Hardland
Level up mechanic inbound for the next version!
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Gh6SkJy.png[/IMG]
We just got this first version of the level up mechanic working today, currently player can eat food or kill characters to get more experience. Once player gets enough experience for a level up this mesmerizing effect is triggered:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/zTqMmxX.gif[/IMG]
Maximum stamina and health increase with each level. Some creatures which are not accustomed to or fear magic will flee if they see the event.
Killing stronger monsters and eating rare food items give more experience and it will be expanded to quests and opening chests as well.
Map screen has been improved a lot but more on that and other features once the update is about to be submitted and we can confirm the exact set of features. Which should be soon!
Cheers,
Timo
Hardland release #3 is available now!
First off, I want to thank everyone who voted in the poll in the last announcement! The Forgotten Folk it is. Sampo has almost finished modeling and texturing those fellows so you should be seeing them in the game pretty soon.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/80UnmFql.png[/IMG]
Erik has been improving the terrain generator so that it can detect if the terrain angle is too steep and won't spawn objects there. It will clean up lots of the crazy stuff in the wilderness. The feature is still pending some additional testing and I expect that we can get it to you guys in release #4.
Here's the changelist for this update:
- We finally found the launch bug affecting some CPUs (thanks everyone who sent us their game logs!).
- The first version of temporal anti-aliasing is in the game.
- Guards and keys are randomized into the watchtowers, and the watchtowers can also be empty.
- New weapon: Wizard's Hand (hint: kill the Fire Wizard)
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/slDcVYw.gif[/IMG]
Some ideas for killing the red devil
- New town objects and improved food eating effects.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/q243LNa.gif[/IMG]
The pot and fish bones are physical objects so they move the player a bit when they intersect it. It's a small glitch and will likely be fixed later.
- Added food items to Skeleton Arena.
- Some small tweaks here and there.
Hires screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/z4BH6xu.png
Hires screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/m8VBcpv.png
More graphic screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/8aNOjRNl.png
PS. Please let us know if this update fixes the launch issue for you.
Cheers,
Timo
Hardland release #2 is available now!
Hires:
http://i.imgur.com/9ZsTxnc.png
This update was in testing since yesterday in the public beta branch, and now after some polish and tweaks we're rolling it out for everyone.
These are the most noticeable changes:
A much improved town generator:
There are stone fences around the town, watchtowers on the fences, flowers, grass and bushes growing next to road, as well as benches, carts, tables, etc. all around. (some of the stuff can still be in silly places but it will still be improved a lot)
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/oTYJMXSl.png[/IMG]
Hires: http://i.imgur.com/oTYJMXS.png
New more fleshed out starting location: Town of Fortuna.
New quests in the starting location.
New food/hunger mechanic which requires the player to carry some food with them. Many food items are eaten automatically when the player carries in the inventory, but some (more precious food items) require manual use by using the right mouse button (left trigger on the controller).
Food items: Apple, Cabbage, Carrot, Cheese, Cinnamon, Coconut, Corn, Croissant, Cucumber, Eggplant, three kinds of Fish, Fish Pot, Ham, Plate of Ham, Red and Yellow Pepper, Pickle, Pie, Potato, Tomato, Watermelon.
Drinkable items: Coconut, Health Potion Small, Health Potion Tiny, Exotic Drink Small, Exotic Drink Tiny.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/EWmqqkjl.png[/IMG]
Hires: http://i.imgur.com/EWmqqkj.png
New barrels for these food items: Eggplant, Potato, Watermelon. (We already had barrels for Apple, Cabbage, and Carrot)
Overall barrel functionality improved.
Drinking and eating animations for the player.
If the player is hungry and doesn't have any food, the stamina gradually drops. Jumping, blocking and throwing become very weak without stamina.
The first version of motion blur. It's not enabled on the low settings and we will add the ability to disable it altogether in a future update. (Ryse-style anti-aliasing will also be added later which, more specifically, is a combination of temporal and spatial AA)
Remade Cursed Graveyard using the new town generator (if you follow the roads you should be able to find it).
Chests can be opened with keys (it's still a work in progress as the key should be consumed after the player uses it).
