New Update live - Optimisation, Like prompt UI change, Building Exclusion Zone Changes
Hello everyone!
We hope that you've all had a smashing Christmas holiday and are gearing up for an awesome 2019! If you spent the holidays playing CardLife and creating an incredible structure or some beautiful custom weapons, make sure to share your creations with the rest of the Steam community, we'd love to see what you guys have been working on. Just hit F12 and you'll be able to upload your screenshot to Steam community at the end of your play session.
Our last update included two new tools, a new creature and a voting system. You can read all about that by clicking the link below:
However, today, we're pushing out a few optimisation tweaks that we've been working on. They mainly focus on memory optimisations as these issues are mentioned about the most within the community.
1 - Memory requirements:
We have massively reduced the memory footprint needed to run the game, pre Christmas we were still getting crash complaints from people with 8GB Ram on their PC Rigs. The team has created an array of near min PC specs and blow spec Laptops to gauge improvements. If you have 8Gb or more the game should not run out of memory. we have also had the game running on 6Gb PC's well but its worth noting that if your Graphics Card borrows RAM from the main memory pool then you might be operating less the the maximum memory specification.
2 - Performance
We have been doing a lot of work in the background on frame stalls and framerate. The coders have been improving the way physics are being generated with structures and have made big improvements to the overall performance of the game. The good news is that there is more to come and we will be upgrading to a new version of the Unity soon which provides even more gains.
3 - Like prompt UI change
we had a few comments about the size of the Like prompt and that is obscured too much screen real-estate, so we have reduced the size of it significantly. let us know what you think
4 - Building exclusion zone change
We have reduced the building exclusion zone radius so that players can build structures a little closer together than before, this will generate more potential build space on the map and reduce the need for land grabs where players would place foundation pieces at regular intervals as a boundary to prohibit other from building on their land. We are hoping that players will be a bit more sensible about claiming land as a result.
Community images
Here are a few awesome images that were captured by the community.
Thank you everyone for your support and we hope that you all have an incredible 2019.
Dev Blog 100 - New Tools, New Creature, Creators chest and the Like/Dislike System
The Second Phase of Our ‘Creator Tools!
This update continues our creators trend with a new item, the Creators chest. The Creators Chest allows the owner to place items within the chest as a reward, which non owners will be able to claim once every 4hrs.
We hope players take this opportunity to set up some cool content, with a fun reward waiting for players at the end.
Do you Love it, Like it or Dislike it?
This release will introduce a new system into Cardlife, the like or Dislike system!
Players will now be able to vote on structures that have been created by other users by Pressing V (when looking at the structure). Players will then be able to choose between three options, Love, Like or Dislike.
This system gives valuable feedback for all our amazing creators, letting them know that their work is not only visited, but appreciated.
The Chainsaw and the Jackhammer
This release also brings with it the next set of tools for players to collect and use, these are the Jackhammer, which is the next level of Pickaxe, and the Chainsaw, the next level of the Axe.
The Jackhammer will also allow players to collect the next levels of Ore, which are Titanium, Thorium and Meteorite.
New Creature: Torasaurus
A new creature has made its way into the land of cardboard, the Torasaurus!!
This new dinosaur is the Age 1 representative for its species, which rounds off all 4 types of creatures in Age 1. You will be able to find them at the boundary between the beach and the forest.
We need your help!
Cardlife is currently trying to win the 2018 Indie of the year award over at IndieDB, every vote counts and we need our communities support to help us clinch the top spot.
To vote just follow the link: https://www.indiedb.com/groups/2018-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100
Dev Blog 99 - New Tools Coming Soon
Hello Founders and Vanguardians,
We hope that many of you have been enjoying the changes of our last update which adds Ion Swords, Droids and improved mining! Of course if you have any feedback do let us know what you think!
Todays Dev Blog focuses on just a couple of tools which will be releasing in the next patch (Which is planned to go live Mid December!)
