HammerHelm News

Today's update includes the new zombie model! The zombie replaces the ghost in all cases except the Necromancer battle. The quest involving the Restless Spirit will also still use the ghost model for the Spirit, but the quest now involves the zombies rather than other ghosts.

This build also includes some small optimizations that I've been meaning to finish.

Making some good progress on the new combat prototype as well. Looking forward to making a test map so all of you can try it out!

Also working on the new structure building system with the animated building parts during construction - this is very time consuming as I have to redo every building so I'm doing it in the bacjground while I work on other things. I might improve the building system as part of it too. I like how it looks overall. And of course, gotta add the ability to pet Nika - very high priority! ;)

Tonight's build includes a fix for one of the two bigger bugs that I am tracking. Weapons that are imbued with a gem would fail to save correctly, resulting in losing the weapon upon loading the game.

The other bug I am still tracking involves farmers, herbalists, and alchemists sometimes pathing outside of town. Like WAY outside. They all use the same part of the pathing code, but I haven't been able to reproduce the bug yet.

This build also fixes a couple of other bugs:

• The Orc Boss' weapons will no longer be occluded by the optimization system.
  
• Nika the Dog will now correctly play her sit-idle animation when you are near her.

And speaking of Nika, the petting animation is done! I'll add the ability to pet her soon. ːsteamhappyː



Now that things are starting to settle down a bit, aside from bug fixing, I really want to get re-started on the new combat system!

A quick update to show the new zombie model! Also an appropriate update because right now I feel like a zombie. Just finished a 10 hour drive as part of the move I mentioned in a previous update. Another one tomorrow!



I was planning on working on some big fixes tonight once I got to the hotel, but it's probably a really bad idea to make a build and then go afk for a full day. Plus the internet is so slow here I'd probably have to check out before the build uploaded. :)

I do plan on creating a new build in a day or two however as there are a few bugs that I really want to track down and fix asap.

Thank you everyone for your support and patience. We will resume the usual pace of updates soon!

Quick build to fix an issue that made the mini-mushrooms in the Shroomin' quest ignore the player. They can now be collected as normal.

(just got back from my brother's wedding and traveling tomorrow so probably won't have an update for a bit longer unless it's something progression blocking)

Today's build includes the NPC collision change I had to revert in Beta 1.4.1. It has been updated to work with all of the special NPCs, such as Shaydee, Grrrumble, and the Orcs. Townspeople will no longer cause your character to move when they collide with you.

A new setting for camera draw distance is also in this build. Lowering this setting can improve performance on low to mid spec PCs. You can see the difference between the three settings in this image:



In the lowest setting you can see the fog layer pretty clearly. It's less noticeable in the middle settings. And not there are all at the high setting. At the low and mid settings, the fog layer is a bit more noticeable in dungeons and caves.

Note the high setting is the default and is also the distance HammerHelm used prior to this update. So you shouldn't notice any difference if you don't mess with the slider.

I've also had some reports of the character getting in a state where attacks always miss against monsters even when in melee and facing the monster. I haven't been able to reproduce it, but I did add some more logging and a change to the way the monsters are accounted for that might fix it. If this bug happens to you after this update, please let me know.

This update includes some other fixes and changes:

• Changed some of the settings for the new water to further reduce it's impact on performance while maintaining the same visual quality.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the confirm button in the rename an NPC UI to fail to work.
  
• Some changes to the tree trunks in the tree falling system to make sure they don't collide with the player or cause the camera to zoom in.