy the last seen image at the main menu. Sad to see it go!

    And zx...seriously?

  20. Several games has what they often call a *Safe Mode*. The original Unreal Tournament had that and it was particularly well implemented. Basically, the very first time you'd launch the game, it would pop a launcher with a list of gfx and audio interfaces, selecting what was recommended, and letting you change that. If things went right, you would never see that launcher again, the game would start directly. But if the game ever failed to start correctly, when you'd try running it again, the launcher would show again letting you change anything you like before trying to start again. There was also a -safe-mode command line parameter to force the launcher. In any case, I don't want the launcher to be forced on me if things go right and I don't want to see it.

    I'd be sad that you remove the last scene from the start up menu, I hope you will get that fixed and that it will remain in the main release when the update is final.

  21. This truly is an amazing game... I am hooked like i have never been hooked to a building game before.. just wish it had multiplayer capabilities that would just set this game over the top the maps seem big enough to run at least two villages on.. just a thought but other than that it is an awesome game...

  22. * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    Aww, I really liked this feature πŸ™

  23. Great idea with the launcher screen with Graphics selections! however I quite liked the menu screen showing last seen in game image, but whatever πŸ™‚
    * An Idea, have an in-game screenshot library, and have the menu screen cycle through your saved photos as the background! πŸ˜€

  24. this website SHOULD have a link to online reviews

    there are online reviews out there

    where are the links??

  25. I really liked the main menu showing the last seen in game image, hopefully it will be able to come back later on!

  26. so i have a slight issue ive noticed and im not sure if its the game or my laptop but when i play the game there are some spots that the game slows way down before times one speed. it returns to normal if i move from the area. my system is a win 7 x64. with a duo core 2.3 ghz cpu and integrated gpu.

  27. I will miss the startup menu! And as annoing as it is.... modkit? any forecast?
    Keep up the amazing job!

  28. Dukus you are awesome, hope to see an addon soon so I can throw more money at you for your hard work! Thank you!

  29. hi Luke, i'd really like to know if there's a way to talk to you? i can't acces the link to do so... You could maybe use some help? anyway, i'm just asking, i have a lot time to give and this is one of the game with the most potential i've seen since the 90's and it could really become something big!

  30. * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    This was a bug!? This was one of my favorite parts about the intro screen! When I was first learning to play, it was cool to see what my last town was; it was a good reminder as to WHICH of my towns it was; and now that I'm not accidentally committing genocide anymore, it's fun to see the sprawling villages I can create when I start the game up.

    I'm sure I'm not alone in this when I say: is it too much work to leave the behavior as is?

  31. Thanks for the great game!! Loving the game so far! Just gotta be careful not to get my soul and life sucked in too much πŸ™‚

    Keep it up!

  32. All I can say is thank god for the default auto save. I just had my second autosave crash but both times only lost five minutes. Just opted into the beta, will see if that resolves it.

  33. great work the game works fine on my system, just the AI that drives alot of us nuts. πŸ™‚

  34. My game now crashes right after the shining rock software screen ends. It was working fine before the update. I removed menu.sms in the save file. The game starts up. But then it freezes completely when I go to the load menu.

  35. I dont know why you removed the "main menu shows what player saw" thingy because i loved it and my request was a "Continue" button that would resume the game from that screen πŸ™

  36. I had never heard of this game until I came across it on Steam. I've since lost like entire evenings trying to keep people alive in my villages. I've was dying for a new SimCity until they actually released it. You have put them to shame.

    A+ my friend.

  37. So far everything works really nicely on my ASUS G73JH-A1 laptop. I may test your new patches but kinda love the last moment you played image when you restart the game. Will keep a copy of your original installer for nostalgia. Please re-integrate the last moment image when the snark hunt is completed.

    You made a wonderful thing here, my Mac friends are insanely jealous to the point they are considering hitting Best Buy for a bargain Windows laptop that still has decent graphics.

  38. Hey Luke

    Awesome game. Will you ever plan to make updates/expansions/DLC for it? I'd like to see something like a Scenario mode where players select "scenarios" to start with and try to play from that point on (i.e. Black Death: Start with a town of 100 people and try to survive a widespread disease).

    Or maybe implement technology trees?

    Nevertheless, just do your job and take my gold

  39. I love the game. Everything was fine than all of sudden my cursor doesn't show.. but I can see my cursor on other games but not this one. Is this a bug? Btw, I'm using a new mouse thinking that was the issue. I'm try and reinstall the game.. hate to lose my saved game but I want my cursor back so I can play.

  40. * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    Nooooooo !!!! That was one of the coolest features. Bring that back !

  41. The masses have spoken!!!
    ---------------------
    Vibhu
    February 27, 2014 11:28 pm

    * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    Nooooooo !!!! That was one of the coolest features. Bring that back !

    rick
    February 27, 2014 11:34 pm

    β€œThe startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area”

    Don’t to this

  42. keep up the work with fixing all the issues. game is fun to play. can't wait to see what the community comes up with the modding once its out.

  43. i like many others play banished because were hooked on it i must be lucky as i have no problems at all but i did like the last seen area on start up
    a great game Luke
    im sure there's plenty to come in the future

  44. I understand the modkit isn't ready, but how about some general info on polycount/ texture size on buildings so people can get practicing on some models? πŸ™‚

  45. EA and Ubisoft need 2 years and 100 of worker to make a Game.
    But you are alone and give us a wonderful Game thx

  46. In fact, this game is amazing, I had not much hooked a game since CS 1.6, thank you very much for this wonder.
    The community is tightly knit around you Luc, WE will make this game, the game of the year, I think of iron as

  47. Thought I'd let you know the patch worked for me, game started to save...ran into the problem last night and BAM patch already ready! Congrats on a great game!

