Wrongworld
Wrongworld has launched!
To everyone who supported the game throughout early access: I'll be forever grateful for all your invaluable feedback and the countless fantastic suggestions. You truly have helped shape Wrongworld into the game it is today, and there's no doubt it's a more enjoyable experience because of your input. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
But just because the game has left early access now, that doesn't mean the end of development. Far from it... This is just the beginning!
Speaking of which, time for me to get back to working on the next big content update :)
Update 0.8.3 (9th May) & Leaving Early Access
Here's what's changed:
----- UPGRADEABLE INVENTORY -----
After crafting a Workbench, you'll now have the ability to upgrade your Inventory Size in the "Tools" section of the Crafting Menu.
You upgrade it one slot at a time, and this recipe can be repeated 5 times, bringing the maximum Inventory Size to 20 slots in total.
Also, Boxy McBox's Inventory has been doubled in size - he now offers 10 slots instead of 5.
----- CRAFTING MENU IMPROVEMENTS -----
A few updates ago, I made it so that when new crafting recipes are unlocked, they are marked with a "New" label until you mouse-over them. This has now been expanded, so whenever a specific section of the Crafting Menu (such as "Tools", "Food", "Structures" etc.) contains one of those "New" labels, the relevant section button will also be highlighted in orange, just to help ensure people don't miss any of the newly-unlocked recipes.
----- MODULAR HOUSE TILE IMPROVEMENTS -----
When you use Construction Mode to edit a Modular House Tile, you'll now see a little "?" help icon at the top-right. Clicking that will open a guide explaining how it all works.
Also, when editing the Global Style, the colour sliders now include a little text box to the right of them, allowing you to manually enter the RGB colour values if you want.
----- CREATIVE MODE TWEAKS -----
To lessen its spoiler-y potential, you will no longer have access to the bosses and their related points of interest while playing in Creative Mode.
----- PAUSE MENU "DID YOU KNOW?" -----
When you pause the game, you'll now see a random "Did You Know" tip at the bottom of the screen. Click on it to show a different tip.
I try to keep the in-game Getting Started Tips that appear at the top-left to a minimum - only explaining the absolute essentials - so I've used this new space to add any extra hints that don't really deserve their own in-game tip, but are things I still wanted to mention somewhere!
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Fixed the order of the pages in Fishing Help UI after I messed it up in the last update!
- Tweaked a bunch of crafting and item tooltips.
- Improved a few Getting Started Tips, and added a few more.
- Snapping a Door to a House Tile will now correctly hide any Windows is obscures.
- Tweaked the player camera a little to help prevent it from clipping through the ceiling of your house.
- Slightly lowered the Mushroom spawning rate over time to help prevent a late-game world being overrun by them.
- Reduced the chance of obtaining Acorns while digging in the Grasslands biome.
- Fixed an issue with opening Chests that could cause other nearby structures to also be interacted with (like lighting Campfires and using Doors).
- Fixed an issue with face-planting while the Crafting Menu was open which could cause the player to be stuck in Crawl Mode.
- When the game checks for a roof above the player to determine if they are indoors (and therefore whether to hide the weather effects or not), it now checks a greater distance, just in case you've created some kind of mutant multi-floored house and have disabled the ground floor roof.
- Ever-so-slightly boosted the drop rate of Iron Ore from Rocks.
- "Multipurpose Claws" are now called "Climbing Claws".
- Tweaked the Teleporter logic to fix a few potential issues.
- Chopped the antenna off the top of the Cloning Station so that it nicely fits inside a house.
- Fixed an issue (I think) with tree-spawned Acorn Beasts which may have caused them to freak out and float when spawned on top of another tree while the player was wearing a Wooden Mask.
- Fixed an issue with the Pyramid event not despawning correctly if you died in Easy Mode while it was active.
- Improved the logic for a few events (The Rage of the Pig Beasts checks for nearby Pigs before triggering; the Tornado should suck things up better and more efficiently; better Day-scaling for the number of Frogs in the Frog Ambush event).
- Tweaked the lighting in Pikachew's Lair so that you'll now see a shadow directly below the player (to make it easier to see whether you're dangerously close to the edge of the platform while in mid-air).
- If you use a Door while wearing the Cardboard Mask and Boxy is reasonably close to you at the time, he will now teleport through the Door with you. No need to remove walls to get him in and out of your house any longer!
- Redeveloped the Robot death logic to ensure he won't be able to freak out too much due to wonky physics any longer.
- Improved a few other things about the Robot and the contents of his lair, adding a Sign relating to the cannon, improving some of the physics objects, and making it possible to shoot the TV with the cannon.
- Fixed an issue with the lair entrance Warning Screen to prevent it appearing while the Loading Screen is still visible.
- Fixed an issue with the Scarecrow that could cause it to be marked as completed (and therefore trigger the achievement) before you actually solved it. And also made the crafted Fences nicely snap to the correct position/rotation.
- Changed the Wishing Well so that it no longer randomly spawns Flowers, Trees or Rocks. Instead, it just spawns a bunch of Rocks, as Flowers and Trees aren't particularly desirable, and hopefully 15 or so bonus Rocks is a bit more useful.
- Updated the Probe Console UI so that it shows the current Status of the probe, e.g., "Moving", "Searching", "Highlighting".
That's all for now. I have been working on some big chunks of new content too, but, once I came to the decision to leave early access, I decided it was probably wise to focus on tightening up all the existing things first and saving the new stuff for post-launch updates, rather than rushing it out now. At some point after launch, I'll open up a Beta branch for the game, so anyone who wants to can access updates before they officially launch, testing things out and offering any feedback prior to it being pushed out to the live version of the game. But I'll talk more about that in future.
So, yes, as mentioned above, Wrongworld will be leaving early access very soon, in just a couple of days' time:
Launch Date: Friday the 11th of May!
