🦣 Addressing Feedback + Big Content Update 🦣

This is a longer update on some of the latest progress in the development of Folk Emerging.

It addresses a lot of the player feedback from the latest playtest (thanks again!), and adds new features and content, moving along the roadmap towards a polished demo.

Headline Changes

• Specialists & Production now more impactful

• Territorial tile claims removed (structure claims remain)

• Split-off bands have automated foraging, reducing micromanagement

• Big content update for foodwebs & domestication

• Big UI update with fullscreen/window settings, UI scaling, and QoL improvements

Design

• 💼 Specialists

  • Specialist effects made more impactful overall

  • Each of the 4 main personality attributes now matter for Specialist effects

  • Character traits added as states (e.g. Wise, Herder, Ranger)

  • Specialists now upgrade based on character traits, each giving a unique bonus (instead of XP just giving an incremental increase of the specialist’s base effects)

  • Specialist roles can now be unassigned from their current Person

  • Each Person can accumulate XP for multiple Specialist roles over their lifetime

  • Lorekeeper and Master Crafter merged into 1 specialist role: Maker

  • Balanced Warmaster’s effect on risk of injury from battle so it’s more difficult to completely bring it to zero

• 🔨 Production

  • Production Focuses reworked to scale with Production and local/adjacent features, making Production much more significant throughout the game

  • Scavenging yields scale with adjacent Predator Threats

  • Wood and Stone are now gathered via Production Focuses, so these resources no longer accumulate passively

  • Farming and Herding are now Production Focuses, so Food yields from Farms and Pastures no longer accumulate passively (but other Farm/Pasture effects remain passive)

• 🚩 Territorial claims over tiles are removed (claiming structures remains)

• 🍏 Resources & Stockpiles

  • Stockpiled Food now goes to waste at a % rate each turn.

  • Resource stockpile limits are removed, instead there are now resource carrying capacities. Bands can stockpile any amount of a resource but when they move, any excess beyond the carrying capacity is left behind, cached on the tile.

  • Cached resources get added to the stockpile of the first Band to step on that tile. Cached Food goes to waste at a high % rate each turn.

  • Cooking tech now directly gives +50% Food yield, boosting Food from any source, not just foraging

• ♻ Foodwebs

  • Big content update: Added entirely new dedicated foodwebs for Steppe, Desert, Savannah, and Rainforest climates.

  • Added more megafauna (including Mammoths in the Steppe)

• 🌱🐄 Domestication

  • Big content update: Domestication outputs now vary based on species being domesticated (e.g. Sheep, Camels, Wheat, Agave), and each has unique & powerful effects

  • Domestication sped up to require less domestication points overall

  • The Maker role is now the only source of Domestication points, so Domestication can only happen in their assigned Band.

  • Effects of Farms and Pastures now vary with the type of Domesticated Item equipped in them

  • Farms and Pastures now decrease Food Forageable and Foraging Impact in adjacent tiles

• ⚔ Combat & AI

  • AI bands now retreat away from bands that recently attacked and defeated them in combat

  • Bands can now be conquered if attacked & defeated in combat and sufficiently outnumbered

• ⚙ Reducing micromanagement

  • Band foraging actions can be automated (toggled setting)

  • Split-off bands are now semi-autonomous offshoot bands whose foraging actions are automated by default.

  • Domestication being limited to the Band with the Maker specialist reduces micro as well.

• 🧭 Movement

  • Each band’s movement action has a “reminder” toggle, which can be turned off so a band can stay on its tile without needing to re-confirm every turn

  • Not showing movement reminder on the very first turn (movement can still be initiated via the Band Actions buttons)

• ⚖ Balance

  • 1-turn boosts from opportunity events are now more powerful than related items that have similar effects

  • Hunting migratory herds now gives higher Food yields (5 → 10 default, 10 → 20 if adopted norm Ferocity)

• 🌙 Factions theme switched from animal worship to natural elements worship (e.g. Sun, Moon)

UI

• Added fullscreen settings with a borderless window option and windowed option for switching screens

• Added resolution settings

• Accounted for a broad range of aspect ratios

• Added UI scaling settings (1x-1.2x)

• Made expected resource yields more noticeable and added color (e.g. negative Food yield is yellow by default, red when it will result in a food deficit; positive is green)

• Resource carrying capacities are yellow when exceeded by the stockpile (meaning resources will be left behind when moving)

• Structure banners on map now show equipped Item

• Changed structure background to clay tablet

• Adjusted position of map tooltip in bottom-right of screen so it's always right next to the minimap (independent from resolution/AR)

• Changed tooltip background to be stone slab like other UI panels

• Added a small question mark in the corner of the status button to prompt players to hover on it for the action tooltip

• Enabled pressing Enter/Return key to press status button

• Band map banners now show more info (e.g. specialists assigned, what is being produced, founder/offshoot type

• When clicking on an unassigned Role in the pinned characters banners, the Band>Members sub-page now automatically opens, and if Person view is open it switches to the Person>Roles sub-page

• Foodweb page now has background texture corresponding to that foodweb’s climate.

• Made button highlights more noticeable, e.g. when cultural norms are available

• Make victory points a hyperlinked phrase in more places so it’s clearer how they are earned

• Unstaged any staged structure-placement action when another band is selected or another producible is selected

• Enabled game restart via main menu without needing to exit and re-open app

• Changed default light text color from white to ivory like interactable buttons

• Updated arrows in foodweb, clan, and tech tree pages, with subtle animation shader where appropriate.

• Made modifier text in tooltip breakdowns more descriptive

• Enabled hyperlinks on just icons without any text, for more compact tooltips

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed wonders not becoming available after researching Stoneworking

• Fixed battle timeline buttons remaining clickable after fight is over, now player can't click "next step" multiple times to get multiple raid events

• Fixed little green/red arrows for expected change in foodweb species population size not showing up on certain resolution screens

• Fixed baseline audio volume, no longer quiet compared to other apps

• Fixed adopted Council norm not being recognized in clan dispute event, outcome requiring it is now selectable

• Fixed food forageable from foodweb species species sometimes being negative, now clamped to minimum 0

• Fixed military view not updating to show newly selected band's units when switching selected band while military view is open

• Fixed tooltip persisting and following mouse when it should disappear (e.g. when opening/closing panels)

• Fixed wrong Happiness values after Band splitting

• Text and event fixes

Programming

• Minimized duplicate UI update calls

• Optimized how inter-cell feature effects get applied to map entities

• Added new modifier type: *additive* reference multiplier, e.g. get the Shaman's Charisma (e.g. 2), multiply that by 3 (= 6), and *add* that to an attribute's value

• Upgraded project to Unity 2020.3.49f1

I'll soon post about next steps and plans going forward.

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Cheers :)