  48. You're awesome! Keep up the great work. Looking forward to updates and expansions!!! No pressure πŸ™‚

  49. Awesome Game I Can't stop playing!!

    Don't get rid of the start screen last seen area. I think that is awesome!!

  50. As a student developer, I'd be willing to put some hours in to help you. Either way, you need help man. Future updates and fixes will be crucial to keeping this alive. Great game, and thank God I got Banished.

  51. Add me to the list of people who liked the last save being shown at startup. I'd also like a continue button so I can get straight into the game.

  52. When I showed the game to a friend last night, he had a difficulty playing because he's colour blind. He couldn't distinguish between the red and green squares when placing structures. May I recommend making red squares flash, so they're easier to see for colour blind players? Many male gamers are colour blind, after all, and most gamers are male.

  53. I'm using the GOG version. The instructions are to overwrite the files in the install directory with the ones in the Banished_1.0.1_140227_Test zip file. The problem is that by default the start-up shortcut points to "Application.exe" whereas the .exe files in the .zip are "Application-x32.exe" and "Application-x64" .exe. So doing as instructed will do absolutely NOTHING, for those not technically knowledgeable to rename the appropriate .exe for their 32 or 64 bit systems. So, feedback for this will be meaningless!

    In addition, running the new 32 bit or 64 bit .exe shows the build as 140210 and v1.0.0! Again, not very useful and even IF you're using the new .exes (which by default you would NOT) be doing, there's no visual indication of any changes. Doh.

    Hope this helps.

  54. Really cool game. A few more options that would happen in real life would make this game one of best of all time like milking cows,pigs , wild life danger from animals, fire pits,fire light, day/night cycles, more control over citizens, more buildings ,shops. Making of individual tools or items that differs professions would require , ration food, if we could combine this game with stronghold 2 and dawn of discovery, it would be the best game ever created.

  55. Amazing game! I failed in the Settler-Games, because of the military... So, your game IS perfect for me! πŸ˜€

    Thank you!

  56. Great update! I haven't been able to play at all because of startup crash, this fixed it. Thank you!

  57. My game works great, wont download update because i love that the last seen area is on the menu screen and I dont want to lose it but great game bought it on opening day and haven't stoped playing it, could use a few tweeks but sure your working on that!

  58. Great work with the game, good (and fast) response to patching...

    Bring some new content out for the game, and you'll be at the top of my list of favorite developers.

    Amazing game - keep up the good work!

  59. I am really loving this game, it is beautiful and the micromanagement is so much fun. I eagerly await to see what gets added! You have done an amazing job with this game.

  60. I have been playing through the save crashes LOL. Its a fun game. I look forward to the fixes. I am not so hot on Steam however would of loved a plain cd version that I could pick up at walmart or somewhere.At least there is an offline mode.

  61. So saw the game on steam, and bought it on a whim since it looked like a very nicely done city building (especially solo).

    I tought I'd let you know my first impressions, but so far great work.

    Things I noticed or that bothered me so far tough:

    -Forester house seems very unnefficient.

    Roughly, the bigger the town grow, the more you are busy with various task in various part of town. One that grows tedious is wood. Easy to have a crapton at start, the logic would be you start relying on forester for supply after. Maybe I'm not using them right, but forester so far seem largely unnefficient for the population cost. Roughly, I use them to grow trees, then throw a mob at the forest in when fall approach. Their production seems very low if you leave them alone. Use I've found, is tag one to an herbalist in a leave alone forest, and otherwise just have them grow trees, deactivate the cutting and do a wipe every other years with the general populace.

    Splitting herds : Cattle wouldn't split for around 25 years. No idea why. Sheep and chicken would take the command, but no way to have new cattle herd for the longest time.

    QoL issue : Trader outpost

    Roughly, when supplying good you want to trade, an option to send a one time stock would be nice. Exemple : I open a new zone to bulding, get a lot of one time extra material, and have a surplus of various good. I'm not going to keep producing that surplus, so I have to adjust my market before the merchant ship arrive, then tone it down after the trade is done, otherwise tools or clothes I need will be gathered there and people will suddenly be naked miners with toothpicks.

    Overall the mechanism and realism is great, once the bug fixing is done, working on function would make this already very good game a leader a must have of its genre.

  62. Hey man, totally agree with everyone above. Such an excellent game, I feel like I'm addicted to it. One of the best I've ever played and I've played a lot of city builders from Caeser to Stronghold Crusaders to AoE II to Civ 5. Yours is totally comparable with all of those. Super smooth and top notch city builder gameplay.

    Thanks for the patch. I've only run into the problem once my population gets >100 or so, under that it's totally fine. I'll let you know if the patch works past 100 pop.

    +1 for not removing your last city on the start menu, really cool and unique feature.

    It literally blows my mind that one person created this. Bravo dude, brav-fucking-o

  63. Awesome game! Love playing it!!

    However:
    * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    Can this please be an option? I personally really like seeing my town when I log into the game!

    Thanks in advance.

