From now on, dying means: dropping your inventory at the place you have been killed, and waking up somewhere in the biome where your current hideout is. This may sound easy, but in the later biomes returning to the place where you have died is sometimes very tricky.
Extracting essence
Mushrooms in the woods are more plentiful, but only certain rare kinds can be cooked for essence. This allows for bigger "trap" areas with a reward for successfully navigating them.
Things that can be cooked will rot after a certain amount of time after they have been picked up. Where do you find essence, you ask? Well...
The night
During the night, you will not only see creatures, but also mutated plants. You will need to be on the lookout for them if you want to harvest their essence!
Light now plays a bigger role, as staying in the shadows for too long will be a bad idea, so better fill up your generator before it gets dark!
Sound
You will need to pay much more attention to the sound you generate from now on. This means interacting with doors, moving objects, barricading etc. will bring attention to your location. This will be very important during the night, as you do not want to alert anyone to your presence.
AI changes
Stealth is harder and easier at the same time. If you are reckless, you will easily get spotted. But if you keep a low profile, you will be able to sneak through areas. Enemies will also be more forgiving in letting you know if they are alerted to your presence.
Minor:
New stuff:
- Added a popup notifying you about entering a biome.
- [Experimental] If you are inside a location, you will be able to see it marked on the map.
- You can pick up dropped items from the ground if you are inside your inventory.
- When quitting the game, you will get notified about the time of the last save.
Changes:
- Player will no longer receive damage when waking up.
- Changed balance of gasoline for generators.
- The mushrooms you get after drinking from the well depend on what hideout you are currenly in.
- Health / stamina potions have been removed (in favour of skills). This is temporary, as we need to find other ways to upgrade these stats.
Fixes:
- Loot no longer respawns after time in some locations.
- Electronic game is now properly added to journal.
- Inventory icons no longer disappear.
- Fixed having multiple items selected on hotbar after death.
- Fixed desynchronizing aim indicator.
- It's no longer possible to appear outside of a underground location when travelling to it.
- Fixed bug causing the pathfinding grid to get corrupted after loading.
- Fixed issues with reloading the game after dying in a underground location.
- Fixed several issues with mimics.
- Fixed weird behaviour with Wolf when traveling to Doctor's house again.
- Fixed ambient music sometimes cutting off.
- Fixed map and poison overlays intersecting each other.
- Fixed the fog in a few locations.
- Fixed disappearing enemies in front of the player.
- Added missing sounds to some furniture.
- Fixed not getting reward after dream if your inventory was full.
- Fixed rabbits being blind sometimes.
- Fixed generator not emitting light if it was previously drained from fuel.
- Fixed a gap in the trees at the Doctor's house, enabling the player to leave the location's bounds into the void.
- Fixed being able to drink from the well even though it was day.
- Fixed some issues with loading underground locations.
- Optimized loading meshes.
- Fixed information popup appearing in main menu.
We're very happy with this update, as it fixes some major issues with how leveling / dying worked before, and lays a foundation for really cool nights. It also introduces some new issues in the long run (like gasoline being a limited resource), but nothing that can't be mended with future updates.
This will probably be one of the last updates containing major changes to gameplay mechanics. After we fix a few more big things that we're unhappy with, we can finally move on to adding more content and polishing existing mechanics, yay!
The Acid Wizard
What’s coming in Alpha 3?
Greetings!
Alpha 3′s main focus will be making nights exciting again! To do so, we had to make some big changes to other mechanics.
Consequences of death
Dying in normal mode means losing some of your skills, your currently held mutated items, and damaging all of the other items in your inventory. This sucks, as the mutated plants which you use to level up don’t grow back, which can be quite frustrating when you lose a few perks and can’t really regain them after some time. We could of course make them grow back after some time, but that would encourage boring grind.
So, in Alpha 3, dying means: dropping your inventory at the place you have been killed, and waking up somewhere in the wilderness at the beginning of the next day. You lose your belongings, but can regain them if you get back to the spot where you have died. Sound too easy? Not quite, as the time skip ties to the other mechanics:
Extracting essence
Mushrooms in the woods are more plentiful, but only certain rare kinds can be cooked for essence. This allows for bigger “trap” areas with a reward for successfully navigating them.
Things that can be cooked will rot after a certain amount of time after they have been picked up. Where do you find essence, you ask? Well…
The night
Currently, nights can be very intense at the beginning, but the excitement fades as you figure out how to defend yourself with no risks (like hiding in a corner behind a wardrobe). We have been experimenting quite a lot on how to overcome this, and came up with a solution that we think is pretty cool, and lets you play your way.
From now on, mutated flora and fauna will start appearing in the night, in different form. You will need to be on the lookout for them if you want to harvest their essence. You can still hide behind that wardrobe if you’re scared, but you will be missing out on some precious essence!
Image by Sir Smide II
Light now plays a bigger role, as staying in the shadows for too long will be a bad idea, so better fill up your generator before it gets dark!
