Beyond Nations 0.6.3

Beyond Nations 0.6.3 (pre-release): fixes from the 0.6.2 playtest.

• Clicks land where you aim. A command bar button that has just appeared or moved waits half a second before it takes a click, so a pawn walking off no longer drops Buy Pickaxe under your cursor. Pawn buttons keep a fixed width on their own row, and Feed Residents keeps its slot.
• Feeding works. Feed Residents gives each resident enough to stop being hungry, sharing scarce food fairly. The hunger banner, the button and the result agree, and say who is hungry here and who is away.
• You are told what happens. A lifted siege is announced, the fall of your nation is no longer hidden by "Autosaved.", and a confirmation you didn't finish says so instead of leaving "click again" on screen.
• The chronicle shows your news by default (your nation, its neighbours and the world's foundings), with a switch to all nations (U). It keeps your own history when other nations' news fills it, and after your nation falls. Conquered nations get a fitting epitaph.

Release-candidate playtest evidence: docs/playtests/0.6.3 (8 sessions). Known open items are in its README, including the Village era's recruiting grind (a design question).

Downloads: Windows x64 (.zip) and Linux x64 (.tar.gz), each with a .sha256 file, are attached when the release workflow finishes.

Beyond Nations 0.6.2

Beyond Nations 0.6.2 (pre-release): fixes from the 0.6.1 playtest.

• Sieges take a minute to capture a settlement, not thirty seconds. While your village is besieged, the Era box says so in red ("Your village: Besieged by Greenshire (2/12)!") instead of a countdown. Tribute, gifts or an alliance lift it.
• Fewer people starve in winter. AI leaders whose nation has no settlement yet stop to forage. Pawns too poor to buy food sell the goods they carry, then buy food with the coins.
• AI founders no longer get stuck while looking for land. They walk to the nearest spot far enough from every settlement, so their nations get founded.
• The settlement screen fits at 960x540. The open Era box scrolls instead of covering the command bar. A busy market lists its merchants on one line. Player Info keeps your nation. The debug "PCIS" line is gone.
• Strata v0.6.0 engine.

Release-candidate playtest evidence: docs/playtests/0.6.2 (4 sessions, no blocker or major findings). Known minor issues are listed in its README.

Downloads: Windows x64 (.zip) and Linux x64 (.tar.gz), each with a .sha256 file, are attached when the release workflow finishes.

Beyond Nations 0.6.1

Beyond Nations 0.6.1 (pre-release): fixes from the 0.6.0 playtest.

• Drastic actions ask twice, and the confirmation now stays open for 8 seconds instead of 4. L (leave or disband), and War and Denounce on the Nations screen, now ask twice. The Nations list keeps its order while open, and declaring war warns when it would break a truce. Pawn buttons sit last on the command bar, so they move nothing else.
• Winter: a warning shows when your nation's members go hungry or starve, and a Feed Residents button feeds them from what you carry. Starving pawns who shelter in a settlement in winter use energy at a quarter of the usual rate.
• Selling explains itself. A refused sale says why (no stall, only your own stall, or no merchant can pay), and Sell Resources is enabled when you carry only food or saplings.
• The crafting screen says the Workshop unlocks in the Village era, even before you have a nation.
• A settlement's right-hand boxes fit at 960x540: they compact and wrap instead of running off the screen.

Release-candidate playtest evidence: docs/playtests/0.6.1 (4 sessions). Known issues found there: AI nation leaders starving in winter, the diplomacy stage's early siege next to its "Sieges can begin" countdown, and the Era box covering the command bar inside a settlement.

Downloads: Windows x64 (.zip) and Linux x64 (.tar.gz), each with a .sha256 file, are attached when the release workflow finishes.

0.6.0

Beyond Nations 0.6.0 (pre-release).

• The command bar keeps its buttons in place and confirms drastic actions; pawns in your own settlement can be talked to, gifted and invited; early hostility is explained and capped; the Nations screen scrolls and offers war and peace on foreign land.
• E acts on whatever you face, not the nearest pawn.
• Pawn energy is capped at a full bar, as the player's is. Winters are harsher for NPC towns as a result (see #353).
• A crash on a merchant standing where it keeps no stall is fixed, and saves affected by it are repaired on load.
• Strata 0.4.0 engine.

Release-candidate playtest evidence: docs/playtests/0.6.0. Known issues found in that run: #345, #350, #353, #354, #358, #368-#375.

