Odd Realm News

Hey Oddities!

I have uploaded the 0.10.0.8 patch. There are quite a few changes in it, and I'd love for you to give it a go. Now, because I changed a lot of uniform and room data under-the-hood, this *MIGHT* mess up your old saves. I've tried to make it backwards compatible, but the chances of weird behaviors will be higher for old saves on this version. If you do see weird things, before reporting them, try reproducing them on a new save. If it still happens, then let me know!

Ok, the main focus for this patch was room management and production, but I added some new content, overhauled a lot of UI (especially with uniforms), and put in a ton of fixes for bugs. I also did a pass on all the room art because I didn't feel like it had enough character:




Rooms in the game are complicated. There's a lot to take in and do with them. Even if you know what everything does, the UI is super cluttered and hard to read. Initially, I thought it would be best to have everything on one window so you didn't have to manage multiple screens. Trying to fit all the production stuff into the Room Edit window made everything a huge mess. I decided to split them up into two windows (just like the old days!) where one window manages room production, and, the other, room occupants and items. This gives me way more space to present things.

You'll notice that each room 'Function' has its own button in the toolbar now. Whereas, before, I had some functions combined into a super room. This was creating a lot of confusion between what a 'Room Template' and 'Room Function' was. I've decided to remove the option to add functions to rooms. The added control wasn't worth how complicated it made things. Now, rooms are just rooms and each provides unique jobs and functionality.

Additionally, rooms no longer need a set of props to function. Instead, some blueprints will require a specific prop in order to be started. For example, you'll need a Workbench to build certain tools in the Wood Mill. The job will say what type of prop it needs and will list candidates you should build. This has the added visual bonus where settlers will go to those props and work. So, you'll see them cooking at a fire, or smelting at a furnace.



Now, no matter what I do, the production stuff is going to be complicated. I give players a lot of ways to set them up, and the range of options makes it seem super overwhelming. I'm going to keep improving this stuff based on feedback, as well as create a tutorial to help communicate what it is you should do.

There are a ton of new options for setting up an auto-job and how they are queued. There are now six threshold types to choose from:

• Manual - You queue jobs manually.
  
• Items In Room - The threshold looks at the count of items in the room.
  
• Items In World - The threshold looks at the count of items in the world.
  
• Jobs In Room - The threshold looks at the count of jobs in the room.
  
• Jobs In World - The threshold looks at the count of jobs in the world.
  
• Entities In World - The threshold looks at the count of entities of a race in the world.
  

You can also change the threshold condition to any of the following:

• Equal To
  
• Not Equal To
  
• Less Than
  
• Greater Than
  

Some examples of combining the above are:


If Carrot Seeds in world are greater than 0, queue 1 job.


if Harvest Standing Crop jobs in room are less than 1, queue 1 job.

You can also edit the job priority which will set the priority for the jobs that are added to the world as well as determine which auto-jobs are assessed first.



You can still edit the owner groups and room item specifications. This hasn't changed all that much. I've made it so rooms look for skills instead of professions when trying to auto-add occupants. You can still set up professions as the restriction, but skills as the default make the rooms much easier to set up.



You can now equip/unequip items from any of the equipment displays found in the entity tooltip, entity window, and uniform window. Clicking on any slot will bring up the game's inventory window where you can drag items from there onto slots. Slots now highlight and provide more feedback for what can be equipped and where. Dragging items onto a slot that's affected by multiple uniforms will also bring up a popup that asks which uniform to change.

The uniform window has been cleaned up and I've removed one of the unnecessary panels. You should be able to easily created and edit control group, profession, and individual entity uniforms from here.

Oh! I've added a 'back' slot for bags. These increase carry skills, and I plan to add things like cloaks/capes, and other 'back' type items in the future.



There are many other additions, so let's just go through the notes!

