NovaMundi: Weeks 113 and 114

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Week 113

Up to v0.24.2

Localization

With the English and Spanish bundles unified, and a lot of hardcoded English text (including procedural text) bundled, we finally released the Spanish version.

The reorganization will also allow new languages to be added more easily, although there is a lot of clean-up to be done since we are carrying a lot of old text from the previous scenarios and gameplay modes.

Exploration

Some minor tweaks were done, like changing fog color to a blueish hue which overall reduced the scene temperature making it feel a bit more highland-ish. We still need to tackle this head-on with less grassy lands, more rocks, and more accurate vegetation (we are on it).

The Low-Quality modes also got some need changes with a more apt texture for the forests and fixes for the water to look ok. More optimizations are still needed to make the game playable with lower specs.

Content

We spread the “informational” townspeople through many towns instead of having them all live in Ramiriquí, which was overwhelming to some players. We are still pending marking them as “informational” for easier navigation (especially when you arrive at a new town).

User Interface

The conversation window was updated with a bigger portrait and a darker background for better contrast. Also added a notification for when party members are healing (so you know the bandages are actually doing something), and shortened the onboarding removing unnecessary, redundant, shallow, cursory parts.

We also updated the “Barter” UI to the new design.

Combat

We still need to put more love on this but at least for now we tweaked some values in the materials and adjusted the lighting of the combat scene so it looks a bit better now in conjunction with the bigger camera angle.

Week 114

Ending May 2, with 0.25.0 in the works

Combat

Added a much-needed formation in “rows”, with the stronger defense units at the front, and the ranged and non-combat units at the back, and also increased the space between the parties to allow some initial flanking strategy.

Also updated the Guecha Warrior model to get up to date with the latest units visuals, it features both an exploration (covered for the cold) and a combat mode.

Exploration

The addition of a new biome, Wetlands (Humedales de la sabana) required a big chunk of changes in the procedural generator for better handling of the biomes which also affected the placement of forests in blobs.

A biome Indicator was also added, however, it hadn’t been integrated yet, since we needed still to relayout the UI with the new upcoming horizontal compass bar. (coming out in 0.25.0)

User Interface

Display party members when trading to avoid confusion (I saw in some gameplays, and the onboarding kind of implied, that you started with an empty party and had to hire it from scratch, but that’s not really the case.

Also improved the loading screen with localized text and to make it more easily extensible with new unit types.