Hardland cover
Hardland screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie

Hardland

HARDLAND Progress report on version 1.0
We've been hard at work on the remaining features for the gold master.
There's one major feature we’ll highlight today, the story.



For the past five months we've been developing the story of Hardland in tight cooperation with an extremely talented writer, Chandler Groover.

In the interactive fiction world, he's best known for his contemporary text adventures. Some games he's written include Toby's Nose, where you play as Sherlock Holmes's dog; Midnight. Swordfight., where you travel through time at a masquerade ball; and Eat Me, where you have to escape an enchanted candy castle using only your mouth.



To give you a glimpse of Hardland's new content, here's 8 unedited minutes of gameplay from the latest build. Sounds are disabled and music is temporary, but that will change in the coming months as we start plugging in the final audio. The footage takes place in a small town, Port Pulgar, where a twisted character called Ulf the Wolf has taken control:



There’s also been an extensive optimization round to improve the performance of the game.

The list of the entire changelist would be enormous so that won’t fit in this post. This is an example of the daily submissions to our version control server: (check out the scroll bar on the right!) https://i.imgur.com/vUJnw3b.png

Almost forgot this:

Hardland Progress report on version 1.0
We've been hard at work on the remaining features for the gold master.
There's one major feature we’ll highlight today, the story.



For the past five months we've been developing the story of Hardland in tight cooperation with an extremely talented writer, Chandler Groover.

In the interactive fiction world, he's best known for his contemporary text adventures. Some games he's written include Toby's Nose, where you play as Sherlock Holmes's dog; Midnight. Swordfight., where you travel through time at a masquerade ball; and Eat Me, where you have to escape an enchanted candy castle using only your mouth.



To give you a glimpse of Hardland's new content, here's 8 unedited minutes of gameplay from the latest build. Sounds are disabled and music is temporary, but that will change in the coming months as we start plugging in the final audio. The footage takes place in a small town, Port Pulgar, where a twisted character called Ulf the Wolf has taken control:



There’s also been an extensive optimization round to improve the performance of the game.

The list of the entire changelist would be enormous so that won’t fit in this post. This is an example of the daily submissions to our version control server: (check out the scroll bar on the right!) https://i.imgur.com/vUJnw3b.png

Almost forgot this:

Hardland Release 26 is available now!

RELEASE 26 UPDATE NOTES:


<*> Combat improvements:
- Characters should be able to hit their targets consistently with the new hit detection.
- Much cleaner weapon trails, 16 times more accurate than before.

- Camera shake effect upon impact to other characters.
- Player attack animations tweaked.

<*> Lock picking mechanic improved.
- It's faster to choose actions.
- Camera no longer bounces back and forth.
- Mansions have one level tougher locks.
- Quantity icon.

<*> New Mansion interiors:


- Cursed Mansion.
- Marquardt Mansion.

<*> Landmark changes in preparation for the main quests:

- Shipwreck on the shore in Barry's Field.
- Town of Fortuna separated from Barry's Field.
- Barry's Field and Town of Fortuna surroundings refined.
- New farm landmark.

<*> Baron Reynold Von Sparkle boss fight improved.
<*> Forgotten Folk rise from the ground animation.
<*> Skeleton Champion alert animation.
<*> Wild Boar spawn animation.
<*> More graveyard enemy spawners.
<*> Sneaking speed increased.
<*> Ghoul Merchant and Merchant corpses added to generator.
<*> 8 low shelf configurations with randomized loot.
<*> 4 curtain objects. (Black, Blue, Red, White)
<*> New fence pole objects.
<*> Player sliding bug fixed.
<*> Blacksmith quests fixed.
<*> Motion vectors fix.
<*> Companion load bug fixed.
<*> NPC label disappearing fixed.
<*> Small tweaks all over the place.

Hardland Release 25 update notes!

RELEASE 25 UPDATE NOTES:


<*> Sneaking mechanic. (press Ctrl on keyboard while moving or move the analog stick slowly)
<*> Sleeping improvements:
- Sleeping heals.
- Passage of time is shown while sleeping.
- Player stays in sitting position after sleeping.

<*> NPC and object interaction inputs streamlined.
<*> Sneak behind an unexpecting NPC to steal valuable items.

(Though it comes with the risk of getting caught! If the NPCs notice the player is stealing from them they'll either attack the player or flee the scene - potentially alerting nearby guards)

<*> Camera zooms in while trading with merchants.
<*> Sprint animation redone. (the animation looping issue will be fixed in the next release and sneaking speed will be boosted)

Teaser of the upcoming mansion interiors in Release 26:

Hardland Release 24 is out now!

