War Islands News

[p]Hello again![/p][p][/p][p]Today I'm here to share a new way to experience the Christmas season in War Islands: A whole new snowy island for you to protect against the evil snowman crew.[/p][p][/p][h3]Get ready for some Snowman battle![/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]While the quest itself remains the same, the new location faces new challenges. Santa's home has been surrounded by Snowman catapults and a giant ice lake, making it super fragile for explosive attacks![/p][p]Enemies will be constantly trying to use their catapults for ranged attacks, make sure to always keep an eye on those to avoid taking large amounts of damage on your Christmas Tree.[/p][p][/p][h3]But... Why a new island for the seasonal content?[/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]The idea behind this new island is to ensure that the Christmas content can be always available even when out of season so you can beat it whenever you're ready! This also allows you to complete the Christmas achievement at any time.[/p][p]Another fun little feature is the game will detect the season based on the current date, this means that you can even experience the December/Christmas theme when playing offline :)[/p][p][/p][p]Merry Christmas! See you next year![/p][p]Lucas[/p]

[p]Hello everyone! It's me again![/p][p][/p][p]First of all I would like to thank everyone once again for the trust and patience on this project, I know I've been going silent for long periods of time but rest assured the game is alive and well. My wife has been helping a ton with the game, taking over various roles, which was essential to keep the game's development moving.[/p][p][/p][h3]So without further ado, here's the Jungle Update![/h3][p][/p][p][/p][p]This update contains 3 new quests, continuing the story after "The Battle Of Nine Lives":[/p]

• [p]Let's Hit The Gas (Main Quest)[/p]
• [p]The Reptiles Strike Back (Side Quest)[/p]
• [p]Tropical Danger (Side Quest)[/p]

[p]Alongside those you will also find new items, frogs and a hidden note in the jungle![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New Jungle related achievements have also been created:[/p]

• [p]Stardust[/p]
• [p]Do It Yourself[/p]
• [p]Tropical Danger[/p]
• [p]Garden Warfare[/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The Jungle Update also comes with lots of general improvements to the game:[/p]

• [p]Improvements to Single-Player mode: General quality of life improvements that help going solo.[/p]
• [p]Shader preload: The game now attempts to cache some of the shaders to avoid stuttering on first play-through.[/p]
• [p]Camera system refactored: The camera should feel a lot smoother now throughout the game.[/p]
• [p]NPC Improvements: They can now jump, use path shortcuts, swim, among other interactions. (eg. Snails may now go drink some water then find a spot to take a nap)[/p]
• [p]Soundscape improvements: All areas of the game now have designated ambient sounds. (including the ocean)[/p]
• [p]Achievements menu: You can now see your list of achievements directly from the game's main menu.[/p]
• [p]Game engine upgrade: Provides greater stability to the game.[/p]
• [p]And honestly much more![/p]

[p][/p][p][/p][p]Let me know if you encounter any issues with this update, feedback is greatly appreciated! Happy to chat about this update in the Community Hub![/p][p][/p][p]And that's about it for now. I hope you enjoy the fresh new content :)[/p][p][/p][p]Cheers,[/p][p]Lucas[/p]

Hello Hello! Quick patch for a few small fixes and improvements to the game.

• New Anti Aliasing options: You can now choose between "Off", "FXAA", "TAA" or "TAA + Sharpness"
  
• New Graphics options for Foliage Density, Reflections and Frame Limiter
  
• Night ambient brightness increased (It was too dark!)
  
• Lighthouse Cave lighting tweaks
  
• "Lost Child" side quest boss battle area updated
  
• New flags created near Morumotto's Little Timmy area and Crystal Cave mountain
  
• Fixed Jonathan jump attack animation not working properly on friends machine (multiplayer)
  
• AI following behavior improvements
  
• Fixed Ladybugs and Sheeps outline effect flickering
  
• Honey Cave & Cat War multiplayer bug fixes
  
• Christmas quest disabled
  

Cheers,
Lucas

Hello Hello!

How are you all doing? Apologies for being away for quite a while, I'm currently preparing the game for its final release and with it, a few changes are being made to make sure the code is clean and the features are solid.

Quite a massive amount of changes were made on this one, here's a summary of the big ones:

• The game has been upgraded to use Unreal Engine 5
  
• Better compatibility with Linux using Proton (Tested using Linux Mint)
  
• Shop now sells different items depending on their locations
  
• New items and weapons
  
• Item physics updated to be more gameplay friendly
  
• Weapons now have attributes such as Damage, Attack Speed among others
  
• New compass UI to help navigation
  
• You can now revive your team members by interacting with them (No longer needs to head back to a flag)
  
• Lighthouse Cave lighting improvements
  
• Frogs and Notes achievements can now be completed by collecting all currently available ones (No longer need to wait for Full Release to get those)
  
• New loading screen
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• Various under the hood code improvements and refactors
  

And of course, the Christmas Quest is back!