  64. >The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.
    Nooo :O But i guess this is related to save game problems^^

  65. This is an awesome and fun game to play. One suggestion/addition that I would recommend adding is to have water as a resource. Wells could service x amount for adults, y amount for students, and z amount for children as everyone needs water to survive. That way, as the population grows/dies, wells would be needed and the player need to manage the water supply available.

    Again, this game is great!! Keep up the great work.

  66. I STILL CANT PLAY!

    Ever since the update the game keeps crashing as soon as it gets to the first loading screen. It's been two days since I've seen my villagers!

    HELP ME PLAY THIS GAME.

  67. I'm having the same problem as g. As soon as I try to either start a new game or reload my old games, the game freezes and crashes saying, "A fatal error has occurred and the game cannot continue! A crash dump has been written to (location of save file)

  68. Solved, kind of.

    Deleted menu.sms in save folder. Game would go to start screen, but would freeze as soon as I clicked "load."

    Had to remove my last save from the save directory. Now the game is running fine.

    To repeat, I removed menu.sms and the last save from the save directory. If it still freezes then keep removing the last save file until it works. (Put them in to another directory)

  69. I have no idea why, but the save bug wasn't fixed for me...

    Can anyone help me further with this? I reached over 500 people in my town and I don't want to lose it due to small bug.

  70. I love this game. I can't believe that this was developed by just you!! πŸ™‚ I've already logged over 14 hours in the game! The only problem I've had with the game is sometimes it won't launch at all and doesn't give any errors. I found that I can just close out everything else that's running on my computer and then it will open fine. I'm assuming that it doesn't have enough RAM available when this happens.

  71. If you ever add features in some future release. The only enhancement that I can even think of would be to have a little map preview on the New Game screen each time you click a new Map Seed. I realize that this isn't that easy to implement because the map preview probably gets generated after clicking OK and once the world is actually built. If its possible though it would greatly help to get a preview so you don't have to start a bunch of new games to find a map you want. πŸ˜‰

  72. The game is awesome. IMO the game is better that any version of Sim City I have played. Keep up the great work!
    Thank you!

  73. Glad to hear updates are coming soon. However I, too, would really like the last-seen start-up screen to stay. I loved that feature from the get-go.

  74. after the patch i can finally start the game, thank you for your good work!

    don't loose courage in the face of so many comments and to-do-items πŸ˜‰ it's really good already considering its a one-man job!

  75. When the fishermen drop off the fish at the storehouse they take the fish right back out of the storehouse and take it to their house. The others starve while they have a house full of fish. I have tried 3 games and the same thing happened each time. I get up to 12 people (on hard mode) then I see the forks and knifes over the houses, so I checked and the fishermen's houses had about 50 fish and all the other houses had no fish. I don't have time to get other food, by the time I build a hunter's place their is no one to place in it they are to many dead. Each time I ended up with only the fishermen living till the firewood ran out then they all froze.

  76. Thanks for great game. I have some minor ai problem that troubles me great. Have a town with 3 different settlements. (around 60-70 adults) People work irrelevant places to where they live which leads most of them use all of their life walking. Can't they pick works close to their home or vice versa ?

  77. After playing for five hours my game crashed, and when I started it back up clicking on 'load' resulted in a frozen game. No crash, no error messages, just frozen on the wait screen. I can start a new game and play it, but then clicking 'save' results in the same frozen wait screen.

    I've tried uninstalling it, and I've tried opting into the beta to try the test patch.. nothing has helped at all. πŸ™

  78. Purchased this afternoon and it wouldn't start. Tried to direct x 11 work around that the developer posted and worked like a charm. i've been playing for about 4 hours now and i'm having a blast. this game is legit. the sounds and music are super calming but the game is inherently stressful. it's definitely a challenge.

  79. Big props from another developer, just wanted to express my respect for what you're doing. Great game.

  80. Great great great job !!
    I put the new exe's in the folder of my game but I still have problem for saving. Am I the only one ?

  81. Absolutely addicted to this game. Of course, I'm just after making pretty towns so I play easy mode. Just wish I could build my starter houses where I wanted.. like have extra mats available when it starts like on medium mode. That is not an important feature though. It doesn't autosave like its supposed to all the time but I save the game anyway as I have had some problems placing bridges and them not building from the side I started them. (hence, they starve to death or freeze trying to get to other side)). Keep up the excellent work!

  82. Great game. Loving the rise of the indie developers. Currently switching between this and DayZ.

    As a fan of Stronghold and Tropico, this little treat seems to celebrate the best of both while leaving the rubbish. Endgame loses the challenge, but short of including tech-trees (which would mar the simplicity) not sure how to overcome this.

    A rising number of challenges resulting from increasing population could fit the theme, diseases, politics, crime etc (which already exist in part).

    Anyway, greatly enjoyed the game so far - just hypothesising how I might enjoy it more. Congratulations on going head-to-head with corporate game designers and showing them shiny doesn't equal good and players like to be challenged. It's nice to see gamers re-asserting control of game design.

  83. Great game. Can't wait for you to get through the bugfixes and start adding stuff (If that is your plan)! πŸ™‚

  84. Thank you for this amazing game. Don't know how you have done so much by yourself.

    Best City Builder since Simcity 4. Loving it.

  85. Thank you for the nice game.
    This one really addictive...Any plans for official modding soc.? Whould be great to have the same good as in xlnation.

  86. Thanks for this incredible game.
    I'd love see more added to it though. Maybe have an upgrade feature all the buildings?

  87. Thank you for this wonderful game! I've started playing it yesterday, and especially because its Indie... I think you show a great amount of talent!

