Odd Realm News

Hello!

0.10.0.17 has been uploaded to the BETA branch!



There are lots of goodies in this one!


First off, there's a new tutorial. I think it needs a bit of trimming, and some better timing, but it's mostly there. I want to add one or two more tips, but let me know if there's anything you think is missing. I'm also going to make a video tutorial on YouTube because I know some people prefer that. I'll keep you posted on its status.


Another big change is the tuning for entity attribute update intervals. Previously, I was updating attributes every 1 minute of game time, and, now, I'm updating them every 5. I felt that, when a settler started to starve or dehydrate, there wasn't a lot of time to address emergencies. With increased intervals, there's way less pressure on the player to scramble for water and food. We'll see how 5 minute intervals feel. I might even go higher because these higher intervals also give me more room for buff values. Time will tell! Or maybe you will. Let me know what you think.


I've slightly changed how pathfinding works to help with some lag in the later game. The problem was that entities would pathfind all at once, especially once you got more than 25 entities. This would cause some FPS drop as the pathfinding manager tried to process them all. Now, I'm processing pathfinding requests one at a time, and I prioritize closest move targets first. The request also checks to see how long it's taking and it will delay a frame (to let other processes continue), then continue on in the next frame. The downside to this change is that you might see a settler standing there waiting for a path to be found, usually if the path end point is extremely far away. I was playing with some pretty big populations and I didn't notice any serious delays in pathfinding. In fact, I think this system responds faster because I'm delaying using the ms process time instead of the number of iterations a pathfinding process goes through. Of course, any time I touch the pathfinding, there's the chance I've inadvertently broken something else, so do let me know if your people just never move at all.



You'll notice now that containers can hold more and that some of them have special permissions. Bins, for example, can only hold seeds and resources, but they can hold up to 150 items. Whereas, crates, can hold any item category, but only up to 75 items. Chests will also hold way more to make up for their cost to build. Lastly, there's a new item category, Books, so you can hold tomes and spellbooks in bookcases.







I've added some extra info to tooltips to show what sorts of benefits blueprints provide. Things like movement speed bonuses, container size/permissions, and decay buffs will now be shown. Oh! And you will now see prop requirements for room tooltips.


There are quite a few fixes in here too. Take a look!
-Entity attributes are now update at 5 minute intervals instead of 1 minute intervals.
-Entity attribute updates are now staggered so that not all entities get hungry all at once.
-Fixed a pathing bug that could cause entities to become stuck.
-Added some prop information to the room tooltips.
-Fixed a bug where entities were getting stuck in an equip item loop.
-Entities that cannot equip items will not longer have uniforms auto created. This should keep cows and chickens from having individual uniforms.
-Fixed a bug where entity intelligence type wasn't being set on load.
-Increased storage capacity for all containers.
-Added item category restrictions to certain containers. The trade off is that a container might hold more, but only be able to hold resources, and seeds. i.e., the Wood/Stone Bin.
-Added an item category for books.
-The bookcase can now hold books.
-Added more info to various tooltips.
-Improved pathfinding performance for larger populations.
-The clay roof is now unlocked with The Basics research.
-Fixed a bug where entities could get stuck in the mating state if they weren't in the same pathing room.
-Fixed a couple places where entities tried to start pathfinding to inaccessible areas.
-Fixed a bug where mating entities could get stuck in infinite move loops as they tried to move to the point the other entity was at simultaneously.
-Search input will now only affect the focused window at the time of search start. This is to avoid windows changing the selected target unintentionally. For example, using search to filter items in the inventory window, then dragging an item onto a uniform, only to have the uniform window change which uniform is selected because of search input.
-Settler search is now more accurate for name searching.
-Fixed an issue where some items would not be removed from rooms that didn't permit them.


This is the home stretch to get 0.10 out of beta and into the main branch. There are still a few behavior bugs and tuning things I need to address, but I also need to re-enable several scenarios. Once those things are done, the game should be stable and ready to go to mainline. I'm aiming for no later than the 20th!

