HammerHelm News

Today's build includes a pretty big update to the Orc Quest based on some feedback I received and some tweaks to monster AI.

The Orc Quest has been updates to be less grindy and take less time overall.

• Made the Orc Island about 25% smaller.
  
• Moved the second obsidian cave and skeleton dungeon closer to the Orc town.
  
• Added an area with trees and sandstone closer to the Orc town.
  
• Reduced the resource cost of some Orc buildings.
  
• Removed the first town attack.
  
• Moved the Goblin camps closer to the Orc town.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused footsteps to not play when on the Orc island.

Note, if you have a save, started the quest already, and you are already on the Orc island, that quest will still use the old Orc Quest. Future play-throughs will use the new one.

This build also includes a couple of tweaks to monster AI:

• Monsters now have a chance to attack immediately when they get in range.
  
• Monsters now have a higher chance to attack when reduced to below half health.

Thanks again for the feedback everyone!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Today's update includes an in-game feedback form. To open the form, simply press and hold Left-Ctrl and then press F3. Doing this will automatically take a screenshot and then allow you to type in some information about the issue you are seeing.



The screenshot and form files are saved locally (they each have the same number) and then you can email them to Soedesco and myself!

This update also includes some fixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused Carpenters to fail to start furnishing houses.
  
• When clicking the "About" button in the NPC Conversation UI, the townsperson will correctly state their name.
  
• The close button in the resource portion of the town manager now correctly closes the UI.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the Inventory UI to automatically appear when gathering resources causing the character to get in a stuck state after closing the UI.
  
• Made some adjustments to the occlusion system to reduce shadow popping.

I'm in the process of making some changes to the Orc quest based on some great feedback. Basically going to shorten it and make it more focused so it doesn't take as long to complete. Less grind = more fun! Also likely going to do some quick tweaks to monster AI. They're still not attacking quite in the manner that I want them to.

Thank you again everyone for all of the feedback and support!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Join us on Discord: discord.gg/soedesco

Just released beta 7.8.2 which includes a couple of bug fixes.

• Fixed a bug that caused workers to think they have nothing to do even when they should be building a structure.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the Cursed Trees Quest to not curse the trees after loading a save. This bug was actually a result of the optimizations I made a bit ago as those updates changed the way trees were loaded into the game and the quest for Cursed Trees needed to be updated to account for that when loading a save.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Tonight's update includes three new quests! One repeatable quest and two new story quests. With most of the optimization and other behind the scenes stuff completed, it's been great to be able to get back to creating some new content!

Discover the cause of a recent earthquake!


Explore the mushroom cave and bring back one to light up the town!


Repair a broken shovel to bring a sunflower to one of your townspeople!


In addition, if you complete the Sunflower story quest, you unlock a buildable sunflower garden that can be used to add beauty to your town!


This update also includes some changes and fixes:

• Added the dungeon texts to the localization system.
  
• Replaced the Treant monster in the Hunted Hunter quest with an Earth Elemental. The Treant wasn't animating properly. I might have a new one made at some point.
  
• Turned off a couple of blocking volumes that were visible at the Stonemason building.
  
• Fixed the location of the gold amount in the NPC dialogue.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the character to move faster when sprinting and jumping.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused workers to fail to start chopping trees after loading a save if they were set to do so.

I hope everyone is staying safe and keeping up the social distancing as best you can!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Today's build includes a big optimization to the trees in HammerHelm. The trees in the game are the biggest factor in framerate. I optimized them and changed a bit of the way the occlusion culling (hides trees you can't see so your graphics card doesn't draw them) works to add even more of a boost.

In the below shot, the left is the old trees. About 580 on the island. The right is the new trees, about 690 of them, so more trees, and has about a 25% boost in fps!



I'm feeling pretty good with these recent optimizations. I want to get some more quests in the game and I have one that I am working on now!

Thank you again everyone for your support and feedback!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco