itch.io

I was very disappointed by 2.0's cities, I really liked how large they looked in 1.x. Very glad to see they'll be back.

Wasn't that suggested like way back in 1.4, back when regions were first being talked about?

EDIT: yeah there was talks about it here: https://commodoreshawn.itch.io/bronze-age/devlog/5763/settlement-influence

Tried out 2.0.2, performance is terrible. I'm getting low FPS practically from the outset.

That's... disappointingly small, compared to 1.4 settlements.

It outright crashes on me.

Just downloaded it. I'm excited and all, but I think it's gonna need a few fixes. As it stands, it says it's failing to load files and crashes on worldgen. Here's a pastebin of the crash log.

Yeah, the display. Functionality I've got no objections. The doors are just too wide, the one on the bottom looks like it's on stilts. The grass underneath it might be a mistake as well. With the old square one it was okay, but with this one it makes it look like it has no fundation and is going to collapse like a jenga tower at the first stiff breeze.

Combat looks great. Not sure about the gatehouses though...

Check out the issue tracker linked on the main page, it has a list. Highlights include: actual combat, sound, defensive structures and upgrading structures, some worldgen stuff, and various little things.

The way I imagined it was schools working a bit like barracks/training grounds, turning regular citizens into scribes, that would then go on to garrison administrative buildings and provide various bonuses. But to work they'd require a papyrus/parchment/clay tablets industry, and the scribes might demand pig meat or somesuch.

Rather than educating the general population, I think it's more realistic for the time period to create an upper class of educated nobility. And it makes sense, after all, educating your farmers and miners has poor returns on investment. It's more efficient at that tech level to just have educated overseers.

It might also be easier to code nobility/scribe pops with special demands than to track the education level of regular citizens.

On the other hand, worm farms may help further the idea of "disgusting inhuman savages you don't feel bad about exterminating".

Trade though, is great. If you can interact with them in ways other than a javelin to the face, they become more than a threat to be eradicated and dismissed. Doubly so if they have unique ressources you can't get otherwise. Having different tribes with distinct behaviours/personalities as well. Simply having two camps of masklings wear different colors of clothing should be enough for the player to infer deeper differences and thus a more complex society, I think.

Worm farms? Ew! This all sounds very interesting though, looking forward to it all!

Wow, that first picture looks amazing! I'm impressed by how much progress you made. I like how you've made the bakery fit into an hexagon. I don't have any major criticism to make this week. The world gen looks unaturally random but I'll chalk this off to a work in progress.

Just a few minor suggestions before I forget: The ability to turn off the highlighted hexes when you're not building, and an income display next to the item numbers. Like "wheat 30 (+2)". Per 100 turns or however it works. This would be handy to determine at a glance whether a city has enough farms to sustain the bakeries, or too much.

I'm impatient to see what comes next! Keep up the good work!

Game crashes when I try to clear a full inventory. Wheter by eating, throwing away, or using in a recipe, it seems that freeing a slot in a full inventory crashes the game no matter what. Meaning if you get a full inventory your save is lost.

> Error report

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Mouse Event for Glob Left Button
for object objPlayer:

Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [20,0] out of range [20,-1] - 101132.inventory(100048,640000)
at gml_Script_RemoveItem
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_RemoveItem (line 0)
gml_Object_objPlayer_Mouse_50

>You have been, and I appreciate the input.

By the way, I'd like to apologize for my comments in the previous dev diary. Lookng back at them, they are rash and overly agressive. I shouldn't have posted so emotionally.

My main issue wasn't with the sub-hex system on its own, it's with the

small number of buildings to place. Your previous dev diaries said the
settlements would consist of a couple hexes with a dozen buildings
inside each, which I believe to be a serious downgrade from the 1000+
buildings of 1.4 cities.

Thinking about it further, I think a hybrid of sorts could be made, using essentially the second system, but keeping the general idea of "sub hexes" by creating small-ish zones that would play the role of the larger hexes of the first system, but without being necessarily hexagonal, or quite as small. Sort of like the region system planned for 1.5 but with hexes and smaller regions.

