Odd Realm News

Hello friends!



This is just a quick update to let you know the beta update for the new Tundra biome is pretty much ready to go. I'm going to push it live this Monday, March 30th. The only things it will not have are the new events/underground discoveries. I didn't have time to add those and will be doing so while the new update is in beta. So, those will go in to version 0.9.1.0.

Other than that, it has loooots of new goodies. My Monday post will have a more detailed breakdown of everything that has been added.

There will be a week or two of fixing beta issues and adding some new events for Tundra following this update. I anticipate this update having a lot of strange bugs/issues because it introduces a lot of new systems. After that, I'll move everything to the production branch.

Once this Tundra update is out of the way, I'm going to begin work on a big content/tuning update. By content, I'm referring to, events, items, props, blueprints. I'm going to avoid adding any new UI features or game mechanics. I wish to solely focus on world building as I think this has seen the least amount of attention. I have a unique world and history I want to show you and, so far, I've avoided doing so in order to flesh out the game's foundation.

I also want to take the time to thank all of you for supporting the game and for having so much patience, waiting for me to finish this Tundra update.

Thanks!

Waylon

Friends!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with this update. I'm very close to putting this next version of the game out onto the beta branch.

This week I was wrapping up the temperature system and how it affects entities and the environment. I also updated a lot of the UI to better communicate weather, block temperature, entity temperature, and so on. Here are some gifs showing various UI additions:













This temperature system is neither Celsius nor Fahrenheit. It's just a simple -100* to 100* scale. Anything below 0* starts to freeze and anything above 90 has a chance to catch on fire with 100* being on fire. 50* is the comfort zone for critters. Imagine a nice summer day with a breeze. 70-80* would be more tropical/desert weather and 20-40* would be fall/spring for taiga and voidlands. Tundra has very cold spring/winter/fall seasons but a moderate summer which will allow you to grow things and prepare. Weather and day/night will also affect the current temperature on top of the season.

Entity temperature is affected by the block they currently occupy. This block temperature will lower the entity temperature IF it's lower than the entity's cold tolerance. Cold tolerance is a stat which can be buffed/debuffed by items, inherent abilities, and effects. Humans have a default cold tolerance of 20* and their resting body temp is 50*. This means that if the block temperature drops below 20*, the entity's body temperature will start to lower to match. If it drops below 20* then the entity will gain the freezing status and will start to take damage. Very similar to the hunger/thirsty status. You can keep your entities from freezing by providing warm spaces (torches, fires, braziers, provide areas of heat) or equipping them with better clothing. Wool clothing can drop the cold tolerance to -10* which means the entities won't lose body temperature in weather of -10* or greater. But, if a snow storm sweeps in and drops the temperature to -20*, then you better make sure they have a warm house to hunker down in.

A biome's temperature will also affect things like ice, snow, and plants. Each plant has their own cold tolerance. This means that you'll be able to keep plants alive during winter in a greenhouse with heating and sunlight but probably not if you leave them outdoors in the cold. Likewise, snow and ice will melt when spring rolls around.

So, what's left to add to this update? I'm still working out some of the smaller dynamics of ice and snow melt. After this I need to add the new animals (3-4 new) as well as some new events. This is probably about 2 weeks of work. With those things ready, I'll be able to submit the new version to the beta branch to start to get help finding bugs. :)

That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

Waylon

Hey gang!

I hope you have all had a wonderful week. I've been working hard on the Tundra and wanted to give you a progress update.



The last two weeks I finished adding the core biome content (excluding fauna). This includes 3 new trees, 3 new plants, all the tuning and data for the seasons and weather, and, lastly, ice!



Much like the snow buildup I've shown in previous dev blogs, ice will appear as you get further into cold seasons. Ice has the added functionality of providing a path above water and can be deconstructed in order to gain access to water/fishing again.

As well, regarding trees, I've now made it so you can build in the canopy of trees and have settlers walk around in there. This lets you make tree forts if you so choose.