And I've also published a new Launch Trailer. It's pretty much identical to the early access trailer, but with a few tweaks and new footage of some things that have been added during early access. You can view it at the following link if you like, although I'd always recommend people go into the game blind... It's kind of impossible to make an action-packed, interesting trailer without spoiling some surprises in the game, particularly the random events, and I really hate the idea of ruining the unexpected silliness new players have in store for them!
Launch Trailer: https://youtu.be/UpmZc-J4Fec
Leaving early access definitely doesn't mean the end of the development - far from it! Updates will continue to expand the scope of the game in a bunch of different ways, but, basically, I realised that if someone doesn't like the game in its current state, whatever new content I add in future isn't likely to change their minds! I'll just be adding more stuff they won't like :)
Oh, and a final word on Linux/Mac versions: I'm hoping to have a Linux version up-and-running pretty soon after launch, but it'll probably be a couple of months before I can get the Mac version sorted out. Need to save up for a decent Mac first!
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, please do let me know.
And feel free to come and say hello on the Wrongworld Discord. You'll also find more info on there about why I feel that now is the right time to leave early access, so, if you're curious, feel free to take a peek :)
Update 0.8.2 (13th Apr)
----- CREATIVE MODE -----
When starting a new world, you'll now find a "Creative Mode" option along with the usual Easy, Normal and Hard Modes.
In Creative Mode, you have access to all of the crafting recipes (apart from the XP-unlocked things), and you can craft them instantly without needing any resources. On top of that, you're also invincible; Hunger and Health have been completely disabled, so you can go around whomping beasties as much as you want and they'll just flail around, unable to hurt you.
As you might imagine, this makes things a little easy, so you won't be able to unlock any of the Steam Achievements in this mode. And, of course, XP is disabled.
And because you have access to all of the crafting recipes, please bear in mind that this mode is kind of a massive spoiler, so I'd definitely recommend new players stick to the regular survival modes until they've experienced the satisfaction of discovering things for themselves. But, at the end of the day, it's your game, so play it however you want! :)
I'm curious what you guys think about this mode in general. I can't decide whether it should even exist, because it's such a big potential spoiler. But, on the other hand, it can be kind of fun (if a little pointless) to just roam around, build a massive house, experiment with the late-game craftables etc. And I suppose it's no different from me adding some kind of "God Mode" cheats. Actually, maybe it should be called "God Mode" instead. And maybe it should have to be unlocked via XP. Perhaps the bosses shouldn't be accessible at all in this mode. Perhaps you should be able to trigger specific events whenever you want (although I kind of already have plans for something like that in future). Maybe I should add some other kind of challenges to this mode to give it more of a purpose. Let me know what you think.
----- HOUSE TILE WINDOWS -----
You can now add "Windows" to your Modular House Tiles. Just edit the floor using Construction Mode like normal, and you should see 2 new Window options to the right of the Roof options.
I put "Windows" in quotation marks because they're purely decorative - you can't actually see through them (that'd require a lot more work because I'd need to redevelop the weather system, as mentioned in the 0.8.1 update notes), but I think they do make your house look a little prettier, especially at night :)
From now on, windows are enabled by default when you build a Modular House Tile, but they'll need to be manually added to existing Tiles that were built prior to this update.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- When battling the Robot, you'll now see health bars for each of the areas in his lair, representing the current tidyness level of each area. Hopefully, this helps to clarify what you need to do to defeat it. And I've also fixed an issue with the central pillar that zaps you - previously, if you defeated the boss but then stood too close to the pillar, it looked like it was zapping you but caused no damage. Now it just ignores you instead like a good little defeated boss pillar.
- You can no longer go through Stonehenge portals while mounted (Thanks for the heads-up, Mark!).
- Tweaked the Boxing Ring a little so the camera is no longer allowed to sneak behind the Round Indicator... Always useful to be able to see what you're doing during a fight (Thanks, Airwave)!
- Fixed an issue that was preventing footstep sound effects from playing while in a boss lair.
- Lowered the recharge time of the XP-unlocked Teleporter from 5 to 3 seconds, just to make it a little more fun.
- Tweaked the Flagpole model a bit. Previously, they went unnecessarily far into the ground, which meant if you placed one on the roof of your house it was likely to poke through and look stupid.
- Tweaked a couple of the Getting Started tips that appear at the top-left to hopefully ensure people don't miss the super-useful "Hold Interact to pick up nearby items" tip.
- Updated the Frog Beast's movement system to help ensure they don't magically go through walls, just like I did for the other beasties in the last update. But be warned: they're a bit better at vertically aiming with their dive attack now, so jumping out of the way might not be as easy as it once was.
That's it for now. Time for me to continue working on the next boss-type thing in preparation for the next big update... Mwa ha ha!
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, please do let me know. And feel free to come and say hello on the Wrongworld Discord :)
Update 0.8.1 (6th Apr)
----- CONSTRUCTION MODE -----
You can now press "C" (or "Select" if you're a gamepad kind of person) to activate Construction Mode. While active, you can move any structures you've crafted by interacting with them - just hold down the Interact button and drag them wherever you want.
I separated out this moving functionality into its own mode so it didn't interfere with any of the regular functions of structures, like lighting a Campfire or aiming a Spotlight.
And Construction Mode also has another use...
----- CRAFTABLE HOUSES -----
In the "Structures" section of the Crafting menu, you'll find you're now able to build a "Modular House Tile".
When initially crafted, it'll just be a simple square of flooring. However, activate the new Construction Mode as described above and Interact with one, and you'll be shown a bunch of options allowing you to move/rotate it, add walls, corners, a roof, and also fiddle with some colour sliders to create a global style for all your house tiles.
These tiles neatly snap together as well, so it should make it relatively simple to expand your house as and when you have the resources to spare.