  88. Awesome game to sit back and relax with. Really looking forward to more additions.

    ******
    * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.
    ******

    This was a very nice surprise was i was playing and i enjoy seeing my village on the menu screen rather than a random generated world. - Could you reconsider the keeping of this feature? Its the little things that make gamers happy. - Tough, if its causing issues i can understand its temporary removal? :3

  89. Obviously the startup menu thing is related to the intermittent crashes and save game issues some people have been having. It probably caused some people to be unable to get back into the game once their save games or graphics setups started acting up.

  90. Luke,

    been totally addicted to the game since day 1. I know you're working hard on the bug issues. Just wanted to let you know I bought the game with your bug fixes and initially it fixed everything, initially. I got to about 400 citizens, measles wiped out 100 of them (gotta build those hospitals for times of distaster, oops), now I'm down to 300. The crash is happening all over again, the higher the population, the more often the crash happens. Just wanted to let you know that the new bug fixes still need fixing.

  91. For the love of people with two screens please add a switch for people who want to run in Fullscreen windowed mode!

  92. IΒ΄m gonna wait till the 2nd patch which will hopefully fix/change people using coal as a fuel automaticly and make people a bit smarter. (hoarding food while other people starve) Fix my 2nd market not wanting to employ people etc.

  93. Huzzah! Thanks for the development work! πŸ˜€ And consider it a compliment that we're all jonesing for more. πŸ˜‰

    Some quality-of-life requests: automatic high priority for two things: bundles of goods left in fields (I've had plantings get ignored because laborers go in consecutive order for clearings, and so an abandoned bundle of food in a field would be left indefinitely; narrowly avoided starvation a couple times until I realized I could/should manually reprioritize these), and fires. Currently, players who don't know to transition workers to laborers and then prioritize the fire will look on in anguish as their village disintegrates despite having people wandering right by the fire.

    Additionally, more late-game content would be amazing; high-grade, high-cost constructions that make it clear that the town is progressing from settlement to village to town, such as forges (high-density blacksmiths), bellfounders, etc.

  94. Hi I loved your game... while I was able to play though. The game crashes while I try to load a saved game, normal and beta mode. Please fix it.

  95. Hey can you do something about the crop field bugs, it's a pretty serious game breaker when food production is a main issue and if there's even a single basket of food left on a field the farmers just ignore the entire field. Also I'd like more content, like production building (ie blacksmiths, tailors, or wood cutters) that have a higher production rate but are much more resource intensive to build. It's a good game but there's not enough to it to be worth 20$

  96. Hi there from Hong Kong! I love this amazing game! It has been a really long while since I enjoy a PC single-player game this much.

    Before I have been dabbling in free casual games, and this is one game that induces me to happily pay a lump sum for it. This is an incredible game, more so for solo development, and I will gladly support endeavors like this, if only to show there is still space for great PC (esp. simulation) games! Needless to say, I'm deeply disappointed by the fall of a certain other city-building title, however, I have high hope in you and what to come! πŸ˜€

  97. Hi!

    Great game and totally worth the 18€. I like it because it is very hard to play. I suggest you keep the difficulty. This is it what makes me trying over and over. I am looking forward to see features like new buildings etc in future. Keep it going great Mr C++ Programmer!

    cheers

  98. Just wanted to drop you a note to let you know this game is awesome. 20+ hours in and I'm still loving it!

  99. ~~~ Thanks for working hard to make a quality game so far, me and my girlfriend love it! Now is your time to make an impact and relationship with your fans. Listen to and work on the features the players want but also comply with your vision for the game (ie. don't waste time on features not everyone wants or cares about or doesn't fit with your intentions). If players see you working with the community to improve your game now and make it worth while for them, they will loyally follow you through with any future projects. Good luck and thanks! ~~~

  100. Add my voice to those who like seeing the last viewed area as the startup menu scene.

    I'm loving the game, but one minor AI concern: When clearing an area for a building, why do workers cart the wood, stone and iron back to the stock pile or market... only to have to return it to the build site? Would it not be more sensible to simply cut the trees and rocks and leave the necessary materials at the build site? Is that possible?

  101. I really like this game!! I only have a suggestion on the long term part of the game. A goal would be nice like becoming an independent state or something and a lot of other buildings for entertainment and health would be a nice add-on. So just keep up the good work and hope you have a nice day.

  102. On the subject of the game failing to start when multiple adapters are present:
    - I had this problem on a Notebook with integrated graphics plus a Nvidia board and solved it

    The solution was opening the Nvidia Control Panel (On Windows 7 it's right-click on desktop and select it from pop-up menu) and in it, under Manage 3D Settings, set for the executable of Banished (Application.exe, in my case) the "preferred graphics processor" to be the Nvidia processor rather than the default Integrated Graphics.

    This solved the problem.

    I've seen that some of the apps actually default to the right graphics board, but I don't think it's by changing the registry entry (my tweaking of settings has ended up deep in the NVTweak bowels under the NVIDIA Corporation registry keys) but rather it's probably based on some kind of list of capabilities required list set somewhere in DirectX (i'm afraid my expertise is mobile and servers, so this is just an informed guess based on my OpenGL knowledge).

    Hope it helps.

  103. just a question could you possibly add multiplayer and mabey bandits or raiders that you need to kill or somthing

  104. Awesome work so far bro!! I've been watching this game for awhile now and can't be more excited to be able to play it. If I could make a couple of suggestions...

