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Want to help test version 1.0.2?

April 30, 2014 | Dukus | 209 Comments

A beta of the new patch (version 1.0.2) is now available on Steam. To get it you can opt into the beta by right clicking on the game in the Steam Library, select properties, and then pick the BETAs tab. You can switch to the Beta version 1.0.2.

While I've tested loading a bunch of save games from before the patch, I'd recommend backing up your save games before overwriting them. The new save games won't work with the previous version of the game. Saves are located in Documents\Banished\Save\

If the community can give some feedback on the patch and make sure everything is working properly, that'd be great. If no major issues come up during testing of the patch, it will be come official in the next week or so and installers will be sent to all distributors.

In response to previous comments on whats changing in the patch, I've made a few more fixes and changes to game balancing:

  • * Citizens are now more effective at fighting fires and putting them out.
  • * When fires break out, citizens fighting the fire now run at high speed.
  • * Citizens working in an area where a fire breaks out will now be interrupted to help fight the fire.
  • * Fixed a bug that caused non-laborers to not fight fires.
  • * Citizens fighting fires will only be interrupted by sickness, freezing, or starving.
  • * Citizens will now only search for water in an area around the fire. Far inland areas need wells for fires to be fought.
  • * Increased the number of citizens that can fight a single fire to 50.
  • * Increased the area of effect for citizens fighting a fire.
  • * If enough water is brought to a building on fire, the chance of the fire spreading is lowered.
  • * Fixed a bug that caused buildings on fire not to be high priority.
  • * Fixed a major slowdown in large towns when fires break out.
  • * If citizens are already walking to get food at a distance location and become starved, they'll now interrupt the walk and get food at the closest market or storage barn.
  • * If citizens are working far from home and become hungry, they'll eat food from their home as if they brought food with them. This will not interrupt the current task. If no food is available at home they will interrupt the walk and get food at the closest market or storage barn.
  • * Because citizens can eat from home when far away, they can better deal with freezing, and visit a warm place when needed.
  • * Fixed a bug that caused citizens not to warm up when eating at home in some cases.
  • * Citizens now won't be assigned far away tasks without a specific profession (pickups, gathering, clearing, etc) unless the tasks have been around for a long time, or haven't been assigned to someone local. This keeps citizens far away from walking across the map in most cases.
  • * Citizens now limit the distance they'll walk in the winter when it is very cold.
  • * Tombstones now decay in 4-6 years instead of 13-17.
  • * Existing tombstones have had their decay time reduced by half.
  • * The trading post volume was been increased to 60000. This allows larger auto purchases to occur without overflowing storage. Existing trading posts need to be removed and replaced for this change to take effect.

Here's the rest of the changes already posted:

  • * 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.
  • * Fixed a bug that caused very wide screen displays to calculate an incorrect FOV.
  • * 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.

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209 comments on “Want to help test version 1.0.2?”

  1. Great update.
    Any news on a Mac OSX version?

    I bet you're eager to code some OpenGL, after all those DirectX woes ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Nice job.
    Thanks for taking in suggestions from the community.

    1. The various firefighting adjustments look really promising and balanced. I look forward to testing them out ingame.
    2. The march of death rectification is much anticipated.. by both regular players who know the problem and by casual players who are puzzled by whats happening.
    3. The decay rate of graveyards will relieve the pressure on town planning. Thanks.
    4. The trade port increase to 60k is the best part of this update (imo) that will reduce micro management.
    I just have to figure out how to switch 25+ trade ports in my currently running town :p
    4a > I just hope we can autopurchase more than 9999 of an item?

    This looks like a patch that I am more ready to try out AND keep as my main game file.

    Thanks for the effort and listening to player feedback.
    ps - Do visit the forums and assign a few mods if feasible. A number of regular forum posters have volunteered to help out.

  3. Fantastic! I've been waiting on this!

    I bought the game via GOG. How can I get the update?

    Joe of Hot,
    Banished runs flawlessly on iMac (Mavericks) via Paul The Tall wrapper. Just google him and snag the wrapper. I've been playing Banished on my iMac, purchased from GOG from day one.

    Cheers,
    Jason

  4. Fantastic! I've been waiting on this!

    I bought the game via GOG. How can I get the update?

    gpdev,
    Banished runs flawlessly on iMac (Mavericks) via Paul The Tall wrapper. Just google him and snag the wrapper. I've been playing Banished on my iMac, purchased from GOG from day one.

    Cheers,
    Jason

  5. Wow! This is a game changing update !! I'm so excited!!

    Thanks very much, Luke !

  6. Wow, that's an impressive bunch of changes, well done! Really addresses some of the most frustrating issues.

    I think I'd rather see taverns used as a place to eat, than have them snag food from home, just because it would make taverns a lot more useful in a strategic sense.

  7. Love all the changes!

    If there's anything I would like to ask is that, somehow in my two recent games the herbalists seem to supply me lower than usual amount of herbs... Anyone around who can hint me at what I'm probably doing wrong or how to boost herb output? Usually I can make around 100 or so herbs per season but it dropped to 18 even when I have two herbalists on duty and a great expansive forest to get herbs from...

  8. I'd love to test it, sounds fab, but I'm not on steam. Can you put up a link for players who purchased the game directly from you?

  9. Could you also optimize the splitting of animal herds?
    So I don't have to split in half, but only subtract 1 animal and send it to another farm?

    Thank you for the update!

  10. "Citizens fighting fires will only be interrupted by [..] freezing[..]." ๐Ÿ˜€

    But seriously, those changes related to firefighting sound great, though came to late for Gilcreekside: i.imgur.com/dUvEqMk.png

    Would love to see modding support soon!

  11. Lot of players love to trade, we know it, you know it.

    However, though I would love to use automatic trading a bit more, there are few things I ran into:
    1. I would like to stock up on Steel Tools, but not Iron Tools. Sadly automatic purchase only allows Tools, most likely buying whichever is available. This applies to some other products as well, I recon (would list, but I am not home at the moment).
    2. Automatic trading does not seem to obey the configured production caps. Intended? Personally I'd love to see them obey the caps.
    3. An option to apply settings in a Trading Post globally would be awesome, so we don't have to tend to the Trading Post 24/7, currently about 80% of my time is managing Trading Post for orders, and manual purchases.
    4. This one is probably known already, but Firewood seems to have to much of a trade value as it is way to easy to just stock up on logs and trade off Firewood.

    Specially points 1 and 2 would be great changes to me, 3 not far behind. 4 being not too big of a deal, just some minor balance.
    Of course, this is my opinion and may not be shared by everyone.

  12. In addition to my feedback above, I'd like to throw in a word of thanks for a great game, and the support your giving it so far!

    Keep it up! ๐Ÿ™‚

  13. Way to go!

    You could easily have put off any fixes that were not posted, but you read the comments and added the big fixes - FIRE and the MOD.

    Thanks a million! Now go spend some much-earned time with the family. ๐Ÿ™‚

  14. Some of your loyal players aren't on Steam. Wouldn't you like our feedback, too? *wistful tone*

  15. Great changes. Will be testing it later today for you. It's only morning here in Australia so I'll give it a few hours of game play and let you know how it goes. I'm excited!

  16. I'd love to help test, but I don't have Steam.

    I'd like to make a comment though: "Remote eating" - Where citizens eat as if they had brought food with them seems a bit... well, not overpowered, but seems to remove a lot of the challenge... at least that's how I feel.

    LOVE the changes with dealing with fire disasters. Now I can start playing with disasters ON again!

  17. @Jason, deemoness, GOG will update when they get the files (which will be after Luke ensures that the fixes are solid - in about a week or so as he said.)

    Alycya, slink - it's not likely that he will provide testing for non-steam. It's just more practical doing that on steam which has the tools to allow quick updates if there are issues found. Steam also ensures that all the testers are on the same version, so that he knows that any new reports of an issue are for the most recent version. Less headaches for him. Unfortunate for the rest of us, but that's the way it is.

  18. Turtle - if you were told you had to travel for work to a place that didn't have its own food...wouldn't you bring your own? Citizens having to return home to eat has always been a little bit silly, since they can clearly carry food with them.

    Luke, this is a great patch, thank you.

  19. This is great news! I'm really glad you decided to allow citizens to get food at other places when they get desperate.

  20. Thanks NC for the reply. I'll keep an eye out on my GOG collection.

    I agree with Eric, the starvation problem is killing the game for me. The AI should allow people to get food from a nearby source, no matter the penalty, to that user.

    Cheers,

  21. Thanks for your reply, Eric. Sure, if I had to go somewhere that didn't have food, I'd bring my own food to eat. But I would not - could not eat it from where I am directly from my home.

    Starting locations don't really matter anymore.
    1. Start game, pause and scan entire map
    2. Find best place start a real settlement that has room to expand.
    3. Make a few houses, with basic food to sustain them for a little while, like one fishing dock or gatherer.
    4. Send them off clear across the map to start a real settlement with absolutely no consequences - because once they just need to build ONE house and they will ALL be able to stay warm from that one house and eat from their houses that are miles away.

