Well, my friends, we finally did it. I've just hit the big green button and 1.0.26.0 should be live on all platforms.
I started making this little game at the beginning of 2017. I didn't know what I was getting into at the time, but I knew I wanted to make a colony sim set in a strange, little fantasy world. It has been a monumental challenge, and it's because of your constant patience and encouragement that I was able to get to 1.0. Especially over the last several months where players have helped me find bugs in the beta or simply kept me company. So, for that, truly, a genuine thank you to all of you.
And if you are a new player, thank you for playing my game. It means a great deal to me.
Now, this isn't the end. We are just getting cooking! If you've read my previous posts, you know that there's a lot planned for upcoming versions of the game.
Next Steps
A Fifth Playable Race - The Tomek
A subterranean people that dwell underground, living off crystals they grow in torchlit gardens.
Overworld Conquest
Expand your kingdom, trade with allies, send out armies.
Deeper History And Events
More fleshed out backstories for entities in the world, along with enriched events that take place.
More Content
I'm going to continue adding things for players to find, build, and explore! Especially mechanisms for players to alter their settlement.
Mod Support
This will be a big one to focus on immediately. I really want to get modders up and running as soon as I can.
Localization
Going to do my best to get the game updated so it can support other languages. This will likely be a big task! So, here's hoping it can be done sooner rather than later.
Concluding Thoughts
I'm sure the next week will be busy fixing issues players come across, but I hope to get trucking on these new things very soon. :)
Thanks again to all of the players that have been a part of this journey or are now discovering the game for the first time. I really appreciate you all!
Waylon
Odd Realm 1.0 - Coming August 16th, 2024!
That's right friends, 1.0 is coming out Friday, August 16th! Less than two weeks away.
As well, version 1.0.21.0 is now the official stable build for the early access which you can play now. All players should be on this version if you already own the game.
Let's take a look at what is in store for 1.0.
New and Improved UI
Tons of work has been put into UI to add functionality, improve performance, and unify the overall look and design.
Tooltips
I've gone through and added as much important information to tooltips as I can while trying to avoid making them too overwhelming. I'm especially happy with the location tooltip which now shows a detailed graphic of what is in a block, as well as what's below.
Entity tooltips also have a ton of added functionality and information.
Bigger Icons
I've gone through the icons and updated them with larger icons to help with their legibility. This is so they are easier to see in menus, but also when layered in the location tooltip.
New Research Tree and Progression
In the days of old, one would unlock each research node in the research tree with a special tome. Now, players select a node for their settlers to research which unlocks after a time. Tomes do still come into play, but are used to reduce the total time it takes to research something instead of outright unlocking it.
Gwdir
In addition to the Ancients, Ardyn, and Human playable races, you can now play as the Gwdir. The Gwdir are similar to Humans in that they also need to drink water and eat food. However, they differ in how they reproduce and build their structures. The Gwdir have a symbiotic relationship with the T'Thdir tree. This tree grows exceptionally fast and lets the Gwdir build on a grass, Nelescuro, which spreads out from the tree's base.
The Gwdir are led by a single female queen called the Gwnvayth. She is responsible for planting and growing male Gwdir to increase the population. Only one female Gwdir can exist in the settlement at one time. If she dies, she drops her crown (the Rose Crown) which can be planted by male Gwdir to grow a new queen.
Improved Custom Loadouts
You can now access all items and entities in the game to make your own starting loadout.
Increased World Depth, Improved Terrain Gen, and New Tile Transitions
The new world depth max is now 256 from 128. I wanted players to explore and be able to dig deeper if they wished. Or, if they want huge towers, they can build much higher into the sky. But, be aware, there are more challenges going in each direction.
I've put a lot of work into making terrain generate super fast. And, the tiles now have seamless transitions between one another. This means, you can have combinations of biomes appearing. Take for example, above, Taiga and Voidlands.
Lastly, the terrain will now generate bigger cave systems with easily added themes.
New Simulation System
My goal with Odd Realm is to have a world that continues to change as you play. To this end, I've added in a simulation system to affect the world over the passing of the years. For example, when you load up a tile you've never been to before, the game simulates 500 years of plant growth and water flow.
This is most obvious with the tree growth which is also new functionality. Trees are no longer simple prefabs I randomly spawn around the map. They start off as a sapling, and I have them simulate their growth over hundreds of years, their leaves, branches, and roots growing outward over time.
The eventual goal with simulations is to see how time affects settlements you've left behind, or that you come across while exploring the overworld map. I want them to appear to have grown due to entities building there, or decay from a lack of upkeep.
Overworld Kingdoms
This feature is just in its infancy. There's a loooot of potential here that I want to explore. The eventual goal is to allow players to interact much more with the kingdoms around them. Right now, the other kingdoms will send you merchants, but I still need to make it so you can dispatch scouts, merchants, and envoys of your own. You can send migrants to claim more territory, but I also want to improve upon this more in the future. Lots more to come with this!
Other Window Updates
Every single piece of UI has been updated for 1.0. One that has seen a lot of work is the production window. I've organized rooms into collapsible lists, and added lots of options (especially for auto-job conditions) to this UI. Plus, the requirements should be much clearer and editable (selecting specific items or workstations to use).
The entity lists have seen a great deal of polish. For example, settler lists now fit on screen (width-wise) requiring no horizontal scrolling. And its much easier to tune skills, professions, diets, and default starting values.
Going Forward
There's so much more in this update that I haven't mentioned, but I'll let you discover these on your own. The 1.0 isn't the end of development. There's still a mountain of work to do. Namely, expanding upon kingdoms, and adding the Tomek playable race will be my main focus. Additionally, I want to work on localization and modding tools. Big tasks! But the 1.0 is a great starting point for the game in terms of foundation. I've put so much work into making the game extendable. Every single element of the game is derived from easily edited data objects. Most of my efforts for 1.0 have been getting all the systems up and running. I want to put more focus into content and player story progression. I'm really excited for what's next!
That's all for now, but I do want to take a moment to give a heartfelt thanks to everyone that has supported the game over the years. The Odd Realm community is amazing, and I wouldn't have reached 1.0 without their help. A special shoutout to all the beta testers that spent an insane amount of energy providing bug reports and feedback. Thank you so, so much!
You can look forward to more news and updates as we lead up to August 16th. And, as always, please feel free to join our discord or chat with me in the forums. :)
Waylon
1.0 Beta is LIVE!
I know I said I'd have this ready and out in May, but I ran into a ton of issues. So, I'm sorry for the delay. Thank you all for waiting!
I'm still making the Linux and Mac builds, and I'm going to have them out on Monday.
Beta Caveats & Read Me
Please, please do not play the beta if you don't want to encounter any issues. It has been more than a year since I've had any eyes but mine on the game, so be prepared for the beta to be unstable for the next few weeks.
Also, if you notice any missing UI elements from the old version, don't fret, they aren't cut or anything. Because the 1.0 version has a completely new UI system (for performance and feature reasons) I am in the process of porting screens and various UI elements to this new system. For example, the list of settlers has yet to be re-added. I'll be adding in any missing elements as soon as I can.
I'm in the process of tuning, polishing, and adding the remaining content for the official 1.0 release. So, some things are very much in flux. I am doing a whole pass on events, and I have them temporarily disabled while they are being tuned. I also have a bunch of functionality to add to the overworld map interactions with kingdoms. For example, sending out your merchants and raiding parties.
All-in-all, there is still a ton of work to be done to have the beta come out to the main line.
There is a lot that has changed from the last version of the game, and I'm going to make a huge write up detailing everything for when 1.0 comes out of beta in the coming weeks.
For now, if you'd like to help find bugs and provide feedback, I strongly encourage you to join our discord server. I'm on there every day chatting with players and it would be great to hear your thoughts there:
Thanks so much for your patience, support, and interest in the game. It really means a lot to me how many people are excited about the game.
Cheers!
