DevLog 3 [10/14/2024]

Gold Standard, Research Overhaul, Final Steps to 0.7

Project Towny 0.7 is entering its final stages of development. No release dates or anything because we don't want to rush the launch like we did for 0.6 (we all saw how that went). But I can confirm we are close. And since I've mainly been spending my time on development, I outsourced this Devlog to Sona, so without further ado:

Woe, Sona be upon ye

All that glitters...

We've teased it in the discord before, but it's official: We're adopting the gold standard for the currency system. No more are you able to submit miscellaneous items of dubious quality to a box made of wood and wool, much as you may be shocked to learn. No, money is gold, and gold is money. Rather literally, in fact, as the only way to acquire money will be to mine gold and exchange it with an NPC at spawn.

You can establish your town anywhere you want, rest assured. Even so, a base 10k blocks away isn't great for Player Interaction (killing each other with sticks) so this method is used to reign in the range you go to. Of course, there will be a global market that can be traded on regardless of distance, so I'm sure that towns nearer to spawn will be more than happy to exchange gold for cash for you, for a small fee, of course.

Money Money Money

Unlike previous versions, it's not the be-all-know-all of research. You will need money for nearly every technology past the initial stages because the scientists keep whining about requiring food and whatnot, but you'll also need to give them, y'know, the actual stuff they can do science with.

An amount of money is also necessary to found a town, and research is tied to towns, so you'll need to do that before anything else. Rest assured: Each player will begin with a small balance, roughly a fifth of the amount required. If a team forms with 5 players, they can immediately start. If they're smaller than that, no worries, you'll just have to dig for gold for a bit.

Player Interaction (killing each other with sticks)

Now having gold is fun and all, but you know what's more fun? Having someone else's gold! It can be stressful killing everyone you see without knowing how much gold they have, so we've graciously decided to fix that. Above every player's head is a counter for how much gold they're currently holding, which also happens to be how much will fly out of them like a pinata when you kill them with sticks. This value takes into account all forms, including ingots, blocks, nuggets, ores, and anything else that you can easily convert to ingot form.

Now you may be thinking "Doesn't that make the process of shuttling gold to spawn in order to get the money required for nearly all technologies highly dangerous?" And to that I say: Yes. It does. Do something about it. Live close to spawn crammed between everyone else who chose to do the same. Build transportation networks for quicker travel to minimize risk. Give your crayon-eating teammate gobs of heavy weaponry and point them in the direction of where you saw someone stop crouching for a moment.

Ok, that's all for Sona, I'm back. Let's talk about the research overhaul, the whole point of the update, because it has now been completed.

Research Overhaul

Research now falls into 3 tiers of technologies (or ages, or eras, or however else you wanna organize them). Research is obtained with both money and research points. Money is outlined above but research points are a new mechanic similar in nature to Factorio's Science Packs, albeit with some differences. There are 16 different research points each with their own ways to generate them and each unlocked with different techs.

Tier 1 research is available from the start after founding a town, and is researched in the "Primitive Research Bench" multiblock.

Tier 2 research is available upon researching Electricity, and is researched in the "Research Workshop" multiblock.

Tier 3 research is available upon researching Scientific Theory, and is researched in the "Research Laboratory" multiblock.

Research points are generated in the research multiblock associated with that tier. Research points have multiple recipes to craft them, with increasing complexity but increased efficiency with the later recipes, most of which are available in either later researches, or by progressing in the mod associated with the tech.

Final Steps

There's a whole lot more to explore with the research overhaul, but I want to leave that up to the playtest! And speaking of playtest, 0.7 is right around the corner! In fact right now we're just putting on the finishing touches. The modpack will be updated on Curseforge upon the completion of 0.7, which the official server going online about a week later to give time to set up server side things, and fully pregenerate the world (without totally breaking it this time).

Keep an eye on the discord for updates and sneak peaks as we get even closer to the modpack release!