    The community may not be able to create "challenges" anymore by starving everyone but two citizens and somebody WILL find a way to exploit this by way of destroying bridges.

    I may create a Steam account just so I can test - just need to find that email for my Steam key!

  22. Thanks Luke! I and everybody truly appreciate all the hard work you've done. In my book this game is a classic already. Any game that can make me startled to see how fast the clock has moved since I looked at it last, has a unique place in the gaming world and your excellent work qualifies!

  23. Wow, this is amazing. You managed to fix the biggest complaints, bugs and glitches people noticed in one go- namely fires, marches of death for various reasons, builders taking years to build bridges, roads sometimes mucking up and creating unusable areas, and so on. I'm glad I bought this game!

  24. Hello! I don't have any criticisms or suggestions or bugs to report (haven't dived into the patch beta yet, am just about to) but I just wanted to say that you are an AMAZING person. I'm stunned by the fact that you have made this fantastic game by yourself. I love this game and have already played many hours, but I've been holding off for the last while, waiting for this patch to come out. I am super excited to test it out! Thank you for being so awesome.

  25. My Video Card nvidia geforce gt555m at laptop asus n55sf are not recognized at selection tool. Game are sett in the nvidia tool.

  26. Had a good smirk at line 5:
    "Citizens fighting fires will only be interrupted by sickness, freezing, or starving."
    Yes, freezing to death is a real danger when fighting a fire. ๐Ÿ˜›

    Not complaining here, though. I don't think it's even worth changing, but more of a funny detail.

    And kudos to you for all the work you have put into the patch. I'll definitely fire up (haha, get it?) the game again, once the new version is settled.

  27. very nice Luke. I have download and played the steam beta for at least 3.30 hours. no problems what so ever = awesome patch update to me ๐Ÿ™‚ thank you.

    Now for some other minor suggestions.
    - how about some more shortcut keyboard keys?
    Or do they exist already? could even add a new menu button detailing current keyboard shortcuts to select/toggle through different buildings?

    I.E. it would be great to toggle between storage barns/ trading posts / etc. hit a keyboard key.
    E.G press S key to toggle storage barns.

    Another minor thing I hate is the rain scene. It is so depressing. What I mean is the lighting is way to dark. Can't we have summer rain instead ๐Ÿ™‚ sun showers.

  28. Yeah, I'd do the testing if it was for the DRM Free version (not Steam)... but I don't use Steam and never will.

  29. Not sure if it's only the beta problem, but ...

    Couldn't maintain enough lumber even with 4 forestry people. Had to create another forestry area just to maintain. Perhaps the forestry guys spent too much time harvesting rocks instead of trees. Why are they harvesting rocks?

  30. THANK YOU!!!!! The changes in starving and freezing are so very important to me, and, I guess to a lot of other players who love this game. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  31. @jeff depends how you play the game. starting a new city will be hard in the first years. dont build foresters until you need them.

  32. Would it be possible to upload the exe and dlls for people without steam? (Like the last test update)

  33. Played with the patch last night, so far I like the adjustments. I did notice a couple things that "seemed" different, but I haven't had time to reproduce. One, I grew potatoes around year 3 with a nearby barn. The taters never seemed to make it to the market, but they were in the barns and people's homes...other things (gatherers stuff, venison, non crops, etc) were fine. I was just getting to the point where other crops were coming online when it was time for bed, so haven't had a chance to see if it affected other things. One other thing, had a weird issue with a trade just after building a trade station. I made a trade for bean seeds and I thought I was done with that, as it pretty much wiped everything I had brought to the trade station. But, I decided I had enough stuff for a second seed trade and so I set up another trade and hired 6 workers to bring 1000+ units of firewood. What was weird is that the delivery increments were only going up about 5 at a time, usually it's quite a bit more per delivery. Stockpiles were full of firewood, so it wasn't a supply issue. I ended up dismissing the trader after about 5 or so minutes on 10x speed as it would have taken forever to get the product to the trader's station. Again, I don't have much data/analysis about the problem, nor have I had time to try to reproduce it yet, but wanted to report my experience so far. Thanks for the hard work!

  34. Hello!

    These changes are great! Great work, and thank you for listening to feedback!

    I'm a little concerned that citizens that are eating "in the field" (so to speak) will be more productive, and whether this will change the balance of the game.

    Also, could we see the trade posts increase their auto-buyout max of 9999 to 15000 or 20000? I've been using fruit -> ale -> stone conversions for spacial concerns, and this would decrease micro-managing the trade post!

    Many thanks, and keep up the great work!!

  35. I think it's safe to say all these changes will restart a big learning curve. Yaay ๐Ÿ™‚

    Please don't wait too long to make it available to non-Steam users!

  36. Installed the beta patch, loaded a saved game, played for about 35 minutes and everything worked fine. The starving, freezing peeps disappeared immediately. No problems! I like it! Good work, great game!

  37. I finally have a reason to play this game again.. the bugs that are now fixed were ANNOYING..

  38. I hope we GOG customers don't have to wait too long! I'd love to have the updated files.

  39. Looks awesome. I only have one niggling issue thus far: playing in fullscreen, every time I alt-tab or change focus to something else, when I come back to the game the resolution has changed slightly and everything appears blurry. If you change a graphics setting it fixes itself, at least until the next time you alt-tab anyway. Windowed mode has no similar problems.

  40. Will the patch be available on your website? This is where I purchased the game.

  41. Looks great! Looking forward to being able to get it for non-Steam games. ๐Ÿ™‚

  42. You've got a dirty uninstall. (At least for non-Steam.)

    After unhiding everything, giving full access perms in separate folders, etc. - I still couldn't uninstall all the files associated with this game. I'd been in appdata for all users, a general search shows no files or folders for Banished or Shining Rock and all files created on the date I installed Banished. It's still got something... somewhere. So I went through Registry and the uninstaller leaves behind the registry keys. Extremely user unfriendly for someone who doesn't know where to find this.

    While I think patches to fix the game to make it playable (save game and march of death primarily) are most important since they haven't even gotten to do it once, for those who are wanting to play through again, perhaps putting up a tut to clear out the problem (through regedit) or doing a quick fix for the uninstaller might be appropriate.

    Many people in games like this reset it once they are finished the first time to make their own rules while doing accomplishments or to see how fast they can do it now that they know how to play. (Such as reach the pop while having... no trading posts or farms or something.)

  43. P.S. If you do the tut to get through for now, bold, red, underline not to play in that area for any other reason. ๐Ÿ˜€

  44. Thanks for listening to us on the impact of the trade port capacity change.

    However, with a capacity of 60000, this causes firewood, one of the most profitable and easiest resources to use early-game, to be used as a primary trading resource throughout endgame. Before the 20000 storage cap on trading posts made resources like wool coats competitive with firewood. Now, using only firewood, you can buy all four food groups from a food/general boat trader. Something that previously you needed to supplement with ale and wool coats.

    I'm not calling for a change, just wanted to point that out.

    I'm still hoping that trading post management becomes less tedious in large cities. Being able to save the settings for one trade port, and copy it over to others would cut down the amount of gameplay spent clicking in tradeports, and allow us to focus on the city.

  45. I have the same fears with that, Enfo. If one could manage them all at one time, the the brunt is put on building them for mass sales as opposed to a few that can hold anything and everything. I was kinda said it was being raised at all - or at least not see wither rates or something. I'm not technically a fan of some changes to make the game easier when it's running as designed now. Maybe over time when new items/house types/ etc would be added or whatever. Not my call to make everything goreat but setting Trade Limits globally would be best over high capacity posts that basically eliminate the entire need fir much of anything. Get logs? Make firewood and sell it.

    Buy leather and wool? Make some coats and sell it.

    Ann.... that's about it, unless you want to do it a step further with tools.

    With these capacities, you could quite literally buy 2 years of firewood in one go with no requirement to keep people working.

  46. "If citizens are working far from home and become hungry, theyโ€™ll eat food from their home as if they brought food with them. This will not interrupt the current task. If no food is available at home they will interrupt the walk and get food at the closest market or storage barn."

    I don't like this at all. If food can magically teleport from the house to a citizen, you no longer need to plan your cities so that places of work always have houses near them. At least the amount of food they can carry should be very, very limited - just enough so they can leave whatever they're doing and get back to their house without starving on the way.

    Seemingly random deaths due to starvation are annoying, but please don't make the game too easy. Once you have a big town with 100k+ food, the challenge should be city planning. Without this, there's no challenge at all with bigger cities.

  47. Being able to eat food remotely is great, however I would say limit it to only once. Once eaten, they actually have to go back home / market to pick up more food. Essentially, giving a much more realistic 'lunchbox' effect.

