Hammerting News

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the 35th instalment of the Dwarfveloper log. We've been hard at work on fighting off those pesky enemy waves to bring you this bunch of changes:

Content

• Added Enemy Wave Records to internal database, added Enemy Wave specifications
  
• Added Health and Faction information to buildings.
  
• Added Fuel & Building Health to relevant buildings.
  
• Added statusbars for Fuel & Building Health to crafting interface
  
• Added in world GUI statusbars to buildings, creatures, &c.
  
• Reworked Statusbar Modifiers and Thresholds
  
• Added World map entity near entrance
  
• Made Braziers buildable
  
• Fixed a bug by which unlocks were set improperly
  
• Added "Mushroom Stew", food recipe
  
• Added several Infrastructure buildings.
  
• Added support for dropping loot when excavating tiles
  
• Enemy waves with graphic alerts
  
• Tweaked crafting related tooltips
  

Code

• Enemy waves now spawn in the cave every now and then. These contain enemies that don’t just roam around. They’ll go for your buildings!
  
• Buildings can now be destroyed by enemies. We’re still working on letting you repair them.
  
• Added a shader effect when something takes damage.
  
• Improved tooltips for what the dwarves are up to.
  
• UI indicator and tooltip for when an item is reserved for use, for example when it is going to be used for crafting.
  
• Various fixes for issues that could cause dwarves to idle rather than do something useful.
  
• Moved starting position to be centered in the Dawnlit Caverns biome.
  
• Started work on pathfinding rewrite.
  
• Added a block_cull_system, to allow for further optimizations
  
• Started working on CPU optimizations, to allow better FPS
  
• Reworked how objects are built on map
  
• Various bug fixes
  

Art

• Made new UI art for Storage and Chest.
  
• Started to rework the dwarf character UI.
  
• Made concept art for underground farm and infrastructure (railroads, elevators, mining carts, drills and doors).
  
• Models and animations for Machinery (railroads, elevators, mining carts, drills and doors).
  
• Made art for fuel and health bars dedicated to the rooms.
  

And here comes the images:









Join us in the great hall next week for another Dwarfveloper log by the hearth where we’ll have more exciting news to share on what’s to come!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Dwarfveloper log #34 – Items and crafting!

Today we are going to discuss:

Items
Items, items, items. Any game with extensive crafting really does revolve around them, and it is therefore of the essence that the underlying systems governing and presenting them to the player rest on solid foundations. Ours, we like to think, do.



Items in Hammerting are defined primarily in two ways, through their “Modifiers”, and through their “Classifications”. Rather than being hard welded into some monolithic data structure, items carry very little information in and of themselves, and rather act primarily as container objects for “Modifiers” — effectively a set of values with a type — which the crafting system passes on through the various crafting stages, modifying, translating or otherwise using their values along the way. “Modifiers”, in turn, can have “Classifications”, which are string and hash tags which can have hierarchical inheritance from other “Classifications”, and which are used to provide “Modifiers”, carried by items, with identity. So what does that mean?




Axe Example
An axe, is made from two components, an “Axe Head”, and a “Handle”, and those are both, in turn, made from the various metals available in the depths of the Mountain. One of the requirements we had on the system when we did our extensive rewrite of it back in September, was that we wanted end products, like the axe, to individually reflect the metals they and their components were made from, and thus the system has to preserve that kind of information, as well as the typology of the various axe heads and handles used. So, for example, you could have a Butcher’s Axe made with a Copper Cleaver Axe Head and a Curved Iron Handle, or a Woodsman’s Axe made from a Mithril Hawk Axe Head and a Straight Gold Handle. Powerful stuff.



Under the new regime, we use a translation scheme, by which a particular crafting recipe translates “Modifiers” in the incoming crafting material to its own outgoing values, and through such sequences the raw inputs from the base of the crafting trees can be propagated to the eventual leaf-node end products, end products which will then effectively carry their entire crafting history with them. An “Axe Head”, for example, has a “Sharpness” modifier, which it creates by looking at “Hardness” and “Malleability” modifiers in the incoming metal, and which all metals then have to some degree or another. The finished axe, in turn, can do whatever it wishes with the incoming “Sharpness” value, and this varies per axe type, but usually it propagates by some factor into the various damage types, for example “Slashing Damage”, or “Piercing Damage”. The beauty of this is that, rather than adding in an axe head per metal type, we only have to add the axe head type (e.g. “Cleaver Axe Head”) once, and then have its actual values qua “Golden Cleaver Axe Head”, calculated from the metal that was used in the concrete crafting instance.

So, for example, a Hawk Axe Head made from Copper would be lighter and sharper than one made from Gold, which could increase the “Slashing Damage” of the axe made from Copper, but at the same time the axe made from Gold would have a higher “Crushing Damage”, as “Crushing Damage” is heavily dependent upon the weight of the weapon, making your optimal choice of axe heavily dependent on the enemies you plan on encountering. Not all enemy encounters are planned affairs, so perhaps a more balanced axe type could be the go-to choice? Then there are the considerations of the peaceful application of axes as crafting tools, so other dimensions would also come into play when considering what best to put in the hands of your stout little wards.



More than Weapons
The system permeates all crafting interactions in the game, and, in another example, Food uses a similar layout as Weapons, in which various base “Tastes” — e.g. “Salty”, “Bitter”, “Sweet” — in the primary cooking ingredients, like Tubers and Mushrooms which can be found and cultivated in the Mountain, can be propagated upwards through the crafting tree, to finished food products, which will then by their respective types have various taste preferences. Beer, for example, is best made from “Bitter” tasting foods, whereas “Bitter” foods wreck any good cake, as cakes usually prefer “Sweet” tastes. Except the Bitter Cake, of course.



