Odd Realm News

Hello friends!

Thanks for waiting a couple weeks for this patch. I received so many bug reports and notes of feedback that I needed to take a bit longer to get this patch completed.

The main points of focus for the patch were entity state issues (starving, drowning, dying of thirst, freezing, etc.) and the room editing window. The state issues should mostly be fixed up, but I'm sure there will still be the odd occurrence of someone getting stuck, or bugging out. It's tough for me to find every little edge case during my own tests. It will get better and better as I address each bug report, so thanks for the patience with that stuff.

And, as for the room edit window, I've optimized it a bunch to not be so laggy. Plus, I've improved the feedback to communicate what players need to get a room working. i.e., if they don't have someone with the right skill in the room, don't have the right props, don't have an owner group assigned to a function, etc. I have a lot more to do on the screen to clean it up, though. I'm not 100% satisfied with how legible things are, and I'll be making tweeks as I go. Plus, I wasn't able to finish the icons for the owner groups and the functions. So, don't mind the placeholder ones I have in there. Will have those done for the next patch. Really, there's a lot I just couldn't get to (such as adding priority to the auto-jobs), but I will keep working away at it.

Those two things were a big chunk of work, but I did manage to get a ton of fixes in for various things, as well as a bunch of tuning in. Here are the notes:

-Cleaned up the room edit window. It has more feedback for issues, plus I added the ability to specify items for auto-jobs. i.e., if roasted carrots < 1, queue up 1 cook roasted carrot job. You can still queue by the number of jobs in the room, which is handy for ensuring there is always x jobs going.
-Fixed a bug where tooltips were not aligning to the mouse when first shown, but would do so a frame later.
-Fixed a bug where owners weren't being removed from owner groups if the owner group was deleted. This would keep entities from joining other owner groups because they think they're still an owner of the room that was deleted.
-Fixed a bug where the entity selection list wouldn't scroll properly.
-Fixed a bug where search input would activate when renaming something.
-Added a visual component to windows that can be dragged. The window position has a reset button beside the close window button.
-The Fiber Sleeping Mat is now unlocked at The Basics rather than Wood-Work in the research tree.
-The Smithy room function now unlocks with Stone-Work in the research tree.
-Added item category to item tooltip.
-Fixed several incorrect icons for various items.
-An error popup will now appear when the game encounters an error while saving, rather than send the player to the front end menu.
-The pregnant status will now show -Clicking an entity's equipment slot from the entity overlay window will now show them as selected when the uniforms window is opened.
-The room edit window will now remember what room you last had selected, so when it re-opens, that room is still selected.
-The room edit window is no longer tied to the room you have selected when the room toolbar is open. This lets you edit room designations for one room, while editing the settings for another simultaneously.
-Fixed a bug where entities would pick up and drop off items on the same spot indefinitely. This was caused by entities wanting to remove prohibited items from a room, while also trying to manage their own inventory to keep it empty.
-Added the associated room function to the job tooltip. This will be visible if a room creates a job. i.e., Storage creating carry jobs would show [Storage] at the bottom of the tooltip.
-Several item lists have been shortened to show items with a count rather than showing every individual item. i.e., showing, '2 Ren,' instead of, 'Ren, Ren.'
-Block tooltips now show if block is an obstacle.
-Fixed a bug where all fish migrated to the bottom of a lake or body of water.
-Fixed a bug where fish would teleport across the map after the game loaded. Yep.
-Fixed a bug where freezing water would play SFX constantly.
-Fixed several issues with settlers not going to get food and water when hungry and thirsty.
-Added numpad enter hotkey for confirming popups.
-Fixed a bug where children were spawning with professions.
-Fixed a bug where settlers without a profession were gaining XP.
-Fixed a bug where heat sources weren't setting their block temperature after being built.
-Gaining the warmed status will now also increase some of the entity's body temperature.
-Fixed a bug where entities weren't sleeping in beds.
-Optimized the entity state machine to improve some performance issues.
-Fixed a bug where entities were holding onto items that they didn't need.
-Fixed a bug where job dependencies were being cleared on game load.
-Fixed a bug where timescale wasn't processing entity state at the correct speed.
-Fixed a pathfinding bug where entities could get stuck in a loop.
-Fixed a bug where the priority buttons weren't showing their active state when a job menu first opened.
-Fixed a bug that caused the entity info window to become stuck open.
-Tuned Ancients to have more starting HP.
-Fixed a bug where a job would not properly clear up because, under the hood, it hit an error while trying to spawn drop off items.
-Fixed a bug where select next and previous (, and . hotkeys) weren't ignoring dead entities.
-Fixed a bug where killed entities weren't being removed from various lists. This would cause bugs like jobs looking like they could be started, even though no living entity with the skill was enabled. This would also show entities in UI lists where they shouldn't be.
-Entities will now immediately eat/drink an item produced by their active job if they are hungry or thirsty.
-Fixed a bug where entities with the no profession were not able to join rooms.
-Entities without a profession will now have the 'unassigned' profession, and players can now specify this in the profession requirements lists for rooms.
-Fixed a bug where if a parent dies, and the living parent finds a new companion, the child wouldn't join the room with them. Teen angst is not welcome here.
-Fixed a bug where entity attributes weren't being displayed correctly in the settler migration party window.
-Fixed a bug where the starting loadout of settlers could have an unbalanced gender ratio causing new settlements to have all of one gender and subsequently not be able to grow the population.
-Fixed some incorrect icons for things like void crystal nodes, wood trunk, wood desiccated trunk.
-Fixed a bug where FX for job related attacks were not being played.
-Fixed a bug where Void Imps, Void Woken, and other unintentional races were writing Tomes.
-Tomes are now written based on the skill used, rather than the profession when an entity levels up. This looks at the last used skills within a set timeframe and picks from that randomly.
-The Transmutation Chamber and Chaos Construct no longer require seats and stools. This is to avoid Ancients being unable to build their rooms without researching at least Wood Work.
-Arcane Dust and Void Crystal blueprints are now unlocked by Thaumaturgy I instead of Thaumaturgy II.
-Fixed a bug where entities would not play the work animation if they were sitting. This would cause them to get stuck in their working state.
-Fixed a bug where kalite blocks weren't being generated for several biomes.