  48. Fully agree. Bringing a lunch box makes sense. Being able to remote-eat anything that's stored in your house does not make sense and almost ruins the whole point of the game.

  49. jimmy how does it ruin the point of game? to me if anything houses horde mass amounts of food. So to me if workers use them that is fine by me.

  50. Another small detail. Do you guys think the resource limit default for logs, stone, iron and fuel should be doubled to at least 400 instead of 200. just a minor quirk when starting new towns.

  51. Yea, new fire-fighting is cool thing, but - Why did my citizens went to tradin post instead of well? I mean everyone had to travel quite a distance to nearby trading post, instead of taking water from well, next to the fire ๐Ÿ˜›

  52. Thanks Nmid,

    I wasn't sure if I could post links here but I've been trying to spread the word about Paul's wrapper for Mac users.

    I've been using it since day 1.

    I also wanted to add that you can easily update your current Banished.app version by drilling down within the wrapper and replacing the .exe files that are made available.

    This keeps you from having to reinstall the entire game again. I did this for the patch that corrected some of the crashing a while back. Worked like a champ.

    J

  53. "a few more fixes" ...
    Thanks for the huge work and the good game ๐Ÿ˜‰

  54. I just wanted to day that you are fantastic! Although I didn't had any time to play I still want to thank you. You're a hard working dev. Please do me a favour and that a break after releasing the patch. You deserve it!

  55. "how does it ruin the point of game?"

    Because you no longer have to plan your cities at all. Previously, houses needed to be close to places of work so the citizens could get home to eat and warm up. Now, at least in the summer, you can basically have the houses in one corner of the map and farms etc. in the other. Food will just get beamed across the map thanks to this new Remote Eatingโ„ข feature.

  56. ...I though the idea was that people have a small inventory to carry food (like a house) and once it's exhausted they must look for more?

    This would make large trips feasible but would still force people to RTB after a while. Also more realistic for people to carry food...

  57. Hi, please can you release a zip for non steam users? is it possible?. thanks anyway.

  58. Wow, really great patch. This will fix all the open problems. Thank you very much! ๐Ÿ™‚

    There are two additional small features, which could improve the game, I think.
    - It would be really nice if there were the possibility to let the forester plant a single tree outside of his range. So you can use it as an decorative element for the town, as all the trees there would die after a couple of years.
    - It would be nice to give the production buildings (trailor, blacksmith, brewery) a button, which applys the current settings to all other buildings of this kind.

  59. little idea:

    On a long trip, people can take picnic basket, but their walking speed will be significantly slower and the amount of transferred material will be lower. Or they can eat or warm up in another house, but the mood of its inhabitants fall, and if low, they refuse to accept other guests. Then it will be advantageous to have houses close workplace.

  60. * If citizens are working far from home and become hungry, theyโ€™ll eat food from their home as if they brought food with them. This will not interrupt the current task. If no food is available at home they will interrupt the walk and get food at the closest market or storage barn.

    I like the idea that they can eat away from home. But as others have mentioned, magically eating food remotely seems unrealistic. It seems like a big step away from the semi-realistic simulation that this game tries to achieve. I think the lunch box or basket ideas are great and still allows laborers to not starve to death, or grab food from the marketplace. I think when you're starving, you'll go to the nearest spot, market, barn, or someone's house to keep yourself from dying.

    But thanks for looking into the march of death, it's a big factor that's kept me from trying to get my town bigger than 300 peeps.

  61. Yeah usage of the existing inventory for food would be better than magically beaming food. The question is how to implement such a thing, I assume it;'s a bit harder then we might think.

  62. I have been testing the changes in my city over the past few days (progressing from 800 people up to 1200, and now settling back to about 1100).

    1. Farmers actually farm now *yay*. Given that I've currently got somewhere between 340-380 labourers (and about 60 builders), not having the farmers do distant jobs over winter means they're home to do the spring planting on time - and does make a huge difference in their effectiveness. That simple change appears to save about 15-20% of the harvest, which was previously being lost due to farmers being sent to jobs like carrying quarry stone on the other side of the city over the winter and not making it home until late spring/early summer.
    2. Housing proximity does still appear to affect things like fishing dock production - for those that are worried that the "eating away from home" negated the effects of needing to place homes near workspaces, I'd say from my experience that it's not had a large effect on this - it's still very important to have homes (and especially barns!) near food-producing places.
    3. Fires - I've had two fires since the patch now and the citizens are responding much better. Two issues though - they'll often run right past the well nearest to the fire to go to the one that is 2 blocks away instead, and marking the buildings next to the fire for removal still appears to prevent the fire from spreading (unless they were genuinely just that much more effective and the bucket chains were actively preventing the spread).
    4. I haven't had a single "march of death" incident - though I also haven't been building a lot on the far edges of the city either. All the random winter deaths of farmers sent to work on the other side of the city as labourers have stopped.

    Overall, I've been a lot happier with the game after the patch - I was getting very frustrated with the farmers that were not farming in particular previously. ๐Ÿ™‚

  63. Hello,

    How do I get the update since I'm not on steam? Thank you.

  64. Edit: Oops, it's settled back to 215-220 labourers - was highest at the peak, but some have been reassigned to new farming areas and some gone due to old-age die-off.

  65. I was hoping to get my hands on the beta to test out this weekend.

    Really wish Luke would make it available for the rest of us.

  66. He said it'll be available next week if there is no big problem in it, so it should be available in a few days, please be patient.

    I don't think he can ask other websites to update the game twice in a row, something he can do on steam (with the early access thing, you can even do an update per day, or even several per days if required).

  67. By the way, for people who bought it on humblebundle (so from this website link), you should also have a steam key, along with the no-drm game (I got both) so very curious people can still install steam and use the key to try the update.

  68. It was worth playing it on Steam just to experience non-starvation, but I really don't want to play it on Steam anymore.

    Thank you, Luke, for fixing the one glaring problem this game had. Now the possibilities are greatly expanded.

  69. Hiei - except non-Steam has gotten zero updates. The download is the original, release date Banished. Some people even sought out his site personally to buy it from his preferred method because normally, a dev pushes updates for all, makes a patch available or only gives beta/updates first, and because often devs get more through the purchase this way. Others don't want to participate in a beta for whatever reason and not everyone has Steam or wants Steam or to install a third party just to get a game to work that wasn't bought there. None of these changes are live yet. Either play beta or the sometimes/partially broken original. In other words, this game is still in beta but has been full price since release. I'm still cheering along, hoping for the update to be pushed live.

    Also, I don't have the details but perusing through HumbleBundles terms, it seems there is no limitations to update or patch. (Though I have no idea if separate terms are offered once HB accepts the submission, just going off the site's terms to enroll as a seller.)

    All that said, I'd rather the walk of death end and be too easy for the moment, so we can get a patch that fixes the save game, graphics and walk of death. Dev can always reign it in later but it's better to go overboard now just to get the game playable, then tweak the amounts or methods. While all the other stuff is shiny, really - the game crushing bugs should be fixed separately and immediately. Giant patches never go well and are harder to troubleshoot. As of right now, there are about 40-45 fixes, but only a few that are critical to gameplay or getting the game just to work.

  70. @Seola "Hiei โ€“ except non-Steam has gotten zero updates."

    Non-steam had access to the 1.0.1 update since late Feb, as a direct download to replace files:

    http://shiningrocksoftware.com/2014-02-27-working-on-an-update/

    "If youโ€™ve got a standalone version of the game, you can download new exeโ€™s and dlls. Just replace the ones in the game directory. " (link was: http://shiningrocksoftware.com/patch/Banished_1.0.1_140227_Test.zip )

    True - it's not the latest patch which released ~4 days ago. But it was the same patch that steam users had access to prior to that, and he did say that he intended to release the current one across all platforms within "a week or so" provided there were no critical issues with the patch (a timeframe which hasn't passed yet!).

    Further, even in steam the "stable" version download is NOT patched - you have to select the BETA version in settings yourself to get it - and if you were on 1.0.1, you had to select the NEW beta version to get 1.0.2 (it wasn't auto upgraded - probably so you could step backwards if you needed to in case there was a critical error in the patch - i.e. what he was testing for before pushing it to people who DIDN'T want to participate in betas/possibly unstable patches!).

    I can understand being frustrated not to have these bug-fixes immediately - it's a *very* long and useful list - but given that the article itself SAID the timeframes for when he was looking to release these globally AND that the previous patch WAS released in the same sort of BETA form to non-steam users as it was to steam users, it's a bit unfair to be berating him at this point when he has been up-front about it, and dishonest to say that he's released NO patches for non-steam users.

    I'd rather he didn't push a partially-tested patch out to everyone as stable, and then be innundated with issues to be fixed and people with broken games as a result. He's only got so much hardware/time to use for testing himself...at least releasing it as a beta gives him some feedback and some multi-system testing, and users can choose whether to patch at that point *knowing* that it's potentially going to break things (and thus whether to create a new dedicated town for testing rather than continue with an existing town that they don't want to lose, etc.)

