Hello everyone!
We're happy to relase another update, this one focuses on innovations in city planning & placement tools that are easier to manage and more suitable for expansion, new road components and system changes, as well as a series of improvements and expansions to our existing mechanics.
As with earlier updates, we have added a number of new structures, a new playable map, new environmental components and logistical units.
These are the main highlights:
Road network and new operational principles
New components that will act like roads (Squares)
New variants of the Highway Precursor
Early stage, animals-based freight system (Horse Carts and Pack Horses)
New Map and a series of building and building case changes
New Road Contributions and System Changes
All ‘square’ Props will now act as ‘roads’ in addition to their aesthetic ground function. If you build a square that connects to your main road network at any point, or build a road segment that continues the road network on top of a square, that square will function as a component that meets the road requirements of all structures built on it.
We have added three different scale ‘soil’-based plaza options with a more primitive and unpaved appearance to the Cobblestone and Cement plaza options, which are also accessible much earlier in the game.
GIF: Newly constructed square that shares its connectivity status with each other and neighboring road networks
Once squares are connected to the main road network, they will be able to share this connection effect with neighboring squares or other roads.
With this change, we wanted to support players with an easier alternative, especially in meeting the absolute road connection needs of each structure. We aimed to prevent players who use free-form structure layouts or prefer more frequent and contiguous city compositions from being hindered by road mechanics and to break the feeling of boredom that the road construction mechanics, which can become tedious in cities reaching massive scales, can create.
New Road Contribution Calculation Subsystem
Roads that facilitate access for the workforce in production facilities to the necessary raw materials/products and storage points will now offer road bonuses at different intervals based on the construction materials used and the level of development.
We have added a new road network performance measurement method due to the challenges in measuring which material each road connection is made of from one point to another in terms of performance, as cities can reach massive scales. This system will calculate the percentage of each road type in the city's entire road network and calculate a general ‘road contribution’ accordingly, which will be reflected as a universal value in all structures connected to the road network.
Accordingly, we now have a new UI plugin that allows you to see a general summary of all roads in your city, showing what percentage of each road type your city contains and, based on this, the universal contribution score range. This component can be used universally in the window that opens when any road in the universe is selected.
The new system is based on what percentage of all roads in your city are of which type and operates with an average value multiplier in a variable structure.
The basic working range and values are as follows:
No Road Connection: -30 WorkForce (Same as it is).
1%-100% Dusty Road (If your entire road network consists solely of dusty roads or soil squares, you will receive a +3 workforce contribution for all buildings)
50-100% Cobblestone (If your entire road network consists solely of cobblestone roads, you will receive a +6 workforce contribution applicable to all buildings)
50-100% Paved Road (If your entire road network consists solely of paved roads, you will receive a +10 workforce contribution applicable to all buildings, also provides a +5 Efficiency Bonus to Tier III structures. )
Whichever type of road is most common in your city will provide the overall effect.
We aimed to make the role these fundamental components play in the game flow more meaningful by offering a slightly more realistic contribution to pedestrian transportation based on the level of development.
New Early-stage Lite-Load System and Avenues (Highway Precursors)
While it was quite exciting for us to transition to meeting the transportation needs arising from the powerful production capacities of industrial production facilities by establishing a transportation network consisting of trucks using diesel engine technology developed in the late stages, equipping an existing city with a road network suitable for trucks can be a real problem.
To solve this problem before it arises, we added a new type of primitive roads and intersections that can later be upgraded to ‘highways’.
New Component : Highway Precursors - Unpaved Avenues
These early-stage wide roads, which trucks could also use in the future, were not aligned with New Cycle's goal of building a vast universe, as they were left as partially ‘dead zones’ used only by pedestrians until appropriate improvements were made. For this reason, we are including horse carts and pack horses in our game. Besides, who doesn't love horses? ^^
Listening to community feedback, especially regarding the inconvenience of building new road networks in later stages, we made some changes to our master plan (creating a universe rapidly evolving into a dieselpunk theme). We hope you will enjoy the animal transportation and early-stage load-balance mechanics, which we did not plan to include in the original game content. (We also plan a more detailed infrastructure expansion covering tools for animal husbandry, breeding, management, and assignment, etc., allowing you to create and manage your live animal stock through a special mechanical network without the hassle of micromanagement.)
This new mechanic will serve as a somewhat simpler predecessor to the primary cargo mechanic you will manage with trucks in the late game. Cart Yard structures will provide adjacent production facilities with a certain amount of efficiency and workforce bonuses. This transportation support, provided by two horse-drawn carts, has been added to the system as a feature that facilitates the movement of goods from one location to another using the existing workforce.
In this context, we have added Horse Carts as a new transport unit with 5 different horse types and 8-10 different Cart model types. Currently, the first-person control option is not available, like for trucks and boats, but we plan to add it in the future.
We are also planning a new sub-mechanics pool for managing live animal resources in the universe with the participation of horses. In the future, we have planned a more detailed sub-expansion where we can manage topics such as animal production, production facility efficiency based on animal numbers, etc.
The number of structures that cart yards can serve is naturally limited. Players will be able to choose which neighboring production facility they want to serve.
Early-level wide streets will help you operate your city's basic settlement plan in a more future-ready and easier-to-manage way.
These new road components can be upgraded to ‘Highway’ components that resemble them in form once appropriate upgrades are completed. (All road segments and intersection components built by the player)
The motor vehicle and livestock-based transportation system was linked to ‘regulation’ by being fictionalized in a way that they cannot work together at a certain point depending on the city's level of development, and one new task text was added under this heading.