Waylon
April 2024 Dev Diary - Beta Release News
Hi friends!
This will be a short post as I'm mostly just focused on tuning and polish (which doesn't have a lot to show off) but I did want to say that I'm planning on releasing the 1.0 into beta in May. I'm going to need lots of help finding bugs and getting the game ready for the final release. I'm excited for you all to play. :)
That said, here are some of the small things I've been improving over the the last month.
Uniforms
Cleaning up a bunch of different UI windows including the uniforms window. Giving lots more control over uniform permissions and improving the feedback for item stats.
Family Info On Entity Tooltip
I've added a family section to entity tooltips to help communicate the family relationships between entities. As well, this section will tell players if they need a specific room for the entity. For example, Humans need the Home to mate.
Saga
Adding some polish to the saga screen as well as tuning how tomes are earned. I'm going to test out having tomes unlocked at the racial room (each race has their own; Town Hall for Humans) instead of spawning randomly from entities. You'll still be able to find and buy tomes in the world, but this will be the main way to produce them. This will let players unlock tomes and research quicker if they want to spend settlers on writing them instead of working on other things.
Biome Info
Continually adding info to the overworld tile tooltip. Some more info added for the entities found in each tile. Still a bit more info to add to these!
Settlers Window
Many of you will be pleased to know I've made it so skill permissions now fit on one screen. Also added some filter options here.
Concluding Thoughts
I am working on my list of 100 polish and tuning tasks which is slow going, but I should have a better idea of the official beta date at the end of the month. I really haven't had a whole lot of time to fix bugs and optimize things, so a lot depends on doing those before the beta comes out. Will keep you posted!
Thanks for reading and for your interest in the game. I appreciate you all!
March 2024 Dev Diary - Road to 1.0!
Hey gang,
Apologies for the late dev log. I wanted to get a bunch of UI stuff done before writing one, and wasn't able to finish that stuff before the end of Feb. So, here we are! Thanks for the patience.
The final push for 1.0 is going very well and I'm so excited to put the beta build out soon. I'm burning through a lot of UI polish, bug fixing, performance improvements, and content tuning. That said, I don't have a date for the beta build to go live just yet. The UI work is taking me ages because there's a lot of information and features to cover, so I'm not comfortable committing to any specific date at the moment. Again, thank you for waiting.
Now, let's take a look at where we're at.
Finalizing UI
Even though it takes so long to finish this stuff off and get it to a point that feels good, it is going so well. I feel like I've finally gotten to a point where everything makes sense and is not an absolute pain to use.
Entity Tooltips
Entities have a lot of information to show and I'm still adding some things to this UI (relationships and jobs), but it's coming along nicely. I've incorporated the new collapsible list feature into the entity tooltip so you don't need to open the entity window to see things like statuses, buffs, abilities, inventory and more.
Going through each individual element and making sure they have a tooltip is the slowest part of the process, but I'd say I'm 70% of the way there.
Things like item abilities, buffs, and entity statuses now say exactly what they do with a more detailed tooltip. For example, the metabolism status (for those entities that have one) will tell you exactly what it's doing, whereas, before, it would be much more ambiguous. The tooltip text is directly connected to the game data now, so any mods players make will correctly show the various actions for statuses, items, and buffs.
A big thing I'm excited to add is some entity interaction options for players. For example, being able to open up a merchant's trade options when they are in your town. This is to replace the merchant overlay that appears when they arrive. You'll be able to trade with them as long as they are in your settlement.
Location Tooltips
I've already showed off the location tooltips, but there are a couple changes since the last time. Namely, more info about what the location contents drop, their functionality, and--for plants--what seasons they are permitted.
I've also added a visual to indicate what directions an entity can move from the location. This is to help communicate permitted pathing (the red, green, and blue arrows in the bottom left).
Rooms Menu and Edit
This is a big change I'm extremely happy with. This completely replaces the room editing window and makes editing rooms a lot easier because you can look at the room and its settings at the same time. It has really helped me make the connection of what rooms I'm actively editing.
