This week I've been trying to get through some of the Banished gameplay bugs that are the most annoying.
I hope to have a patch up for testing sometime next week. If no terrible game breaking items get reported for the patch, I'll set the build live to everyone after a week or so and build new installers for non-steam builds.
Here's a preview of the change list for the patch so far:
- * Mouse buttons now obey system setting for flipped left/right buttons.
- * Input options now allow binding of mouse actions.
- * Input settings can now be bound to any of eight mouse buttons.
- * Fixed a bug that cause meat and other resources to show up in the corner of the map.
- * Fixed being able to pop a building back into existence after being damaged by using the cancel removal tool or reclaim button.
- * Fixed grave count on cemeteries when it is marked for removal then reclaimed.
- * Fixed crash at trading post when trading, dismissing trader, and then selecting a custom order.
- * Fixed a bug that allowed auto purchase to over fill the trading post.
- * Fixed a bug that caused cycling through laborers to show children and students.
- * Foresters no longer cut down orchards.
- * Fixed water showing inside merchant boat.
- * Builders will no longer walk the long way around to the other side of a bridge or tunnel when constructing it if it's more than twice the distance to the closer side.
- * Fixed building pause icon staying up when a building completes construction after pausing construction.
- * Fixed a bug that caused starving or freezing people to get stuck in a loop doing the same job over and over if no food or warmth was available to resolve the starving or freezing issue.
- * Fixed a bug that caused pending roads to not be cancelable if they were under a tree, rock, ore, etc.
- * Fixed a bug that caused roads to be unremovable.
- * Fixed a bug that caused areas to be unusable after roads were removed in certain cases.
- * Dirt roads can no longer be quick removed by zoning over them with stone roads and then removing them. They now revert back to dirt roads and work has to be performed to remove them.
- * Placing stone roads over pending dirt roads no longer cause unusable areas.
- * Disasters are now disabled in tutorials.
- * Fixed several spelling and grammatical errors.
- * Fixed crash in audio streamer due to missing thread synchronization.
- * Fixed a crash that occurred if a video card doesn't support sampling from a depth texture.
- * Windowed mode now allows resizing of the window.
- * Window position is now remembered and restored on game shutdown/startup.
- * Graphics initialization now has better error handling and exception recovery.
- * Added a game launcher that allows changing video settings if the game doesn't display properly on startup.
- * The game launcher only shows if an error occurred, on first time startup, ctrl is held on startup, or /launcher is on the command line.
- * Added selection of refresh rate to graphics settings
- * Added selection of graphics adapter to graphics settings.
- * Save games now check for truncation and crc validation to make sure save games haven't been corrupted.
- * The scene shown on the background of the main menu now has better error checking in case the file has become corrupt. If the file is corrupt it will show the original scene that the game shows on first time startup.
- * Files are now created in a temp directory and are moved after writes complete. This stops partial files from being created if a thread crashes while a background thread is performing file I/O.
The last major issue I'm currently looking at before the patch is the 'March of Death' problem on really large maps. General laborers end up walking a really long way to do an odd job and starve to death on the walk back.
Computing a perfect solution of who should do what takes too much CPU time, so I'm playing with some other heuristics.
What I'm trying to do is prioritize what citizen gets assigned a job based on how far away it is. However there's a problem with a simple distance limit. It's possible that something won't ever get done if the people are far away. So I'm trying to set the distance limit based on how long the job has been pending. That way only citizens within range of a job will do it when it's newly created, but once a certain amount of time passes without the job getting done, the range will expand allowing someone across the map to try to get it done instead.
Another issue with the limit is that if a player marks a bunch of trees to be removed that are far away, the people won't head out across the map for a while - until the distance limit increases. So an additional heuristic needs to be checked, such as if no laborers have been assigned the task because of distance limits, then the distance limit should be increased early so that the nearest worker will do it sooner.
I'm hoping this won't unintentionally break the simulation - it should actually make cities run more efficiently - but more than once I've made simulation changes that acted against expected behavior. I suppose that's what testing is for.
Nice job.. but what the heck...
Removing the auto-trade function overfilling the trade port?????
That's not a darn bug that should be resolved until we have a better automated way to autotrade/buy the full contents of the trade boat.
Damn, that is one impressively long patch note. Good job! 🙂
Ah, the comment section actually worked for me for a change.