New Tools
We are introducing two new tools to CardLife.
The first is the Chainsaw, a powerful tree chopping tool!
The Chainsaw cuts twice as fast as hatchets and about 1.5 times faster than choppers! But not only will they be able to cut holes much more quickly, they will also have a much larger cut radius, thus improving the speed at which you can cut down trees.
The second tool that we’re planning to include in the update for Mid December is the Jackhammer.
The Jackhammer mines 50% faster than pickaxes an 33% faster than the drills. The Jackhammers main use is to mine harder ores such as Thorium, Meteorite and Carborundum (Though Carborundum does not have any crafting recipes yet as this is an age 4 metal)
The Jack Hammer can also be used to dig dirt, but it’s not entirely efficient at doing that!
These new tools will require brand new crafting tables to make them. Though we are not yet sure if these new crafting tables will be available for our update in Mid December, So they may temporarily be available with the current crafting tables. We’ll reveal details about the new crafting tables soon!
That’s it for this weeks dev blog! If you have any thoughts or suggestions, get in touch with us by responding to this announcement. Additionally you may want to leave a review on the current development progress for CardLife too, These really help us reach new players and improves the future of CardLife. Thank you everyone for your continued support, Next week we’ll reveal more info on what is coming for the mid December update
All the best,
Chris
UPDATE NOW LIVE, Droids, Ion Sabre, localisation and more!
Hello Founders and Vanguardians!
We are pleased to announce that a great new update is now available for CardLife! Ion swords, Droids, localisation and changes to the mining and terrain placing system are here!
CardLife now Available in 11 languages!
As of this moment, CardLife is now available to play in the following languages:
English
French
Italian
German
Spanish
Japanese
Portuguese - Brazil
Russian
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Korean
The First Phase of Our ‘Creator Tools!’
This update marks the very first phase of our ‘Creator Tools’ development. In the coming months we’ll be refining these tools to give players more creative freedom to generate exciting new gameplay elements such as dungeons!
Our first step is to provide players with the ability to place the Creator door! The recipe for the Creator door is:
Once placed, the door will create a map marker for everyone on the server. This will allow you as a creator to show off your creations with the rest of the community. These doors can be opened by any player and combined with several incoming new tools will create completely new experiences.
On Server 1, Thor’s castle will appear on the map shortly after the update has launched. He spent a massive amount of time constructing this and the sheer scale of it should be visible from the gif below:
He’s also added an art gallery to this amazing construction for players to browse which features cardboard renditions of popular art works. Here are just a couple, but visit his castle in this update to see the other works of art!
We anticipate that more players will place creator doors across the other servers and members of the team will be looking to explore the world of CardLife to check out your amazing creations.
Joining the Creator door in just a few weeks will be the Creator chest, which will allow players to place a reward item for other players…
We’ll also shortly after release the Enemy Spawner, which will allow players to spawn waves of enemies. Combined these make the initial step towards user generated dungeons.
The A-Void Droid
This surface droid is our latest creature! Forged in Age 2 and the first enemy to Dual wield weapons, they are a formidable foe. Their elite versions have a chance to drop a rare item. You’ll find this surface droid roaming within the centre of the island where creatures are much more dangerous.
The Prototype Ion Sabre
This powerful high energy sword is an age 4 weapon which has a chance to drop from the Elite A-Void Droid. While it can make mincemeat out of many of the creatures within CardLife, it does suffer from low durability (it is a prototype after all!). Bears are no match for the power of the Ion Sabre!
The Ion Sabre is the only weapon available in CardLife so far which emits a light source. An added benefit to this weapon is the ability to light up cavern systems while wielding a weapon.
While this weapon is not fully customisable at the moment, in the future you’ll be able to craft a version of the Ion Sabre which will allow you to customise its design similar to other weapons within the game.
Passive creatures
A selection of CardLife’s wildlife have gone to anger management classes and has resulted in a selection of creatures which will not throw the first punch. Crabs and pemu are the major additions to the Passive creature list and you’ll be able to stare at the beautiful cardboard designs our lovely artists worked on without fear of being attacked.