That's all for now. Thanks and have a great day!

Waylon

Hello!

This is a smaller update to fix up some issues that were reported over the weekend.

-Fixed a bug that would cause loading a game to get hung up on, 'Generating World.'
-Fixed a bug where entities weren't starting jobs.
-Ancients now start with Arcane Dust.
-Fixed a bug where Void Crystals required the conjuring skill to build.
-Entities will now eat/drink at 50% (if they can). Additionally, entities will not take damage if they are on their way to eat/drink and are starving/dehydrating.
-Fixed a bug where the wood gate wouldn't open/close.
-Fixed a bug where removing a blueprint would leave ambient shadows on textures.
-Cutting grass should drop at least 1 plant fiber now.
-Holding alt will now place a new room instead of holding control. This is to avoid conflicts with the border select only hotkey.
-Added min/max temp and min skylight to plant tooltips.
-Fixed a bug where plants could grow underground. Mushrooms can still grow underground as they don't need light.
-Fixed a bug where saplings couldn't grow in cold weather.
-Fixed a bug where search lists would lose the search filter if the mouse left the window.
-Fixed a bug where the last toolbar selection wasn't re-selected when the toolbar re-opens if the toolbar was closed with the ESC key.
-Roofs and floors are now easier to build.
-Fixed a bug where a job wouldn't start if its prerequisite job wasn't the same priority.
-Fixed a bug where uniform items weren't being equipped.
-Fixed a bug where trees weren't spawning after the sapling matures.

Thanks,

Waylon

Hello!



Today's patch focuses on some performance issues. Hopefully you see an improvement when playing this new build. That said, I still have a few more things I need to improve before this is running at the level I want. I know there are GPU bound issues and next week I'm going to finish those up. Anyone running on a machine with a weak GPU will be running into this one. I noticed that some save times are a bit long. Will take a look at this too!

A few people have mentioned how overpowered cages and traps are. You *should* notice a difference in this build because the trigger will now take into account the target's evasion rating. The higher the evasion of an entity, the harder it is to trigger the cage or trap. Let me know what your experience is with the new change. Hopefully I haven't gone too far in the other direction. I do need to add some feedback to indicate that a trigger check was fired and failed. Will do soon!

I've slightly changed how caves generate in the game. You should notice that they have more of a buffer when spawning. Because this change affects biome generation, you might see a cave appearing when you first load your game. I still need to come up with a method that lets me change/tune biome generation without it messing up save files. So, I apologize if a cave messes up part of your settlement when you load!

I'm going to jump into the notes, but, before I do, I'd like to point out that I've increased the game time's speed. It used to be that 1 realtime second = 1 game minute. Now, it's setup so that 0.5 realtime second = 1 game minute. It takes ages for seasons to pass, so I thought this might be a nice change to help things move along. However, it also means things like damage from hunger are faster. This *might* result in your settlers dying super quick while starving or dehydrating. Don't worry, I can fix this by tuning some things. Just let me know what you experience so I can tune accordingly. :)

Ok, here are the notes:

