Odd Realm News

Hey gang!

For today's update, I won't have a lot of new stuff to show off as I'm currently focused on cleaning up things from the recent world size changes. However, I do want to show off some things which I'm excited about and I've touched on in the past. Before I do, let me give you an update on where I'm at with the... update.

Hokay. So. The change to the world sizes (making them variable)--as shown in last month's post--was a huge amount of work. The 128x128x64 map size you're used to was ingrained so deeply in all the systems, that it was like trying to remove a pack of wild hyenas from a butcher shop. I don't even know what that means, but it was frightening and difficult and I might have cried. Needless to say, I've spent the month since last month's post working on that and I've still got a lot of work to do. I think by the end of April, I'll be back to where I was before I made that change but with that added world size variability. The not great news is that, when I made this change, I still had a bunch of work to do finishing up all my room management stuff. This means I'm at least two months out from finishing this humungo update. At least. So, thank you all for waiting patiently. I say this every time, but you all are incredible. We're almost there!

With that little update out of the way, let's chat about map sizes.



The above gif is the 256x256x64 map. It's absurdly huge. Now, I was very worried that this map was going to absolutely obliterate my computer. However, it's quite fast! In fact, the load times for all maps has been decreased by a lot. Let's use the 128x128x64 (which you play on now) as our baseline. Before these changes, that map size would take about 15000ms (15sec) to load in editor. (These load times are way less when I finally build the game, so keep that in mind too.) After the new changes, that same map size takes about 8000ms to load. For loading the 256x256x64 map, it's about 40000ms. This is way faster than I expected, and the beauty is, once built out, it'll be even faster. Probably like 25000ms. Additionally, the saving time has been sped up from 5000ms to about 200ms. Again, in editor. With saves that quick, I'll be able to auto save without you really noticing. You won't have to see that loading screen. Instead, I'll show you a quick, 'game saved,' prompt in the corner.

256x256x64 map on my 1920x1080 screen

The nice thing about having variable map sizes, is you can also choose to play on a 256x256x16 map (if you don't care about the world depth so much) which loads suuuuuuper quick. There are lots of options for you. Heck, play on a 16x16x16 map if you like.

Another thing I wanted to show off is a feature that lets you choose your starting settlement point:



After you start a new settlement, the game lets you select the world position where you want the settlers and items to appear. I've received a lot of complaints about your settlers starting out on rocks in the ocean and such, so this should fix that. Also, because water tiles are now available to settle, choosing a starting location on water will auto-create a raft for your items and settlers. You'll need to figure out yourselves how you're going to survive on the open ocean, but I have faith that those of you brave enough will manage.

I also wanted to talk about the updates to the game's lighting system. Now, it works very similar to what you'd see in games like Terraria where light permeates ground and lets you see a bit:



*This above gif is much darker than what you see in game. The light permeation works with spotlights too and the intention is that players will be able to find hidden underground ore and dungeons easier. Plus, the lighting changes allow for real-time spotlights, meaning I'll be able to make torches/headgear candles to allow for settlers to light up stuff around them. This will be in the next update though.

Lastly, the rendering system for the game has been updated to allow for proper transparent tiles, so I can now have things like tree leaf blocks that don't need to be fully opaque tiles. I'll need to update the textures, but it's nice that the renderer works properly now. This means I can have transparent glass too!



They need an art pass, but the above gif shows you an example where the 'leaves' block isn't one solid tile, and you can see through bits of it.

Alrighty, that's all for now. Thank you for reading and for supporting the game. Hope you are all doing great. :)

Best,

Waylon

Hey everyone!

I have some news for today's dev log that I'm so excited to share with you all.

A lot of people have requested that they be able to change two settings for the game:
-Overworld map size.
-In-game map size.
I had held off changing the game to allow this because the defined map size was deeply tied to so many integral systems. This means that changing anything even remotely tied to this would result in adding a lot of work to my plate and further pushing out the update release. As well, increasing the map size introduced problems with the cost of pathfinding which, at the time, I didn't have a solution for.
I had planned on tackling this change in the next update because I've made you poor souls wait almost a year for this update and you've all been so patient with me. However, one issue with me changing the map size is that I can't easily maintain backwards compatibility for your save files. Players would have to start a new game. That said, I'd rather players make new saves for this version, a version so different you'd probably do so anyway, instead of the next, where you'll likely be more invested in the file you've put so much work into. I *hate* having to make you start a new game, so I apologize for that.
So, long story short, I've spent the last four weeks implementing the variable map sizes and you can now select from the following options when you start a new game:



Overworld map sizes:

• Tiny 64x64
  
• Small 80x80
  
• Medium 96x96 (Default)
  
• Large 112x112
  

Settlement sizes:

• Tiny 32x32x64
  
• Small 64x64x64
  
• Medium 128x128x64 (Default)
  
