RivenWorld News

Hello!

We've been hard at work on fixing some performance issues reported from the v1.05 update, and have also updated the water & swimming within RivenWorld!

The water now looks more realistic and has flows and currents. We did this by doing a water simulation and then converting it into a static asset in the game world.


With the completion of this patch/ bug fix, we're moving on to v1.06 to be released sometime in the next month. This update will be adding single-player, and co-op game modes!



[h2]Added[/h2]
- New Ocean System with realistic waves and swimming
- New Underwater Post Processing
- New Waterfalls around the map

[h2]Modified[/h2]
- Moved the world environment down 3000 units to support the new water system
- Slowed the player speed down to prevent sliding and ultra-fast speed
- Added transition animations for different movements (player no longer slider side to side when running)

[h2]Fixed[/h2]
- Node respawn bug
- Node not interactable bug
- Random blocks disappearing in claims

[h2]Removed[/h2]
- Old water & river system

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hello!

We're proud to announce the release of v1.05 of RivenWorld (AKA the August Update). This update has taken many late nights, countless cups of coffee, and some sweat and tears. With this update, we're releasing our very first devlog! Feel free to watch the devlog for information on the update, or feel free to read the change notes below!

[h2]Visual Upgrades[/h2]
For a long time, we've had players say textures were blurry and the game was not optimized, we took time this past month to learn more about UE5 and how we can make sure players get the most out of the visuals in RivenWorld. With this, we have done a complete overhaul of the visuals and the world!



[h2]New Resource Nodes[/h2]
Since we launched RivenWorld people have mentioned the resource nodes did not fit the environment, so now we've upgraded them with new models and textures!



[h2]Farming[/h2]
That is right! We've added farming into RivenWorld, you can till anywhere in the world and plant seeds you find from foraging. We're going to be working on a minor update to add more support for farming, adding a water pump to hydrate soil, and a seed station to smash seeds out of fruit!

[h2]Looting & Loot Boxes[/h2]
The 2nd most requested feature has been loot boxes and a looting mechanic, we've added a simple loot box system. This will spawn random loot boxes around the world for players to find, loot boxes are broken up into low, mid, and high-grade loot boxes.




+ Added new world design to main release (a lot of changes)
+ Added loot system, and random spawns
+ Added Farming with basic crops
+ Added farming auto watering when near to water sources
+ Added ability to water plants with a bucket of water
~ Updated the building system to use HISM (way more performance with large buildings)
~ Updated the animal speeds, damage, and health
~ Updated deer AI to run away from players If they get close
~ Fixed the bow & arrow
~ Fixed building bugs
~ Fixed forge crashing games (We think we found this)
~ Fixed animal hitboxes
- Removed Undead (for now, they are one-hit killing and that is no fun)

We've gotten reports of server lag, with blocks taking longer than usual to appear and other related things.

After a few hours of digging and running a profiler on the code, we found the culprit causing the lag. It seems to have been related to our world saving system, we've now changed how the world save is working, and it seems we've eliminated the lag!

All servers have been patched, and everyone should be good to go!

Thanks for your patience as we got this fixed, and let us know what you think!

- Keoir

This past week, we've been working hard to balance issues and optimize RivenWorld on different graphic cards! We also took the time to upgrade RivenWorld to Unreal Engine 5.2 to take advantage of some of the new systems they have to support better graphics and performance.



[h3]New Assets[/h3]
- Small crate (Workbench)

[h3]Added[/h3]
- New Combat Damage System, that takes into account blocking and armor values
- New post-processing in the world using lumen
- New lumen lighting system
- New animal AI for attacking
- New materials and textures on building blocks and around the world
- Snow on top of the mountain
- New ocean and river look and feel
- New main menu background with the world
- New FPS counter on the settings screen
- VSync option in graphic settings
- New types of trees around the world

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- "This station in use" bug when logging off
- Crafting stations now drop a bag when broken
- Animals now do not kill in 2 hits
- Multiple performance issues
- Weapons balanced
- Animals balanced
- Crafting times balanced
- Fixed unable to drag in inventory for some players
- Fixed block inversion controls
- Server lag issues over time fixed
- Armor balanced
- Fixed drop bag on death being pushed underworld
- Blurry textures on certain computers
- Texture budget over limit error

[h3]Removed[/h3]
- Nothing

Hello Lords and Ladies!

We're excited to announce another big content update and feature release for June! Since we released animals early this month, we've been hard at work tweaking the performance of RivenWorld and adding additional content for all of you!





We spent countless hours working on optimizing RivenWorld and the environment, we can successfully report we raised FPS by 200% during our testing.





We want to add a particular fear of night to RivenWorld, and with this, we started working on the Undead. They rise out of shrines around the map at night and gradually worsen as the nights continue. Right now, they guard the shrines, but in the future, we plan to make them more aggressive and seek players at night to help enforce the need for shelter!






With the new optimizations, we also found a need to replace our trees. This is the first game we've ever built, and none of us our game developers. Though watching videos and trial and error, we found the trees were the cause of a significant amount of lag and optimization issues. So now the world has a new layer of trees we like a lot more.



We know the player base for our little game is not as big as some would hope, and we're a new studio (a group of friends making a game). With this, we decided to release a demo to let people try out RivenWorld before they purchase.

The demo will allow you 24 Hours to play RivenWorld; you have access to the full game during the demo, and once the 24-hour clock is out, you will need to purchase RivenWorld on Steam.



[h3]Added[/h3]

• New world design with more tree variations and more of a "Europe" feel
  
• Sound effects at night near shrines
  
• New building blocks
  
• Hotbar scroll wheel support with key bind to enable
  
• New keybind system
  
• In-game map & mini-map
  
• In-game map waypoint system
  
• Tree cutting system w/ animation and sound effects
  
• New king tax system
  

[h3]Modified/ Fixed[/h3]

• New Animal AI, with improved performance
  
• King's Mountain and throne position
  
• A lot of performance tweaks and changes
  
• Use of the progress bar when capturing the throne
  
• Fixed item stacking issues
  
• Fixed durability duplication issues
  
• Fixed animals getting stuck on cliffs
  
• Fixed NPCs in the towns
  
• New balance of tools and resources
  
• New animal death animations
  
• Animals now do not go through structures
  
• A lot of bug fixes
  

[h3]Removed[/h3]

• Nothing