We have also did some adjustments for the nights to be more fair, making them less random and based more on your actions, which leads us to…
Sound
You will need to pay much more attention to the sound you generate from now on. This means interacting with doors, moving objects, barricading etc. will bring attention to your location. This will be very important during the night, as you do not want to alert anyone to your presence.
AI changes
Stealth is harder and easier at the same time. If you are reckless, you will easily get spotted. But if you keep a low profile, you will be able to sneak through areas. Enemies will also be more forgiving in letting you know if they are alerted to your presence.
We will be entering the testing phase as soon as we balance out some of the new features, which should be this week. This update will probably be one of the last major alphas to bring big changes to mechanics, after which we will finally be able to move on to adding more content!
Alpha 2.1
Here is a balance and bugfix update for you lovely mortals:
Changes
- Balanced loot / object spawns. Hopefully no more empty crates!
- Balanced melee weapons in terms of durability drain and barricade damage. You can no longer destroy a barricade with a plank with nails :P
- Balanced barricade damage for enemies.
- Beartraps, mushrooms etc. no longer spawn in the middle of nowhere. Instead, they appear around trees like in previous versions.
- The Saw eats less gasoline.
- You can hold the Jump button to automatically jump over stuff, instead of having to press it when you get near something jumpable.
- You can do the secondary attack while running.
Fixes
- Added missing Burned House map icon
- Compressed more music. This may help those of you who have been experiencing out of memory crashes.
- Fixed bug when you had to attack a barricade one more time to destroy it, even though it's durability was 0.
- Fixed loot respawning after loading the game in some containers.
- Fixed indestructible barricades.
- Added more container space to the new hideouts.
- Fixed culling which sometimes did not work in dreams.
- Fixed freeze on player death if had Additional Hotbar perk, but did not have anything in the slot.
- Fixed savages getting stuck on window barricades.
- Fixed bugs with displaying some barricades.
- Balanced junk from scavenging bear traps.
- Removed chompers from Forest biome.
- Fixed Well being reactivated when loaded a game during night.
- Fixed fog parallax in burned houses.
If all is well with this update, we would like to start working on Alpha 3, which will probably focus on the nights in Darkwood.
The Acid Wizards
Alpha 2 hotfix 2
Here's a hotfix for a few issues some of you may have been having.
The update should not break your saves, although you might need to generate a new world for some of these fixes to be in effect:
Hotfix 1, 31.10.2014 - Fixed crashing due to memory leaks. [ EDIT: This is still an issue for some people]
- Added back crows.
- Fixed infections.
- Fixed saw running forever.
- Fixed black void areas around some borders.
- Fixed characters not visiting at night after some time.
- Added (experimental) support for 1280x720 resolution.
- Fixed some save errors.
Hotfix 2, 02.11.2014 - It seems audio is sometimes not unloaded from memory. Compressed some of the music files and added some less elegant methods of unloading assets, resulting in slightly longer saving times, but the game should not crash anymore due to memory issues.
- Fixed nasty bug where sometimes the pathfinding grid would get corrupted in a savegame, resulting in AI not being able to move after loading a game.
The game will update automatically. You will still see "Alpha 2.0" in the corner.
Alpha 2 is live!
Rejoice, mortals! Alpha 2 is here, just in time for Halloween! With it, changes big and small!
This update focuses mainly on a huge rewrite of some of our back-end systems, meaning they are now more optimized, less buggy and allow for some cool stuff to happen.
Highlights:
Brand new world
We basically rewrote the whole world generation system. The main thing you will notice is that the biomes are now grouped together, and getting through to the next biome requires a trip through a “gate” location. Borders are much more interesting now, and aren’t only impenetrable walls.
This system allows for a lot of new cool stuff. We’re tingling in excitement just thinking of the possibilities in future updates! For now, the benefits of this approach are mostly visible through better pacing (easier in the beginning, harder at the end of chapter 1), more rewarding exploration, more interesting navigation, and a better sense of progression.
Even though we optimized the generation script quite a lot, the new world is now about 50% larger than the previous one, and in result creating a new one takes more or less the same amount of time. This will of course be optimized in the future. Some parts of the procedural generation system are turned off for now to avoid some bugs.
Modified combat
Combat in Darkwood is supposed to be slow, tactical, but lethal. It may be unintuitive at first, as you can’t spam attacks like in every other game with this perspective, but it is a lot of fun when you get used to it. We worked on it in this update to make it more responsive, but also made the Secondary Attack and Dodge skills available right from the start.
Optimizations and fixes
There are a ton of optimizations to pretty much everything. Less stuttering, better performance! We also fixed most of the reported bugs (including the dreaded Mac crash and disappearing Wolfman!). However, a lot of new features were added, which still need to be polished.
And also:
- New hideouts! Nights are different based on the hideout you are sleeping in.
- New content to be found in the wilderness.
- Wood is more plentiful, but to make use of it, you need to convert it to planks with the new Saw object.