Changed New Player Spawn Points
We know that players found it difficult to find their friends and would sometimes spawn at opposite sides of the island. We’ve adjusted this now so that players will now spawn in the south west. It will be much easier to make the journey to find your friends when playing on a new server
Changes to the Crafting system
We have made some quality of life improvements to the crafting system in CardLife, no longer are you restrained by the dotted lines. You now have greater creative freedom to craft any type of shape, regardless of how unwieldy that object may be.
We’ve also added redo and undo buttons so if you make a mistake while drawing, you no longer have to start from scratch!
Changes to Mining
We’ve had some players report that they want more predictive mining tools and we’ve delivered just that! While using a shovel, a drill or a pick axe, you will be able to select the size of the area you’re mining but also how deep you’d like to mine.
We really hope to see a beautiful underground cave network using these new tools! You’re also able to make more intricate terrain placements and the system works in the same way as mining:
Much more coming soon!
We are already hard at work on the next build for CardLife which will release mid December. Of course, some of the items in the list below are subject to change or may be slightly delayed. Over the coming weeks we’re going to be sharing more details.
Guns
The Creators Chest
New tools
New creature
Ram optimisations
FPS optimisations
AI improvements
Creator rating system
The Future of CardLife
CardLife is an incredible project that everyone here is excited to work on. We have a vision for the future of the development process and would love to share our thoughts with you. So we’ve created a special forum post which will
It’s very important that we share details about our plans for CardLife. We created a post on our forums which details our development ethos and our vision for CardLife. You can read about it by clicking the link below:
We released CardLife into Early Access to gain valuable feedback from players. We want to improve and we need your help to do that! Let us know your thoughts regarding the new creator tools, changes to the mining and Connect the Dots crafting and let us know what features you are most excited about.
Known Issues:
We are aware of just a few known issues in this build, we are working towards a hotfix for these very soon!
1) If players join a server at the same moment, it is possible that it will delay the spawning of their inventory (logging off and on will fix this).
2) We have seen instances of a bug spamming the logs (it contains the text Dot.Tween). If this bug is encountered it causes a large frame rate drop, this is fixed by logging off and on.
3) Passive creatures can currently be phased into, this does not have any game play effects as when you attack them they will again react normally.
4) Sometimes creatures may be able attack you through a wall or the ground
That’s it for this week! Thanks for being a part of our development journey and we’re looking forward to seeing what you think of this new build! Let us know your thoughts on Steam, Facebook, Twitter or Reddit
All the best,
Chris
Modding - Community Showcase - Update To Go Live Next Week - PVE Server Plans
Hello Founders and Vanguardians
We were planning to release a new update this week which introduces several new features including droids, Ion swords and the creator door.
Unfortunately, we came across a few issues during development and we will have to delay its release to next week. We’re sorry about this, but this is a part of the development process. The team are working hard to address all the issues we’ve found to deliver a higher quality build when it is ready.
So while we are focusing on giving players more flexible and powerful tools within the next few updates we wanted to take some time to talk about the awesome mods that players have made and are available right now! This is the Modding Community showcase
While most of the mods are based on tweaking the way CardLife plays, you can mod some of the character game files to create truly awesome character designs too.
V1NC3NZ0 who frequently delves into the game files and has been a part of the game for ages created Team Cherry's Hollowknight as a character in game. This is a really awesome look at just some of the truly incredible things that players can make with modding in CardLife
if you have created anything amazing and want to share it with us, remember to take a screenshot in game so we can see it :)
Now onward to the gameplay mods! To install any of the mods below you will need to place the folder into the following directory:
The Superman mod created by RomanTheKing gives the player incredible strength and increased movement speed! They can also jump much higher than before! Your fists are now tools of complete destruction with them dealling 1000+ damage and being able to mine resources with them!
