ACE - Authorized Community Expansion Project

place them next to each other first, then via the move tool you can put crates on top of other crates!

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Or just place them through the Place tool (and once they’re placed, you can place others on top of them) - which is what I did. I rarely put furniture and such through the builder, I usually place it afterwards, through the place menu. :jubilant:

This was actually already “announced” on the Preview Thursday about farming :merry:
You can check it out here

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Hi guys,
Is there still someone updating the mods or is this game completely dead?
I haven’t checked the latest mod updates yet but I see ACE is dated 2019 so …

Ace is still in progress, nearly done for a massive update, some other mods are waiting for that to hit atm. That and the holidays and recent other games will slow new mods down a bit.

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Herbalist interactive ground planters.

Speaking of planters, the herbs in the wall planters under the Herbalist’s window are at different stages of growth.

@parmort guesses wagon, which I think I see in the bottom right-center, partially hidden by the roof - this could be a huge development if it isn’t just for show.

Just small things, this town looks like it’s in its fledgling stages, and while it’s probably inconsequential, it seems pretty early to have market stalls; don’t they require a level 6 carpenter? Maybe I’m biased - I feel like it’s a good bit into the game by the time I can start/choose to build them. The other thing, why isn’t that worker in the top center helping out with the build? What’s so interesting about the firewood?? Lazy!

And of course one more thing because of the wonders of an imagination running wild. Seeing the market stalls and (possible) wagon makes me think, is there some sort of changes/additions coming to the early game economy? Sending out little merchants of your own with carts of local produce?

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Some mods are being updated yes, however, progress is slow. It is worth being patient tho :smiley:

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We’ll discuss the “bonus objectives” later - for now, let’s head into…

Herbalist Planters

Alright! That’s it, we have arrived to the potentially last Preview Thursday!
But I’ll say do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. It will make more sense soon…

So, we’ve been over several subjects on the last weeks but some of them remained rather… incomplete. As if something was needed to tie everything in.

We have discussed the new herb system with colors and types, which adds lots of herbs, not to mention the fact that wild herbs are no longer renewable. And we’ve also seen a new healing system that added several new consumables and uses for the herbs - and a new farming system that transforms the beloved flower fields into purely decorative flower fields.

So the big question is, how do you get herbs? How can you get this very important resource that has lots of new uses if we’ve apparently changed or removed the current ways you have to obtain them?

We present you the herb planters!

As you can see, there are several types of planters, each with their own characteristics and uses. The majority of them can be easily obtained (crafted) by the Herbalist, however there are some special ones that you might - or not - find during gameplay…

Planters are, as implied by the name, a “tiny farm” that your herbalist can use to cultivate (and automatically produce) resources.
Although the majority of the planters are simple herb planters - that is, they grow the common herbs and flowers - some planters have special roles.

For example, for the first time since its introduction years ago, the water resources (algae and lily pads) are finally renewable through Water Planters!

With the new tree farms now growing actual trees instead of saplings, there’s also a new way to obtain saplings, which is using Tree-planting Pots!

Although saplings are not really necessary depending on your playstyle, these pots can be used as great (and diverse) decorations as well! Some of the tiny trees look really nice and can definitely become new, ornamental decorations - and this is something you can achieve because all planters are capable of having their “Automatic Harvesting” turned off.

This is how the planter UI looks like:

Similar to a farm, you can see the currently selected crop, how many resources it will yield per harvest and the probable quality of the resource. The quality is based (and increased) by tending, which is a new action the Herbalist will occasionally perform on planters. Some factors, like the Herbalist’s level, will influence tending, making it more efficient and increasing plant quality faster.

Finally, the (+) symbol represents that this plant, when fully grow, will provide occasional herbs without needing to be harvested. This means that if your stocks are already high enough, you can stop producing/replanting but can continue generating a few herbs every now and then.

In essence, planters exist to replace the role the original wild herbs had. Until now, it was relatively easy to get a good production of any herb going by simply bringing a few wild specimen near your town and constantly harvesting them, getting lots of seeds and resources. It wasn’t uncommon to see something like this:

While this works - and surely, some people can keep it cleaner - it is negative for the game in many aspects. Performance-wise, you get a lot of clutter and hoard hundreds of resources you don’t immediately need. It looks bad. And in some ways it is too easy - you can get this going in the first few days of the game, basically making a whole aspect of the gameplay useless.

This only got aggravated once you had a farmer that could then create fields of herbs.

So what we did is basically a change of paradigm without really changing the way things work - just how you get to them. In our analysis, we realized that the same resource had different, very easy/efficient “RRN” - which are “Renewable Resource Nodes” - and this seemed to contradict itself. You have a resource that has several renewable sources, all easy and efficient.

