The EA v0.61 update brings new music and villager models to the game, along with a few gameplay improvements.

• New Music: 8 new tracks have been added to the game. I carefully selected these tracks to match the chill and peaceful atmosphere of the game.
  
  
• New Villager Models: The old villager models, which were my early attempts at learning game development, have been replaced with improved and polished models.

• Zoning Without Roads: The requirement to zone only next to roads has been removed. You can now zone areas even without road connections, enabling more creative settlement designs.
  
• Increased Influence Areas: The influence areas of buildings have been expanded: Education buildings: +40%, Fire stations: +25%, Police stations: +30%, Water wells: +50%. This makes the game slightly easier and reduces the need to build these structures too frequently in larger settlements.
  
• Herbal Medicine Production: The production rate of herbal medicine has been doubled.

• A caching system was added to prevent FPS drops when constructing water wells. Additionally, a visual effect has been added to highlight the influence area of water wells more clearly.

Towards the end of this update, a critical issue in the project files almost resulted in losing the project. Thankfully, I had a backup of the previous version. I hope I’ve successfully restored the project to its earlier state without introducing new bugs. If you notice any issues, please report them.

See you in the next update!

The v0.60 update focuses on visual improvements and enhancing the user experience.

• Hardware Cursor: The software cursor has been replaced with a hardware cursor. You will now see the system's native cursor without experiencing lag. Since the cursor is no longer tied to FPS, low FPS will no longer affect its performance.
  
• Grass Spawn: Grass now populates the terrain, eliminating the barren look of the ground.
  
• Moving Cloud Shadows: Dynamic shadows cast by clouds are now visible, adding depth to the environment.
  
• New Ocean Water Material: A refreshed water material enhances the look of oceans.
  
• Improved Lighting: Sun and sky lighting have been reworked to produce more realistic results. You’ll now see gradual color shifts in the sky during sunrise and sunset, along with a dark sky and stars at night. In previous versions, distant views appeared white, and the sky remained white even at night.

These improvements aim to create a more immersive and visually appealing experience.

With the EA v0.59 update, FSR 3.1 has been integrated into the game, introducing new FSR quality settings and frame generation. Additionally, several visual improvements and bug fixes have been implemented.

• FSR 3.1: FSR 3.1 has been integrated into the game, with native, quality, balanced, and performance modes added to the settings. The quality mode provides a 30% FPS increase compared to the previous version.
  
  
• Frame Generation: An option to enable or disable FSR 3.1 Frame Generation has been added. Enabling Frame Generation can double the FPS. It is recommended to disable V-Sync to minimize input latency when frame generation is enabled.
  
  
• Tree Render Distance: Newly developed materials ensure that trees are rendered across the map without impacting performance.
  
  
• Distance Field AO Improvement: The maximum distance for DFAO has been extended, allowing even distant trees to benefit from AO, resulting in a more realistic visuals.
  
  
  
• Fog Density: The amount of fog has been reduced.

The FPS values in the image below were obtained with an AMD Radeon 5600 XT (equivalent to an RTX 2060) graphics card on ultra settings.

• Fixed an issue from the previous update where the movement handles in the building editor were not visible behind certain parts.

The next update will likely introduce new building parts to the game.

See you in future updates!

Hello everyone,

I'm thrilled to announce that after a long hiatus, I'm back to working on updates again.

Some of you might have seen my responses to questions in the Community section or elsewhere: I had been working on a side project to sustain this one financially. That project is now nearing completion, allowing me to focus on NH:MV again.

The side project was quite challenging for me, and not being able to deliver the updates I knew you were waiting for was mentally taxing. I sincerely thank you for your patience and understanding.

That project taught me a lot technically and greatly improved my understanding of the Unreal Engine. I plan to incorporate many quality of life techniques from that project into NH:MV.

The EA v0.58 update upgrades the game’s engine version to Unreal Engine 5.4.2. This new version enhances the visuals by integrating new technologies. It also updates the settings interface with new settings and keybinding systems, laying the groundwork for future updates.

• FSR Anti-Aliasing Method: The default anti-aliasing method is now FSR. Previously, the default was TAA, which is known for producing blurry, unclear images. With FSR, you can now enjoy much sharper and higher quality anti-aliasing.
  
  
• Virtual Shadow Maps: Virtual Shadow Maps is a shadowing technique developed by Unreal Engine for producing very high-quality shadows. Although it requires more performance than some other methods, it provides much clearer shadows. Additionally, it offers more performance in areas with a high number of buildings using Nanite, especially in mid and late-game stages.

You can see the difference these two changes make in the images below:

• Anti-Aliasing Method Setting
  
• AO On/Off Setting
  
• Virtual Shadow Maps On/Off Setting
  
• Custom Resolution with specific height and width settings
  
• New Input Keymapping System
  
• Quick Save Shortcut Key
  
• Screen Percentage Setting for Upsampling

• Fixed the issue where the spacebar would trigger the last pressed button instead of pausing and resuming the game.
  