Here's a bullet point list to summarize my ramblings:

•  Packs of ~50-100 hexes (so 4-9 hexes in your first system) make a "big hex", work like a big hex of system 1 for settlements purposes. Groups of 3-6 "big hexes" (12-50 hexes in system 1) would make regions, for maskling territorial claims for example.
• Roads preferably placed on the hex borders, maybe the same for walls. (or a cheap palissade variant). When in cities units may be visually placed on the roads, with no mechanical effect (it just looks neater).
• A lot of building sprites will have to be redone to fit better in hexes, like you did for the houses. Adding a ground/walked path effect (like the bakery has a bit of) could help.
• Substitute people walking around with sprites in buildings idling or pacing back and forth to give the impression of activity? For example a bakery could have a small stand with a couple villagers seemingly selling/buying bread.

Hope I've been constructive.

See, my main issue with this is going from hundreds if not thousands of buildings to a couple dozens. With cities now being all the same shape with the same number of buildings -some of them probably being mandatory-, you're completely destroying decision making.

I made that thread to show off my cities because I was proud of what I made. What pride is there in placing a dozen buildings in a predetermined hexagonal shape?

I'll be honest I don't like the sound of this. Really don't. I liked Bronze Age precisely because of the detailed simulation. I like placing down the walls and the individual houses. If it changes to civ-like abstracted one-hex cities with "click that button to add walls" I'm going to go look for another game. Because you're basically making a different game. This isn't an update, it's a sequel.

Not sure I like the concept of transparent fields, and IMO you need less contrast on the terrain tiles like the sand and the deep water. But I like the buildings.

Mine work perfectly. All the .png named the same as the basic ones, the text file a simple edition of the original (making sure the things between <> are still intact), and the whole thing inside a .zip file just like the basic graphics.

If you manage to get it working, please post pictures.

I never really liked how the stone upgrades clashed with the rest of the buildings,  so I set out to make them prettier, while still keeping the vanilla aesthetic (also I'm not a pixel wizard). The biggest obstacle was the top of the buildings, which needed to be identifiable as stone fortifications. I'm still a bit iffy about the towers' roofs, tell me what you think.

The mod exists in two variations: light grey (picture) and limestone (picture).

This looks great! Much more natural than what we have now, in my opinion. Islands will also make boats (when they are implemented) more valuable and interesting.

Here you go, savefile on dropbox.

Yes, I click "export image", it sometimes run for a second or two, and then it gives me the regular "fatal error, bronze age has crashed menu/quit" message. It is in a subfolder of Documents, not Program Files. I'll try running it with admin, see if it changes anything.

PS: Nope, admin doesn't change anything. It creates a folder for it in the export folder ("Eror the plane of chopping turn 76858", number varies a bit), but it's empty.

Trying the new export feature, it crashes my game consistently. I have a lot of people in four settlements, so that may be why. Graphical mods don't seem to influence the crashes. Panning through all the settlements seemed to help, as the game took longer to crash, so I suspect it's a matter of the world being too big. My settlements have overlapping  influence radii, I don't know if it changes anything.

Edit: I highly doubt it has an influence, but my world is called Eror the Plane of Chopping, not the most encouraging of names...

You need 0 homeless and a wealth per capita of more than 5 (though it can round down so you can see 5 and it's really 5.4). So build more houses and more buildings in general.

Thank you! I made the quick mod I wanted thanks to that. It's not perfect, and I may tweak it before releasing it, but here's the result: Prettier Stone Towers, light grey (image 1) (image 2), and limestone grey (image 1) (image 2)

I also see there's some new things in the tilesheet... I guess that qualifies as a sneak peek :P

EDIT: I changed the top of the walls, I like it better that way. Opinions? Light grey and limestone.

I transfered mine, it does work.

Oh. Well I guess as of now wagons and wealth are the only uses for pigs so it doesn't really matter. I know pig trading is planned, but maybe we could eat them one day? Possibly around the morale update as a luxury food.

This was an optimisation update for the most part, and good grief does it succeeds at that. The automatic surplus works wonders. No more food shortages or surplus micromanagement.

