Odd Realm News

Hello!

Hope you're all having a great day.

Just uploaded v0.8.5.0 to the beta branch.

This version is, I think, pretty cool as it adds a lot to the survival aspects of the game. That being said, it also might be the least stable in terms of loading saves. I've added a few things but also changed up some previous functionality so I'm not 100% certain everything will load perfectly. I didn't have any issues with the several old saves I loaded but you never know.

So what's new in this patch?

First up is age. I've completely changed how settlers treat age. Before it was based on seasons and children were treated as a profession. Them being a profession doesn't really makes sense especially when looking at elders. Elders shouldn't be stripped of their profession just because they get old. As well, who knows, I may want a child who's a super warrior to show up and I don't want to limit that because child is a profession.

Wow, wow, wow. What's this elder you speak of?

Ok, that's the other thing I've added. Much like Children turning into adults after a time, they will also turn into elders. I've changed age to correlate to days rather than seasons (seasons take too long). So, your settlers will start to become elders at around the age of 50-60 days. There are two things to be aware about elders. First, they can randomly die of old age. Second, they get a bonus to their favored skills. Think of this as them becoming masters in their profession.

The main reason I've been working on age is because Ardyn rely on it heavily for their main mechanic of syphoning life from other beings to stay young.

The other big thing that I've added to this build is water, thirst and the survival skill. Settlers now have a thirst attribute which depletes slightly faster than hunger. You can get water from two sources: a well, and water blocks. I've added a new collect water job which the survival skill is used for. Collecting water produces unpurified water. You then need to purify this water at the campfire room. Water is also used for booze now.

Ok, that's a lot to take in. Here are the notes:
-Fixed a bug where camera 'go to position' would not go to the exact z level of the target. i.e., Go to settler would not go to their z.
-Added sfx for: cats, dogs, chickens, tamtallen, mirmits, lopens, vytrax, cows.
-Added new Thirst and Hydration attributes.
-Added water and purified water items.
-Added Survival skill.
-Added Collect Water job.
-Added well prop.
-Can now purify water at the campfire.
-Added Age attribute.
-Changed age to correlate to days rather than seasons.
-Added Elder status.
-Removed child profession.
-Distillery will now use water as an ingredient for booze.
-Added beverages and liquids zones.

What's next?

This next week I'm going to fix up the bugs which arise from these big changes to put out a stable PROD build. As well, I'm going to implement some fun new things related to water. Mainly, building water blocks. Yay! As well, I'm going to add a new room to automate water production. This will use the stone well. Additionally, I'm going to add water and feed troughs to the animal enclosures so we can stop having animals steal your items and the farmer (in the future this would be animal handler or something similar) will automatically fill those with the proper food items.

This is all leading into the Ardyn race implementation I assure you. Ok, maybe water and thirst was a slight tangent. Happens.

Any help testing out this beta build would be solid.

Thanks and have a stellar weekend.

Cheers,
Waylon

Happy Friday everyone.

Today's Production build (v0.8.4.2) has been uploaded.

Besides the Beta changes from a few days ago (Beta 0.8.4.0 patch notes), it includes:
-Fixed a bug where the custom zones inventory panel would get stuck open.
-Added an option to delete gear sets from the gear set list on the uniforms screen.
-Added duplicate, copy and paste gear set buttons to the uniforms screen.
-Fixed a bug where the inventory panel would not update when new items were created.
-Added blueprints for Stoneleaf Leggings and Vests.
-Fixed a bug where settlers would show an item was being equipped when it was not.
-Changed the 'go to entity' button on the settlers screen to open their info window, snap to their position, and select them.
-Hitting 'T' when no entity is selected will select the first player owned entity and open their info screen.
-Hitting 'G' to go to next idle settler will ignore non-player entities and will now immediately snap to their position.
-Fixed a bug where hidden blocks would show a tooltip description.
-Fixed a bug where container descriptions would show the 'all' icon for permitted item types.
-Added a new blueprint to make coal from wood logs at the Campfire with anyone who has the Forestery skill.
-Added the ability to add/remove settlers from your current selection from the settlers screen.
-Added a skill requirement icon to the workshop blueprints.
-Fixed a bug where enemies would be unable to flee the map if there was no land on the border.
-Fixed a bug where you could build grass over water.
-Added wheat seeds to the custom loadout options.