Downloads: Windows x64 (.zip) and Linux x64 (.tar.gz), each with a .sha256 file, are attached when the release workflow finishes.

Beyond Nations 0.5.0

A spring that no longer starves, a sheltered first village, a status line that keeps every message, and the first release playtested by ten AI agents.

Play in the browser: https://beyond-nations.play.danielstephenson.dev
Desktop downloads: Windows x64 and Linux x64 builds are attached below.

Gameplay

• Lean worlds recover at spring. Starving pawns forage instead of pacing between their gate and an unaffordable market; in winter, with nothing to forage, they stay home. Hungry pawns prefer food when gathering, and a run of deaths reads as one line ("5 pawns have died."). Second-spring deaths fell from 7–15 to 0–3 per world in measurements, with winter as lean as before (#338).
• The player's first village is sheltered. The early siege grace now covers a nation the player joined as well as one they lead, and when the Town era ends it, no new siege can begin for five minutes. The era box shows an amber "Sieges can begin in m:ss" countdown, on touch too (#339).
• Every message reaches the status line. Messages from the same moment are joined into one line, so "A new era" is no longer replaced by "Objective complete" before it is seen (#342).

Playtesting

• A playtest kit lets AI agents play the real desktop build headlessly: a --playtest-out flag writes the game's state and events, tools/playtest/pt.sh drives isolated sessions, and the results are aggregated into one report (#341, docs/PLAYTESTING.md).
• The first ten-agent playtest ran on this build. Its evidence is in docs/playtests/0.5.0/, and its confirmed major findings are filed as #344–#358. Releases now need their playtest evidence, which the release workflow checks (#343).

Saves from 0.4.1 and earlier load unchanged (save format 5).

Known issues

Found by the playtest and not yet fixed in this release (fixes for several are already in review):

• Pawns in the player's own settlement can't be talked to, gifted or invited (#344).
• The bottom command bar can rearrange under the cursor (#345).
• A new nation can turn hostile and be raided from day 1 with no reason shown (#346).
• The Nations screen lists only the oldest 7–8 nations (#347); "Too close to another settlement" gives no distance or direction (#349).
• Inside a settlement the right-hand HUD column overflows (#350).
• In the first winter, many NPCs can starve with no warning, and the player can't feed them (#353).

Full changelog: 0.4.1...0.5.0

Beyond Nations 0.4.1

A follow-up to 0.4.0 that fixes all five of its known issues and four more bugs, and adds desktop downloads.

Play in the browser: https://beyond-nations.play.danielstephenson.dev
Desktop downloads: Windows x64 and Linux x64 builds are attached below. See docs/RELEASING.md for what each one contains.

Fixes to the known issues from 0.4.0

• "Eat something" no longer means waiting about a minute. A new world starts the player just below the eating threshold, so the first apple is eaten straight away (#333).
• Winter is lean. Large apple hoards spoil, and trees give pawns no fruit in winter. Pawns go into winter with about 10–15 food instead of about 200, and most run out before spring. The player's own pack and stalls are not affected (#335).
• Touch text names touch controls. On phones, every on-screen line that named a key or mouse button now names the touch button instead, from one shared table (#330).
• The claimant event follows the realm's rules. Claims go through succession, laws and war or truce. The player's own rule can no longer be taken by a claimant (#332).
• A waited-out bandit camp can still be cleared. A "Deal with Bandits" button reopens the militia or bribe choice for any camp still standing (#331).

Other fixes

• A non-leader player's heir can no longer be the nation's leader, which used to leave the nation pointing at a deleted pawn (#334).
• Entity and nation ids now compare by value everywhere (#334).
• Law changes that have not yet taken effect lapse when the player stops ruling (#334).
• Player energy is capped at 100. Saves above it load at 100 (#334).

Project

• New release workflow that builds and attaches the desktop downloads for every version tag (#329).
• Removed the Setup Website workflow, which had failed on every run and never published anything (#328).

Saves from 0.4.0 and earlier load unchanged.

Known issues

• Pawn energy, unlike the player's, is not yet capped at 100.
• On some worlds, winter hunger lasts into early spring and causes a run of pawn deaths.
• An AI neighbour can capture the player's first village within a few minutes.
• On Linux distributions older than Ubuntu 22.04, libglfw3 needs to be installed.

The Windows build has been played on an Intel UHD 630 (OpenGL 4.5) with no extra installs.