RELEASE 24 UPDATE NOTES:



This update focuses heavily on adding new gameplay mechanics and removes the compulsory 30 FPS lock. The toggle for removing the lock can be found in options.
<*> Lock picking mechanic and breaking into houses:
- Failed break-in attempt can result in an angry dweller coming out of the house:


- New house landmarks and interior randomization improved.
- 3 types of interior cellar entrances: Reinforced hatch, regular hatch and secret hatch


- Two types of wilderness cellar entrances.


- New randomized cellar, windmill and farm interiors.
- All Western Province houses connected with road and functional door.
- Distance field accuracy increased 9x which allows for tighter landmark and road fitting:

(The target is to fit all locations into one map)

<*> Hard Ogre's heart hidden in the world.
<*> Sleep mechanic improved - you can now sleep until a specific time at the campfire.

(The next update will make sleeping replenish health as well)

<*> Treacherous minefields and bomb disarming mechanic:


Also effective for leading enemies into them...

<*> Town of Fortuna improvements:
- Cathedral, east and north sides polished:

- Cathedral Cellar:

- Adventurers' Guild polished and separated into its own landmark:
http://i.imgur.com/ZpvhzgL.png

<*> Several other landmarks polished:

- Barry's Field
- Castle Small
- Elven Citadel
- Goblin Cathedral
- Mertusk Treasure
- Old Path
<*> New graveyard landmarks.
<*> New monk props.
<*> Ammo indicators for ranged weapons.
<*> New shaders: rim light, eye and ghost.
<*> Characters with "signature animations" can look at the player. (Blacksmith, Witch etc.)


<*> Bunch of new inventory icons.
<*> Wind effect for all leaves and godrays improved:


<*> New objects and foliage. Several objects polished.
<*> Dialogue box text formatting fix.
<*> Dozens of other minor tweaks and fixes.

Hardland has it's own twitter account which automatically fetches development screenshots. Check it out:
twitter.com/hardland_rpg

Hardland Release 22 and 23 update notes!

RELEASE 23 PATCH NOTES:


(It's available now!)

<*> All 4 continents significantly improved. Hills, forests, and landmarks in much closer vicinity to each other.
<*> Full controller support in all game screens through virtual cursor.
<*> A new demo character with more weapons available right from the start.
<*> Heavily optimized memory use. Save games should no longer crash.
<*> Cut down the polycount of the game scene by about 40%.
<*> Goblin corpse loot is now randomly generated. (see the GIF above)
<*> Extensive set dressing for Cursed Mansion:



<*> Dead NPCs no longer play back their various effects (animation, sound, boosts, etc) when you go back to them the next time.
<*> More variants of the small houses along the roads.
<*> Procedural forests can appear closer to big hand-made landmarks due to tighter landmark bounds.
<*> The color of the terrain around objects is tinted towards the object's color.
<*> Terrain and object darkening at a distance.
<*> Background separation blur:

The new HUD is also visible in this screenshot.

<*> Bug fix: Memory leaks from the physics system.
<*> Bug fix: Assassination quest with Monk 47.
<*> Bug fix: Small rock infinitely duplicating.
<*> Bug fix: Objects floating in the air.
<*> Bug fix: NPCs turning erratically when following a path or when standing on angled terrain.
<*> Bug fix: Bright edge artifact in motion blur. Still some issues with DOF.
<*> Bug fix: Bunch of smaller fixes.
<*> Known issue: Framerate capped at 30.
<*> Known issue: The glow on the hand of a certain type of Forgotten won't follow the character.


RELEASE 22 PATCH NOTES:



<*> Blue noise based forest distribution with denser forests.
<*> HUD overhaul:
- Damage numbers.
- Critical hits visualized, damage chaining.
- Cursor in inventory controllable by the gamepad.
- Quick slots redesigned: now only takes ranged weapons and healing items.
<*> Boost drops (ammo, armor, health and stamina) for NPCs.
<*> Almost complete controller support (minus main menu and some steam controller issues)
<*> Goblin corpses randomized around the world.
<*> Basic sleeping at campfires (time passes).
<*> Better destruction effects for books and some other items:

<*> Level upping scares enemies away.
<*> Screen space directional shadows for low grass and after cascade shadow maps end.
<*> Road-side tavern interior.
<*> Dodging when aiming.
<*> Interior fog.
<*> Quick save (F8).

