Main focuses

The two main focuses of this update have been:

1. To improve the look and variability of characters going forward.

2. To improve the robustness of production of all items and to make you able to upgrade your characters to build that sweet stuff faster.

Visuals

• In terms of the visuals we've doubled the resolution of all characters to make them sharper and better looking.

• Characters are also able to be generated in any combination which allows for limitless appearances for the characters that you encounter in the world. This will be crucial going forward and a cornerstone to characters feeling more satisfying and believable overall.

• We've also restructured our entire behind the scenes pipeline for making new features and clothing which will make it easier and faster to bring you tons of variations for characters.

Production

You can now improve your characters by tanning new clothing that modify your characters' stats and hence improve the overall efficiency of your fort.

Robustness of your own "player made jobs" have also been improved. Especially when secondary characters are doing stuff that interferes with one of your other character's current job. Instead they can now cancel jobs correctly and no longer mess up if the current job is suddenly impossible to finish. 

Characters can now correctly assess the best way to build different items based on what resources are available to them. Before, they would prefer crafting from scratch over using already available materials, but now they assess the situation and act accordingly.

In terms of performance we've made several improvements as well that make reassessing plans for the characters stay smooth with no hiccups. 

Going forward

We're super excited to show what we're focusing on next. We'll be back soon enough with a new update!

Hope you're as excited as we are for what's to come. Please join our Discord and help the game become even better!

//Jacob & Gustav - Sharcoal Studios

Noteworthy updates

• Better character AI for crafting. More effective, robust when interrupted, cancellable, and performant. Over 10x performant in some cases.
• Refueling plan are much more flexible and more correctly assessed against other options. 
• Characters now replan their actions more often when items in their plan are used by other characters. This ensure their current course of action is always the correct one.
• Moving workstations now don't interfere with other characters plans.
• Moved workstations now don't change how character jobs/actions are performed.
• Can no longer cancel throw- and pickup animations since it made no sense from a visual as well as a gameplay perspective.
• Added Tanning to the game.
• Added Hides into the game.
• Tanning now enables character equipment to be crafted, in turn enabling you to improve your characters.
• Added new modifier types to equipment.
• Added new modifers to equipment.
• Characters now wait some after they've finished your latest command. This makes it easier to issue several orders after one another without your current character starting something else when your thinking of what to do next.
• Enabled support for highlighting selected characters with outlines. Not fully available yet.
• Doubled the resolution of all characters.
• Restructured the pipeline for creating character features and clothing/armor. Makes creating new features and armor easier and faster.
• Now repacks all currently used armors and character features into a single texture to increase performance for less powerful hardware.
• Character customization/generation is now possible with any combination of features and no performance loss.
• Armor/clothing now supports changing your character's apperance when equipped.