You can still select and designate rooms from the bottom right rooms menu like normal. Now, though, you can see all the rooms and create new ones from this menu too:
If you wish, you can also select rooms just by clicking on them in the world. Makes it super easy to jump around and edit rooms.
I've also added a "Settings" to each designation window (you'll see this in practice a bit later) to help organize menus with a lot of options. i.e., only viewing stockpiles, or only seeing blueprints of a certain resource.
With a room created and selected, an edit window will appear in the bottom left of the screen:
Much like the entity tooltip, this lets you view and edit all things related to the room including: occupants, jobs, and items:
Job Menus
Job menus (such as the build menu seen below) are now organized by job type. i.e., Blocks, furniture, doors, etc.
You can imagine that these lists get quite big when you unlock a lot of blueprints. So, I've also added a handy settings menu (mentioned before) that lets you filter blueprints by things like "resources":
I'm going to add some other options to allow players to view these lists comfortably. For example, being able to toggle the large icons for blueprints. With it disabled, many more entries fit into a list.
And, of course, I'm always working cleaning up tooltips for all these things:
Small Things and Final Thoughts
I'm always trying to polish some of the art in my free time. Did a pass on the trees so their roots look more.. idk.. tree-ish.
I'm slowly getting through all the icons to make their bigger versions. Am about 60% of the way through those!
So, I've still got lots of UI polish to finish as well as a ton of overall tuning. I know I'm way, way behind on my initial estimates for when this would be ready. Sucks being so slow, but I hope these dev logs give you some idea of why I am taking a long time.
As I've said a million times, thanks so much for all the support and good vibes. I would not be this far without it! Thanks for reading and hope you are all well.
Lost Legends Expansion - Jan 2024 Dev Diary
Hello and happy new year!
Today I wanted to show off some terrain stuff which will be in the next update as well as some of the other improvements.
Terrain and Cave Generation
The game's terrain gen has taken up a lot of my focus, and I'm super proud of where it's at. With all the biomes, plants and animals in the game, it's an extremely laborious process to work on improving terrain. And it's a big reason why this update has taken so long. But, it's juuuust about done. Let's dive into some things to look forward to.
First off, caves.
The new generation system has a robust set of tools for generating unique and diverse caves (when I say caves, you can assume I include dungeons as well). This is something I'm working a lot on because I want players to have more things to find while exploring underground. That was a big reason for increasing the depth of the world to 256. Caves will vary depending on two main variables: the biome, and the depth. Caves near the surface will be a bit smaller, and have fewer threats and rewards. As you get closer to bedrock at the bottom of the world, the caves will increase in size and complexity. As well, you'll find more interesting entities and items. Big underground lakes with fish. Web-filled spider dens. Tomek mining away. That sort of thing.
As for the overall terrain generation, I've been tuning it like mad. I want players to experience a unique landscape each time they start a new map. A large amount of effort has been put into each biome's features and shape. Mountainous terrain have towering, snow capped peaks with wide, flat valleys. Islands have sandbars and lagoons and deep ocean trenches. You can choose from the hilly landscape you are used to, or flatter plains to work with more open areas.
This is all combined with the new simulation stuff I've built for plants and animals. So, you'll see huge trees, and expansive vegetation that has grown untouched since the Fracture.
Our Ol' Friend, UI!
Better Notification Previews
You know I'm always trying to improve the game's UI. I've updated the notifications to provide more info for important messages in the game. This is to communicate exactly what you are missing instead of a generic, "Missing item!" notification. For example, when you don't have enough of an item when you are building things, it shows you what blueprint, and what item:
These will appear in the top-left of the screen for various things which, in addition to missing items, include enemies sighted, dying/hungry/thirsty entities, new discoveries (caves, items, tech), and all manner of important info.
Now, I know some people probably don't want to see all these things, so you can also disable them from the notification settings window. From here you can also enable the ones that are disabled by default.
Selected Blueprint Preview
I've also added--not sure why I didn't ages ago--the feature which shows what you are currently going to place as a job.
