I was working on another game but I am now working on Isles of Adalar again. I am incorporating everything I learned from working on that game. I am using the opportunity of porting to Unreal Engine 5 to rethink everything. I have spent way too much effort on the level editor. I still am going to support mods but now it is through JSON files. All the data is in JSON files and scripting is done through LUA instead of the in- game level editor. I am trying to focus on the gameplay. I wrote a design document and I think I have what I want in the first island planned out as well as the game mechanics. It will be awhile before I upload the new version, I want it to be playable.
I wanted to show my progress. I have been concentrating on building up the UI as well as the character creation system and quests.
This shows the new character screen. I am trying to standardize everything. I am using metahuman models. Any metahuman model can be used which will allow the addition of new metahuman models through mods. Here is a close up. Since the rig is metahuman (tal normal weight) any clothes/armor rigged to that can be added through mods. Only human characters are supported right now. The hope is in the future to add different races but that will be a ways off.
Male and Female supported. Not many variations yet but I can add more later.
Showing the background tab. Here you can select the class and subclass. Each subclass has its own starting stats and set of skills that the character starts with. The plan is you get a stat point to use and you can learn a new skill every level. Stats determine what skills you can learn.
I have the inventory system working. You can equip/unequip weapons and armor.
You can filter the inventory based on item type
Containers are working. You can take and place items.
Doors are working. You can open and close doors. Still need to implement picking locks and using keys
You can harvest materials to use for crafting. Some materials will require a certain tool and/or a certain skill to be harvested.
You can find crafting stations that will allow you to craft different types of items.
If you have the skill to craft a recipe and the recipe is of a type that matches the crafting station then they will appear in the list. You can craft items if you have the required materials.
I have only the first person view working right now but Unreal has a full featured 3rd person controller (as well as first person) that I can use. Still a lot of animations to hook up.
Monsters need a lot of work but Unreal has a very nice AI system that I can use, instead of having to write one from scratch, again....
This shows the JSON file for configuring and adding recipes. The crafting station reads this JSON file to determine what you can craft. You will be able to add additional JSON data in mods to add your own recipes, items, etc.
This shows the JSON that sets up the conversation.
This shows the LUA code that can be called. Still a lot to do but LUA code will be used for conversations (determining what options and nodes can be seen, actions that occur), and quests. Also interactable objects and triggers.
This shows the JSON file that determines what is in a chest. Right now you can specify specific items but in the future you will be able to randomly spawn items to be in a container.
The way JSON information is associated with objects in a level are through Unreal's tag system. For this NPC it has a tag for the type of Object it is (in this case it support conversations) and the ID of the object. You start the with ID_ (to avoid conflicts with other tags you might use) but the game strips off the ID_ to match with the object in the JSON files.
The idea of this system is that if you want to make a new island you can use Unreal's free and extremely powerful editor (5.3). Then you add your JSON and LUA code and link it through tags that you place on objects in your scene. This is the way I am doing it so users can do the same thing.
I worked a lot on the editor for Isles of Adalar but it was too much, to make an in-game editor and work on the game so now I am offloading that work onto Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine has a new Procedurally Generated Content (PCG) system which is a better version of the procedural content generation I created in Isles of Adalar, so that takes away the biggest reason I needed an in-game editor. You could not easily generate an island (at least without buying some assets from the unity asset store). PCG is included for free in the Unreal engine. Also I can standardize on the much better looking metahuman models so that it is easy for modders to add their own. The Unity version of Isles of Adalar is based on a custom rig. You cannot map animations to that rig through mecanim but it is pretty easy to map almost any animation to the metahuman rig.
I have to have a full-time job to pay the bills so I will be working on this in my free time so progress will be slower than I would like, but my plan is try to finish the game that you paid for and deserve.
Kevin
Peakway Software Update
Dear Isles of Adalar Community,
I would like to take a moment to express my appreciation for your support and to provide an update on the status of the game.