-Fixed a bug where entities couldn't be attack targeted.
-Added a greyscale to overlays to help distinguish job placement permission.
-Fixed a bug where storage carry jobs that were automatically created were being set on items that were falling.
-Fixed a bug where carry auto-jobs for storage rooms might not get created.
-Fixed a bug where bandit warnings weren't showing up in the overworld map screen.
-Fixed a bug where selecting an entity from a UI window such as the settlers overlay wasn't unlocking the entity tooltip info and buttons.
-Rooms no longer need props to function. Instead, blueprints may require a prop to be started. i.e., Pumpkin Pie now requires an 'oven' prop.
-Each playable race now has a unique research tree. i.e., The Ancient research tree unlocks the Immortality Tomb room, and Aeternum blueprints, while the Human research tree unlocks the Human Home room.
-Changed the "carpenter's table" name to "workbench".
-Added stone stove and stone oven props.
-Created a new screen for room production.
-You can now enter a value for selling and buying items using the input popup. This can be done by clicking the amount.
-Fixed a bug where the hold position order wouldn't work after issuing a move command.
-Fixed a bug where some toggles were not disabling correctly.
-Fixed a bug where 'Feeding Buff' was displayed instead of 'Survival Buff'.
-Fixed a bug where leather working buffs weren't being applied correctly.
-Fixed a bug where entities weren't unequipping items that were no longer part of a uniform.
-Added a back slot to equip bags, capes, cloaks, etc to.
-Confirmation popup now listens for enter input to confirm in addition to clicking the confirm button.
-Fixed a bug where buffs weren't being removed correctly when items were unequipped.
-Fixed a bug where entities wouldn't hold their current position if an entity was already given a move command before.
-Most rooms now require skills instead of professions to become an owner. i.e., needing the harvest or planting skill instead of the farmer profession to occupy the farm room.
-Added wood, stone, bronze, iron, steel, and rutile tongs, sewing needles, carving knife, and chisels which are used by Masons, Tailors, Leatherworkers, and Blacksmiths.
-Added a Masonry Shop where stone-based items and materials can be produced.
-Added cloth backpack, stoneleaf bag, and leather backpack items to equip to the back slot.
-Polished the uniforms screen to fit on one panel and be easier to understand.
-Players can now edit entity uniforms from the entity tooltip and entity overlay in addition to the uniforms screen. Items can be dragged onto any of those slots from the inventory popup. Slots will now highlight to show if an item can be equipped when the player hovers over an item. Additionally, already equipped items will display a stat comparison to show their current stats, and the stat change if the item were equipped.
-Added a popup window for when players drag items onto slots that are affected by multiple uniform sets. This lets players select which uniforms will get the change.
-Fixed some incorrect icons for saplings.
-Fixed a bug where trees would leave behind an obstruction after being logged.
-Added more tree prefab variations.
-Re-enabled settlement building generation for when players settle the same tile as a previous settlement.
-Fixed a bug where logging the centre of a tree could sometimes cause it to float in mid-air.
-Re-added selection area to tooltips for placing jobs and rooms. i.e., 3x5x6
-Added priority option to auto-jobs.
-Fixed a bug where doors couldn't be locked.
-Fixed a bug where settlers wouldn't be allowed to be a room owner if they had all their skills disabled.
-Fixed a bug where entities were spawning items if they weren't player controlled. i.e., Cows spawning milk.
-Improved the chances of taming captured animals.
-Did an art pass on all room icons.
-Cleaned up and re-organized all the UI elements to have a more uniform look and feel, especially the HUD.
-Add search input to several lists. You can now hover over certain lists to 'focus' them. i.e., hovering over the inventory panel to apply searches to that popup.


For the next patch, I'll continue to improve quality of life stuff, and polish UI, but I will mostly focus on optimization. Mainly, I want to reduce how much RAM is used by world load, improve performance of some UI elements, and reduce the save time lag. After that, I'm also going to update the tutorial and re-enable it. I think this next patch will be the last one (not including small hotfix patches) before I can finally put beta out as the main production build. Hurray!

Thank you all for the support and feedback! Hope you have a good holidays and/or end of the year!

Waylon

Hello!

This patch is a few days later than I wanted, so apologies for that!

Lots of fixes here but I also spent a few days working on the game's notifications. A bunch of them were not firing properly, and I also wanted to spruce up the notification settings. You'll no longer find the notification settings within the notification panel. Instead you'll find them through the main settings menu. I think a lot of people were totally unaware that there were notification settings at all, so having them at this location with other settings options should help with that. Also, I've added the ability to tune which factions *and* which races have notification settings. This is nice for when you don't want, say, the death notification for Void Woken. By default, only the main races will fire off notifications, but you can enable them for everyone. This saves to your player profile, so you shouldn't have to set this each game or anything.



On another note, I've decided to make the world depth 32 by default instead of 64 until I can optimize things. The 64 depth worlds are just too slow now that the maps can get up to 256x256. I'll need to put in a lot of work to make them work well, and I don't have the bandwidth right now. And, honestly, you're not really getting that much more out of the game from 32 extra layers. I'm sure most would prefer bigger (256x256) maps over that added dirt. The terrain should generate like normal, but if you see something off, let me know. Now, I'm not scrapping 64 depth for good. I will do my best to make the 64 depth work in the future, but I will likely need to put it on the backburner for a bit. Oh, and those that have 64 depth saves, should still be able to play those. You just won't be able to create new 64 depth worlds.

