Hello everyone!
Recently, I have been making good progress working on some late-game areas and upgrades. I am really happy about the result, there are really cool and powerful abilities. For instance related to a fast travel system that helps to make routes more efficient!
But I have also worked on some other improvements, and I am releasing today a patch for the demo! It adds a couple new things, like new early-game upgrades, or even the possibility for the buildings range to expand when they are upgraded, to impact not only the 4 adjacent but the 8 surrounding tiles.
But the main feature is that I made a rework of the audio atmosphere! The game now uses positional sounds for the environment. I changed the sound of the resources transfers, added sounds to the routes, and also implemented a whole ambient dynamic system. Basically, it scans the surroundings of your ship once in a while and spawns ambient sounds depending on what is founds. It could be some birds because you're near a forest or a plain, or some mechanical sounds because you're near a city. Or seagulls because... well, the whole game takes place on the sea! The ambient sounds can be different from one region to the next, and also if you are at day time or night time in the game. So the ambience shifts with the time cycle and your journey. Also, the music gets slightly muffled at night (you can disable it in the settings if you don't like it).
I don't want to go overboard with the dynamic system and add too many ambient sounds, but I feel it was a bit lacking. So I am happy with this addition. and I think it adds a lot to the ambiance and makes the atmosphere more immersive. Let me know in the comments if you enjoy it!
Oh, and this patch fixes a few bugs too of course. Full changelog is below as always. Thanks for reading this post and for your support! I'm heading back to work on the mid- and late-game content, and I'll see you next time!
-Radiant Sloth
Changelog Demo v0.5b:
Added two new early-game upgrades in the Advancements tab
Added buttons to the "Story" tab to filter events and only display those of a certain type
Reworked internal code to better manage the effects impacting tiles in a range
Introduced possibility for buildings to impact all 8 surrounding tiles instead of only the 4 adjacent. For instance, Wood shed now goes from Adjacent to Surrounding when upgraded to Medium wood shed
Effects impacting neighboring tiles now show an icon to clarify the shape of their range (Adjacent/Surrounding)
Added hotkey for locking/unlocking the ship inventory. It will appear on the right of the HUD after pressing the checkbox a first time in the menu. Default is "C" on keyboard and "Button X" on XBox controllers
Some visual polish in the Cosmetics tab
Reworked the environment sounds to be more positional and dynamic with sounds varying with the biomes and the day time
Added environment sounds to the routes when they start/stop moving and when they exchange resources with cities
Changed the music to be slightly muffled when it is night time in the game. Added an option to enable/disable this setting (on by default)
Changed the sounds for resources transfers
Switched to a better compression level for sounds and music to retain a satisfying audio quality while lowering the game files size
Tweaked the layout of the upgrades in the Advancements tabs and polished the look to make purchasable items pop more
Fixed not being able to delete a Heating tower even if all houses are already adjacent to another one
Fixed a button sound playing when it should not at the end of loading a sector
Fixed drafts not being deleted if the target is no longer a valid building option (for instance after destroying a building that makes it available)
Fixed cities tooltips on the lower part of the map sometimes flickering
Fixed supply routes using the wrong trail color
Fixed ship previews in the Cosmetics tab being in the dark at night time in game
Fixed the transparent background of resource inventory above route ships sometimes flickering