Release 18 has been a long time in the making but the day has finally come. This update makes the game open world as it was originally intended.
After one week in the beta branch most of the nasty bugs are fixed. Thanks everyone who helped us track down the bugs!
FEATURES
All major locations moved to the open world
Generated roads use A* algorithm for natural paths
More varied terrain generation and better erosion
New continent with Elder King's castle Root Hall
Queen Ingrid and Castle Snow Peak location
Mountain Sheep Tavern location
Merchant Union City landmark
Cursed Mansion landmark
Western Harbor landmark:
Northern Harbor landmark
Northern Guard and Palace Guards
Undead Knight with three variants
Elder Guardians and their Commander
Wolves (plus the ability to buy a pet wolf)
Travel system for going between continents
Procedural idle look at animations for NPC's to make them feel more alive:
Redone dialogue and quest funtionality
Lots of new items and weapons
More elder villager variants (with more to come)
New quests and dialogue
New story characters:
- Priest Holloway (The hat is special...)
- General Lupus
- Gus Grimaldi
- Grand Jester
- Merchant Union Leader
- Tavern Owner
- And many others
New set of masks:
- Woman villager
- Male villager
- Old woman villager
- Old male villager
- Merchant Fodder
- Merchant Lord
- Wood Elf Lord
Reynold Von Sparkle boss fight
Ulf The Wolf boss fight
Sir Kuolema boss fight
New consistent damage feedback effects
Better quality shading (removes banding which was visible on large round objects)
Replaced cube maps with real-time solution
Particles have correct ambient lighting
Water doesn't flicker anymore on shores
Better quality depth of field
Much longer draw distance
More background mountains
Boss battle HUD
More object LODs
Improved assets
Camera tweaks
Lots of bug fixes
Fixed launch issue that affected some operating systems
We're already hard at work on the next release, stay tuned!
Best Regards,
Timo
Release 18 Info - The Open World Update
Release 18 Info - The Open World Update
This has been the most satisfying update to develop so far as things are coming together beautifully.
All large key locations are integrated into the larger continents. Lots of additional and difficult optimizations were needed to make that happen.
I think it's better to let these images do the talking and show what that actually means.
Goblin Forest with portals as it was in Release 17:
Goblin Forest integrated to the Western Province (random world) in Release 18:
Barry's Field with portals as it was in Release 17:
(and actually it was much smaller as you couldn't easily go past the walls)
The new Barry's Field in Release 18:
There will be 5 continents in the final release version, this upcoming update will have 4 of them.
Tuskland (This will be added for the final release version)
Also coming in this update is lots of new story content.
New characters:
Northern Guards
Palace Guards
Queen Ingrid
(you can just barely see the queen in the middle of this screenshot)
Tavern Owner with his epic mustache:
(Gus Grimaldi on the front)
Lorelei Barry
Ted Barry
Priest Holloway
Merchant Union Guards
Merchant Union Lord
Some of the villains:
New weapons and shields.
Tons of bug fixes. (Flickering water, companions who want to walk through the player etc.)
The game runs much better in more demanding situations and the lighting system & fog have been improved.
Last but not least you can buy a pet wolf:
The update should be out in the first half of January. We've still got a few things we want to throw in there.
Happy New Year adventurers!
Hardland Release 17 is available now! Snow Peak and improved performance
FEATURES
City of Snow Peak is the main landmark of the random snow world:
GPU memory usage has been reduced massively due to smarter foliage handling.
LOD system for terrain which reduces the amount of triangles:
(Huge performance boost)
6 stylish pumpkin masks that player can wear:
New priest character type.
New cloud system. Affects visible clouds and cloud shadows:
(enhances the accuracy of cloud shadows)
Two new small landmarks in random grass world:
- Marquardt's grave
- Fortuna's grave
House of the Witch landmark redone.
New bush assets and optimized old bush assets.
Terrain texture and ambient occlusion system has been improved:
New snow grass biome and randomized particle system for dropping snow around objects.
Fixed several inventory icons. (thanks for the tips!)
Hires main menu assets. (and x changed to v for clarity)
Minor tweaks.
WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON NEXT:
With the improved LOD systems we can handle bigger worlds so we're working on moving even more locations to the generated worlds.
For example Way to Fortuna landmark is in the process of being moved to the Random Grass World which means the game would start in a random world.
Snow Peak castle will be expanded with interior.
New characters will be added. Here's the concept art for the Northmen:
And here's a sneak peek of the in-game models of that same character:
The Northmen will have a huge shield which will block direct attacks.
Cheers,
Timo
Happy Halloween & Release 17 News!
We really wanted to get a build ready for Halloween but in the final moments decided it's better to postpone it by a few days so we can finish one very important feature.