Lastly, this week, I worked on improving two systems which were a bit buggy or slow. I didn't plan on working on these this week but they were VERY annoying and needed to be addressed. The first is the item spawning. It should now spawn items faster but also with less chance of failing because an open point isn't found. The second is blueprint item requirement awareness for builders. In live builds, the game can receive some pretty heavy framerate drops because settlers will think they can start building a blueprint when, in fact, the required items are not available. Sure, the item exists in the world, but another settler could be carrying it or has reserved it for use in building meaning it really isn't available to build with. These added checks will ensure settlers won't iterate through every single blueprint trying to find the item requirements that aren't there which is very expensive CPU-wise.

This weekend and next week I'll be tackling the temperature mechanics finally!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Waylon

Hey gang!

Wanted to give a quick update on how things are going with the Tundra update.

I'm making really great progress. I've added a new system to the world which lets me display effects on blocks which opens up the possibility of snow/dust/rust/burns and other similar visual treatment. This system is hand because it can transition over previous textures making things like snow have a more natural appearance.

I've combined this new effect system with the weather system which creates a really cool building up progression:



The above showcases how the winter season progresses. As it snows, the snow will build up on surfaces that are open to the sky. I can think of a couple other fun uses for this such as ash falling from the sky if you are in a volcano biome (which I want to add one of these days).

As well--and I know SO many of you have waited for this--I've added in grass regrowth for when it rains:



The grass will fill appear on top of blocks that allow natural growth such as dirt.

This next week I'll be implementing temperature. The core system should be easy to add but I'm guessing I'll need to add a lot of UI to help communicate why snow is melting or things are setting on fire. I anticipate this system will take me a week to add. Once that's up and running, I'll be implementing the biome specific things such as new animals, trees, plants for the Tundra. I'm hoping to have this update ready and good to go for the end of Feb but no promises! ;P

I'm feeling really good about these additions and I think they make the world feel much more alive. Can't wait to share them with you!

Have a good weekend!

Waylon

Hey friends!

This is a rather brief update on game progress and where I'm at.

The last few weeks I was updating some old systems that were poorly written/designed. That's pretty much done but I'm still working out some of the bugs that arise as I go along.

I'm also in the process of adding more natural 'platforms'. Platforms are more of an internal term for any floors that the game can have. For example, grass, wood tile, clay shingles, snow, etc. The bottom face of the game's block, essentially. Natural platforms are ones which appear on their own in the world. The two which I'm working on are grass and snow. Before, grass and snow were simply texture swaps to the grass platform. When I entered a new season I'd swap those textures. Now, those platforms will appear based on the tuning information for weather and season. So, when it rains, grass for that season will naturally grow and appear on dirt blocks. In Winter, if it's snowing, snow platforms will appear on all surfaces exposed to the sky. So, you'd have snow on your rooftops and such. All these weather and season sets are now tuned based on the biome. So, you'll no longer see that weird snow bug in the Tropical biome.

These new changes open up a lot of fun possibilities because I can now have varying seasons per biome, varying season lengths, unique seasons, unique weather per season, etc. For example, I could have the dust storm weather in the Desert spawn things like sand. Or, I could add a unique season to the Voidlands where everything is chaotic, weird plants growing out of control, temperatures swinging about wildly. That's just spitballing, but can see the potential.

After this, I'm jumping onto implementing the temperature system itself. This is what I was describing in my last post. Namely, biomes having a baseline temperature which is affected by weather and season. And then having props control temperature. Heating a house, keeping a greenhouse warm enough to grow crops and so on.

Anyway, the combination of re-writing a lot of the core game and adding in these new features has resulted in a very long wait for a new game update and I apologize for the delay. I know it's easy for games to seem like they are abandoned in this genre but have faith that I'm still trucking along. That's why I like to do my normal weekly updates. This one, however, is just impossible to get out at that normal cadence. Thanks so much for all your patience.

Best,

Waylon