Say hello to Darkwood’s biggest content update as of yet! Even though we have tested this Alpha extensively, there are things which are bound to be broken due to the massive amount of changes made, so please bear with us!
CHANGES
- The story progress through Chapter 1 has been overhauled. This resulted in a big amount of changes both small and large, but you will need to find most of them by yourself!
- The Prologue has had some work done on it, and also has it’s own map.
- Most of the dialogue for NPCs has been rewritten.
- Lots of new journal entries, and all previous ones have also been rewritten.
- In-game cutscenes!
- Renamed the Meadow to the Dry Meadow, and Forest to the Silent Forest. We needed a solution for people who were having problems with finding the beginning locations (eg. looking for the Chicken Lady in the Meadow) as they did not know that these are two different biomes .
- New enemies, new attacks and behaviours for existing ones.
- A ton of new characters, mostly villagers.
- Many new idle animations for enemies and characters.
- At lot of new locations, most notably a large village area.
- Wolfman now has hideouts in each biome.
- New quality settings for low-end PCs.
- Improvements to stuttering when exploring the woods.
- Dynamic difficulty scaling to player progress for some enemies.
- The game now saves after talking to NPCs (except when in dreams).
- Several updates and improvements for controller mode and new default bindings as suggested by players.
- Removed mushroom gift after the first night.
- Added specific post process effects for certain locations.
- Removed priority for enemies to attack the player, resulting in more fighting between mobs.
- Added and modified a few help popups.
- Doors move when hit by something.
- Changed gamma settings to brigthness adjustment.
- Un-nerfed dodge.
- Removed game save when leaving the hideout after morning mode.
FIXES
- Fixed torches and flares not giving light when clipping inside walls, doors etc. – Fixed enemies wanting to jump through small, blocked windows.
- Fixed some events that should be triggered when entering a specific location being fired on game start.
- Fixed pathfinding issues with locations outside of the game world.
- Removed duplicate river in some cases of a generated world.
- Fixed some events not loading properly.
- Some outside locations now have proper rotation based on their corresponding location in the world (like the train wreck).
- Fixed error when destroying the large larva egg.
- Fixed nasty error for characters with changing portraits, resulting in a memory leak.
- Fixed banshee screams not disabling lights.
- Fixed some characters getting stuck in the middle of nowhere.
- Disabled secondary attacks when in inventory.
- Disabled hotbar scrolling when in main menu.
- A lot of AI fixes.
- Fixed item repair popup when it’s no longer usable incorrectly positioning itself.
- Fixed some incorrect gamepad icons.
- Fixed visible culling when being teleported to a new location.
- Fixed map dragging itself when closed.
- Optimized morning mode effect.
- Fixes to Bicycle man behaviour and getting stuck.
- Fixes to violin quest, as doing it in the incorrect order would still get you a outcome you did not want.
- Fixed missing controller translations.
- Fixes to time freeze music playing in dreams and The Three disappearing.
- Fixes to characters still making sounds (eg. barking) after dying.
- Fixed bugs in crafting requirements for gasoline.
- Made horizontal and vertical camera movement dependent on screen size.
- Fixed poison overlay displaying on top of map and journal.
- Fixed some stuff that should fit to the screen size being a pixel or two too small.
- Standing by the oven at night no longer makes you invulnerable to shadows.
- Fixes to controller camera movement and player reach when in dynamic resolution mode.
- Fixed incorrect number of lives showing up sometimes.
- Fixed incorrect skill popup positioning on small screens.
- Fixed not being able to repair weapons in certain situations.
- Fixed characters sometimes getting stuck on barricades.
- Fixed banshees sometimes changing their mind when walking towards the player.
- Fixed characters which wanted to jump through a object even if they did not have the space to do so.
- Fixed crows flying in place.
Chapter 1 still needs some work, but we’re pretty close to how we want it to look.
What’s next? We don’t know yet! It’s time for some quality time with the family (mine will grow by one any day now :D ) for the Wizards, but we will definitely be looking at the forums and streams to see how you’re liking the new update :D
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 6.1 [Hotfix 1]
It's time for Alpha 6.1!
This update is a bit overdue, as I had to undergo appendectomy last month and needed some time to recover.
Changes
- Darkwood now supports gamepads! Just press any button on your controller during gameplay to switch to gamepad mode, which has many changes compared to the mouse + keyboard scheme to make it easier to play.