    Flatland maps
    Aesthetics-like maybe some walls,hedges and the like
    Social classes and some from of governmental structure
    Larger churches, maybe a Cathedral

  105. I have never smoked crack, but I can bet it's less addictive than this game. I've owned this game for less than 72 hours, but have been playing it for over three days. I am not joking.

    Your game is the best game that I have ever played in my entire life. It is exactly the game that I wished every other game I've ever played was going to be. I cannot stop playing it. I hate you...

  106. great game thx a lot!!!
    sound not working for me dont worry i love the game and wait for new stuff
    keep making!!!!

  107. * The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    Nooooo! That's the best bit of the game!

  108. .... The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area.

    Don't remove this kindly leave it to be an option for everyone in video or general section?
    Cheers

  109. Indeed, the startup menu scene was a stroke of genius! Please keep it if at all possible!

  110. It needs a Map Editor. Lot of good games usually have it so people can create their own scenario.

  111. THANK YOU for adding the parameters to switch to DirectX 9 mode straight away - I got it to run smoothly under Linux using Wine :). Made a great game even greater!

  112. Are you going to work on the pathing it can be pretty messy at times other than thats its great

  113. Hey,

    This game is awesome πŸ™‚ !
    I would suggest to add a couple of things for the long term games, because when you finally reach to survive in the hardest difficulties, you need an objective I think to keep it up, perhaps adding challenges, adding some more buildings, technologies perhaps? well, something :).

    Then, maybe, another thing, could be to add some buildings to have more management. Like when you build the City Hall you have more statistics; when you would build the Advisers Hall, you would be able to manage more in depth some parameters. This could be coupled with a more long term approach of the city building.

    Maybe, some scenarios maps inspired from true maps?

    Maybe I haven't gone far enough yet, but I feel that once you have found how to counter the fires, the pests, there are no 'problems' appearing. What about having food rotting? or having some thief in the city (meaning to create a 'police' system? Adding some more challenges when the game continues on the long run.

    Cheers,

    SolutOdka

  114. I LOVE this game!

    Had a crash-to-desktop once, but not reproducible as far as I can tell - other than that, smooth as ... something very smooth.

  115. This game is electronic crack first off. Second the only in-game problem I have is resource management like limiting certain stockpiles and barns to certain materials. I can't tell you how many times I've had to demolish a stockpile until it's low just to reclaim it again so I can move the logs where I want them. Other than that I don't really have an issue. I guess if you didn't want to implement that you could always make vendors, traders, or laborers move materials where they are needed. Great job on the game, you are a saint.

  116. Aside the bugs, which currently I am not having too much problem with, there is in need of fix to the gameplay system. The old people will grow old and die but will prevent citizens to make more babies. So in order to make more babies, user need to create a new house and then the cycle drain-loop begins that will eventually kill the town, lacking the resources to sustain them... Here is my suggestion, create an asylum for the olds and/or allow user to designate the place the citizens live. Because sometimes citizen tend to travel too far for work because of the ratio of citizens living in a house... Making another use closer just for the efficientcy just don't work either.. due to the population thing. Also allow user to propagate the resources instead of having citizens automatically always stacking it to nearby stacks... Also I noticed the food/fuel consumption of citizens on bases of 300 population to be around Food=popx200,Fuel=popx10... which really seems absurd. I don't know if this is to make the gameplay more challenging, but anyway... creating asylum for old is #1 important thing to make.

  117. Oh also.. towns far from the trading post seemed to move very few items in their inventory.... this also needs a fix, or create a horse wagon system across market to market

  118. Sorry one more... time to time citizens tend to disappear from the professions panel. And lot of citizens die without a saying...

  119. So just spraying ideas around. If you watched Tangled, a Disney film, the narration on how the town became a kingdom seems like a cool way to set a long term goal. Like trading with other kingdoms, going on expeditions and creating your own army for protection but as I said it's just an idea.

    here's the link:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhSVreVsjJo

  120. I just want a long term goal for the game because I almost got all achievements and it feels like their's no where else to go after accomplishing that. And starting their own place and staying to that place for a long time and protecting it with their lives after being banished just seems the right way if you know what I mean.

  121. Add wolves in the winter. Make disasters more common.

    I'm 30 hours in and getting bored with a town of 900 people. They just wonder around my giant town

  122. So i couldn't wait any longer and bought the game for playing it on Mac with a wrapper from Paulthetall.com and the game is working fine... i know i should have wait until the game was released for mac but anyway... the only issue is that i dont have any music on it, everything else works fine... does anyone know how to fix this in a wrapper??

  123. Amazing work. This has great potential to be the best citybuilder game ever. My only gripe is that the game is pretty short, once you figure out how to manage your resources, there isn't much challenge left. As a developer myself I admire greatly how you've built this game by yourself. But maybe it's not a bad idea to enlist some minions to divide the work into further development and bugfixes. I feel like, with a few more features, I would never want to play another game gain. Still, I'm already very thankful for the 25 hours of fun, for such a low cost.

  124. Bug report. The game doesn't properly respect display DPI settings. If you set the display to 150% scaling (to make things bigger on high DPI laptops) the game initially starts with the screen bigger than the display pixels (the lower right is cropped off and the menu is in the lower right portion of the screen instead of centered). If you adjust any of the video settings, then the display stops being cropped (and the menu is in the center) but mouse doesn't line up with the display and you need to click in the lower right area of the screen to actually push the menu buttons (which are displayed in the center).