I regret to inform you that I have not been able to post updates over the past year. In April 2021, my partner stepped away from the project and I took on additional work to make ends meet. As a result, progress on the game was slow and I was unable to work on it full-time.
However, I am excited to announce that I am now working on a new, smaller game. This game is a single player, turn-based, rogue-like dungeon crawler that I hope to have completed by 2024. I am using this opportunity to apply what I have learned and develop a plan for addressing some of the challenges in Isles of Adalar.
My goal is to generate enough revenue from this new project to hopefully return to Isles of Adalar. I am currently not seeking funding or volunteers, as I simply need time to work on the game.
I understand that this may be disappointing news for some of you, but I want to assure you that I am still committed to bringing you the best possible gaming experience in my current venture. I appreciate your continued support and understanding as I work towards this goal. Special shout out to @Fall Damage for the recent review. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXda_4h9cQ8
Please note that I am working alone and only part-time on the game, so I may not be able to provide regular updates or respond to all questions at this time. I will keep you informed as I get closer to releasing the new game.
Thank you again for your support and I hope to have some exciting updates for you in the near future.
Kevin Nelson Peakway Software
Critical bug fix
Fix issue where going into a dungeon would crash the game.
island creation changes
Fixes
- fix crash when creating an island
Changes
- tweak the traditional climate preset and biomes to have more variation.
March 2022 update
Changes - show any perks required to use an item in the inventory UI - add option to always show health and stamina bars
Bug Fixes - fixed bug where picking some class templates in character creation would break the game. - fixed bug where some class templates were shown when they were not supposed to be shown. - fixed bug where sometimes switching tabs in character creation would break the game. - fixed a bug that sometimes occurs when trying to save a game. - fixed bug where staffs were floating instead of being in the character's hand
New update with graphics and performance upgrades
This update has major changes that upgrade graphical fidelity and performance.
Loading
A level is no longer loaded for the main menu or for character creation (black background instead). This improves load times.
New terrain shader
Support for up to 16 terrain textures (previously maximum of 7 textures)
Much better performance
Better visual quality
Can eventually support snow and rain.
Dynamic occlusion
Integrated a GPU dynamic occlusion system.
Much better performance especially with dense scenes
Point light shadows are much less expensive so they are now all enabled instead of most turned off
Less visible popping between LOD levels
Lower memory and CPU usage
New ocean shader
Much better performance
Better visuals
No more visual artifacts when sun reflects off of the water
Much better underwater rendering visual quality
New biomes
Load A_Start_Island2.lvl to see the new biomes and the start of a new island
More traditional looking
Much better performance
Much higher quality wind effects
The meadow, mountain, and beech forest folders under nature in environmental objects have the new assets
New biomes in the biome database under the mountain and meadow folders
In progress
New character creation
New character system using UMA
New animations using Mecanim
Expanding the Perk system
New campaign with new starting island
Game Update
Sorry that the game updates have slowed down. I am doing contracting work to pay the bills so I don't get to work on the game full-time. I am continuing to work on the game however. Updates will probably be 3 months apart now but there will be more frequent updates for the test build. Instructions to use the test build can be found on the PeakwaySoftware discord server.
Should you buy the game right now? Unless you are interested in playing with the editor I would wait for awhile. Once I redo the start of the campaign would probably be a good time. This is a long-term project that will take awhile to get to a beta early access level. Please check in every once in awhile to see how it is progressing.
Changes
Upgraded from using Unity 2017.4 to Unity 2020.3 This improved load times but caused a lot of bugs that had to be fixed.
There is no longer a resolution dialog when starting the game. You can now set the resolution from the settings inside the game.
You can now select the window mode in settings. You can choose FullScreenWindow, ExclusiveFullScreen, MaximizedWindow, and Windowed.
There are new options for anti-aliasing. They are None, Fast, Subpixel, and Temporal. Temporal can sometimes cause weird blurring in the distance.
When an exception occurs a window will pop-up showing the call-stack for the exception. Instructions on how to report the bug appear on this dialog. Previously on an exception the game would just become unresponsive.