That covers it! I'd like to put out another patch for the end of the week, but we'll see what comes up between now and then. There are quite a few things that are annoying me in the UI and various overlays that I'd like to address. I think we can all agree the overlays need some work. After that, I'm going to focus on re-enabling events and animal migrations. Then, I'll be very close to having the beta ready for the production branch. And THEN it's onto adding the Ardyn race!! Woohoo.

Alright, take care everyone.

W

Hello everyone!

Today's post will be short and sweet to update you on what I'm working on.

Two weeks ago the beta build went live and I've mostly been focused on all the bugs that have been reported. There are... a few. That has been keeping me real busy. Special thanks to everyone that has been helping out with that! All those bug reports are invaluable. There are some nasty issues with the multitude of ways settlers can die. It's mostly a tuning issue, but I am addressing the lack of feedback as well as some strange cases where settlers just ignore important, life saving items. The entity state machine is pretty complicated, so there's no one panacea for this type of issue. It simply comes down to finding edge cases and tuning various stats. We'll get there!

Aside from major bugs, I've reserved some time to work on the room edit screen. This screen is one of the most important in the game, so I want to polish it quite a bit. I've spent some time cleaning up the overall look, improving performance, and have also added lots of feedback for why things may not be working. As well, there are some features I've added based on requests from the community. For example, I've made it so players can specify exact items as well as item categories for storing items using the storage room function. Plus, players can now auto-queue room jobs based on the number of items the settlement has. i.e., queueing up bread baking jobs when bread falls below 5. That sort of thing.

I wanted to have that stuff ready in a patch today, but couldn't line it up. Will have it out next week for sure!

Thanks again to all those playing the beta and finding bugs!

Best

W

0.10.0.2 has been uploaded!

Here are the patch notes:

