1. Hearthlands
  2. News

Hearthlands News

News, New Games, and a Soundtrack

[p]Hi everyone! Sergio’s here.[/p][p]Finally, I got some good news.[/p][p]I’m releasing not one, but two new games today.[/p][p] [/p][p]One is called Elsewhere. It’s a game inspired by Yogscast’s Jaffa Factory series, and is essentially a throwback to the old Tekkit days. I’ve been working on it since before Hearthlands and in 2018 switched to it almost full time. So, yeah, it took a while.[/p][p][/p][p]The game turned out to be huge and there are still many things I want to do with it (like adding an ending), so it’s gonna keep being updated for a while.[/p][p][/p][p]I wouldn’t go as far as to say that things are looking up after 3.5 chaotic years, but at least I can release my games and get paid for it (hopefully enough to survive, since I don’t have anything else going on) – which is new.[/p][p][/p][p]Also, the Yogscast people loved the game and let me use their stuff in it. Which is something I myself can’t still fully believe.[/p][p][/p][p]Here it is:[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]If you already own Elsewhere, you should be able to grab a Steam key from Humble if you go to the link that was sent to you when you purchased the game. If you can’t figure it out email me ([/p][p][email protected][/p][p]) and I’ll get you the key.[/p][p][/p][p]A positive review will go a long way. This is a decade worth of work and I’m terrified to set it loose onto a largely unsuspecting audience and just see what happens. First impression is very important and I would very appreciate if you take a minute to write something.[/p][p][/p][p]Please remember though – this is a work in progress, and I’m not trying to one-up or recreate Minecraft (or Yogventures for that matter). Much like with Hearthlands this is something I always wanted to play, so I had to make it myself.[/p][p] [/p][p]The second game is called YogLabs: Testing Initiative. It’s a free game based on the old-school Yoglabs series. It’s a standalone puzzle/adventure game made in Elsewhere.[/p][p][/p][p]It’s gonna have at least two episodes (the first one is complete; the second one is about 60% done).[/p][p][/p][p]I really liked making these adventures, so ideally, I’m planning release new ones from time to time (considering Elsewhere is successful enough to let me do this).[/p][p][/p][p]YogLabs is voiced by Lewis, Boba, and Duncan, to whom I’m very grateful.[/p][p][/p][p]Here it is:[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]I know how fans can be highly critical of other fan’s work, so just keep in mind that we all see the things we love from a different perspective and this one is mine. I’m not forcing it on anybody, it’s free, and the Yogs themselves loved it, even though it’s very different from what they’re doing in Yoglabs 2.[/p][p][/p][p]I’m also releasing my music collection (around October 30th), which combines higher quality tracks from Hearthlands with 20 years’ worth of music from my other games. It comes with a little career retrospective in a pdf.[/p][p][/p][p]I don’t expect it go platinum:) It was something I did while I was waiting on other things and it was very fun for me to remember and re-record this stuff. Hope you’ll find it interesting too.[/p][p] [/p][p]Here it is:[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]That’s it for now.[/p][p][/p][p]There are many other things that are in the works from ideas to demos, to 90% completed games that I’m not gonna talk about, because I’m too superstitious:)[/p][p][/p][p]Hopefully there’s gonna be more stuff to share with you soon.[/p][p] [/p][p]This is my dream that you helped me live, I'm infinitely grateful for it, and I’m not giving up.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you all and take care,[/p][p]Sergio[/p]

Hearthlands Status Update

I had big plans for this year (2022).

First of all the plan was to do some promotions for Hearthlands to see if there's still interest for the game. If there was I would consider making an update or even a DLC. This would require new assets, which isn't cheap, so I wanted to make sure this was worth the investment.

Hearthlands has been quite popular, which I'm very thankful for, but I feel it was missed by many people due to a total lack of marketing (which isn't something I'm good at or really interested in). So I was planning to get into that kind of stuff this year.

Another plan was to implement sound effects for Elsewhere. This is a long and tedious job, since I estimate the game needs about 600 sound effects. Every sound effect needs to be found, purchased, processed, adjusted, added to the game and tested. I wanted to finally give Elsewhere a wider release and sound effects were an absolute must.

As I was in the middle of both, the bad things happened. I don't want to talk about the bad things, they've been talked about enough, just gonna say that at first they put my ability to do what I love in jeopardy and now my very freedom is in danger too. At the moment I'm still able to accept payments, but this may change overnight. As with my freedom - I just have to see what happens.