This is especially handy when you want to rotate things before placing them, or just want to see what they look like without needing to be built.
Tooltips
Always adding more info to the tooltips. I've added a bunch more descriptions and surfaced a ton of item, plant, entity, and block info. Added artwork for each biome, and am just adding the additional info for them now to show things like fauna, nations, and other tile features.
Tuning
I'm testing out having entities live longer. Many have mentioned that they'd like this and I'm going to see how that feels. So, instead of a human living 60-100 game days, they'd live 60-100 game years. Essentially, you'd probably never see your settlers die of old age, unless they were old when they arrived. But, I'm curious how different this will play. As well, the Ardyn would age per day, instead of per minute (how everyone else ages in the old version).
I'm honestly not sure which is best and I might have the option to select either when starting a new game. On one hand, short lifespans means you get to see a settlement progress at a super fast rate, but lose their individual progress quickly. On the other hand, with long lifespans, you get to have settlers keep their levels and skills for long periods but you might never see them get old, and never see their children grow up. It's a tricky little design challenge, and I'd like to put it into the beta to get some feedback on it. Either way, I can easily change between one or the other depending on which is the most fun. :)
Concluding Thoughts
I'm in the middle of about five different big-ish tasks, and 100 small-ish tasks. Some of the big ones being UI screens and game content. I'll be honest, it's tedious stuff. I'm trying to juggle all these things as best I can but it takes a long time to finish out each one. So, thank you for waiting, and providing all your extremely kind and supportive messages. I know it seems like this will never come out, but I swear, I am close. You are all amazing and I appreciate you!
Lost Legends Expansion - Dec 2023 Dev Diary
Hello! Welcome. Come on in. Have a seat!
Hope everyone is doing well. I am making great progress on the game and have been working on finishing up all the UI changes for 1.0. This post won't be extremely long as most of my work the last bit has been focused on polishing up the UI, which isn't terribly exciting stuff. But, nonetheless, I wanted to write something to show off the new UI as I'm very happy with where it's going. It's finally starting to feel polished and not annoying. Yay!
New Font
I've changed the font to a more legible one that isn't bold, blocky letters. This should help distinguish the inline icons and make things easier to read overall. I, personally, love it and it has made a huge difference for me just developing the game, let alone playing. I'm very happy with it. And I have to give credit to Chevy Ray for making it.
UI Improvements and Organization
A lot of the UI elements now have collapsible lists. This is to help organize all the data that can come with a UI panel.
For example, below, the room designation now organizes rooms into categories based on function. As you discover new rooms to designate, they'll be organized under their respective category. As well, I've cleaned up 'active' rooms to appear at the top so you can quickly select and view those.
All the tooltips take advantage of these lists too. As you'll see below, the block tooltip shows all its contents in clean lists. And you can open these up when you select the block (holding TAB).
This is very useful when you need to view and select/deselect entities when a group of them is selected.
All the game screens are being updated with this functionality to clean things up. Here's a look at what the new game screen looks like.
Going Forward
There is so much UI in the game to update, and I'm currently updating the room management, uniforms, diets, and settlers windows. It's a tedious process but I feel like I'm making great progress and I'm getting close to having something ready to play. We're getting there!
Thank you for reading and, as always, for the patience and support which you give the game. Hope you are all well, and have a great new year.
Lost Legends Expansion - Nov 2023 Dev Diary
Hey gang!
Progress on the next update is sprinting ahead. I'm working hard to get it out as soon as I can and I'm pleased with where it's going. I'm starting to approach a point where I feel like the game is getting close to its 1.0 content and feature requirement. I want to talk about that towards the end of this post. First, let's take a look at some of the new additions to the game...
Kingdoms
Players will have the option to start a kingdom when they begin a new game. After selecting a starting loadout for your game, players will need to select a point on the map to spawn their settler caravan. Once spawned, they can move this party around the overworld map. This will use up the party's resources and may encounter events. The party can then settle the tile they occupy, which claims the tile as their kingdom. If another kingdom claims that tile as well, players will need to defeat any hostile entities in it. This effectively declares war on that kingdom. Choose wisely where you claim kingdom territory.
