Breakwaters
Mission flow fix and Railings bug fix
-Fixed a mission progression issue where rewards would not always be given if the "E" button was the only method used to progress the mission.
-Fixed railings so they drop the correct item when destroyed.
-Fixed a Item duplication bug in online.
-Setup backup logic in the online code to check if a Crate has the correct items before the player modifies its inventory reducing desync potential.
Multiple bug fixes reported in the online alpha branch tests
-Update to wood floor half long variant piece so it builds pathing correctly
-Network connection error logic fix
-Object serialization bug fix
-Animal AI bug fix
-Creation Station Window close error fix
-Update to Health Damage logic to block possible error cases
-Menu logic update to check for additional missing info
-Paper window logic updates
-Update to Contraption placement logic to fix possible error cases
Online Public Alpha for Breakwaters is live
I moved the online tech I have been working on into the Steam Branch called Online Public Alpha. Its open for everyone who has Breakwaters, so download it and try it out with some friends.
How to install a branch:
If you haven't used a Steam Branch before, its like installing a different version of the game.
Here are the basics for how to do that:
1-Right click on the game in your Steam library, and click Properties.
2-Select the Betas tab, and select the branch you want to switch to. Keep in mind the branch you want may be at the bottom and require scrolling.
When you are done playing in that branch, be sure to change back to the default branch.
Why is it called Alpha?
Alpha means that its still being worked on and may have some bugs.
I am actively working on a few known bugs related to Titan combat, but the Discord community playtests have been going well and I felt it was time to share it with everyone who wants access.
In a Alpha build, its always a good idea to make a new world and a new character so if you hit an unexpected bug it doesn't impact your main save files.
Hope your week has gone well and you have a great weekend!
Minor update to align the build with online tech build.
-Merged Wood Door wide and narrow versions into one item with variants.
-Moved some contraption locations in the Builders Bench menu to be more consistent across item types.
-Fixed issue where an object in the world would rarely not die correctly and would reject any new damage because part of the logic thought it was already dead.
New contraptions, improved building logic, new resources, updated resource spawn
I am currently wrapping up bugs on the new online tech and as part of that work I have been updating some of the resources in game and related features like building. This means new resources and contraptions in the game along with Grey Stone and hammer updates to make stone harvest-able earlier in the game.
New Contraptions!
- Grey Stone Walls and doors now exist, and you can now harvest Grey Stone with strong enough hammers.
- Wall Lights can now be built and placed on vertical or horizontal surfaces
- Wood Signs can be placed on walls or the ground and customized
- Grilling Table (tier 3 food cooking, and it wont catch things nearby on fire regardless of how much fuel you put in it)
- Wood Beams (square, round, and 45 deg slant)
- Round Wood Pillar variant
- Wood Railings which includes stair variants
Some contraptions, like Stone Doors have been combined so the large and small versions are now variants in the same contraption instead of built separately.
Some of the advanced contraptions have been moved into the Forge build list based on their ingredient list.
Golem Stone is a new resource which is needed to build early hammers and some other items.
Quality of life Improvements
In addition to new contraptions, there have been a bunch of quality of life updates, bug fixes, and performance improvements.
Some of which are: A snap widget when placing contraptions to show its current rotation point. A hotkey to lock the current snap location. UI button previews for interactions. Intelligent auto rotate on contraptions depending on where you target your cursor. Free rotation option on fences like the pipes have.
Combat updates
Combat difficulty has been increased for some enemies (mostly golems, mega golems, and titans). Some users will love this, some wont, so on my todo list is a difficulty setting which I hope to add soon after the new online tech is live. More combat updates will be happening soon, along with the new Ashray enemy. Look for Ashray in the next update or so, they are just about ready.
Oh ya, there is a new main menu background video too! Its been a while since I have updated the video, but a lot of improvements have happened on the game, so be sure to check out the new video to see it with all of the improvements.
Hope your having a great day, looking forward to sharing the new online tech with you.
Build notes:
v0.7.5
-Big improvement to WoodFloor building logic so its easier to do, plus anything that snaps onto wood floors is easier to do now.
-Fixed pine tree death vfx spawning to better align with the trunk position
-Updated fences to allow high precision placement like water pipes use. This lets users rotate them with or without snap.
