A village at work
Villagers who chop at real trees, kneel in the rows, fish off the dock, and carry the day home in their arms. And why a whole village had the same haircut.
The people in an Eras village have had jobs for a while: water carriers, wood gatherers, farmers. But they all did their jobs the same way, with one reach-and-pull gesture they repeated wherever they stood. From a distance the village looked busy. Up close it looked like a room full of people miming. This week they got their work back, using a new animation library on the skeleton they already had, so the clips dropped straight in.
Work you can read
Farmers now cut the ripe stalks, kneel to set seed, or water the rows from a small clay pot. Each stop in the field picks one of the three, so a field with a few farmers in it never moves in step.
Chopping needed more than a clip. A woodcutter swinging an axe at empty air reads as wrong at once, so wood gatherers now walk out to a real tree at the edge of the village. That's one that's actually drawn: not felled already, and not cleared away for a path. The swing doesn't land straight ahead. It comes across the body and lands about 70 cm out and 32° to the right, at waist height. So each woodcutter stands where that point meets the bark, turned a little to the left of the trunk, and the axe bites the tree on every stroke.
Carried in both arms
The day's work comes home in front, in both arms: an armful of logs, a basket of the harvest, a pot of water. The carrying walk holds the arms out under the load, and when a carrier stops for a moment, only the arms keep holding while the legs settle. That way the load never floats in the air.
Building this turned up an old bug. When villagers on an errand walked into a fence, they paused to rethink, and the pause counted as the work being done. They turned round and carried home a load they never collected. Now they walk along the fence, the same way each time, until they're past it.
Fishing off the dock
In a village with a dock, the water carriers sometimes go fishing. They walk out along the planks to the end, cast, wait on the float, and reel in a few times before heading home. The clip's hand was posed for a short grip, and a long rod in that hand pointed back over the fisher's shoulder. So while they fish, the rod is aimed in the world instead: back for the cast, flicked out low, held over the water while they wait, and lifted as they reel in. The line hangs from its tip to the float.
Ten more ways to wear your hair
There are ten new hairstyles, chosen for range more than novelty. Men get balding, locs, a mohawk, a ponytail, and slicked back; women get a bob, long locs, a ponytail, and locs. Men can now wear a moustache or mutton chops, as well as a beard.
Villagers and anyone who never picked a look get one from a hash of their name. When we added the new styles to that, every villager in a village came out with the same choice. Villagers are named after their village ("140:0", "140:1", and so on), and in the hash we use, names that differ only in their last letter barely change the high bits. Those were the bits we'd used. Running the hash through a proper mixing step fixed it: in a village of ten, about half now wear one of the new styles.
The hair added weight we didn't want, so a fuller style's triangles were halved, the texture coordinates went (hair is drawn in one flat color), and the server now compresses what it sends. A first visit to the game downloads about 2 MB less than it did yesterday.