• Grass color tone slightly darkened to match the color of the trees.
  
• Building thumbnails in the building editor have been colored and improved.
  
• Music will continue playing when the game is in the background.
  
• Added environmental lighting(skylight) changes according to the sun's angle in the day-night cycle.
  
• Added automatic language setting for first-time game launches.

The upcoming updates will focus on fixing the game’s problematic aspects and creating a more polished foundation for new content. I will continue to incorporate the experience gained from the other project into this game. I am eager to modernize the visuals and UI, aiming to meet and exceed current standards. I will keep gathering your feedback to shape future updates.

Take care, and see you in the next updates.

I would like to be in closer communication with you in the upcoming updates. Therefore, I have created a Google form to see what you want. This way, I can learn what you expect to see in the next updates. The form consists of a single question with 10 options, and it will only take a few seconds to complete.

Looking forward to talking to you in the upcoming updates.

Form: https://forms.gle/36ou9ihNN4vsz3oc6


Best regards,
Mustafa Caner Tonbul

With the EA V0.57 update, changes were made to the water access algorithm in the game. A few translation bugs have been fixed and minor bugs affecting gameplay have been fixed. A feature that provides information about villagers leaving the village has been added.

- Reasons for villager leaving: The reasons why villagers leave the village are now recorded. When you hover over a villager in the list of villagers who have left in the last month, you will see a list of factors that contributed to their unhappiness. If you see that there is a problem with his/her house, you can click on the search icon at the end of the line to go to the house where he/she lived.- New water detection method: In the old system, buildings received a list of available water wells, calculated the distance and detected whether they had access to water, sometimes with erroneous results. The new system detects whether there is a water well covering the location by sending a raycast. I expect this system to prevent erroneous results.

- Fixed a few translation errors in English. Fixed a few translation deficiencies in other languages.
- Iron ore, gold ore, iron, gold, jewellery, holy books, educational books and novels can now be sold from the regular resource selling menu.

EA v0.56.1 is a small patch that fixes a UI bug during road construction.

EA V0.56 is an update that focuses on sound effects. It also includes a few minor changes and bug fixes.

• Coastline: By detecting the coastline with an algorithm, coastline wave sounds heard only on the coastlines.
  
• Sea sound: Added sea sound that is only heard in areas where water is present.
  
• Variable rain sound: Added dynamic rain sound, including the sound of rain falling into the water on the water, the sound of rain hitting the ground when close to the ground, and the sound of rain turning into a calm rain sound when the camera is far away from the ground.
  
• New wind and bird sounds: Bird and environmental sounds are heard when close to the ground, and become distant wind sounds as the camera moves away from the ground.
  
• Ship sounds: Added sail flapping, wood creaking, and water rippling sounds for ships, as well as the sound of movement while in motion.
  
• Farm animal sounds: Added unique sounds for pigs, sheep and cows, each playing every 10-20 seconds.
  
• Church bells: Added a church bell sound that will ring approximately once every 5-7 game days.
  
• Muezzin: Added the sound of a muezzin calling the call to prayer in a mosque approximately once every 5-7 game days.

From now on, in manual or automatic tree planting, trees will be planted as seedlings and grow over time, instead of appearing out of nowhere. In addition, the possibility for workplaces and homes built in zone areas to plant their own trees has been increased from 50% to 75%.

• Notifications have been moved from the center of the screen to the bottom right of the screen. This will make them less obstructive when there are too many notifications.

• Fixed procedural forest creation not working when creating a new map in some cases.
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would freeze when building a livestock that was too small and the spawn location of the animals could not be found.

The EA v0.55 update focused on the appearance of roads and fields. A new technique was used for rendering roads and fields. This will allow for more detailed roads in the game, while at the same time allowing for more road types to be added without sacrificing performance.

This update is partially compatible with the old version. You will need to rebuild the fields in your old saved games.

Dirt and stone roads' textures have been redesigned according to the new rendering technique.
The construction of fields has completely changed. Now, when fields are built, the direction in which the crops will be planted can be determined. They will also be surrounded by fences when built. When building new fields, they can be built adjacent to the edges of existing fields. These fences have also been added to the orchard. So the boundaries of the orchard will be clearly visible.
Contrast ratio has been increased for players who don't like the hazy look in the game. A contrast adjustment has also been added to the settings for players who want to play the game as it was.
The color tones of some crops' textures have been overhauled to match the new contrast ratio.

• Fixed a situation where the snowy environment would not subside without a new weather condition when loading the saved game.
  
• Fixed an issue where buildings would occasionally go into the ground when loading the saved game.

See you in future updates.
Mustafa Caner Tonbul