As you'll see in the notes, I've enabled animal migrations again. I'm sure this is going to have some interesting bugs because wild animals have some new behaviours. Namely, they will hunt animals they consider prey. The Vytrax, for example, consider everything prey. This doesn't mean they'll attack you right away, but they do have a chance to become aggressive. Also, you'll probably see animals hunting your animals, so keep that in mind. For example, cats hunting rats. You should be able to catch wild animals using cages. I've added notifications to help communicate when they are captured and tamed.

Enough talk, here are the notes:

-Fixed a bug where default hotkeys were being disabled on load if a custom hotkey was added as a second hotkey.
-Fixed some bugs with incorrect notifications and notification duplicates.
-Fixed a bug where settlers could get stuck in a pick up item loop when organizing room items.
-Removed the bedrock blueprint from the build menu.
-Optimized a performance issue with tooltips.
-Fixed a flicker bug with tooltips.
-Holding Left Shift will again add/remove entities to the current group of selected entities.
-Fixed a bug where placing a room would deselect the template if the room wasn't actually placed.
-Fixed a misaligned text element for the error popup.
-Fixed a bug where you couldn't use Left Control + Right Mouse to select a room from the overlay
-Fixed a bug where mouse selections couldn't be made when using the search panel.
-Raised the max temp of plants to 95 so they don't die en masse during summer.
-Enabled a couple more events that were temporarily disabled.
-Enabled migrant animals again. Plus added in all the overworld map info to display what kinds of animals a tile will have in the area.
-Fixed some issues where notifications weren't playing anymore. (i.e, Low on food, low on beverages, entity born, etc.)
-Added some new notifications for: entity captured, and entity tame failed/succeeded.
-Fixed a bug where notifications would appear for scenarios that didn't activate.
-Fixed a bug where scenario entities arriving at the border weren't spawning if you were surrounded by water.
-Neutral animals will occasionally try to kill prey. This only applies to animals that actually have prey. i.e., Vytrax, owls, snoots, etc.
-Fixed a bug where flying entities weren't calculating paths properly.
-The equip item priority has been increased to ensure entities equip items before starting the next job.
-Fixed a bug where toggles would get stuck if another hotkey using the same key was activated.
-Fixed a save/load bug related to jobs.
-Separated Harvest into two jobs: Harvest Ground Cover and Harvest Plants. This also fixes an issue where auto-jobs were harvesting planted crops when you just wanted the grass harvested.
-Fixed a bug where trees could be harvested.
-Room auto-jobs will now be managed by the room and idle entities. This means jobs will queue and get created regardless of an entity being idle. This should also fix an issue where room jobs just weren't being created because the respective entities were always busy.
-Fixed a bug where drink/eat audio wasn't playing.
-Jobs will now show a description when hovering over the toggle button in the toolbar menu.
-Fixed a bug where entities wouldn't stay at a point to fully heat up their body temperatures.
-Fixed a bug where ambient audio would continue to play after exiting a game.
-Fixed a bug where the main menu music wouldn't stop after selecting a file to load.
-Fixed a bug where Void Imps wouldn't eat or drink because they didn't have a diet set up.
-Fixed a bug where settlers were dropping several items on one block that wasn't able to hold them all. This would result in the items spawning around the target drop point, requiring them to pick up and carry the items again.
-Fixed a bug where entities would create eat/drink jobs for the same item. This would cause several entities to go for the same item.
-Fixed a bug where room points weren't being removed from a room if the block no longer permitted rooms.
-Fixed a bug where an item could get stuck falling on top of another item. This bug would cause sfx to play forever. The most common example being the sound of Ren falling.
-Fixed a bug where, if a room's storage settings were changed so current items were no longer permitted, settlers would try to put the items just outside the room rather than look for a better candidate in the same room or another room.
-Fixed a bug where settlers were eating/drinking more items than they needed.
-Fixed a bug where the state color of a job would flicker.
-Fixed a bug where job textures weren't transitioning correctly.
-Fixed a bug where unreachable jobs weren't immediately updating their state once a neighbor obstruction was removed.
-Fixed a typo that caused the Swords of Love and Hate to have missing icons.
-Fixed a bug where jobs could be seen through the ground.
-Fixed a bug where newly added research blueprints wouldn't be unlockable if the player had already unlocked the relative research node.
-Added the Wood Hammer blueprint and item.