Fast travel changes
I have a made a lot of changes to fast travel and the map to make the game less of a walking simulator and more like other open world games.
You can now fast travel from any place on the map to any location that you have already discovered by opening the map.
When you are near a location that you have discovered a symbol will appear on the compass to help you find the location instead of having to keep opening the map.
Only fast travel locations and portals require all players in co-op to be nearby before traveling, other locations can be traveled too independently of other players.
Gameplay improvements
Now shows a message about carrying too much when you are over your carrying capacity. Used to you would just go slower until you stopped without knowing why.
When extremely overburdened you move very slowly instead of coming to a complete stop.
Added new inventory filter category and item type for crafting ingredients. Previously they were considered food for filtering purposes.
Added pickax item. This is required to be in your inventory in order to mine ore.
Editor changes
Added spawn area regions to location points of interest so that they can be used for fast travel.
Added ability to change attributes through the ChangeStat action.
Added quest taker and quest receiver to quest status
Quest taker and Quest receiver are now targets for many requirements and actions that have a target property.
Add support for speedtrees. Added two environmental object properties to support speedtree. Has billboard which allows the use of speedtree billboards and LOD 0 dynamic which supports making LOD 0 dynamic instead of instanced so that speedtree wind works correctly.
Added picking requirement to and picking not allowed message properties to environmental objects. This is used to make it so you can only harvest coal and ore if you have a pickax.
Added Owner property to crafting stations. If a crafting station has an owner the player cannot use the crafting station unless the owner has shared ownership with the player.
Portals no longer have icons that represent them on the map. Now points of interests should be placed near portals to see and travel to their locations on the map.]
Added RandomNumber action and CheckRandomValue requirement to be able to add randomness to brains.
Gameplay bug fixes
Fixed issue where sometimes traveling between dungeons and islands would freeze the game.
Fixed issue where sometime the AI would get stuck trying to close distance with the player.
Fixed issue where iron armor was much heavier than other armors.
Fixed issue where non-speedtree tree billboards would be at the wrong scale causing some objects to change size when switching LODs.
Fixed issue where colliders for dead spawned enemies would be active after loading from a save game.
Fixed issue where trading with an NPC would make the game become unresponsive if they had an invalid item in their inventory.
Editor fixes
Fixed issue where saving databases when one of the folders does not exist causes the application to stop responding.
Fixed issue where grass was not being generated for islands when generating biomes for a level if one or more of the biomes had a a clear grass operation.
Fixed issue where looking at a harvestable object in the environmental object editor causes going into player mode to make the editor unresponsive.
Fixed an issue where generating and island would sometimes make the editor unresponsive.
Fixed an issue where selecting an object would sometimes make the editor unresponsive.
Fixed issue where not finding a module directory when saving cause cause the editor to become unresponsive.
Coming next
The next update will probably be within 3 months of this update. This will be a big content update.
Researching Dynamic occlusion culling. Hopefully this will greatly increase performance especially with more complicated islands and dungeons.
New campaign start at the center of a new and a slightly bigger starting island that is more open for exploration.
Will start in a fort overlooking a village.
Several quests to teach you the mechanics of the game including how combat works.
Several optional side quests.
More open and less linear quest line.
Wider variety of foliage and biomes.
Adding new and more traditional monsters.
New dungeons.
More story.
Several merchants and trainers near the beginning of the game in the village.
Adding more perks and spells.
Start working on switching to UMA and mecanim for characters and animation. This is a long term project.
Here is a test of the new island. Still a lot of tweaking of the biomes to do.
Kevin
Gameplay update
This update expands and changes some of the gameplay systems. Make sure to start a new game to see all the changes.
Attributes
Some attributes have been renamed, some have been removed and some new ones have been added. Here is the current list of attributes.
