UPDATE: Version 0.9!
Choo choo! Next stop: hypeville.
Today, we’re happy to release 0.9 which is a huge milestone for us, not only because of the amount of features we’re introducing, but because the next step is – make sure you’re sitting down – the 1.0 release of Castle Story! Which is, sort of, like, a big deal for us, to say the least.
Since 0.8, we’ve been to Steam Dev Days, GDC, PAX East and EGX Rezzed to demo and playtest the game to as many people as possible! We met tons of incredible people, both developers and players alike with whom we discussed many things; the ups and downs of game development, various ideas and improvements for Castle Story and we got to visit some of the best spots in whatever town we were in to let off some steam from our busy game development schedules. (P.S: Boston has the best Clam Chowder, hands down!)
After watching many fans playing our early 0.9 demo at PAX East and EGX Rezzed, we’ve been heavily rebalancing and ironing the kinks to get it in a releasable state.
It’s with tremendous excitement (we dare say Kaplan-esque) that we drop the biggest update in Castle Story’s history and hope it was worth the wait!
Highlights
Rope Bridges
Your Bricktrons can now build rope bridges to close the gap between two ledges and they only need access to one side to construct the bridge, meaning that new frontiers have never been easier to reach. No longer will you need architecturally dubious diagonal columns of stairs to reach new islands!
Wards are new dynamic structures that Bricktrons can build out of iron ingots and Brimstone. There are different types of Wards and each of them serves a different purpose.
Pylons will allow you to channel energy from your crystal or captured shards to out-of-range wards in order to power them up. Some wards need energy from the crystal to function at all, while others will function better when energized.
Sentinels are powerful wards that will act as a sentries when powered up, helping you guard corners of your castle if your archers are busy somewhere else. After spotting an enemy, sentinels will charge up and fire seeking projectiles. Sentinels can overheat and will need to cooldown if they fire for too long, however.
The Healing Ward will cast a regenerating aura around it. Friendly units within will quickly regenerate health. Healing wards are expensive and need energy to function!
Capture Wards allow you to capture crystals to convert them to your faction when placed nearby.
Capture wards will generate wisps over time giving you precious wisps to summon new bricktrons.
Capture wards will generate wisps over time giving you precious wisps to summon new bricktrons.
Lanterns cast light passively and dissipate the fog of war nearby. They don’t need to be powered up, but if they are, they’ll shine considerably brighter and their fog dissipating ability will be enhanced.
Free Agents: Automated Workers
This is the “pièce de résistance” of this update. One of the biggest change to the artificial intelligence we’ve ever done in Castle Story and it will make the game considerably easier to play, drastically reducing the amount of micromanagement required to play.
The gist of it is that workers now automatically assign themselves to tasks; you no longer need to manually select Bricktrons and assign them to a task, then manually move them out into another task once that one is complete. The workers will intelligently switch between tasks depending on which priorities you’ve set. Once they’re no longer needed in a task, they will leave and work on the next one in the list of priorities. This means you can focus on building awesome structures and managing your armies rather than continuously bouncing between micromanaging workers, designing structures and micro managing soldiers.
The best example to this is placing a harvest task over some trees, placing some stockpiles blueprints, placing a quarry and placing some bricks blueprints. Workers will automatically assign themselves to the harvest task and chop down some trees. Some of them will split off the harvest task and build the stockpiles. As soon as a few stockpiles are built, some will split off and begin working on the quarry and finally, once the stone turns into bricks, workers will assign themselves to build the bricks. All you had to do was place the tasks and confirm they’re ready. Magic!
The gist of it is that workers now automatically assign themselves to tasks; you no longer need to manually select Bricktrons and assign them to a task, then manually move them out into another task once that one is complete. The workers will intelligently switch between tasks depending on which priorities you’ve set. Once they’re no longer needed in a task, they will leave and work on the next one in the list of priorities. This means you can focus on building awesome structures and managing your armies rather than continuously bouncing between micromanaging workers, designing structures and micro managing soldiers.
The best example to this is placing a harvest task over some trees, placing some stockpiles blueprints, placing a quarry and placing some bricks blueprints. Workers will automatically assign themselves to the harvest task and chop down some trees. Some of them will split off the harvest task and build the stockpiles. As soon as a few stockpiles are built, some will split off and begin working on the quarry and finally, once the stone turns into bricks, workers will assign themselves to build the bricks. All you had to do was place the tasks and confirm they’re ready. Magic!
Crafting System & New Resources
New resource types are making their appearance in the 0.9 update; iron ingots & fiber. Fiber is obtained by harvesting plants while iron ingots can be smelted from iron ore in a furnace. The furnace is one of the new dynamic structures introduced by the crafting system. Hold right-click on it, queue some iron ingots and a Bricktron will haul brimstone and iron into it, refining them into iron ingots.
Iron ingots, fiber and planks can be used to craft Knight kits and Archer kits by queuing them on a workbench, which is the second new structure in the crafting system.
These kits can be stored in the third structure added with this update; the weaponstand. Up to four kits can fit on each weapon stand, allowing you to equip workers to turn them into military units and vice-versa.
Bricktrons can now dynamically switch classes and turn into workers, knights or archers at the whim of your command.
Bricktrons can now dynamically switch classes and turn into workers, knights or archers at the whim of your command.