-Fixed a bug where entities were not dying of old age. Now, entities (those with hearts) will have a small chance to go into cardiac arrest after becoming an elder. This is randomly applied over time, and the chances are higher the older they become.
-Newly spawned adult entities will now have their starting age closer to the age they need to become an adult. Adult Humans, for example, should start with an age between 16-27.
-Water put on fires will now have less starting mass. This should keep settlers from flooding large areas with water.
-Fixed a bug where the character sprite wasn't changing to represent a new entity appearance. For example, when becoming an elder, the sprite didn't show white hair.
-Fixed a bug where clicking a death notification didn't take you to the point of death.
-Fixed a bug where, if a population max wasn't set, the game wasn't using the default 99 limit.
-Fixed a bug where the attack labels in the entity window were overlapping.
-Increased dirt and stone spawn amounts.
-Added small chance to spawn stone chunks when mining dirt.
-Fixed a bug where extra items were being eaten/drunk.
-Fixed a bug where entities didn't show the climbing animation for ladders.
-Fixed a bug where items were discovered before being found in the world or unlocked in the saga research tree.
-Fixed a bug where blueprints would show up as blue (ready to start) when the room they are assigned to doesn't have anyone with the skill enabled. i.e., no one with the cooking skill to do cooking jobs in the kitchen, but someone in the world does have it.
-Item spawning will now favour spawn points in a room if it originated in one. i.e., butchering an animal's remains will try to spawn the produced meat inside the room (kitchen) that the job originated. This is intended to avoid spawning these items outside the room, or on the roof.
-Fixed a blueprint name typo where Sand Shrimp Meat was showing (Raw) instead of (Roasted).
-Fixed a bug where Chirpen Meat (Roasted) was showing up as Chicken Meat (Raw). Thanks Morin!
-Improved performance relating to jobs, and world rendering.
-Reduced loading times.
-Fixed a bug where Ancients would randomly start with non-magic professions, and humans would start with magic professions.
-Fixed a bug where windows would not automatically rotate.
-Props which clamp to fixtures like walls, should no longer fall from gravity.
-Fixed a bug where duplicating a uniform didn't copy the profession or control group.
-Fixed several bugs where entities would stick around in control groups after dying or leaving the settlement.
-Fixed a bug where inventory counts were sometimes incorrect.
-Attacks now show the icon of the skill used instead of a unique attack icon.
-Fixed some bugs with tooltips not showing when hovering over various UI elements.
-Tooltips that aren't locked (because the entity/block isn't selected) will now become 50% transparent if the mouse is over the tooltip.
-The temporal displacer now requires Arcane Dust instead of a Glass Pane to be constructed.
-Fixed a bug where a noticeable pattern could be seen in the terrain random offsets. This was most noticeable when zooming out and looking at the repetition of water.
-The Wyrm event no longer spawns items when creating a tunnel.
-Fixed a bug where caves weren't generating plants or props.
-Increased the buffer used to determine the position of caves in relation to visible blocks. The intention is to have them spawning farther away from the mine, rather than right on top of them.
-The glass window is now a glass block.
-Fixed a bug where crafting sand clods required metal crafting instead of stone crafting.
-Added a bunch of missing inline icons for blocks.
-Added wood plank item which can be manufactured at the Wood Mill for 1 Wood Log.
-Wood plank shingle/floor/block now require wood plank items to build.
-Fixed a bug where fences didn't transition with gates
-Rooms without auto job options will no longer show up in the production window.
-Cages and traps will now only trigger based on a roll beating the target's evasion. i.e., If the random roll (out of 100) is 15 and the target's evasion is 16, the cage or trap will fail to capture, drop, or damage them. The higher the evasion rating of the entity, the harder it is to trigger the block.
-Fixed a bug where NPC's would show equipping/unequipping uniform icon and feedback on item slots.

Thanks everyone!

Have a great weekend!

Waylon

Happy Friday/Saturday everyone!



This patch was initially just going to be some tuning and bug fixes, but, last night, I spent an hour adding in two new rooms, the Vault, and the Market. Like you, I get frustrated by where the merchant items spawn, so I thought I would remedy that with these rooms.

[h3]Market[/h3]
This room is needed for merchants to visit your settlement. Any items bought from the merchant will be spawned here, unless there's no room, in which case the items will spawn at the merchant. In the future, I am going to have merchants stick around in the settlement and hang out at the market, instead of leave immediately after a trade. That way, players can re-initiate trading while the merchant is around.



[h3]Vault[/h3]
This room is where any Ren acquired from a trade will spawn. It starts with a Ren stockpile already set up as well.



I also added a bit of extra AI logic to neutral animals wandering around the map. They are now attracted to cages with their preferred foods inside them. You can put items in a cage using the stockpiles.