Soulshined spent a lot of time creating and refining an incredible mod for CardLife. He is currently upop to version 1.2 and contains a ton of adjustments to the core game experience:
Fov is set to 95. ADS is set to 60
Passive creatures (Crabs, Deer, Turtle, Pemu) which will only attack when provoked.
Movement speed increased to 2.6, sprint speed increased to 5.0 and stamina cost is cut in half
Higher chance to land a critical hit on an enemy
Inventory cap increased to 200
Changed animation speed of bows being drawn
All trees have the same drop rate (15 wood per tree)
All bushes/plants drop 8 of its resources regardless of type
Eclipse118’s Mods with razor and Echo’s mods included
Eclipse118 has been sourcing several mods made by other players and refining them to his liking. This is a pretty long curated list but allows you to mix and match the type of mods you are after and include the following
These two mods created by Brassqund increases makes it more difficult for you to combat the hunger levels (if you wanted that!). By changing a few elements such as:
Making the hunger meter deplete faster
Berries and meat restore less health and hunger
Bushes drop berries
Fewer berry bushes in open area and trees
But if that isn’t tough enough, The HungryHungrier mod ramps up the difficulty
In time we will be giving modders more power to mod the game! Combined with our easy to use in game creator tools which will allow players to create unique gameplay experiences even on our official servers!
We can't wait to see what you make! Let us know what you think about our latest tool sets and if you happen to try out any of the mods mentioned in this blog, make sure to tell the modders what you think of them! I'm sure they'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions :D
PVE Servers
Along with our plans for Ion Swords, Droids and the Creator door for the next build, we are also going to be changing some of the servers into PVE servers. This means that players will be unable to attack and damage other players. Some servers will remain PVP. The planned server list after the enxt build should look like this:
EU-PVE-Official-CardLife-01
EU-PVP-Official-CardLife-02
EU-PVE-Official-CardLife-03
EU-PVP-Official-CardLife-04
EU-PVE-Official-CardLife-05
EU-PVP-Official-CardLife-06
NA-W-PVE-Official-CardLife-07
NA-W-PVP-Official-CardLife-08
NA-E-PVE-Official-CardLife-09
NA-E-PVP-Official-CardLife-10
Asia-PVP-Official-Cardlife-11
OC-PVP-official-cardLife-12
Any structures created on any of our official servers will remain when the change to PVE is made.
If you have any questions, reply to this announcement and we'll do our best to answer them :)
All the best,
Chris
Dev Blog 97 - Ion Swords, Droids, Localisation And More! Big Update Incoming!
Hello Founders and Vanguardians!
Today we're revealing a plethora of fantastic new content, features, bug fixes and improvements that are coming NEXT WEEK!
The Community Creator Series
Players have made some truly remarkable structures since the game launched just one month ago. But they have not only created pretty buildings, they surprised us by using our current building system to create new types of gameplay! We've seen massive and complex mazes to dastardly and tricky traps.
Our own Thor has created a complex system which tricks players into a false sense of security and the promise of 'Free stuff'.
This structure is in Server one, soon you'll even see it appear on the map as an icon, but more on that very soon!)
These new game experiences have inspired us to begin experimental development of a series of tools which give players the ability to create much deeper game play for others to enjoy. But here is the exciting part, you'll be able to create and design while playing on our official servers! You won't need to open up any files outside of the game, we'll be doing our best to give players the ability to create amazing content for other players while playing
Additionally we'll be testing a new feedback system that will let you see how many players are interacting with your content and what they think of it.
Coming In the Next Few Updates:
Before we tell you about the plans for next week, we have a list of the upcoming features happening in the weeks following! These are specifically related to providing players with more tools to create engaging structures that other players can interact with. We're very much looking forward to seeing what you can make with these new tools.
Creator Credit System - Hover over anyone's structure and see the username of the creator. You'll then be able to Push ‘V’ to vote and give the user a Thumbs Up if you like what you see. See how many ‘Thumbs Up’ the structure has had so far.