Full changelog: 0.4.0...0.4.1

Beyond Nations 0.4.0 (A Nation to Run)

The first release since 0.3.0 (January 2024). The game has been rebuilt from Unity onto its own C# simulation core with the Strata engine. It now runs in a browser as well as on the desktop, and it has a full game loop: goals, eras, an ending and saves.

Play in the browser: https://beyond-nations.play.danielstephenson.dev

Highlights

A new foundation

• Unity is gone. The simulation is a standalone C# core with no engine references, drawn by the Strata engine on desktop (OpenGL) and in the browser (WebGL 2, WebAssembly) (#294, #297, #298).
• Simulation time is counted in ticks rather than wall-clock time, so runs are reproducible (#285).
• Phones are supported: touch controls (#325) and GPUs with fewer than 16 texture units (#312).

Something to do

• Objectives: a teaching arc that leads into longer-term ambitions, with a HUD tracker (#302).
• Eras: grow from Camp to Kingdom, with victories, defeat and an end-of-run history screen (#324).
• Chronicle (Y): a dated record of what happens in the world (#303).
• Choice events: droughts, bandits, claimants to the throne and more (#320).
• Ruling: laws, war and peace, and heirs (#322).

A living world

• Settlements visibly grow, with buildings that use stone; rocks regrow (#304, #310).
• Nations have relations, territory, diplomacy and sieges (#306).
• Pawns have relationships, personalities and offspring; leadership passes on when a leader dies (#300, #308, #268, #271).
• Seasons with a lean winter, plus regions with surpluses and shortages (#318).
• Trade caravans and market prices that move with supply (#321).
• Crafting (C): tools that wear out, cooked meat, planks and bricks (#307).
• Hunger, building costs, prices and pacing rebalanced (#301).

Feel and usability

• Two usability passes: a controls screen, high-DPI scaling, an energy bar, failure feedback, nametags and darker nights (#299, #305).
• Sound, visual feedback and tips for the first five minutes (#317).
• Steer by dragging with the right mouse button (#309). Mouse look and input fixes (#290, #291, #296).

Saves and sharing

• Save and load worlds. Saves have integrity checks and an atomic write with a backup, and older save formats still load (#311).
• Share a world by seed or link, and export its history as Markdown or as a USD replay (#323, #284, #293).

Fixes

• The game no longer crashes when the player's settlement is deleted (#288).
• Collecting profit from an empty stall no longer creates a coin (#316).
• Crashes now report the real exception (#289).

Under the hood

• A pacing bot plays each objective in CI and fails the build if one takes longer than its time budget (#319).
• Every host switch and every CI job is documented (#313).

Known issues

• The "Eat something" objective involves about a minute of waiting.
• Pawns stockpile apples, which makes winter mild.
• Some touch-mode text still names keyboard keys.
• The claimant event bypasses the realm's laws.
• A bandit camp that was waited out cannot be cleared.

Full changelog: 0.3.0...0.4.0

0.3.0

What's Changed

• Release/v0.2 by @dmccoystephenson in #171
• Merge pull request #171 from Preponderous-Software/release/v0.2 by @dmccoystephenson in #172
• Title Screen by @dmccoystephenson in #184
• Added Banner Image by @William-McGonagle in #186
• Pause Screen by @dmccoystephenson in #185
• Main Menu Screen + Config Screen by @dmccoystephenson in #188
• Transition to GPL3 License by @dmccoystephenson in #190
• Update README.md by @dmccoystephenson in #191

Full Changelog: 0.2.0...0.3.0

Beyond Nations 0.2.0 (Settlements & Markets)

What's Changed

• Release 0.1.0 - Initial Proof of Concept by @dmccoystephenson in #122
• Merge pull request #122 from Preponderous-Software/develop by @dmccoystephenson in #123
• Cleaned up a bunch of code. by @dmccoystephenson in #124
• Inter-Pawn Relationships & Behavior Refactoring by @dmccoystephenson in #130
• Settlements & Saplings by @dmccoystephenson in #132
• Automated Player Object Creation & Camera Retrieval by @dmccoystephenson in #138
• Teleport Home Command by @dmccoystephenson in #143
• Settlement Markets by @dmccoystephenson in #144
• Random Stall Selection by @dmccoystephenson in #154
• Improved relationship between pawns & the player upon trading. by @dmccoystephenson in #155
• Enter/Exit Settlement Commands by @dmccoystephenson in #157
• More Info UI & Lag Prevention by @dmccoystephenson in #158
• Accounted for pawns in settlements when handling deaths. by @dmccoystephenson in #159
• UI Info Boxes by @dmccoystephenson in #160
• Displayed names of nation leader & merchants when inside a settlement. by @dmccoystephenson in #162
• Project Renaming by @dmccoystephenson in #165
• Allowed player to trade at markets by @dmccoystephenson in #169
• Withdraw settlement funds (Behavior/Command) by @dmccoystephenson in #170
• Documentation Updates by @dmccoystephenson in #166

Full Changelog: 0.1.0...0.2.0

Open Source Game 0.1.0 (Initial Proof of Concept)

This release introduces the initial proof of concept for our project, which aims to create a procedurally generated world where pawns organize themselves into nations and participate in economic activities.