  71. Thank you for this update.

    I really needed-it to play on my 8" tablet.

    Your game is great and adictive. Thank you.

  72. To those that are looking for a none Steam update :

    Please read his post again..especially this part...

    'If the community can give some feedback on the patch and make sure everything is working properly, thatโ€™d be great. If no major issues come up during testing of the patch, it will be come official in the next week or so and installers will be sent to all distributors.'

    In short the Steam version is a test bed for the patch, and barring any critical bugs will be passed to official installers in a week or so.

  73. Discovered something interesting. I had a fire that slowly burned down houses, barns, marketplace. In the middle of all that is a well. But the villagers chose to walk to the river to get water instead of using the well.

    Maybe some of them are using the well but the well has limited capacity? If so, can Luke disclose the approx. capacity of each well so we can do better city planning? Although wells are expensive, I'd much rather put down 3-4 wells compared to the lost productivity and potential starvation/death due to a marketplace burning down that is used to service a whole bunch of houses packed closely together. Any thoughts?

  74. Please, please, PLEASE, make the patch available at some point for non-steam buyers ?

    As I have more or less managed to play around most of the now beta-fixed problems, I can still keep on getting my fix, but I would like not to feel so rejected ! (weeps, cries, pull hairs) -- and to try the new game strategies !:-)

  75. and yes, I read the previous posst, but I think some encouragement to the beta testers is in order (I am generally a lousy one -- generally not having much time, which I prefer using for, well, getting my fix and playing...)

  76. Read the post the official patch will more than likely be released in few days or so if no major bugs reported. also only my view but I believe the reason the patch was on released to steam was it was a lot quicker to-do for Luke than to create multi test releases for everyone. So there you go one beta testing patch on steam might equal to you guys getting the official patch a lot quicker.

  77. I have the Beta Patch and found there are still some weird starvation/Food Stroage Problems. My Storage was Overfilled so my People began to put the Food Outside the Storage, even on the Fields the Food remained after it was harvested. Then my Storage emptied after a time but the Food that was put outside, remained there and my People began to starve one after another. The next Bug I saw was a strange Water Bug on one of the Maps, sadly I can't remember the Name but I know that Bug was already reported and discussed. Best Regards Harumi

  78. @harumi, maybe it's just the way you play? you over filled, try building more storage barns closer to your laborers. Also building a market if you have not already.

  79. hey, i have just litle observation

    achivement firefighter no work
    achivement Stylist no work too, dificult to maintain at 100% (i have + 2600 warm cots, +650pop,
    6 market (60 vendor)all home in market range)

    n my sugestion
    in trader, (on auto trade) stop buy what do we shell
    we need make (crop field, pasture, orchart, cimetary n stock pile) can be folow terain, hill or river (no rectangular)
    a micro managment on stock pile n barns( we need chose what we wan n who can take (cunsomer or factory))
    a oblique tunnel n bridge
    active well on market for firefighting

    sorry for my badly english, im french speaker ๐Ÿ˜‰
    im very enjoy to play in ur game (played more 100 hour)

  80. oops achivement Stylist work fine (i have in my stock a hide cots, i shell it, i got achivement ๐Ÿ˜‰

  81. Zarr.be: There's a typo in the firefighter/wells achievement - you need 40 wells for it, not 20.

  82. Have been playing the beta for a few days now with no worries at all. Loaded a pre-beta save fine and have started new games. Great patch, love that my citizens can eat on the go!

  83. Have at least 20 hours on the game since this patch. Game seems very stable. Started two new towns, up to about 200pop. I have not had any problems, crashes, corruption in saves. Only thing is the graphics are still sometimes difficult. Going from one resolution to another and sometimes alt-tabbing will mess up the graphics. But, it is fixable by selecting graphic options again.
    Thank you very much for your work on this great game.

  84. I think the reason why a patch for non-steam users isn't available is because even the data0.pkg is updated which along with the .exe and .dll files... essentially, all the files of the game. Thus, for him to properly issue a test patch for "everyone" it will require him to put the test patches for the public, unless he intend to push the test update to all buyers from GOG and Humble, which isn't preferable if the test update isn't as stable as we think it is.

    Thus, only through steam would it be safe to push a test update without publishing the test update trough regular channels or putting the entire game out for free.

  85. If you bought the game from humble, either through the humble store or the humble widget on this website, you should have a steam key. Just head over to the humblebundle.com website login with your account (or simply access the "key page" you got via email when you purchased) and you will be presented with the option to get your steam key.

    I know some of you are concerned about steam DRM and all that, but this is the only secure way he can issue the test patch. Do understand.

  86. Too bad beta test requires steam malware. Eagerly waiting for the stable release, I can't think of anything more to be fixed. Particularly happy for the flipped left click/right click. Great game, very addictive, told all my friends to buy it.

  87. Actually found a DRMfree 1.0.2 version. It's a bit sad legit customers have to use shenanigans to get the files. I'm too impatient to try the changes. Playing it as a lefty is very uncomfortable.

  88. There is a lot of added revenue from those who bought the HB version and couldn't wait so went to steam to buy it again to play with the fixed beta version.

  89. Zeighy - if this is a Steam heavy for whatever excuse is needed. Okay. But smaller updates should have been made available. Or he could give the option of which version to download in some form.

    Even if we accept there is just no way in the world to do anything for anyone except on Steam, then why do a HUGE patch like this and telling everyone for months how great things are in beta (which I still make a point that the playable version is in beta while being released), instead of getting the serious bugs addressed for non-Steam.

    As Matthew already notes - you can already get the game through nefarious means. The updated game the rest of us legit people who want to support Luke can't get. Not to mention, not everyone has a Steam key. For example, multiple users in a single household, but only one Steam key. One of the bigger downsides already to this game is the inability to change users thus one copy has one achievement line. Which is fine... unless you are only allowing one user of one copy to get the updates.

    Tomorrow will be a week while there's been lots of promises. I've got my fingers crossed. I personally have already played through the game 100% achievements even with losing so many cities to the save bug. (I found with one key formula, any map, any conditions and any start can lead to a 1000 pop city so the playability of the game for me is in going through achievements again.)

    Like Matthew says - the game is already out there, the updated version. You can salve your current customers or push them to other means to which they'll end up sharing THAT to others as opposed to the legit release.

  90. I like this patch, very much. I've been using it since it came out, and feel the updates have helped.

    The only issue I've seen that I think is worth consideration is related to the fix for the death march. While I am in favor of and like the extant fix, and in fact proposed pretty much exactly this solution some time back, I recognize that it does harm the mechanic of needing to live close to the workplace. I would suggest, therefore, a compromise.

    The scale of a town, even if it's the entire size of a large map, is nothing resembling what it would take to starve a person, and movement speed is completely unrelated to passage of game time. There are two different speeds at play - game time (the passage of seasons, years, etc) and task speed (the rate of movement to walk around and do whatever assignment is given). It can take 3 months of "game time" to walk a distance that would take an actual citizen of a similarly scaled town 10 or 20 minutes. We accept this and assume movement is representative of tasks done over the course of time, each day's routine being summarized by a larger simulation. The 3 month trip represents 3 months of making daily trips to carry resources, clear land, build something, etc. For gameplay balance purposes, in order to keep the "live close to work" component in play more than it is now, what if citizens were programmed to still have to make the trip home occasionally, just as if they were going to get food, but with no actual danger of starvation? This could simulate the commute people make daily over time, a time requirement to be sure, but without the absurdity of starving to death if there happens to be a traffic jam on the way. This would retain the proximity mechanic, without the illogical punishment.

    I'm reminded of the very brief period where I tried out The Sims - even in a simple home it could take an hour by the game clock for a person to change clothes, use the restroom, and walk out the front door to their car pool. Tasks in Banished are not accomplished at a speed related to the passage of game time, so punishments based on game time (such as starving for going too long without food) can not be logically based on task speed.

  91. One question about the trading post. Is the trade ship's arriving interval set at once a year or is it determined by when it last visited?

    Is it possible to make the ship leave port once the ship ran out of supplies to trade? I'm making a whole bunch of trade ports and wonder if there's a better ways of getting supplies faster.

  92. I agree that the beta updates could be posted as a stand-alone updater for those who don't have steam, waiting for official updates, but anyway, the official update should be up in a few days I assume.

  93. Not asking this to be done soon, just a general idea.

    How about implementing Horses? They can be kept using Pastures, or some new building like Stable. The resource they provide is horse themselves and it will be equal to the amount of horses in the holding area.

    Wood and Metal can be combined into Horsecarts in the Blacksmith.

    Resource storage area can then have a function to allow "importing" resources from other similar buildings i.e. Barn to Market.

