Hello again! Yes, I am still working on this game, despite having a lot of things on my back at the moment. I've begun doing livestreams on Twitch every monday and friday (except when I can't) where I've been developing the game: https://www.twitch.tv/oddlyspecificgames

Anyway, onto the updates!

PROBLEMS THAT NEEDED FIXING

I had issues with the system of estates I had coded. If you remember, the previous version used a percentage of the population of a locale to determine the workforce and output of an estate. I realized this system limited the control of the player over the estates, and at the same time was overly complex to manage. So instead I devised a different system, where estates are simply built like your usual 4x game, and have a fixed output based on their level alone. The population of a locale simply increases the number of estates that can be build in that specific plot of land. Estates require that there are people living in the locale in order to function (workforce) and I have some other plans for them as well.

The estates that are programmed right now are the  following:

• FARM - Output: Food - Depends on factors such as water index, altitude and fertility of the land
• BUNKHOUSE (previously Lumberjack) - Output: Wood - Extracts the wood of a locale. Only bunkhouses can be built where there's wood, and can be used to clear out forests as well
• MINES - Output: Stone (for now) - Gathers minerals, and in the future higher levels will allow for new minerals to be mined dependant on the ones available in the locale
• GARRISON (previously Barracks) - Output: Soldiers (not implemented) - The idea is that these garrisons will serve to resupply militairy units and create them as well
• MARKET - Output: Money - The money generated in the markets decreases with the ammount of money in circulation, giving diminished returns. This is so that the player is forced to find other ways to make money other than just stock up on market estates
• ACADEMY - Output: Research - The idea of research is to unlock new levels of estates and new estates as well by spending research points in the advancements tree (to be implemented)

More estates are coming, but for now I want to make sure the stuff I already have is working well first.

ROADS

For a long time I've been rejecting the idea of roads in the game, avoiding it like the plague, and looking for other ways to do things. But I realized that for trade and interactions between nations to function some sort of network system has to be constructed, and I found no way around it. The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was when I attempted to create merchant units that spawned randomly on market estates and moved to other cities to trade, and the game became so laggy that it could no longer do fast-time. I realized that doing pathfinding for each individual unit was the problem, so the only method of fixing this I found was to make a road system.

This is not fully functional yet, and is a nightmare to program, but I have gotten somewhere.

As you can see, it sorta works, with some diplomat units travelling between capital cities to do some diplomacy. These units aren't fully funcioning however, and the code is extremelly messy and needs to be cleaned up for them, but it's a start, and I'm excited to see where this goes from here.

TINY WINDMILLS

That's it. I love them.

That's for reading all this. I hope to keep you posted for more updates on this project. Meanwhile I'll be streaming some more work on this today: https://www.twitch.tv/oddlyspecificgames

Have a good one!

- OSG