Please note that this feature is still experimental, and as we’re not really gamepad players, we’re looking for feedback on how to improve this mode!
- A new difficulty mode! Instead of a permadeath switch when starting a new game, there are now three difficulties: Normal (the same as the non-permadeath mode), Hard (you have a limited number of lives), and Nightmare (the same as the previous permadeath mode).
- Lights and your FOV are blurred (only on High FX settings).
- The protagonist has been completely redrawn! Apart from a sleek new look and new animations, there have been changes to weapon speed and range.
- The Rock Savage has a new look too!
- Some balance changes to items, monsters and weapons.
- Lamps have a bigger light range.
- Modified spawn locations for Elks.
- The pitchfork can get stuck in walls now.
- Some new items to examine.
- Added hints before nightfall concerning the Oven.
Fixes
- Completely redone the input system to fix some annoying issues.
- Fixes to a few player animation issues.
- Fixes to pathfinding for some enemies in the wilderness, especially elks.
- Fixed not being able to jump through the fence in doctor dream.
- Fixed doctor’s portrait suddenly changing into the generator…
- Fixed Careful Step perk not working with beartraps which were set before the game starts.
- Fixed Scary Face perk making a delay where you can’t use other perks.
- Fixed issues with small windows.
- Fixed black screen after doctor dream.
- Fixed electronic game.
- HOPEFULLY fixed sound volume being reset sometimes.
- Some crafting fixes.
- Fixed weapons losing their upgrades.
- Fixed some items being refilled after death.
- Fixed static effect being applied after getting hit during night.
- Fixed flare smoke rendering incorrectly.
- Removed a few repair kits.
- The protagonist can’t be moved when dying now.
- Fixed torch flames not disappearing when destroying the torch by hitting something.
- Fixes to walls, windows and doors being incorrectly lit.
Hotfix 1, 9.10.2015
This hotfix will make your controls revert, sorry about that!
- Fixed broken rebinding of movement controls.
- Fixed having the first drop of gasoline spilled on the ground when refuelling the generator / saw.
- Added some missing translations.
- Added missing hotbar keys to the controls menu.
- Fixed being able to change hotbar items in main menu.
- Fixed disappearing dog in prologue.
- Removed journal help popup when in controller mode.
- Fixed some issues with night events.
What's next? Artur has drawn a ton of new stuff which is waiting to be added, and it looks like we will focus on reworking the storyline of the first chapter in the next update!
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 6
Alpha 6 has been unleashed!
This update brings a lot of small and medium changes, along with a slew of bugfixes. The list is too big to post here, so check it out on our blog.
This alpha was VERY hard to polish, and we've had around a dozen of Release Candidate versions. Special thanks to the valiant efforts of our testers: ShadyS, DeforMC and Rednecklawrence!
We hope you enjoy what we’ve cooked up for you in this update!
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 5 [hotfix 2]
Alpha 5 is here, baby!
Remember, if you wish to keep playing on alpha 4.2, just follow this guide before launching the new version.
You can find the full patch notes here, as it looks like we've hit the size limit for announcements.
There might be some bugs that got through the testing builds from the recent changes, but once we iron them out in the next minor update, I think we will be able to describe Darkwood as pretty darn stable!
It looks like we're in the final stages of modifying the gameplay mechanics. As of now, we still have to work on a few things, like The Well (or get rid of it in favour of something else), adding unpredictability to exploring locations, or the loot distribution system, and of course some technical stuff like gamma settings and normalizing the camera zoom across all resolutions... But once we're through with that, we can focus on the things veteran players are interested most: adding more content!
Hotfix 1, 13.06.2015
Generating a new world is required for some of these fixes to take effect!
- Fixed a case where the burned cottage between the Meadow and Old Woods would be rotated incorrectly.
- Fixed crafting requirements for high level workbenches.
- Added workbench level cap.
- Removed some repair kits from the game.
- Added a few missing translations.
- Added loot to a picture on the wall.
- Fixed pigs in the pigshed being aggro to the player when attacked by villagers.
- Fixed not being able to enter the journal when dreaming.
- Fixed villager in pigsheds not doing any damage.
- REMOVE KEBAB
- Dogs are a bit relentless sometimes. Don't know why, so I temporarily nerfed their speed slightly.
Hotfix 2, 15.06.2015
- Fixed exploit for The Three and Mushroom Gift.