Strength : effects amount of health and health regeneration
Endurance : effects amount of stamina and stamina regeneration
Athletics : effects speed of player
Melee weapons : effects amount of damage that a player does with melee weapons
Ranged weapons : effects amount of damage that a player does with bows
General magic : effects amount of mana and mana regeneration
Dark magic : effects power of dark magic spells
Light magic : effects power of light magic spells
Elemental magic : effects power of elemental magic spells
Natural magic : effects power of natural magic spells
Smithing : allows creation and upgrading of weapons and armor
Enchanting : allows the enchanting of weapons and armor
Alchemy : allows the creation of potions and food.
Armor : controls effectiveness of armor.
Pick locks : effects ability to pick locks.
Perk system
Perks are abilities that can be selected every other level to enhance or add capabilities to your character. Each perk is associated with an attribute. In order to select a perk on leveling up the character's attribute associated with the perk must be at a certain minimum level. Some examples of perks are:
1st level light magic spells : Allows the character to learn 1st level light magic spells
Swordsman : Increases the damage of any weapons that are swords
Faster arrows : arrows shot by bow travel faster and farther
Strong back : increases carry capacity
New classes
Cleric : starts with a book of self healing and a perk that allows the learning of 1st level light magic spells
Necromancer : starts with a book of summon skeleton and a perk that allows the learning of 1st level dark magic spells
Elementalist : starts with a book of lesser fire bolt and a perk that allows the learning of 1st level elemental magic spells
Druid: starts with a book of summon wolf and a perk that allows the learning of 1st level nature magic spells
Control changes
Default input bindings have changed. If you have played the game before this release press the reset button in the input bindings dialog to change to the new defaults. These changes are to bring our controls in-line with other open world games so that people are more comfortable and familiar with the default input bindings.
Left Alt is now sprint.
Caps lock is now toggle walking and running.
R is now sheathing/unsheathing weapons.
Stealth is now Left Ctrl.
Bows now work by holding the attack button (Default Left click) to draw the bow back and releasing the attack button to fire the arrow. This makes it more like the way bows work in other games.
Staves are now held in the left hand and have some minor blocking ability. Staves usually enhance mana regeneration and the level of an attribute associated with a school of magic.
Other changes
There is now a dedicated mana stat used for spells
Reduced texture memory usage by quite a bit
Reduced size of some of the trees and mushrooms
Weapon collision is more precise now
Reduced size of foliage so that it is easier to see monsters coming
When you close the levelup dialog it will ask you if you want to apply your levelup before closing the dialog
Added value in edit transform to change the angle of rotation change when pressing R
Added carrying capacity limit. Character over the weight capacity slow down until the weight is 50 over and then they stop moving
No longer showing monster stamina bar for the target status
Now only showing health and stamina numerical values while in inventory
Height that you can fall without damage increased and the amount of damage you take from falling decreased
Made the second tier for all weapons and armor above the starting ones have an enchantment socket. Now displays if the armor or weapon has an enchantment socket in its description
When you close the levelup dialog it will ask you if you want to apply your levelup before closing the dialog
Fixes
Fixed not being able to change anti-aliasing and shadow settings
Fixed not pausing the game in single player when in a conversation
Fixed red lines showing in distance landscape objects
Fixed some spell icons not showing correctly
Fixed number of party members not decreasing correctly after loading from a save game.
Major gameplay update
Combat changes
Make sure to start a new game to see all these changes.
Game now pauses in single player when the game menu is shown, when in inventory, in the map, and picking locks.
Monster movement is slowed down. Monsters move around less in combat in general.
Monsters no longer push the player around when they are attacking.
Monsters, items, spells, and stats have been re-balanced for easier and more intuitive combat.
Monsters and players no longer move during normal attacks making combat easier to follow.
Encounters now scale according to how many companions the player has. This allows solo play to be viable.
Added sounds for when entities get hit and when they die. Also changed the weapon swing sounds.
Fixed issue where the player could easily hop over monsters by running into them. Replaced capsule colliders with box colliders which seems to have helped a lot.
Fixed some monsters with 4 legs which were not orienting with the ground on slopes.