The thing with promotions is simply not possible at the moment, so it has to be postponed.

As staying focused and productive became difficult, a few months ago I decided to take a break from implementing countless sound effects and do something new instead. Hopefully that will be released before the end of the year. A silver lining I guess.

Sound effects will hopefully be finished by the end of the year too (if of course I'm able to keep working). Though I decided not to wait until they are all done and polished, and release an intermediate update with about half of them implemented. Version 0.2.2 is available now and includes almost all mob and machine sounds plus a bunch of others (roughly half of total) as well as some fixes and improvements. More info on the website: https://elsewheregame.net

I didn't do or say anything public since late February, basically hoping it all just going to end soon and I will pretend to myself that nothing happened, so I'm sorry for the silence. Nothing is dead or abandoned, just didn't work out quite as planned.

This has been a wild ride.

In other news, last year Hearthlands was part of the Jingle Jam by the Yogscast, who I've been a big fan of since the good old SOI days. Check out the VOD here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKbc7h518n8

A couple of months ago one of my favourite city-builder youtubers GamerZakh made a video about Hearthlands! He compares the game to the unreleased Medieval Mayor which was supposed to be the next game in the Caesar/Pharaoh/Zeus/Emperor series. Can confirm that Hearthlands was inspired by the lack of a game like that. Had to do everything myself:) Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8uKNKwPN8A

I haven't watched either of the videos, since it would be too nerve racking for me, so I hope they're saying good things about the game.

Let's hope it's just good news from now on.

Thank you for your support!

Stay safe,
Sergio

What's new in 1.3.0

First of all you may have noticed that the game got de-listed on Steam for a couple of weeks.
There was a copyright strike against me, but luckily the issue now got resolved and I have papers to prove that I do indeed own the game I made.

This is a technical update:

- Added Italian language (made by Andrea Di Stefano).
- Fixed issues with special characted not displaying correctly.
- Improved 4K support: at first (clean) launch the game will start at full screen and adjust UI size automatically based on screen resolution. "Big screen" option now goes higher (so you can manually set UI to be bigger than before).
- You can now zoom in closer and zoom out farther.

Please let me know if something's broken ([email protected])!

Thank you for your support!

Hearthlands Status Update

My fellow Hearthlanders,

Hope you’re all in good health.

It’s evident that with a full-time job, personal responsibilities, a time-consuming project and a finished game (plus my poor time-management skills) it is hard for me to keep up with everything as fully as it deserves to be kept up with.

I apologize for that and I thank you for being here and reading this.

Please feel free to join my Discord, where I’ll try my best at answering questions and discussing things.

I keep it on most of the day, since I’m also using it for work, but may not be able to answer everything right away.

Let me know if I’m missing something important.

Frequently asked question: Is the game still being developed?

The game is complete with a full campaign mode as well as a sandbox mode. It has four factions, randomized and customizable maps, in total - at least tens of hours of gameplay.

I know that these days it is customary to keep adding content to a 10 year old game, but I don't think it adds that much value to something that is already good. While working on the game I realized that adding stuff doesn't necessarily make experience better, but it makes things more complicated. People often do that because it increases profits, but I would rather do something new. The game is made by the team of one, and I just don't have enough resources to keep putting in the same level of effort as I had 7 years ago.

I keep making minor updates from time to time, and I see that there's still interest for a DLC, so maybe I'll be able to do that as some point.

There will be an update soon: Italian language + some minor things. I'll be uploading it to GOG and Humble too.

Another problem with adding new content is that I don't have an artist. Original artist has not done anything since soon after the release (though I kept making payments). Some bad stuff had also been done in the past. I don't feel like going into detail here, let me just say that it's a miracle that the game got made in the first place. Never do business with your friends.

Having said that, I want to say that it has been an amazing experience, and I'm forever grateful to the community for letting it happen. It's great to know that all the effort and hard work (from me and everyone who helped and keeps helping) means something. I'm very proud with how the game turned out - the game I wanted (and tried to) make since the age of 7.

Thank you and stay safe.
Sergio

What's new in 1.2.2



This is another technical update:

- Window can be minimized by pressing F11
- Option for fullscreen window to be automatically minimized if focus is lost
- Option for locking mouse cursor to the screen (in fullscreen mode with multiple monitors)
- Fixed mouse scrolling on MacOS
- Upgraded to LWJGL 3.2.3

Please let me know if something's broken ([email protected])!

In other news, Elsewhere 0.1.3 is coming soon. Here's a little teaser:



Thank you for your support!