- Fixed Mirror disappearing after the night.
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 5 news + how to keep your saves
Hello!
We’re close to finishing up work on Alpha 5! The testers already have their hands on the first Release Candidate. Here’s a sneak peak on what we’ve been working on:
Workbench
The majority of craftable items are now created through the workbench. Instead of finding recipes for new items all over the place, you will have to upgrade your workbench to craft better items. Workbenches are found in every hideout.
Repair kits have been removed. You will be able to repair your weapons on the workbench.
In addition, weapons can be upgraded / modified with different perks.
The workbench gives players some short-term goals to look forward to, which are much needed until we add more detail to the storyline.
World refinements
A lot of work has been put to make exploration better and more rewarding, with new locations and a more varied wilderness.
Roads are more plentiful and informative (they don’t end in the middle of nowhere anymore).
Biome borders have been overhauled, and now contain unique stuff and are much less confusing. Also, new enemies have been added.
Other bigger changes:
- New trading UI, preventing accidental purchases.
- Time freezes after surviving the night, allowing you to breathe a little, repair your hideout and interact with a new NPC.
- New weapons.
- The saw has it’s own UI now.
- There are only two types of mushrooms now: regular and night mushrooms. The essence you gain from them depends on the quality of the oven you use.
- Loot randomization has been put through a balance pass (the system needs to be pretty much redone in the future though).
Apart from the major changes, we’ve spent a lot of time on refining smaller elements and squashing bugs, but those will be outlined in the update notes.
How to keep your saves
We've added a quick and easy way to keep playing on older versions, so your saves do not get wiped when a new Alpha is released. Read all about it here!
In other news, we’re very happy to be part of Independent By Design, a upcoming book about the stories of awesome indie game developers like Lucas Pope, Frictional Games, inXile Entertainment, Dennaton, Vlambeer… And, well, us! :D
The book is in the final days of it’s Kickstarter, so it’s your last chance to get it early!
Alpha 4.2
Salutations!
Hope you had a great holiday! This update does not break your saves as it contains mostly bugfixes, but if you want the full benefits, generating a new world is advised (these are tagged with [Needs restart])!
CHANGES:
- Added text during loading informing about the steep learning curve during alpha.
- The ambient light at the beginning of the day is brighter.
- Some minor improvements to AI during the night.
- Some locations do not overlap each other as much. This helps with the problem of having poisonous mushrooms in places which should be safe. [Needs restart].
FIXES:
- Fixed a rare case of a broken world and severe lag if you have generated and loaded several profiles without closing the game. [Needs restart]
- Fixes for rare lag after dialogue and death. (Well, this is a blind fix as we cannot reproduce it, please let me know if this still happens)
- Fixed one of the savages constantly screaming while chasing you.
- Fixed having two hotbar slots selected after ending a dream.
- Fixed Chompers on the bridge disappearing. [Needs restart]
- Fixed several sprite glitches, like the sleeping Chompers.
- Fixed roots around the burned house appearing out of nowhere, sometimes trapping the player inside them! Considering putting back in as a feature. [Needs restart]
- Fixed waking up in the middle of the day after the prologue (it should be at the start).
- Fixed flare weird behaviour.
- Fixed a screen overlay persisting during the day after night.
- Fixed some sounds not looping.
- Fixed text during reading notes / books displaying below the sprite.
- Fixed a few occurances of items disappearing when dragging them out of a location (like the lynx).
- Fixed being able to interact with objects after getting all of the contents of the night gift, when having your inventory still open.
- Fixed button mashing during dialogue / cooking screen transitions causing weird stuff to happen.
- Fixed unexaminable grave.
- Fixed the night gift disappearing after loading the game.
Phew! These last few updates have been huge technical undertakings for us, but it looks like the worst is behind us - there have been no out of memory crashes reported lately and we're up to date with the engine and plugins.
Unless something is seriously broken with this update, we will begin work on Alpha 5! Some heavy work needs to be done on the current borders between biomes and the wilderness. We'd also like to experiment with some things we wanted to implement for some time now, like a crafting workbench.
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 4.1 (update:hotfix 1)
Greetings, lovely mortals!
During the last two weeks we've been working on upgrading Darkwood to Unity 5 and squashing bugs. Along with that came a total redo of our audio library (it was a real mess), and updating most of the plugins we use.
FEATURES
- World generation is now up to 3 times faster. That's quicker than your average respawn time in Bloodborne!