<*> 13 Trading Cards, badges and emoticons!


<*> Bug fix: Many crashes and hangs.
<*> Bug fix: Endless dungeons.
<*> Bug fix: Objects hanging in air or being underwater.
<*> Bug fix: Blacksmith's hammer quest.
<*> Bug fix: Temporal AA black pixel propagation.
<*> Bug fix: Objects disappearing at wrong times due to culling.
<*> Bug fix: Sliding NPCs.
<*> Bug fix: Straight stretches of road.
<*> Bug fix: Throwing a carried NPC.
<*> Bug fix: Disappearing grannies when carried at night.
<*> Bug fix: Projectiles hitting each other.
<*> Bug fix: NPC knockback.

Hardland Release 21 is here just in time for Christmas!

RELEASE 21 LANDS JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!



FEATURES

  • New starting location at the border of random generated and handmade content:


  • Forest spawner system part I: It spawns forests, flowers, wheat fields and sunflower fields around roads.



    (House, healing altar and camp lights can be seen from far away to aid the navigation at night)

  • Enemy spawners in landmarks and along roads.


  • Improved landmark placement using distance fields.

    (the actual distance field)


    (how it looks from landmark's point of view)

  • Lots of other procedural generator improvements.




  • Road generation has received much more attention:
    - Roads can spawn houses along itself.
    - Each landmark decides what kind of road connects to it.
    For example you have a higher chance of encountering elves if you're traveling to Elven Citadel. Road leading to Goblin Forest spawns lots of goblins etc.
    - The road keeps itself horizontally level so it's easier for the player to walk on it:

    (In theory NPC's should be able to walk pretty much any road, though the AI navigation might still get stuck sometimes)

  • Big random generator optimizations to get this new more advanced system to run fast enough.
  • Very long distance terrain shadows.

    (Regular objects can't cast these type of shadows but they can be shadowed by these)

  • Multiple save game slots.
  • New ranged weapon aiming mechanics.
    Holding the left trigger (right-click on a mouse)
    moves the camera to the over the shoulder aiming view.
    (See this earlier announcement post for GIFs)
  • Blunderbusses, Pistols and Crossbows have their own
    unique carrying and aiming animations:


  • Several body armors which can be switched:


  • Falling from heights can kill.
  • Melee hit detection improved.
  • Boss variants of wolves and wild dogs:


  • Several unique armor variants for NPC's.
  • Several new tree objects.
  • New merchant guard.
  • Handmade landmarks have received more polish.
  • More characters moved to random generators.
  • Ground spawning animations for several characters.
  • Several new world generator nodes: Dilate, Shrink etc.
  • Distance based generation of terrain tiles. (faster)
  • New Temporal AA adapted from Playdead's wonderful game Inside.
  • New better quality and faster bloom effect.
  • Screen-space reflection quality improved.
  • Additional distance culling system.
  • More seamless day and night cycle.
  • Generation seed is displayed.
  • Tons of small improvements and bug fixes.


This update went through a pretty long testing period, thanks everyone who helped!

What's coming next: In Release 22 forest spawner will get another big feature. It gains the ability to spawn forests anywhere on the map and also bring much more advanced blue noise based hierarchical object spawning to replace the grid jitter algorithm.

This image explains how part of it works:


Each small image depicts the same forest. Spawning stars from the first row and advances left to right. White dot's represent succesfull spawning and gray dots were rejected due to lack of space or proximity to other existing objects. I won't go it into specifics of all the little details but the end result is much more natural forests. In several places the procedurally generated content is starting to produce more beautiful results than the handmade landmarks.

This is how the end result looks like:



Merry Christmas Adventurers!

RELEASE 21 info!
It's been awhile since the last update, here's information of what's coming next:



  • New ranged weapon aiming mechanics. Holding the left trigger (right-click on a mouse) moves the camera to the over the shoulder aiming view.

  • Blunderbusses, Pistols and Crossbows have their own unique carrying and aiming animations. Even though the ranged weapons are powerful they're balanced by limited ammo.


  • AI villagers and guards behave in a more fun way to surrounding player inflicted mayhem. The first strike won't make them attack you, though they will warn you to not do it again. Then if you strike them again they'll attack you or flee and call for help.



  • Road generation has received much more attention.
  • NPC's have an easier time walking on the roads as they're not too steep anymore - which makes a few important quests possible to complete. Here's some making of shots from along the road:



  • Support for Minigore 2 (our dual-stick shooter game) style enemy spawners. The system checks with bounding boxes if there's enough room to spawn characters in a specific spot, surprisingly hard problem to solve with a good performance in a procedurally generated 3d game.