Players can expand their kingdom territory by sending out parties to settle or claim new tiles. As well, players can send out envoys to interact with other kingdoms to establish trade and relationships.
I'm also designing leadership roles so players can choose how their kingdom is run. Each race will have their own types of leadership to choose which provides unique bonuses: Humans - King/Queen Gwdir - Gwnvayth (Matriarch) Tomek - Chief Ancients - Primus Ardyn - Dominus
I'm currently working on a lot of these features, so please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see in the game related to kingdoms!
Labels, Overlays, And Additional UI Options
You'll notice that there is a new additional to the HUD which lets you view lists for things like overlays, labels, selections, and more. This helps clear up the bottom bar from having a million buttons.
Labels
Labels are a new UI feature which detail some of the things in the world, which include: entities, and overworld objects like nations, parties, and tiles. Players can edit each type of label to display specific information. For example, only show the level and profession on an entity label. You can click labels to select the object they represent.
As well, zoom level changes what details are shown so that the maps don't get cluttered with 100 labels.
Overlays
You can also edit what types of overlays are visible. For example, nation borders on the overworld map. Other overlays like jobs, rooms, etc, will be in this list as well.
Selections
Sometimes it's hard to select entities when they are all stacked in a group, so I've added a list that displays entities for your current selections, control groups, roles, and overworld parties.
For those that are not familiar with threads, let me try to explain. In the old version, when an entity wanted to get across the world, it would start a pathfinding process. Depending on the distance to the target, this could be extremely slow. And, the game would have to wait for this to complete. I had some performance helpers which would delay a pathfinding process if it was too slow (to avoid huge lag spikes), but it meant pathfinding could take a really long time to calculate. Now, in the new version, pathfinding uses 'multi-threading'. Think of a thread as a pathfinding job. The game issues pathfinding jobs to each of the CPU's cores to process in the background without blocking the main game 'thread'. So, the more cores your PC has, the more background pathfinding jobs it can do. As a bonus, these processes are incredibly fast. So, not only do the jobs process in the background, they finish at blazing speed.
This should improve a lot of the pathfinding performance and also fix a lot of pathing inaccuracy I had before, due to some hacks I had to keep your machines from melting into slag.
Development Timeline and Plans
OOOOoook. Time for some real talk. I've been incredibly fortunate to work on Odd Realm for SEVEN YEARS. Wow. I didn't really know how to make a full game when I started. I've had to learn a lot about game design, art theory, shaders, and code architecture. It has been the most challenging thing I've undertaken. By far. And that's why it has taken seven years to get this far. You've been incredibly patient and supportive during this whole journey, and I thank you. Seriously, it would not have been possible without this community. Thank you so, so much!
With that said, I'd like to talk about the 1.0 of the game. It is my goal to have 1.0 done early next year (2024). Hopefully January. Now, I'm going to try my best to get all five races into the game for that date. But, and to be absolutely transparent, I might need to release some things like the Tomek after this version. I'm at the point where I need to start delaying certain features for polish and tuning to make a good 1.0 candidate.
So, why the push for coming out of early access and releasing the 1.0? I want to continue working on Odd Realm for years and years. I love working on it. But, my savings can only take me so far. The game needs to release 1.0 to see any kind of revenue which would support its future development. So, ideally, features like Tomek (if they can't make it!) will still come into the game, just in the update immediately after 1.0.
Anyway, these are all big IFs. Who knows what the future holds. I just want to make sure I'm always giving you, the community, full disclosure. Thank you again for supporting the game with your feedback and positive vibes. I'm trucking along happily on things and hope to have a new beta update out soon. Stay tuned! You all rock!
L.L. Expansion - New World Gen, Simulations, and Soundtrack now on steam!
Heeeello!
I know it has taken way too long for me to post an update on the game, and I apologize. I've been working on a large amount of systems all at once, and it's taken a while for me to have all the moving parts working together. Let's dive into that, shall we.