Creator Chest - You fill this chest with items and anyone who opens your chest will see one of those items selected at random and will be able to collect it from the chest. They will only be able to collect from this chest once, per player, every 4 hours.
Creator Enemy Spawner - Allows you to spawn enemies, we hope to let creators ‘draw’ the enemies you spawn using the CTD system, so you can create your own dungeons and other content involving enemies.
Creator NPC - An NPC which you can craft yourself, you can configure and set the dialogue he will say when other players come and interact with the NPC
Each of these items (including the Creator Door, which I'll talk about very shortly) Are craftable in the creative mode mod. These are all very experimental tools and we would love to know what you think of them. If the community likes this and wants more we will be happy to give these systems more functionality and expand upon it.
Coming Next Week
Next week is the start of our Community Creator series and experiments. You could say we're opening the door for more creative freedom in CardLife. So what better way than to star with an object that does exactly that... The Creator Door.
The Creator Door is a craftable door which can be added to any structure that you have created. This will then place a marker on the map of all players on that server so that they can make the journey to marvel at your epic creation. This door can be opened by anyone on the server and will require more material resources to craft than the standard door.
While the door is the very start of our Community Creator series when it releases in next weeks update, it is not the only thing being that will be present in that build. We'll also be adding the following in the next update!
Science Fantasy
The team are working very hard on injecting more 'Science' into our 'Science Fantasy Survival game' by bringing you two new great pieces of content
Age 2 A-Void Droid
A lethal dual sword wielding surface droid will soon be roaming the cardboard landscape and is one of the latter Age 2 Science fiction themed creatures.
Should you wish to seek this droid out, you'll likely find them in the centre of the island where the creatures become much more dangerous. but be cautious of night time as they will gather in greater numbers.
The Age 2 A-Void Droid will drop a couple of items:
Void Droid head
Complex Machine parts
Both of these drops are used to create Age 3 modern gear and weaponry which we plan to start working on after this release.
The A-Void Droid is also our very first creature to have a chance to drop a rare usable item, the Prototype ion Sabre. This is a temporary weapon drop that will drop very rarely by this creature. We wanted to handle it this way so that we can give you an early taste of the awesome Age 4 weaponry from the future as we continue to develop content towards Age 3 and 4.
The A-Void Droid's movements are different than many of our other creatures do to their mechanisms. Here are a just a few of them in action!
The Prototype Ion Sabre A powerful high energy sword from the future which can be wielded by players with devastating effect. This prototype age 4 weapons will be temporarily dropped by the new A-Void Droid to give you a taste of the future weaponry coming to CardLife. Since this weapon is just a prototype, it will be much less durable than the standard Age 4 weapon and can break in several swings. So if you're lucky enough to find one, use it wisely!
While currently the Prototype ion Sabre is not customisable, this weapon will be craftable in the future and allow you to redesign its look similar to how other weapons can be created.
Also included in next weeks update
Along with the Creator Door, the A-Void Droid and the Ion Sabre, there are also a few more additions included as part of next weeks update. They are:
Localisation - CardLife has been professionally translated and will be available in 11 languages including:
English
German
French
Italian
German
Spanish
Japanese
Portuguese - Brazil
Russian
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Korean
PVE & PVP Servers - The official dedicated servers have been altered so that now half of them are now PVE only. This will mean that players will be unable to do any damage to any other player. Servers will be renamed clearly PVE and PVP so that you can choose which you prefer.
Mining MK2 - We've overhauled the mining, digging and landscape tools so that there are three modes to choose from. You'll be able to now do large and fine edits to the terrain with much more accuracy. Read more about these changes in last weeks blog by clicking here
Connect The Dots MK2 - This system has had some additional functionality added to it to give players more creative freedom and control. We've added Undo and Redo buttons and have given players more space to create much grander designs! Read more about these changes in last weeks blog by clicking here
Passive creatures - Several of the creatures have gone to anger management classes and are no longer aggressive.This means that you can now get as close as you want to these creatures without fearing that they will start attacking you. However, if you start a fight, be prepared to finish it, they will still attack if you throw the first punch.
