Odd Realm News

Hi friends!

I'm back from my mini vacation to see family and am feeling good about the beta build. I was able to get a tiny bit done in the mornings during the vacation, but, even so, I have a bit more work to do to get this build out into the beta branch for Steam, Itch, and GoG. That said, I'm going to push for
[h3]October 1st[/h3] as the date that I upload the build. I'm very excited and nervous to start getting players to see the new changes.

Aside from that announcement, let's take a look at some things I've been working on since our last post.

[h3]Rafts![/h3]



I want players to be able to settle any tile they choose, so I added the option to select water tiles as a settlement point. Players can then select a water block for their starting position, and the game will generate a little raft for you to start on. This isn't limited to ocean tiles. You can also do this in, say, the middle of a lake in a Taiga tile.

Later on, I'll be adding a lot of sea creatures and marine plant-life. I think it'll make islands and ocean tiles a lot of fun.

[h3]Items Can Fall Into Water[/h3]



Because I want the bodies of water in the game to feel more alive, things like items and plants will be able to enter water blocks. They'll then slowly sink to the bottom.

There are a couple ways to get the items back...

[h3]Fishing Can Catch Items[/h3]



This will pick up items from below, but will also occasionally find random unique items. Fishing isn't the only way to get items from the water....

[h3]Entities Can Now Swim In Water Blocks[/h3]



Entities can enter any water block to go get items, or just do underwater jobs.

I was on the fence as to whether I wanted to make this change or not. Initially, a bit apprehensive, I thought it would be an absolute mess to implement. On the other hand, it sucked how water was essentially blue lava. To have water pathable opens up a lot of fun options for players. So, what the heck, I decided to make them pathable. Plus, it turns out it wasn't such a mess to add, only needing some extra animations for characters.

I will later be adding some threats for being in water, but that'll have to wait.

[h3]Somewhat Realistic Temperature Physics[/h3]



Torches and other heat sources will now emit heat that fills up rooms, rather than, like the game's lighting, flood fill an area.

[h3]Action Text[/h3]







This is something I've been meaning to add for a looooong time. Before, you would only see output by looking at the notification log. Now, you'll see these values appear when doing work or in combat.

[h3]FX And SFX Additions[/h3]
I've added a bunch of new sfx and fx for things. Namely, spent a whole day spicing up the audio. Plus, you'll now see things like cracks that progressively get bigger as you remove a block.


That pretty much covers it for now. I'm going to work my butt off to get the beta build ready for Oct 1. Thank you for all the support. Hope you all have a great day.

Waylon

Hey everyone!

Hope you are all doing well. Sorry I'm a day late on this dev log. I wasn't home yesterday to write.

This dev log won't be too exciting. I'm still working on a lot of room-related tasks, and, although things are going very well, it's taking a long time to finish up. Mostly, it's tons of data entry to properly set up the room functionality, and fixing edge case bugs related to rooms auto-creating jobs. So, I don't have much to show off today other than some small HUD things.

Ok, HUD stuff. As I go, I'm always tweaking the HUD to make things more enjoyable. One small change I've made is moving the search panel out of individual screens, and into the toolbar. It's a nuisance to have to add it to each screen, and I've made it so screens can easily listen for input from the search panel. So, the intention is that you can quickly type here, either by clicking it, or holding shift, and then your input will filter out items for each relative screen you have focused. This is really handy for finding entities as well. You can type in the name of an entity and the camera will start following the first one that matches the input.



Or, as you are probably used to, use the input to filter out large lists. This works for job/blueprint/room lists and I'm going to update all the other lists to listen for this search input too. i.e., the settler lists, item lists, diet lists, etc.



Another small thing I've improved is the performance when placing jobs/blueprints/rooms. In the live build, when you do this and move around the map, or change layers, there's quite a bit of lag. Especially, when you are zoomed out. Now, there will be none. The reason there was lag before is due to the fact that the game would check every block to try and determine what overlay should be shown when placing things. Now, blocks update this overlay information when their state changes.

Oh! I've also changed the TAB hotkey to show any overlays that would be hidden when the build/room menu is closed. It's a nice little way to quickly see where jobs and rooms are placed without opening those toolbar menus.

So, that's pretty much it for this dev log. I was hoping that by the end of August the beta would be good to go but it's likely I'll miss that date. This last chunk of work is agonizingly tedious and I appreciate that you are all waiting so patiently. By the end of August I will be very, very close to putting out the update on the beta. Unfortunately, I do have a family vacation in early Sept (one I planned a long time ago to see family I haven't seen since before the pandemic) and it will mean the update won't be coming out until after then. But, of course, I'll be sure to keep you friends updated with my dev logs.

Thank you so much for the words of encouragement and unwavering tolerance for my slow development!

Waylon

Hello my friends!

I hope everyone is doing well and today I wanted to update you all about Odd Realm's 0.10.0.0 version.

