This smaller update tweaks resource mining by adding early-game mineable deposits and adjusts late-game quarrying. The update also adds more depth to food items.
Quarrying
The major change in this update is the addition of free-standing deposits around (a newly-generated) map:
The start of the game now has a Stonecutter building instead of a Quarry:
These operate basically like Lumberjacks - the workers go out and harvest the nearby deposits:
Each full-size deposit can be mined 6 times, so these patches last for a while, but not indefinitely. This makes initial stone resources much less a "build-and-forget", but something you have to keep an eye on, mine from several sites (some possibly far), and eventually transition to quarrying.
Quarry is now unlocked by Quarrying tech and each resource type has its own mine type:
Sand and Clay quarry are now also separate buildings and Sand/Clay Pits are no longer part of the Quarry:
I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do about clay and sand mines since they have similar issues to the quarry. But they are okay as is for now, so I'll leave this for later.
Quarries can now use Mining Tools (which is what I renamed Tools). Every Mining Tool delivery will last for 6 excavations at a mine:
Mining with tools is significantly faster, but not required. Mining in general is slower now, so having tools would likely be preferable to having lots of villagers.
Besides various opportunities for balance and progression, I mainly like deposits for the visual variety and the "verticality" they add to the map. Any feature that adds new props and interactions with the world is a big plus in my book. I love the idea of each deposit slowly depleting visually watching the villagers go hit the rocks. As for balance, this changes a fundamental part of the initial gameplay, so I'll have to see how it goes.
I originally wanted quarries to be way more involved instead of just mining deposits, but I never got around to it, so it all stayed very "flat". I feel like this being literally on of the first things the player learns about, it should be significantly cooler.
What I still haven't added are rock tiles that have specific underground resources, so that the player would have to build mines in certain locations. But this requires me to make substantial changes to the level generation, which I cannot easily do with the current/old generator. Even the deposit generation needed code that is more hacks than logic. (For example, I couldn't even add deposits outside stone areas.) So I'm holding off on that for now, but will probably revisit things later. I also haven't added any sort of ore processing, which would make long-term production a bit more involved.
And stone is still not use for anything late-game, so there's that to address at some point.
Food values
Food now has several new "properties" to make food production and use feel more meaningful.
For example, a simple food item:
Versus a complex item:
This makes me want to aim for the fancy foods instead of potato quality.
First of all, food now belongs one or more categories, like Produce or Meats:
Each food item has a set quality:
Quality is the average quality of the best 4 items. In other words, as long as there are enough high quality items, the overall score will be high.
Each food item provides variety (for each of its category):
Variety is the sum of all the varieties in each category with a limit of 3 per category (so you cannot "stack" the same category).
You'll note that Pickles are really the only item that stands out at the moment because I didn't have any such items before. In fact, it's the addition of Pickles that prompted such questions as - how is it any better than just stacking potatoes.
Villagers in Houses will now consider both food quality and variety for their Diet need (score):
To sum up, all of this mean that items like Pickles actually provide as much food variety as 3 individual vegetables and still boost "fancy" quality score. So you could start with basic food supply, but transition to better mixed foods (and stop selling "cheap" food). Now I "just" need to add a bunch of new food items to fully utilize this new stuff. (And somehow allow houses to cram all these items...)
This feature is one of those where it's not obvious just how much extra stuff needs to be added to make it work. But this does allow me to handle "better food" in a way that can be balanced and explained reasonably well. Admittedly, about 80% of this work is UI-related, but that's how some features are.
Ant trails
One feature I have wanted to add for a long time but never got around to are so-called "ant trails" - on-the-ground virtual paths between locations. Currently, I am using these for export/import station routes:
If you mouseover a route in the selection UI, it will also highlight the relevant trail.
These use the same logic as regular in-game path-finding, so they actually follow the paths that couriers would take along the routes (and I think that's really neat):
There is a lot of potential for these in various locations, although none are really a priority right now. It was the export routes that felt more like a bug or at least a glaringly-unfinished feature since it didn't indicate where routes go. (There are the building markers, but you have to actually scroll around to find them and they didn't specify which route it is.)
It doesn't sound like a complex feature, but as always with these, it's the little things that get you. For example, I discovered some non-aligning sprites:
I won't go through a lot of detail, but I talked about path-finding and where path "nodes" are in a previous update post: https://steamcommunity.com/games/931270/announcements/detail/4748472700555436873 In short, path-finding is not just between tiles, but also between every corner of the tile. And the exact pixel distances for hex tiles the way I have them aligned means that even seemingly-identical transitions are actually 1 pixel shorter or taller depending on the exact location. Which means I ended up with a silly amount of sprites for this:
All this took a few days to do, but I think it's a nice "nice-to-have" feature.
