As of 10/12/2023 the update is officially out of beta!
Greetings Warlords (and you, grimy goblins)! Today we're going to talk about the Enchanted Realm update which has been in the works for a while. It wasn't an easy time, as we ripped many of the game's systems apart in order to rewrite them from the ground up. Although this might not be noticeable by the player as such, it was very much needed. WuS content creep and tech debt has grown to an unsustainable levels, and so we were left with no choice but to butcher it, and rebuild it.
But it's all better now :)
Now, let's get to the JUIIICEEE!
We've overhauled post processing, weather, textures and some models. Our amazing graphic designer, Hussh took a look at the game and said "Ya know what, the colours don't work together...". Along with Gothim, our programmer they sat down, re-toned the textures and applied some awesome post processing.
But then that wasn't enough! We all decided that the weather events weren't quite up to scratch. They often felt "flat" and dull. You couldn't tell that it was foggy, or sunny, or rainy. It was just, well, crap most of the time. But no more! Each weather event got a visual overhaul, and this is what we got now!
You know what else sucked? Buildings and how they were just sinking down when destroyed. So we threw all that out and added building destruction physics! If your machine can't quite handle it, or you'd prefer to play without it, you can simply turn it off in the options.
Another fun thing is Corpse Persistence. It's now a game option which you can set to your liking. Generally you can have corpses disappear instantly (good for performance), after some seconds, all the way to... never (very bad for performance)! This option is experimental and will be improved upon in the future. Corpses always work on their original timer for now, so if you set them to never, and then to instant, those ones from earlier will remain... I'd advise to play around with it if you're curious, but don't be too upset if your PC chugs ːgoldensmileː We'll work on this some more in the future. ːWH3_claspː. Also I hate ːwinter2019angryyulː emojis ːsteamhappyː in text ːambitionː.
The amount of stupid things in the code was insane. This is mostly my personal fault, and although I'd love to blame someone else, Gothim's code is quite pretty and nice, whereas mine is like a tangled ball of wire. In fact, he chastised me recently for adding in game logic code to his UI code. I'm treating this section of the article as a self-help piece of reflective writing, and a punishment at the same time. Think of it as a programmer's equivalent of medieval flagellation, just without the religious undertones.
Anyway, we improved a lot of things. AI has been rewritten and for now it is behaving a bit weird, but we'll iterate on what we have in the coming weeks. Most importantly your units will now finally listen to orders given, and should be a little bit smarter. What's more is we have removed huge performance bottlenecks, because my code written beforehand which has been here since the release of Citizens: Far Lands, did not accommodate for such a large number of units on the battlefield. Imagine that every missile unit would loop through every other unit in existence, check distance between itself and it, and then find the one closest? That was bad. I feel bad.
Would you believe that we have FINALLY added the REVOLUTIONARY DLC-LIKE CONTENT... Waypoints for recruitment buildings! /s (itsajoke)
For the grandpas and grandmas among you, we've also added 1/2 speed! This could potentially also help performance if it chugs at some point. Maybe.
There's actually a bit more here and there, so here's the full changelog.
- Features:
- Added building destruction physics (toggle in options if your performance suffers)
- Added 1/2 speed setting (can also help with performance)
- Added waypoints for recruitment buildings (set with right mouse button when building is selected)
- Added alphabetical card sorting in deck builder (top left corner)
- Added corpse persistence option. EXPERIMENTAL, not optimised! Make sure your PC can handle it. Will be optimised in the future.
- Players are now required to have lower-tier cards in their deck before they can add higher-tier cards (so you can't add Card II or III if you don't have Card I etc...)
- Improvements:
- Units will no longer ignore and reset movement orders when about to attack
- Clicking on a building slot will no longer close automatically when playing on higher speeds
- Pressing the unit group key twice in quick succession will take you to random unit from that group
- Hero panel now has gold colour rather than blue to distinguish them easier
- Flags flash and bob up and down now! Wooow! (DLC material really, but you get it for free!)
- Building slots are highlighted when hovering over them
- Resource production circle is now blue for better visibility (also has a nice border!)
- Post processing also affects the UI now, some bits and bobs were given a small overhaul
- Bone catapult now has a more spooky sound when firing!
- Better visual cursor indicators
- When holding left shift, we can now correctly add more units to selection group by clicking on them, or by dragging a selection box
- Fixes:
- Optimised and improved pathfinding
- Optimised unit decision making logic
- Optimised UI performance (was bottle-necking bad!)
- Eliminated various memory leaks related to pathfinding (and therefore crashes)
- Moved missile logic into Unity Jobs for performance. Experimental but no crashes reported so far. If you get crashes, send us logs!
- Removing card filters in deck builder no longer randomly sets the card indexes
- Modded maps now correctly load endless modes if they have it
- Hero portrait should now display correct HP values at all times
- Selecting Merlin in deck builder will now play one of his voice lines
- When a building is in process of destruction, it's no longer possible to click it
- Fixed various typos in English and Polish
- Visuals:
- Fixed post processing!
- Toned down certain textures
- Replaced loading screens
- Iron Mountains keep received some visual love (sun direction, fog etc...)
- Bad weather no longer removes most of the shadows (doesn't look as flat)
- Fixed LOD for pine trees
- Things that got worse:
- Added lots of Spaghetti code. I'm not happy when Somebody toucha my Spaghet!
Shoutout to the following:
- szczurkowski for showcasing our games to the Polish community and providing initial and fundamental feedback without which our games would not be here today. Twitch here (Polish)
- Big Kyle for awesome and passionate feedback!
- lewi030 for making some mods!
- Asha Marie for sticking around the community and providing us with good feedback!
- TacticalFriedRice_ for calling us funny names in anger, but actually providing awesome feedback. You can check out his Twitch here
- pharaohsyris for letting us know about crashes, and helping us find the reasons for them!
Actually, right now! The update is officially out!