There's been a lot of things going on: I fixed my computer (one of the hard drives was dying) and in the process managed to lose my DropBox folder (!), luckily it was just backups, but it was kind of scary:)

Also I've been to Germany (way to see Hearthlands architecture in person), visited my sister (who made German translation for the game) and brought a bunch of components to build a new PC, which will allow me to properly record more letsplays and stuff (if I don't mess it up).

In case you've missed it, here's a new trailer of the game:

And here's what's new in the new update:

- Several building have been redrawn: tax office, peddler's tent, apothecary, constabulary, town hall, temple, minstrel's guild, library, manor and estate.

Since minstrel's guild now has a different size it disappears from the map when you load a game saved in 0.8.5 or older.

New vs old:

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- Also high-appeal road now looks more fancy.

A number of decorative objects added (most of them increase appeal):

- Bench. The bench rotates automatically to face the road.

- Garden crate.

- Garden.

- Metal fence (works the same as wooden fence and let's monsters in as well).

- Stone tiles.

- Canals and canal bridges. Canals are 3x3 tiles and only connect to each other on a 3x3 tile grid. Canal bridge must be built between two canal pieces (press R to rotate it) and it counts as a road. Enemies can use canal bridges too.

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

- Fixed bug (hopefully) with enemies getting stuck under gatehouses.

- Character screen now shows damage value correctly according to character's level.

- Invaders now have greater range and are less likely to hang out on the edge of the map (which isn't necessarily good).

- A number of other fixes.

I'm also in the process of migrating to LWJGL 3, which will improve a few things, but there's a lot to rewrite so it'll have to wait until one of the next updates.

Savegames from 0.8.5 are compatible with 0.8.6 (don't forget to rebuild your minstrel's guilds though).

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- Chancellor can now be female as well! Big thanks to Anais (https://youtube.com/anaisbelieve) who recorded the voice of the chancellor and female citizens.

- Female citizens now have female voice:)

- New title screen!

(Click to enlarge)

Title screen alternates between the old one and the new one each time you restart the game.

- Map generation has been reworked to make sure the landmass in contiguous (no more troops stuck on an island hopefully). It may take a bit longer now and map seed taken from an older version of the game may not produce the same map in 0.8.5 due to these changes.

- Now you can comfortably play the game on a 4K monitor! 'Big screen' mode has been added which scales up the UI to x1.25 or x1.5. You can enable it on the Settings screen. The game needs to be restarted before changes are applied.

You can also edit 'config.txt' file and set 'big_screen' to 0 (off), 1 (x1.25 scale) or 2 (x1.5 scale).

- Citizens will no longer wander through entire city and will stay closer to their homes.

- Roadblocks are no longer hidden in 'Hide buildings' mode.

- The sound for trade notifications has been changed.

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You can now specify random seed when starting a new game (requested feature), so that you can play the same map again. If you leave the seed empty it will be generated randomly. You can see the current seed in the game menu (if the game was started after 0.8.4 update).

Fixed difficulty calculation depending on the amount of staring coins. Thanks for pointing that out.

Opponent's power now drops more significantly after they are defeated.

Trolls and ghosts should no longer wander into their dwellings, which used to make them invulnerable.

Barracks can now hold only one load of any weapon (or armor), which makes resource distribution between armorers and weaponsmiths more even.

Citizens can now spawn if your houses are level 3 or higher (another requested feature). They do nothing, just wander around along the roads, minding their own business. They can not be killed (otherwise one stray bogger would be able cover the streets with bodies within a few minutes).

Citizens can be either male:

Or female:

And the more advanced your houses are the better they dress up.

Immigrants and emigrants can now also be male or female.

A new title screen (work in progress):

(Click to enlarge)

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- Female characters! You can now play as female ruler and rivals can be female too (chosen randomly). This was more difficult that anticipated, since I had to go though all game text (in all languages) and replace all male-specific texts. Units still say "Yes, my lord", but I think I'll leave it as is. Originally I planned to make chancellors able to be female too, but then I realized they have male voice (my heavily processed voice), so this'll have to wait.

Minor things:

- Tons of typos fixed in German translation.

- Mega buildings no longer provide their effects before they finished.

- Pressing "Q" while in Spells menu closes it.

- Archers now attack enemies properly even if there's no path.

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This is mostly an improvements and fixes update.

- New texts added in 0.8.0 have been translated into Spanish (thanks, Joaquin!) and German. Also I fixed several typos people have pointed out.

- Divine Inspiration spell now doubles production rate (as it should) instead of halving it. I don't know about you, but this was quite funny:)

- Added option for automatically accepting resources (tributes, gifts, loot, etc.) without a pop-up window. Note that if there's no space in the stockpiles resources will be lost.

- Windows are now closed by pressing right mouse button (previously windows would close on release).

- Added effectiveness statistics for production buildings, which lets you see how well it performs and what may be the reason of low effectiveness. Note that at the moment effectiveness is being reset every year in January, so it is most accurate in December (because there is a full year of data to analyze). I may look into it again to make it more accurate throughout the year, but already it is quite helpful to see that your carpenter's lodge wasted 50% of time doing nothing because its furniture storage was full.

Here you can see that cider brewery doesn't have max effectiveness because it didn't have enough apples:

Carpenter's lodge here spent about a half of its time waiting for its furniture storage to clean up:

- Note that savefiles from 0.8.0 are compatible with 0.8.1 but you won't be able to see effectiveness data that would have been collected since the last January (obviously).

Meanwhile working on female avatars (one of the most requested features):

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