Alongside these changes are also a selection of bug fixes that were reported by players over the last week. We thank everyone who has made detailed reports and given us output logs to try and recreate these issues.
Fixed an issue with AI getting stuck
Fixed an issue where AI were too easy to kill when you back away from it and continue to attack it
Fixed an issue causing major lag when looking in some directions of the map when in certain areas of the world
Fixed a bug causing you to fall through the world while mining
Map updated to display your facing direction on the map and also allow players to move whilst the map is displayed
Improved error messages in game. These will now give you more information about what is going wrong, so that we can help you solve the issue much more quickly
So there we have it! The development team have been working very hard on the latest content and we really hope that you enjoy these changes. CardLife was envisioned to be a creative hub for players to create and share. These new additions launching NEXT WEEK takes us one step further towards our vision for CardLife.
Today's Devblog previews a bunch of features and improvements coming to CardLife in our mid-November update including new Digging options and more tools for the Connect The Dots editor.
New Connect the Dot functionality
We have seen some incredible designs made using our Connect the Dots system (see below for some awesome community structures and creations!). But we want to improve the usability of this system to give players more creative power.
The most requested addition was the ability to redo and undo. Previously if you made a mistake while cutting out a shape, you would need to start again from scratch. Our incoming change aims to address that concern!
First, you are no longer confined to make your weapon follow the outline. We have given you much more control to shape the object however you want.
Next! If you’re not happy with your shape, you can simply undo and redo very easily with just a click of the button!
Even once you have made your initial shape, the redo buttons will still be activated and you can make further adjustments
The undo and Redo also works when cutting out shapes within your creation!
We have further plans to improve the functionality of this system. This is just the start!
New Mining system
We are currently refining the mining system in CardLife to make it much more predictable. We’ve had a few players report that when digging they would like to have much greater control over the shape of their caverns. These new changes will make it easier to not only dig, but also place down stone and dirt too!
If you equip a shovel or a pick axe and face a digable surface you will see a circular outline. This outline shows exactly where you will dig and can be resized and the depth can be adjusted by right clicking
This should give you greater flexibility to create amazing cavern systems with improved precision.
This system also affects placing down dirt or stone too! We’re looking forward to seeing players construct some truly remarkable statues using this new system!
We may have some more news to share regarding the changes to mining in the coming weeks. But let us know what you think of these changes!
Community creations
Have you made something amazing in CardLife? An epic structure, a cool character or a marvelous mod. You should definitely tell us about them! Here are a few screenshots that were shared over the last week:
A Spicy Pumpkin created the Combat iron Crossbow:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1550980246
JLi ""\\.@.//"" has been working on an amazing castle archway and stair combo.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1550738152
And JLi ""\\.@.//""’s brother has been working on another impressive structure:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1551358657
Captain_Bunneee has been using the creative mode to construct an odd pyramid building!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1552329897
Thank you for sending over your feedback!
We sent out a call to action earlier this week which asked you to send in your top ten bugs. We had quite a few of you getting in touch via Discord, Steam and via our official forums. This list has been sent over to the production team who is now looking over the most severe issues and making plans to address them. Remember to keep providing us bug reports and give us clear descriptions and reproduction steps so that we can fix them much faster!
That’s the end of this week's dev blog. We have some really exciting news to share over the next couple of weeks so make sure to stay tuned!
All the best,
Chris
Offline Mode - Hotfix #1
Today we have released a new hotfix to address a few issues that have been with us from launch:
Fixed one of the occurrences which results in the Server Not Found error when trying to connect to servers.
Fixed an issue with our server infrastructure so that it will no longer have the issue where buildings fail to load.