Fixed some monster path finding issues.
Fixed issue with some monsters still having colliders turned on after dying.
Fixed footsteps sound that keeps playing while the monster is dying.
Fixed resistance to damage bug.
Fixed bug where AI would not go through open doors.
UI changes
Monster health bars appear at top of screen again instead of over the monster's head. When they were over the monster's head they were hard to see when you got close.
Character creation now shows descriptions about attributes and other settings.
Crafting stations now show the name of the type of crafting station.
When there are more conversation options then fit on the screen the mouse scroll wheel can be used to navigate the options. Icons to show there are more options are now bigger.
Fixed level up not updating the current stats correctly while in the inventory. Also made it so health and stamina are set to max after leveling up.
Allow binding of scroll wheel positive and scroll wheel negative movements.
Gameplay changes
Item stats are simplified making them more intuitive and understandable.
There are now tiers of weapons and armor. There is also light armor and heavy armor. Heavy armor offers more protection but slows you down a bit. Light armor offers less protection but does not slow you down.
Health and Stamina potions now immediately raise stats instead of over time.
Slowed down NPC and player walk speed but increased default run speed.
Added more fast travel points.
Reduced the number of recipes at crafting stations.
Item placement is more geared toward controlled progression.
Attributes now start at a default value of 20 instead of 50. Each level you can allocate 5 points instead of 10.
Re-balanced encounters on the island and the dungeons to make them less punishing and less frustrating.
Made map location circles for quest objectives smaller.
Environment
Removed graphical effect that made things look washed out. Much more vibrant colors now.
Fixed a lot of colliders so they match the graphical version of the object.
Replaced some grasses that were very dark.
Reduced the size of a lot of the grass so monsters are easier to see.
Replaced some of the big grass with trees.
Turned down sound volume for some torches, chandeliers and bonfires and removed the sound for other light objects like candles.
Reduced the volume of some footstep sounds.
Fixed wrong sounds playing when opening and closing containers.
Editor
Added load level button in editor so you don't have to go back to the main menu level to load a different level or dungeon.
Added entity spawner system. Can be used to spawn monsters based on number of player + companions and the level of the player.
Added editor button to toggle on and off snap to ground when selecting and object. (defaults to m)
Changed floor setting to be a float so fractional floors can be typed in.
Added editor item spreadsheet view where you can look at the stats for item types in a list. Allows easy comparison of items for balancing.
Added search to edit conversations and edit brains so you can find things in big brains/conversations.
Added keybindings for increasing and decreasing camera speed.
Added pre-alpha version of dungeon generation system. Takes builder prefab parts and randomly assembles a dungeon for a fast starting point. Still needs a lot of work.
Added several new debug modes including being able to move the camera to a specific container or item.
Fixed changing object exterior hint in a builder on and island messing up the object placement.
Fixed issue where you could not select certain objects when selecting objects to place in a biome.
Fixed issue when creating a folder in a database the wrong item or folder is selected to rename.
Fixed placing a builder prefab with a door causing coming out of play mode to fail and making the UI unresponsive in the editor.
Fixed user created terrain textures not being set correctly for the far and reflection LODs.
Fixed issues where editing a level and then going through a portal to a dungeon and then editing the dungeon and saving will overwrite the level with the dungeon data causing the level to no longer load.
Fixed editor camera speed changing while scrolling in UI.
Steam workshop support
The steam workshop is live. You can upload modules from the game to share with other people. See the guides for documentation on the process.
What's next?
For the next few months these are the types of things we will be working on. As always these may be subject to change.
Improve the game play experience in general. Work on the getting the game play loop going.
Revamp of attributes. Making them more like skills. Start work on a perk system.
Add weight limit system.
Add a mana stat separate from stamina. Improve the magic system in general. Add more spells.
Add leveled loot spawning system for containers and monster inventories.
Add arrows (instead of quivers with infinite arrows).
Revamp how staffs work.
Add more content to the level including side quests, NPCs, and small dungeons.