Additionally, neutral animals will also shy away from your settlers and they should be less inclined to enter rooms. Though, you'll still see them stealing your food.

Here are the notes:

-Added market room. Mechants will now only arrive when this room is placed. Merchants will leave any purchased items here.
-Added vault room. Merchants will leave newly acquired Ren here.
-Improved some performance issues with item tracking and saving.
-Fixed a bug where entities would run in air immediately after climbing.
-New settlements now start with enough containers for all items that are brought. Ex: If no items are brought, no containers are spawned. If 100 items are brought, 2 containers are spawned.
-Fixed a bug where all input would get locked if, in the overworld screen and with an active settlement loaded, you hit the ESC key while selecting a new settlement loadout.
-Fixed a bug where you would see items and entities in lists when they were not present in the world.
-Added some extra zoom levels.
-Fixed a bug where depth 16 worlds were not generating.
-Fixed a bug where the item edit list for migrating wasn't showing all items.
-Fixed several bugs for adding/removing items to the migration loadout.
-Fixed a bug where entities wouldn't spawn correctly when selecting a new starting point on the map.
-Neutral entities will be less inclined to pick rooms as random migration points.
-Neutral entities will now try to avoid player entities.
-Fixed a bug where non-player entities were using custom diets.
-Neutral entities will now be lured to cages with foods that match their diets.
-Fixed a bug where stockpiles showed custom and liquid category types.
-Fixed a bug where an entity being attacked wouldn't fight back.
-Fixed a bug where neutral animals would try to move to herd members that the player owned.
-Fixed a bug where cages wouldn't capture an entity if they had just held an entity.
-Fixed a bug where entities could get stuck in an infinite drop item loop.
-Fixed a bug where scenario entities could spawn and then immediately die.
-Berara trees no longer have leaves around the trunk to allow settlers easier access to cut them down.
-Fixed a bug where the debug paint tool wasn't showing the correct display name for entries.
-Fixed a bug where entities would ignore food/water that was close at hand if they were doing a job which produced food/water. This would result in entities going long distances to do the job, ignore food/water they ran by, and starve/dehydrate before reaching the job.
-XP is now only given to player entities. This is to keep hostile entities from levelling up during combat.
-Fixed a bug where entities wouldn't walk over hatches.
-Distillery blueprints now require stills instead of barrels.
-Cooked foods will now be worth more than their raw counterparts.
-Added sfx for when research is activated.
-Renamed the Water blueprint in the Wellhouse to Draw Water From Well.
-Fixed a tooltip bug which would occasionally cause some lag issues.

One last thing. For this build, I made some changes to clean up unused items (items you delete, items merchants take away, items eaten/drunk) so, there's the possibility you might see some newer weird item bugs. I hope I fixed any issues there, but something like that might appear as jobs disappearing immediately after being placed, or entities getting stuck in item pick up/drop off loops. I'm going to address any severe issues over the weekend. Please let me know if you see anything!

Thanks everyone! Have a fun weekend!

Waylon

Hello!

Here's another small patch to address some more serious issues that I missed with the last patch. This *should* stabilize the build quite a bit, but please do let me know if you see anything serious.

-The blueprint to make sand clods from stone chunks has been moved to the stonework tier in saga.
-Fixed a bug where entities weren't able to find food and water, even though it was clearly present. This happened most often with tamed animals.
-Fixed a bug where snow would not melt.
-Fixed a save/load error.
-Fixed a bug where room jobs were not evenly checked for auto-placement.
-Fixed a bug where freezing water spawned water items.
-Fixed a bug where plants in rooms weren't saving correctly.
-Fixed a bug where water wasn't moving into fire blocks.
-Fixed a bug where entities could not be summoned if a platform blueprint was under the required prop.
-Fixed a bug where an auto-job would say you needed a certain prop to build even if you had it in the room.
-Fixed a bug where skill buffs weren't saving.
-Fixed a bug where the evocation skill wasn't levelling up newly summoned entities.

Thanks!

Waylon