Vertical Beams
We have horizontal beams, so why not vertical ones too? These work similarly to logs and X Plug Bricks; horizontal beams can be attached to them from any angle. They cost only planks so they’re bound to make your wooden carpentry easier. :)
New Sidebar
With 0.9, we’re introducing a brand new sidebar that will make it easier for players to find the task and blueprint they’re looking for. Additionally, it introduces harvest tasks for specific resources; harvest trees, harvest fiber, harvest iron, harvest brimstone and harvest boulders. The good ole’ classic “harvest everything” task is still available and will collect all resources in its radius.
New Launcher
Out with the old, in with the new! We’re introducing a snazzy new launcher to replace the dreadful default Unity Launcher. It will serve as a portal to the various community hubs of Castle Story. A navigation menu leading to the website, forums, Discord and support site will help increase the amount of traffic to these platforms, benefiting the community as a whole with the arrival of new players. Additionally, we’ll be displaying news concerning updates and other Sauropod Studio related articles.
NOTEWORTHY FEATURES
Defensive Stance
Knights can now toggle in and out of a defensive stance (by pressing H). In defensive stance, they move slower, but now absorb ranged attack damage to their stamina. This is super useful to approach an enemy’s walls in multiplayer since projectiles, such as an archer’s arrows, will have to drain the Knight’s stamina before it starts chipping health away. Additionally, knights in defensive stance will not move from their position when enemies are in sight, essentially replacing the old “defend position” mode entirely.
Multiplayer: Colored Scarves!
In multiplayer, Bricktrons now wear adorable little scarves that represent the color of their factions. Very practical to avoid catapulting your ally’s Bricktrons off the island, you dirty traitor.
Performance improvements
We’ve undertaken major work in the performance department – freezes should happen much less frequently now and the game’s performance as a whole is considerably better.
Audio improvements
We’ve worked with the beautiful folks at Vibe Avenue to implement tons of new audio elements to Castle Story. You’ll hear brand new cues, whether it’s your Bricktrons grunting during hard work, the satisfying bloop bloop of the pie menu or the deep rumble of a Biftron coming to smack the ever loving bricks out of your castle.
Camera improvements
We’ve made changes to the camera that will reduce instances of cameras getting jammed high up in the air or under the ground. We’ve also added damping to zoom and elevation limits to make it feel a lot more natural. Situations where you’re stuck with your camera in some weird position with your Bricktrons nowhere to be seen is now a lot less likely.
New Textures
Several dynamic objects have been retextured and re-shaded. Notably, you’ll notice explosive barrels and planks look snazzier now!
New Maps
We’ve added several new official maps for you to explore. Two invasion maps, one sandbox and one conquest map, as well as a total revamp of Stepping Stones, which is now almost two times bigger
Tasks & Bricktrons Feedback
Bricktrons are a little more talkative now, giving you better insight on why they might be having trouble completing an action. Additionally, we added bubbles on top of tasks alerting you when there’s an issue stopping its progression, such as a lack of resource or storage.
Corruptrons Animations
We added new animations for the Corruptrons spawning. Instead of popping out of nowhere, they’ll now dig themselves out of the ground.
FIXES & CHANGES
- Updated to the new scoreboard on all gamemodes.
- Fixed UI issues in multiplayer lobby.
- Threaded the main menu, making maps and saves list load without hiccups.
- Fixed an issue where bricktrons would slide to the middle of a voxel after arriving to their destination.
- Fixed an issue where the music would randomly stop playing.
- Fixed an exploit where Bricktrons could pick up a barrel that was about to detonate and cancel the detonation. No more spitting on your yellow oven mitt and putting the wick out. It’s unhygienic.
- Fixed an issue where Corruptrons would jump inside the terrain.
- Fixed an issue where the timer would start before you clicked “I’m ready” in Invasion.
- Fixed an issue where rubble on bricks would stay there forever. It’ll now disappear after a little while.
- Fixed an AI issue where Bricktrons would only carry resources for one structure at a time. Now they’ll carry several resources for several structures at once, making building much quicker.
- Fixed the crystal capture progression on Conquest not updating properly in the scoreboard.
- Fixed an issue where destroying a Bear Trap’s supporting voxel caused the Bear Trap to levitate instead of being destroyed.
- If you’re still reading this deep down the changelogs, you’re awesome, thanks for appreciating our hard work you glorious thing :).
- Fixed an issue where clients wouldn’t see the progression til the next Wisp on the scoreboard.
- Fixed lazer-beam appearing between corpses’ wisps and the bottom of the map. We’ll have to find another way to rave and party hard, now.
- Fixed an fog of war being wonky in sandbox.
- Fixed allies not sharing the same fog of war in multiplayer.
- Fixed an issue where workers would fight while carrying bricks, logs or planks.
- Fixed a locomotion issue where Bricktrons would turn around after arriving to their destination.
- Fixed an issue where players couldn’t publish new maps on the workshop.
- Fixed an issue where archers would stop shooting if the nearest target was not shootable.
- Fixed Lights Out mode having no stars on Linux.
- Fixed a naming discrepancies between the pie menu and sidebar.
- Fixed the warriors being able to attack through doors.
- Fixed an issue stopping players from grabbing handles through stockpiles’ blueprints.
- Fixed an issue where clients in multiplayer couldn’t see resources in storage management.
- Fixed a save/load issue with Lights Out multiplayer.
- Fixed an exploit allowing knights to restore their health while they only lost stamina.
- Fixed an issue where arrows would get stuck in visible barrel blueprints.
- Fixed an issue where suicidal catapults would sometimes try to blow themselves up.
- Fixed the checkboxes in general options not working.
- Fixed the scoreboard in shared control only showing the first player’s name. We love you too, Player 2.
- Made sure there’s always at least one Corruptron defending corrupted crystals.
micdrop.
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