You responded last week to what you wanted to see and I come with pictures this week!
So first off, here is one of my favorite new houses. It's called Crafter's Lodge and features a fenced in area. Here's some different shots around and inside the house:
Next, I wanted to share just a few of the plushes I made. I have more than this and more in mind to make, but we'll see how many I end up with!
Moving on to furniture, Michael is still making a lot of it, but here's some furniture from The Eyre:
And Soupy is working on different pottery decor (I may steal some for furniture!):
If you've missed the Behind the Curtain streams on Discord, here's just one of the things that was worked on today:
Around this area will be these guys:
but I wonder what other creatures lurk around here? There was a sneak peek on Discord today, but other than that you'll have to wait to see!
Alright onto the more technical aspects. Here's a snippet from Michael:
Last week I began work on a blueprint we're calling the "Corruption Event Manager" which handles loading and unloading levels for a new system in Windless Woods.
Windless Woods introduces a mysterious plague that is spreading throughout the zone and if left unchecked, the world. Around the zone there are several spots that have a chance to spawn large corrupted thorns as well as evil Shade creatures who seem to draw power from the corruption.
The corruption manager keeps track of all of the Shade spawners it creates and whenever one is cleared, it triggers an effect to sink the thorns back into the ground and unload the level, adding it back into the shuffled queue to spawn again after some time.
The system is a pretty fun new addition to the game and gives the Windless Woods a totally new feel and even a sense of danger, considering these enemies are the most challenging in the game so far. We can't wait to see if you can clear all the corruption from the woods.
And a snippet from Louis:
Hello! Louis here, to check in with some updates from the programming side of things. A big focus this week has been an overhaul to our damage calculation and how it's handled in multiplayer. I've put together a "payload" system, which packages all the relevant damage data into a neat parcel before sending it across the network. This ought to fix some of the lesser-known (but still annoying) bugs once we get it patched into our existing weapon types, but most importantly it's an integral part of the new magic system we're building. This week has also been the first time our three-hit combo system has been hooked up - it still needs some tweaks to damage and timing, but it's feeling great so far.
And there we have it! A little bit of everything. There's still more enemies I haven't shared and furniture being made. This update is huge, to say the least.
See you all next week!
-Janna
(P.S. Here's a little blooper while the wasps were getting their AI working)
Development Digest June 3rd - 10th
Happy Friday Friends!
I just need you to know that I just realized something amazing. Like less than a minute ago. I was adding the Shrubrian furniture to be items you can place in your house. Well Shrubrians are small. So I wanted to see how tiny the furniture was because I liked it small. They are the perfect size for the plushes! AHHHHHH! (I also made a ton of new plushes)
How stinkin' cute, right? Kindred made me all of the base races for plushies and I've been making different professions for them. Above you see a treasure hunter and a detective. I think making the plushes is one of my favorite things to do.
In other, not as adorable, news, Kindred has gotten a new mechanic working that is a part of the main storyline in Windless Woods. There will be these, let's call them "places", that will have unique things happen that are randomly spawned. These places will have a unique resource and have a backstory as to what they are and why they are there.
Wendy has been setting all the traps for you. You'll have to find your way through a tomb and make it past all the secrets and traps before getting to the treasure.
We've got a lot of new models going into the game and one is more structures for The Eyre.
Honestly, we have so much going on right now. New furniture, new quests, main questline, new enemies, new attacks, combat, map overhaul (plus reviewing each quest in game for map markers), items, mounts, outfits, shops, npcs, traps, puzzles, magic system, dedicated servers, job boards, weapons, and any bugs for all of those. It's a busy time! I've probably missed like 10 things for that list.
I want to know what you want to see next week. More furniture? New enemies? More overview shots? Some traps? Do you want to read all the technical details of the programming going on? Let me know so I can tailor our weekly chat more to you!
See you next week! - Janna
Development Digest May 27th - June 3rd
I need a catchy Friday catch phrase here.
*Insert phrase*
After our non-clothed NPC fiasco last week, I'm happy to say they've all found their proper attire again and confirmed by testers to be clothed. Phew.
If you aren't on our Discord, Michael/Kindred does some Behind the Curtain streams where he just shares his screen and works on new items. It's very chill and any "talking" is through text. One of my favorite things he made in the last session was new base races for our plushies!
I'm so excited to add new plushes to the world. They are my favorite furniture item by far.
