15.08.2026 The Sound & The Cursor

The Sound & The Cursor

This is one of Hansa Forever's largest interface and systems updates so far. It introduces the game's first broad sound and music layer, an original Hanseatic cursor, renewed live panels across the Main Menu and cities, deeper Guild and Alderman gameplay, and a large group of input, save, performance, and Player-build improvements.

The sound work began directly from community feedback about how quiet the game felt. Thank you for speaking up and helping shape the direction of Hansa Forever. This patch is the first major step toward giving its cities, voyages, and interfaces a stronger atmosphere.

Sound, Music & Atmosphere

• A persistent background-music system now plays Five Armies and Black Vortex by Kevin MacLeod. Both tracks and their CC BY 4.0 attribution are listed in CreditsPanel.
• OptionsPanel now includes a full Music Player with previous, pause/resume, next, direct track selection, seeking, and elapsed/duration displays.
• New Master Volume, Music Volume, Effects Volume, and Mute controls apply throughout the game and persist between sessions.
• CityScene now has medieval Hanseatic city ambience, while WorldScene has a dedicated medieval cog-voyage ambience. Both respect Effects Volume and Mute.
• Buttons, tabs, confirmations, back actions, unavailable actions, and panel openings now use six distinct medieval parchment-and-quill cues: click, page turn, quill and seal, paper fold, dry nib scratch, and parchment unfurl.
• ChurchPanel's Pray action now plays its own immediate prayer sound.

The New Hanseatic Cursor

• The standard system pointer has been replaced with an original black-iron, parchment, and brass cursor designed for Hansa Forever's late-medieval Hanseatic setting.
• Its precise (2,2) upper-left hotspot keeps small controls accurate, while the existing hourglass still appears during longer operations and returns cleanly to the Hanseatic cursor afterward.

Main Menu & Core Interface

• The new live PlayPanel brings Name, Family Name, Gender, Appearance, Hometown, Number of Cities, and Start Game into one authored character-and-campaign setup screen. Escape closes it cleanly.
• OptionsPanel has been rebuilt around four clear pages: AUDIO, GRAPHICS, GAMEPLAY, and LANGUAGE.
• The new GAMEPLAY page adds persistent Autosave, Camera Edge Scroll, Camera Speed, and Zoom Speed controls that affect both city and world-map play.
• The GRAPHICS page keeps resolution, Windowed Mode, quality, UI Scale, Auto UI Scale, and game/canvas lighting controls together in the renewed layout.
• The searchable LANGUAGE page supports the two current game languages, English and Türkçe, with preview, Apply, and Back behavior that does not overwrite settings until confirmed.
• The new CreditsPanel includes Created by OĞUZCAN “NEONEBU” ŞİROLU, the music titles and composer, the CC BY 4.0 license link, community links, and a localized thank-you message.
• EscMenu now uses a centered authored parchment presentation with the exact actions Continue, Save Game, Load Game, Options, Main Menu, and Quit Program, plus prebuilt confirmations and a full-screen input blocker.
• Renewed panels use viewport-safe opening, reliable Escape behavior, and consistent blocking of camera or world input while a modal interface is active.

TownHallPanel: Government, Elections & City Projects

• TownHallPanel is now a live five-page interface: Office, Elections, Patrol, Missions, and City Council, with the current city's crest and data.
• Office shows City Treasury, a mayor-controlled Tax Rate from 0% to 25%, and detailed 30-day income from housing, commerce, and the port alongside fortification, patrol, and administration expenses.
• Mayors can Deposit 1,000 or Withdraw 1,000 gold. Raising taxes while the city already has a 30-day surplus reduces the mayor's reputation in that city.
• Elections displays the most popular burghers and the current mayor. The player can run under the chosen character name, with support determined by the same person-city reputation system used by the rest of the game.
• Patrol reports the city's current patrol ships and status, while Missions presents an explicit no-missions state when the city has nothing to offer.
• City Council allows non-mayors to support one of up to three active projects with a chosen gold contribution; any attempted overspend is refunded.
• Projects include Chapel (10,000), School (15,000), Defensive Tower (20,000), Hospital (25,000), Mint (30,000), City Wall (40,000), and Become a Hanseatic City (50,000).
• Completed projects have real effects: Chapel grants +5 current-city reputation; Hospital grows population by 1% with a minimum of 10; Mint increases commerce income by 20%; Defensive Tower and City Wall reduce fortification expenses by 10% and 20%; School reduces administration expenses by 10%; and Become a Hanseatic City promotes a Trading Post.
• Treasury history, taxes, elections, active projects, and project funding continue through save and load.

ChurchPanel: Pray, Donate & Feed The Poor

• ChurchPanel now opens directly into three live pages: Pray, Donate, and Feed The Poor.
• Donate costs one quarter of the current city's population, rounded up, and can be used up to five times per month in each city. Every accepted donation grants +1 reputation in that city.
• Feed The Poor can be completed once per month in each city. Its live requirements scale with population and beggar count and can request Grain, Beer, Stockfish, Meat, and Wine when those goods are unavailable locally.
• Completing the action consumes the required warehouse goods and grants +5 reputation in that city.
• Monthly Church usage limits are preserved in save data, and all live text is available in English and Turkish.