There’s a lot going on, and little by little, these types of interactions and dependencies will make their way into pretty much every aspect of crafting and building in Hammerting — Perhaps making a solid Gold foundry isn’t the best idea when the magma eventually comes slushing through it? — and provide ample design space for emergent behaviours, ideally providing a fun and varied experience with each play-through of the game.

Balancing these heavily intertwined systems is another matter, but we have done a fair bit of thinking on that as well. Stay tuned!



Join us in the great hall next week for another Dwarfveloper log by the hearth where we’ll have more exciting news to share on what’s to come!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Dwarfveloper log #33 – The War Above!

Do dwarves bathe? The winter is long and cold, we think they could appreciate a bath? Maybe if they had hot springs down in the mountain? Or would they not risk making the beard soft and fluffy? Just what we're pondering at the moment! Let us know if you all have any suggestions!

On that serious note - WAR!



Overworld Crisis

Significant progress has been made on overworld crisis missions:

• Locations can be taken over, and fall.
  
• UI work. War progress meter, alerts, map locations, & more.
  
• Work on crisis spawning algorithm.
  
• 10 crisis/war missions.
  

Here's an example of an overworld city normal and razed.

Other

• Added several dependencies to crafting recipes to improve content progression.
  
• Readded "New Recipe" alert on unseen recipes.
  
• Unlock system supports mission unlocks.
  
• Bacon now restores Energy.
  
• Implemented new UI for crafting rooms.
  
• Bricks can be mined away.
  
• Unlocking Ball Peen Hammer Head after Sledge Hammer Head.
  
• A dwarf in misery will now get a flashing icon by the portrait to warn the player. A bit too discreet, yes, we’ll add a more in-your-face notification too.
  
• An icon is now shown in the missions list to indicate that there are available overworld missions.
  

• Grottos will now light up and provide extra visibility to dwarves who wander near them.
  
• Dwarves will now walk around inside buildings when crafting, rather than just standing outside.
  
• Dwarves can now issue the “Place block” order to fill up missing pieces of the map.
  
• Lowered priority for hauling stuff to storages.
  
• Orders on the map now have icons.
  
• Even the most stubborn of dwarves will no longer try to enter an elevator and pass through the cave wall.
  
• A notification is now shown when the game auto saves.
  
• A dwarf standing on top of a map block would under certain circumstances refuse to move anywhere else. Perhaps because of the good view. Well, it is no longer so.
  

• Tweaked with various UI elements (such as the build UI and an alert notification)
  
• Polishing on Overworld locations and background.
  
• Razed versions of the overworld locations
  
• And some images that belong:
  

A dwarf in misery:


The War Meter:



Join us in the great hall next week for another Dwarfveloper log by the hearth where we’ll have more exciting news to share on what’s to come!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Dwarfveloper log #32 – Hungry Dwarves!

We’re implementing the feature that plagues all us mortals - death! For now we have added in starvation as one of the tickets to the underground graveyard but there are others planned. We would love your feedback! How resilient should dwarves be? How often should a dwarf die? If you have input on how you'd like to see this balanced, please let us know on Discord, Steam or Twitter - links are at the bottom of this post!



Onto the patch notes:

Content

• Added room "Storage".
  
• Significantly reduced likelihood of iron and coal being present in Dawnlit Caverns.
  
• Implemented unlock support by recipe type to provide better content progression.
  
• Changed building dependencies to provide better content progression.
  
• Statusbars are now woven together in that Greed affects Morale which affects Energy which affects Health. Failing to maintain the dwarves' statuses should ultimately be detrimental to his health.
  
• Mission indicators placed accurately relative to locations on the overworld map.
  
• Increased vision ranges for the dwarves by factor 1.5
  
• Lowered Required Skill on Straight and Curved handles.
  
• Added "Goblin Tent", loot
  
• Added "Goblin Watchtower", loot
  
• Added "Gramford Bridge", overworld location
  
• Added "A Bridge Beyond", mission
  
• Added "Bluebulb", "Tater", "Suckle-Vine", "Summer Green", "Paradise Canopy", "Thornbush", plant components
  

Art

• Started to rework crafting UI, separating the art from each crafting station.
  
• Made a bulletin board model (to be used to access the overworld map).
  
• Made new icons for the overworld map that indicates if a location is under siege from either allies or enemies.
  
• New Biome still in progress.
  

Code

• Added highlight effect to things that are interactable (metals, different crops, world loot etc)
  
• Started to reworked how basic commands are used for interaction
  
• Adding some coloring to the dwarfs’ armor and hair. Their armor will be colored in their clan’s colors.
  

Join us in the great hall next week for another Dwarfveloper log by the hearth where we’ll have more exciting news to share on what’s to come!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Dwarfveloper log #31 – Ice Mines!

This month we are focused on making the game really FUN to play. Most systems are in place, we have a lot of content, now we need to tie the pieces together. This is when the magic happens!

Art

• Reworked some UI (like the build UI).
  
• Made a bunch of new icons. Some examples are generic food, granite and vegetables.
  
• Begun working on a new biome: Frozen Waste.
  

Code

• The tile highlights when placing dig/mine/build room/build other are now much more visible(visible in fog of war, for example), and support custom textures.
  
• There’s now a tooltip that shows the “hotkey” for all buttons with hotkeys assigned.
  
• More bug fixes
  

Join us in the great hall next week for another Dwarfveloper log by the hearth where we’ll have more exciting news to share on what’s to come!