Some players are still reporting that they still fail to connect to multiplayer servers and see a 'Server Not Found' error. We have made changes to the client which may eliminate this issue for some players but we believe there are other causes out there.
We're still working as hard as humanly possible to debug all occurrences of this error and fix it. If you still get this error after 12pm UTC 30/10, please send us a support ticket via https://support.freejamgames.com/hc/en-us with a description of the error and your game logs located Steam\steamapps\common\CardLife.
We're going to solve the Server Not Found issue, but we need more of your help to do it.
Thanks all!
Offline Mode Out Now!
Hello everyone!
We have just launched a new single player offline mode in CardLife!
Several members of the team have worked incredibly hard to get this game mode up and running in just two weeks. They are now waiting for your feedback on this game mode and are now preparing to work on new features. We’ll share more details very very soon on what new content we are adding to CardLife
Offline Single Player Mode will effectively remove the lag that players have previously experienced. This relates to combat where maybe it takes some time to register an attack when the information is sent online. All actions in game are verified 100% by your own machine, creating a lag free experience. Players will also no longer be disconnected from their own game in single player.
It is important to note that in order to activate your CardLife account to be played offline you will need to log into the game with an internet connection just once. Below is a step by step progress as to how it will work
The first time you log into CardLife, we check that your account owns CardLife as the final part of the installation process. You need to be online for this but you would need to be online anyway to download the game
The next time you launch the game, you don't need to be online at all. You can be on a bus with a laptop and no wifi, and you'll still be able to play Single Player
From then on single player has no network stuff regardless of whether you have internet or not, zero lag (at least zero network lag).
How do I Access Single Player Offline mode?
If you want to play Single player offline mode, make sure to follow these steps
Start Cardlife as you normally would and select Single Player from the main menu. I’ve highlighted it in red in the screenshot below:
From here you’ll be brought to a menu where you can choose the game mode and select a bunch of mods (of which, we’ve had some incredible mods already created by the community and you should check it out!)... I’ve highlighted the new single player offline mode in red in the screenshot below:
And here it is zoomed in just in case! It is found at the top left of this menu :)
Because this is a new game mode, progress from Single Player - Online Cloud Save (which is the single player mode which was present before this update) will not be carried over. You will start the game from fresh if you play Single Player - Offline.
Please let us know what you think of the offline mode and if you come across any odd issues. We’ve tested it internally, but a big part of our release onto Early Access is to gather feedback and build upon our game. Offline mode is just the start of us listening to player feedback as it was a widely requested feature.
Review CardLife
Are you enjoying CardLife and want to help support the game further? Make sure to leave a review on the game! We’ve been reacting to many of the comments on the review section and a large number of our initial launch issues like server, lag and offline mode have all since been addressed :)
We’ve made some great changes to our network infrastructure by having servers based in different regions to reduce lag and the new offline mode responds to a lot of requests by players who wanted an offline mode.
Taking the time to write a review to recommend a game to other players really helps us as a studio and we often gain a great amount of insight into player experiences from reviews too!
Further fixes in this build
Along with the Offline Single Player Mode there are also a few fixes below:
Fixed a Client memory leak, this would have affected performance the longer the game was running.
Fixed a bug where players would sometimes not be able to place a building piece even if nothing was blocking them from doing so.
Fixed a bug relating to animations that was spamming the error logs, sometimes causing frame rate drops.
Optimisations to AI
Of course, if you experience any issues with this update, do get in touch with us with as much information as possible!
We’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has joined us in playing CardLife over the last two weeks. We have a really lovely community who have been supportive of our game. We are now working towards new content, bug fixes and hope to share more news very soon as we continue to strive towards making an awesome game!
All the best,
Chris
Dev Blog 95 - Upcoming Content
Greetings all,
This is the first official Devblog since our launch on Steam and boy have we learnt a lot in the past week or so? This blog post will give you an idea of what's coming to the game, including the new Skeleton monster, dual wield and an update on how development of our new Offline Single Player mode is going.