I've received a TON of constructive feedback related to the auto-jobs and room edit UI. There's a lot of great polish stuff that I will be working on, but the main thing I want to address is how auto-jobs are nested within the room UI. This makes it really difficult to quickly queue up jobs and, because of the small UI space available, it's hard to read. I'm going to create a separate window for room based jobs. This is pretty much the workshops UI we had in the past. I feel silly coming full circle with this, but oh well. Anyway, from this screen you'll see all the available blueprints you can make, plus which rooms they are assigned to, and you'll be able to filter and (SHIFT) search each blueprint easily. It should greatly improve the experience. I've really floundered with this room stuff, so thank you all for your patience and incredible feedback.

Thanks to everyone supporting the game's development and helping with beta testing.

Waylon

Happy Friday everyone!


I've just finished uploading the 0.10.0.6 patch. There are a lot of fixes in this patch. As well, I spent some time working on improving the hotkey options/settings. I've added a few features to it and it should be much clearer to use. You can now assign hotkeys to the mouse, add modifiers (shift, ctrl, alt, etc.) to any keyboard key, and add up to 3 hotkeys to an action. Scroll input now has the option to be inverted and I've removed the scroll options from generic settings because you should be able to do this through hotkeys. The only thing I couldn't get working was modifier keys for the mouse. This sounds trivial and certainly isn't impossible to add, but it will require some more work, and I'm going to have to put that on the backburner for now. I don't think modifier keys for the mouse are terribly important, but it would be nice to have later. As well, I've removed editing the ESC backout action because it's too easy to mess this up and lock yourself in UI. Lastly, I've added some hotkey options for various things like the temperature overlay, but there are a few I still need to add. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like a hotkey for. Happy to add it if it's not absurd. :P

Oh, I've also re-enabled some events. These are just some bandit and tomb events for now. I'll continue re-enabling events as we go, but I wanted to start out with these to test the new scenario systems. I added some UI to the overworld map to indicate tiles where bandits and dangerous wild animals have been reported. If you want to avoid bandits and dangerous wild animals, keep your eyes open for that warning.

I wasn't able to get to all the issues reported for 0.10.0.5. Just know that I see EVERYTHING O.O and will continue to go through the list. I know there are some funky bugs with trees at the moment. I'll look at this for 0.10.0.7.

Ok, here are the notes:

-Fixed a bug where plants could grow underground without light.
-Fixed yet another pathfinding bug which could cause entities to be stuck.
-Fixed a bug where entities could work through platforms.
-Fixed a bug where entities would try and start jobs that are unable to reach.
-Fixed a bug where death notifications would show up twice for the same entity.
-Entities will now stop working on a job if they can start a different job that will save their life.
-Some hostile events have been re-enabled. Additionally, overworld tiles will show a warning for bandits and dangerous wild animals.
-Hostile entities will now try to get to player controller settlers if they aren't in range to fight.
-Fixed a bug where floors could be placed within solid blocks.
-Added a tooltip to the create control group button to show hotkeys.
-Fixed a bug where overworld settlements weren't saving.
-The expiration time for plants has been decreased.
-Tuned cooked food to provide a longer lasting hunger buff.
-Tuned a ton of blueprints to produce 3x what they normally would.
-Fixed a pathing bug which had entities preferring rooftops as paths.
-Increased the spawning distance of trees to spread them out.
-The death notification will now only show statuses that affect HP.
-Fixed a bug where the day on the time menu was showing day in year, rather than day in season when a settlement was loaded.
-Minor performance improvements, specifically related to notification tracking.
-Fixed a bug where certain keys weren't being read when setting hotkeys.
-Added mouse options for hotkeys.
-Hotkeys are now ordered alphabetically based on the hotkey action.
-I've removed 'Back Out' as an option for hotkey re-assignment. This is to avoid situations where you get locked out of the settings menu.
-Fixed a bug where two one-handed items weren't being equipped properly.
-Fixed a bug where population custom limits were not being saved.
-Added action text for pickup/drop/eat/drink jobs.
-Fixed a visual bug where job textures weren't transitioning properly. This was especially apparent when changing the job's priority.
-Fixed a bug where underground jobs weren't rendering.
-Fixed a bug where settlers would continue doing a job that had been set to 0 after they started it.
-Tuned the xp progression to take a bit longer to level up.
-Changes to which overlays are visible by the player should now save. i.e., Disabling the Single Layer Only Selection overlay when designating jobs will not reset when the job menu is re-opened.
-Fixed an issue where settlers would like to choose the roof as an idling point.
-Fixed a bug where settlers always went to the same room points when doing an idle move to a room.
-Fixed a bug where jobs would auto-queue when the threshold type was set to none.
-Fixed a bug where hostile entities would become companions with player controller entities.