There are 5 kind of keys at the moment:
Small Key, Silver Key, Large Key, Round Key (nothing requires it at the moment), and the biggest of them all: the Majestic Key.
Major faction improvements.
Improved Town Guards.
New NPC Fire Wizard.
A couple of new weapons: Pole Axe and Enchanted Broken Sword (short but powerful).
Improved character collision shapes (the wild boar is still faulty as it will require unique treatment due to it's different shape, it will be sorted out later).
Gold Coin collision shapes improved.
Large Treasure Chest collision shapes improved.
Improved mini-map.
Menu scroll wheel stutter bug fixed.
It's possible to resume back to main menu and choose a different mod without restarting the game.
Known major issues:
There is a launching issue (crash at simulation bubble initialization) that affects some people and we are working to get it fixed as soon as possible. Other crashes are also being looked into.
Ranged units have really poor aim due to their inability to turn after they decide to attack (Wood Elf, Merchant, Wizards).
Terrain generator is something which we'll tackle next as it's way behind the town generator.
Also these characters are soon heading into the game:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/NptRfhtl.png[/IMG]
Hires: http://i.imgur.com/NptRfht.png
Which name is your favourite? (We haven't decided the name yet)
Some fun stats: We worked on this update for 8 days and did 200 version control commits. This changelist is the short version.
Cheers,
Timo
New Hardland version coming tomorrow!
(This is how you can find the betas: in Steam library right click "Hardland" and then select "Betas")
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kEiBIvPl.png[/IMG]
To give a quick overview of what's gonna be in the update here's the partial changelist:
The beginning of the game will change completely. The new starting location is Town of Fortuna and there's more quests in that location. These quests can be completed and it feels more like the Training Grounds missions. (compared to the total randomness of the last version)
New hunger mechanic which is tied to stamina. You have to have some food in your inventory if you want to be at your strongest. Cheap food items will be automatically eaten when the player character reaches the hungry state. It's a bit like in Betrayal at Krondor where you didn't need to micro-manage the eating process itself but you had to have supplies with you.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/ovMg0Rml.png[/IMG]
Hires: http://i.imgur.com/ovMg0Rm.png
Massively improved city generation, looks like this currently and it will keep improving:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/PFBj5Nnl.png[/IMG]
(notice the properly aligned fences, watch towers, no stuff piled on top of roads)
Hires versions:
http://i.imgur.com/kEiBIvP.png
http://i.imgur.com/PFBj5Nn.png
On the eye candy side we've got a high quality motion blur, pictured here:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/TLjhw2sl.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/BD7uydhl.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/RXGjjXOl.png[/IMG]
Hires versions:
http://i.imgur.com/TLjhw2s.png
http://i.imgur.com/BD7uydh.png
http://i.imgur.com/RXGjjXO.png
(nerdy side note: Motion blur required motion vectors which also opens the door for temporal anti-aliasing, the kind seen in Ryse. It gives that clean film style look and helps in flicker prone environments like forests.)
Much more reliable collision detection. (There were some broken characters in the last build)
Chests require keys to open.
Better handling of factions.
New wizard NPC.
Better minimap.
Huge pile of other tweaks and bug fixes. More info and screens to follow!
Cheers,
Timo
Hardland Modding Tutorial #1 - Chicken Rampage
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/XMOnFnV.gif[/IMG]
THIS IS A QUICK TUTORIAL TO SHOW YOU HOW YOU CAN CREATE AN ANGRY CHICKEN ARMY, MODIFY SOME TREE & GROUND TEXTURES AND CHANGE THE WEATHER.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7E_QaVj8eg
(We're working on a WIKI site with more extensive instructions and examples)
Normally we use Photoshop but I wanted to demonstrate this with free tools.
In the video I'm using GIMP for texture editing.
(http://www.gimp.org/downloads/)
For text editing I'm using a free text editor called Notepad ++
(http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.6.9.html)
After you're equipped with a text editor you need to locate the asset files.
Instructions for locating the asset folder can be found in the video. The video also shows line numbers which have to be edited and what the changes are.