- Big performance boost for slower CPUs.
- Big memory optimization. This NEEDS TO fix the out of memory crashes during world generation...
- Audio postprocessing, ducking and less distortion. More to come later!
- New, modified and improved sound FX.
CHANGES
- You can now craft items even if your inventory is full (assuming that after removing the required ingredients you will have room).
- The game starts in fullscreen by default again.
- You can no longer interact with objects when having a item picked up from the hotbar.
- Added info message when trying to confirm skills, when having not selected a negative skill.
- Touching a sleeping Chomper now wakes him up. They also snore.
FIXES
- Several fixes to world generation. This should fix the low FPS bug, and not respawning in camps.
- Fixed game breaking bugs in the chapter 1 end quests.
- Fixed item context menu not hiding when entering the main menu.
- Fixed epic chomper dodging.
- Fixed characters sometimes picking up wrong waypoints.
- Fixed pigshed generator guard not attacking player.
- Fixed nasty savegame corruption in the late game.
- Fixed several cases when characters could disappear (and reappear) close to the player.
- Fixed not being able to change inputs after generating a new world.
- Hopefully fixed a very rare bug when leaving the undergroud tunnels would make the world all black.
- Fixed characters in the Musician's parents house.
- Fixed inventory items appearing on top of hotbar numbers.
- Hopefully fixed all weird graphical glitches introduced in 4.0 (underground entrance tree, etc.)
- Fixed player freeze when buying the map from Piotrek inside the currently selected hotbar.
- Fixed cornfield shader.
- Fixed changing resolutions / fullscreen weird behaviour.
- Fixed rare, weird door behaviour.
- Fixed audio volume settings not applying to some sounds.
- Fixed some mimics emitting sound after death.
- Fixed unlootable wood pile in the pigsheds.
- Removed beartrap recipe (it's unlocked from the beginning).
- Fixed rare error during dialogue.
- Fixed wrong night scenario progression in meadow, resulting in too difficult nights at the beginning.
- Fixed having 2 hotbar slots selected.
- Fixed Chomper in Church dream not having the pendant.
- Improved player inertia.
- Fixed light flares from lamps not rotating correctly.
- Removed a hole in some borders (resulting in being able to travel to another biome way before you should be able to).
- Improved cursor icon display on various objects like the Well.
- Fixed melee weapon modifiers resetting when transferring between inventories through ctrl+click.
- Fixed inventory events not triggering when swapping items, like the underground entrance key, or violin.
- Fixed flare not lighting barricades correctly.
- Fixed not being able to pick up a firearm from the ground if you have the same type in your inventory.
- Fixed flares and matches reigniting after loading a save.
We've been testing this build very intensively, but as I've had to rework a ton of code because of the engine and plugins update, some new bugs may appear. As always, please report them to the bugs section so we can take care of them for the next update!
Hotfix 1 - 03.04.2015
- Fixed respawning in the same spot you died. For real this time!
- Updated Steamworks.net, which fixes being unable to start the game on Linux for some.
- Fixed save corruption if reloaded game directly after finishing prologue.
- Fixed some instances where skipping a movie would cause graphical glitches.
- I was unable to find the source for the lag some of you have been experiencing at random points, but I've made some adjustments which may help. We can't reproduce it here, so please let us know if you still experience it!
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 4.1 coming this week
Hi all,
Just letting you know that Alpha 4.1 will release any day now, and you may want to switch off automatic updates in your Steam client if you want to keep playing your current game, as this update will wipe saves from 4.0!
It features a big engine upgrade to Unity 5, with improved performance, new and improved audio FX, memory optimization and many bugfixes.
The Acid Wizard
Alpha 4
Alpha 4 is finally here!
THE NIGHT
Night gameplay is now controlled by a scenario & event system, which makes a lot of weird, awesome stuff happen. Some of that is stuff is random, some is a consequence to what you have done previously (or during the night). Some are basic and common, but there are also complex and unique ones. There are a limited number of events currently, but you can expect more in the future.
Shadow creatures have been completely revamped. The "you need to be in the light after sundown or you die" mechanic has been scrapped (it sucked, sorry about that). You will still be visited by those creatures, but they're very different now.
The Banshee has also been revamped, but I'm not going to spoil that for you.
Mutated mushrooms no longer spawn in and around your hideout every night. They're not completely removed, but they're a bit different and much more rare.