  125. Hi, please create multiplayer for banished and add a soldiers. Banished can be better than games as Tribal wars.

  126. really great game its come so far and can go farther i think it would be a great idea to ad a bit of technology to the game what do u think?

  127. Thank you so much for such an amazing game! Best city builder I have ever played. Better than the AAA titles out there, keep up the amazing work. Also, if it's not too much to ask because I know you are a very busy person and have a lot of things to work on as it is for this game but, if it's possible could we maybe get hops seeds to grow our own hops and breweries to make our own alcohol? also granaries to turn our own wheat into flour, and bakeries to turn said flower into bread? I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this πŸ™‚

  128. You can make beer(Ale) with the wheat. I was thinking the same thing about flour though. You could have a mill to make the flour and a bakery to make bread. The Farms could also produce milk and cheese products.

  129. I'd recommend playing in windowed mode until save crash bug is fixed.

    Fullscreen alt-tab and C-A-D weren't useful as the game instantly forced itself back to the front.

    By switching to windowed I was able to minimize it and then kill the process and relaunch without having to reboot the PC.

  130. Like this game very much... after 2 weeks of playing, today the first crash occured. I was able to play the game yesterday without probs, as i wanted to continue the game all of a sudden a fatal error occured right after the Shining Rock Screen. Any suggestions?
    LG Sven

  131. Good game, nice graphics I love the old style houses its a bit like Anno 1404 and I would love to see it go in that way to πŸ˜‰ like: releasing more special buildings, fertilizers, fences for wild life, islands on bigger maps, boats/ferry.

  132. Awesome game, but I am having the save game issue. Even the test version does not work for my old savegame πŸ™
    If the start a new game, will the problem be fixed?
    I am not motivated to restart just to experience the same problem again.

  133. Hi. Love your game! Im a developer myself and i have so much respect for you doing this on your own!

    Then my comments:

    I got a few suggestions for improvements:

    - Make the students be able to switch school, so they will attent the school closet to them. Ive had students move to a new house after they started school and then walk acroos the map to attent school, resulting in they will be pretty old before the become adult.

    - Do something about labours that dies because they are far from home when picking up resources. My own idea was to program that if no priorities are set a labourer should collect the resource closest to either their current position or the position of their home.

    I have read the comments here and some of the ideas are great!

    I love the idea of a working shelter where labourers can eat and get warm.

    Also thinks the idea of a continue last came button and please change back so that the start screen shows last seen village.

    Also i agree with the ones saying that they need a long term goal. And make more achievements, both easy / beginners (it took a long time before i got the first) and hard almost impossible ones, and speciallized achievements like uneducated and one with the nature.

    And dont listen to those reviews that states that the game is to hard and "one way" because its not! I saw vechs review and he said that this game could only be played by building a lot of gatherers, and starting on hard needed a step by step list. I think it not correct, and i love that this game is a challenge.

    That was the words from me. Keep up the good work!

  134. "* The startup menu scene no longer displays the last seen area."

    Whaaat? I was sure its a feature and nice touch! πŸ™‚

  135. Love the game but after applying the test files I now have the save game crash where I didn't before. Had to revert to the original files and lose a good save. Please don't over complicate the game like Minecraft - the game works well as it is and a few extra tweaks will make it pretty much the perfect city builder. Combat isn't necessary either. Some of us just want to build.

  136. I come on here to see if there was any news on an update and ended up reading a lot of the comments. For me the game has had no issues really, at first I had a a few issues with starting the game but I was able to quickly fix them. I have not been able to get a large town going yet So I still probably have a lot missing from the game, but the one thing I did notice that many of the other players have is the Worker AI. It seems... out of sync per say. They do not always build in the order something was placed. One example is I had a woodcutters area, a forester and a warehouse placed long before the roads yet the two builders I had instantly started building the roads before anything else, causing a fire wood shortage the first winter. AI could use a little tweaking but so far the game has been great! And yes please no Multiplayer... this is great as it is.

  137. Some kind of building queue would be super helpful. I always end up setting up build sites then pressing the stop button on the build site to pausing them so that builders don't start building them until I'm ready for it. This works well for laying out a large town area and then just unpausing what you want built next. The issues I run into is also with roads because you can't use this tactic on them, its seems that they always get built first.

  138. I love the game, keep upp the good work:)
    I have had no issues running the game. will there be more content in the future? like buildings, jobs for example.

  139. Love the game! but my sheep were wondering if they could get some scuba gear, they are having troubles holding their breath as they walk under the lake from one pasture to another.

  140. You should do an update too. Here are some ideas:
    - the traders have wheelbarrows. Why we can not produce those useful things as people could transport goods faster or more.
    - a bug: i hate, when people walk long long ways and then they work only one thing, cutting only one tree, stone, etc.. why? okay, they are tired and hungry, but....
    ... and they have to go home or to market for having food. why there are not any canteens or lunch rooms or what? πŸ™‚
    - sheeps, cows, chickens.. okay but.. no pigs? how the... :O
    - there are deers in the wood. could be bear-s too, as they could be dangerous.. πŸ˜‰
    - there are the wells. and the ale. but people never dring water? why? its neccessary πŸ˜›
    - I never tried the homlesses' building. but if it is not working like an 'old people's home' it could be one (sorry for my english). but yes.. not neccessary.
    - I love very much that no money in the game is. its very interesting, I love it! πŸ™‚
    - the roads are interesting with only two directions. is it posible to make roads more angles, 45Β°at least?
    - I very love that there is not any leader or so.. its cool!
    Love the game! πŸ™‚

  141. and yes: make beer! πŸ™‚ make more wild animals and not let them to walk into water.
    make dangerous animals, that you can catch or kill and trade..
    bakery is a fine idea too..
    thanks!