I'll post a more comprehensive reply in a bit.
I'm looking forward to seeing you address the march of death issue.
About the resetting cemetery count, it will require you to speeden up the decay rate.
I've seen maps on the forums where people do not reset the cemetery and more than 20% of the map seems to be composed of cemeteries.
For a one man army you are doing a fantastic job man. Keep it up dude!
So....when will families hoarding food and resources they dont need while others are starving be fixed? Its the only game breaking problem for me. I, as well as others just simply cant play the game while this is a problem.
Your game is absolutely brilliant, the difficulty at first was quite hard, but once you get to know what to do its actually quite easy! Any plans to make any expansions with bigger maps and harder difficulty?
Ian
Taking out the reclaim bug means that you really needs to address the fire fighting issue..
Or it just means that we reload the 1 min autosave and avoid fires.
Currently wells do nothing substantial to stop fires.
Keep up the great work Luke.
Still w8ing for multiplayer.
Thank you so much for the much anticipated patch. Looking forward to the road fix, fire bug, and the bridge/tunnel fix.
Keep up the awesome work!
I second the "one-man army" comment ! Bravo (even though lots of those bugs never occurred to me -- I never realized I was so lucky !:-) I'm still playing Banished even though I've tried to stop… so you must have done something very right, that all those fixes will make even more so ! Thank you !
Fantastic news and thank you for the update. Once the 'March of Death" bug is resolved, i'll be able to dive back into my game.
Cheers,
Let's start with the positives..
> addressing the SW corner bug
> trader dismiss, order change crash/
> Cycling through laborers-children sorted/
> foresters not cutting orchards
> Taking care of graphics issues with running the game (That's good for the miniscule number of players who do have issues, but it's good biz practice to ensure that the game is working for everyone).
> Re:Main menu background scene.. (Does that mean that the patch will start using our individual game screenshots as starting scenes again? Nice.)
> The bridge-tunnel far side build bug is being taken care of.. (That's nice, but again.. something I could live with. I will happily let a dozen builders die to complete the building, or just pause it and make smaller step gap measures.)
All these are nice rectifications.. but something I (or any regular player who knows how to work around them) could live with no real issue.
The rectifications that do seem promising,
> Various road bug issues. (again, something I could live with by careful planning or just living with it).
The one rectification that really interested me but was a bit unclear to me was..
> Fixed a bug that caused starving or freezing people to get stuck in a loop doing the same job over and over if no food or warmth was available to resolve the starving or freezing issue.
Does that mean that if a citizen is starving of cold, he'll stop what's hes doing and get some food/warmth 1st?
Anyways... now for the negative parts of the upcoming update and why I'll probably not be updating.
He's fixing the cemetery reset / auto-trade not overfilling the trade port anymore.
I didn't even know he considered the 2nd a bug, as it felt more like a way to handle the limitations to the game's auto-trade frequency/method of implementation.
It actually irritates me that Luke seems to be mixing
1. "annoying" problems that can be handled by better player knowledge vs
2. "game breaking" problems with the game that can't be fixed by any amount of player input.
In the case of
A> trade ports-autotrade limit
B> cemetery reset
C> (and reclaim building bug to a minor extent),
Luke is rectifying these "bugs" that were reducing my MM.
He's actually making my game more MM intensive.
Let me explain.
A> The auto-trade function overfilling the trade port, is something that actually helps players.
It's not a darn bug that should be resolved until we have a better automated way to autotrade/buy the full contents of the trade boat.
B> The reclaim reset cemetery count bug is something that actually tips the game into a better balance as well.
If he's removing it, he needs to speeden up the gravestone decay rate... or increase the density of graves currently in cemeteries.
Currently, I’ve seen maps on the forums where people do not reset the cemetery and more than 20% of the map seems to be composed of cemeteries.
C> Taking out the reclaim bug means that he really needs to address the fire fighting issue..
Or it will just lead to people playing with disasters off or simply reloading 1 min autosave files to avoid fires.
Currently neither wells nor rivers/lakes do anything substantial to stop fires.
Overall, these are patches that make the game stable for the layman.
However, for regular players the upcoming patches creates more problems than it solves.
The only thing that could possibly tempt me to update is the march to death issue.
He's still thinking of a way to solve it.
(trying to set the distance limit based on how long the job has been pending. ).Let's see how it goes.