The hauling improvements are also a blessing. Things get done at an incredible pace. I can order a hundred houses and they pop up like mushrooms in the rain as one dude with a wheelbarrow full of bricks just passes by. As a result I have an incredible number of idlers. Previously they'd all be busy hauling shit left and right, now they just chill at home. Which does wonders for my tick rate. I'm pushing 1100 citizens and it's still smooth.

Pig breeding seems to be either very slow or a little buggy at the moment, I'm not seeing new piggies in my pastures.

If I may suggest, maybe put the default sprites in the tilesheet guide (instead of having it empty), so as to make it more intuitive, and tweaks easier maybe? I'd like to see if I can just change the stone walls/towers a bit, but as it stands graphical mods seem meant to be done from scratch.

Sounds great. Does that mean maskling camps will have their own admin structure? Potentially upgradable with each upgrade unlocking behaviours.

90 tiles square sounds a bit smaller than what I'd consider "regions" right now. When I look at the 1.3 map, I see region borders to be mostly the rivers. Looking at my cities the "regions" are maybe 100x150-ish, give or take (they're quite potato-shaped). We'll see how it turns out.

All in all I'm really excited for that update. Almost forgot 1.4 lol.

>The UI might be a bit tricky

We'll need a region view/overlay in any case, to see where the regions end and who owns what. It could be done through there in a fashion similar to building upgrades ("influence area of settlement A" "1: claim as core" "you need X citizens to claim as core"). Or, if we go by my favoured idea of Town Hall buildings, inspecting a town hall (or trying to build one) may tell you what you need. The Settlement Info screen might also see use here, with different pages. I think eventually this screen is likely to require some expansion anyway as a menu or ledger of sorts, to see everything that's going on with the settlement.

I prefer a region-based system rather than a distance-based one. I feel like it would be more realistic, as it would enforce natural borders like rivers and mountains. Maybe have a mix of both, with a small influence radius that doesn't expand or not very much, and otherwise go by region. So if you settle near the border between biomes you can go a bit on the other side, but you're otherwise bound to natural borders. Something I feel is important.

If the borders of settlements and maskling territories follow rivers and mountains, rather than being circles that ignore terrain, then border friction feels more natural. If the masklings attack you because you built a tower two tiles too far to the left and its circle overlapped with their invisible circle, it feels arbitrary and annoying. If you piss them off because you crossed a clearly visible, unchanging boundary, then it makes them feel more human. "This is our side of the river, this is yours" is much better than "You can get within 144 squares of our huts, if you get even one step closer we'll shank you."

Expansion should in my opinion bound to milestones allowing you to claim more regions as "core". Those milestones could simply be population (IMO something exponential like 150-350-600-1000 rather than a flatter 200-400-600-800), wealth, or later in development be tied to achievements like successfully developing a noble class or technology.

>I think most or all of my cities would fail that check.

Looking at the cities you posted, at a glance Scalestander port is on a single region, it passes. Grasschopper port looks to be on four regions, but at 1600+ citizens I think it could be allowed one or two more, so it passes. Wallstander on the other hand seems to sit on three regions, and at 229 it should be allowed two, so if the region-based system was in place, you most likely would've had to stay on one side of the lake, maybe making your town more vertical instead.

>I would also limit how closely settlements can build to each other, requiring them to merge administratively first.

Forbid settling into another settlement area of influence (core regions + regions adjacent to core), can't expand into another settlement's area of influence unless it's for a merge.

>I'm unsure of the best way to effectively limit settlement size.

I think you'd need more systems in place, like happiness or diseases, before an adequate soft-cap can really be implemented. As it stands, hauling inefficiencies and FPS death act as a soft cap.

I like the idea of restricting a settlement to a biome rather than a radius. However, as you said, it might cause some problems. A possible solution is to allow certain buildings (mines, roads, 2x2 towers eventually) and activities (gather pigs, cut trees...) to be built in adjacent biomes, letting citizens gather ressources from adjacent biomes, but not live there.