World configuration files are in this folder:
SteamApps/common/Hardland/Mods/Hardland/Config/World.txt
Weather configuration files are in this folder:
SteamApps/common/Hardland/Mods/Hardland/Config/Weather.cfg
All textures are in this folder:
SteamApps/common/Hardland/Mods/Hardland/Textures/
Textures are saved as TGA files and the game automatically converts them into DDS format. Depending on the situation there's two or three texture files for each 3d model. One ending with "Albedo" and another one ending with "Normal". For certain foliage objects there's also an "Alpha" texture.
Hardland uses physically-based lighting and that's why we have the following textures:
ALBEDO
Red, Green and Blue channels hold the color information of the object.
The Alpha channel holds the Metalness value, where white is 100% metal and black is totally non metal. You can use almost black (4% brightness which has RGB value of 10, 10, 10) for most objects if you have no idea what to use.
NORMAL
Red, Green and Blue channels hold the normal map.
RGB value of 127, 127, 255 is fine if you don't have tools to do a proper normal map.
Alpha channel holds the specular intensity. It defines how sharp the object highlights appear. Alpha value of 0 gives very wide and faint specular highlight, 255 gives a very sharp and bright specular highlight.
ALPHA
Red, Green and Blue channels of this texture hold the emission property. It's can be kept completely black because we might remove the feature in future because it's not used much.
Alpha channel is the more important channel as it can define the shape of your object. Black means completely transparent and white means completely opaque. You can use this to create tree leaf shapes etc.
The latest version is progressing very well, the town generator in particular has received a considerable improvement. Now the houses are aligned properly to the closest road, there's space for different house sizes, fences and foliage is generated next to the roads etc. (not on the road) There's also slots for towers on the city wall. You can see some of the improvements in these comparison screenshots:
Old Town Generator:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/f8V6FXhl.png[/IMG]
New Town Generator:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/2DBbokOl.png[/IMG]
(The very first shot and the latter half of the video was made with new town generator, the rest of it was with the old generator)
Cheers,
Timo
Hardland development update #1
In general we had a very high priority on gameplay systems.
Generic character rigs which allows player and NPC's to wear items in various configurations. It means player can wear skeleton shields and weapons and the skeletons can wear the chicken mask etc. The transition to the new system is still ongoing so there's some limitations on what certain characters can wear.
Examples of player equipment configurations:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/OODQEaIl.png[/IMG]
The inventory and item equipping system is much better than before and it has all the stats connected to data. You can see the Armor value update if you remove armor pieces:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/xw6N5DEl.png[/IMG]
Various skeletons, all equipped with the new rig and item slots:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/WXgQCiLl.png[/IMG]
Accurate damage shapes for all weapons and objects. Here's a screenshot of the collision shapes lined up in Blender:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/2cnQEBdl.png[/IMG]
Body parts have quite accurate collision shapes as well. If pick up an object and if an enemy strikes at you it will likely hit the object you're holding.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/J9Grbctl.png[/IMG]
Animation system has been rewritten to allow for upper body and lower body direction to be different. For example: strafing while blocking.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/uDCObnsl.png[/IMG]
Combat AI improvements, the enemies don't stack in one place like they used to. Instead they flow around the player more naturally, though there's still room for improvement in their AI as they get stuck on objects:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/UR3GvHHl.png[/IMG]
Throwing system is connected to damage so you can inflict damage to enemies by throwing items at them:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/iE5qfWAl.png[/IMG]
There's a better stamina system. Jumping, blocking, lifting and throwing spend stamina.
Currency has been reworked. Instead of coins there are various representations for different monetary values. It's also an optimization because you can display one gold cup instead of 50 gold coins:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/FMBqVeAl.png[/IMG]
Day and night was a bit clunky before. It's been replaced with cleaner solution which can create smooth blends between any weather conditions:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/o6BPdpcl.png[/IMG]
Lots of new objects and foliage:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Znoxihil.png[/IMG]
Main menu has several graphics options so it should run better on older hardware.
The world generation is still heavily unfinished and makes the separate elements seem way more unfinished than they are, that's why we've included the Training Grounds sections where you can see more easily how the gameplay mechanics work.
Our next step is to move manpower to the world generation and move it to the next level.