Looks to be a really nice patch, I'm only saddened to see nothing about the fires being overpowered and villagers refusing to respond to them (well, the majority of villagers anyway which would be required to really try to stop the fire).
Regarding the walking and starving issue. Just have them able to eat directly from a near-by market instead of walking all the way home.
I like that only local citizens would get tasked with the work, but still, the walk of death will continue to be a problem.
Why not just add a feature to laborers where they can carry some food on them to distant job sites so they can have a picnic when they're hungry.
You know, like in real life?
Can you name a date when you will start implementing new Stuff into the game? I played it a lot but building the same thing over and over causes a great loss of the fun.
I really cant wait for additional Buildings and people.
So what's wrong with tasks not being done if they are too far from anyone to survive the two-way trip? Is it more realistic for people to commit suicide in ranks?
The walk of death is really annoying. Would be nice if either citizens could eat at local warehouses or markets, take the food with them or make a new building lets say Inn where they could be served some food.
But overal those patchnotes look really nice.
Why dont you make a building called "Camp", the laborers will need wood, food, etc.
First of all, thanks for a great game, very impressed and completely addicted. I also very much appreciate all the work you are putting into this to fix these bugs. For me, I don't find bugs and problems as annoying as some, it's part of the challenge, and sometimes, bugs just end up being part of the game and can make it really fun/funny.
For those of you who chose "Not to play until certain bugs are fixed" - Shame on you, where's your Spirit of adventure! No game should be too easy, and once you understand the issues you can easily change your strategy to accommodate for these problems (or is it user error because you're not producing enough food? - hehe J/K). Really though, coming from a QA Profession some would classify a few of the commented issues as bugs, and others would not see them as defects but how do we say it in the IT world Expected behavior, or part of the design :). Not everything can be perfect in a developers world, and sometimes a few defects here or there can make for a more interesting play experience and make you think about clever ways to avoid the situation.
That all being said, my main concern was that I kept finding my workers in the corner of a giant map, starving on the way back to town in an attempt to collect ghost resources (I am super glad to see this being fixed - thank you! I've been playing on smaller maps since I noticed this issue)
I'll be glad to help do some testing once the patch is released, this game is super fun!
Instead of using a maximum distance approach to stop the march of death, why not have a rule as such:
if(villager.goingHomeForFood &&
villager.isStarving &&
closestMarket.distance < villager.home.distance) {
// go to market for food
}
I think the core issue really is that villagers are not willing to eat anywhere but home. The peusdocode above should demonstrate that they will still favor home for food, but when push comes to shove, will go to a market if it is closer. Should probably also check to see if a barn is closer too.
To amend my most recent comment, since there is no edit option; It woudl be really nice to have an Inn that can be built where villagers would go when starving and home is too far away. The game could use some new buildings anyways, why not solve some of these issues with purposeful buildings?
I like the idea of changing they way where people can eat but that also creates a new problem: Fully stocked houses that will never get their food being eating which can lead to even bigger starvations because some people won't find any food.
Sweet! Looking forward to these bugfixes. To those looking for more fixes this is the NEXT patch, not the FINAL one so keep the feedback coming. And this proves you are actually engaged with the community at your own pace and NOT THEIRS!
Thanks again for a great and original game and your continued work on it. I wish more folks could recognize the work and time put into this. Kudo's to you and yours.
YES!!! Lol. I have been waiting sooo long for this patch! I can't wait for it to be live so we can finally patch our games. Some of the bugs were really annoying to play with
@Nmid The tone of your comments will ensure that Luke is willing to read your posts and address your issues. Good work.
Wells/rivers work just fine to extinguish fires. The only problem that exists is that the citizens won't automatically prioritize fires. If you manually up the priority on the buildings on fire (and possibly free some workers if you don't have much laborers), they will take care of the fire just fine. There are also a few tricks to avoid fire expansion, such as leaving some space in between groups of buildings.
I think the only thing that needs to be changed is that all citizens (or maybe those within a certain -- but large -- distance from the fire) should automatically stop whatever they are doing (except if they are hungry or freezing, obviously) and rush to wells/rivers to extinguish it.
That's about as realistic at it should be. It will remove one layer of management (controlling the people to get to the fire) but really that's not exactly the kind of management that I want. Living with the consequences of how I've built (rapid expansion of fire if I built too tight) is enough for me.
cant wait
That's a lot of work! Congrats on managing to get through such a big stack of changes.