New Skeleton Monster
Since launch CardLife's launch into Steam Early Access our code team has been busy implementing our new Photon Cloud Servers and the Single Player Offline mode, which has left the art team free to begin creating new visual effects and new monsters to launch in-game in the coming months. The first of which we'd like to reveal this week; say hello to the Skeleton or we call him internally 'Skele'.
The Skeleton will be another magic monster in-game like the Golem and Dryad. This character will be like the aforementioned monsters in terms of its behaviour and it's aggro distance and will drop a new crafting material - the Skull. Unfortunately we won't be able to get him in for Halloween due to current development priorities, but we did want to share our vision of Skele with you during the spookiest time of year.
The Skeleton is also the first character in CardLife to have a death animation as well, which is currently work in progress. Matt, our animator, is working on new death animations for all characters in-game to give kills a bit more oomph but don't worry we'll still incorporate that poof of cardboard as drops emerge.
Offline Single Player Launching Next Week
We've always had a small number of the CardLife community (that's you guys) asking for a way to play offline without having to maintain an active connection with servers while you play. That demand skyrocketed for this functionality as soon as we were available on Steam and as soon as we saw that we diverted some of our coders to begin work on that functionality straight away. The good news is that work on the Offline Single Player feature is almost complete and it's currently being tested by our QA team.
Here's how it'll work:
The first time you log into CardLife, we check that your account owns CardLife as the final part of the installation process. You need to be online for this but you would need to be online anyway to download the game :)
Next time you launch the game, you don't need to be online at all. You can be on a bus with a laptop and no wifi, and you'll still be able to play Single Player
From then on single player has no network stuff regardless of whether you have internet or not, zero lag (at least zero network lag).
If all goes well with testing, we believe that Offline Single Player will launch in-game towards the end of next week, but we'll communicate the exact date to closer to the time.
New Region-based Official Servers
We have spoken a lot about servers on this week when we launched our new Cloud Photon Servers which gave players hosting their own servers and playing in Single Player better pings and more stable connections. Today we have made this transition with our Official Servers as well:
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Formerly all of our servers were based in Ireland which meant that if you weren't in the EU you experienced a heightened chance of disconnections and a high latency. Now that shouldn't be as much of an issue as it was before.
Obviously, some EU players may experience much higher latency to their server of choice when formerly this wasn't the case. In those specific cases we'll be happy to transfer across any items that you have in your inventory that you want to take with you to an Official Server which is closer to your playing position. Just get in touch with our support team via this link https://support.freejamgames.com/hc/en-us with information on what server you were playing on, what server you have moved to, what items you want to take with you (pending verification), and of course your display name.
Dual Wielding
Did you know that we first hinted at Dual Wielding way back in DevBlog 8? Well, that is the next big feature we're currently neck deep in. The art team has already finalised how the animations will work when you, say, block a parry with your shield in your left hand while you commence a sword strike with your right, or carry a torch in a cave while digging with a pick-axe. By freeing up your hand for additional actions we're aiming to add a bit more complexity to combat and world interaction. The next step is the code team to implement this system in-game which we suspect will be completed and in-game soon. No promises of course as this is still in development, but it's looking good at the moment.
To give you an idea of how dual-wielding will affect the game animations, check out the attack pattern of the new Skeleton:
Connect The Dots Improvements
One of the most common suggestions we get from players is that they want more functionality in the Connect The Dots editor. Our art team is currently looking at that in detail at the moment with the goal of adding functionality that offers a lot of creative freedom without being complex to use. We've been looking at every art software you can possibly imagine in this pursuit and we'll share news of these added tools soon. We've also made some tweaks to the way your character looks during character creation to allow your edits to be much more easily visible with additional shadowing as well. This small yet impactful tweak will go live in our next major update.
As always let us know your thoughts about this week's Devblog and CardLife in general via Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Discord and our Official Forum. We want to make the best game we can and we can not do that without your support.
