Firstly, Happy New Year to you! I hope everyone has had a great Christmas/Holiday period. While family has been gathering, I’ve been sneaking off to finalise the Alpha 12 build of RPG Tycoon which is now available across all platforms.

Update Video

This update mainly focuses on improvements and balance, but there’s lots of small tweaks that have been made to improve the overall quality of gameplay and tighten up the mechanics a bit. Upon starting a new game most players will notice that the progression system has changed drastically to focus much more heavily on the settlements you’re protecting (which just seemed fitting considering the context of the game). Players will now level their kingdom up by keeping the settlements happy and completing Quick Quests or protecting them now achieves this. So instead of matching up Quest Types with Settlements, a Quick Quest will now play out across ALL of your Kingdom’s settlements and adjust their happiness accordingly, with some quests being more preferred than others. Playtesting has proven this to be a much more rewarding system as gathering more settlements means that you’ll progress your Kingdom level faster, but it’s then more work to keep all of them happy at the same time. It’s added a lot more depth and challenge to the gameplay, which I’m really happy with. I hope you will be too.

I’ve also included a number of updates to the Menu’s to make them a little nicer to read. The Settlement screens now have some flavour text for the players that enjoy that kind of thing and equally displays all the useful information needed. The Hero Menu has also had a much needed overhaul, making it a lot easier to read and manage your Heroes.

Finally, some long awaited requested adjustments have made it into the game. Including Decorative Water Tiles that add a splice of contrast to the Kingdom AND FINALLY a Hero Recovery button that forces Heroes to attend a recovery building that’s available, so no more waiting for them to automatically recover! A full list of patch notes is available below.

 

 

Also, the game is still on sale and is currently 20% off, which is going to be the cheapest you’ll be able to purchase the game for, for the foreseeable future as the price of the game will be increased again upon full release. So with this update and version 1.0 just around the corner, now’s the perfect time to pick up RPG Tycoon if you’re looking for it cheap! (Or you can always gift it to a friend if you want to get me AND a friend a late christmas present.) 😉

 

 

Patch Notes:

New Features

• Overhauled Followers/Progression system to rely upon Settlement Happiness.
• Updated Settlement View Screen to include more information.
• Updated Bounties to fit the new progression system.
• Decorative Water Tiles Added.
• Waterway Road Type Added.
• AI now completes research.
• Added support for viewing/updating published mods in the Mod manager.
• Added multiple new Settlements.
• Changed Clinic sprite and building size.
• Added Description tag to Settlement Data for optional flavour text.
• Recovery limit can now be set in the options menu.
• Reworked Hero Menu Screen.
• Reworked Individual Hero Screens.
• Finally Added “Force Recovery” buttons for Hero Needs.
• Added Trading Marketplace Special Building.
• Hero Needs now function fully.
• Hero Pay Happiness now more demanding.
• Children Quest Type Added.
• Trading Quest Type Added.
• Number of supplies spawned at start now affected by Game Difficulty.
• Multiple New Research options now available.
• Over 10 New Epic Quests added.
• 3 New Adventurer Variants added.
• Stationary Supply Type added.
• Traps Supply Type added.
• Hero Max Health & Mana now increase upon levelling up.
• Over 20 new sounds added/changed.
• “Millionaire” Achievement Added.
• “Better than all the Rest” Achievement Added.
• “Timesink” Achievement Added.
• Updated Prompts.
• Updated to the most recent Steam SDK and wrapper API.
• Removed Financial Bailout System and replaced with a more traditional Tycoon “Grace Period” for negative balance situations.

Balance / Optimisation

• Locked Kingdom Expansion to Level 2 and above.
• Increased Competency of Competing Kingdom AI.
• Rebalanced Quest Performance Algorithm to be more dependant on Hero Stats / Approach and less random.
• Removed Follower Objective.
• Rebalanced Epicness Level Experience.
• Rebalanced Kingdom Level Requirements.
• Increased Starting Inventory to 30 slots.
• Increased Efficiency of Training Buildings.
• Fixed Pay Happiness Calculations.
• Updated Console Handling.
• Adjusted Supply Combo to be more Logical to Quest Types & reduced randomness.
• Updated Quest Progress Tooltip.
• Reduced Followers Gained from Epic Quests.
• Increased Gold gained from Quests.
• Various other balance adjustments

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Bug where AI will start a quest without a Hero and fail to function.
• Fixed a Bug where settlements would remove more upgrades than it actually had.
• Fixed a Bug where a settlements would incorrectly assign themselves to an AI upon starting a new game.
• Fixed Effects Volume Slider.
• Fixed Ambience Volume Slider.
• Fixed Bug with a Negative total score showing in Sandbox mode.
• Fixed null pointer error assigning Tutors in the school menu.
• Fixed null pointer error when looking for Subscribed Workshop files on Startup.
• Fixed null pointer error when attempting to remove a prop from an Adventurer.
• Fixed null pointer error when requesting stock price of a store.
• Buildings can no longer be deleted with a Hero still stationed in them.
• Fixed Level 5 objective to display correctly.
• Kingdoms will no longer claim special Heroes.
• Fixed issue with Adventurers not visiting a Bank.
• Fixed various tracking issues for Achievements
• Mod Uploader now ignores DS_Store file extension and allows folder to be uploaded.
• Fixed Typos.
• Fixed Entertainment & recovery.
• Fixed bug allowing settlement to defect at high threat level with a Hero garrisoned.
• Rotated competition Plaza now positions tiles correctly.
• Fixed bug where attempting to Fire a Hero would do nothing.
• Various other Bug Fixes

I’m taking a few days off now, before work starts to focus on v1.0. I’m looking to seriously patch up any last frustrating bugs, clean-up UI and make some QoL improvements to the gameplay. I’ll be continuing with balance and content additions with a few more quests, heroes and adventurers to boot. We’ll have more information in the New Year regarding news/updates on the launch window.

Also, here’s a GIF preview of something I’ve been working on ready for launch…

See you in the New Year with more news,

All the best,

Matt