I'd like to see some limits on the distance workers will travel from their home. If you want resources from far away on the map, you just have to work your way out there.
Or, better still, let taverns act as a place for people to eat & warm up.
Holy patch notes Batman!
Great news!
Good job that dev!
Glad to see all the issues up to be fixed! Good job!
I have to agree with Tom Duhamel, I do not find the fires as broken as other people. They are considered a disaster, after all. I admit I build differently on maps with disasters on though, to minimize the risks (just as I do for tornadoes).
I do like the idea of having an Inn act as a way station for workers going further out for jobs to help minimize the starvation/freezing issue. I would think it would need to have an Innkeeper though to keep it stocked with food and firewood though otherwise, everyone would be eating for free.
Thanks for the hard work, dedication and determination to make this game better.
If you actually read this post, you have the ability to make this game a classic and I have a great hope for that.
There are a couple of good examples above for the fix of the march to death problem. You need a couple of common sense abilities for the people.
Carry food and eat it on the go. Let them stop and build a campfire to get warm. That's what people do in real life to solve those problems. The big issue here is that by the time you have a doctor, blacksmith, tailor traders etc etc., you have already long before developed carts to haul large loads pulled by oxen or horses. This decreases the number of people that will drop everything to clear a section of forest. So make a Wagoner's shop
cont'd
in order go build wagons, carts and wheelbarrows.
A tailor should not up and leave to go chop a tree. That is the job of general laborers or if you want to make a new profession, wood cutters / or just use foresters. Only miners or laborers should be able to go and gather stone / iron. They reaaaaally need a way for only a few people to carry a lot more and carts/wagons are the solution in real life.
for long jernies let the villagers bring a packed lunch or two with them and eat it on their way back. If anyone is going on a long trip and can't get food along the way they will bring some with them.
Awespme: "Window position is now remembered and restored on game shutdown/startup."
I don't know anything about game programming but based on my HTML knowledge man you sound like you are doing an awesome job and I can only try to imagine your work load.
Although I am one of the lucky ones with no issues after fixing the minor no sound issue running the standalone 64bit on Win8... Keep up the great work on this amazing game.
Must be off I have houses to build...
note: Christmas wish list Banished 2 (multiplayer)
Most of these errors or problems I did not have and others I didn't even think that they needed to be fixed, especially the darn graveyard durancy. Now that it is fixed, we will probably end up with 25 % of map in graveyards???? I have a game with 2000 villagers in the year 240 and maybe 10% of the map are graveyards, and that is because I use the "cheat", but now that it will be fixed, god bless, there will be graveyards beyond the imagination.........lol. No kidding, please make the decay of the stones faster, a lot, so we won't change the game's name to "Graveyarded". 😉 Thanks for your work.
Fred
refreshing game for sure, cheers!
A simple fix to the march of death(MOD),is to allow a greater travel distance for Laborers.
example
laborer x 20 miles
non laborer x default/10 miles
Laborers should be stronger, for they are truly the backbone of our communities.
The second idea, would be to quarter the maps into 4 sections + and respectively code to reflect building/item placement.
This splits tasks into 4 smaller zones.
laborer's who live in zone 1, respond to tasks in his or her zone.
want, or need more laborer's in certain zones? Build a few homes in the area to accommodate more laborer's.
Laborers 2015
my name is brotherjim, and i approve this message.
Glad to hear the March of Death issue will be fixed, that was the one thing really killing the game for me.
Nice work, but I have a couple suggestions.
1. Removing the trading post overflow "bug" is not needed. It's actually useful for purchasing large amounts of food and other supplies all at one time, without having to micromanage the post. Why even allow the trader to bring in over 20,000 units worth of food if there's no way for me to buy it at one time? If you feel like you really need to remove this "bug", please at least increase the capacity of the trading post. I don't want to have to keep buying supplies from one trader in increments because it all can't fit in the trading post.
2. The march of death - I'm glad that you're trying to figure out a solution to this problem. Another thing you could look into is if the laborer (or temporary laborer)'s home it more than X distance away, he will instead eat at the nearest house or storage barn, or cart, or market, instead.
