Dev update #9: villages & farms, AI improvements and advanced lighting settings

Hey everyone! It's been only one week since our last update, but we're already back with another one, since we just launched our Sunny Side Update patch for the beta testers! This post is an overview of the new features in this patch.

Villages & Farms

We have added the Villages & Farms stretch goal that was unlocked during the campaign. This includes town squares, parks, gardens, smithies, bakeries and much more! Here's a video of us creating a quaint little village in mere seconds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny05Pr3-jAc

Improvements to AI

As you might have noticed in the above video, the AI has been sped up significantly. In smaller and medium sized rooms, the speedup is about 10x! Small rooms generate practically instantly now. And for larger rooms, we have added a progress bar so you can be sure that something is actually happening.

But that's not the only improvement. We also improved the quality of the AI generation on many fronts:

• Windows and lights are now spaced more logically.

• Objects that belong in the center of a room tend to spawn in the center now.

• Decorative objects such as wall shields, benches etc. are now placed much more evenly.

These improvements not only apply to the new room types, but also the old ones!

Advanced lighting settings

We have also added advanced lighting settings, a much requested feature. Aside from the regular presets (morning, noon, evening, night), you can now select the color, height, position and intensity of the sun. Finally you can make a blood moon scene! Or a horror scene bathed in unnatural green light.

Improvements to stairs

The options for stairs were sorely lacking so far in Dungeon Alchemist, so we added a TON of new ones! Each ascending stair now has a descending version, so you can easily make matching floors. Additionally, we also added bannisters to the descending stairs to make them look much better (and much safer). Here's an example:

New categories

People have been complaining about the lack of new objects, which surprised us, since we already have 1400 objects in the app right now, and every patch introduced 100+ new ones! We realized the problem was that people weren't finding the new objects, so we added a category that contains all new objects added in the last patch. Enjoy scrolling through 200+ new village items! :)

What's next?

This concludes our first step on the roadmap towards release, as outlined in the last update. Next up will be the outdoors environment, with forests and rivers. Something to look forward to!

In the meantime, please wishlist us on Steam so we can make a huge splash when the app hits stores in March. And of course you can still join our Discord for more fun & regular updates.

See you in about a month for the next update!