We're delighted with the results we see everyday in wishlists and play times. They're growing bigger everyday with an increasing pace.
We would like to see more comments though in discussions and on Discord. Maybe our player base is full of introverts who don't like to comment or give feedback except a few. :)
As promised at the start, we are updating the demo once every two weeks and we're aiming to keep up with these updates until we release the final version of the game.
WHAT DO WE HAVE IN THIS UPDATE?
New Monster for Dryland
The Antar Tribe has an elite fighter now: The Antar Drone.
We're trying to design unique behaviors for each monster in Good Heavens! and this creature has bombs! However, it needs to get very close to the player in order to plant its explosives. It's possible to hit the monster a few times while it's planting the bomb and then it flies away quickly and you need to run away from the explosion range as well.
If you have the right gear, it shouldn't be difficult to take it down when it's alone, but it can be really annoying if there are some other Antars around.
UI/UX Changes
Update: Main Menu and Load Screen Background Images Added: Tooltips Added: Mouse hold interaction for tools
There will be further changes regarding tooltips, but for now there is a delay of 1 second for tooltips to show. Not all items, abilities and other assets have tooltips or some of them have a dummy text for now. We will keep working on tooltips in future updates to complete these missing parts.
We recently had a request for ability to use tools like axes and picks by holding down the mouse button and it was something in our mind for a while so we implemented that change as well.
New Items
We will keep adding new items hopefully in every update we make. Here are the ones for this one:
-Potion of stamina -Ring of speed -Grilled rabbit
You don't have to unlock them on tech tree for now but we might put them in a tree later or maybe you will find the blueprints from vendors or by completing quests.
Other Updates
Added new sounds for gnomes, rhinomel, fox and minibug Fixed and Improved multiple Save subfeatures (We also made some fixes during the week)
WHERE IS THE DESIGN HEADED?
Our current aim in design is to find some well crafted challenges to the player. Darkness during the night and in the dungeons will serve that purpose. Also we are trying to make better balanced encounters in dungeons and monster camps. We will see some improvements on these fronts in the following updates.
We're also working on new cultures for the start of the game. In the current version of the game cultures and factions are static. But they will soon be generated procedurally and be selected from an available pool of cultures for each biome.
We are also changing the item bar and inventory UI/UX and we're adding pants (YES PANTS!) to wearable items soon.
World generation and multiplayer integration is ongoing on the side. We are trying to optimize loading times while also creating a robust multiplayer system. Multiplayer updates for the demo will need to wait at least for a couple of months, but we will keep informing you about our ongoing efforts here.
Stay hydrated until the next update.
FULL PATCH NOTES
Added new monster Antar Drone to Drylands
Updated UI with multiple improvements
Added Tooltips to UI
Added Mouse hold interaction for Tool Use
Added new Items
Added new Sounds
Fixed and Improved multiple Save subfeatures
HOTFIX: v0.3.17 Patch Notes for the Demo
Fixed multiple Save/Load Bugs
Fixed disallowing Saving in Boss Room/City Protection Quest
Updated City Leveling to use City Development Points
Devlog#3 - Demo Update v0.3.16
IMPORTANT CHANGES IN 0.3.16
Hello everyone!
SAVE SYSTEM
It took us a while to develop a save system for the game. There were a lot of different data types and many of them didn't have a clean structure. It was also a cleanup process for the game.
The current version of the save system is temporary. So be aware any save file you create in this version of the game might not work in future versions. We'll try to give a heads up if such a situation is about to come up.
Steam Cloud is available as well. Location of your save files in case you want to move them around manually:
You can send your save files to us when you encounter something weird in your game.
FOX REWORK
We are trying to make every creature unique in Good Heavens! Besides the natural behavior of hunting small animals, foxes didn't have interesting combat behavior. Its animations were a few of the first animations made for the game and they didn't have any built-in anticipation. So we made an overhaul of its behaviors and animations.
Now it has a retaliation attack once the player moves in too close, then it dodges the player jumping backwards and tries to stay in a safe distance to make its next charge.
It's possible for the player to dodge its charge but the retaliation attack is harder to dodge.
UPCOMING CHANGES
CAVES & DUNGEONS
We are working on small dungeons where you will find some puzzles or encounters. One of the ideas is to unlock the boss lair through these dungeons but this is just an idea for the moment. These dungeons will be found as Points of Interests all around the map.
We're hoping to include a few of these dungeons in the following updates.
MULTIPLAYER
We're building the basics of multiplayer. Some systems of the game need to be rewritten such as the player animator.
It's not the time to get excited about multiplayer yet, and it will take a lot more time. We're aiming for November-December for the multiplayer build.