I'm making some fantastic progress but I'm still working on finishing things which I had started earlier in the year. Namely, a bunch of room related changes and improvements. I had mentioned in a previous post that I had overhauled the room UI because it was desperately needing some TLC. At the time, I wasn't able to finish that work because I was running into a lot of core game issues and decided to fix that up. As you are all aware, that added quite a bit of time to 0.10.0.0's development timeline. Anyway, now that that stuff is out of the way, I came back to finishing up those room changes/additions. I'm very excited about the changes and I think they are going to add so much to the game, so I want to show off some things.

If you are unfamiliar with the new functionality of rooms, take a look at this article which describes them thoroughly: article.

To summarize, rooms are block designations which can be assigned functions, owner groups, and stockpiles. This means you can mix and match these things to create your own custom room. For example, a Home with a bedroom function, occupant owner group, and food/water stockpile.

But let's take a look at what that would practically look like:

Here, I'm taking the Storehouse room and assigning it to an area that I want settlers to bring items to. The Storehouse is a very basic room that has the sole purpose of item organization. It comes with the following template settings:


'Hauler' owner group: This is a preset that auto-adds anyone with the carry skill active to the room. Each owner group can be assigned to any room functions. In this case, Storage.


'Storage' function: This function, like all functions, can be added to any room and lets entities auto create carry jobs. This will ensure entities move items into this room based on the assigned Stockpiles.


'All' stockpile: This is also a default preset for the room which just states that all item types are allowed. It also shows (as you can see in the gif) which items are currently in the room. Players can mix and match item types with item names. i.e., Resources + Beverages + Coal. Stockpiles are also assignable to any functions. In this case, it's assigned to the Storage function, and, so, entities assigned to the Hauler group will make sure items specified in the stockpile get placed in the designated room area.

At this point, I'm sure you're thinking, 'wait, isn't this just a zone designation?' Yes! That's exactly what this is, but now you have waaaay more control. And because this has all the functionality of zones, I've decided to remove them completely as they are redundant. Don't worry. It's still super easy to designate item areas using this new rooms functionality because everything is already preset.



You can probably imagine how this stuff will work with other room functions. The 'Farm' room, for example. It has your 'Farmer, Forester, and Shepherd' owner groups, your 'Garden, Arboretum, and Animal Enclosure' functions, your 'Food and Water' stockpiles. Now, you don't have to have that specific set, and that's the beauty of the system. You could just have 'Farmer' + 'Garden' + 'Seeds' and be off to the races. I have created default templates to designate these things, but you can create and save out your own, and they'll appear on the room designation toolbar.

Outside the room stuff, I've added/changed a few other things:

Players can now hold 'SHIFT' to select blocks which locks the block's tooltip to the window. This lets them inspect the tooltip contents.


Also, I've added the new 'pregnant' and 'companion' statuses to entities that can get pregnant and have companions. Pregnant entities take a few days to have their child. This is really just a little 'realism' touch to replace children randomly spawning.

To wrap things up, let's talk about timelines. I'm still doing a lot of work on the room stuff (little features/polish/bugs/tests), and I'd say I have about 2-3 weeks of work left. After this, I'll need to jump onto getting the beta build ready, which will take 2-4 weeks. I'm shooting for having the beta ready for the end of August, but I don't want to promise anything. That's just my own personal goal. It could easily take longer, but I want to give you all a bit of an estimate because you wait so patiently.

Ok! That's it for now. Hopefully you're stoked about these new things. I really can't wait to get the update out there and into your hands. Thanks again, everyone, for being so supportive and motivating me.

Waylon

Hey everyone!

Today's dev log will be rather dull because I don't have a whole lot of new content to show off. I'm at the stage where I'm working on bugs, polish, and finishing implementation for previously shown features. That's good, though, as that means the date for putting this update into beta is drawing near. I hate not being able to tell you guys a specific date for when that will be. I want this to be my last dev log before then, but due to the scope and complexity of the update, there's a lot of hidden tasks that arise as I go. This update is more like a sequel than it is a general update and as a result is an absolute ton of work for me. Thank you for understanding that, and for being patient with me. :)

Now, I've seen a few comments recently about how long this update is taking and some have even expressed that there is nothing in this next update so I wanted to recap some of the things that have been added:

-Tech tree. Allows for Humans to unlock magical props/items.
-Capturing mechanic and respective props.
-Diets. Allows players to specify the diet by race and indicates what foods are harmful or have negative long-term effects.
-Unlimited save slots plus a bunch of extra save info is now displayed.
-Variable map sizes. Maps can now range from 16x16x16 up to 256x256x64.
-New hills biome variation which allows for previous biomes to be flatter.
-Player progression is now saved to realm, rather than tile. Things like diets, uniforms, tech tree unlocks, currencies, etc, will be saved even when the player's settlement is lost.
-Players can now settle any tile, even ones they've abandoned or had a game over at. Also, game overs will not force players to start a new settlement. The game will continue to play for as long as they player wishes. They can choose to start a new settlement at that same tile, or start a new game, or load the last save.
-Room functionalities. Players can now mix and match room functionality to allow for more specific room clusters. i.e., A room with a bedroom, kitchen, and workshop could be set as a room template that you name 'home'. The game has several default templates, but players can add/remove/edit new templates if they choose. Rooms can also be placed on several z layers.
-Combat and move order entity states have been re-written to be less buggy.
-62 new tools and weapons.
-A billion QoL improvements: draggable windows, lists for active zones/jobs/rooms, modifier keys for hotkey edits, tooltip additions/improvements, better text contrast, item and entity tracking can be added/removed/edited on the top bar and clicking top bar items will take you to the next point, and much, much more!
-Entities will no longer be able to scale any height. They can climb a max of one tile up, but will need ladders/stairs to climb higher.
-Light permeates the ground layers now. This is to allow for better exploration underground, like you'd see in a game such as Terraria.
-Save/load speed improvements and general performance improvements. I re-wrote the entire backend of the game to allow for bigger maps and so the game's performance has been drastically improved.
-Transparency for a bunch of textures. Because I re-wrote the renderer, I'm able to properly do transparency for things like glass. You can sort of see in the below gif that the house has some transparent windows as a roof.