-Updated main menu video and button positions
-Improved water reset logic when leaving a world to the main menu and entering into a world again
-Small experience improvements to Wooden signs text editing
-Update to golems and BlurCrystalPine Trees to always drop resources on death instead of having a low chance of not dropping something
-Added the Grilling Table to the game. A third tier cooking station with more slots and 2x cooking speed, plus it wont catch surrounding things on fire no matter how much fuel you put in it.
-Moved some of the advanced weapons out of the Builders Bench and into the Forge.
-Updated weapon damage values to provide more contrast and better results depending on what you are attacking.
-Update to Stone resources and hammers to allow Grey Stone harvesting without explosives.
-Added Grey Stone walls and doors to the build-able list
-Changed Golems to drop Golem Stone which can be used for early hammers
-Update to various item and contraption icons
-Update to the first island and the Pine island spawn values to generate more Red Stone boulders and Metal boulders
-Combined Stone doors and wide stone doors into one contraption with variants instead
-Improved ocean shader distance rendering where details had not been tiling correctly
-Improved Golem movement to render smoother
-Improved world and character selection menus in the main menu so when you delete a file it keeps the scroll position relatively in place instead of moving to a default selection
-Improved building feedback to show when you are building too far away from a Dock and it wont let you place the object there.
-Setup a Contraption Snap Widget to show which socket the contraption that is being placed is currently snapped to and rotating around
-Setup a Wall Light contraption
-Setup Round Wood Pillar variants and Horizontal Wood Beam variants
-Setup interaction button ui to help users to know what button to press
-Setup the new Railing object which can be used with stairs and looks better than a Fence as a decoration.
-Setup Wood Beams contraption
-Changed Wood floor to not require nails
-Improved Projectile reticle texture
-Update to fish save logic to avoid a case where they could save with zero fish in a school because it saved before the school was spawned
-Fixed a bug with the lod system which could cause lods on objects to stop working
-Improved unloading of distant NPC to improve performance
Dev Log : What updates are next, and year-in-review
Production has been moving along strongly with lots of changes happening in the build, but many of them are not public yet, so I thought it was a good time to bring everyone up to speed on what I have been working on, what’s coming next, and what updates happened over the last year.
Recent updates:
Since mid-December the updates have appeared in fewer numbers than in the previous year because most of my time has been spent on finishing the new Online Tech. The updates that happened are not as exciting as some of the past updates, but many of them are the result of some of the big updates that are about to release. (specifically the new online tech, new building updates, and new contraptions)
One of the big updates that did make it out during that time span was adding new languages to the game, fixing bugs, improving UI, and improving quality of life across lots of systems. The localization tech took longer than I predicted because of the large number of places that text is interacted with in the code throughout the game. Localization is near complete with just a few missed places to add translations too.
English, Spanish, German, French, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, and Japanese are all now supported in the game with translations from a professional translation company. (Hopefully more languages to come soon).
In addition to the languages, some big updates to the loading system and rendering systems happened to improve performance on lower end machines and smooth out perf spikes and improve performance for everyone.
What’s coming next:
The next two updates coming are the Online Tech and a big building feature update (I don’t have a name for it yet).
-Online Tech: (Discord link at the bottom if you want to chat about the Online alpha tests.)
The Online Tech update is currently in closed alpha and testers have been in it every week. Sessions have been going great and it is making solid progress each week. I expect to move this tech into public beta in the next two weeks (Hopefully by the end of this week if the tests show its ready), and then into the default build as soon as it shows it’s ready.
-Building Feature update: This update will show up around the same time as the online tech enters beta. It changes how some of the hammers work in the game so they can harvest Grey Stone (without using explosives). It also introduces the Grey Stone wall building set, Wall Lights, Railings, and lots of new building pieces to round out the building sets more. The placement of walls/floors/stairs has been greatly improved too, so it’s easier than ever to build a structure.
Some items and contraptions have been moved into the Forge, including a new Contraption, the Grilling Table. The Grilling Table is a third-tier cooking station. It has more slots, cooks faster, and WON’T catch nearby things on fire if you put lots of fuel into it.
Another new contraption is the Wood Sign to help label crates and other objects in online and single player.