Other
One requested feature is that export stations can now toggle items per route:
This allows some more complex exporting rules. Honestly, export/import stations are now way more complicated (and versatile) than I ever originally expected them to be.
Future plans
Another update so soon? What is this, Christmas?
I think I will continue to do some smaller updates for now. I have no idea what I will work on short-term since I don't want to do anything huge or overly complicated over the holidays. There are some high impact features I am looking into, but I have no idea whether they are huge changes or something I can get partly done and playable until I try. So I don't want to commit to anything. But I would really like to add technology tiers and rework scholar and library knowledge gathering. If not that, then something to do with late game, objectives and/or more involved monument construction.
Long-term, I am still aiming at a better level generator and all the features that come with it. As I mentioned before, I will try to make some updates that are "part of" level generation, like this deposit update, but does not require it. Even so, I was limited in how I could place and distribute deposits, so that's the sort of difficulty of not having supporting features.
Full changelog
Changes
• Generic Quarry Mines have been replaced by Stone Mine, Coal Mine and Iron Ore Mine
• Sand Quarry and Clay Quarry are now separate buildings
• Add Stone Deposit, Coal Deposit and Iron Ore Deposit props
• Add Stonecutter building
• Add Deposit concept
• Deposits will generate in new worlds on Rocks areas - a guaranteed number around spawn, proportional further away, and then randomly
• Add Quarrying tech unlockable after Mining
• Quarry is now unlocked by Quarrying
• Sand and Clay are now mined at Sand Quarry and Clay Quarry instead of Quarry, which is now only for Stone, Coal and Iron Ore
• Quarry now toggles production by item instead of by auxiliary
• Quarry now has separate mine buildings for each resource - Stone Mine, Coal Mine and Iron Ore Mine, which cannot toggle their production
• Quarry Mines now have to prepare area from Rocks to Excavated Rocks
• "Tools" have been renamed to Mining Tools; change icon
• Quarry Mines now can use Mining Tools for 6 operations; they can still work without, but much slower
• Mine building inspection UI to show Mining Tools use
• Mining Tools now require Quarrying for unlocking
• Add goal for Quarrying
• Food items now have a Food Quality values - 1 to 3 "points" (for example, Carrot is 1 point and Pickles is 3 points)
• Food items now belong to one or more Food Categories - Produce (e.g. Carrot), Dairy (Cheese), Meats (e.g. Roast), Pastry (Bread) and Preserves (Pickles).
• Food items now have Food Variety values for each Food Categories.
• Villager Diet need now uses Food Variety instead of counting items, however each Food Categories is limited to max 3 variety "points"
• Villager Diet need now uses Food Quality as additional criteria, which is based on best available item average quality (currently, best 4 items)
• Export Station can now toggle items on a per-route basis
• Items now show a reserve infoline (in tooltips and Micropedia); Food items also show their food-related values - quality, categories, variety
• Shack (former House) building has been removed
• Building inspection HUD route removal button now requires confirmation - second click (unless Shift is held)
• Selecting Export Station and Import Station will now show a visual trail to the route-connected stations along the tile path; and mousing over a route in HUD inspection will highlight the respective trail
• Better infoline sorting rules (notably, production recipe is listed before usage recipes)
• Minor Micropedia and UI improvements
• Micropedia reserve entries to show item's recipe infoline
Fixes
• Fix empty tooltips in Micropedia when trying to display locked entities in current game
• Building inspection auxiliary construction button tooltips not showing construction costs
• Victory window social link icons misaligned
• Main menu background image to not unnecessarily upscale if UI is set to upscale
• Unlocking a tech would deselect an active construction tab button
• Some props having empty tooltips
• Pickles not being delivered
• Grocery Shop not being unlocked with (only) Pickling
• Micropedia Pickling entry failing to load due to exceeding entry limit
• Fix possible crash when trying to save/load the game
Balancing
• Initial easily-mineable stone supply will now run out, requiring expanding via Quarrying and using Mining Tools
• Food Variety now allows items like Pickles to provides greater variety
• Longer mining times at the Quarries
• Less Sand and fewer inland Sand/Clay areas will spawn
• Medicine and Furniture as Reserves will last longer
Rudy
Snowy Ash Games