And the list goes on... There are a million smaller changes, fixes, and polish tasks I've done over the year and if you'd like to see them, you should check out the Trello where I jot down finished tasks, or checkout my previous dev logs.



One small thing I can show you is that a lot has been added to the game's overlays. Above you can see what's displayed when building, for example. One addition is the path permission up/down arrows to indicate where entities can move up (green arrow) and down (red arrow). With the new restrictions on climbing height, this is an important bit of info, which will help players plan out castle walls and such.

Ok, back to work for me. Thank you so much everyone for your feedback and encouragement. I appreciate this community.

Take care

Hello!

Today I'm going to show off some stuff related to migrating and saving. I get quite a few comments regarding these two systems and how they can be improved. Especially the migrating system which is pretty much just a prototype in the game. The save system also needed an upgrade, not only because it didn't have that many features, but because I literally had to upgrade all the tech for it to make it so players are able to go back to settlements they've abandoned or been killed at.

Before I get into that stuff, a quick note on where this sisyphean update is at. I'm getting closer each day to being able to put this out into beta. This save system stuff slowed me down a bit because it's so complicated to save out a player's session based on information that spans the game, and individual tiles you settle. So, I still don't have any hard date to provide as for when the update can go into beta. Thank you for waiting so patiently.

Alright, first up, migrating. I'd say a large majority of Odd Realm's negative reviews/comments relate to migrating and how punishing/wonky it can be. Which sucks because I added it in as a fast solution to let players leave their current settlement, not to be the final product. And, because I had to start working on it to allow for the re-settling of tiles, I figured I'd dedicate some hours to fixing it up.



Here are the main changes:

• I've made it so the overworld works with the game's timescale. This means that all the overworld stuff will move along with your current settlement time. Later on in development, there will be hundreds of entities moving around the overworld, and their movement will determined by this moving game time. Need to request a merchant to stop by? It'll take 3 days of game time to send out a messenger, then have a merchant arrive. Or, at least, that's the vision. For now, because time passes while at this map, your migrating entities will also become hungry and thirsty based on this too. Which leads to the next point...
  
• The migrating party no longer uses some bespoke system of food management for survival. They use exactly what they would while walking around your settlement. So, Humans will, say, get hungry and thirsty over time, then try and eat and drink items that you've brought with you. This means that the game is waaaaay more forgiving whereas, before, you'd lose settlers super quick to starvation and such. You now have a lot of warning to tell you someone is starving and about to die, rather than having a random party member die. Which was annoying because it could have been someone super important to you.
  
• I've done a complete overhaul on the UI to let you easily edit your party members and their inventories.
  
  
  
  
• You can now toggle the overlays to hide/show FX and UI which might obfuscate your view of the terrain.
  
• You can now return to a settlement you had previously played. Every tile now saves out its information.
  
• Many of the player settings are saved to the game session rather than to individual tiles as they were previously. This means things like uniforms, room templates, diets, and tech trees are maintained as long as you keep playing the save file.
  
• Added a time menu to the overworld screen to help you control game time.
  
• Players no longer have permadeath and can play previous tiles.
  
• Added overworld indicators to show things like current player settlement, and migration party position.
  

These additions don't mean that the overworld map is done by any means. As I've mentioned before, I want to add a lot of things like interacting with other kingdoms and travelers through the overworld map. And I'll start adding those things in later updates. For now, this is a huge upgrade to more easily allow the movement on the map.

As for the save system, here's what's new there:

• Unlimited saving slots.
  
• More info: Date saved, realm name, nation, population, biome, seed, in-game date, and world dimensions.
  
• Preview window to show what your settlement looks like.
  
• Ability to delete saves.
  

Some things I'll need to add in the next update because I don't want to spend any more time on this. Things such as:

• Copy, duplicate, overwrite, general editing.
  
• More info about the nation. i.e., total settlements and currencies.
  

Save slots are now auto-created and the game will auto-save at midnight without you needing to select a slot. The save folder now shows slots as the realm name + session ID:



That's all for now. Thanks everyone for the support and patience. Hope you all have a nice weekend!

Waylon