Something else on our Discord is our ideas channel. We get so many great ideas all of the time and then our long time members let people know that those ideas have already been submitted. Well we wanted an easier way to see all of the ideas and allow for people to upvote. That's where Canny comes in. You can submit ideas, comment on others, and upvote your favorites. It's easier to see what everyone wants to be added. We can then add top items to the roadmap which will make their way into the game. Check it out here!
As the game grows, we've been wanting to do a rebranding of our logo and key art. We're happy to say we've found an amazing artist who has made art for games like Delver and Minecraft! His name is Sam Cube and here's the new logo he made:
We'll be transitioning the art around our Windless Woods summer update.
In other news, Louis has finished up the map overhaul and it's ready to go out to testers this week. It'll get some polish and tweaks with feedback from testers, but it's a much better system. Still more can be added to it, but those are quality of life changes that we'll add over time.
Other than a lot of new models, art, mechanics, quests, bug fixing, and general work, that's the big stuff for this week. I'll leave you with a new picture though and let you guess what it's for!
-Janna
Development Digest May 20th - 27th
Hello Friday!
This week was a lot of clean up. I actually reorganized some outfits and houses and because of how source control works, it ended up breaking for everyone else and we ended up with about 150 unclothed NPC's. It's since been fixed, but it was quite funny.
We've had a ton of testing happen on quests, Lots of tweaks and fixes going in along with new quests. Wendy and Kindred have been working hard on this questline through Windless Woods. With Louis back, he's been switching between getting the map refactored (he's been working on this on his stream) and working on mechanics needed for quests and other various things.
Without an animator on the team, Kindred has converted back to the old days of no animator where he finds an animation he likes, purchases it, then models over the rig. This week he found an amazing animation pack that had basically everything we need for Windless Woods and some creatures for Bone Reach. He's already modeled out a few, but I don't want to spoil them just yet. One is a new mount that the Shrubrians use and the other is the baby fox pet for the Kickstarter backers. What do you think the Shrubrians ride?
Speaking of pets though, I never shared the chicken pet! It's a longer gif, so I can't post it here on Steam, but here's a link https://imgur.com/lMCPxEq to view!
The pets are just a cosmetic item. They have little houses that will go on your plot to interact with to summon your pet. You can pet them and have them follow you. They don't have health so they won't die while you are in combat. It's pretty cute to have a little chicken follow you.
While this week was a lot of content, there aren't many pictures to post. We've got another busy week coming up with hopefully more pictures (maybe I'll spoil the mount then - if you are a Patreon subscriber, I posted the mount as a spoiler)!
See you then.
-Janna
Development Digest May 13th - 20th
Hello Friday!
There's been a lot this week! Even with Louis out on vacation, lots of progress has happened. First and foremost, we've had a successful test on a dedicated server! The server stayed up for a couple of days and most issues our testers found (which have been pretty minor) have been addressed and ready for another test. Super exciting. We'll have more information available with the update.
Kindred has been working on new quests and NPC's. New secrets have gone in, including a new stash mechanic (putting the right item in the stash can trigger something) and new puzzles. He's also been doing some programming for new mechanics needed in Windless Woods like this:
Then, of course, he had to leave something for a placeholder. This one made me laugh:
This past week Wendy has been adding new decorations to Dewdrop Village and fixing bugs from the last test build.
As for me, I added TEN new buildable houses. Here's eight of them:
These houses were built by two of our long term testers. Which house is your favorite?
The other thing that I worked on this week was getting all of the Hero Edition (supporter) DLC and Kickstarter Exclusive DLC items in and ready for testers. The Hero edition will become available for sale soon after the Windless Woods update. I'm also working on gathering all the house and plot sizes and implementing a system to let you know if a house will fit on a plot. Along with this, we now have a way to increase the height of a plot! Not all plots will change their height value, but we'll start having more varied plot sizes.
Last, but not least, the credits are now available in the Grove of Hero's. These can still be adjusted and most likely will be changed throughout development.
I'll see you next week!
-Janna
Development Digest May 6th - 13th
Happy Friday the 13th!
This week was more backend work with a lot more distractions. I've been out most of the week sick (dang kid germs), Louis started his vacation midweek, Kindred has been taking care of me and working as much as he can, and Wendy has been moving right along. So let's get into the specifics!