In addition, you could possibly increase the utility of the tavern building by making it more like a tavern, rather than just a brewery. You could allow the tavern to stock food as well as ale, so that laborers could also have an additional place to eat. If this is too much work for the single brewer to do alone, perhaps the building can be made to add additional workers, whose job it is to bring food to the tavern.
Thanks again for your hard work. I hope this game made you lots and lots of $$$$$, it's well earned.
Thank you so much for creating such a fantastic game, Luke. Your efforts are appreciated so much. Looks like you've been amazingly busy trying to fix issues and keep on top of things. Do take care of yourself. You rock!
Awesome can't wait for the new patch. The game is running fine for me I love it. One minor quirk to look at is sometimes my cows/sheep end up outside the farm/other side of the fence. thanks for a great game!
Great game and I played the heck out of it. I only stopped because of tediousness of managing trade ports.
But, please reconsider the trading port overflow change. It will only add too much micro-management to the game, where everytime a trade boat comes in, you would have to manually unload it to make sure you are getting everything you can off the boat. With huge cities, this is no fun at all.
Most of the game-play in big cities is spent managing trade ports and this would be a step in the other direction. Some simple changes that would be welcome:
-Allow you to save, and load trade port autobuy/orders/stock settings.
-Make the arrows for the resource purchase queue "move to the top" or "move to the bottom" with a SHIFT click.
-Have a resource sell priority so if there are multiple stocked resources for trade at a trade port, the ones with higher priority get used as currency to the trader first.
-Disable seed merchants from spawning once the player has collected all seeds.
A few of the ideas are a bit nicki-picki but it must be gratifying for you to see so much thought and interest in your game.
The thing I'd like most is the ability to have a snack at a Tavern, if this helps with the March of Death it would be great. There would be a penalty as they would be taking extra time to complete, or move on to the next job, but not quite as bad as death.
I haven't built a Tavern yet as my villagers seem happy enough without one. Food would make it worthwhile though.
Congratulations on a really powerful game.
Patches are nice and all, but i think more people are waiting for the modkit then for the those bug fixes.
Consering the issue you are still working on, isnt it easier to make a new temporary job in the Jobs menu, in which you can assign a few people that will do the job that you have highlighted with the Priority tool.
So if you transfer 1 laborer to that spot, he will first eat up to avoid starvation, and then walk off to do that job, and return quickly, so there is no need for annoying programming, and changing the current gameplay?, and with that a priority job could be done quickly for us aswell
What about the modding tools?
Without these the fact that the game is far to easy and that it is missing new things the player can build in the late game limits the replay-ability a lot.
Modding tools and therefore the modders or you could fix these issues. Not addressing them is by my mind a huge mistake.
Hey there! Love the game. One query I have is if there will be an option availalbe where holding a click on the up/down tabs on worker counts will put it to the maximum/nil automatically - one of the pains I have is trying to get everyone to move house so workers are closer to their homes; this is currently the "best" way to do it.
Regarding the march of death issue. There's already something in the coding that allows citizens to walk to the nearest available food source (barn, market), instead of all the way home, under certain conditions. I believe it is when they finish a task and are already starving, they will just eat from the nearest source available. The problem for the march of death is: 1. a citizen gets a task to run all the way across the map to do a task 2. when he has performed the task, he is "hungry" (but not "starving") and starts running all the way home 3. during the march home he goes from "hungry" to "starving" and dies before reaching his home. If he is already "starving" when he finishes his task he will not run home, he will run to the nearest food source. If you would add coding that makes a citizen "recalculate" his destination the instant he becomes "starving", so that he just runs to the nearest foodsource at that point instead of continuing his path home, i believe that would solve most "starving while running past 10 food sources" problems.
Luke - well done! Amazing job.
Can I have just one suggestion. Is there any way that player have possibility (if he wish)to manually change workers paths and who lives in which house?
I found that paths are not always optimal and in one game my Town hall gets the number of families wrong - I am definitely sure of that and can show you proof if you email me.
I know that you must feel overloaded with all that hard work so I hope you are going to make loads of $$$ as you are creating a game which will be called 'classic' for many years! Great job!!!
The modding kit is insignificant and not important. You could make your own challenges. Just think about it, what would make the game more challenging? Playing without Gatherers? Try playing without using to much of the natural ressources. Play with much space between the buildings, in harmony with nature. Ever tried the small mountain area an hard with harsh climate? Just use a random seed and don't restart if you don't like the map.