AN ELITE ANTAR
Drylands is still a bit dull compared to the Evergreen biome in terms of resources and creature variety. We wanted to create a new elite for Antar monsters. Therefore we will have
An early concept of the character looks like this:
A NEW CAPSULE ART FOR STEAM
We are ramping up our efforts on the marketing side, therefore we needed more polished assets. There are still some work left but here is what we're working on:
OTHER WORKS
We have also been working on the map design, music and additional sounds, UI, day & night cycle and lighting but we don't have much to show at the moment for them. Stay tuned for future updates!
FULL PATCH NOTES
Added Save System and related infrastructure
Updated various World Generation subsystems
Updated Colliders to provide better Combat and Collission feel
Updated Occupiers to improve Pathfinding
Added Group Occupiers to grouped objects to better control object spawning
Added missing Pickup, Gather, Building, Animal, Equip, Use Consumable and Inventory Sounds
Fixed Sound Effect related bugs
Devlog#2 - Demo Update v0.3.15
DEMO NEWS
It has been two weeks since we released the demo and we are thrilled with the numbers and positive comments.
We are planning to update this demo every two weeks with new features and content. Some updates will be bigger than others. We're also planning smaller Hotfixes in between these regular two weeks updates, especially if there are any game breaking issues.
Let me try to sum up the biggest concerns we collected from the demo and try to answer them as much as I can:
- The inventory / Chest Bug [FIXED]: This was a game breaking bug after a chest is built and interacted in certain ways. Previous Hotfixes have solved the gamebreaking part of this bug. There are still some glitches that cause some items to disappear from the item bar, but they are not lost. You just need to reassign them from the inventory to the item bar. We're not going to spend more time on this bug as there will be a bigger rework to inventory soon.
- Lack of a Save System [ONGOING WORK]: This was a bit more complicated than we first assumed. I totally understand it's a bit frustrating not to have any save system even for a short demo, especially if you run into a bug somewhere along the way. We had to prioritize game breaking bugs first and I really want to ensure the next regular update will include the save system. This is also related to the multiplayer infrastructure and the optimization of multiplayer experience therefore it's normal it's taking a bit more than usual.
- UI Communication issues, mostly around Blue Essences [NEEDS DESIGN REWORK]: This wasn't a very common issue, but multiple players reported they didn't understand what is a blue essence and how does it work. We're going to try to collect more feedbacks on this but changing the location they are displayed on the main HUD and adding a tooltip can be an improvement. Maybe along with a bigger tweening animation when you collect essences.
We gained lots of new wishlists, surpassing 10K Wishlists.
Demo has been downloaded around 5000 times.
Demo was played 46 minutes on average, which seems to be quite good with a median play time of 25 minutes. We believe fixing the bugs and adding new content will increase this number further.
NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT
Shaders
We already had a space and water shader before the demo but as we just migrated to a new world generation system just before the demo, we didn't have time to implement the space tiles. Also it was also a good time to rework the older water shader.
We also worked a new wind shader that would make the branches of the tree shake a little bit.
Starting Area Objects:
We felt the need to connect the intro cinematic to the actual game. With these new starting area objects the transition is a bit more seamless. Also it will remind players where they were born when they find the area once again during the game.
Quests:
Our goal is to give the player lots of quest options to follow. Some of them will be combat oriented some of them will exploration or crafting quests so players can choose the suitable quest for their playstyle.
We've added new Quests to Level 3 Cities NPCs
We are also reworking Steam capsule images
SFX:
There has been a bunch of new SFX added from monsters to animals and UI.
Multiplayer Groundwork:
As Good Heavens! is our first multiplayer game, we're learning a lot of things from scratch. There were some snippets of multiplayer code left from the early prototype days of Good Heavens! but we didn't improve any of those. Therefore right now, we're back on the topic as if nothing has been done before. As we're not going to offer any PVP, we don't need any authoritative server. We just need to assign a host and client architecture and try to decide how often to send packages to the clients and what should each of these packages hold as info. Also, some of the existing systems should be iterated to comply with this new architecture including animators, behavior, detection and aggro systems, quest system and others. So thousands of decisions and optimizations. Easy fun work (!)