ShipyardPanel: A Complete Live Renewal

• ShipyardPanel now uses a new authored visual presentation across Construction, Order List, Upgrade, and Repair instead of stacking the old Shipyard layouts underneath the live interface.
• Construction has illustrated Pinnace, Frigate, and Cog pages with previous/next selection, the selected ship's live name, and the real Build action.
• Order List uses authored scrollable rows showing ship type, estimated delivery date, and order owner. The list refreshes immediately when the city's construction queue changes.
• Repair cycles only through damaged player ships that are docked in the current city. It displays the vessel name, health percentage, and repair cost before using the real repair action.
• A dedicated empty Repair presentation appears when the current city has no damaged docked player ship, instead of leaving stale vessel data on screen.
• Upgrade now has its own authored page and keeps the Plagues of the Sea content correctly identified as locked DLC content.
• Escape and the close control dismiss ShipyardPanel reliably, while permanent live references prevent unrelated labels, buttons, or materials from being reused when the panel changes page.

LedgerHousePanel & ArchitectPanel

• LedgerHousePanel has been renewed around Personal, Balance, Goods, Warehouses, and Administrator pages with pre-authored rows and controls.
• Personal shows Current Rank, Wealth, Hometown, Ships, and Ledger Houses; Balance summarizes business, worker, housing, tenant, rental, warehouse, storage, guard, labor, and tax figures.
• Goods presents inventory plus daily consumption and production, while Warehouses shows owned or rented storage, space, cost, guards, security, and usage.
• Administrator supports hiring an administrator and creating automated buy/sell rules with a goods picker, trade mode, price thresholds, and amounts.
• ArchitectPanel now has an authored Hanseatic presentation with the current city's crest and Production, City, and Mayor pages.
• Production includes dedicated artwork and live good/output information for 19 production buildings, while permanent references keep the panel stable in the shipped Player build.

GuildPanel, Guild Tasks & the Alderman

• The renewed six-page GuildPanel is now the live panel opened from city Guild buildings, using its full medieval parchment, wax-seal, brass, and wrought-iron presentation.
• Players are automatic members of their hometown Guild with no joining fee. Foreign Guilds retain their normal rank, city-reputation, gold, and membership requirements.
• Production and Regional Goods privileges show AVAILABLE only when the player genuinely meets every requirement, and the Obtain action uses the same live eligibility result.
• The Merchants page now uses larger portraits, gold influence bars, and standings for six AI merchants at Rank 7 — Patrician.
• Statistics includes all 20 canonical goods and an 18-city table with real daily production and production-building counts, sortable by highest production or city name.
• Guild tasks become available at Rank 6 — Magnate. They include rotating seven-day city-delivery contracts for 100–400 goods, completed through real sales, with success or failure changing reputation in the target city by 3–5 and a one-day cooldown.
• Become a Hanseatic City is now a real recognition task tied to funding the matching TownHallPanel project in a Trading Post. AI merchants can also accept and complete their own delivery tasks.
• Every new game appoints the most successful AI at Rank 7 — Patrician as Alderman, followed by a new election every 1 December.
• Player candidacy requires Rank 7 — Patrician Lord and three completed Guild tasks. Election standings combine city reputation with merchant or player performance.
• Non-Aldermen see the current Alderman's full name, hometown, and portrait. A player Alderman can submit up to three annual Measures from Harbor Toll, Grain Reserve, City Watch Fund, and Convoy Priority.
• Guild tasks, candidacy, election year, the current Alderman, and active Measures are all preserved through save and load.
• Expeditions remains correctly gated behind the Purchases from Heaven DLC.

Controls, Performance & Player Reliability

• World-map city interaction now wins over overlapping ship markers, so a ship can no longer block the city button beneath it.
• Autosave, edge scrolling, camera speed, and zoom speed now follow the selected GAMEPLAY settings across the relevant scenes.
• Cloud-shadow movement, gold-text shimmer, and lighting refresh work have been reduced or capped, while the top-center world-action crest stops doing idle visual work after reaching its resting state.
• Under heavy AI fleet load, ship simulation distributes work across alternating subsets without changing the world's aggregate time scale.
• Camera and world controls remain suspended while modal panels, focused fields, or the Cheat Console require input, preventing clicks and key presses from leaking into the map behind them.
• Save data now carries the new Guild tasks and governance state, Church monthly limits, Town Hall treasury and projects, and the new gameplay options.
• Live panel references, authored assets, and build-inclusion checks have been strengthened throughout the renewed interfaces for more consistent behavior in the distributed Windows/Steam Player.

Thank you very much for your feedback and for continuing to help Hansa Forever grow.