You'll also find you can craft a "Door" now as well. I'm sure this is pretty obvious, but this is a door that auto-snaps on to the walls of your Modular House. Using it basically just teleports you from one side of a wall to another. Simple, but it does the job for now! And, on the plus side, beasties don't understand how they work :)
This is very much Version 1 of House Building, and it won't offer much to you other than a roof over your head and a windowless room to put your structures in, but it does feel nice to have a place to come home to after a hard day's exploring! But it's probably wise to stick to bungalows for now as you can't craft stairs :) I imagine I'll add furniture, lights, interior walls, windows, and continue to expand on this in other ways in future too (like automatically changing an indoor campfire into a stove or something), but hopefully this gives us a nice starting point.
A couple of not-very-interesting limitations that I thought I should mention anyway:
- Once the game detects there's a roof over your head, it hides any weather effects that are going on in the outside world, because snowing inside is not cool. This is fine as long as your house is fully closed off with walls, however, if you've left a gap in a wall, you could technically see the weather visibility toggle on and off as you walk under a section of roof. Unfortunately, there isn't much I can do about that without redeveloping the whole weather system, and that's a pretty large task; a definite possibility for the future, but I think I can live with this for the moment while I focus on more important tasks.
- There are a couple of things that can result in some lighting weirdness when inside a house:
A) If you have shadows set to "Low" in the Graphics Settings (which disables them altogether), you might get bits of light seeping through the walls where the tiles snap together. I'm still researching this to see if I can find a fix, but so far it just seems to be a quirk of the Unreal Engine. Bright Spotlights pointing at your house can make this worse, too.
B) Even with shadows on, if you have a particularly large house, you might see light creeping under walls in the distance. Because the world is completely dynamically lit (which is generally the biggest hit to performance in the game), the level of detail you see in the way the world is shadowed changes based on the distance from the camera, so if your house is big enough, the walls on the far side of your house will only cast lower-quality shadows, resulting in potential lighting weirdness.
C) And the inside of your house will still be affected by the day/night changes to global illumination, meaning it'll still be darker inside your house at night than it is during the day, but I suppose that'll make more sense once I add windows.
----- OTHER CRAFTING THINGS -----
The Stone Wall has been completely redeveloped, with the new version replacing the old version. No longer do you craft individual pillars that auto-connect together; instead, you craft a full section of wall which contains 3 pillars and 2 connecting walls. You can use Construction Mode to grab the pillars and drag them around; the connecting walls expand as necessary (up to a maximum length), and the pillars snap onto any other pillars nearby, so I think this makes it much easier to make, modify and expand the walls around your base as needed. Also, the walls are taller now, so no more Slugs leaping over them (unless they manage to climb over one of the pillars, which are two-tiered to allow you to climb over them). Any of the old style of wall you have in your save games will still be loaded, but you won't be able to build any more of them. If people really miss the old style, just let me know and I'll have a think about putting them back into the game, but, for now, consider them a casualty of early access!
Literally just before launching this update, I was testing the new Stone Walls some more and noticed that I don't appear to have updated the tooltip for them in the Crafting Menu, so it still shows the old Stone Wall tooltip. Didn't seem worth delaying the update for a few more hours while I updated that, repackaged the game, re-uploaded etc., so just ignore that for the moment :)
You can also build Spike Traps now as well (which can be reset after they've been sprung). They don't do much damage (20, like a single hit from a powerful weapon), but it's amusing to get a beastie to chase you through a bunch of them and die without ever needing a direct whomping from yourself. Personally, I combined them with the new walls to make a nice "Corridor of Doom" :)
Oh, and you can now use a Smelter to turn a Gold Ore into a Coin and back again.
----- NEW POINTS OF INTEREST -----
Several new points of interest have been added to the game (you'll need to start a new world to see these as they're spawned and have their locations randomised when the world is initially generated). A couple of minor ones that'll be dotted around the world in multiple places, and a few unique ones...
----- TAME A TRUSTY STEED -----
As far as I'm aware, "steed" specifically refers to an actual horse, so that headline above isn't strictly true. But, as part of one of the new points of interest, you can now get yourself a mount and go riding around the world, climbing any cliffs you encounter along the way :)
----- EVENTS -----
I've added a couple of new random events to the game, and gone back over the existing events to make sure that the addition of houses with roofs hasn't broken them too much. Also, side note: I hate the word "roofs". To me, the plural of "roof" should be "rooves", as I think it was once upon a time. Ah, the good old days!
----- THE PROBE CONSOLE -----
The Probe Console has been expanded on and given it's own UI. Locations it can find are initially marked "?????", which are slowly unlocked as it searches around and finds things. A word of note: One of the locations it can track down for you is a new point of interest which won't exist in older saves, which means part of that UI will forever be "?????" in those save games.
----- COLLISION UPGRADES -----
I've carried out some more collision upgrades to hopefully prevent beasties from going through the landscape and walls. This issue was something I wasn't ever able to recreate, which made tracking down the cause an absolute nightmare, however, this time, I found a way to recreate the problem, and the changes I've put in place have stopped it happening for me, so I'm hopeful this will have fixed it for other people. Please feel free to let me know either way.
I'm aware of a few other circumstances in which beasties can sometimes sneak through some of the details around the landscape (such as the big icy pillars in a snowy biome, for instance), and I'll be tackling those issues soon, but this fix mainly relates to the landscape - the actual floor of the world. Frog Beasts might still suffer from the problem, though, because they use a different system of movement to most of the other beasties, but, assuming this fix does actually solve the issue for people, I'll update the froggies as well to get it fixed for them too.
As part of this fix, the way the beasties launch themselves at you during an attack (or launch away from you after receiving damage) has been changed, so you might notice beasts being a little more "jumpy" or sliding around slightly differently than before.