New Building Variants and Visual Updates to Existing Buildings
We have added new House I variants to the universe, represented by three different models.
Two different 3D cases belonging to the Tall Shack Structure have been added as House I variants.
We have made various changes and improvements to a number of our existing structure models. By refining these models, which were created in the very early production stages of the expanding and evolving New Cycle universe, we have strived to bring them closer to today's standards. In doing so, we have focused on enhancing the visual appeal of early-stage structures and contributing to the overall artistic quality of the universe.
SheepYard I: old->new
Barn I: old->new
Fisher I: old->new
Metalwork I: old->new
In this way, we have strived to enhance the visual appeal of early-stage structures in particular and contribute to the overall artistic quality of the universe. In line with this, we will continue to make improvements gradually and strive to raise our overall appearance bar one step further with each update.
New Playable Map Variant
We have added a new terrestrial map, interpreted to be close to the characteristics of northern latitudes, to the existing options.
This biome example, with a high overall resource volume and abundant, fertile areas suitable for agriculture and animal husbandry, is designed to be relatively easy to moderate difficulty, capable of supporting a high population.
New Feature: New Town Ambient SFX
To better reflect the atmosphere of cities and settlements, we’ve added a set of outdoor ambient sound effects to the game world that operate according to specific rules.
This new sound effect, which operates based on elements such as the city’s population, the physical distribution of the settlement, and the camera’s distance from the ground, aims to organically incorporate general crowd noise and city background noise into the gameplay.
Fixes, Balance, and Changes
The entire Road placement system background has been redesigned and extra control points have been added.
Fixed a bug where some roadside structures in extra large cities would remain suspended when there was no road.
Fixed an issue where icons showing universal effects in the Worker UI panel would accumulate and overflow from the UI panel.
All water surface reflection features have been reset to start disabled by default. This feature can be manually re-enabled in the Settings tab for ‘ultra’ use.
Fixed a collision warning that occurred incorrectly when building a road or structure at the same location after deleting a ‘Fence’ unit.
Fixed an issue where the Tier III Mine structure's casing was not visible in some cases.
Fixed an issue where the detailed components of the Tier I Mine structure's casing were not rendering.
Fixed the incorrect positioning of ‘burning structure 3D assets’ in the universe that could occur during FPS drops.
Fixed components of certain structures that could extend beyond their placement areas at specific angles and act as blocks for building roads or other structures.
The farm structure garden, designed as a walkable free zone, was operating at a 90-degree incorrect position; this has been fixed.
In the universe, especially in snowy weather, the ‘trace’ system produced by objects on the ground could sometimes clear snowy ground in inconsistent areas quite extensively; this has been fixed.
The issue of grass, trees, and rocks remaining on the surface after road construction has been resolved.
The distance setting for ProcessingYard main structure and processing pool sound effects has been corrected.
The distance setting for sheep sounds has been corrected.
The open sea sound effect and blending feature based on camera position have been redesigned.
The issue where the outline effect of the Covered Stack City probe was not visible has been fixed.
Following the introduction of a new load system support that increases production efficiency for Tier I and II structures, a series of updates were made to all production formulas.
Production formulas for Tier III production facilities have been partially improved to maintain balance in the face of changes in their predecessors. (This is not the final version.)
Improvements have been made to the tin ore and tin ingot production formulas.
A slight improvement has been made to the age-related natural death rate, resulting in a rational balance improvement in cumulative death values.
The locations of Crop Rotation and Divided Layer Enhancements have been swapped
The Glass product has been removed from the ‘Builderden’ structure's wish list
The ‘Pottery’ product has been moved under the ‘Vocational Training’ development.
The ‘Sand’ resource has been moved under the ‘Building Static’ development and made available in the early game.
The ‘Glass’ product has been moved under the ‘Mine Surveying’ development and brought forward to an earlier phase.
Fixed the issue where a light cloud appeared at the top of the lightning rod structure when it was disabled.
The lighting issue causing excessive surface glare in the inner courtyard of the Diesel Generator structure has been fixed.
A series of text errors, primarily involving structure names, have been fixed.
Upcoming: New Aesthetic Subsystem Expansion
We planned to include this aesthetic component in this update but were unable to complete it in time, so we will try to release it asap, ideally next weekend.
We are adding a new small subsystem to enable a more organic creation of the early-stage universe view and overall city atmosphere. This new subsystem activates autonomously after the first-level ‘residential’ structures are built. Over time, the structures will make small design touches to their surroundings with a series of different 3D objects, controlling several parameters such as their location, the presence of road-facing facades, and the suitability of neighboring structures' sockets, etc., in order to better simulate the normal flow of life and visually reflect it to the player.
This new system will operate without placing extra load on the game's main flow in terms of performance. It will spawn awnings, ropes or cables connecting buildings, suspended structure floors connecting two suitable buildings, props adjacent to the walls of the living area (crates, barrels, stools, various tools and equipment) adjacent to the walls of the living area, and certain plant types (shrubs, bushes, and ivy) depending on the biome conditions.
Additionally, thanks to our new universal fabric shader, which we released for the first time in the previous major update and which can react to wind and weather conditions, we have the opportunity to diversify our settlement elements.
We have created a series of new forms by placing our ‘tent and canopy’ add-ons, which we believe will significantly contribute to the early-stage settlement appearance, in suitable locations on some primitive structures.
We have also prepared a series of deployable city probes derived from tents and their variants and are preparing to make them available for use as aesthetic elements.
We hope to be back with more good news soon, and we are grateful for your continued support and encouragement!