A more complicated idea would be to have a specific building (a town hall) that claims a biome. When a group of settlers is ordered to settle, they build such a building, claiming the biome. When a settlement reaches a certain population, it is allowed to build another such town hall, claiming a second biome. This could again tie into districts somehow. The masklings may also be drawn to the town hall, trying to destroy it to kick the settlers out. It would also be a prime target for all kinds of upgrades and various mechanics and interface (nobles, diplomacy, early religion...).

I also like the idea of  maskling tribes claiming biomes. It would make them seem more intelligent, more relatable, and it would open the possibility of peaceful interactions down the line. And/or conflict between masklings. Maybe they'll even expand under certain circumstances, one tribe gaining in power and asserving or wiping out tribes you were trading with would be a matter for concern or even war. Imagine, going out at war to save masklings!

Woah, that's an impressive set of settlements there. Pretty much a state or kingdom. And yeah, I've had inconsistencies on turn length. An aborted attempt got to 700+ms turns with less than 200 inhabitants. I have no idea why. I'd be curious to see the food situation in your main world, my bigger city is at a perpetual 600+ deficit, and you seem to have much less bakeries. Do you somehow manage to get your dudes to work efficiently or do you just don't care about food (since there does not seem to be any kind of penalty at the moment)?

I'm surprised this hasn't been made already. It might be because piecing screenshots together necessitate some work, but I think it's worth it.

Basically, this is the thread where you post screenshots of the cities and settlements that make you proud! And the stories that go with them if you so desire.

I'll open the ball with my own:

- Coinhammerer City, 1313 inhabitants, 100 soldiers ( 40 militia, 60 skirmishers).  A prosperous coastal settlement, Coinhammerer City enjoys a long period of peace and prosperity after the 100-strong warband cleaned up all the maskling camps within twenty chunks of its walls. Before that expedition, the masklings attacked relentlessly from three directions. The twice-reinforced wall sections are monuments to that troubled period. Unfortunately, the city doesn't have access to copper, and thus remains relatively low tech. I could have made a mining outpost, but the game was already running at 800ms per tick so I more or less abandoned the world. I wanted to put statues everywhere but no copper... Stone statues when?

- Scalechopper Harbor, 672 inhabitants, 110 soldiers (10 scouting militias, 2x 20 spearmen/30 archers battalions). Nestled in a nicely isolated peninsula, Scalechopper Harbor is much more ressource-rich than Coinhammerer City, with access to vast forests and rich copper veins. The latter allow it to field a very strong military, which utterly stomped every maskling camp that could remotely threaten the settlement. I consider this settlement pretty much done, although the asymmetrical farm placement annoys me slightly. Very satisfied with how it looks otherwise.

And one from a friend:

- Wallchopper Camp. Since I didn't make that one I don't know much about it, except that my friend didn't quite understand mines yet. I find the different building methods to be interesting nonetheless.

And now it's your turn! Let's see some great cities in this thread!

After reloading the game it seems that he got unstuck somehow. He was at the tip of that peninsula while he was stuck. I don't recall having tradehouses when the pig escape happened but maybe I'm wrong.

Another one: the pigs have escaped their pasture and I have no idea how. Nobody seems intent on putting them back either.

Edit: The pigs mostly got re-gathered eventually, but one dude got stuck on a peninsula while gathering pigs (again), which seemingly stopped all pig-gathering business altogether, despite half a dozen empty pastures.

The buffer thing sounds like a good idea. When I set target surplus that's exactly what I'm trying to do. So automating that would be great. We'll see how that version of handcarts will turn out, but I think that between that and fixing structure inventories (no more farms with 70+ wheat waiting for pickup!), things should go a lot better.

The district part sounds like it should be related to merging settlements. Like if a settlement is merged into another and doesn't have separate districts already, it automatically becomes a district.

Another suggestion: 3-blocks long walls. It will very simply allow walls to be any length except 2 and 5 blocks. Currently they can only be multiples of 4, and building a long wall only to find out that you're one block short from squeezing that last wall in is maddening.

More generally put, I'd like more flexible walls. I think 3-blocks short walls is the simplest method. Something context-dependant similar to roads would be ideal but more complicated to implement.

Edit: A way to heal people? I'm not sure they heal on their own and there's nothing on trello about healing stuff.