Features:

• Procedurally generated world
• Pawns with unique names & energy need
• Pawns organize themselves into nations
• Pawns participating in economic activities by gathering resources and selling them to their nation leader
• Player can perform actions equivalent to pawns
• Initial unit testing system in place

We believe that this release sets a solid foundation for future development and testing. Try it out and let us know your feedback!

What's Changed

• Fixed a typo. by @dmccoystephenson in #4
• Added License! by @William-McGonagle in #5
• Create banner.svg by @William-McGonagle in #7
• Update README.md by @William-McGonagle in #6
• Planning Document by @dmccoystephenson in #8
• Added in Unity's Default Files– we should probably use Github Desktop to keep everything synced up by @William-McGonagle in #14
• Planning Document Modifications (General Goals, Elements) by @dmccoystephenson in #15
• Prototype Assets by @dmccoystephenson in #16
• Added in Automatic Website and Some Management Changes by @William-McGonagle in #23
• Simplified planning document & added narrative section. by @dmccoystephenson in #24
• Small Change to Fix CI/CD by @William-McGonagle in #25
• Added getting started and troubleshooting sections to the README. by @dmccoystephenson in #26
• External Learning Resources Links + Modifying Tech Stack by @dmccoystephenson in #27
• Removing unnecessary files + Modifying Getting Started Section by @dmccoystephenson in #29
• Island, Tree & Cottage Models by @dmccoystephenson in #30
• Project Reorganization + Island Model Update by @dmccoystephenson in #31
• Recreated prefabs & added .meta files back into the project. by @dmccoystephenson in #32
• New Plan - Sandbox Nation Builder by @dmccoystephenson in #34
• README Rewrite by @dmccoystephenson in #35
• Move Planning Document Contents to README & Add Game Concept section. by @dmccoystephenson in #36
• Modified Tech Stack section of README. by @dmccoystephenson in #37
• Removed PLANNING.md.meta file. by @dmccoystephenson in #38
• Procedural Land Generation by @dmccoystephenson in #39
• Added id classes for locations, chunks & environments. by @dmccoystephenson in #51
• Systems Document by @dmccoystephenson in #43
• Teleported the player back to spawn upon falling into the void. by @dmccoystephenson in #54
• Implemented an initial event system. by @dmccoystephenson in #56
• Game Config Class by @dmccoystephenson in #61
• Display Chunk Position by @dmccoystephenson in #59
• Display Status by @dmccoystephenson in #62
• Created the osg namespace. by @dmccoystephenson in #63
• Some Refactoring by @dmccoystephenson in #64
• Added CONTRIBUTING.md file by @dmccoystephenson in #67
• Nation Creation by @dmccoystephenson in #68
• Trees & Rocks by @dmccoystephenson in #69
• Living Entities by @dmccoystephenson in #88
• Added tests for the Inventory class. by @dmccoystephenson in #101
• Rename LivingEntity to Pawn by @dmccoystephenson in #102
• Added tests for the nation package by @dmccoystephenson in #103
• Pawn Spawn Event & Auto Walk Toggle by @dmccoystephenson in #104
• Gold Coins by @dmccoystephenson in #106
• Added unit tests for the world package. by @dmccoystephenson in #110
• Allowed the player to leave their nation. by @dmccoystephenson in #111
• Apples & Pawn Energy by @dmccoystephenson in #113
• Made all entities have inventories. by @dmccoystephenson in #115
• Allowed the player to interact with nearby entities. by @dmccoystephenson in #116
• Command Classes by @dmccoystephenson in #117
• Made the player require food to replenish their energy. by @dmccoystephenson in #118

New Contributors

• @dmccoystephenson made their first contribution in #4
• @William-McGonagle made their first contribution in #5

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Preponderous-Software/Open-Source-Game/commits/0.1.0