----- NEW ACHIEVEMENTS -----
I've also added a few new Steam Achievements that relate to the new points of interest.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Changing equipment now cancels interacting, which fixes a problem that could potentially result in a precious weapon breaking instead of your tool (Thanks for the heads-up, Eric!).
- Updated the Fuel Cell tooltip because it lied (Thanks, Stylez!).
- Changed the order of the logic that runs if you die. It now updates your saved amount of XP at the same time as deleting your save game. Previously, it deleted your save game and then only updated your XP a few seconds later, so if the game crashed between those two events, you'd lose your save but not get the XP you deserved (Sorry about that, John!).
- Added a tooltip to the Brightness setting that I added in the last update.
- Slightly tweaked the potential loot from crates.
- Fixed a couple of issues with the Rabbit Beast's teleport.
- Updated the Frog Beast's dive attack particle effect a little, because it looked 100% lame. Now it only looks 97% lame.
- Lowered the intensity of Spotlights.
- You can now bomb floating crates to get the goodies out of them. Just don't blame me if you get nibbled to death by the sea monster thing in the process.
- Added an on-screen message when someone tries to call the number of the phone they're currently using to help explain how they work.
- Added a message to the warning screen that's shown when entering a boss's lair if you've already completed it, just to let people know that they'll be repeating content.
- Fixed an exploit/save issue with the Pyramid event. And you can now bomb the little statues if you want. Previously, they did an excellent job at shrugging off explosions because I'm stupid.
- Made the UFO a little less persistent in its abduction attempts, and it'll generally leave you alone pretty quickly if you cower inside your house.
- The Obsidiman and the giant Snow Yeti now detect when you're in a house, so they shouldn't punch you through the walls. They'll still lurk outside forever, though, waiting to squish you.
- Lowered the probable lifespan of the Tornado a little (again), and it won't actively follow you or suck you up if you're inside your house (although its random movement pattern means that it may still stray through your house and look ridiculous in the process, but it won't affect you).
I think that's everything! Thanks to anyone else who provided feedback but I forgot to mention here.
As always, if you do have any feedback or encounter any problems, please just let me know. And feel free to come and say hello on the Wrongworld Discord!
Update 0.7.1 (16th Mar)
Effective immediately, I have reduced the price of Wrongworld to the 10.99 GBP/14.99 USD/14.99 Euros mark, and I've done that for a couple of reasons:
1) I'll hold my hands up here: I think I simply got the price wrong. As I think most of you know, this is my first time releasing a game, and it's been a big learning experience for me. Being from the UK, I understand the value of the British Pound, but it was impossible for me to know how people from other countries would feel about the price. Early access has not only been about gathering feedback about the game itself, but I've also been listening to feedback about the price point, especially from non-UK folk. Ultimately, I just want people to feel like the game is definitely good value for money, and I hope this new price point will help with that. I came to the conclusion that this was the price point at which I'd like to game to be upon leaving early access, but I didn't want to hold off reducing the price once I'd come to that decision, so I thought I'd do it now instead.
2) Since launching into early access, the overall difficulty of the game has been toned down in a few different ways, which I do think has made the game a more enjoyable experience in general. However, one of the side effects of this is that the average time it might take people to finish the game is a little less than it was back at the start, purely because they're not likely to die and have to start over as many times!
To anyone who has recently purchased the game at the previous price point and is still in a position to refund it and re-buy it at the reduced price, please, by all means, feel free to do that! To anyone who bought the game while it was on sale, you probably paid the new price anyway :) But to anyone who bought the game at the previous price but is unable to refund/re-buy, I hope you understand my reasons for this reduction and don't feel like this is a slap in the face. I appreciate all you early adopters and supporters so very, very much, and I'm going to try to figure out a way to repay you for your support, but I need to research things a little more and try to work out exactly how I could do something like that. Leave it with me :)
Anyway, enough boring price things. Time to discuss what's new in the update:
----- NEW BIOMES -----
When starting a new game, the world will now include a few extra biomes! Previously, we just had Grasslands, Rocky, Desert and Snowy, but you'll now also find Radioactive and Alien biomes, and maybe a Swamp or two as well. And who knows what ridiculous new beasties you'll find lurking around in them :)
Speaking of which, one of the new beasties may or may not be using a placeholder sound effect for now. Originally, I definitely added it as a placeholder sound effect, intending to replace it with something "better" in future, but it keeps making me laugh whenever I hear it, so I think it may have to stay forever now! I imagine you'll be able to guess which sound effect I'm talking about once you hear it! :)
I'll be continuing to work on these new biomes as well (most likely adding unique points of interest and events for them), but this is hopefully a nice start.
While I'm on the subject of biomes, it was previously technically possible (although incredibly unlikely) that a specific world might not include every single biome. Well, I've adjusted that now, so new worlds are guaranteed to include at least a bit of every main biome.
----- NEW CRAFTABLES -----
I won't spoil them here, but there are quite a few new craftable items and structures for you to discover now. You don't need to start a new game to take advantage of these, but you might struggle to find some of the new resources you need to craft them without access to the new biomes/beasties, so starting a new world would probably make more sense! :)
I have lots of questions for the community about these new craftables (and others I plan to add in future), but I'll wait a while before I ask them, just to make sure I don't spoil them for anyone in the process!
----- AUTO-SAVE FREQUENCY -----
Previously, the game auto-saved around every 12 in-game hours. I was actually using this auto-save to mask a few of the most intensive processes in the game (like randomly growing all the trees in the world), but I've reworked those systems now, which means I no longer need the auto-save to hide them!
So, with that in mind, the game now defaults to saving once every 24 hours instead, and you can customise this in the Settings > Preferences menu. You can set the game to auto-save every 1 - 5 days, or disable it completely (although I'd strongly advise against that... I'd hate for a power cut or random crash to wipe out hours and hours of your progress).