    The horse can then be made to act like barn\market workers who will run around to pick up goods, provided there is a cart available for the horse. The cart can be a morph of tools and will wear out thus requiring new ones to be built.

    The holding area will act like a house for the horse and so will not dwindle in number if the horse resource is used up.

    Just an idea =) Hope to see this implemented.

  94. i've encountered 2 bugs in the most recent beta version:
    1. inexplicable video crash freezing the game
    (1 occurrence)
    2. mass starvation again;
    after reaching a city of 800 with a consistent surplus of food between 3000-7000 at its lowest in the year (once a steady 100k before nomads arrived) and a log surplus at 6000 minimum, a mass starvation event is triggered that can't be reversed. citizens fail to acquire food from nearby stocked storage barns or markets, and the die off is steady every second until the city is empty. i have a save point right before the event and have run a variety of strategies to see why it's happening and it seems to be a bug in the behavior with some sort of catalyst. another thing i noticed is that citizens fail to relocate near their workplaces. this doesn't necessarily have an impact on the die-off since starving houses mostly have very short commutes and even longer commuters have multiple opportunities to be fed en route. furthermore, freezing happens despite full nearby log supplies for firewood creation resulting in mass freezing.

  95. Not sure if this is just normal game play or what. I built two identical sized farms, was harversting peppers at first. Then I bought some pumpkin seeds. Wow pumpkin grow so slow. I reduced the farm to half its size - still same slow as. like half as slow as peppers grow speed. Why is that? they should really grow as sim speeds. Yes I have farmers on each. Even tried making the farmer start work first on pumpkins.

  96. maynard - I found that I never take nomads unless there is 2000 food for each. I have the original build but this catalyst-type doomsday happens a lot. I only accept nomads with that food and 2 hospitals per "suburb" (area around the marketplace ring).

    Bugz - actually, that's one of the more charming aspects of the game. Pumpkins and squash are late bloomers and late harvesters. Most types in the real world, you don't harvest until after the first frost. The current seeds in game are harvested at different rates and have slightly different harvest totals. The catch is... citizens will not eat one type of food (at least, in my test runs). So you can't just solely do all fishing since it only makes fish available. Beans harvest a ton early, so it's good to have those but minus nomads/walk-of-death type scenarios, the plots all give out at different times a bit to keep a more sustainable flow rate instead of getting smacked with 20k food in one month, then seeing if you can make it to the next harvest.

  97. also about hospitals do they even work if you have disaster option turned off? I built a hospital also had 8 nomads arrive. still not one patient in my hospital since day 1

  98. even with no disasters per se, you can get pandemics, apparently (yellow fever, scarlet fever, the poxโ€ฆ) When seriously ill, people will go there -- you'll see a little skull & bones going to the hospital and staying there or not, depending of the seriousness of the illness ; the nomads don't go there, I think (then again I've never accepted any nomads yet !). And remember to build more hospitals as your town grows larger, in appropriate places : the longer the sick have to travel, the sicker they get and the more people they have a chance to infect !

  99. Could be entirely coincidental, but even with disasters off and no epidemics, I think keeping just one physician employed seems to help the health of the citizens. It's iffy enough since health has a huge variety of factors, but no harm done with one citizen missing.

    You will still get sickness, but it will be less often and less severe it seems. Again, since there are variables on how many citizens get sick from one (where they go, what their job is and who they pass - for example a teacher tends to infect all their students) but it's something I suspect.

  100. Why would I employ physician if nothing todo?
    to me as long as you have herbs u don't need a hospital. then again i am only in early years 20- years maybe it changes? still I see no need for a hospital building if disasters option is off

  101. Because for one, as both tariel and I pointed out, you still get sickness with disasters off. Second, as I also said, I suspect it helps with overall health. The healthier your citizens are, the more productive they are.

    I suggest again, you at least take the advice to building it. 20 years is not any remotely comparative time for this sandbox. Most who are giving you advice or commenting on issues they come across have played a cumulative 2000 years across several cities or more. Some illnesses are worse than others and you will be sorry you don't have one when TB comes across because not only is it highly contagious, it's death rate is astronomical (compared to citizens) and can, in early towns, kill off the whole population.

  102. if anyone is really eager to try the beta and has bought a non-steam game, it's available elsewhere on a pirate ship somewhere on the internet.

  103. Way to discourage the solo developer s33ds.
    Really smart.

    Even if only legit players who have already purchased the game visit here, why would you come to the dev's site and post that?

    You want to play or recommend a pirated game, go ahead.. but at least don't flaunt it in front a game developer's face.

  104. @bugz I must have played only about 300-500 years in all my games so far, but if you play without a hospital, be prepared to have your city collapse on you when the mid-sized epidemics start hitting you around year 70-90.

  105. @maynard
    Won't it be a better idea to post your bug report on the forums along with your save file?
    I'm not a betting man, but I'll wager that you might be doing something wrong and it's not actually a bug.

    For eg, 800 people mean you need 80000 food (100 food per citizen at the min). Unless I'm misunderstanding your post where you say you have a surplus of 6-8k food.. do you mean you have 86-88k food or only 6-8k food?
    If you had a steady 100k food before nomads came in, that means that once you accepted the nomads, you lost your status quo and started eating into your buffers... Anyway, post in the forums for some more help.

  106. I like @Keplar's proximity mechanic suggestion.
    It does bring in the proximity concept back into play, unless we haven't understood the patch sub-text properly and perhaps the citizens still have to go home once a month, unless they are on a walk TO their destination.

  107. Bugz - 2000 years cumulative, not on one city. With the original build right now, it isn't possible. Everyone starves at about... 1200-1400 in optimal conditions because farmers start walking all over the map and making no food. I've been able to hit the 1400 by mass producing coats and sticking them in the trading posts for trade when the farmers start doing that. I've stockpiled 200,000 food and 12000 warm coats and employing 25 people at each market to distribute, trying to stave the event, but alas, no gold. If tuberculosis happens after about.. 1100 people, even with 20 hospitals, doesn't matter. Infection rate is absurd, then it triggers the march of death between infection rate, infected workers won't work and replacements for those who die may live across the map. It's just too much of a PITA to either demolish houses or mark them for deletion so they won't be occupied (thus holding onto resources and breeding faster than you can manage when rebuilding).

    Nmid - that has to be a joke right? Most non-steam have been discouraged for weeks. This promised update is now 5 days late (after being late, being late, being late) - we are still playing with a BUGGED game (various bugs which are both graphics related, save games, dirty uninstalls and march of deaths) who paid full price for a game that apparently only works properly (or close to it) in beta. (I actually have doubts this game ever went to a public beta before launch... the walk of death is almost inevitable in most situations and happens fairly quickly while the save game bug has happened to more than just a few.) One of the ways I completed all the scenarios (twice now) is by spending very little time elsewhere but making sure each mass has a bridge though it still didn't save two maps I've played.

    The game itself, being sold as is (and still being sold as such) is incomplete at best and broken and unplayable for the worst and you can't even remove it properly if it does work.

    Reality is, the dev shouldn't be the one with the broken confidence - it's the customers. Promise after promise after promise. Some people, the beta patch actually breaks the game (according to a few forum posts on teh interwebz) or it limits the ability of their machine (alt-tab crashing). We've heard complaints about having to deal with post-release, complaints about working on it and a markedly nicer tone lately, but still... no results.

    Sorry, but that "dev confidence" crap strikes a raw nerve. Not only does this affect this dev's future, but for others who try to actively promote indie games - it can turn them off or others they tried to turn onto the market. Sandbox games are very difficult to market if you aren't called "Sim"something (and even that took a big hit after the DRM/always online debacle). We're finally starting to see a bit of a resurgence in this market. I'm a full blown sandbox addict (happily playing a paid-for Prison Architect in beta - which has issued 30 updates in 2 years for Alpha and raised over $10m through purchases). I'd honestly be more than happy to have bought this thinking it was in beta. As it is, it was sold as a finished product. If you buy a disc at the store, do you just go "oh well" when the box is empty? What about if it's scratched and you can never, ever play past the scratch to reach other content (i.e. March of Death)? Do you just say "Oh well"? Yes it's "one guy".. by HIS choice. People are offering to work on it for FREE at this point. This sob story "one guy" stuff isn't really flying anymore.

  108. ..and like I said earlier I am starting to wonder if feet are being drug because of the added revenue from non-Steam users giving in to re-purchase the game on Steam so they can play the updated version..

  109. The game works pretty fine here but even if I don't need update, I'm okay with the others when they say it take too long, not to mention people which didn't bought it on steam (I bought it in steam so no problem here) are still waiting for a patch.

    The minimum would be to release patchs (even beta ones) as a stand-alone patch.

    More news updates would be a good thing too, to make people see it didn't forgot them.