-Tuned food and water items to give a larger instant refill.
-Optimized some UI elements to help reduce drops in FPS.
-Fixed a bug where settlers would not do life saving jobs. i.e., not build a torch when needing to warm up.
-Fixed a bug where job progress was being reset to 0 when an entity walked through it.
-Fixed a bug where plants weren't saving if an item was spawned on the same tile.
-Tuned plants to reproduce naturally at a slower rate.
-Fixed a bug where settlers couldn't find a heat source if it was too far away.
-Added the Warmed status for entities that have warmed up at a heat source. This reduces the cold tolerance for a brief period.
-Added the Wounded status which lowers entity energy at a faster rate. The intention is to have them sleep earlier to heal missing HP. Once HP is full, the wounded status goes away.
-Fixed a bug where entities with buffed HP max would not receive an amount increase as well. This would result in a settler with 50/150 HP when starting with the Big Boned status as an example.
-Added color transition to HP display which goes from green to orange to red as the entity loses HP.
-Entities should no longer have a hungry, thirsty, drowning, status if the respective change over time stat is > 0.
-Fixed a bug where events were not delaying properly. This would result in the same scenarios playing several times per day.
-Fixed a null reference bug which could happen if an entity was unable to find an attack for a target.
-Fixed a bug where entities would get stuck in a loop where they'd pick up and drop off items forever.
-Fixed a bug where entities would never drop items from their inventory.
-Fixed a bug where rooms weren't being selected properly and, if the room toolbar was open, the room edit window wouldn't work.
-Changed the visual icon for the empty room to not be the bedroom icon.
-Fixed a bug where deselect all and select all were swapped.
-Tuned coal to be more common.
-The torch blueprint now requires plant fiber instead of a wood log.
-Room toggles in the toolbar no longer show up as locked when you haven't researched functions they use. Instead, they display a red warning icon.
-Fixed a bug where underground tiles weren't rendering properly.
-Tuned unlit interiors to be slightly brighter.
-Fixed a bug where the sprite could be cleared for a block by placing the same block type blueprint on top.
-Fixed a bug where settlers couldn't path properly in water.
-Fixed a bug where plants, especially tree leaves, weren't saving properly after the tree is logged. So, on reload, they would re-appear.
-Fixed a bug where settlers were climbing through dirt at a vertically diagonal.
-Fixed a bug where action text was not showing up for fish being damaged.
-Fixed a bug where items could be equipped in any slot.
-Fixed a bug where plants looked mature when they weren't yet.
-Fixed a bug where trees were being removed if the leaves were destroyed.
-Fixed a bug where saplings weren't turning into mature trees.
-Fixed a bug where a save file wasn't loading an item correctly and could cause the game to hang at the loading screen.
-Fixed a bug where the 'Place New Room' hotkey wasn't working. (Left Ctrl + Left Mouse Click)
-Fixed a bug where rooms of the same type weren't showing as separated on the overlay.
-Fixed a bug that could occur when deleting rooms.
-Fixed a bug where the selected border for rooms wasn't updating after the room toolbar was closed. This would result in the room having the selected border when the menu was re-opened.
-The stone dais now unlocks with the Summoner I research node.
-Humans no longer start with a Tome of Arcana, and get 2 Tomes of Industry instead.
-Ancients no longer start with a Tome of Agriculture, and get 2 Tomes of Arcana instead.
-Fixed a bug where room auto jobs weren't being created if owners had other jobs already assigned to them.
-Fixed a bug where some jobs couldn't be started if they didn't have a path, but a neighbor did.
-Added harvest auto job to arboretum options so foresters can keep grass cleared.

Thanks again to everyone helping report bugs!

W

Hey everyone! Thank you for testing and reporting issues for the buggy beta build. It means a lot. I've just uploaded a new version with some fixes for various things.

I'm still figuring out an issue with pathfinding which makes it so entities always think they're in combat with underground enemies. I've temporarily disabled the underground tomb discovery to avoid this while I fix the real problem.

Before I list the patch notes, let me explain the next steps for beta. My main priority is fixing serious game breaking issues. There are a few but we'll get there. Plus, I want to fix a lag issue that's coming from the UI. The FPS drop some of you are seeing is from this. I'll need to optimize a few windows to improve frames. Once those bigger issues are somewhat out of the way, I'll focus on tuning/balancing, adding in disabled scenarios, and changing/fixing things that are annoying based on feedback. I know there's a progression issue with how Ancients unlock summoning. That stuff will come in slowly as we go. I'll try to put out another patch this Friday.

Anyway, here are the notes:

Fixed an issue where the mod files in StreamingAssets weren't being loaded correctly.
Changed Sacaton Grass to grow in Desert winter instead of summer.
Reduced the load times for generating a map.
Fixed an issue where the settler permission screen only showed a list of Darby's.
Fixed a memory leak that occurs when starting new game sessions repeatedly.
Fixed an issue where placing rooms over other rooms could cause the UI to break.
Fixed swapped labels on the slow and speed up buttons.
Reduced the spawn chances for tomes when entities level up.
Fixed an issue where snow was destroying props.
Fixed a bug where you could give yourself Ren in the custom loadout.
Fixed a bug where entities weren't sleeping.
Fixed a bug where the game wouldn't load if entities were in a combat state.
Fixed a bug where rain ambient audio was playing while it snowed.
Fixed a bug where the ren icon was missing.
Fixed an issue where auto jobs weren't being set if entites were carrying the required materials.
Tuned Void Woken and Ancients to lose energy at a slower rate.
Fixed a bug where the toolbar would not select items when using the search function.
Fixed a bug where temperature wasn't being regulated.
Fixed a bug where entities wouldn't leave work or mating states when needing food, water, oxygen, or warmth.
Tuned all entities to have higher starting health. This is to keep entities from dying so fast when they are hungry, thirsty, freezing, etc.
Fixed an issue where settlers could get stuck on a corner block.
Fixed a bug where platforms weren't saving properly and players would be sent to the main menu.
Added credits screen from main menu.