Now by the nature of the above changes, I gotta be honest with you, there's probably new bugs that I now have to fix because of it. I tried my best to make those changes as smooth as possible. If you do see anything and would like to help please feel free to post them on the Community Hub.

Lastly, because I'm getting it almost ready for full release, you may also see from a distance the upcoming levels far away, this is because there's some assets being shared between Early Access and the Full Release version.



As the game is getting closer to its final release, I realized that now is the time for a final engine update. There's a few features from the newer engine that I started to use but those will mostly be seen on the final levels of the game.

I've noticed on previous versions of the game that on Linux using Proton the videos were not working at all. However the rest of the game worked fine so that made me decide to strip away pre-rendered videos from the game, hence why a new loading screen (and also startup visuals). That should help Linux users have a better experience!



New items and weapons are being created for the game, and It only made sense to have custom vendors per location to better accommodate the change. Those items may have different attributes and the game will show you the difference between your equipped one and the ones you're looking for.



The physics were also updated because It felt a bit frustrating at times where items would just fall or slide across and you would essentially lose them. So they now use a simpler physics that makes them essentially not move around and only listen to gravity.



This might be a partially just for fun feature but I kinda do think it's nice to indicate where you should go, especially after the second quest where it pretty much becomes a massively open world.



It will show you the available quest map locations and undiscovered quests if there's no current quest.



A bit of a frustrating thing I've noticed with previous versions is that every time Jonathan, Almika or Sarsi dies you have to manually go back to a nearby flag to revive them. I honestly didn't know how annoying this was until I implemented this new feature; all you have to do is get near them and smash your interact button and they'll be back up.



The only catch is that if you're in a fight you might not be able to smash interact enough to save them otherwise enemies will start attacking you, so be safe!



Here are some screenshots of the new Lighthouse Cave lighting:









I'm sorry for taking a bit longer again on the full release but I really hope the amount of effort being put into this makes it worth the wait.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on the update or even the full release delays, I'm always keen on having an open discussion on these things, your support means the world to me.

Merry Christmas!
Lucas

Hello Hello! It's me again, this time with another update for War Islands. This one focuses on quality of life and general improvements for the game. Here's the list of changes:

• Lighthouse & Wookikota level changes
  
• New item pickup HUD notification
  
• New selected character HUD health bar
  
• Items now glow for easy visibility when they're on the ground
  
• Coin bags now give random number of coins
  
• Sarsi's boulders now get destroyed on dash hit
  
• Sarsi combat mode duration tweaked
  
• Sarsi AI improvements during Reerion's battle
  
• Icicle hit location indicator visuals updated
  
• Fixed Possess indicator showing on non controllable animals
  
• Fixed crash when carrying Little Timmy too far away from quest area
  
• Fixed mount animation glitching when mounting deleted character
  
• Saturday Island snail button no longer closes gate if Snail move away from it (Avoids sea turtle being locked inside)
  
• Fixed being stuck using cannon when swapping characters
  
• Fixed crash when moving animals too far from their original location using Almika's possess
  
• Ships network lag improvements
  
• Shop now sells the original boomerang weapon
  
• Shop items price updated
  

So there's some major visual changes to digest here, let's talk about some of them!



A good example of how one thing leads to another. I wanted to increase the amount of coins you get with every coin bag that enemies and crates drop. The game was literally giving you 1 (one) coin per bag which made it extremely difficult to afford shop items. From now on the game will randomize a few coins every drop.

Now after implementing this I realized that you need some sort of feedback of how many coins you're getting so for that I've created a new pickup pop up that shows on the HUD. This should tell you how many coins you got and for consistency sake it also shows any other item you collect there too!

Another thing I began to notice is sometimes those coin bags are hidden on the grass or bushes, so I also added a new glowing effect to all items so you never miss them!





Sometimes we forget about the most obvious things, this one is no exception. Your selected character (the one you're controlling) now shows their health bar at the bottom of the screen during combat or when losing health in general. Once health amount restores to 100% it fades to still maintain a clean HUD design.





This one specifically I haven't heard anyone talk about, it's mostly me thinking that's not really obvious where the icicle will hit. This should help beat the Crystal Cave quest!





Boulders in general were most of the time just blocking your way after being pushed so there's no point in keeping them rolling. From now on they will break after being used.



Anyways, that's all for now :)

Cheers,
Lucas