New buildings would be nice, but patches are far more important than any mods. You can't mod the road bug and this particular bug is annoying as hell (for me, at least).
So when this patch comes out, will it apply to existing save games or will we have to start new games from scratch?
Nice to see you thinking on my level regarding death march solutions xD
Anyway, I believe "the issue with a distance limit" is not an issue. If you don't have a workfoce (or single worker) nearby to get the job done, it simply won't get done.
Sounds very Banished to me.
Seriously, if you installed a way to reflect this in our interfaces -something like a workrange tools useable on homes- I'd gladly accept it as a feature.
Softlimits won't solve the problem. They will just delay it and shift it farther away from the common player's cognition. It will "feel" even less responsive which is way more important to most players.
TL / DR
Give the player more apparent control over this issue instead of putting on more and more layers of invisible algorithms.!
Can't wait to test it!
hi,
first of all i just love the game, you did a really great job.
i've played like 20 hours now and really enjoy it but there seem to be some small problem with the houses. from my ~ 40 stone houses ~15 are accupied by only 1 or 2 ppl who just refuse to die...
for year the take up space and there is nothig i can do about it, is there?
i feel there should be some kind of "residential community" for old ppl without family - or just let them live with their children...
sometimes they block houses for over 30 years, this seems just silly
besides from this i really love the game - keep up the great work
keigh
well done sr. your doing a great job ... everything is looking great so far
Cool, really waiting you 😉 😉
Absolutely fantastic game. This one game I have spent more hours than all other games together in my entire gaming history.
Look forward to improvements.
Most rewarding game play for me is getting big and trying to self sustain and/or trade for equality of all products/food.
Trading: put a button on each item when trading that allows you to add it all at once instead of clicking the up/down arrows billion times or typing the amount(so tddious)Great idea I saw above was being able to move your items up/down the list.
Glad the labourers dying will be addressed going too far...
Onc thing I would really really love, is the ability to plant one square trees or flowers.
Even when you leave space(2x2 and bigger) to begin a new developemnt, the trees all die out... I would like to add back some more beauty in older towns/areas.
My best map, the workers not being replaced/dying(extremely tedious managing this manually) not being subtracted, has really put a damper on wanting to play the game anymore if this will eventually happen on all large maps with high population. Hope this bug gets looked at in the future too.
If you give a mouse a cookie...
First off, allow me to reiterate - fanfrickingtastic gaming experience! Hey, and may all the naysayers be damned by the patch change list, for that you have my respect and gratitude.
Personally I don't have a laundry list of annoyances. The road/building unusable/broken ones were the only peeves I had and they appear to all be going away.
On the March of Death (what a hot button, huh?) I am with @slink on this, so what? Hey Slink, you going up in them hills where the mountain lions are and bring us some i-ron? Zae, your nuts, no way! Okay, guess it's Luke's turn.
Keep up the good work! You know what you are doing and your priorities are 'spot on'. Playable, then release, only then mods.
I have been loving the game so far - I had a city stable at 800 people, but it tipped over into mass death when I accepted some nomads at that point primarily due to pathing issues/farmers being busy working as labourers in winter somewhere disant to their farms and not making it back to their fields to plant in Spring.
For the "March of Death" issues and related pathing issues, is it possible to make any distance-related prioritisation "primary-job" specific?
i.e. People who are normally labourers or builders can travel further for a job than people who are temporary labourers due to season/idle time?
Farmers in particular seem to take delight in tromping off all winter to work somewhere else on the map, and then not make it back to their fields until late spring/early summer because after working all winter they need a new hammer and to restock their house...and there's currently no way to prevent them from doing that. Even cancelling ALL building/expansion tasks over winter doesn't prevent it - they tend to decide that carrying that one block of stone from the quarry over the other side of the map to a stockpile next to the quarry is more important than being back near their fields in time for early spring planting, despite there being a pool of labourers near that quarry who would have been better suited to that job. Distance restrictions will certainly help *a lot* with that, so it'd be a good start and I'm looking forward to seeing the effects of that start.
If the new priority-rating could prioritize people who are primarily labourers/builders for "distant" tasks over people who are primarily farmers/blacksmiths/tailors/woodcutters/etc, it'd help keep the specialised workforce of a larger city in the general location of their primary tasks.