Thanks!

W

Hello, dear testers.

I've uploaded Windows, OSX, and Linux 0.10.0.0 versions of the game to the beta branch.



Ok, so, this beta version is coming out in a very unstable state. I wanted to get this out there to get help finding bugs. Please, please don't play it if you're not looking to help report bugs. It's not going to be much fun until I can put out a few patches. I still have a huge amount of polish to put into the game to get 0.10.0.0 ready for production. Over the next few weeks I will be periodically uploading patches to the beta branch to fix things.

Also, currently, the world is using way more RAM than it should and isn't properly unloading it in between world loads. Depending on how beefy your machine is, the game might crash as it's trying to load into a tile. I am working on this and I apologize for the huge memory footprint. If you are having issues, try playing smaller map sizes until I can fix this. You can do this from the new game screen. Try lowering the depth before the width and height because that will lower the RAM usage, but still give you quite a bit of x and y space to work with.

I'm in the process of re-tuning a lot of things and, because of this, I've disabled the majority of scenarios. Don't worry, I haven't deleted them, they're just going to get incrementally added back in as I tune things. I want to improve how players are challenged and scenarios (i.e., bandit raids and events) are a big part of this. You should still see the settler wave, ancient immortality tombs, and merchant scenarios. But probably nothing else. This includes animal migrations! I'll be adding them back in this next week, don't worry. Additionally, underground discoveries are a bit different. Before, I generated everything when the game loaded. Now, I add underground discoveries as you play dynamically. So, there might be situations where they just appear. That's the scenario manager dishing out scenarios over-time. This is now dynamic to be more balanced and to have a bit more flexibility with the types of scenarios you encounter. For example, do you really, really need another ancient? Well, now, I can generate that discovery. That's the idea at least.

Oh, you'll notice all the trees in the game are the same. That's totally normal. I wrote a prefab generation system that looks at previously authored models and generates them. Right now, the game is using a plane-jane tree model. I'll be adding in a bunch of other models over the next couple weeks.

There is also no tutorial for the game. I have to re-work the old one, so you'll just have to go in dark. I'm sorry!

Regarding progression, players will notice that there's a new research tree in the Saga screen. This lets you unlock blueprints and room functions by using Tomes. Tomes are a physical item that you get through several methods: sometimes settlers randomly write one after they level up (sort of like writing down their experiences), merchants, random items in scenarios, and from the library room function (scholars can make them from paper and ink). There are five tomes for the five respective tech trees. You can also sell them for 100 Ren at merchants which is quite a lot! The tech tree progress has seen zero tuning, so feel free to give me lots of feedback there. I'll be tuning it over the next few weeks and adding things (some of the nodes are sparse, I know).

A quick note on modding. There is a new folder where your game's executable is, called Streaming Assets. This has two files: game data and a texture atlas. You can edit these, but I haven't double checked to see if the game is still referencing them. I'll be testing this out this week to make sure it's functional, but I thought I would mention them in case you wanted to check out that sort of thing.

There's a lot of missing UI feedback--not out of neglect, but lack of time--and I'll be working on this. Please let me know where things confuse you. I will be taking that feedback seriously. For now, you'll have to test things out and fumble around a bit. Please leave me a message any time. I'm happy to chat about anything.

I'm going to try and upload a patch very soon to address any immediate issues. Sometime over the weekend or early next week.

Oh, one more thing. Many have requested brighter text and I've gone through and brightened up the majority of the text, but I know I've missed a few. Feel free to point them out, but know that I am periodically brightening them as I see them. All the background for UI should be black to help with contrast.

To play the beta version, follow these instructions:

How To Get The Beta Build

I've also created this sticky post for reporting bugs:

Main Bug Reporting Thread

Or, you can join us on discord for the live play-by-plays:

Discord Invite

Thanks so much to everyone willing to endure the issues in this version and help me out. You are rock stars and I owe you so much.

Best,

W