Edengrall News

This week we worked on the Earth element magic, Rockstep, it allows the player to jump while airborne by creating a small platform under the player feet.



The spell has a visual indicator showing how many jumps you have in the form of orbiting rocks.
The rocks recharge a few seconds after touching ground.

Each level of the spell will give you one jump, these gifs are using Rockstep lv3


The jumps conserve momentum, but also allow you to change direction.

One the Faerie system I begun working on a facerig, if this works out the Faeries will have smooth facial animations and if it all works well I will use the same system on the other NPCs late during the NPC overhaul.



Next week we will polish both the Waterwalk and the Rockstep a bit more and make sure they are working with each other, and maybe we will add a new non-magic movement option if all goes well.

As mentioned last week, Faeries will be connected to movement magic. In Edengrall there are 6 basic elements, faeries can have affinity for any element and each element is linked to a different movement spell:

Water - Waterwalk
Fire - Blastdash
Earth - Rockstep
Air - Airglide
Light - Blink
Dark - Moonjump

This week we began implementing Waterwalking, each movement spell will have 3 levels of intensity, you can upgrade the movement spell by having a faerie with very high elemental affinity or many faeries with weak affinity, more details on this later when we implement the Faerie UI.

Lv1 Waterwalk: Allows to move on water, the spell loses power as you move, so staying still lets you float forever, allowing the player to fish on high seas, jumping or sprinting will break the spell.


lv2 Waterwalk: The spell now remains active when you jump, and you can jump when underwater to get boosted out of the water, you also get access to waterskating (water sprint)


lv3 Waterwalk: You now have turbo waterskating, you can move extremely fast on the water surface, this will be one of the most effective ways to travel long distances and will turn rivers into roads.


This is still work in progress, we need to add more particles, sounds and fine tune everything as well as maing the UI elements for buff indicators and the bar that measures the duration.

On the Faerie model I have finished converting the hair into pieces that can be assembled into different styles



Now I need to redo the UVmap, texture and rigging for hair physics

Then I will move to the new face rig.

We have decided to add the faeries before we continue the exploration, but this is not the old system we had planned, but a whole new one inspired by Palworld.

This is the idea for the old Faerie System, very UI heavy and simulated, this screenshot is from the Everyday Lite prototype that I made before Edengrall.


The new system will be fully integrated into the world, less UI and more Faeries moving around, working, emoting, playing pranks and such.
The new Faeries will help you around the farm and lend you their magic for more movement options.

You will be able to keep a few Faeries with you, these are your Companion Faeries. They will give you more options for movement based on their element:
Fire: Blastdash -> quick acceleration, can be used while airborne
Water: Waterwalk -> walk/run on water, useful for fishing in deep sea
Air: Glide -> converts horizontal into vertical momentum
Earth: Rockstep -> Spawns a platform under your feet allowing double jumps
Light: Blink -> Teleports to the direction you are looking at, kills momentum
Dark: Moonjump -> Lower gravity for a few seconds, combos well with Blastdash and Rockstep

Other than lending you movement magic, you will be able to keep one companion faerie active, the faerie will follow you around, you will be able to headpat, give treats and give orders.
When combat is added the Faeries will also lend you combat magic.



Each faerie will have different jobs and affinities based on their traits.

Faeries not assigned to be companions will remain at the nearest fae tree (the large tree at the top of the cliff near the town) or at player made faerie houses.
You will be able to build beds, tiny houses, amenities and work stations for them.

At first we will only add one Faerie to test the system as companion, this may take a few weeks before it is playable.

Bugfixes:
Fixed many speed issues with the fishing related to the new timekeeping method

You can now start the game on any day of the year, this looks like a simple change, but took a lot of work to get done.
We have also fixed a critical bug that caused problems on long playthroughs, if you have a save on winter of the first year and the problem started to manifest loading that save on this version should fix it.



Each season now has its own soundtrack, with a song for outdoors day, outdoors night, city day and city night, for a total of 12 new songs (spring is still the same).
You can also choose the seeds for the randomization of critter/fish spawns, forageables and quests.

Changelog:

*V0.69.0.0 ~ 20.02.2024 ~ Unity 2020.3.46f1

Features:
Implemented a day selection screen for new games, so you can start in any season.
Implemented a randomseed selection for some random elements ingame.
Added 12 new songs

Changes:
Added 10k, 35k and 100k survival score achievements.
Improved the aligment of some elements in the Collections Screen

Bugfixes:
Fixed a bug related to timekeeping. The game should now work consistently for 100 ingame years rather than just one and a half
Fixed a small issue in the Building Screen search box
Fixed the tutorial guide triggering when typing in input boxes
Fixed scarab critters animation
Fixed seeds with no traits not showing the score star in the inventory