What's next?
Seeing as the Ardyn race is next up on my backlog, I'm going to implement age properly for all entities. Age is an important attribute for the Ardyn as they age much faster than all the other races. As a result, they have to syphon lifeforce from imprisoned entities to maintain their youth. This also introduces the new profession of Elder (similar to child). Settlers become Elders at a certain age. This will increase the level cap, but also keeps settlers from changing profession. Elders have the benefit of obtaining higher skills but also have a chance to die of old age.
After old age, I'll be jumping onto adding a new room called cell or perhaps jail. This is where you'll be able to put prisoners. Especially handy for the Ardyn as they'll be able to keep human/gwdir/tomek/etc livestock there.

Anywho, hope you folks have a wonderful weekend.

Best,

Waylon

Hey super fam,

I've uploaded the latest version, 0.8.4.0, with the newest feature, settler Uniforms, to the beta branch.

*There are new tutorial steps for this feature. You can reset the tutorial from the settings menu if you'd like the game to explain it as you go.

What is this new Uniforms thang?
A lot of people have expressed that equipping settlers is tedious. The Uniform feature is a way around the micromanagement and monotony of going through each settler, one-by-one to equip items and gear.

Here are the important terms to know:
Gear Set - a loadout of items that Uniforms use to determine what settlers should auto-equip. Many Uniforms can use the same Gear Set.
Uniform - a preset which determines the items settlers need to equip based on Gear Set and prerequisites. There are three prerequisite categories: profession, selection group, and individual.
Profession Uniforms - settlers will equip items from this Uniform if they are of the same profession.
Selection Group Uniforms - settlers will equip items from this Uniform if they are in the selection group. (Selection Grouping is the feature which lets you name and hotkey settlers.)
Individual Uniforms - settlers will equip items from this Uniform if the player has manually equipped items to a settler.

What's important to note about the Uniform functionality is that individual uniforms completely overwrite the two other Uniform types of profession and group. If no individual override exists, settlers will try to equip from profession and group Uniforms based on their relative priorities.

You can have many profession and group Uniforms. Settlers will auto-equip using a waterfall method. This means, that if no item exists for the highest priority Uniform, they will then look to the next highest Uniform to determine what item needs equipping. You can see a settler-by-settler breakdown of the behavior from the settler's info screen.

Here are the patch notes:
-Input fields now start as selected so you can begin typing right away.
-New UI and System for settler Uniforms.
-New tutorial steps explaining the new UI.
-Fixed a bug where Wicker Baskets could be deconstructed for Bronze Ingots.
-Fixed a bug where integer text popups wouldn't accept Enter input from the keyboard.
-Fixed a bug where cancelling and 'equip item' action would still have the settler go and equip the item.

There's a lot more that I want to add to polish up these screens for the Production build on Friday. These items include:
-Only auto create professions for permitted race professions.
-Add copy/duplicate for uniforms and gear sets.
-Show when a uniform has no items.
-Add delete button for gear set list.
-Swap out rarity display text (i.e., 'Ordinary') with stats/buffs for inventory panels to easily see how good items are.
-Update inventory panels when new items spawned.
-Export/import feature to transfer uniforms presets from one game to the next.

I'd really like your feedback on this feature as it's complex and I appreciate your opinions.

Thanks,

Waylon

Hey friends,

Just wanted to let you know I won't be putting out an update today as I'm still working on the new uniforms feature. It's actually very close to being complete but, as you'd expect with something with so many complexities, there are a lot of edge cases and UI feedback tasks for me to tackle first.

Here's a breakdown of the feature:

The Uniforms window is a brand new overlay where you'll be able to create gear loadouts for professions, control groups, and individual settlers.

Uniforms Window

Settlers that fulfill the requirements of a uniform will automatically equip the items that are a part of the uniform's gear set. For example, you can create a gear set for your Miners which has them automatically equipping pickaxes. As well, within these uniforms, there is a priority level which you can edit. So, you could have two uniforms for your Miners, one with Bronze Pickaxes and one with Iron Pickaxes. The Iron Pickaxe uniform can be setup with a higher priority so your settlers will try to equip items for this first and then fallback to Bronze Pickaxes if no Iron ones exist.

Keep in mind that you'll still have the ability to setup individual uniforms like before. Individual uniforms are of a higher priority than profession and control group uniforms, so your settler, in this case let's say, Jeffrey, will first try to equip the Blade of Brian before falling back to a uniform that's set up for their profession or control group.

I'm going to try to push this new update to the BETA branch once I finish off the remaining items on my task list, sometime early next week. Then I'll push to the PROD branch on Friday.

Anywho, sorry for the delay. Hope you have an excellent weekend.

Waylon

Hello!

This is a small update to fix a memory leak which was occurring with UI text. Though, it may not be the fix for every mem leak in the game, this one is huge and should help with a lot of crashes.

Thanks,

Waylon