Update 1.9.2 is Live! Placement Guide and Scared Animals!
This update has several improvements to prepare for the Project: Vantage Village and other nice things!
There is now an option to see a "height grid" overlay when placing items in the world. This will help you place items based on the current terrain surrounding you. It is "on" for crafting items placement like large buildings (hovels, wigwams, etc..) and "off" for small item placement. However you can toggle between "on", "off", and "overlay" modes with the numpad 7 (default key).
Keep in mind, however that the terrain grid does not prevent you from placing/crafting the item in a position aside from the previous limitations. It is only a guide. You can raise/lower the terrain for your structure before or after building it, and see exactly how much extra work you may need to do :)
Animals now correctly run away from large buildings, fires and torches. You should no longer see a bear waiting for you in your hovel :)
Several other small updates to prepare for the next phase of development. I will talk about this soon!
Enjoy!
Project: Vantage Village Begins Soon!
Yep! With the third person camera and item attachments complete, it is time to begin the final polishing sequence for the game! "Project: Vantage Village" is a fancy way of saying that for the next steps, I will begin doing this by of course... building an entire village using every game craft, skill and item exhaustively!
Of course, all other normal development will continue. However, the focus this time is finalizing all game play mechanics and how they all interact with each other.
So, every hovel will be built... every herb grounded up, boiled, and steeped to perfection... every wound and disease acquired… every beautiful flower and weed placed outside my hovel, etc... you get the idea!
I have done a complete game play overhaul already before, and that focused on specifically each profession's crafts and game play mechanics independently (brush working, pottery, leatherworking, trapping, farming etc...) Now it is time to put everything together!
And I want YOU to help! I will be mostly doing this on the main online test server so that other people can come on an help build and test as well! I will change the character's starting location list to include the location of the village.
This process will be a long one of course, as there are currently over 100 crafts, over 450 items, and many skills to test, and those numbers keep growing!
I plan to move forward with starting this sometime next week hopefully. I will of course give more information soon!
Enjoy!
Update 1.9.1 is Live! Player Item Attachments!
You can now see items on you character!
Walk around with your spear or sharpened stone, and show off your new hat!
Again, this was a massive amount of work! But it was worth it! Your character can now have a more unique look!
However, the process to add an item to both the male and female characters takes a bit of time, so for this update there are just a few items that are visible:
- wood spear (hands) - coconut (hands) - thatch and hide hat (head) - sharpened stone (hands)
I will of course be adding many more items as I update the visual objects, and add and test each item as development continues. If I started adding all the other items now, it would take weeks to change models that needed to be changed, and manually test every object, etc... so I will do this slowly over time.
This marks the end of yet another major development milestone as well! I will talk about what the next major development talk will be very soon!
Massive Update 1.9.0 is Live! Third Person Camera!
Since people have been asking for it for a long time. I decided to finally implement it! The game can now be played in third person!!!
That's right! It was a massive amount of work, but it is here! With this update you can see your character walking, running, jumping, crafting, and just having a grand old time!
The game was designed to be a first person game, however, people really wanted this feature, so I tore apart the code and made it happen!
With this being said, please let me know of any issues you may have.
Also, the next update I will be focusing on is adding attachments to the characters.
Really not much more to say, but ENJOY!
Update 1.8.3 is Live! Tech Tree and UI Upgrades!
This update adds a complete Tech Tree! You can now view every skill and craft in the game, and what the requirements are to unlock every one!
The update also adds several graphical upgrades to almost every UI window in the game. Making them easier to see their contents more easily. This will help a lot for people playing the game on larger resolutions (4K screens). You can read the specifics in the patch notes.
Also, I *finally* implemented the more conventional mouse look mechanics. Holding down right click now allows you to mouse look!
Enjoy!
Update 1.8.2 is Live! Diseases and Wounds!
Because who DOESN'T want to die from Dysentery?!?
That's right! You can now contract diseases from drinking impure liquids and eating impure food! Once diseased, you must slowly recover by eating healthy again! Cook your food and water!
Also, animals that attack you can now also now inflict serious wounds! These wounds will disable you until you recover. You can also craft crude splints for you arms and legs to help you recover.
The "buffs and debuffs" system have gotten another large overhaul, and now buffs can have a "potency" value, which multiplies their effects.
This update is also marks the end of yet another major development milestone for me! I will explain what the next phase of development will be soon! But for now, my brain needs a rest!
Update 1.8.0 is Live! Post-Processing Graphics Upgrade, HDR/Bloom Effects!
I have just completed a massive upgrade to the game's engine which allows post processing effects, such as HDR lighting, Bloom/Glow effects etc.... This is a fancy way of saying that many new visual special effects can now be entered into the game. This is was a massive amount of work, but it was worth it!
You can see the difference in the before and after pictures below: Before:
After!
I will of course be optimizing and adding new effects to the game, but for now enjoy the view :)
Please let me know if you experience any issues with the new system as this made massive changes to the graphics rendering pipeline.
Aggressive Bears (with new model) and Wolves!
Watch out! Bears and wolves are now aggressive and can attack you! Also, there is a brand new bear model the replaces my terrible "programmer art" bear!
The old bears will still exist until they are killed, or if you perform a "soft wipe" on your server. (I did not force a "soft wipe" on all player's server for this update, as I did not think there were enough changes to warrant it).
However, the new bears will be spawning and replacing the old bears' spawns.
Wolves are now bigger, faster and more dangerous, be careful out there!
Not much more to say, all the work for this update was importing, implementing, and testing the new mechanics for these animals.
Enjoy!!!
Developer Video Blog: Crafting System!
I have created another developer video describing the crafting system in Vantage! This video goes in-depth into the mechanics of the crafting system, and how it works the game. I also explain why I designed it the way I did. The video itself explains itself however, so here it is!