Louis is continuing work on the map and finishing up some combat overhaul work. He'll be finalizing these once he gets back. Wendy is bouncing around as models and mechanics become available. She has been moving through Bone Reach with more level design and adding finishing touches into different areas in Windless Woods. The quests have new placeholder items in currently, which I'll be replacing soon. Kindred has been fine tuning the Shrubrian village houses and modeling their little furniture and Wendy has already taken the furniture and started decorating!
There was some bug fixing mixed into the week. We updated Sen's quest on Castaway Rock with a new shiny pedestal for the key. We had a report recently that you would open the chest in the secret crab cave and not get the key. We have only had this report once before and couldn't replicate it. After one of our new testers tested it over 40 times it seemed it would fall through the platform between two planks of wood and end up in the bushes below, which you can't see. It was a random chance for this to happen so the key has been taken out of the chest and put on it's own pedestal.
Our other news for this week, which was already released to our Kickstarter backers, is that we don't have the time or resources to support a Mac build at this time. As the game grows, we're constantly trying to understand performance and optimize the game for everyone. Unfortunately, through our testing with Mac builds, only the highest of high end specs are running the game at an acceptable performance. We still plan to add Mac support, but it won't be until the end of Early Access as our best guess right now. We need to focus our efforts on continuing to add content and moving the game forward.
That's it for this week! See you all next week.
-Janna
Development Digest April 29th - May 6th
Hi, hello! Welcome back to our weekly development digest!
One of the most important things that happened this week was that we found a new illustrator! I won't go into all of the details, but once we get something more finalized, I'll be sharing.
We've made some progress on dedicated servers, which are actually helping us pinpoint some performance issues as well. Performance in a game has got to be the hardest thing (in my opinion - I also don't do programming) to pinpoint and figure out the right way to do things. We've changed up so many things that have shown promise, but still they never end up fixing the issue (I'm specifically talking about the missing furniture in buildings after a couple hours of gameplay). It's a rabbit hole of time and energy.
Louis has been hopping around a bit this week. He's been working on finishing up the shop item overhaul. This would make it so that you can purchase a daily limited supply from shops rather than just the one item sitting there.
He has also been working on vanishing NPC's, a long-needed feature. Basically, if an NPC says "I'll see you in the next town" then once you've left the area and returned, you won't see them standing around anymore. It'll fix the weirdness with Sen seemingly teleporting between Azura and Castaway Rock as well as being super useful for things to come!
Lastly, he's been working on the map overhaul! This overhaul will give you the ability to see the world map, zoom into each (available) zone and even place waypoint markers wherever you'd like. You'll also be able to see your quest log while looking at the map and track quests from it. The map will also be receiving a fog of war feature which covers areas you haven't yet explored and tracking your exploration progress using a progress bar off to the side.
Wendy and Kindred are making progress filling out the quest content in Windless Woods and our dedicated testing team will be combing through them with a fine toothed comb very soon to catch all those pesky bugs before the update launches this summer.
Kindred has been working on the Shrubrian village as well and some background programming needed there. I shared some of the models he made last week, but I don't want to spoil the village.
This week wasn't really picture friendly (but we did share a lot of fun gifs between the team in our conversations haha).
I'll see you all next week!
-Janna
Development Digest April 22nd-29th
Welcome to another Development Digest on this lovely Friday afternoon!
This week we were busy! We've got quests going in, NPC's coming to life (showcase next week), and these little guys:
This guy is part of the Shrubrian village. Here's some of the houses you'll find there:
Aren't they so cute? Can't wait to see this village come to life!
I've been working on an alchemy rebalance and adding new ingredients for new and old potions. Speaking of alchemy, here's one of the new NPC's in Windless Woods:
Wonder what they are up to?
Some other things have made their way into the Windless Woods; things I am not happy about.
Luckily, we've made an in-game arachnophobia mode. Right now it's still being tested, but there will be an NPC handing out free, unlimited potions that last one full in-game day everywhere spiders will be. This potion turns all the spiders that spawn after you drink it into cute purple floaty balls.
Last thing for the week, we've finally decided (after much back and forth) the gems and ores going into the Windless Woods! We've probably changed them 100 times at this point so I'm hoping we're sticking to these ones (no spoilers!). The woods were decided before, but I don't believe I shared them with you all. You'll have oak wood, of course, and then the common, unique wood for Windless Woods will be Elderwood. There are some corrupted locations that need looking into, but you can grab some of the Corrupted logs from them and figure out another type of wood. Here's the Corrupted logs:
It's super exciting seeing everything come together. We have plenty of secrets waiting to be found already.
