​The 0.3.4 Feature Poll

The feature poll for version 0.3.4 of Worlds History Simulator is on (find it here). Here you'll get to choose what will be the last feature to be added for that particular release. The list consists of features that are not tied to the 0.4 milestone plan, but rather, they are things that can be worked on independently of it. Some of them are features that have been requested by the community. Some others are things that I would like to work on but have low priority. Two of them in particular, Global Stats, and Currents, came back from the previous poll. 

Here's where I explain each one of the options in the poll:

• Bigger Maps
  • This one is "simple", the goal is to allow players to generate bigger worlds. The current hard-coded map size is 400x200 and the goal is to at least double that size. There would be three initial map size options: 400x200, 600x300, and 800x400. Although there's the possibility of adding more map sizes up to 1600x800 (though honestly that would be kind of a stretch).
• Global Stats and Graphs
  • This one is returning from the 0.3.3 poll. The idea would be to add sort of a "ledger" that players can consult during the simulation run to see how different game statistics, like global population, knowledge levels, and others, progress during the game. Those would be presented as either bar or line charts. It might even be possible to show charts for specific polities, but that will depend on how much work it all would entail. 
• Wind and Ocean Currents
  • This is another one returning from the previous poll. This feature would consist of generating realistic wind and ocean currents for each world (currently, only a very basic wind model is used to generate rainfall patterns). These currents would be used not only to generate more realistic rainfall patterns but also to generate more realistic navigational routes over oceans instead of just straight lines crisscrossing from one side of the map to the other.
• Seasonal Effects (Graphics)
  • This feature would be more eye-candy than anything else but the idea would be to add a graphical shader to simulate seasonal changes over a year and some minimal mechanics tying certain group events to seasons (harvests, festivities). This feature would also function as an experiment to figure out how to add more long term events like ice-ages and climate change.

The voting process will be divided into two sets of polls, one of which will be open to the public. The other set will include polls only accessible to active patrons each poll assigned to a different contribution level. Each vote  at the 'hunter-gatherer' level will count as much as 5 votes in the open poll. A vote at the 'shepherd' level will count as 25 regular votes A 'farmer' vote will count as 50 regular votes. And an 'artisan' vote will count as 100 regular votes. In addition to these variations, features that had been present at previous polls with start with the vote counts they have accumulated so far to give them a greater chance of getting chosen eventually. In this case, 'Global Stats' will start with just 7 votes and 'Wind/Ocean Currents' with only 6 votes... Unfortunately there's no way to alter Patreon polls to start with initial counts, but I'll try to have a week-by-week updated graph showing the actual vote counts.

Finally, the poll will remain open all the way during 0.3.4 development up until a few weeks before work on the final feature actually starts. With that say, here's the link to the public version of the poll. Start submitting your votes!

Edit: Just a quick reminder. You don't need to be a subscriber to vote on the open poll. But you need to signup on Patreon.