FULL PATCH NOTES
Added space and water "biomes" to world and minimap
Fixed UI scaling issues
Fixed Quest Tracker resizing after changing quests
Fixed Trees giving additional loot if hit during fall animation
Updated minimap to stop refreshing while indoors
Updated Chunk size to handle Chunk loading on wider screens better
Added Biome ambient sounds and many other new sound effects
Fixed Branch pickup sounds
Fixed heart shaped smoke layers
Removed heart shaped smoke from Drylands Settlement
Fixed Farmer vendor items
Added Sprite Mask to Tent and Shack
Fixed Critical Health Overlay blocking UI input
Fixed various visual and functional bugs in Inventory and Quickslots
Updated NPCs to inherit quests from previous Settlement stages
Fixed Vendors not updating content and UI layout properly
Fixed some NPCs Quest dialogue markers
Fixed some buildings not enabling and disabling their renderers
Fixed incorrect Vendor entry for Broccoli Seed
Updated Quest Dialogue Box buttons to be clickable only on last dialogue index
Updated Quest Descriptions in Journal to be clearer
Updated multiple Quests for balance and typos
Added multiple Quests to Evergreen and Drylands Biomes
Added Wind Shader effect to Trees
Updated Sprite Masking components in multiple objects
HOTFIX: v0.313 Patch Notes for the Demo
Fixed Tech Tree showing empty screen
Fixed swapping Items in Chest UI destroying them
Fixed player getting Mana Shield incorrectly
Fixed game freezing in Chest UI after pressing Tab to close the UI
Fixed moving Items inside player Inventory causing Items to be removed from Quickslots in Chest UI
Fixed player state to be locked in aim-state when switching equipped Items during aiming
Added details in some Quest steps, removing the need to rebuild already-built Buildings
Fixed Quest titles showing incorrect characters in the Quest Tracker
Updated various enemy Behaviour Trees
Fixed some animations with mismatched timings
Fixed player getting Quest rewards or Crafting items when Inventory full incorrectly
Fixed Quickslot breaking after selling Item inside
Fixed multiple player spawn bugs
HOTFIX: v0.312 Patch Notes for the Demo
Fixed a bug occuring when swapping items on quickslot with slots on a chest
Added and Updated missing NPC icons and names
Fixed a bug where items dropped on any non-slot point were disappearing
Fixed a bug causing the game to freeze when two menus are opened simultaneously
Fixed a bug causing "insufficient resources" message to not show while crafting
Fixed various typos
Fixed some quests not having reward data
Fixed Minimap indicators appearing outside of the minimap in different resolutions
Fixed Minimap Icon Resolution scaling problem
Fixed Inventory Quickslot item removal (to chest, for example) locking the game
Fixed Tech Tree not resetting on return to Main Menu
Updated wordings in tutorial quest for further clarity, bound a few of the steps to prerequisites
Updated chipped purple gem requirement for jewelcrafting table to flint
Added flint to carpenter vendor
Added gatherable & renewable glitter dust to occupied gnome houses
Demo Is Live
It's time. We're finally releasing our public demo and we're sooo excited about it.
So what to expect and try in the demo:
- A tutorial for the basic systems of the game like crafting, building, combat and farming
- Tier 1 Tech Trees (as well as a small taste of Tier 2) for all 6 different player classes
- Different Weapons, Equipments and Abilities
- Consumable effects, food effects, status effects
- A variety of enemies and a final boss for the demo
- City questlines and city improvement
- Vendors
Also some features are there but they will be improved in the following versions:
- Base Building
- Parallel Quests
- Combat abilities
- Sub-biomes and danger areas
- Sound and music
We don't want to overhype the game but there's also so much we would like to share with you. So let's talk a little bit about what you can't find in the demo yet but they are all in
Our roadmap:
- Save Option
- Multiplayer
- Controller Support
- Survival (Permadeath) Mode
- Map (We have a limited minimap for the demo)
- Day & Night Cycle
- Lighting (We don't have the sexy looking lighting in the trailer yet)
- Skill system (You can advance in the tier 1 and some tier 2 tech trees but skills just don't work yet)
- Character Creation
- Animal Taming
- Random Encounters
- Luck & Barter
- Faction relations
- Spaceships and Open world Exploration
If you revisit our demo during the next few months, you will be able to witness the evolution of the game and these features will arrive and be iterated on one by one.
Demo Limitations:
Also the content of the demo is limited with the first island of the game and cities are limited to 3 levels (instead of 5). This content limitation will be similar in the future versions of the demo.
Devlog#1 - Demooooooooo!
Oh wow, we are going to reveal almost 3 years of work very soon publicly. Again wow. We don't know how many people will raise an eyebrow after this demo, but we are doing everything we can to pleasantly surprise the ones who will play the demo.
We decided to start a devlog to share the feature and content updates that we will make regularly from now on. The demo will be limited with the first island in the game but the content and the features will get frequent updates (maybe once a week or once a month, we don't know yet).
Demo and Trailer Preparations
We had a playable game until recently but everything was working on top of a prototype codebase. Things were working fine but making changes was a nightmare. We decided to rewrite almost every core system from scratch. Our rendering pipeline, world generation algorithm and object hierarchy have been rewritten.