That feature is the terrain LOD system and it will improve performance drastically. Short technical explanation of why it's needed: In earlier versions we used to have evenly spaced grid of polygons for the terrain and it has started to cause more and more issues as we've increased the draw distance. The proper way to do it is to have more dense polygon grid near the camera and less dense polygon grids further away from the camera. So Kimmo rewrote the entire terrain baking system with that in mind and as a result we have visually near identical landscape with 4-10x less polygons. (and with even longer draw distances the difference would have grown bigger and bigger)
This is also coming in the update:
Happy Halloween!
Hardland Release 16 is available now!
FEATURES
<*> New big landmark in the Random Desert World:
(Eastern Port)
<*> New interior location:
(Broken Horn tavern aka the Outlaw tavern)
<*> New story characters: Praakh and Rogue Merchant
(Praakh can be a powerful ally... or enemy)
<*> New type of story triggers:
- Harming or killing a character can trigger events
<*> Barry's Field polished and moved to the bigger Random Grass World
<*> Traveling Merchant supplies are random generated
<*> Added more characters who can sell items:
- Cobold bartender
- Market traders
<*> 16-bit image support for landmark heightmap "brushes":
- Means the accuracy is 65536 steps instead of 256 steps which reduces the amount of visible steps in several terrain features
<*> Random generation speed improved
<*> More robust road generation
(Still has some height glitches which will be fixed later)
<*> Landmark name randomization improved
<*> Grass color is tinted towards the ground color
<*> Added support for landmarks in the shoreline
(Barry's Field and Eastern Port are the first examples)
<*> Shore shape generation improved
<*> New objects:
- Large ship
- Large crates
- Terracotta vases
- Pastry stand
- Some small objects
<*> Inventory shows item prices
<*> Inventory icons for almost all the remaining items
(please mention item name if you find any missing icons - Sugar Wand is one at least, thanks fletcherkali for the tip!)
<*> Trading Posts connect Eastern and Western Provinces
<*> Destruction of many items improved: tables, bottles etc.
<*> Town of Fortuna location and quests polished
<*> Food items heal you again
<*> Lots of balance tweaks
<*> Dozens of bug fixes including the save game crash
WHAT'S COMING NEXT Random Snow World gets its first big landmark called Snow Peak, here's a small teaser of the work-in-progress version that Sampo has been working on:
We'll also look into performance issues and see what can be done on that side. Until next time!
Cheers,
Timo
Hardland Release 15 is available now!
FEATURES
Combat improvements:
- Combat is much more physics driven
- Stronger hero units are guarded by weak fodder
- Better group AI
Player can control NPC formations with masks
- Masks come equipped with a lure that spawns a green trail when compatible units are nearby
- Town guard mask included as a tutorial mask
New characters:
- Mertusks, large elephant like creatures
- New goblin types, such as Goblin Healer, Goblin Bomber and Archer Captain
- Alert reaction animations for various characters.
- King of the Wood Elves
- 2 different Wood Elf Lord variants
- Elven Magician
- Elven Poisoner
4x bigger random grass world
More detail in the background mountains
Much longer draw distance for terrain:
- Terrain distance can be changed from options (terrain is relatively cheap)
- Simulation distance is a different option (be careful when increasing it, because it can really kill the performance because most of the objects have physics simulation on)
Inventory system upgraded: (see above for a comparison image)
- Icons for almost all items (about 10 items are still missing icons)
- Hover info
- Quick slots
- Right click smart equip
- Better stats and descriptions for items
New landmarks:
- Elven Citadel with new houses and various environment props (It's the first big landmark we've integrated into the Random World. Obviously we would like all the locations to be seamlessly connected like this but there's still some technical issues preventing that - mostly related to performance)
- Undead War Arena
- 4 new building landmarks
New items and objects. Improved some old assets:
Major balance tweaks
10x faster texture loading when enableModTools is turned on
Camera system changes
Fog improvements
More fog and dynamic moon during the night
Character idle animation start times randomized
Town of Fortuna and Way to Fortuna locations polished
Hidden Wood Elf mask!
(formations shown in the level editor, Blender. Different colors mark different unit types.)
Fun detail about the icons. We made a simple "photography studio" where we took screenshots of the assets to help in the creation of the icons.
Here's the player "photographed" in the studio:
(the family photo of goblins was shot in the studio as well)
There's a bunch of story stuff and another big location coming soon (the location is similar size as the Elven Citadel). Rest of the older locations will be upgraded to use the new characters. (Way to Fortuna and Town of Fortuna were upgraded for this release)
Cheers,
Timo
Introducing new inventory and formations for Release 15!
