Edengrall News

The update is progressing just fine, we will probably get it done by the 31th and release on both main build and demo, there will be at least 60 different critters, not counting the Shimmering variants, and what is better, the systems we are building for this update will greatly speed up the creation of the fishing system, spawning, critter AI, capturing, many of these will be recycled for fish.

The critters are split in different biomes, seasons and time of day, this is the first feature that will be affected by seasons, fishing will also follow spawning different fish every few weeks.



The implementation of critter behavior is almost done, last few parts of the update are:

-Collection Screen: UI that shows which critters you have collected so far and if you have collected the Shimmering variant of each critter.
-Bug Net special: The bug net special will be very different from other tools, instead of a powerful move you will instead gain Critter Vision highlighting critters hidden in tall grass
-Dynamic spawn checking: Right now critter spawners only check if critters should despawn and be replaced by another type of critter if the player is far away, we will try to make these checks even if the player is close without having critters disappear right in front of the player
-Achievements: at least 5 new achievements
-Ambience based on bug proximity (cicada, bees, wasps, flies and cricket): Noisy buggers will actually affect ambiance sounds

Features:
More insects.
- 1 bee
- 2 wasps
- 1 horner
- 2 ladybugs
- 2 scarabs
- 5 beetles
- 3 grasshoppers
- 4 moths
- 1 slug
- 2 glowflies

Changes:
Added an offset to their animations, so groups of insects should no longer all animate in sync
Added swarming behaviour where multiple insects fly around in a swarm

Features:
Implemented the first stage of critter catching
- 8 Butterflies.
- 3 Spiders.
- 1 Bucko.
- 1 Poofah.
- 1 Glowfly.
You can place captured critters in the world using the hammer.
Implemented LOD option for the grass.

We are going to release an alpha build tomorrow with the core of the bug catching system, what we implemented so far are the bug net main action, and a few insects:

8 Butterflies: Butterflies just fly slowly and close to the ground, they are very easy pickings for the bug net
3 Spiders: Jumping spiders stay hidden in the thick grass, getting too close will cause them to show a cute animation, getting closer will cause them to jump away and escape.



1 Bucko: Buckos are a special creation of one of my favorite Vtubers Amiya Aranha, I added them to the game as a small little reference. They do not react to the player, only to nearby Dreamweaver Spiders.



1 Poofah: Poofahs are little critters I invented, they are a tiny insect that inflates and fly away when the player gets close.



I have modeled a total of 45 bugs, but we haven't implemented their behaviors yet, the modeled bugs waiting for AI are: Wasps, Moths, Isopods, Slugs, Snails, Beetles, Ladybugs, Flies, Glowflies, Bees and Cave Poofahs.



Also a small warning, tomorrow update will come to a fix to the grass system, we had a bug where about half of the grass was not rendering properly, by fixing this the amount of grass basically doubled, if the FPS drop is too high for you, go to the grass settings and switch to half-grass, this will result in about the same grass density as before the patch, you can also now switch the grass LOD if you want denser grass, but don't mind things getting choppy when far away.

We switched focus from the Faerie village to the insects so we can add Bug catching to the game sooner, we should have an alpha build by the 15th with many insects to catch, each with a special shimmering version.



At this first release there won’t be much use for the insects, but fishing will be sneaked in right after and insects will become bait for fish.

After bug catching and fishing are in we will resume the faerie village, and it should be done before the end of November.

Oh on another news, we are very low on funds, and I have decided to shut down our website since I can no longer pay the hosting, I will still be making reports here on Steam. The site will be down by mid November.