Hello everyone,

I’ve just updated RPG Tycoon to Version 1.3, which brings a few UI Changes, optimisations and bug fixes as well as a couple of new features to the game.

One of the most significant features is the new overhauled Build Menu UI which has now been split into two separate panels.  The previous layout was trying to cram a lot of information into a small space without clearly conveying that information. Now, as you scroll through buildings and decorations, each items information is neatly presented in the adjacent panel. As a bonus, this also allows you to easily compare two items by selecting one and hovering over any other item you wish to compare it with. You can also sort up and down each item more efficiently too by toggling the sorting options. Huzzah!

The second main feature is the introduction of Survival Mode. In survival mode, you must remain the leading Kingdom each year in order to continue. If you end the year and another Kingdom has more points than you, it’s game over. Challenging you to survive at the top, for as long as possible. It’s intentionally difficult and I’d be interested to see the longest duration many of you will be able to survive for. To enable survival mode, simply enable it during the Kingdom Set-Up screen.

Finally, I’d been meaning to implement this decorative feature earlier in development, however for one reason or another never managed to get around to it. So upon request from a few players I’ve finally implemented a new Floor Tile system. This system allows you to place different tiles on top of the terrain, or underneath buildings to add a more decorative element to the Kingdom.

 

 

Floor Tiles can be found in the new Roads section of the build menu, however as far as gameplay is concerned, floor tiles work differently to roads in that they have no effect to walking speed and can be built on. They act simply as a terrain changer. Once placed, they cannot be deleted, but must be replaced by another floor tile (all of the base terrain types are included as floor tiles). In the image above is a few example of the new floor tiles and a few objects placed on them. For modding, simply use the new “TYPE_FLOOR” definition in a buildings “Type” XML tag to import the tile properly additionally “CATEGORY_ROAD” has been added to the “Category” tag to separate buildings from Roads and Tiles.

The update also brings a number of balance and optimisation improvements. Such as improved AI to make them more active and balance score more appropriately to the game difficulty, as well as performance optimisations to characters path-finding and some adjustments to the data handling to help avoid any bleed between old and new save-games.

For a quick look at what’s new, as always, I’ve put together a developer walk-through of some the new features. For a full list of improvements and fixes check the patch notes below.

 

 

This update changes the way some parts of the data is handled, so although old saves should be fine it’s possible it may have an effect on your savegame. Starting a new savegame is always recommended with each update.

Patch Notes

 

• New Build Menu UI
• Improved Sorting Options for Buildings
• Added new building type “TYPE_FLOOR” and category “CATEGORY_ROAD” to buildings.xml
• Added new strings to strings.xml
• Added new Survival Mode option
• Added Grass Floor Tile
• Added Sand Floor Tile
• Added Snow Floor Tile
• Added Mud Floor Tile
• Added Clay Floor Tile
• Added Forest Floor Tile
• Added Steel Floor Tile
• Added Swamp Floor Tile
• Added Stones Floor Tile
• Added Pebbles Floor Tile
• Added Slates Floor Tile
• Added Red Floor Tile
• Added Yellowstone Floor Tile
• Added Blue Floor Tile
• Added Black floor Tile
• Added White Floor Tile
• Adjusted AI to auto-generate after 6 months if the player doesn’t start a quick quest by this point.
• Building Viewer in the Kingdom Overview no longer shows decorations or roads, only facilities/stores.
• Boosted maximum amount of gold available to earn from completed Quests, allowing earlier quests in the game to be more profitable.
• Adjusted AI score to better reflect performance based on game difficulty.
• Improved Building Management system
• Improved AI Handling of Buildings
• Improved AI Handling of Heroes
• Optimised and removed null Quest UI instances from memory.
• Improved XML Data Loader
• Adjusted Adventurer Pathfinding performance to only look for a new route if the next tile is blocked as opposed to after every movement.
• Fixed a bug where the game wouldn’t detect a House as occupied after moving it and would show the Vacant House icon.
• Fixed a bug from v1.2 where time wouldn’t reset properly once starting a new game after loading a previous savegame.
• Fixed a bug where Kingdom Expansion buttons would be hidden after loading a savegame.
• Fixed a bug where a Hero’s hire price would not adjust based on difficulty.
• Fixed Sword in the Rock to now display an icon properly in the build menu.
• Fixed an issue in the Hero Menu Viewer where it could not be exited or returned due to the Name Text being on top of them.
• Fixed a prompt window bug causing the continue button to quit to the main menu when starting or loading a new game, after completing or receiving Game Over.
• Fixed a bug with the Kingdom Renaming option in the lower third where it would not allow you to rename it again after declining the first instance.
• Fixed a bug where the pause screen overlay would show during build mode if enabled.
• Fixed a bug with Kingdom AI Happiness not returning a number if there were no heroes hired by them.
• Fixed a bug in the save manager where loading a new save in the same game instance would save over the previous game instead of asking for a new save name or confirming to overwrite.
• Fixed a bug with the Epic Quest threshold to scale in the correct direction based on difficulty.

As always thanks to all of you for purchasing and supporting the game, it still means so much to me.

All the best,

Matt