• Large 256x256x64
  

As well as these new options, I've totally updated how players exist in the 'Realm'. My intention as I go along in development is to have players forming their own faction, and having that as an entity on the overworld map which other factions will engage with. The first factions you'll see are nothing new: Humans, Ancients, Ardyn, Gwdir, and Tomek. Later I will be changing this to fit with the actual lore behind the game where factions can have one race or multiple races, as well as diverse relationships. So, you could have multiple human factions to select from as an example. As well, I want to give players the option of making their own from scratch, but this stuff will come in a later update because factions rely on the other races being implemented. But, the idea is you'll be able to create a faction with Ancients and Humans, for example. Anyway, this stuff is a ways out but I'm excited to share my plans with you all.

I've also updated the overworld map UI to be way more functional. Things like being able to zoom in and out and see which tile you're hovering over on top of a full UI pass for all the windows to clean them up and make them easier to understand.



Plus, you'll now be able to settle tiles which you had a game over at. If you do so, the map will be slightly degraded and overgrown to show that it was abandoned for some time. In the future, there will also be some fun events special for this type of settlement.
Oh, and settling on a friendly faction tile will now give you control of the entities and items at that tile. It's a cheeky way of starting the game out with some advantages, but I don't see a reason to keep players from doing this. Settling on a hostile faction will, of course, still have them attack you.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is that I've added a new biome variation call, 'hills'. Technically, I'm adding a 'plains' variation but visually you'll see a new hill tile. A lot of players have requested flatter maps, so that's now an option.



Ok, so with all that out on the table, I do want to say thanks for all the kind words you write in response to these. You folks are so patient and awesome and I'm happy to have a community like you. The update has a ways yet to go before it can be released, but I hope these dev logs give you an Idea of where I'm at and that I'm passionately working away.
Also, special shout out to one of our community members, Morin, for updating Odd Realm's wiki page. You are doing amazing work and I thank you and anyone else that has been working on it. :)

Thanks and have a great week!

Hello friends!

Now that I'm well into the bug fixing, polish, tuning phase and don't have too many new things to show you, I thought I'd showcase the new room editing window and all the changes to the rooms system. I've built a lot of systems from the ground up in this new update, but the rooms system is one which has seen a large amount of re-design and UI work. This is easily one of the most complicated systems in the game, because it gives players so much flexibility and agency. Let's take a look at the differences and walk through the new process of making rooms to fully understand how it works.

Firstly, the name for the system, 'rooms', is no longer that accurate. In the current live version, you're placing down individual rooms, so that makes perfect sense. In the new version, it's more like you're placing down 'buildings' or 'shops', so, I'll likely be changing the room name to something more fitting soon. However, for this post, let's just keep calling the system 'rooms'.

Ok, let's get into placing rooms. The first new term I'll be throwing around is, 'Room Template'. These are what you will see when you open up the room toolbar. Think of a room template as a collection of--here's our second new term--'Room Functions'. The first and, likely, most common template is the, 'House'. Remember the bedroom you would place down? This is that. Sort of. Now you're placing down houses (room template) and, by default, it has one bedroom (room function) and one fireplace (room function) assigned to it. Room template = several room functions.

So, what are these functions? Room functions simply determine what your room is going to do. Let's look at our bedroom function. This is where your settlers that like beds will go to sleep and have children. And the fireplace? Well, it's going to be where you can prepare basic meals and create basic blueprints. Each room you place down can have an unlimited amount of functions if you wish. Hell, you can place down one super-structure room with every function in the game and let 'er rip. I'll leave that up to the player's discretion, but in a later update, when I add more demanding settler behaviors, they'll probably want their own individual rooms. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Now, the room toolbar you're used to is pretty different to accommodate the ability to swap functions around. This toolbar's only purpose is to show you templates.



By default, these are the templates you'll see:

• Empty [No functions]
  
• Home [Bedroom, and Fireplace]
  
• Farm [Garden, Animal Enclosure, Arboretum]
  
• Work Shop [Wood Mill, and Fireplace]
  
• Forge [Foundry, and Smithy]
  
• Cookhouse [Kitchen, Grain Mill, and Distillery]
  
• Barracks [Melee Training Ground, and Ranged Training Ground]
  
• Immortality Tomb [Void Sickness Damper]
  
• Mage's Sanctum [Chaos Construct, and Transmutation Chamber]
  
• Summoning Chamber [Conjuration Dais]
  
• Wellhouse [Well, and Storage]
  
• Clothier [Tailor, and Tannery]
  
• Academy [Library, and Arcane Study, Apothecary]
  
• Storehouse [Storage]
  
• Prison [Guard Post, and Prison Cell]
  
• Town Hall [Market, and Great Hall]
  

These all have several functions already assigned and I'm not going to detail each one because it would take ages. But, as an example, I want to point out two templates here: the 'Empty' and 'Forge' templates.



The empty template is simply there to let you quickly place a room which you intend to customize. Let's say you want to create a house-tailor-market combination.



The forge template has two functions--which you may recognize--within it, the foundry, and smithy. Here, you'd work with metals and various blueprints that require smelting, anvils, and forges.

Players will be able to make their own custom templates to display on the toolbar which will be available across all new games they start. They'll be able to change the icons, overlay, name, default functions, default owners, and so on.

The last important term I want to talk about is, 'Room Owner Group'. ROGs are what you will create to assign settlers to functions in your rooms. Now, don't worry, you won't have to micromanage these if you don't want to. Every room template has them already pre-defined. For example, our trusty house template already comes with an 'Occupants' ROG which, by default, assigns settlers to sleep in bedrooms and use the fireplace.

As well, ROGs auto-populate based on their requirements, so players won't have to worry about manually adding settlers to their rooms. For example, the house occupant ROG comes with the default settings of:
-Family Only (Only allow the same family to join the group.)
-Humans Only (Only humans will join the group.)
The forge would have something like:
-Blacksmiths only.
You can edit the groups to have any of these requirements:
-Family Only
-Race
-Profession
-Skill



The above, for example, only lets human warriors with the harvest skill active that are the same family join. This is an unlikely setting but should give you an idea of how specific you can be.

Let's take a quick look at the Room Edit window.



It's comprised of three parts:

• Owner groups list (far left) - lets you add, remove, and edit owner groups.
  
• Function list (middle) - lets you add, remove, and edit functions for the room you have selected.
  
• Room list (far right) - details all the rooms you've placed. You select which room you want to edit from here. Also now shows all occupants.
  

All the important info for a room will be visible here, such as, in the above gif, which entities are assigned, and which props are required.

Speaking of props, each function has a prop requirement whereas, before, each room had them. The function will not be ready to use until these props are built within the room, just as before.

Ok, I know this has been a long winded post but I'm excited to show off this stuff because I think it adds a lot to the game.

As always, thanks for being so patient with me and waiting ages for this update. I know it can seem like the developer has given up on the game when updates become infrequent, but I'm just as passionate about the project as ever. And the wait is only due to the fact that I'm taking things seriously and putting as much love into the game as possible. So, I don't have an ETA, but I'm working away like mad. Thanks again for the patience. :)

You all rock and I appreciate you.

-Waylon

Hello, dear friends!

Today's dev log will focus on items and item system changes. I get a lot of requests for more content to play with and most of my updates tend to focus on making features and/or improving previous features based on feedback because I think it's important to do that stuff first. The 0.10.0.0 update I'm working on has SO many new features and improvements but I wanted to ensure there's lots of new content for players to discover as well.

During the month since my last post, I spent a bunch of time making about 60 new tools and weapons for the game. A lot of these new items can be unlocked in the new tech tree and some are only discovered by exploring the world. I've also created two new projectile types--rocks and spears--to support new items such as, bolas, slings, darts, and spears. I've even added some new spellbooks too!



Creating all these new items surfaced some UX issues that I needed to address. Namely, how confusing outgoing damage is. In the live version of the game, it's not too clear how much damage an item will do to a block or entity. For example, you have a pickaxe which says a damage amount but doesn't apply that to a target entity in a fight. This is because the tool isn't intended to be proficient in combat. I've solved this issue by giving ALL tools/weapons their own set of attacks which are now displayed on tooltips and in a 'Attacks' window you can see on entities and uniforms. Each item 'Attack' has a partnered skill with it. So, the attack will only be used for that specific skill.



For the above image, we see that the stone pickaxe has 3 attacks:
2d4+2 Strike [Melee]
3d3+2 Cut [Melee]
1d4+2 Mine [Mining]

The attack displays the damage roll, thematic name, and skill. From this, we can deduce that, in combat, the attacks, 'Strike and Cut,' are used (because they have the melee attack skill), and, when working, the attack, 'Mine,' is used (because it has the mining skill). If the entity uses a skill that doesn't have a respective attack provided by equipped tools/weapons, then their inherent default attacks are used. Every entity has a set of underlying inherent attacks for all the skills in the game.

In a later update (I'm not going to push this update back any further to do this), I'm going to add damage types for each attack to diversify combat even more. i.e., slashing (can cause bleed), piercing (ignores % of toughness), energy (ignores 100% toughness), bludgeon (additional bonus damage), and so on.

Now, all these changes had me working a ton on UI within the various equipment screens. This then led me to all the issues with the uniform screen. (And you can see why it takes me so long to finish this update.) This is one screen which I get a ton of feedback on (aside from the room screen, which has also seen a huge update for this version), and justly so.