    That's pretty sad thing because I'm pretty sure it'll harm the sales if the developer release another game later. Some people wont buy it, even if it's a good game, because of the struggling of updates with this one :/

    About the fact the updates are on steam-only for now to protect them, I didn't understand the point. Why would you need to protect updates? Even if you release stand-alone patch, you can't use them if you don't have the game. And if you mean "don't give non-stable releases to selling sites", no one never asked him to do that. They could just be released here, on his website, as a stand-alone setup.

  110. Wow, there are alot of impatient whiney babies posting here. Also seem to be some who believe themselves to be godlike city builders who apparently aren't.. maybe there needs to be a whiney baby version of the game and the version that is the enjoyable challenge that it was meant to be.
    *end rant*

    Way to go Luke, I have faith in you and the game. Love Banished. Will follow any future projects you venture into as well.

  111. Well, there are costumers that got promised things since a few months but didn't get them (yet), so it's understandable if they are a bit upset.

  112. Steam is the only way people can opt into beta patches. GoG or other DRM free purchases have no way of implementing this patch, they simply have the most complete stable patch available that's it. It is no fault of anyone and is not about protecting the patch...

    I'd prefer playing the patch once it is stable either way.

  113. Everyone relax. please read Lukes post. He says "If no major issues come up during testing of the patch, it will be come official in the next week or so and installers will be sent to all distributors".
    SO stop being inpatient little spoilt brats/bitches.

  114. First off, I love the game and have encouraged others to buy it. I know Luke is one guy trying to get things in order so I have no problem cutting him some slack.

    What I would like for him to address for future updates, is to make the patches available on his site for non-steam users. I really enjoy playing the game so having to wait is difficult, especially when I know steam users are able to play the beta (though 1.01 is not playable up until a point when your town becomes large enough that the 'march of death' becomes inevitable).

    I also understand that just placing the files in a zip file for users to manually update their current install would bring about additional problems but if I can help with supporting those users, I'd be glad to. I would be glad to setup a temporary email to help users update the current game to the 1.0.2 beta.

    Better yet, allow only a select few to test the beta. When I read the initial email, I thought 'great I would love to test the patch' but it came only for steam users. I understand why but still not a good decision to alienate those who purchased it by other means so I can understand the frustration many are having.

    So, I love the game and I want to help those who don't use steam, like myself.

    To those who have posted here ridiculing others about asking for the patch, please understand that the game becomes almost unplayable (or at least intensely frustrating) once your town grows to a certain size. The MOD 'bug' makes it difficult to continue. I just think the rollout of the patch could have been done better but we live and learn.

    I for one offer help in any way I can.

    Cheers,

  115. Jason, at what population level does the game become unplayable for you?

    I, of course, have experienced the 'march of death' but I've found that it is definitely solvable via strategic placements of houses / work sites / and storage areas.

    After a few hundred game years, in an attempt to go for the Uneducated + Isolationist simultaneous achievement (with a harsh climate and hard starting conditions), I finally was able to do it by focusing on building out fully autonomous "pods" of houses, work sites, and storage. Along the way, I experienced numerous marches of death, all the way down to zero population. But each time, as refined my strategy, I got to higher and populations before the death march. First to 160, then to 190, then to 225, then to 265, and then to 288. Then, once I figured out the right placement combinations, I went right thru 300 with no sweat. After reaching 300, I was able to start educating my population and I'm now well on my way to 500 population with over 30k in food reserves and no death march in sight.

    Were the death marches frustrating? Absolutely. But personally, I loved the challenge. Looking at the way the new patch will make the game SO much easier in regards to starvation issues, I'm going to hold off on installing it until I get 100% of the Achievements with the original version of the game. I know itโ€™ll be just that much more satisfying for me.

  116. Hi Michael,

    I do think the patch has made it much easier but I became so frustrated by the 3 or 4 villages I made to end up becoming so large that people would have to walk further, which lead to MODs.

    I took a look at some of my old saves and found that at around a pop of 500 is when I could expect a percentage of my pop to die due to starvation (sometimes freezing to death). I noticed that selecting Mountains made this much worse as I didn't have enough flat land close by and had to use what I could which at times would be far away. But even on flat land I would run into MOD's. Most of the MOD's for me were towards the middle and end of winter. To me it seems like people travel slower (which would make sense in the snow) and would cause starving people to not make it back to their homes.

    In all of my games, I've ended up using every possible location (I only use the large maps) to place Gatherer and Hunting huts. They seem to do much better in a heavily wooded area with few to no buildings in their zone. In order to do this people have to travel far enough. Believe me, I placed bridges and tunnels everywhere I could to minimize distance and also bricked all roads. I mean all of them! lol

    I even tried what was suggested in a forum which was to close everything and turn all of my pop into laborers then enable all businesses, huts, etc. which was supposed to redistribute the pop to live close to where they should work. I was never successful at it.

    I could continue playing mind you, but having to account for MODs and hearing that 'bling' irritated the hell out of me. I just felt like that people could at least carry food or stop by a storage barn to eat. Hell, beg for food from someone before dying.

    Some during the summer but middle to end of winter and the first part of spring, I always had starving people even when food was abundant and storage bars were placed all over.

    I could have created a small village and kept everyone close and never grow but that really opposite of the main goal of the game.

    I have a friend who did what you mentioned but still suffered from people starving and dying.

    So, the new patch may make things too easy but version 1.0.1 needs tweaking and not ideal in its current state.

  117. A couple oddities:

    1) I built 2 markets in 2 different games (both with the beta installed).

    Market 1 carried one set of goods, market 2 carried a different set.

    Late game, my second market wouldn't stock except 1 item (logs in this case). The first market, worked normally but the second market wouldn't stock up correctly - even with large surpluses sitting in stock.

    I removed an item from inventory (it didn't disappear - just removed from trade option) with 3,200 ale just sat there.

    The second market was set for 2,000 stock and nothing stocked until I traded the bulk of the 3,200 ale out by reactivating it then removing it once I'd traded it away.

    Then the second market stocked it - 1 time to 2,000 and never restocked - even with inventory climbing back towards 2k nearby.

    The second markets were just past the first ones - one right beside the other on the same path from town.

    Second issue:

    Yellow Fever - medium map, from roughly 900ish-1500ish population growth, the patients would't stay in the hospitals (12 hospitals towards the end).

    At one point across a decade of play, it got down to 1 patient left in a hospital who then walked out, still infected, to infect another group of people on the streets - back up to 30+ infected wandering around in short order -- all over the map, past hospitals... so on and so forth.

    Really strange infected behavior. I followed one literally past 2 hospitals, around the 3rd one before going into it to then leave before being cured.

  118. Patch 1.01 I have a successful town of 1000+, I have successfully managed Marches of Death by not laboring through winter, limiting the amount of labor tasks and prioritizing certain tasks as needed.

    I cancel any orders by the end of autumn. Careful placement of houses and also micro managing employment. (IF you need an area cleared, stone, iron or forests AND you have 12 neaby foresters reduce employment in those huts to get the needed LOCAL laborers........ other local nearby gatherers huts, farms etc also apply!)

    Honestly the M.O.D was only a learning curve for me and I have successfully managed it quite easily. Fires were never a problem I never knew of the reclaim house bug and occasionally I lost some large parts to fire, but that's part of the game.

    It seems a lot of whining is happening to "dumb" down elements of the game that can already be managed.

  119. John,
    My city has 1000+ pop as well. So you don't have any deaths due to starvation or freezing?

    If you don't mind, drop a copy of your save game file onto Dropbox and share the link. I'd love to see how you are able to manage 1000+ people with no starving or freezing deaths.

    Thanks,
    J

  120. I just upgraded and found a show stopper.

    1. Launch the game in windowed mode.

    2. Load a previous save game. (in my case it was from 1.0.1).

    3. Go fullscreen through options.

    4. One will see the blurred screen with black border bars on the left and right sides issue, briefed here before.

    6. Resume the game.

    5. Go back to windowed mode through options.

    6. The screen will now start to flicker with 2-3 flickers/second.

    7. The game will be stuck on the left-top corner of the screen and not register any user interaction.

    8. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete will get you to the screen which will be unlike the desktop not flickering. From there starting the task manager will do you no good as it will open behind it! Apparently clicks will be registered on it but no drags will be caught thus making it unusable. The screen will continue to flicker in the meantime.

    9. Only a logoff/restart will termnate it. If you have a bigger screen like me, doing it through the start menu will do the trick otherwise the Ctrl+Alt+Delete screen will do the trick.

  121. @Jason
    There is no way I am sharing my save file, that is just lame and cheating!

    Besides it is not my layout that counts, unless you don't know how to use store houses and markets. A store house near food production and houses is a great combo.

    All roads should be in stone by 1000 pop.

    It is vital when you set clear(forest,stone,iron) tasks cancelling before winter is paramount! Using the priority selection, and minimize the amount of builders even if it has to be down to one. Creating laborers near clearing zones is also vital.

