0.8.004 - Update 3

Major changes

Unreal Engine 5

• A lot of old engine bugs and crashes should no longer occur, including random crashes during loading a saved game or certain resolutions breaking the game.
• [Experimental] A new "virtual shadow map" system that produces very sharp, high resolution shadows.
• New volumetric clouds and atmosphere rendering.
• GPU based LOD for Instanced Components.
• I tried my best to match UE5 settings (foliage LODs, fog level) to UE4's settings since some players perceived a downgrade.

Trade overview

• Added a trade overview in the development screen which lists all the previous transactions done by the region.

Food spoilage mechanic

• Each food type decays at a certain rate per month, for instance, fish decay faster than bread.
• Certain buildings affect spoilage, for instance storing in a granary is better than storing in the workplace's pantry.
• Weather events can affect spoilage rates (droughts make food spoil quicker).
• Added drought impact to the spoilage tooltip.
• Added a "spoilage multiplier" difficulty setting to the game setup.

Fishing

• Added a new resource node: Fishing pond.
• Made so that the ponds freeze in the winter.
• Added a new development branch, Advanced Pondkeeping, that enables fishing all year round and doubles the capacity.
• Added a new food resource: Fish.
• Added a new workplace: Fisherman's hut, with new job (fisherman).
• Fish pond water level should lower during droughts.

Crossbows

• Added a new military resource: Crossbows (made in bowyer workshop).
• Added new unit types: Light Mercenary Crossbowmen and Militia Crossbowmen.
• Added a new ranged low tier mercenary group: "The huntsmen".
• Iron Parts are required to make Crossbows. They are made from Iron Slabs by the Blacksmith Artisan.

Butchers

• Implemented the butcher artisan conversion. Butchers take surplus sheep and lamb and convert them into meat.
• Added new deposit (salt) and readded the salt resource which is mined with the surface/deep mine.
• Added a new resource: Sausage (1 salt + 1 meat = 2 sausage). It is made in the Butcher workshop and has much lower spoilage rate than Meat.
• First butcher workshop built will set a sheep & lamb reserve automatically to a half of the population in order to avoid butchering the whole flock.
• Advanced Skinning development branch doubles the Meat from butchers as well.
• Added a system of production limits and reserves for workplaces crafting goods.
• Removed the individual limits (construction limit, hunting limit) and rerouted everything to the new reserve UI in the "advanced" tab. This way, Fisherman huts now also get a fishing limit to avoid overfishing.

Also, pigs

• You now have to choose what animal to order, either a pig or a goat.
• Pigs give 2x meat every 150 days, Goats give 1 meat + 1 hides every 150 days.
• Added pig sound effects.

Gameplay & balance

Adjusted deposit spawning

• Brought rich deposits closer to the starting camp on first spawn (if possible) to make the starts a little bit more balanced.

Malthouse

• Added a Pantry to the Malthouse.
• Malthouse now actually requires refueling.
• Added generic storage to the Malthouse since it stores fuel.
• 1 Malt now makes 2 Ale.

Sheep & lambs

• When bought, sheep all have pregnancy counter set to 0 for better predictability of the sheep breeding development branch.
• A minimum of 2 sheep are now required for breeding to occur.
• Sheep pregnancy duration lowered to 145 days (+-1) (Variable is currently hidden in the game).
• The number of lambs born per region cap increased to a maximum of 2 every ten days.

Communal oven

• Communal oven will now require refueling.

Experimental

• The bonus resource node was removed since most people thought that it's a bug.
• Since most people expect between 2-3 ponds and 2-3 salt deposits per map, instead of spawning them as a bonus node from a random pool, fishing ponds can now randomly replace berry deposits, and salt deposits can randomly replace iron deposits. Once again, the randomization uses a fixed pool to spawn 2-3 of those per map, as the players seem to expect.

Minor changes

• Rewrote the random node algorithm to reduce cases where it fails to find an appropriate spot and spawns an object in the wrong location (eg. spawning a bandit camp on top of a pond).
• Added multiple paragraph breaks to wiki descriptions.
• A setting was added to display Resource Node (Deposit) icons in construction mode only.
• Made "advanced" tab highlight every time an artisan workshop is created so that the player notices the new settings of production focus and reserve for butchers.
• [Experimental] A new way of spawning bandit camps that is more randomized and should now avoid spawning them on top of ponds.
• [Experimental] Moved production focus to the "advanced" building panel tab and livestock assignment to the "livestock" building panel tab.
• Added missing Lambs icon.
• Wiki text and tooltip updates.
• Added new coat of arms symbols.
• Added new character portraits.
• Lowered the interface scale on smaller resolutions to reduce the top region panel overlapping with the lord's panel & screen edge.
• Improved collision avoidance if two characters are already extremely near collision distance or in collision.
• Enhanced the tooltip for the "NA" price to explain better why it's not available.
• "Fuel reserve" renamed to "fuel stockpile" not to confuse with the new "reserve" options.
• Removed the "max capacity" placeholder text.
• Added max mining deposit capacity to save data.
• If an animal breeding fails due to collision, another attempt will be made next cycle.
• Adjusted stone gate spawning locations for specific lv3 plots (left side anchored, no expansion upgrade).
• Added new help buttons to reserve and production limit and added entries for text in barter UI and work area and road curvature.
• Changed the season tooltip to display the current year instead of years survived, as well as the day of the month.
• Changed the Animal Pen upgrade icon to reflect the new animal choices.
• Traders will continue working when sick until they reach home region again.
• Changed ox plowing directions to be even more historically accurate (from center, outside).
• [Experimental] The game hides the demolish button on the very last Hitching Post in the region in order to protect new players from game * * overing themselves by deleting the last hitching post and making the ox run away. I made the stables follow the same rules, so that if you have * 10 stables and 1 hitching post, you may delete the hitching post, but if you have 1 stable, you can no longer delete it.
• Adjusted the description of the "Better deals" perk.
• Added the livestock order timer to save data.

Optimizations

Added advanced culling for transform updates (should make high population sessions run much faster). [Experimental] Fireplace light simulation LOD added. [Experimental] Optimization of surface checks and fire reaction checks. [Experimental] Optimized unit rotation smoothing far from the camera. [Experimental] Ground height checks optimizations. [Experimental] Locomotion velocity & animation speed calculation optimizations. Unit static collision system optimizations. Grass system optimizations. Significant crowd animation system optimizations. [Experimental] Distributed unit motion calculations over multiple frames to make the framerate smoother. Optimized calculation of push forces in combat. Reduced stutter after loading a savefile by moving the loading of the construction assets into the loading screen (in consequence making the loading screen a bit longer). Pathfinding optimizations. Optimized memory usage. [Experimental] Dynamic foliage LODs: Tree detail will now vary on the camera angle additionally to being dependent on the distance to the camera.