Odd Realm News

Hey friends!

The time is here! This update has been quite the challenge for me. What started out as a rendering systems optimization re-write at Christmas turned into implementing the Tundra biome. Both were huge tasks for me, the former taking well over a month, and the latter another two! Thanks so much for patiently waiting for me to get this one out into the beta branch.

Before I explain the new temperature system, I just want to put out some warnings. First, this build is NOT backwards compatible with old saves. Second, the first few days of this will likely be fairly buggy. So, if you don't want to find bugs and report them, I'd strongly suggest waiting for this build to be tested and fixed up. I'll probably be putting it onto the production branch in a week or two. I already have a nice list of bugs which I wasn't able to get to, so I'll try to put out a hotfix patch this week for those and any that are reported.

Temperature. How does it work? What's this Tundra biome? Ok, I know a lot of you are thinking to yourselves, the Tundra doesn't have trees! What the heck. Well, I didn't want to create a snow version of the Desert which is, in my opinion, rather boring. So, yes, the Tundra has trees AND it has a warm season! Beware, though. This biome will still require you to put in more effort to survive.

The temperature system in Odd Realm is called Asters and is represented by an asterisk (*). It's a simple scale of -100* to 100*. Things less than 0* start to freeze while things at 100* are on fire. 50* is resting body temperature and you can imagine 40* to be a nice spring day. Each biome and their respective seasons and weather will determine the global temperature shown on the top-right bar, beside the time. As well, the depth you're at slightly affects temperature. High up will be colder, way underground warmer.

Entities all have default Cold Tolerance. This value determines when they will start to take freezing damage. Humans, for example, have a Cold Tolerance of 20*. This means, when the temperature drops below 20*, they will start to lose body temperature. Once body temperature drops below 20*, they'll take damage and eventually freeze to death. Entities will automatically try to warm up at heat sources when they start to freeze, so make sure you build torches and fires. Or, alternatively, equip them with warmer clothing which offsets the Cold Tolerance value. You can see the temperature of the world blocks from the utility menu.

Plants also have a Cold Tolerance, some higher than others. You'll need to plant warmer climate plants in green houses with torches and a skylight to make sure they can survive the colder weather of the Tundra.

Another added feature is that ice and snow can now appear as the weather gets cold. When enough snow builds up, it will create a snow block. Keep this in mind because you can potentially be buried in snow. You can also deconstruct/mine the ice/snow to collect Ice Chunks and Snow Balls which can then be used for building Ice/Snow Walls. Handy for making igloos but remember these will melt in the warmer seasons.

I've also added some new plants, trees, and animals, but I'll let you find them as you play. :)

Here are the patch notes:

-Re-wrote rendering systems to be faster.
-Deconstruct is now clear/remove and can be used to clear things like grass, snow, ice, as well as deconstruct things you've built. You can also use it to cut tree leaves if you wish to make a tree fort.
-Grass now grows when it rains.
-Snow now lands on surfaces facing the sky when it snows.
-Fixed a bug where saplings could be cut for infinite wood.
-Cancelling stacked blueprints will now only cancel the top blueprint first.
-Fixed a bug where the game would start to lag when you have many blueprints and settlers but not the required items to build.
-Fixed a bug where cut/harvest weren't getting drop chance bonuses from increased level.
-3 new trees: Iro, Caelum Oscula, Pala.
-Tundra biome can now be settled.
-Tree leaves can now be cut.
-3 new plants: ice root, sikari, and weep wisp.
-Changing the camera layer when following a settler will now disable the follow.
-Water will turn to ice in cold seasons.
-Fixed a bug where certain jobs weren't being cleared if the block they occupied was no longer valid. i.e., Platforms being built at a fishing spot but the fishing job still being started/completed.
-Added STONE STOOL. Y'all happy!?
-Switched 'Hide Overlay' hotkey from left-shift to left-alt.
-Fixed a UI bug where carried items would show repeating.
-Fixed some pixel perfect issues with season/weather background of the time menu.
-The cursor 'click point' has been moved to match the cursor finger icon more accurately.
-Added temperature system to game. Entities now have body temperature and can freeze to death. This can be avoided by building heat producing props or equipping them with warm clothing.
-Plants are now damaged by cold weather. Each plant has a cold tolerance amount they can withstand. Going below this will damage them over time. If their health drops to 0, they will die.
-Current weather is now shown on the time bar.
-Six new entities: Stradken, Rabbit, Owl, Nightwing, Gharox, Deer.
-Added medium leather.
-Added stone and wood icebox which adds 120 hrs to decay.
-The block temperature will now affect the total decay time of items.
-Added a blueprint to create ice chunks from snow balls at the firepit.
-Fixed an issue where the wrong hotkey was displayed for the 1/5 increment key.
-Cut and harvest are now one job. The overlay will show a green dot when the plant is mature and will produce items.
-Fixed some cursor bugs where the cursor wouldn't show entities as selectable if they were in the air.
-Tuned food decay times to take longer.

As I said, I've got a list of things I wasn't able to get to and I'll be focusing on those to get this build ready for production. There's a lot of UI/tooltip info I need to update and add for communicating temperature better, as an example. Plus, I need to update the tutorial to convey all these new systems.

Once this update is on the production line, I'll probably take a small vacation to regain some energy. When I'm back I'm going to focus on ONLY content for the next big patch. Items, props, events, discoveries and more things for our pals the Ancients. :)

Thanks!

Best,

Waylon

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