  • Falling from heights can damage or kill the player or NPC's. Though it is rumored that a soft landing with a chicken is possible... Though I wouldn't try it, NOPE, never!

  • Day and night cycle improved further. [check the GIF at top]

  • Long distance terrain shadows. In practise that means the terrain shadows will be visible at 2000 meters compared to the earlier 120 meters with Ultra Settings.
    Maybe it's better to show this one with an image comparison as well:


  • Temporal Anti-Aliasing, Godrays and Bloom have been largely redone.
  • Also plenty of location and gameplay polish.


It shouldn't take too many days until the update is ready to roll!

Hardland Release 20 is available now!


RELEASE 20 SALUTES YOU!



FEATURES

  • Up to 40% faster generation time thanks to multi-threading via OpenMP.


    ALL TEXTURES RECOMPRESSED


    Everything looks nicer and actually uses less memory. The effect is most apparent on normal maps. Especially on metal surfaces as demonstrated here:



    Smooth surfaces like skin also look better:


    That would be 2148 textures in total which have received an upgrade.
    We're using an awesome lib called Crunch to do the texture compression.

  • More robust animation blending system.
  • First strike on an unexpecting character will stagger them giving the player an advantage in combat.

  • Unique staggering animations for:
    - Ghouls
    - Merchants
    - Elder Guardians

  • Unique walking and shooting animations for Rotten Merchant.
  • Reliable water traversal effects for player and NPC's.
  • Slower heavy weapon strike for player.
  • Added spears to the random generator.
  • Ice sliding gameplay:


  • Moon in the sky during night. (it would be nice if it followed a circular trajectory)

  • Low and medium settings performance should be much better.
  • Fixed a bug where seeing a large number particles at once
    would always crash the game.
  • Fixed a bug where large chunks of terrain were
    sometimes missing.
  • Fixed some sound bugs.
  • Secret landmark...


ABOUT SHADOW MAPS


Even though Hardland model normals are quite precise there's other kinds of visual artifacts which can and will happen. One of them is this precision issue with shadow maps:
http://i.imgur.com/KeRf6NG.gif

It happens because the shadows start casting too near to the surface.
The opposite of shadow acne is peter panning where shadows start casting too far away from the surface.

Here's a demonstration:

Just remember that good depth bias settings are between Peter and Acne :)


Best Regards,
Timo

Hardland Release 19 is available now!


Hardland Release 19 adds completely reworked day and night cycle and much more.



FEATURES

  • Day and night cycle completely redone:
    - Beautiful sunsets and during night you can see stars.
    - CycleComponent examples:
    - Certain characters are only active during day.
    - City lights are lit at night.




  • Two-phased enemy attack behavior:
    - Enemies display their alert behavior and change to aggro idle, but don't immediately rush to attack.
    - As an example, Goblin Fodder is made to not be alerted whereas e.g. Goblin Captain is.
  • Robust melee weapon hits using the 3d pizza slice technique.


  • Added critical hits and improved knockback.
  • Preliminary knockback animations for most enemies.
  • Added staggered animation for Skeleton Champion.
  • Reworked the concept of armor.
  • Throwing characters no longer breaks their physics.
  • Fixed this annoying T-pose glitch that happened upon character death:
    http://i.imgur.com/ZLEZLed.gif

  • Treasure chest opening and loot ejection improved.
    - Trap chests can spawn characters properly.
    - Loot randomized.
  • Starting areas expanded and polished.
  • Objects can follow the angle of the underlying terrain.


  • Improved screen-space reflection quality.
  • New level up effect and other particle effects improved.

  • Major game engine improvements.
  • More predicable physics simulation and less CPU spiking.

  • New stone fences, smaller watchtower, larger 4-wheel cart.
  • Increased Ghoul attack range by adding squash and stretch animation for the striking arm. (ala Battletoads!)
  • Added more characters to random generator lists.
  • Larger more dangerous Ghoul variant.
  • New goblin unit Goblin Bomber.
  • Visual changes to Goblins.
  • Added new ground foliage.

  • Gold pull effect improved.
  • Disabled head-tracking in death.
  • Health bar is always shown for aggro characters.
  • Addded support for disc shaped particle emitters.
  • Graphics config changes and more graphics options.


Here's a short video comparing Release 19 mechanics and fixes to Release 18.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6aGdpW_Jiw

Until next time!

Best Regards,
Timo
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