See you all next week!
-Janna
Development Digest April 15th-22nd
Hello everyone!
Janna here. Back and refreshed from a nice vacation. Hope everyone enjoyed Louis's update last Friday. I have a few exciting announcements to share.
First off, here's the updated Roadmap:
Here's the map for easier viewing:
As a reminder, the open areas are (in order of exploration): Castaway Rock, Azura, Farmlands, The Sleeping Glade, and a small portion of Black Rook Vale.
For our big announcement:
Now that we've got the update out, when is Windless Woods coming out? When is the combat update coming out? All good questions. The Windless Woods and combat update will be arriving THIS SUMMER. Along with this update, shortly after it is released, our Hero Edition DLC (a support the devs DLC pack with cosmetic items) will be released.
Now I know what you're thinking. Summer is 3 months. When exactly will it come out? On our side, we have a set date with deadlines leading up to it. We need to leave some wiggle room for testing new systems, new quests, new NPCs, new items, all the fun stuff. While we do testing throughout building all of this, things pop up all of the time. As we get closer and feel more confident in our current deadline, we'll announce the official release date. Until then, we're allowing ourselves that time needed to ensure that everything flows smoothly with the least amount of stress and crunch as we can. You all will get weekly updates showing the progress.
As promised, I wanted to share some of the new crops and meals coming out. Going forward each zone will be getting small amounts of new crops and meals. The Farmlands have by far the most crops, but it's... the farmlands.... So that makes sense.
The spotlight for the first crop in Windless Woods is Garlic! You'll find some of the residents love having fresh garlic on hand.
With the garlic, I've added one of my favorite meals Meat 'n Potatoes! Simply add some meat, potatoes, and garlic and you've got yourself some resilience, vitality, and haste. Delicious.
Here's some new NPC's to find in the Windless Woods:
These are some NPC's exploring ruins. From left to right we have Scarlet, Ross, and Valence. What do you think they are looking for?
The community begged, so a quick 5 minutes later, here's some cat ears that will be in the next update (with some color variations as well):
Other things that were worked on this past week were Bone Reach towns, finishing up the traps and puzzles, more work on the combat overhaul, adding in the new resources for Windless Woods, finishing touches on the admin panel for multiplayer servers, and more work on dedicated servers.
If you aren't in our Discord, tomorrow at 12pm PST I'm hosting a multiplayer world for the community to come in and play together! Everyone is welcome to hop in and out. We'll be in a voice call on Discord just chatting and I'm available to answer any questions as well.
See you all next week!
-Janna
Update 1.4.16
Hey there!
Since we've added a few new features and items, we're going to call this a small update, though the entire purpose was to fix a few more minor bugs.
New:
Blue Hood sold in Sleepy Haven
Ban and Moderator add/remove options for your world
When a player is banned from a game, they get a pop up showing that they were banned
Placeable Forge and Cauldron - auto unlock recipe in respective skills at level 10
Placeable ladder - auto unlock recipe at level 13 carpentry
Improved:
Cobalt chopping axe doesn't show weapon stats, just tool stats
Astral Greatsword and Grimwick's Bane has become bigger to align with the other two handed weapon increases
Quest item conditions - how items are counted towards quests has been corrected to account for dropping, crafting, getting out of chest, etc.
Architecture crafting window now shows Architecture instead of Carpentry
Healing staff now gains far less XP when you heal yourself versus healing others. Heal your friends
Can place structures (wells, sheds, etc.) on top of stone tiles now
Changed named of a job board quest to better reflect what you were asked to get
Removed two testing house plots that aren't supposed to be in. If you bought these 100 gold plots, you can retrieve your items, but can't place anything else there
The Collector quest - new name "The Schematic" and has updated map markers for less confusion
Fixed:
Tools now show proper crit rate
After defeating Harkin, you can now continue on the quest
Small place you could get stuck between a rock and a hard place (another rock... of course)
A flickering issue when trying to rotate building pieces
Tools no longer give XP and cannot unlock skills
Floating goblin leaf in goblin camp
Issue with placing spirit anchor in places you shouldn't be able to
When dying with any menu open, it now forces the menus to close so you can move as a ghost
Various housing plots the weren't flat to place building blocks on
The Big Boom loading issues
Fixed a bug with displaying minimum weapon damage in tool tips
