Worlds Adrift Island Creator News

Un-chomp that apple. Step away from the pumpkin. And unwrap that roll of toilet paper from around your mate’s leg. Cos this Halloween, the competition* on everyone's cornflour and food colouring blood covered lips is our spooky Island Creator contest… and yes, there’s a scarily good prize up-for-grabs!


The rules couldn’t be more straightforward. Simply submit a gothic-inspired design by midnight (Mwa-ha-haa!!) on the 5th November, making sure to title it: "Halloween Competition Entry: blah blah blah". And seriously, let your imagination run amok with this one! We’re talking dilapidated castles, balanced on decrepit juts of rock, surrounded by miles of desolate moorland; skeletal ruins, ravaged by the passages of time, that torturously stretch towards the nightsky; skull-shaped caverns that beckon weary travellers with eyes that… Well, you get the idea.


Entries will be judged by our panel of designers, who’ll be looking for originality, creativity, and general spine-tinglyness. In other words, would they dare step foot on this island without their merry band of comrades, in the bright light of day, with a sizeable cushion close to hand? Does your island call for... the brown pants?!


So… let’s get down to brass tacks. I mean, that’s what you’ve been skim-reading this article for anyway, right? The prize? Well, fear not, cos it’s a good’ un. Basically, the winning island will not only make it into the game itself - *high five* - but will be lovingly sketched by our resident concept artist, Dan Lish, who’lll also sign the piece, before it’s shipped off to your address.


The competition starts now. Like, right now! So get on and start building your spook-tacular island poste-haste, and who knows? Perhaps you’ll have something nice to hang on your bathroom wall by the end of it…






*T&C’s: All entries must be submitted by midnight 5th November 2017. Entries submitted past this date will not be accepted. The winning island will be selected by the design team, and all decisions are final. The winner will be privately contacted via Steam, at which point it is the winner’s responsibility to claim their prize, by submitting a valid postal address, within 72 subsequent hours. The prize is as stated, and not transferable to another individual and no cash or other alternatives will be offered.

Un-chomp that apple. Step away from the pumpkin. And unwrap that roll of toilet paper from around your mate’s leg. Cos this Halloween, the competition* on everyone's cornflour and food colouring blood covered lips is our spooky Island Creator contest… and yes, there’s a scarily good prize up-for-grabs!


The rules couldn’t be more straightforward. Simply submit a gothic-inspired design by midnight (Mwa-ha-haa!!) on the 5th November, making sure to title it: "Halloween Competition Entry: blah blah blah". And seriously, let your imagination run amok with this one! We’re talking dilapidated castles, balanced on decrepit juts of rock, surrounded by miles of desolate moorland; skeletal ruins, ravaged by the passages of time, that torturously stretch towards the nightsky; skull-shaped caverns that beckon weary travellers with eyes that… Well, you get the idea.


Entries will be judged by our panel of designers, who’ll be looking for originality, creativity, and general spine-tinglyness. In other words, would they dare step foot on this island without their merry band of comrades, in the bright light of day, with a sizeable cushion close to hand? Does your island call for... the brown pants?!


So… let’s get down to brass tacks. I mean, that’s what you’ve been skim-reading this article for anyway, right? The prize? Well, fear not, cos it’s a good’ un. Basically, the winning island will not only make it into the game itself - *high five* - but will be lovingly sketched by our resident concept artist, Dan Lish, who’lll also sign the piece, before it’s shipped off to your address.


The competition starts now. Like, right now! So get on and start building your spook-tacular island poste-haste, and who knows? Perhaps you’ll have something nice to hang on your bathroom wall by the end of it…






*T&C’s: All entries must be submitted by midnight 5th November 2017. Entries submitted past this date will not be accepted. The winning island will be selected by the design team, and all decisions are final. The winner will be privately contacted via Steam, at which point it is the winner’s responsibility to claim their prize, by submitting a valid postal address, within 72 subsequent hours. The prize is as stated, and not transferable to another individual and no cash or other alternatives will be offered.

EDIT **new gameplay features NOW LIVE**

Greetings island creators!

A couple of months ago, we mentioned that we were working on major updates for the Island Creator - updates that would allow you to act as game designers. Go wild as we're proud to say the update is NOW LIVE!

You can add non-climbable materials as well as turrets, spikes and barbed wire to your island designs, creating new platform puzzles and adventures full of dangers, challenges, and surprises for players worldwide to discover and explore.

Read on for more detail. We can't wait to see your designs!

WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD

Turrets



There are a trio of different turret types that you can now place on your islands including smaller Light Turrets to bigger Explosive Turrets that'll also target ships. Protecting high value areas that are filled with loot just got tense...



The Tether Turret is a bit different from the others: it uses a similar technology to players' grappling hooks. When it attaches to a player, it reels them in until they're close enough to be shocked and flung away!



Fighting Back



With these added threats, island creators will need to gauge the difficulty of challenge their islands now present. Within the main game there'll be multiple ways to destroy turrets, and teamwork will make the task exponentially easier, so we're adding a tester pistol to the Island Creator.

Its power will be adjustable to make the task of disabling the turrets easier or harder. Players will now also have a health bar that uses the same impact resolution / fall damage and turret damage as the game, so you can really fine tune your puzzle designs.