We couldn't make changes in the main branch of the game for a while but today the main portion of the work is finished and our developers are working double time to merge all these different development branches for UI, lighting, VFX, shaders, content and animation updates.
This is probably the 5th time we are going trough a dramatic change for the UI of the game. But this one will stay for a long while hopefully. Here is how it looks:
The other major work on the parallel was for the trailer. I don't want to spoil a lot but I can share a few images showing the new look and lighting of the game. Unfortunately this new look won't be available in the demo next week as there is some work left on the day/night cycle of the game. We are aiming for June to implement this new lighting and the day/night cycle fully:
World Generation
The world generation was the first system we started developing when we began development almost 3 years ago. This is probably the most important part of the game where everything else is connected to.
There were some design requirements like placements of Points of Interest and dividing the biomes into smaller sub-biome areas. It was a lot of work to implement these new ideas with the legacy system. Therefore we started to work on a more optimized and elastic system. After one month of work we are at the same spot we were one month ago :) But it works faster and allows us to implement our design ideas in the future.
Some tests with trees for opening and closing chunks:
Voronoi cells for a sub-biome structure:
There is still some work left in this area but we will have a unique exploration aspect in Good Heavens! after all is done.
Status Effects and other Developments
In recent months we improved the hit effects when taking and receiving damage. This type of development has a huge effect on the overall feel of the game. The last step of these improvements was showing applied status effects on monsters.
We also edited the behaviors of all monsters because impairments such as Stun, Stagger and Berserk should interrupt the current state of the monsters. It all works very well now:
I can't share everything we have been working over the past weeks but we have some new spellcasting VFX and NPC animations that I would like to finish this first post with.
Concept for Ice Ray Staff (Play the Demo to see the implemented version)
A Vampire from the Love Culture having a good time:
Please play our demo next week and give us feedback.
You can jump in to our discussions on Steam or join our Discord to stay in contact with the team.
Demo Announcement
Hello everyone,
We are about to hit a major milestone. This demo will be our first publicly playable build! We are super excited to show what we have been working on for the last 2.5 years.
Your feedback on this demo is extremely important for us to decide what to focus on next.
What to expect from this demo
The game is currently in Alpha stage and it will stay in alpha for some time. We will wait at least until the Beta to release a purchasable Early Access version, possibly even more.
The content of this demo is limited with a single island and the first two biomes of the game. It should offer at least an hour of gameplay. Depending on taking side quests and exploration it can last some more.
We have a good proportion of early tech tree in this demo. You can gather essences and start building your character. Yet most of the passive skills do not work yet.
There are 4 ability slots in the game that you can see in the main HUD and you can craft some items filling these slots. Hand slot is usually for attacking, chest slot is for defensive purposes. Head and foot slots give utility abilities.
Base building is necessary for crafting purposes but the time you would spend in your base varies on the type of character you are building. Decoration is very limited in this build and tile building doesn't exist. We also don't know if we should have it in later versions or not. (Tell us more what you expect about this)
Cities and quests are the main progression drivers in Good Heavens! The narrative will unfold as long as you develop more cities in the game. In this demo version you can upgrade two different cities but there will be many more types in the main game. Cities normally will have 5 upgrade levels, in this demo we have limited the upgrades to 3 levels.
You can also find some random encounters when you are exploring the map and we want to increase their number in every version.
Combat is one of the most important aspects of Good Heavens! but you can advance in the game without making any combat except the tutorial. In this demo version, you can craft different weapons, you can build your character to use those weapons more effectively and you can find some unique resources to craft some even more powerful weapons. We will implement the possibility to enchant the already existing weapons using gems but that kind of crafting isn't present yet.
You can fight your way until the first boss of the game, the Ant Queen, where our demo ends. After you play, please let us know what you think about it and what else you would like to see in the game.
Major Features missing in this demo but planned for later
Co-op Multiplayer
Controller support
Day & Night Cycle
Procedural Generation (Still in question if we can finish it until the demo)
Space Exploration
Advanced Crafting
Randomized Cities
Passive Skills
Mini Games
are completely missing from the game for now. But also all the existing areas will have some improvement until the release.
What you can do to help?
To start with, we need your feedback to make the game better. Your voice matters, so tell us what you liked and what you didn't. There might be some technical limitations but at least we will know what you are looking for in a game like this.
Furthermore, we need your help to spread the word. The game currently sits on a healthy 10K (almost) wishlists even without a trailer or a demo. We will build the hype alltogether. We rely on future demos and Steam Festivals but also streamers and you guys who already liked the demo. Once multiplayer is ready we trust you to bring your friends to test the game as well.
