November 2, 2018 – Patch EA 0.5.8

New features

  • We implemented a new detection system for all kinds of surveillance actions (eg. guarding). This updated system is used by city guards and lansquenets. The radius shown around a detecting character now reflects the actual area in which the character may perceive illegal or aggressive behavior. Circles are shown when the scanning character is selected or by pressing space on your keyboard. Inside the guard’s awareness circle, illegal or aggressive behavior will be detected and, depending on the laws in the city, acted upon.
    After all potential “perpetrators” are identified a dice roll is executed against every action. Based on the outcome the scanning character is intervening or not. With that new system the overall guard gameplay should make way more fun.
  • With 0.5.8 you will now also see lots of secondary attributes in the character inspection window. These are mostly attributes that are used to influence the outcome of actions. We also added tooltips to all attributes so you can get more information on what they actually do. We intend to add more attributes in the future and also extend the tooltip information. Nevertheless we think this should already help you a bit.
  • We also added tooltips to status effects. So from now on when you move your mouse cursor over the status effect of a burning house or a poisoned character, you should get more useful information.
  • We added a new category to the action bar of characters: Usable items. In there you will find the actions unlocked by items in your inventory, like throwing a bomb or using potions. We will add more item actions in upcoming patches.
  • We further changed the way building placement works. In this iteration we removed the snapping to nearby buildings. This way the placement feels less jumpy and you should have an easier time finding the right spot.
  • We started reworking some of the usable items and actions and added cooldowns to some of them.
  • We further iterated how item prices are calculated. Before EA 0.5.8, only the original price of ingredients was taken into consideration. With the new version the current prices of the ingredients are taken into account. This results in stronger varying prices based on the market situation.
  • With the new version important texts (eg. city names, character names, dynasty names, etc.) are highlighted with different colors or font formats, so it’s easier to identify them in bigger text blocks.

 

New features (under the hood)

  • We continued working on fixing the way actions and interruption of actions is working. There is still a way to go but in this version action should already be more robust particularly in combination with combat.
  • Our new “actor value system” and “modifier effects” can now also be used by items and skills.
  • Right now we are also refactoring a lot of files so we can reduce compilation times. The goal is to further increase our productivity.

Please note: The game does not display/load save games from outdated patch versions as they have become incompatible due to the rework of the employee automation system and other core systems.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug which placed building on the edge of the map if the game was saved and loaded while the building was under construction.
  • Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to remain in front in a house that they just burned down.
  • The game doesn’t react on mouse wheel input anymore if you move your mouse cursor out of the game window.
  • Fixed bug that allowed the AI to produce items which weren’t unlocked yet.
  • Fixed a bug that turned characters invisible when their houses had been burned down.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the leader to get stuck in the market.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed players and AI to upgrade level 1 businesses which are only allowed to be upgraded and placed within the city.
  • Fixed a bug that caused buildings to not show the fire particles anymore after too many buildings were already on fire.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the robber camp to have a missing texture after the building had been conquered.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the character model to not be updated in the inspection window after a new cloth item had been equipped.
  • Fixed a character model with a wrong texture.
  • Fixed seasonal impact on resources. The production times of resources that grow are now dependent on the current month of the year.
  • Fixed that the windmill is also showing fire particles when the building is on fire.
  • Fixed multiple crashes that were caused when the AI wanted to execute pickpocketing actions without finding suitable targets.
  • Fixed a bug where guard detection circles did not disappear after a guard died.
  • Fixed that not all areas of the brushwood were clickable.

 

Performance

  • We improved the way the game checks if an inventory has available space. The function used to do that required a significant portion of CPU time. The function has been reworked which should give you another slight increase of performance.

 

Known issues

  • Currently guards are really persistent and will follow your characters until they catch them. They will even wait in front of the buildings. So basically as soon as they discovered illegal behavior they will get you. We will of course change that in the future.

 

Important information

If you are experiencing difficulties with loading and saving the game, you may attempt to delete all files from the folder “Games” in the installation directory of The Guild 3.
It is quite possible that some problems that you have in your game are caused by missing or corrupted files. In this case, the following can help:

  • STEAM -> right-click on “The Guild 3” in your Steam library, then Properties – LOCAL FILES – VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES…
  • GOG -> right-click on “The Guild 3” in your library, then Properties – “More” – Manage Installation – VERIFY/REPAIR

 

What we are planning for the next patch

  • We want to make gameplay more transparent, so we are adding a new system to give you feedback directly in the game world.
  • We will further work on the production system, so gathering businesses start working properly as well.
  • We will also continue working on how guards are spawned and respawned so the overall legal/illegal gameplay gets a nicer touch.
  • As mentioned in the last patch we will also change the way heirs are appointed in your family. This is a first step for bigger changes coming related to the player’s family.
  • Of course we will continue working on the action system to make it less error prone. As a result we hope that we will have less and less issues with stuck characters in the future.

 

A short outlook…

We will put the emphasis on how to manage your family and what to do with the different family members. The character development part is still a bit thin in the game and it’s something that we want to change.

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We value your feedback!

If you have the time, we would appreciate it if you could fill out a short survey regarding the changes we made in patch EA 0.5.8: https://goo.gl/forms/UL80W7a3HMHcR7E42
Please note: we do not collect any personal information other than your feedback – you will remain completely anonymous. This survey end the day we release the patch EA 0.5.9.