Hello Adventurers!
For the past month we've been working on the new inventory, quick equip slots, formations, new characters and character variants, improved combat which is more physics driven, new locations and quests.
The next update will mostly showcase the inventory, quick equip slots, formations, combat and some of the new characters. The other features will follow in a later update as we need more time to integrate them properly into the game.
Formations mean that with the correct faction mask you can lead groups of AI characters into combat in a nice tidy formation.
To make space for the combat changes characters have been grouped into stronger hero characters (with random generated gear and names) and dozens of weak cannon fodder characters around them:
Elven Magician:
Character AI reactions have been improved as well:
Mertusks are big elephant like creatures. When talking to mertusks (or other large characters) the camera will now zoom out so you can see them in their full glory:
Skeletons are no match for them:
(Or anybody else for that matter, so it's smart not to anger them.)
Funny glitch, the goblin pit:
Release 15 should be out within the next two weeks!
Hardland Release 14 is available now!
(The new dust, grass, sand, snow and water trail effects in action)
Here is the latest release just before our summer vacation.
NEW FEATURES
Audio and sound system improvements:
- Footstep sounds for many different materials
- Set of new human villager sounds
- Nature sounds
- Portal sounds
- Door opening sound
- Sound variation system added
Visual effects for snow, sand and water
Faster player movement
Load time optimizations
(The initial loading still takes a long time. Luckily it seems like we might have found a good solution. Unfortunately it wasn't finished for this release but it should be done for the next update)
Faster physics simulation
Polished town well location
Fog color variations
Small foliage bends
New field landmarks
Mountain glitch fixed
Several item bugs fixed
Some trees can fall down
Few carry poses improved
Tweaked some object models
New coffin object (used for witch quest)
New trigger system for quest flags (not used yet)
Various minor additions: foliage, pollen particles etc.
That's it for now, we're off to holidays. We're gonna be back in action next month!
- Timo
Hardland Release 13 is available now!
It is time to plug in some new music! The music is composed by our talented friend Ilmari Tiitinen. (We've worked with him since Minigore 2)
FEATURES
New music and ambience can be heard in the following locations:
- Desert World
- Snow World
- Houses
- Dungeons
- Goblin Forest
- Town of Fortuna
- Night time audio (really helps with the dynamic time of day)
Placeholder friendly witch replaced with final art
New enemy: Evil Witch
Improved spell effects for Goblin King
(Dust effect added for butt stomp)
Projectile knockback works more reliably
Added secondary attack for merchants
(Merchants are deadly with their melee strikes)
Refined the random generation system
Eat spam exploit removed
Rigid doll physics added for dead Goblin King
(bowling with goblins)
Optimized some performance heavy effects
Small changes here and there
Stay tuned, more audio improvements coming after this update as well!
- Timo
Hardland Release 12 is available now!
After lots of work Release 12 is finally ready!
FEATURES
Massive improvements in the generated worlds.
- 4x larger random world
- Generation speed improved
- New road system which can create main road, side roads and small paths
- Improved draw distance and new faraway mountain to give better sense of scale
- Infinite water plane which makes the sunsets that much nicer
- Added new nature landmarks and improved old ones
- Set of new trees and old trees improved
- Set of larger houses
- Additional version of blacksmith
- Wind affects tree branches
Weather is completely dynamic everywhere
First version of random generated desert island
Witch sells transformation potions:
- Butterfly potion
- Chicken potion
- Fox potion
- Pig potion
- Goblin Minion potion
- Goblin Brute potion
- Goblin King potion
- Spider potion
- Wood Elf potion
(some are still unfinished)
Support for NPC signature animations:
- Fisherman fishing animation
- Blacksmith forging animation
Dungeon improvements:
- Dungeons can have several floors
- Boss floor at the bottom of the dungeon
- Cave entrances in random world lead to dungeons
- New rooms
- More detail in old rooms
- New roofs which can have holes
Building interiors, random generated and handmade
- Random interiors can be found in the random world
Handmade interiors include:
- Fisherman Dave's house
- Larry's house
Combat improvements:
- Player can dodge in any direction (consumes stamina)
- Player can shoot vertically with ranged weapons
- Enemies can track player during their strikes
- Group battles are more dangerous
Goblin King is combat ready:
- Butt-stomp attack
- Can summon minions
New enemy: Goblin Brute - ranged and melee
New variant of Merchant
More legs for Spider
Lots of new items
Added shortcut portals to handcrafted levels
- Way to Fortuna connects to Barry's Field and Old Path
- Cobold Cave connects to random snow world
Level of detail system introduced
Carrying system improved
Camera tweaks
Map screen shows trees, buildings and some characters