----- BRIGHTNESS/GAMMA SETTING -----
In the Settings > Graphics menu, you'll now find a "Brightness" option. Boring, I know, but hopefully useful for some people. Oh, and I also upped the default brightness of night, just a tiny bit. Probably not even noticeable!
----- LANDSCAPE COLLISION UPGRADES -----
I've gone through all of the landscapes in the game and carried out some more upgrades to the collision for them. If you were one of those people who suffered from fast-moving beasties going through walls (something I've never been able to recreate myself), please do let me know if the problem persists for you.
Once I'm certain this issue has been squashed once and for all, I'll be able to relatively quickly add a bunch of new variations to the landscape, but I've been holding off on that for now while continuing to investigate this naughtiness.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Adjusted the rate at which Slug Beasts can spawn throughout the night, and added a maximum number that can appear per night (which both increase over time based on the in-game day). Previously, it was foolishly limited by the number of ACTIVE Slugs, so killing one effectively made room for another one to spawn, resulting in the potential for an almost-constant stream of them spawning if you were battling them all as soon as they appeared.
- Increased the range at which lit Campfires will force Slugs to despawn. And lit Smelters will now also scare them away too.
- Fixed a bug that potentially prevented attack from working when you used the little "X" to close the Inventory.
- Added smoothing to the camera control that's possible while the UI is open, so it isn't as quick and twitchy.
- You can now change the 4-digit number used by each Phone Booth to whatever you want. Just look up at each digit and Interact to cycle through the numbers. Should make them easier to remember!
- Smoothed the initial world generation system to help spread out the strain on your computer while the Loading Screen is shown. Probably not noticeable, but I'm hoping it helps out older computers a little.
- Fixed the tips that appear at the bottom of the Crafting Menu, so hopefully the text won't get cut off on certain resolutions any longer.
- Tweaked the weather system a touch, so you might see fog a little more often in future. What can I say, I like it when it's foggy :)
- When the Acorn Beasts have their little tree-shrinking ritual, you can now also stop it by destroying the tree stump they dance around. Oh, and the Acorn Beasts taking part in the ritual should have little leaves/feathers poking off their heads, which is something I actually added before early access began, but accidentally forgot to activate because I'm stupid.
- As mentioned above in the Auto-Save section above, reworked a few processes (like random tree growth) to stagger them a little over time, rather than all happening at once.
- Receiving damage due to using an item in your Inventory (like a poisonous mushroom) no longer closes the Inventory and Crafting Menu.
- Fixed an issue with the wonky Bait icon in the Fishing Help UI.
- Updated the collision for Pikachew's lair.
- Added some little walls around the edges of the Snake Pyramid event, because having to line up your attacks so carefully was pretty tedious!
- Updated the potential loot dropped by pretty much everything to include some of the new resources.
- Added a few new Steam Achievements.
- And, finally, just as a little treat for anyone who bothered to read this far, you can now press "S" on the Title Screen to view a bunch of pointless gameplay stats :) I'll probably add a "Stats" option to the Title Screen itself at some point, but this was just a last-minute addition to make sure it's working properly.
I think that's everything! Can't wait to discuss some of the newness with you guys.
Next up for me: Time to start preparing to leave early access, I think, depending on how you guys feel about the state of the game. Of course, leaving early access won't spell the end of development - far from it - I plan to continue working on the game for a long, long time yet either way. Anyway, short term, I'll be working on some new craftables (base-building stuff), and new points of interest and events based around the new biomes too. Oh, and at least one alternative way to get off the planet and head home. And hopefully Mac and Linux versions too, assuming I can get hold of some extra machines to compile and test on, but that might have to wait until post-launch... we'll see. So much to do, so little time! :)
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know. And don't forget: Wrongworld has a Discord now which is just getting started, so feel free to come and say "hello" there!
Update 0.6.2 (6th Feb)
Sorry it's been a while since the last one... Quite a lot of December seemed to get eaten up by various not-so-interesting admin/business-y things I had to deal with, and not as much development as I'd like. But as soon as January arrived, I got back into Maximum Development Mode, starting work on all the new content I want to add. A lot of the major new stuff isn't ready yet, and I don't want to rush things. I'm planning to get a bunch of new things finished and then launch them all at once, rather than trickle them out, because most of them are related to each other in one way or another. Anyway, rest assured that I'm still hard at work on new biomes, gear, points of interest, random events, beasties etc... It just might take a little longer than normal before it all launches in one big content explosion.
However, I've also been steadily making a bunch upgrades and improvements to the existing content, and I decided it was probably time to get those changes out there while I continue to work on the more exciting things :)
So, here come the details...
----- HEALTH REGENERATION AND FOOD BOOSTS -----
I know early-game health regeneration was causing headaches for a lot of people, so I've changed a couple of things to hopefully help smooth out the difficulty curve:
1) You now slowly regenerate Health automatically while your Hunger is above 90%. It works slightly differently depending on the difficulty setting:
EASY MODE - As Hunger ticks down from 100% to 90%, it's transferred directly to Health. In other words, you'll heal 10% during that time.
NORMAL MODE - The healing is half as effective in Normal Mode... As Hunger goes from 100% to 90%, you'll regain 5% Health.
HARD MODE - There's no automatic healing.
2) Health gains from food have also been boosted a little. Nothing major - just changed some of those 1-health foods to 2's and 3's.
I'm pretty sure that these Health changes will need some more tweaks and balancing after I've had more time to repeatedly test how it impacts the game, but I just wanted to get this version 1 Health Regen system out there to see what you guys think.
Thanks for all the suggestions and contributions about this on the forums, guys. Much appreciated :)
----- SAND TREES, ICE TREES AND OTHER TREE STUFF -----
The family of mutant trees has grown! Alongside your collection of Meat and Leather Trees, you'll now be able to grow some Sand and Ice Trees.
