After nearly a month of no news, developer Foxy Voxel has finally broken their radio silence with a very welcome update. The small team was apparently surprised by the game’s success, and have been spending most of their time focusing on fixing the initial batch of bugs that cropped up after the game hit Early Access last month. They’ve also decided to begin posting regular updates on the state of the game’s development and what the team is working on.
The update from the developers also included details on the upcoming patch. In addition to regular bug/crash fixes, the two big improvements in the next patch look to be resource pile optimization and improvements to temperature balance. The resource pile issue was causing serious FPS problems in the late-game, and is a much needed fix, while the temperature rebalance should make it easier for players who were struggling to keep their settlers warm.
Players eager to check out the updated build will be able to opt-in to the Experimental Branch starting Monday, July 19th, and test the game’s latest changes before they’re officially released. Foxy Voxel didn’t go into detail on how to opt-in, but presumably you’ll be able to do so using the standard method on your platform of choice (the Experimental Branch will be available for Steam, Epic, and GoG users).
You can read the entire Developer Update below:
Greetings medievalists!
We wanted to check in as we know we’ve been a bit missing in action the last few weeks when it comes to updates – it’s not that we haven’t been around, we definitely have been here.
However, we’ve been working hard on implementing some quality of life features & bug fixes which we wanted to get out ahead of the first update. We wanted to get back into the swing of our dev blog-style updates so sit back and let us update you!
As you are probably aware that we are a small team of seven people and the exposure and success of the game caught us by surprise – that is the reason we decided to focus on the initial bugs before implementing new features.
Many of you have suggested that we do weekly updates, while others were simply satisfied with new screenshots. After listening and taking onboard the feedback, starting from Monday (19th July) we want to begin a regular series of posts, these will update you on what we are working on, including any issues we come across and noticeable bug fixes that are upcoming.
And we have some news to share with you now. Beyond regular bug fixes and crash fixes, here is what we’ve been working on:
Resource pile optimization
Many of you reported an FPS drain mid to late game. It took us some time to investigate this, and believe it or not – upon further inspection, the FPS drain was caused by resource piles. Not “present” piles in the game, but rather, how the game handles piles being spawned, counted, recounted, etc. The bigger the number of resources, the bigger memory leaks you had. The biggest FPS drop would come when trebuchets would hit a structure that had a stockpile on the next floor. Having the piles fall down would result in 1 FPS for some time.
We have refactored the resource system so some FPS issues are solved – this is something that we felt had to be addressed. This update was the last stop before we start adding more systems and features.
Improving temperature balance
This was mentioned by a lot of players. The issue came from balancing and not from a bug. The ground voxels would give off negative heat and cool down a room, but placing floors would isolate that cooling and make it warmer. Good news – the issue has been solved now.
And we’ll announce more things and fixes in a later update, because…
Our next update will be ready for testing on the Experimental branch – Monday, 19th of July on Steam, Epic, and GOGWe have created an opt-in Experimental Branch for Going Medieval, where you can play a build using our latest changes before they’re updated onto the main branch. Expect technical fixes, balancing, and other minor changes and improvements on the Experimental Branch.
The resource pile optimization and temperature balance updates mentioned above will both be available to play in this Experimental Branch too.
We’d also like to invite you to our official Going Medieval Discord server, this is our most active platform and best place to ask questions, chat with mods and us (when we aren’t knee-deep in development).
Thank you for being with us medievalists, and thank you for your patience.
See you on Monday. Should be fun.
Foxy Voxel
Follow us on Twitter: @going_medieval
We are on TikTok, too: @going.medieval