But how do you make an area truly inaccessible when everyone has a grappling hook? With non-grappable surfaces of course!

Unclimbable Surfaces

We've included a range of building blocks that can't be grappled or climbed on, just like a ship during the effects of an atlas pulse. These will allow for more elaborate platforming puzzles. To add a little extra challenge, we've also added spikes and barbed wire to create a sense of danger for any potential explorers.



Bringing all of these things together, we have a video that shows how all these mechanics could affect exploring islands in Worlds Adrift in the future:

https://youtu.be/aYbgbj2Ovrg

Note this gauntlet's super high difficulty - you can thank a certain sadistic island builder for this one! It will ultimately be up to the island builders to decide on the difficulty of their island dungeon. On our side, we'll tweak the looting system to accommodate this new addition to the game: If a container or chest isn't looted for a certain period of time (due to the challenge of the dungeon, the cleverly hidden location of the chest, or the difficulty of reaching its island) the chest will accumulate better rewards, awaiting a plucky adventurer to claim as their own!

This Island Creator update is Phase 1 of a trio of updates for the closed beta of Worlds Adrift to be rolled out this year, with a new lost civilization waiting to be discovered, and even more ways for players to test the skill and ingenuity of their peers with tricks being added to the world building tool in phases 2 and 3.

We're looking forward to seeing everybody go wild with this whole new aspect of the game!

EDIT **new gameplay features NOW LIVE**

Greetings island creators!

A couple of months ago, we mentioned that we were working on major updates for the Island Creator - updates that would allow you to act as game designers. Go wild as we're proud to say the update is NOW LIVE!

You can add non-climbable materials as well as turrets, spikes and barbed wire to your island designs, creating new platform puzzles and adventures full of dangers, challenges, and surprises for players worldwide to discover and explore.

Read on for more detail. We can't wait to see your designs!

WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD

Turrets



There are a trio of different turret types that you can now place on your islands including smaller Light Turrets to bigger Explosive Turrets that'll also target ships. Protecting high value areas that are filled with loot just got tense...



The Tether Turret is a bit different from the others: it uses a similar technology to players' grappling hooks. When it attaches to a player, it reels them in until they're close enough to be shocked and flung away!



Fighting Back



With these added threats, island creators will need to gauge the difficulty of challenge their islands now present. Within the main game there'll be multiple ways to destroy turrets, and teamwork will make the task exponentially easier, so we're adding a tester pistol to the Island Creator.

Its power will be adjustable to make the task of disabling the turrets easier or harder. Players will now also have a health bar that uses the same impact resolution / fall damage and turret damage as the game, so you can really fine tune your puzzle designs.

But how do you make an area truly inaccessible when everyone has a grappling hook? With non-grappable surfaces of course!

Unclimbable Surfaces

We've included a range of building blocks that can't be grappled or climbed on, just like a ship during the effects of an atlas pulse. These will allow for more elaborate platforming puzzles. To add a little extra challenge, we've also added spikes and barbed wire to create a sense of danger for any potential explorers.



Bringing all of these things together, we have a video that shows how all these mechanics could affect exploring islands in Worlds Adrift in the future:

https://youtu.be/aYbgbj2Ovrg

Note this gauntlet's super high difficulty - you can thank a certain sadistic island builder for this one! It will ultimately be up to the island builders to decide on the difficulty of their island dungeon. On our side, we'll tweak the looting system to accommodate this new addition to the game: If a container or chest isn't looted for a certain period of time (due to the challenge of the dungeon, the cleverly hidden location of the chest, or the difficulty of reaching its island) the chest will accumulate better rewards, awaiting a plucky adventurer to claim as their own!

This Island Creator update is Phase 1 of a trio of updates for the closed beta of Worlds Adrift to be rolled out this year, with a new lost civilization waiting to be discovered, and even more ways for players to test the skill and ingenuity of their peers with tricks being added to the world building tool in phases 2 and 3.

We're looking forward to seeing everybody go wild with this whole new aspect of the game!

The new Island Creator Update is now live, restart Steam to download the update! We invite you to watch the video below for a better overview, but here is the patch notes on the menu this week:

• Custom Groups and Material sets are now shareable via the Steam Workshop!
  
• Complete overhaul of Steam Workshop Window.
  
• Materials now feature auto fill options, you can customize fill settings per layer and paint the whole island in a single click. These are also part of the material sharing, so downloading other creators material setups and applying them to your islands is now super simple.
  
• Dynamic Grass is now an option to generate grass blades procedurally anywhere that layer is painted. Options for thickness, softness and height variation can create long hay fields or lush meadows equally well.
  
• Spectator camera option for smoother screen recording to show off your creations in style.
  
• Temperature slider to preview how your island might look in different biomes in the main game.
  
• Character now selects clothing from the starter items in the main game and randomizes the colours to match.
  
• New cliff assets.
  
• Updated grass assets.
  
• The standard array of bug fixes and optimizations.
  

https://youtu.be/dEcWic5y9cM
The Worlds Adrift Island Creator is available for free (and will always be) on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/271920/Worlds_Adrift_Island_Creator/