I've also slowed down the growth of those special trees, just a little, and here's why:
Normal wooden trees can drop a maximum of 5 Wood once they're fully grown, but these special trees just drop a maximum of 3 of their related loot. However, they were growing from the 1-loot stage to the 2-loot stage too quickly - in about 3 days - which meant you could effectively double all of your Meat and Leather supplies every 3 days, which was a little overpowered!
One of the other issues with the trees was that you never really knew how fully-grown they were, especially tricky and frustrating with these special trees, because they don't naturally spawn in the world so you had nothing to compare them with. But, hopefully, this won't be a problem any longer...
Now, when you look at a tree and the little "Chop Tree" text appears, it'll change based on how fully-grown the tree is, so you have a better idea of how many loot it'll drop. And it works like this:
"Chop Small Tree"
Normal Tree: 1 - 2 wood
Special Tree: 1 loot
"Chop Tree"
Normal Tree: 3 - 4 wood
Special Tree: 2 loot
"Chop Big Tree"
Normal Tree: 5 wood
Special Tree: 3 loot
----- CRAFTING TWEAKS -----
Plant Pots no longer require a Workbench, and the Alchemy Table doesn't require as much Leather.
----- ALCHEMY TIPS -----
Speaking of the Alchemy Table, you can now interact with the book on the table to read a little guide about flowers, plant pots, and transmuting.
----- NEW RECIPES HIGHLIGHTED -----
When you craft a structure for the first time and get the "New crafting recipes unlocked!" message, each of the new recipes will now be clearly marked in the Crafting Menu until you hover the mouse over them.
----- COMBAT LOCK-ON SYSTEM -----
Pressing Shift to lock on to enemies has been improved a little. Your current target now has an arrow over its head, and the camera should track them a little quicker. Let me know what you think.
----- LANDSCAPE COLLISION UPGRADES -----
I've gone through all of the landscapes in the game, searching for and updating particularly simple collision geometry around the cliff faces, which I believe was the main cause for the sneaky beasties you might have noticed walking through walls (Snakes and Pigs, mainly). I still haven't been able to recreate the problem myself, but I'm hopeful these changes will have gone some way to fixing the issue. I'm sure I'll have missed a few simple bits of collision dotted around the place, so please do let me know if you encounter beasties going through walls. And, ideally, send me a save file right next to where it happened! :)
----- UI MODE CAMERA CONTROL -----
Previously, when you had any element of the user interface open - like the Inventory, Crafting Menu, Fishing UI - you couldn't move the camera at all. Well, you can now... Yay for being able to keep an eye out for those Slugs while you're fishing :)
For keyboard users, use the movement controls (default: WSAD) to spin the camera around. But there's one special case: If you've got the Crafting Menu open, "W" and "S" will switch between the crafting tabs (as they always have), so you can't move the camera up and down. I couldn't decide whether that was an issue or not, so let me know if you think it is!
For gamepad users, you can control the camera with the Right Thumbstick. But there's a similar special case: If the mouse cursor is hovering over the Crafting Menu, up and down on the stick will scroll the recipes up and down instead of controlling the camera.
I think this system still needs a few more tweaks to make it work a little better/more naturally (and maybe a Preference to disable it completely), but I didn't want to delay this update any longer just to mess around with this some more. Let me know what you think anyway!
----- AUTO-CLOSE UI WHEN DAMAGED PREFERENCE -----
Previously, if you got attacked and damaged while you had part of the UI open, like the Inventory or Burying Menu, you had to manually close it before you could defend yourself. I've now changed it so that all menus will automatically close if you take damage.
I think it works better like that, but if you prefer it the old way, you can tweak a new option in the Settings > Preferences menu to change it back to how it was.
----- CAMERA SENSITIVITY -----
The Camera Sensitivity slider in the Settings > Controls menu was a little too subtle. I've now ramped up the range considerably, so hopefully everyone will be able to get the camera moving as fast or as slow as they want :)
----- FISHING BAIT COUNTER -----
If you've got some Bait in your Inventory when you go fishing, you'll now be able to see how many you've got left alongside the Fishing UI.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Added a few new Tips that can appear up at the top-left. And they now animate/fly in, so hopefully nobody will ever miss that "hold Interact to auto-collect" one ever again! :)
- And I've added a few hints/little bits of guidance about what new players might want to craft first to the bottom of some of the Crafting Menu pages, which should also help clarify that a lot of the recipes are initially hidden. But, just like the other tips, you can disable them in the Settings > Preferences menu.
- When you cook "Cooked Meat", the on-screen message now simply says, "Cooking Meat", rather than "Cooking Cooked Meat" :)
- Fixed an issue that could cause you to get trapped in a certain structure immediately after building it.
- Improved the spawning logic for some of the points of interest... Hopefully no more spawning halfway through a wall.
- Fixed an issue that was preventing "Escape" from backing out of some of the UIs properly.
- Patched up a hole in the world... Thanks, Highrider!
- Tweaked a couple of tooltips.
- The Metal Detector now digs about twice as fast. And it's green light has been changed to orange/yellow (the green light made it harder to see the digging target sometimes).
- The Snow Yeti mini-boss is now a tiny bit slower at attacking... Attack animations running at 90% normal speed so you've got a fraction of a second more time to dodge.
- Slug Beasts automatically killed by The Sword In The Slug will now properly drop some loot.
- Sort of fixed an issue that allowed you to literally get an infinite boost of upwards physics from the Jet Pack.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Hand of God to appear while you were busy floating around, being a Stonehenge ghost.
Phew!
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know!
Update 0.6.1 (2nd Dec)
----- NEW GAME MODES -----
Next time you start a new game, you'll be asked to select a Game Mode - Easy, Normal or Hard...