I've gone through and completely upgraded the whole thing. No longer will you see four separate screens. Instead, you'll see two: one for editing a uniform, and one for assigning uniforms.

Editing a uniform is similar to how it was but has some much clearer UI. The left 2/3rd's of the screen are dedicated to assigning items and seeing all the attacks/buffs the uniform will provide with the new addition of also showing what assignments they have. I'll get into 'Assignments' in a sec. On the right 1/3rd you have a list of all the uniforms you've created along with all the utility options (copy, duplicate, create a uniform for all professions, etc) and they will now show a preview of the items they have assigned.



The 'Assign Uniforms' screen shows a list of 'Assignments.' These let you specify how your settlers will go about equipping items from the various uniforms you create. Just as before, you'll be able to select options from professions, control groups, and individual entities. The difference from before is that you can now mix and match these options. As before, these assignments have a priority value which you can change. Like jobs, settlers will try to select highest priorities first. So, each settler will look at all your uniform assignments from highest to lowest and filter them out based on if they match the specified requirements (are they in the control group selected or, say, of the same profession, etc.) As they're going through the list of assigned uniforms, they'll also check to see if the item is available in your inventory. If it's not, or they can't reach it (in which case a notif will be shown), they'll move on to the next highest priority assignment which they can use.



This means you might have a settler with items equipped that come from several different uniforms. Now, to help convey this information as to where a settler is getting their items from, I've added a window to the entity info screen that shows all the uniforms they are assigned to. These are ordered based on priority and will show more info when hovered over. You can also click these to go straight to the uniform to edit it. Hovering over an equipped item on a settler will also show what uniform is influencing that.

While we're on the topic of tooltips, I've gone ahead and changed it so every time you see a settler in a list, they have a detailed entity tooltip. Sometimes it's tough to tell based on just the name as to which settler you're looking at, so hovering over them will show you the same info that hovering over them in-game would.



Ok, so that covers everything I've been working on this month. However, I want to give a quick rundown of what's left to give you an idea of what I need to do to get this update out. Most of my big tasks are out of the way but I still have a couple things to tackle which will take some time:
-Encounters. I promised that I would update the encounter system of the game. Currently, the game can be pretty difficult at first but then quickly tapers off to be very easy. I want to address this for this update. I want players to have a good challenge progression. Unless, of course, they select a peaceful tile.
-Tune and test. This will also take a while because there's so much that has been changed and I know there will be lots of small issues to fix up. The good news is that I can do this with the game live in the beta branch which means you can play the version, but at your own risk.

As always, I can't say how long it will take to get this into your hands. You've all been incredibly patient and supportive. I appreciate that so much. I always try and be as transparent with my work as possible because I really respect this community and the faith you have in me. So, thank you!

I hope you are all happy and healthy and staying safe out there. Chat soon!

Waylon

Hey everyone!

Now that I'm moved and all that is out of the way, I've been working hard to wrap up the rest of this next update. It's coming along super well. As per usual, I don't want to promise any dates, but I'm feeling great about almost being done.

Currently, I'm rounding out the tech tree which is new in this update. I'm adding in a bunch of new weapons, tools, and gear which you can unlock. Plus some you'd find from events.



You can look forward to some new projectiles like spears, bolas, rocks, and so on. I never had these before because I had no 'throw' animation. Only a bow firing one. The throw animation lets me add in a lot more projectile options for obvious reasons, so that's fun. I'm also adding in more options for the Ancients, such as Summons. I'll keep those under my hat until the update is ready.

I've also been reading a bunch of feedback and suggestions so you'll see some quality of life additions. Namely, I've added the ability to click items in the top stats bar. This will take you to the respective world point. i.e., clicking the idle settlers count will iterate through them. Clicking on raw food will do the same for items. When you're taken to a settler it selects them and follows them, and, for items, I have a highlight effect to indicate the point as it's hard to tell otherwise.



As well, I've made a change so that the stats which you manually track show up on the top stats bar as well. You can right click them here to untrack them or left click to have them go to the next iteration point.



Within each toolbar menu, I've added a toggleable list panel to show: active jobs, auto jobs, active zones, and active rooms. Active jobs let you remove jobs or go to their positions (much like the top stats bar would). Auto jobs let you see jobs which the game will automatically create for you (like harvesting mature plants) and you can toggle these if you prefer to assign them manually. Active zones are pretty much the same as active jobs. Active rooms show you which rooms are placed, their state (empty, needs requirements, full, etc) and also provide an easy way to select that room to add more points to it or just open it's management screen. All these lists don't have to be open but are there if you want to see that stuff.



Lastly, I've added an overlay panel where item tracking used to be. This is where you'd enable/disable visual settings for temperature, block counts, rendering the current layer only, highlighting settlers, and so on.



Alright, time to get back to it. I genuinely hope everyone has a fantastic holidays and stays safe.

Best,

Waylon