Possibly even combining this with breaking the map into segments. Temporary labourers such as farmers can help in their segment and maybe the immediately adjacent segment(s) depending on segment size - but these people should never be selected to go across the entire map due to it being simply "too far" for them to uphold their primary tasks. The player can always choose to turn these people into primary labourers if they need, and in doing so would *know* that they're potentially leaving fields unplanted the next year and that their normal pool of labourers is currently too small to support their city properly. Labourers/builders can travel between multiple segments, because that is their primary task - but try to select labourers from the task's particular segment first, before stepping out to adjacent segments/etc.
There's an issue that I seem that nobody has said so far: the submarine deers, sheep, cattle or chickens.
Every time one of these animals needs to cross the river they do it... Oddly. You can see them going through it like it was normal terrain; like an unstoppable Terminator.
@Alan:
No, they aren't submerged, they're swimming.
On that animal march - a small thing but it would be more realistic if a shepherd or citizen walked the animals to the new pen.
On fires, yes they are manageable but no citizen should walk right by a blaze. All citizens in the vicinity should prioritize fire fighting above all else.
On the march of death, my oversimplified suggestion is to have long distance travelers consume any food they are carrying; eat at inn's; and increase the distance they can travel without dying of starvation.
march of death why not just limit the citizens working distance related to their home building radius. well if possible.
THIS IS AN AWESOME GAME!!!
I got into it by watching Keralis videos on youtube (with my daughter) and the game is beautiful. There are many things that can be fixed, improved, expanded, but for a first effort it is tremendous! Keep up the great work!
I still have high hopes for this game but a lot of posts have been put on there for what might or could happen and not a lot of results. There is more communication since release (which I really appreciate) in the last few weeks but as yet, no results. The current download through the purchase is the same build it was months ago and still includes seems to include the save bug. So while it's been addressed for beta, it's not pushed live for new downloads? I disagree with some fans assertions that it's fixed, I just need to jump through hoops A, B and C and search here and there. (The uninstaller also doesn't remove really anything but actual exe path to open the game and leaves all game files and game data but that's miniscule in the grand scheme of things.) Not to mention, a game-killing bug fix being in beta suggests this game shouldn't be for sale if they aren't going to be pushed live.
That said, I think two simple fixes to the march of death would change having to even need to code significant ifs, ands, ors.
First insert is a food cart. The ratio is more expensive than food consumed at home - for example, citizens consume 2 food instead of 1 for the same benefit and much like priority, you can build this quickly and assign a few people to stock it, but those working around it/within range will eat from it. Could even copy much of the trading post code. Conversely, perhaps a hotel instead of a food cart.
Secondary to the food cart, limit ANY work a person assigned to any job can do a certain distance from their homes. This also fixes the starvation (or tools) cycle where farmers all take off to work across the map then don't get back in time to start the harvest crop. This means only laborers can work clear across the map.
I still disagree with "I don't want anyone else to work on this", especially since in games like this, many, many people would do it for free and for experience at a zero cost while getting people more excited about the game. Sandbox games are my bread and butter, but if you can make it past the first few years, your only challenges come by hoping you can sidestep game bugs.
when about to be ready modkit? will be in the game russian text? thanks for the work
Thank you for making such a great game and for continuing to work on making it better.
Thank you for putting so much work into the game and the patch! I have not had the pleasure of playing the game yet but it looks like fun! I hope there will be a Mac version some day...
March of Death issue - in real life it takes a person many days / weeks / to actually starve to death. Why not just increase the time element that a person has before they actually starve to death? That way, if food is not available to the population for a long period of time, people really would start starving as they should. People walking across the map and back would not starve as they should not.
Shouldn't it be a rule that no person will ever set off to do a job if it's so far away that they won't be able to get home in time to eat (hence death)? Basically nobody should ever starve to death because they were working too far from home, because that woudl be stupid/suicidal. If that means the job will never get done then so be it, you'll need to build intermediate buildings. Maybe we could have Inns to extend people's range?
Oh, by the way, I love this game 🙂
Any News?
On Humble it is still on Version 1.0.
Will there be a patched ver. 1.01 soon on humble?
All non-steam players are still left with wither the initial release or the first ever beta patch. I made a previous post about this but after reading through so far am wondering if we will ever see another patch? Perhaps a simple download area for patches maybe?