EASY MODE is the often-requested non-permadeath mode. Upon dying, you'll drop all your equipment and reappear in a random location, so you'll still want to avoid the whole being-killed thing as much as possible, but your save game will be unharmed and you're free to galavant around Wrongworld like some kind of immortal space mutant.
However, you don't earn any XP in Easy Mode and won't unlock the rewards, so maybe think of it as a practice mode if you want to get your hands on those shiny treats one day.
NORMAL MODE is what you've been playing so far... Permadeath, XP, fun times.
HARD MODE is there for those of you that might want a tougher challenge. Permadeath and XP like normal, but faster hunger loss, tougher beasties, and probably more frequent random events popping up.
----- WORKBENCH AND SMELTER RESOURCES -----
Workbenches and Smelters now require less resources to build, down from 30 to 20 wood/stone. I know it's only the difference of a couple of trees or rocks, but hopefully it'll allow everyone to acclimatise to early-game without feeling like they're being hit around the head with a little grind right at the start. Oh, and I've also tweaked the goodies you get with Quick Start Mode activated to factor in these changes.
----- GAMEPAD HOTBAR CONTROLS -----
You can now use the D-Pad on your controller to select and use items from the Hotbar. To free up the D-Pad for this, Autorun is now toggled by clicking down the Left Thumbstick. And...
----- WALK TOGGLE REMOVED -----
I completely removed the Caps Lock/D-Pad Down toggle for switching between walking and running. Walking didn't actually serve a purpose, and, if anything, it just got in the way when it was accidentally pressed!
As far as I can tell, me messing with some of the in-game controls shouldn't cause any issues, but you might want to double-check everything's as it should be if you've customised your keyboard controls.
----- NEW ACHIEVEMENTS -----
I've added 10 new achievements to the game, and unhidden 2 of the existing ones. In future, I'll try to add achievements at the same time as actually adding the content, as I appreciate that some of you will have already done what's required to unlock these but will now have to do it again if you want the achievement. Sorry!
----- TOOL TWEAKS -----
Wooden and Stone tools are now a little faster at chopping trees/smashing rocks. I wanted to boost the speed increase a little between wooden tools and just using your good old smashy head technique, so they all got nudged up a bit.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Remember when items used to fly off into the distance at warp speed (I'm looking at you, Glass)? Well, I slightly tweaked the fix for that to loosen it up a little, as I discovered that was a potential cause of items occasionally falling through the floor (they were so slow to depenetrate themselves, gravity took over and sucked them through the floor). If you notice any problems with items flying off into the distance again, please let me know.
- Fixed a rather important issue that was probably preventing Slug Beasts from spawning before midnight.
- Updated the Tooltip for the Multipurpose Claws to help clarify that they're actually amazing.
- The damage from poisonous mushrooms was previously being reduced by armour. Pretty sure that's not how poisons work, so I updated that :)
- Tweaked some of the boss damage values.
- It's no longer possible to place structures inside a boss's lair.
- Interacting with a "HOT HOT HOT" meteor without the proper equipment will now display a little hint to let you know you're doing it wrong.
- Slightly increased the chance of Frog Beasts spawning.
- Added a little sound effect when equipping items.
- Fixed an issue that could potentially trap you when crafting certain structure upgrades.
- Tweaked the loot spawning location for trees to reduce the chance of stuff sneaking underground.
- Tweaked the spawning logic for the Statue of Spatula.
- Fixed an issue that allowed you to toggle crawling when you shouldn't have been able to.
- Fixed an issue that meant beasties could continue slapping you in the face while you were trying to watch the little end game cutscene.
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know!
Update 0.5.2 (10th Nov) and Hotfix 0.5.3 (14th Nov)
Apologies this one has taken a little longer than normal. I've been doing a lot of experimenting and testing things for the future - things that aren't quite ready for release yet - but hopefully the updates should speed up again before too long.
Anyway, here's what's new:
----- DEFAULT GRAPHICS SETTINGS -----
I've tweaked the default graphics settings, which may have reset your customised settings. Apologies for that, but this should definitely be the last time I ever have to mess with those! :)
----- NEW POINTS OF INTEREST -----
If you start a new game, you may notice a few new points of interest dotted around the world. Nothing too game-changing - and they might not be the easiest things to find - but simply more random things you might encounter on your travels around the world. Some are definitely still work-in-progress and will be expanded on in future, but, as always, I like to get things released as early as possible to start gathering feedback!
----- FISHING UPDATES -----
To tie in with some of the new POIs, the potential loot you can get from fishing has been tweaked and balanced a little. Oh, and the fishing line itself should be more stable now!
But maybe all this fishing is starting to get on the nerves of whatever lurks beneath the sea...
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Tools are slightly more durable now, shovels doubly so.
- Meat/Leather Trees have been boosted slightly... They still drop a maximum of 3 Meat/Leather, but they don't have to grow as large before dropping more than 1.
- It should no longer be possible to swim off the edge of the world - a completely unexplained force will slap you back towards to middle of the map.
- Loot from Crates/Barrels/Graves have been slightly tweaked.
- The UFO is now a little more aggressive with its abduction attempts.
- Fixed an issue that was causing crates to trigger mines.
- The average length of the Tornado has been shortened a little bit more.
- Upgraded a couple of existing POIs to add more potential variations.
- Fixed an issue that was causing the rotation of all rocks to be reset after the first reload of a particular save game. No idea how that one slipped through until now!
- Fixed an issue that was causing drowning Slug Beasts to simply vanish rather than turning ghostly like other beasties do.
----- 0.5.3 HOTFIX -----
- Fixed a UI bug that might've prevented items in your inventory from correctly appearing in the "Select Item" menu.
- Fixed a bug with the updated UFO movement logic.
I was hoping to get make the hotbar keys rebindable in this update - and add controller support for it - but I didn't quite have time in the end. That'll be the first thing I work on for the next update anyway.