  142. Awesome game, if you do implement a multiplayer mode, make it so that each player eventually gets access to one or more things the others will never receive unless they trade with each other.
    Divide seeds and livestock NPC traders bring between the players.
    If one town dies, the game is lost.

    Each merchant ship you build and send will update information and can be set with requested goods.

    This would be the least invasive to current gameplay, while still depending on the success of the other players.

    Further down the road, create challenges based on natural resources.
    Maybe one has little to no place for a quarry, while the other has no mountains at all.

    Awesome game so far, hard is actually hard, but after you get all crops etc, it's easy to manage. Can't wait for extreme!

  143. I cannot start the game. I only get the application load error 3:0000065432.

    Thank you for your help!

  144. So I hear the game is complete, yet I feel like I'm starring at the skeleton structure of a house with it's wood beams but no filling. It somehow feels 'unfinished'. Am I missing something? This is the general picture of what I got. The game is finished, the developer is going to release a mod kit. It's up to the community to take it from there.

    Leaves me to question, is it going to be updated, is it going to have things added to it by the developer? Will it be supported or are we just on our own from here? Just tossing a mod kit out there while useful, being an 'be all & end all' seems a bit half arsed :/

    Although this seems presumptuous, it's the picture I'm getting from reading the forums.

    Cause Banished reminds me a lot of Townsmen.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe4OyiKyCJ4

    So there's a lot that Banish could add.

    Also a suggestion.

    Different types of houses as just black for the highest when scrolled out seems like a part is burnt out.

    lvl 1 house - Straw - capacity 2
    lvl 2 house - mud - capacity 4
    lvl 3 house wood - capacity 6
    lvl 4 house brick - capacity 10

    Like this.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe8hzvdqMRY

    Also have actual mud look for the rooves, so there looks like a lot of different parts of the town. Like a mud settlement out on the fields which would make sense making it close to a resource node.

    Lovin Banished and look forward to what is to come!

  145. I'm so pleased this game. Great gameplay, music and in one word...awesome game! πŸ™‚ I hope, that you will write next very good game. Great job! πŸ™‚
    Regards

  146. Thanks Luke, this game is awesome. Most fun I have ever had playing a city builder, just past anno 2070 πŸ™‚

  147. the gameidea is awesome, a sandbow game, you can keep on going at... with new experiences everytime. i am a strategy guy to the core, and i must admit im kinda missing some kind of campaign or such... to create some kind of history around the game, right now its kinda blank.
    you should put in some kind of map for the quarry and the mine. like a grid map that shows where you exhausted the ground (or mountainside) for minerals, dosent look pretty with alot of used quarrys and mines laying around πŸ˜›

  148. 1. Thank you for your work! Amazing game! Its been quite some time since I properly enjoyed a game; but you delivered πŸ™‚ I have to agree with some of the folks here that most of the AAA games are nowhere good as yours.

    2. Please, add the retirement home for old people. Also you could consider these:
    Add more luxury items as toys, furniture, or jewelery. Schools could use some supplies as well. Higher level of homes. Some transportation and a Tax collector. There is a lot to choose from...

    No matter what will you add, just please dont stop developing the game πŸ™‚

    Thanks one more time
    Looking forward for future updates
    T.

  149. Hello there! Fantastic game btw!

    Was hoping for some updates?

    Like:

    Ai changes, add kids playing with a ball etc.

    Methods of transportation, wagon, horses etc.

    Ability to flatten map in places that or a world option in main menu where we can view the world we are looking to play on ie: preview map seed after generation of map seed.

    A world creation tool. make our own maps.

    Thank you πŸ™‚ and thank you for such a relaxing game!!!! <3

  150. Please dont Forget that its only 1(!) man behind this Game. Yes its a great Game But please be patient πŸ™‚

    Greetings

  151. I have problems on my resolution as well on 1920x1080 and I can solve them by just going to the launcher icons properties in some game then go to the compatability tab and then click on the Disable display scaling on high DPI and then it would instantly fix my resolution problems when I play but when i got to properties on banished launcher dx9 or dx11 it doesn't let me.

  152. Also thank you for your great game Luke!
    πŸ˜‰
    Your game remembers me how much fun I had with games 20 years ago with e.g. sim earth,age of empires or command & conquer. Graphics improved a lot since then, but your game shows that gameplay, balance and charm make a game! It is nice to see, that people love a game like yours, that is unique and made by just one person.
    Go on with your great game!
    Sorry for my english, my native language is german. My impression is, that you have a lot of fans here in germany!

  153. Just a quick note to thank you for a great game, I was surprised to see there is only one person behind it, I thought it was done by a team of developers. Your game is very good and I play it for hours each night. It's the sort of game I can run in the background while I do other things.

    I bought the game after seeing a review on the Australian show good game spawn point. You can see their review online if you have nt already seen it.

    I liked the game so much I bought two copies, one for me and one for my daughter, she is also hooked now.

    Keep up the good work and I hope you continue to release updates as you find bugs or if you decide to improve or add new functionality to it.