    If people are freezing to death why have you not made a whole area dedicated to better clothing!? Maximum zoned Sheep + Cattle + Hunters + Houses + Storehouses + Tailor/s + Wells, they will have 3 types of food to eat and produce so much clothing!

    Unhappiness of certain workers can definitely be an issue if production is low of something check the workers! Evict seriously unhappy workers!

    The list goes on and on and on.

    It's definitely not my setup that helps it's how you micromanage it this is my 3rd town over 700.

    Also these issues will be fixed in the patch... Making it WAY easier for me at least.

    PS
    People will sometimes die of starvation or cold but I find it is 1-3 max, which is hardly a march of death.

    If I expand too quickly I can purposefully cull off some population by just clearing a zone for resources, I get 2 birds with 1 stone. ๐Ÿ™‚ Make sure empty cemetery is available though.

  122. LOL. John, I had no intention of playing your game. If by having a few people die every year of starvation is successfully 'managing' MODs', then I'm doing just fine by your standards. I thought that you might have a way to prevent starvation for those that travel too far which could have saved Luke a lot of time and headache trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

    I too have a town of 1000+ pop.

    I can minimize the number of deaths each year to about 10 to 20, partly due to assigning no work for laborers or builders (who typically travel the furthest) from Autumn through late spring. I have the largest map in use with mountains so people have to travel further than flat land.

    I have only the best clothing made using leather + wool with plenty available.

    Unhappiness is an issue I could look into for individual users though as a whole, never less than three stars; typically 3.5 to 4 steady.

    I don't disagree in that the patch can make it too easy for some and I'm sure it may need to be tweaked further to find the sweet spot, however I do disagree in that successfully managing a village or town does NOT include yearly, starving population or having to account for dozens of lost workers due to deaths by starvation when food is plentiful! I could see maybe 3 dying of starvation per year (which one or two is possible even in 1.0.2 beta)

    There should be a solution to the problem of people dying (even if the cost is high) rather than just factoring in x number of deaths per season. I've read of using horses, placing storage buildings in remote areas to be used by travelers, eating at Taverns, etc.

    Personally, (by which I am not alone) find it immensely frustrating to constantly replace pop due to starvations when food is available. You feel it's a learning curve, while I see it has a problem that should come with some kind of solution.

    Even though we disagree, and you labelled me as a whiner :), I appreciate your input.

    Cheers,
    J

  123. I've been playing the beta fairly solidly. Previously, I had no crashes. I still have no crashes.

    I've run up a new city, harsh large valley. Firefighting is much improved - one fire took out a cluster of 6 houses, another a single house as there were enough people near at the start to stop it spreading. Also took a tornado in the marketplace. For game balance, I managed to get all of the following on a single playthrough: Isolationist, Uneducated, One with Nature, Miner, Mason, Lumberjack, Ready for Anything, Builder. I'm still under 100 years and <400 population.

    The game has been quite easy. The worst situation was a population collapse from 300 people to 200 when I was running low on food. People would be spending so much time picking up a scrap of food when it became available that they spent no time producing the food. I experienced similar resourcing issues with firewood and tools. Now I've passed the Uneducated and Isolationist achievements and sent the dumb inbreeds to school, I don't seem to be required at all. My only task is ensuring there are enough vendors to keep firewood in the markets in stock so the thieving bastards stop nicking all the coal.

    I've still had people starve to death, even though there has been food nearby in storage. Maybe it wasn't in storage when they started their final action? With my town spread out, people still spend a lot of time 'getting something to eat'. Being spread out is certainly an issue, with laborers and builders (once the lazy bastards have finished idling) walking far, making a single disheartened tap with their pick, and sodding off again.

    I think the update is good to go.

  124. I'm not sure if this a bug or what, I can't seem to split my Sheep pasture. I built a new second sheep pasture. I have workers working in both of them. the first pasture is full 6 of 6. I click on the full sheep farm and the Split icon never activates? I thought once you build a new farm you can split the sheep - half go to the new pasture or am I wrong?

  125. You need ten animals to split a herd.. I thought you asked this on the forums recently? Anyway...

  126. 10 animals? oh thanks for that. maybe I forgot and there is no mention or in game tool tips to suggest that. - Hey Luke maybe add a tool tip when you hover over the split pasture.

  127. bit suss can enter any Name. I did that by mistake by the way soz. but as you see it is a bit iffy.

  128. I just start to wonder how long no contact and no production is enough for the fanboys of "one guy" and "give him a break" will be long enough?

  129. Any idle issues or "lazy" people is related to unhappiness or places to idle being too far from work or home. Put at least one well near clusters of houses and workplaces this helps idling workers to stay close by.

    A cemetery before your first old age death can stop severe unhappiness of a worker or laborer early on when it is most vital.

    These things are more important than you think.

  130. My 2 cents:

    1. I would have like to known that only steam users have access to the beta patches before purchasing the game.

    2. I also do not see why the beta patch could not be made available on this website.

    3. Communication goes a long way to alleviate some of the frustrations being felt by the non steam users. While I am sure the developer is quite busy, it only takes 5 - 10 minutes to throw out a quick update on where he is with finishing up the patch.

  131. Please make farms more efficient at making food! They are almost worthless. I don't even get the seeds anymore because they are less efficient than gatherers and take up much more room. The reason we became farmers was that it offered more food than gathering. When 3 gatherers can produce twice as much food as 3 full sized farms, it's not very effective to clear a massive forest for that large of a space for the farms and orchards. Also the animals should give more food as well. Thanks for making an awesome game.

  132. Cly, the nmid legion suggests that you head to the forums to learn how to effectively utilise farms.
    Farms give 7 food per cell and each farmer can handle 50/80 cells. You just need to know how to place them and ensure nearby homes/barns.

  133. @shiningrocksoftware, please stick with the true bug fixes and dump all the dumbing down of the game. You might think you will attract more customers, however, all you will succeed in doing is making the game boring, unchallenging, and many will stop playing because a 4 year old could play it without thinking.

    For any of you thinking you have bugs with food production, starvation, or freezing - you would be wrong. Those are not bugs, that's all on you. As suggested above, get in the forums and learn what we already know.

    Thanks for the game Luke. It's a good base for many years of additional content and challenges.

  134. Love this game!! Would like to see the mini map with the ability to zoom a little. Also, when setting up a build, would like it to remain more prominent on the map. Sometime I set up a remote outpost and forget where it is.

    Remarkable work! To the Dev, you rock, and it shines! ๐Ÿ™‚

  135. A workaround for a bug is still a workaround for a bug. The fact you think it's acceptable or somehow enhancing to actually remove workers from their jobs to manage the MoD negates the point of having jobs.

    What you "already know" is that you have to do unnatural things in a sandbox/God-type game to make the natural things happen. I don't disagree that going to the other extreme is good, the fact remains that there are bugs where people drop food for no reason or they start to run up and down the sides of rivers for no reason. I negate this by building 60-70 bridges. Just because I can workaround it with a ridiculous amount of resources wasted doesn't make it good gameplay.

  136. mimimi mimimimimimi have no steam mimimi mimi can't play the beta patch mimimimi mimimimmimimi

  137. I was among the first buyers of the game and waiting since then for an update. You should consider releasing smaller fixes much more often instead of doing a "big shot".

    Also I don't use steam, why not quickly make a zip archive and upload?

    don't understand ...

  138. Yeah, mimimimimi I wanted a working game mimimimimimimi I was promised one months ago.

    Totally mimimimimi. How dare anyone expect a fix for save game crashes or hardware crashes! Everyone should be thrilled to have a copy of a game you can't play, that has a dirty uninstall that leaves it behind when you try to get rid of it? So, so selfish to expect a fix *looks at watch* 3 months later!

  139. Thanks for the bug fixes, I was finally able to get from 900 population to 1500 population before things started going bad. But now they are just dying of old age, which means less food producers.... I think I can still pull it off. ๐Ÿ˜‰ I would like to play the newer version without having to use steam, it's really slowing things down.

  140. So I came up with some thoughts that I feel would make the game even better than it already is. I think it would be really neat if the dev made it so that if you have a pasture with livestock of any kind, it fertilizes the fields and orchards near it so that they produce twice as much food.

    Another thought I had was being able to chose where items go. I hate it when I have to keep moving my blacksmith/tailor/woodcutter all over the map because the stockpiles and storage barns are filled with random stuff. Being able to tell the people to move all the leather from that barn on the outskirts of town to the one closer into town would be very lovely.

    Perhaps another thing to do would be making the traders all accept different amounts of things. Seeds are all set at 2500 units for trade, so why not have it that some traders have it for less, and some for more? It's frustrating to have to get exactly the right number. I mean, what trader would say NO to being overpaid? (But I'm a hardcore role player, I think of conversations my people might have.)

