Welcome to Folk Tale Dev Blog 26. Patch 0.2.8 is out and once again we've got a wealth of improvements to share starting with work-in-progress character and global inventory. Besides equipping villagers with armor and tools, weapons can be swapped out and shown on characters. For this patch only we've included one of every item into the global inventory, which can be accessed by clicking on the inventory bag on the top bar. To open a character's inventory, first select an individual which will cause the portrait circle to appear in the bottom left of the screen. Next, click the inventory bag on the portrait wheel. You can now drag and drop items onto your character.
We've still got much work to do on inventory, including proper tooltips, right click to auto-equip, and shift+left click to split stacks, which we'll be working on for the next patch. Inventory is a stepping stone to looting both corpses and chests, so you can expect that soon too.
Two of the economy chains are now complete. The Butchery and Bakery both produce finished goods, and now hungry villagers will buy products ( parting with coin to fill your coffers ) to satiate their hunger. Different foods will fill empty stomachs by differing amounts, and the taste buds of your villagers will evolve as your settlement progresses from Tier 1 through to Tier 3. We've taken the first step by allowing the crop type to be set in the Farmer's Fields.
The worker cap for Tier 1 profession buildings has been increased from 2 to 4, which should make training a small company of City Watch a lot less painful. When enabled, Tier 2 will support 8 characters, and Tier 3 the maximum of 12.
On a final note about economy, we've moved away from the economy simulation first introduced in sandbox and gone back to an actual work performed basis similar to that of the Tutorial. What that means is that there is now a direct correlation between workers dropping off resources and quantities increasing in your inventory. That move opens up a number of options, including the ability to clear areas of land from the map, which we'll be adding in a future patch.
Combat has taken another step forward with the addition of the wave inspector in the Editor. Each wave can comprise of multiple groups, each group being a different monster class. For example, in wave 1 you can spawn a Beastman in Group 1 and a couple of War Pigs in Group 2. In wave 2, you can setup a completely different set of monsters to spawn. Each wave can have a different behaviour, including standing still, wandering within a radius, and seeking out player characters and buildings. You can also choose the wave starting formation, with Group 1 being the captain who's position is denoted by the colour dot in the formation options.
We've migrated the Goblins across into Sandbox and made some improvements, including the addition of the Goblin Warship prop. Goblins can now scale your City Walls, so Engineer's Turrets, Traps and Siege Machines will play an important role in defending your village in later patches. We've also made changes to the Trebuchet including the framework to support different ammo types, with each shot consuming items directly from your global inventory.
Several Editor Kits have received new content, including an expanded Kobold Camp Kit and new Grassland Kit pieces including flaming torches, sconce, braziers, mushrooms, and mine carts. The biggest addition is to the Cemetery Kit which now includes modular snap-together components to create an entire mausoleum complex for your necromancers, skeletons and spiders.
With the kind agreement of community member Matty101, we're including one of his Sandbox maps for you to play around with in Sandbox Player which we've called The Valley. It's completely different to the Human Village map and is well worth playing. It's also pretty stunning, and shows just have great a tile-based terrain system can be made to look.
And finally, if you weren't already aware, we've started the Sunday Dev Hangouts. The live streams on Twitch.tv have been running for several weeks now and provide a great opportunity for us to connect with our community. I always have the latest dev build of Folk Tale on show, and answer questions in chat about game features, what we've been working on, our plans for the future, and how to use the Editor. So if you'd like to hangout with a friendly bunch for a few hours every Sunday, head on over to our Twitch channel and follow us.