Wood Railings are another addition, which easily place on stairs and are cleaner looking than fences.
Balance updates to resources and enemies to the first and second island have also been happening to help support all of the above changes. The focus has been on introducing stone resources sooner and increasing the threat level.
What’s happening after those updates release?
Once the online tech is public, in general my focus will be heavily on new content and creatures since I haven't been able to focus on that as much recently.
Things currently in production: Creative mode, new resources, new contraptions, new items, more missions, Serpent Titan, difficulty settings, new enemies, and a few things I am working on but not ready to talk about just yet.
Year in review:
As a primarily solo dev, it’s been a busy year! 2 big content updates happened which included new islands, new resources, and new contraptions. Lots of smaller updates happened with new content and improvements. Breakwaters now supports 7 languages! Improvements across the board happened to performance, UI, stability, visual quality, accessibility, and gameplay. The Glider Boat was released, along with new pirate towers and related content. The Grabber Arm was added as a boat feature. Black Stone Crates and weapons got added to the world. Character customization improvements and character rendering, audio, and vfx improvements. Most recently Spider Silk and the Speed Sail showed up too. Friendly chickens exist now too, so you can start your own egg farm.
Since this time last year, 137 builds with new content, updates, and improvements have been shipped to players!
Some unseen work has been happening too as I have been preparing some unreleased content. Things like the Serpent Titan, work on new boats, an equipable shoes item which allow for improved movement and walking underwater, weather investigations, creative mode features, mod.io investigations, etc. I am excited to finish up many of these in-flight features and share them with everyone soon.
If you’re interested in playing in Alpha builds, please reach out on the Discord.
If you found a bug you would like to report, there is a Bugs channel on the Discord along with a suggestions channel if you have ideas to share.
Breakwaters Discord link
It’s been a busy year for me and Breakwaters, I hope everyone enjoys the coming updates and that the rest of the year is great for everyone. Thanks for your continued support; let’s make 2023 great together!
New Wood Sign contraption, Improved contraption placement logic, combat updates
v0.5.84
-Setup Wooden Sign as a build-able item which you can edit the text on. It can be placed on the ground or on walls.
-Improved contraption spawn logic so some contraptions can start their placement logic rotated towards you instead of aligned to the world
-Improved Golem and Mega golem ranged combat logic and animations
-New Wood Floor variant with the board direction rotated so players can align the boards if they want.
-Increased golem projectile speed to make it harder to dodge
-Improved throw logic to time the projectile with the animation better
-Setup flight inverted input option in settings menu. Set the default to not be inverted.
-Update to Crab and Yellow crystal water displacement to fade based on water depth
-Improved Dock float in place logic
-Fixed floating objects popping up out of the water when the player gets in range and their float logic turns on
-Updated inventory logic so if you are building a contraption and click a inventory button in the hotbar of the same contraption type, it will cancel building instead of entering the build loop again with the same contraption type
-Reorganized quit/save popups from pause screen so it makes a little more sense in how they flow
-Improved Player movement "Greased Pig" logic to work better with NPC
-Reduced Wood Wall collision thickness
-Tightened up stone wall visuals to be closer to their collision size
-General bug fixes across multiple places
-A combat system bug fixes with Titans
NPC visibility bug hot fix
-Hot fix for multiple NPC that didnt render after the last builds rendering optimizations. All NPC should be visible again.
Improve physics, performance, and graphics
-Improved tree physics and tree LODs to increase visual quality
-Improved health bar rendering to remove jitter from its position when an enemy is moving
-Optimized gpu rendering performance while traveling to new islands and in some cases while on islands
-Grass rendering improvements and visual updates
-Improved speech bubble logic on npc
-Prevented playing the game before world files have finished their initial loading
Performance regression fix and new perf improvements
v0.5.81
-Updated Crab LOD settings (this fixes a frame rate regression on lower end hardware so their fps is much better now like it was previously)
-Optimized animal AI physics logic
-Optimized boat physics logic
-Optimized NPC physics logic
-Improved loading logic so it initializes object rendering for all loaded zones before playing instead of doing it when the zone is first seen on screen.
-Setup frame rate uniformity logic for the ocean when running at 60hz water or in a online game.