  154. Come on Luke please give us an update to what your doing I know your busy and I'm amazed with your work but some of your loyal followers were hoping for a weekly blog so we can keep a track of what your doing been a long time since an update or a comment bud

  155. a quand une nouvelle mise a jour ? πŸ™
    un nouveaux contenu ? nouvelles animation ? nouveaux bΓ’timent ?

  156. Thanks a tone for a great game. I became addicted to it right from the beginning. Have no startup problems to day. Only thing that buggers me is where is my coal going? I've build a mine and the people are digging out lots of coal that will solve my citizens worming homes issue. (Which is quite "burning".) But the coal dissapers on its way and never makes to the stock pile...
    I'm joining the rest of commentators here in praising your game. This is a kind of game I always wanted. Please do NOT add combat to the game. There is plenty of combat strategies out there.

  157. hey man ikinda gotbored waiting for some tech tree in the game or like some transportation ingame like a carriage.yeah a tech tree wold benice...and research and evolution to some degree BUT not modern age cause that wold suck ass

  158. I really need multiplayer in this game cuz its boring to play it alone for more than 2 hours.

    If you dont have plans to develop this game anymore, then atleast let someone else to develop it and add multiplayer feature.

  159. Regarding the save bug, I just wanted to share my experience in case it helps with testing. my game crashed on save (or autosave) after I placed a tunnel. Moving the tunnel 1 square prevented the crash. It was a rather long tunnel through a mountain that overlapped the corner of a pasture, I suspected that was the reason.

  160. Awesome game! Plus, could you add a "cheats" option too the game? so we can increase the food and recourses if we want too? : )

  161. How do you use these command lines?
    I asked my game to go for a bigger resolution than my actual screen could provide, resulting in the fact that I am now unable to click on anything. I tried to re-install the game but I still cannot hit any of the buttons on the menu.
    I need to know how to force the game back on windowed mode to fix this πŸ™

  162. Thanks for making this great game. I've played just about every simulation game since the original 'Civilization' and this is my new favorite. Great artwork and sound, excellent gameplay, just hard enough - a really well balanced and fun game. So impressed that this is the work of one person - it wipes the floor with many big-budget studio produced sims. Now I just need to get my life back again πŸ™‚

  163. Thanks for all your work on Banished. I bought it the other day and have been playing happily since. This is fast becoming a favourite, I look forward to future developments.

  164. Hey! Thanks for a lovely game and great work on the update even though I with many others enjoy the menu screen and hope you can get it back further on.

    However just wanted to say that I've downloaded this illegaly but will of course pay you as soon as I get my salary in the next few days.

    Take care.

  165. Hey! I started playing and looked up and saw it was 3am and I had to go to work the next morning! Haven't done that since Civilization! Excellent job.

    Just some future add-ins:
    1. Candle maker (allows windows in buildings to be lit up when candles are in the house) & adds to happiness factor of that family
    2. shoe shop - Naked and Afraid proves we need shoes more than clothes! Cobbler makes boots/shoes which makes people move faster.
    3. horses/oxen - pull carts that can carry bigger loads faster from further away
    4. Sheriff/constable office with jail. - crime happens - indicating that on your city hall a courtroom could be added - lawyers and judges - police
    5. allow a road to hit the edge of the map which would bring tourists, people migrating to your town who decide to stay and find work, etc. arriving in stage coaches or covered wagons.
    6. have a wagoner/wheel rite to make wagons
    7. boat master / boat house to build fishing boats and maybe transport barges

    OK! Get busy!

  166. Hmmm.Please, no stronghold-Simcity-Rise-of-Nation Like. There is enough like this.
    ... and drop your Margarita away! It's time to go back at work! :))))

  167. I've been playing the Test build on steam, it doesn't fix the freeze/crash on windows xp.

    Game will freeze up after an hour or so of play.

    I have to ctrl-alt-del and press alt-e twice to close it when it does this. I can't alt-tab or even see the task manager once it locks up.

    Windows XP, service pack 3.
    Nvidia 8800

  168. Just so everyone is aware Luke is working on the bugs. Here is ans email that he responded to.

    (Hi Tom,

    Thanks for the bug report. I don’t have an exact date for a patch, but I am working on it.

    -Luke

    From: Tom
    Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 3:43 AM
    To: 'Shining Rock Software Feedback'
    Subject: Crash dump

    You probable have plenty of these but here is one more for you. Game just crashes suddenly for some reason.
    Is there a ball park release date for the new patch. I don’t care whether it’s a week from now or six months. Not knowing anything at all is the frustrating part. Any chance you could post a very rough date.

    Kindest Regards
    Tom
    0410541332)

  169. I really enjoy the game and I've been playing Banished for 10+ total hours so far and I'm getting addicted to it which is a great thing!
    It would be amazing if shoes were added or a X20 speed to boost the speed of the game.

  170. Horasm - I think this sim already has peices of those other games. The realism here is the variety of food sources and the application of social physics.

    Down the road I would suggest a monetary system rather than just a basic commune bartering system where people just pop in and grab what they want.

    If there was a storage master then he could control how much of an item each household could have so that one household would not hoard all the fish etc. You could also add copper and tin to the options that a mine could be used for.

    Salt! Remember the word Salary comes from Roman times when Salt was used to pay the soldiers. It is a vital survival need.

    Taveling merchants on land could stop into the trading post and give options to trade for exotic fruits etc. Good option rather than just having boats. Make them only available when you pushed a road to the edge of the map.

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