Our changes, in more analytical terms, streamline the herbs into two sources, one RRN and one RN - non-renewable - which is the original renewable wild plants. The planters are the new renewable plants, so if you look at it like that, you’ll realize that our real change was only to create an associated crafting cost to having a renewable plant instead of having the original, wild plants be renewable.

Setting up a planter is very easy, all you need is a seed - and once planted, it will renew itself forever without needing more seeds!

And in essence, that’s what the planter boxes are about. Giving the “Herb-” back to “Herbalist”, relieving the farmer from herb fields that occupied much of their time (which allows them to be more efficient with food) and creating a whole new aspect of gameplay around that resource, making it valuable and interesting again. For example - the seed extraction recipes are much more useful now that they can be used for you to “tame” and start renewing a new herb you buy from a trader. And they’re extremely cute as decorative items

In fact, all existing window planters in the game have been adapted to use the system - so you can customize the flowers on windows now!

That’s it about planters!
There’s a bit more to know, but we’ll leave that for you all to discover… :merry:

Bonus objectives now!

Well, yes!

The Wagon

This is also a funny little one!

Now, when you start the game, you’ll have a wagon carrying all the stuff you’ve embarked with. That wagon will serve you as initial storage and can then be dismantled for some extra wood.

This should help new players/new games to start cleaner, without big stockpiles everywhere and with a nice place to leave your belongings or protect your gold from invaders!

A cool thing is that the wagon object can be customized by kingdom - so modded kingdoms can have their own fancy storage - or nothing at all!

Unfortunately no one guessed the other one… :forlorn:
It was about building - and I might talk about it later!
So that’s it!

I hope you all have a very nice weekend and - for those that do celebrate it - I hope you enjoyed a warm and nice Thanksgiving. Maybe this year wasn’t as great as it can be - but the sacrifices we do now are for a better future :merry:

Stay warm and have fun!
-Dani

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-rubs hands- YEEEES YEEEES ALL WILL BE REVEALED

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@DaniAngione Is there any other planned functionality for the wagon aside from early-game storage? Are we able to craft more?

Something that I think would be neat is if wagons, when full, would be moved by Hearthlings from their current location to a pre-determined destination. For example, place a wagon by the entrance to your mine. Hearthlings would fill up the wagon with ore and stone, then when it has been filled, whoever’s not busy would come and cart it away to, say, the blacksmith (or outside a dedicated storage area, wherever you choose). After it’s been emptied, another Hearthling comes by and returns it to its starting location.

I understand this is basically any other kind of storage bin with a bit of automation thrown in - maybe that part can get left out - but personally, the sight of wagons full of the bounty of the fields, forests, and mines rolling through town looks much more pleasing than some boring brown crates being brought in. Just my two cents, and whatever happens I eagerly await this next update!

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Unfortunately not! And it can’t be moved either - just removed.

We do have some ideas like that. In fact, current unstable version actually has functionality/code for a chest that “absorbs” everything that is mined nearby, and ideas like being able to open the same “inventory” from different points/chests are also something that could be used to simulate transport lines/minecarts, etc… this is something that we already have the foundation on in-game - there’s just nothing that uses it.
But we have plans for it :merry:

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I just cant wait to see this new update. Im so glad you guys are continueing ace, and I cant really say anything but thanks. This level of commitment truely makes it a community builder game!

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Has anyone else here had an issue with the game not starting or just hanging on a black screen after adding the ACE Files? I’m hoping it’s an issue that’s been addressed and has a fix but I didn’t see any mentions so I apologize if it’s been asked before.

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It’s a known issue from the base game, it happens when the UI fails to load in time due to a lot of stuff to load (ie: the weaker the hardware + the more mods and stuff you have, the more likely it is to happen)

Fortunately, the fix is quite easy!
Press F5 to reload the UI after you start hearing music. That should fix it.

The answer to this (and some other common issues and such) can be found in our new FAQ in the ACE Discord Server, by the way!

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Many thanks, I kinda gave up on the game some time back before I happened to read the other day about this ACE project so I decided to give the game a new shot and see how much better it was with ACE, sadly I couldn’t get it to start lol. Glad to know there’s a fairly easy fix.

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Great :merry:
We hope you’ll enjoy it!

Make sure to take a look at our list of incompatible mods as well! (also on Discord)
Some other issues that might appear will probably be because of that :jubilant:

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… Surprise Sunday?

Surprise Sunday!

Let the guessing games begin… :jubilant:

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Hmm… happy people, lots of info… notes… on a forum?

Some of these notes are pretty patchwork. Hearthlings work, so we’re left with patch…

Interesting… patch, notes… patch… notes…

Not sure. Really stumped me here.

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Some kind of mailsystem allowing messages from other ”towns”

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image

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It looks like an RPG style quest board. It occurs to me it may be some sort of merchant request system to place orders, though I’m stumped as to why Hearthlings care for it with such enthusiasm.

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