After that, I really want to start working on new events, more biomes, and many more late-game craftable things. Oh, and I'm planning to get a non-permadeath mode in there ASAP too.
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know!
Update 0.5.1 (17th Oct)
This is very much the first of a two-part update. Ideally, I wanted this to include all the fun new things I've been working on over the last couple of weeks - things that were designed to launch alongside fishing - however, a few of them weren't quite ready for launch yet.
So, because I've also made quite a lot of other minor fixes and improvements, I made the decision to get this update out now but hold back plenty of finished and nearly-finished things until I can launch them all at once in the next update.
Long story short, expect more interesting things next time :)
For now, here's what's new:
----- FISHING PART 1 -----
You can now craft a Fishing Rod and go on the hunt for fishies. Simply equip it, point yourself at some water, and click to cast your line.
For more information about how it works, click the little "?" icon next to the fishing UI that pops up whenever you cast into water.
Because some of the things you can potentially catch have been held back until the Fishing Part 2 update, the balancing and frequency of the items you'll find might be a little off for now, but I thought I may as well get this v.1 system out there now and start gathering feedback while I continue to work on it.
----- HOTBAR -----
When your inventory's open, you'll see a little 10-slot hotbar at the bottom of the screen.
Drag things from your inventory into whatever slot you want, then use the number keys to automatically use/equip that item. If you're the kind of person that likes to have the hotbar visible at all times, just click the little pin icon to the right of it and it'll stay on-screen.
For now, the shortcuts on the hotbar are keyboard-only, but I'll be adding controller support soon, most likely in the next update.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Fixed the issue that was causing drops from crops to sometimes fall through the ground.
- Fixed a few sneaky little UI bugs, mostly related to opening/closing menus or cycling equipment while interacting with something.
- Improved the spawning logic for a bunch of points of interest.
- More collision upgrades. As I've mentioned before, I'm doing this bit-by-bit... If you still encounter any beasties going through walls, please let me know :)
- Trees/Rocks now block digging to prevent infinite tree-stacking!
- Tweaked the way the dirt mounds shrink so they no long hide underground and prevent digging.
- Upgraded the shovel dig location marker.
- Fixed a sneaky gap in a landscape - Thanks, Highrider :)
- You can now disarm mines and get a bomb for your trouble by digging with a Metal Detector inside the mine's detection radius.
- Updated the Statue of Spatula to fix and upgrade the things that can potentially spawn within it.
- Updated the potential drops from the metal Reward Crates to make them a little better and remove the most underwhelming possibilities.
- It should no longer be possible for any of the ritual events to spawn underground.
- Fixed a bug that was causing one of the Robot's attacks to do more damage than it was supposed to.
- The combat lock-on system no longer targets Boxy McBox.
- Fixed an issue with the Ship that could cause Boxy McBox to freak out a bit if he happened to be spawned there.
- Fixed a timing issue with the red moon that appears during The Rage of the Pig Beasts event.
- Tweaked the angry Easter Island Head so it should no longer float into the sky like an idiot.
- The angry Easter Island Head and the Obsidiman (big rock guy from the Rock Beast ritual) are now correctly marked as "Stone" and will therefore take bonus damage from pickaxe tools.
- Increased the chance for the Stonehenges to activate, and reduced the shrinking event that can occur to bypass a couple of clipping issues.
- The Minefield shouldn't spawn in awkward places any longer, and its rewards should be less likely to roll away from where they're supposed to be.
- The Scarecrow shouldn't be able to spawn near a cliff face now, and the green fence highlight has been tweaked a little bit.
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know!
Update 0.4.1... And the 0.4.2 hotfix (29th Sep)
----- NEW POINTS OF INTEREST -----
If you start a new game, you might notice the world has several more things dotted around, but I'm not going to spoil them by describing them here! I've already started work on quite a few other new points of interest as well, but they weren't quite ready in time for this update.
----- SPLIT STACKS -----
Hold Left Shift and drag items around your inventory to split stacks in half.
----- CROPS IMPROVED -----
Crops in Greenhouses now have a 50/50 chance to return their seed when you harvest them. Crops planted anywhere else have a 1 in 10 chance.
----- RETICLE PREFERENCE -----
If you like to have a little dot in the middle of the screen to help you aim at things, you can now enable this in the Settings > Preferences menu.
----- UNMUTATE POTION -----
If you end up hideously mutated for whatever reason, you should now be able to craft an Unmutate Potion to return your appearance to its handsome former self.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- The maximum drops from Meat and Leather Trees has been reduced to 3.
- It should no longer be possible to get accidentally trapped by building a structure on yourself - you should automatically appear on top of the newly crafted structure instead.
- Flagpoles now glow in the dark, so you should be able to easily see them at night.
- Reworked the Ghost to fix a couple of issues.
- Yet more shovel updates - When near a crate/barrel, it will now only disable digging if you're actually pointing towards it.
- Refined the spawning logic for the Satellite Dish to help prevent it lurking half way up a cliff.
- Fixed an issue with Cannons overlapping random bits of scenery.
- Fixed an issue with the Jet Pack SFX and particles.
- Fixed an issue when face-planting into shallow water which resulted in you crawling around.
- Fixed an issue which may have prevented shovels from doing bonus damage to Snake Beasts like it was supposed to.
- Updated the Greenhouse tooltip.
- Updated the Seed tooltip.
- Fixed an issue with chest inventories being invisible when the HUD was toggled off.
- Added a little mouse icon to the Interact Text to clarify that it's RMB to interact.
- Added a new Getting Started Tip for the combat roll, and made the Auto-Collect tip reappear after a while if you haven't started using it.
- It should no longer be possible for the same random event to trigger twice in a row.
- The number of new beasts that are potentially spawned every day increases over time based on the current day.
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know!