Soundtrack by Matt Creamer
Before I get into things, I just wanted to say that the Odd Realm soundtrack can now be purchased via the steam store page:
The amazing Matt Creamer created it and all the sales go straight to him. So, it would mean a lot if you guys supported his incredible work and went and bought a copy if you can.
World Generation Mega Upgrade
This was the main reason I had to delay the update, and why it has taken me so long to post anything of substance.
To release the 1.0 version of Odd Realm, I knew I'd need to touch up the world generation tech. The version you are playing now is slow, difficult to tune, and outputs terrain that is passable, but not necessarily interesting. As well, the tiles have almost no situational awareness, meaning, they don't transition. I call this, "stitching." This is a huge feature to me because I want players to be able to go to other settlements with their settlers, and for the world to feel connected.
I knew that the longer I held off improving terrain generation, the harder it would be. The main issue with tuning terrain generation while a game is live, is that, as soon as you change these values, saved files are no longer backwards compatible. Loosely, this is all due to world generation being based on a seed number that uses those tuning values to output cool terrain. I won't get into the details, but, at a high level, that's what's happening.
Ok, cool, so what's what?
Well, I went ahead and improved those things. That's what. And--AND--it's all much faster.
Terrain Stitching
Take a look at this little gif above. We can see the Taiga biome blending with both the Ocean and Desert biomes. This is the stitching I mentioned. Tiles now incorporate their surrounding tiles into their own generation. This not only includes blocks, but flaura, fauna, and any exciting prop generation stuff that a biome has.
This gives players soooooo many more interesting options when choosing their settlement locations.
More Biome Variation
A truckload of work has gone into how I generate terrain to avoid simply outputting hills. I've tried to create way more extremes of terrain. Plains are now way flatter, mountains have epic peaks, and oceans have deep trenches. This combined with stitching, produces tons of surprising results.
A tile that's on the edge of mountain range (like the above gif) will start to rise sharply up to meet that neighboring altitude.
Likewise, plains might sharply drop to meet the depths of the ocean.
Caves!
I revamped the cave gen stuff too. Before I was generating caves by hand and, well, it was painful. You'll notice caves have more unique layouts, and are more common. They also vary as you go deeper into the earth.
Layers! 256 Layers!
Worlds are now 256 levels instead of 128. This means way more underground stuff to find, and also more vertical space to build in, and have huge mountains in. Also, I'm sure you've noticed in these gifs that the minimap now shows you a cutout of the layer you're on. This applies to both the overworld map...
...and to the settlement map...
The two maps do vary, though. The overworld map preview shows you some subterranean hints to a certain depth. While the loaded settlement preview shows you exactly what you've discovered.
The new layer cutout is extremely helpful when navigating underground. Wish I had added this years ago.
General Improvements
I've added a lot of functionality to the controls for navigating a map. You can now hold Q/E to move layers. You can also use the arrow keys to navigate between tiles. No more needing to click the tile on the overworld map. You can even use these arrow keys to load neighboring tiles from the settlement view.
Speed. The terrain gen is fast, so loading maps is very quick. This makes navigating around to neighboring tiles really easy and not a pain for players to wait on.
Simulation
A big feature that I have wanted in the game is proper simulation. I want players to enter a tile and for time to have passed based on when they were there last. Did they leave their settlement for a year and come back? What happened?
This is almost as big of a change as the terrain gen stuff. The problem I had with Odd Realm's live version is that nothing is really simulated. A lot of it is just entities updating per frame, no concept of a timeline. I offload them once you leave the tile, and that's it.
Now, everything that can simulate will. And they'll do it based on elapsed time. What do I mean by this. Well, let's take a tree sapling as an example. When you load a new tile, the game looks at the terrain that's generated and collects all the simulated objects. It then looks at how much time has passed since you were last there. If you've never been to a tile, it will spit out a number of years to run the simulation. So far, I'm just using a year's worth of time for these new tiles (it's actually a range of time that varies for each object. Say, 0-1 year). I think I'll let players edit this. If you left a tile for a day and came back, it would simulate a day. We take that elapsed time, and then process our simulated tree sapling through it.
