Ara: History Untold News

Continuing our conversation on Ara: History Untold's living world and exploration, this week we'll dive further into the Natural Resources that can be found all over the map!

When players first start to explore beyond their Nation's borders, they'll have a chance to discover over fifty different kinds of Natural Resources, from rubber trees to silkworms, to precious metals or the staple fruits, vegetables, and grains that shaped the growth of early societies in the ancient world.

A screenshot of undiscovered grapes in Ara: History Untold.

However, as we mentioned in last week's post on Dangerous Wildlife, there may be obstacles to overcome before taking advantage of these items. Some resources are hidden, requiring additional surveying to be uncovered. Others are blocked by Dangerous Wildlife, until it can be dealt with. And not every Resource will be immediately useful - some require that a player has developed a relevant technology for their use.

Once a player has unlocked the potential of these resources, they can be processed into a variety of items which can be used in a myriad of ways to enhance their growing Nation. They can be consumed by cities to provide unique time limited bonuses, or used to craft important materials for building Improvements, Triumphs, and equipping Armies. If a player has enough to go around, they can also be used for trade. As the player advances through the Technology Eras, new ways to take advantage of their Natural Resources will be discovered, unlocking their potential for the generations yet to come.

A screenshot of a farm in Ara: History Untold.

There is plenty to discover in Ara's living world and we're excited to divulge more about crafting and the economy soon. Be sure to stay tuned for more!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2021880/Ara_History_Untold/

One of the key principles we’ve had for Ara since the beginning is that the various components of the game’s Living World are not just visual flourish but are in fact meaningful to gameplay. This takes many forms, including providing players with feedback, reflecting the outcomes of their choices, and calling their attention to important changes or new information in the world.

A screenshot of an early settlement in Ara: History Untold.

One of the earliest examples of this in the game is Dangerous Wildlife. Dangerous Wildlife is comprised of various biome-specific animals that were a danger to humans in early agrarian societies. As a game concept, it’s there to help reinforce to the player the areas of the world that are wilder and will require additional resources to settle and provide some additional interesting early game activity and rewards for exploration.

Prior to our Technical Alphas, Dangerous Wildlife was being treated as a set of solo military units, roaming around the map, to be defeated by a player’s early units (e.g., Scouts). They were grouped under a “Wilderness” faction so they would play nice with the other military systems – but what this did in practice was emphasize a focus on early game warfare and create a distracting / frustrating set of obstacles for players to explore and progress.

We received a lot of valuable feedback on how this made players feel – and we made some adjustments.

A screenshot of the Ara: History Untold Insider Forums, where one user writes: "I hate cougars I hate cougars I hate cougars"

Today, Dangerous Wildlife is treated instead as a modifier for Sub-regions. Sub-regions that contain Dangerous Wildlife must be “cleared out” before their resources are available for players to harvest and exploit, and doing so gives players a small relevant reward (e.g., Furs for clearing an area of Wolves).

A screenshot of Ara: History Untold UI showing that wolves will bolck the use of the area until they are defeated.

Now players have a more interesting strategic decision to make early on – should their exploration focus on exploring new areas to find new resources or opportunities for Diplomacy, collecting resource caches on the map (which we’ll talk about in a future post), or clearing wildlife to free up additional regions for settling.

We’re excited to get this feature into players’ hands to see how they like this new approach to fauna in our game. If you’d like the chance to try out this feature before the game’s official release, please head to AraHistoryUntold.com to sign up for our Insider Program for the opportunity to participate in future Alphas.

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- The Ara: History Untold Team

This week's update to Ara: History Untold's Living World is focused on how the team ensured that our procedurally generated roads would all come to an organic endpoint or intersection.

Our last update on roads was in our City Layouts Developer Diary, where despite plenty of progress to placement and pattern, intersections were still in progress. Previously, overlapping roads would create seams, intersecting roads would have harsh transitions, and some roads would just end abruptly. To more accurately mirror the path of real roads, the team has made it so that intersections, even complex ones, have a more natural transition with proper blending. Additionally, buildings and structures will be aligned along the edges of roads and won't intersect with them.

We think these changes add to how realistic our living world can get, and we're excited to make more of these improvements in the future. Be sure to stay tuned for updates!


Take a look at the before (left) and after (right) of our roads.


This is a full view of what roads looked like before our recent changes, with visible seams, harsh transitions, and buildings intersecting roads.


This is a fulll view of what roads currently look like, with proper blending and smooth transitions in intersections.

Continuing our series on the look and feel of Ara: History Untold, this week the team wanted to share a little bit more about the terrain and world textures.

As we talked about in our Microflora post, the team was able to increase the resolution of the terrain textures in recent weeks to help ensure a more detailed look, but they didn’t stop there – updates have been made to normalize the lighting across all the elements of the living world to help ground the gameplay and natural elements, and the team also did a pass at regenerating the textures to balance colors and reduce noise, for a more natural look.

With all visual changes, the team is looking to ensure that performance and gameplay are front and center. We are excited to report that despite the increases made to resolution, they were able to make the net render time 15% more performant due to simultaneous optimizations made to terrain blending, with the added benefit of further smoothing lateral camera movement, based on feedback from our recent Technical Alpha.

Take a look at the progress we've made below, and be sure to stay tuned for more!


A split image showing the before and after of the savannah biome.


The savannah biome during our second technical alpha.


The savannah biome with the increased resolution and updated lighting.

This week the Ara: History Untold Team would like to continue to highlight the progress we've made to the game's visuals. Our latest feat has been creating cloud shadows that roll over the various landscapes, adding a new layer of depth to our living world.

We took a simple approach to implementing this, wherein we take the XY World position of the Pixel and use that to generate tiling UVs for a cloud map. That cloud map then modulates the actual shadow value of the directional lights, allowing ambient light and ambient specular to still have impact.

The results are impressive, with the shadows creating more variation across the expansive landscapes. Don't just take our word for it, see the changes for yourself in the captures below.


A spliced view of what the savannah biome looks like without (left) and with cloud shadows (right).


A full view of what the savannah biome looks like without cloud shadows.


A full view of what the savannah biome looks like with the cloud shadows. Sunlight is more vibrant and shadows bring out variety in the terrain.