The beta is getting closer and closer to being 'stable' and I'm slowly moving off just bug fixing to re-enabling events, tuning, and polishing UI. There are still some peculiar issues here and there, and I really couldn't find them without all the testing you guys have been doing, so, thank you!

W

Happy Friday!

Oook. Lots in this one. Here are the notes:

-Fixed a few UI related errors happening under the hood. This would keep some windows from closing or working properly.
-The single layer overlay now slightly darkens layers not on the same layer as the camera rather than make them totally black.
-Fixed a bug where notifications weren't appearing for things like hunger, thirst, void sickness, drowning.
-Vertical paths and several other overlays no longer start activated when opening jobs, rooms, and other toolbar menus.
-Block surfaces will now no longer be obstructed by the single layer overlay.
-Room function auto-jobs now start with 'Items In World' by default. They also use the produced item as the default selected item, and start with a Threshold and Queue Set count of 1. This is to ensure players have to do as little as possible to get auto-jobs going.
-Fixed a bug where the auto-job threshold amount for Items In World was using Active Jobs.
-Added auto-job threshold type, 'Items In Room'.
-Fixed a bug where item selections in the stockpile weren't showing up if no categories were selected.
-Removed a loading screen tip about zones. It now explains how to use the Storage room to organize items.
-Fixed a bug where room functions could show incorrect requirements.
-Fixed a bug where the library was producing the wrong tomes.
-Fixed a bug where the weather starts off at 0.
-Hold ALT will now toggle the single layer select, rather then enable on press, and disable on release.
-Plant mature times have been halved.
-Reproduction times for plants have been increased.
-Void Woken energy consumption has been tuned to decrease at a faster rate.
-Fixed a bug where progress cracks were appearing above blocks.
-Fixed a visual bug where the research window updated a frame late.
-Fixed a save/load bug related to holding position.
-Fixed a bug where players couldn't force their settlers to attack allies. This would make it impossible to butcher livestock.
-Fixed a pathing bug for entities in combat.
-The harvest and log auto-jobs are now toggled on by default for the Farm and Arboretum room functions. They also default to look at the active jobs in the room to auto-queue jobs.
-Added blueprints for butchering all entity remains from the Kitchen room function. These unlock at Complex Meals I.
-Fixed a bug where non-animals were being put into the animal owner group.
-Fixed a pathing bug where entities could think some items were in the same pathing room as them. This would appear as them wanting to go pick up items or start jobs in areas they can't reach.
-Fixed a bug where settlers could get stuck in trees.
-Fixed a bug where settlers could get stuck mating.
-Improved some performance related to entity tooltips.
-Carried items now show as stacks, rather than individually.
-Fixed a bug where entities weren't dropping unneeded inventory items.
-Tuned the hunger/drink thresholds from 10% to 25%. This means entities should go get food or something to drink once the relative attribute drops below 25%.
-Tuned mating to have a smaller chance of making an entity pregnant.
-Fixed a bug where plants weren't spawning naturally.

Thanks everyone, and special thanks to the beta testers!

W

Hey there,

Here are the notes for some fixes I just uploaded. A couple save/load issues fixed in here.

-Fixed a bug where the main menu screen would still be visible after loading into a previous save.
-Fixed a bug where settlers were not doing their idle movements.
-Fixed a bug where the error popup window was not centered. >:|
-Fixed a bug where settlers could walk around after dying.
-Fixed a bug where the game could crash on save after issuing a move order.
-Fixed a bug where the season index wasn't being saved. This could cause some longer term season issues.
-Added top bar statuses for drowning and void sickness.
-Fixed a bug where workers could get stuck trying to path to a missing work point. This would appear as them standing around trying to get to a started job.
-Fixed a save/load bug related to entity diets.
-Added stone anvil prop.
-Fixed a bug where entities could get stuck equipping items.
-Fixed a bug where animals could have professions.
-Fixed a bug where the choose profession pop up closed when confirming a selection.

Thanks!

W