    Yet another thought would be being able to research things, like better farming, better gathering, that kind of stuff, just to make it a little more interesting. I know the schoolhouse educates the people to produce more, but I think a little interaction there would be lovely. Perhaps the research can come from say, how many people you have doing the task you are researching. If you have 30 people mining, they would learn some tricks and it would be cool for them to "pass on" what they know. And the more people you have doing that profession, the faster you research it.

    And a last thing. There is often no reason to accept nomads, unless your population is taking a nose dive, and they rarely show up then. Considering that you are creating an empire using Noah's family, perhaps make it so every 50 years or maybe even 100 years, make a disaster that everyone is inbreeding and you need nomads to help. That way, you kind of have to accept them and just have a doctor for if diseases break out. Just a few thoughts, in case the dev actually reads these.

    I absolutely love this game, I spend hours and hours on it. I play this like I played WoW back when it was good. I stayed up over 24 hours just playing this game. Better than Black and White 2! The little bugs don't bother me at all, and I really hope the dev gets more employees or puts more time into the game. I would even pay a small subscription just to play this if it made the game better. I'm absolutely addicted. Please consider the updates I've thought of. Thanks for the awesome game!

  141. >> * Tombstones now decay in 4-6 years instead of 13-17.

    Which makes the achievement that requires 400 tombstones almost impossible. Good thing I already reached it, but still.

    Thanks for this awesome patch and incredible game! Hope the job will be kept and more buds will be fixed (like, for instance, animals walking through the river bottom instead of bridge).

  142. So i've been playing the beta patch.
    All the changes are great.
    There is just one tremendous issue with the firefighting. When the fire does spread it seems like most of the citizens "crash". They just stand still doing nothing. I've encountered this twice. The first time i was able to reset the citizens by resetting all the professions (but a ton of them instantly died from freezing/starving), the second time i couldn't unfreeze them and had to load the previous save.

  143. And yeah i've just encountered it again. Fire starts spreading, citizens AI crash, they stand still doing nothing, game crashes. Guess i'll keep playing the beta patch because i like the changes regarding no more march of death & trading post capacity but i'll have to revert to spacing blocks of building apart so they just burn down, and hopefully that will prevent the AI crashing aswell...

  144. Why don't you report it in the bug section of the forums along with the save file?

  145. Love this game, spent lots of time on it. I've noticed one thing.

    I seems hungry people go to barns and markets to die. I get their going there to find something to eat. However when they arrive, even if food is available they stand at the door then die of starvation.

    Is this a bug or am I missing something?
    Keep up the good work.

  146. @Basil: "Hope the job will be kept and more >buds< will be fixed"

    Fix me a bud too please.
    ๐Ÿ˜‰

  147. Just a little thing : launching the x32 .exe it launches the game in x64 on steam.

    We can verify it in the task manager and we see "application-steam-x64" for both launchers versions used directly from the game folder.

    Please fix it, I have a 64bits system but i use the x86 version so I can use Sweetfx, on the x64 version of the game it doesn't work.

    And thanks a lot for the big list of fixes.

  148. I'm thinking it should be fairly soon for the release of a stable 1.02. I'm hoping at least the next week or two.

    Keep up the good work SRS loving the game.

    I'm buying a few more copies for friends and family once patch is released and stable.

    Peaceout

  149. Thank you Luke, for writing this great game. Bought it on the first day.
    Luckily I had no starting or running problems with the game, everything just runs fine.

    I think you have a hard time after the release, but you have done a great job so far!

    Will give the Beta a go this weekend. Sadly I didnยดt have that much time as I want to have for playing this game.,,

    Iยดm looking forward for the first update and later for more.
    Someone wrote it would be better to publish smaller updates. I think this would be a good way to keep everybody happy.
    Think this game will be a great base for fan based contents.

    Keep up your great work, Luke! Thanks!

  150. @Eric, I'm having the same problem. I have a huge surplus of food and yet citizens will walk right past a storage barn or market with food to reach one that is further away and then die. All my markets have food in them and they are located centrally yet citizens will walk past a stocked market to the next market (which can be quite a distance away) and then starve to death at the front of the next one. Am I doing something wrong?

    Otherwise, I'm obsessed with this game. It's addictive and fun but also frustrating and confusing! The perfect game mix.

  151. (I am dropping here once in a while, to gauge the status of general frustration:-)). I am routinely (with no patch) reaching the 2000 + citizens mark with no serious problems (playing easy, granted ! --easier to learn like that, and I play for the zen factor), never had any crash (the game just tends to freeze for a few seconds once in a while when the town gets real large). I am playing on a partitioned, windowised Mac. I don't have the patch and do enjoy the game nevertheless. But I also begin to wonder if the GOG buyers will ever see the dratted patch...

  152. I cant go through all 192 comments to see if anyone has adressed this before, so here it goes: There is a bug where when I click on the "resources gathered" in (particulary) orchards, it can sometimes show other resources, like venison og cabbage and such. So unless my orchardworkers have wondered of and slaughtered a dear or stolen some vegetables it would be great if this got fixed.

    Oh, and I love the game! Totally addicted after I bought it a few days ago. Love it!

  153. @Erica:
    I've noticed this too. It happens when a worker is assigned a task and then switches jobs before completing it. They finish the task as if they were working at their old job, and the credit for creating the resource goes to their new workplace.

  154. two of my main problem,

    fire in the middle of heavy rain,
    it burns nearly my entire housing, ****. supposedly rain slows down the fire, but no.

    dual city incapability.
    usually i build one city then expand. but this time i build two city at once which cause major problem as the citizen decided to live work in city a and live in city b. they start to die as the walk to their job from their house in the middle of winter.

    ---

    i hope 1.0.2 patch the dual city problem as the citizen traveling have been patched.

  155. Please note from the FAQ:

    '''
    Can I beta test the game?

    Since the game is close to release and ready to be shipped, I have no need for more beta testers. After release Iโ€™ll be pushing test patches and content into a beta branch on Steam before they go public to everyone. At that point Iโ€™ll be happy to have help making sure the patches, the mod kit, and new releases function properly.
    '''

    But now everyone thinks Steam-only updates are a surprise? ๐Ÿ™‚

  156. i dont like how i get treated as a customer here. not buying the next game of shiningrocksoftware.

  157. @futnat You didnt get the point. This game is one man show and it is fantastic made. The whole project is concentrated on non-compromissed quality. We - customers of Banished should worship shiningrocksoftware.

  158. Yes. One man made. But, is still anyone working here?

    No news of any kind in about 5 weeks.

  159. @Michal Yes it's so "fantastic made" that some cannot run it due to the crashes. I'm not worshiping any company that doesn't have the common sense to hire support staff after a popular release. I paid for a working game not one that I should impressed with who made it.

  160. Sooo, it's been 3,5 months since release. A release that obviously could be improved upon, as the developer himself admitted. Since then, we got 7 blog posts. Some of them promised lots of bugfixes and improvements coming our way. And still, no patch has been released. In 3,5 months... Are we supposed to believe that the developer has been hard at work for all that time, and still couldn't finish up a simple patch for his game? No, if you ask me, this guy is drinking champagne all day long on a nice tropical beach somewhere. Using his blog as a social experiment, to see how much he can aggravate the tension among his steadily slinking customer base. Who knows? It certainly doesn't look as if he cares about us anyway.

  161. Luke has released test patches. It takes some time to do this, especially when you compare the amount of work to do with the size of the team: one 1 man.
    You can cry whatever you want, he's doing the very best he can. Why? Because he made this game for a reason: he loves it.

    For the non-steam builds a test patch has been released a while ago. I'm running it without problems. Just spend energy on searching for it if you're desperate instead of commenting how much the developer sucks (which won't fix your problems in any way).

  162. I think the lesson Luke will hopefully learn is the importance of engaging the community. Even a one man band should perhaps be saying more. If he did he would stop the haters. EA have done the same thing. The silence in regard to Simcity is deafening.

  163. @Jon

    Do you mean a test patch for 1.0.2 or 1.0.1? If you have a 1.0.2 patch for non-steam builds do you mind sharing it with the rest of the class?

  164. @hi
    thanks for that reference to the FAQ.
    I just wish he had made it a bit more public, for eg on his own buy game link on the srs site ;).

    @futnat, grom, phil
    Luke has posted a couple of times on the forums and it seems like he's addressing a couple of other issues as well.

    @curundir
    now your comment is just plain stupid.
    It might be 4 months since the release, but the game works just fine.
    Apart from "Improvements" which should be a BONUS, the game crashes are being addressed. When was the last time the game crashed on YOU, specifically?
    If it has, have you ever posted a bug report on the forums? I doubt it.

    The only thing that was really expected was a fix for the march of death... and to note, if you have 2 grey cells to rub together, you can easily figure out how to manage it.

    @quinn, cya. Why are you still posting here?

    @Acc I do agree with you.
    A weekly post won't be too bad, but guess he's a type A personality who doesn't want to just post a few sentences and wants to deliver the best he has in mind.

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