- New shader for trees.
- Friend of the Forest skill has been nerfed. Animals will be less aggressive, instead of befriending you.
- Rebalances to loot and enemies.
- And a lot of other smaller (or secret) changes!
We are pleased how these changes add to the game, and hope you feel the same! This is hopefully the last BIG rewrite of any of the systems, and we can return to more frequent updates.
We would also like to thank our awesome testers for their hard work on hunting bugs! <3
We’ve been very busy after Darkwood’s launch, and released a few critical updates and hotfixes for most of the problems you’ve been having. We’ve also rested a bit after the pre-launch crunch time, watched a ton of Darkwood letsplays, hanged out in loads of streams, and read a lot of the suggestions you have been posting on the forums. We’re extremely excited about the reception of the alpha, but that’s a story for a different time.
The important thing is, we can now begin working on the first major update for Darkwood. There have been many reports about optimization - sometimes you can run the game on old and feeble laptops without a problem, while other times beefy rigs struggle with Darkwood. To fix this, we need to rework some of the behind-the-scenes stuff, which will take some time. This is a big change, so the sooner we do it, the better, and we’ve decided that it is a priority for the next update.
Optimization is of course not the only thing coming in Alpha 2. You can expect a little bit more of everything, and hopefully a fix for the issues some of the Mac users have been experiencing. I’m afraid the exact things we are planning will remain a secret. The Acid Wizards see your suggestions and what you would like to see improved in the game, so keep them coming! <3
When is the update coming out? We don’t know. We work *a lot* better if we’re not stressing out about a deadline, but it’s safe to assume that you can expect for us to work on it for AT LEAST a month. Don’t worry, we haven’t run off with the money, and we’re not spending 100% of our time playing Dark Souls.
There’s a lot to do before we’re satisfied with Darkwood, and we’re fully commited to making this the best experience possible!
The Acid Wizards
Alpha 1.3 hotfix 2
It's been 10 days now after the launch, and here we are with the third minor update with a ton of fixes, and some balance changes to help players struggling with the first days in the game. Please note that this does NOT mean we are "dumbing" down Darkwood. It will remain very challenging, but as of now the difficulty curve is way too steep and needs a lot of work, which will also be addressed in future updates.
Changes: - You can now dismantle barricades which you have created, reclaiming some of the materials used.
- Weapons are more durable now.
- The plank with nails has a new default attack.
- Time passes a little slower.
- Days are longer.
- It's brighter during the day.
- The player moves a little faster, and has a lower movement speed penalty when aiming weapons. Also, no speed penalty when out of stamina.
- Enemies have less stamina, and are a bit less aggressive.
- There is a new visitor during the night.
- You can't brute force padlocks anymore (at least it's much harder).
- Throwing a item (like the molotov cocktail) for a second time requires you to press the RMB again, to help prevent unintentionally dropping it.
- More space for items in your hideout.
- You have some starting reputation with the traders.
- Red and gray potions can be crafted from the start (you don't have to buy the recipes). Their effect is visible instantly.
Bugs: - NPC in the church sometimes gave the wrong code.
- Wolf reputation sometimes didn't sync.
- Some optimizations for stuttering in the forest.
- Fixed receiving reputation from selling a item when a trader's inventory is full without actually losing the item (and vice versa).
- Recipes are no longer duplicated.
- Fixed player freezing on some occasions.
- You can no longer learn the same recipe twice.
- Fixed infinite item turn in for NPCs exploit.
- Rain was too loud.
- If a well was repaired in the middle of the night, it didn't have any water.
- Fixed huge FPS hit while in the pigsheds.
- Fixed ambient light not saving in some locations.
- You no longer lose your inventory at the end of chapter 1.
- Fixed black screen on end of chapter 1.
- Fixed notes in the journal sometimes leaving a page if you've found too much.
- Fixed beartrap duplicating exploit.
- Fixed incorrectly loaded doors and barricades.
- Fixed not being able to drop a dragged item by pressing LMB if accessed the journal or map.
- Dying outside of the normal world no longer freezes the time.
- Fixed some issues with the cursor.
- Fixed issue when sometimes you could not craft stuff even though you had the required ingredients.
- Item quality no longer changes when loading game.
- Chicken heads and the violin no longer serve as repair kits.
Update 06.08.2014: Released a hotfix for some of the issues with the new patch:
- Hopefully final fix for black screen at the end of chapter 1.
- Fixed player freeze when harvesting mushrooms and moving at the same time.
- Fixed health / stamina upgrades resetting sometimes.
- Wolf dialogue no longer loops infinitely.
- Fixed endless flare burning upon loading game.
Update 08.08.2014: Another hotfix:
- New cursor animation when aiming a melee weapon + info about it in the prologue.
- Night attacks no longer stop after day 5.
- Fixed infestation causing serious lag, especially when burning.
- Hopefully a fix for the filling generator freeze.
- Roads no longer disappear.