The noise you make now plays a lesser role. You can still attract attention when running around at night a lot and dragging heavy things, but it's much less dangerous now.
There are a few other changes, but you need to find them yourself!
TECHNICAL IMPROVEMENTS
Memory management has been vastly improved. We've also added a dynamic texture load / unload system, so out of memory crashes should be gone now!
You can now turn on windowed mode from the main menu.
There is new a alternate control scheme, where movement is relative to the mouse cursor. You can switch it on in the control options.
Performance optimization, and fixes to late-game fps drops.
Written text (like the one during dialogue) no longer jumps to a new line mid-word, making reading it less troublesome.
NEW STUFF:
- A new enemy type.
- If you have more than one item selected (under your cursor), you can cycle through them (default "E" key). This is indicated by a arrow icon next to your cursor.
- Your character now respawns in a small location after dying. Check your map after you get up to know where you are.
- New stuff added to some of the locations.
- Lots of new sounds!
CHANGES:
- Large amount of minor improvements and fixes to AI.
- Modified and improved combat behaviour for all characters.
- Time flows slower, so you have a bit more time to explore.
- Also, the day now always lasts from 8 am to 8pm (as shown by the watch).
- Poisonous mushrooms in the meadow are less plentiful. They can also be selected with the cursor (but not interacted with).
- Roads are safer.
- Minor loot rebalance. The loot system needs to be redone from scratch in the future though.
- Rebalanced enemy and object spawns in biomes.
FIXES:
This update has seen the biggest bug hunt yet, and it would take quite a while to write down all the squashed bugs. Here are the most annoying ones:
- Fixed discovered mini locations not being marked on the map, making navigation much harder.
- Generator usage was broken (sometimes it would consume 2x the amount it should). It's fixed now, and also rebalanced.
- Fixed camera shake being relative to FPS (making it too long or too short depending on your machine).
- Changing resolution ingame will not break some menus anymore.
- Fixed sometimes waking up in the same spot where you died (right next to the thing that killed you), instead of somewhere in the woods.
- Fixed beartraps and poisonous plants being too concealed.
- Enemies can no longer push you around when you're jumping.
- Fixed disappearing enemies.
- Fixed enemies reappearing in front of (or behind) you...
- Fixed a few instances of walking through a black void.
- Fixed crashing the game when mashing the escape button when the dream transition video was playing.
Alpha 3 broke the night gameplay for some of you, and we believe this update not only fixes these issues, but makes the nights really interesting. There's still more stuff to come for them, but we think we're close to our vision.
The new event system makes way for other things to happen during the day too! We're not sure if it will be the focus of the next update yet, as there are some serious issues with how the world is generated right now (the border areas are completely empty) which need to be fixed first.
I truly hope that this will be the last time I need to do any big changes related to some very technical stuff like memory management... These take up A LOT of time. A new version of the engine we're using (Unity 5) is out, and it brings significant performance improvements. If there are no major issues with the initial Alpha 4 update, I will probably start working on bringing Darkwood to the new engine version.
The Acid Wizard
Update: Small bugfix for nights which were too hard.
Alpha 3.1
Hi! This is a bugfix update. It should (hopefully) not break your saves.
Sorry this took so long, but we've been taking some time off during the holidays, and most of us caught the flu...
Anyways, we're starting work on Alpha 4 now, which will focus on the nights, and also fixing some of the stuff we've done wrong in this version (like the Shadows).
Changes
- Shadows are less common and irritating. We will work to change them in the future, so they become awesome and scary instead of annoying.
Fixes
- Fixed respawning in the place where you died.
- Fixed mushrooms sometimes not spawning during the night.
- Pressing ESC after launching the game (when the AWS logo was presented) would cause some weird stuff to happen later. Why would you want skip it in the first place!?
- The fuel efficiency perk no longer gives you unlimited gasoline.
- Fixed a player respawn point being outside of the world borders, resulting in sometimes spawning in the void after death.
- Fixed occasional random crashes during gameplay and when loading the game. There are still problems with crashing when out of memory though.
- Fixed not receiving mushrooms from the well in the third hideout.
- You can no longer overwrite a saved profile with a new world by accident.
- Clicking "Continue" in the main menu should no longer translate to the game world.
- A chair in the prologue will no longer fly away.
- The wardrobe in the prologue properly obscures other objects now.
- Fixed infection saving.