Here's a gif of me spawning an oak tree sapling and simulating it over a year's worth of time:
Wow, wow, wow. What's even happening here. Well, I've set up every object in the game to follow some rules. These are, "simulations rules." Trees, for example, follow a set of sim rules that say things like, "Spawn a tree branch if x, y, and z conditions are met." Then, the branch has its own rules that dictate, "Spawn some leaves if a, b, and c conditions are met." And, so on.
These simulation rules can be shared by any world object. Heck, water blocks could follow these same rules and produce a little water tree. Now, they have their own "liquid" simulation rules, but one can dream. You can start to see the possibility space for this sort of system.
Modding
I've developed a bunch of tools for modders to create simulation rules. I needed these tools for myself to understand the systems, so it's a nice bonus that modders can use them too.
Above, you can see what the editor looks like. It's complicated to look at and I'll need to create a tutorial for all this, but it's extremely robust. You can edit the conditions, actions, and locations for a simulation, and each has a multitude of options, and I'm still adding more.
Notes About Performance and Simulation Accuracy
Warning: this probably won't make sense and is mostly technical mumbo jumbo, but some of you might like these details. Idk.
The real problem with simulations is that they are costly over long periods of time. The way that I get around this is to sacrifice some accuracy to make sure the simulation doesn't take ages. Simulations use minutes (game minutes) to iterate through simulation rules. Imagine iterating through a year's worth of in-game minutes. That's 86400 minutes (in Odd Realm years lol) for just one simulated object. Multiply that by all the other objects we want to simulate. My computer would be a melted heap of slag by the end.
Ok, so, instead of iterating every minute, I iterate steps. And, this is something players will be able to tune if they want. Faster, less accurate simulations? Fewer steps! Slower, more accurate sims? More steps!
What's a step? Essentially, how many times I want to check our rules for an object each time we run a simulation. Keep in mind, a "simulation" is just processing an object's rules over x minutes. 5 steps per simulation? I'll check our rules 5 times. So, if 100 minutes have passed, each step will be 20 minutes of elapsed time to check rules against. We then use the amount of passed time (20 mins) to factor into the successful pass of certain conditions. For example, if you have a random chance to spawn something once every 100 minutes, well, we can reduce 100 by 20 to improve how likely it is to spawn. Or, if you want to simulate a condition in a specific age range, I'll check if that condition requirement is between the simulation step start and end times.
I could go on for ages about this new sim stuff, but that sounds absolutely dreadful to read. But, hopefully, that kind of makes sense. Not really important if it doesn't. That knowledge won't be required to play the game.
Final Thoughts
When is the update coming out? It's not soon. All this stuff is still a big work in progress. I would say the most difficult stuff has passed, but now I'm working on the million smaller details for things. The good news is, this update is going to kick some serious ass. You just have to wait a bit longer for things to be completed. I've learned my lesson and am not going to say any timeframes here. All I can say is that I reaaaaaaally appreciate you all and your immense amount of patience with me. And, don't worry, it's not years out. I want all this stuff done too. I'm working like mad.
Thanks so much for reading this far, and for supporting the game. I'll definitely try to put out another post much sooner next time. Cheers!
Lost Legends Expansion - Update Release Delayed
Hey everyone,
I'm sorry for this, but I have to delay the release of the update. I said it would be ready for today, and it's not. I was way too overconfident with how fast I could finish things for this release date. I absolutely hate promising something I can't deliver on and I apologize. I am working super hard to finish. The good news is, it's taking a long time because it's almost a whole new game. It's a huge combination of content, QoL/UI, and performance improvements. I'm currently working on the remaining UI and art tasks (which is taking me a long time), but I'll post another update once I've got a better idea where I stand with the release schedule.
Thanks so much for your patience and, again, I'm sorry to delay on this one.
