This game is now available on Steam!

FEATURES

• Massive improvements in the generated worlds.
  
  - 4x larger random world
  - Generation speed improved
  
  - New road system which can create main road, side roads and small paths
  - Improved draw distance and new faraway mountains to give a better sense of scale
  
  - Infinite water plane which makes the sunsets that much nicer
  - Added new nature landmarks and improved old ones
  
  - Set of new trees and old trees improved
  - Set of larger houses
  - Additional version of blacksmith
  - Wind affects tree branches
  
• Weather is completely dynamic everywhere
  
• First version of random generated desert island
  
  
• Witch sells transformation potions:
  
  - Butterfly potion
  - Chicken potion
  - Fox potion
  - Pig potion
  - Goblin Minion potion
  - Goblin Brute potion
  - Goblin King potion
  - Spider potion
  - Wood Elf potion
  (some are still unfinished)
  
  
• Support for NPC signature animations:
  
  - Fisherman fishing animation
  - Blacksmith forging animation
  
  
• Dungeon improvements:
  - Dungeons can have several floors
  - Boss floor at the bottom of the dungeon
  - Cave entrances in random world lead to dungeons
  - New rooms
  - More detail in old rooms
  - New roofs which can have holes
  
  
• Building interiors, random generated and handmade
  - Random interiors can be found in the random world
  
  
• Handmade interiors include:
  
  - Fisherman Dave's house
  - Larry's house
  
  
• Combat improvements:
  - Player can dodge in any direction (consumes stamina)
  - Player can shoot vertically with ranged weapons
  - Enemies can track player during their strikes
  - Group battles are more dangerous
  
  
• Goblin King is combat ready:
  
  - Butt-stomp attack
  - Can summon minions
  
  
• New enemy: Goblin Brute - ranged and melee
  
• New variant of Merchant
  
• More legs for Spider
  
• Lots of new items
  
• Added shortcut portals to handcrafted levels
  - Way to Fortuna connects to Barry's Field and Old Path
  - Cobold Cave connects to random snow world
  
• Level of detail system introduced
  
• Carrying system improved
  
• Camera tweaks
  
• Map screen shows trees, buildings and some characters
  
  
• Several quest glitches fixes

See all 4 comments

First off, I want to thank everyone who voted in the poll in the last announcement! The Forgotten Folk it is. Sampo has almost finished modeling and texturing those fellows so you should be seeing them in the game pretty soon.



Erik has been improving the terrain generator so that it can detect if the terrain angle is too steep and won't spawn objects there. It will clean up lots of the crazy stuff in the wilderness. The feature is still pending some additional testing and I expect that we can get it to you guys in release #4.

Here's the changelist for this update:

• We finally found the launch bug affecting some CPUs (thanks everyone who sent us their game logs!).
  
• The first version of temporal anti-aliasing is in the game.
  
• Guards and keys are randomized into the watchtowers, and the watchtowers can also be empty.
  
• New weapon: Wizard's Hand (hint: kill the Fire Wizard)
  
  Some ideas for killing the red devil

• New town objects and improved food eating effects.
  
  The pot and fish bones are physical objects so they move the player a bit when they intersect it. It's a small glitch and will likely be fixed later.
  
  
• Added food items to Skeleton Arena.
  
• Some small tweaks here and there.

Leave a comment

http://store.steampowered.com/app/321980/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC72ic6dQSc

Keep in mind the game is still very far from finished but these are some of the features we did since the August pre-alpha:
In general we had a very high priority on gameplay systems.
Generic character rigs which allows player and NPC's to wear items in various configurations. It means player can wear skeleton shields and weapons and the skeletons can wear the chicken mask etc. The transition to the new system is still ongoing so there's some limitations on what certain characters can wear.

Examples of player equipment configurations:


The inventory and item equipping system is much better than before and it has all the stats connected to data. You can see the Armor value update if you remove armor pieces:


Various skeletons, all equipped with the new rig and item slots:


Accurate damage shapes for all weapons and objects. Here's a screenshot of the collision shapes lined up in Blender:


Body parts have quite accurate collision shapes as well. If pick up an object and if an enemy strikes at you it will likely hit the object you're holding.


Animation system has been rewritten to allow for upper body and lower body direction to be different. For example: strafing while blocking.


Combat AI improvements, the enemies don't stack in one place like they used to. Instead they flow around the player more naturally, though there's still room for improvement in their AI as they get stuck on objects:


Throwing system is connected to damage so you can inflict damage to enemies by throwing items at them:



There's a better stamina system. Jumping, blocking, lifting and throwing spend stamina.

Currency has been reworked. Instead of coins there are various representations for different monetary values. It's also an optimization because you can display one gold cup instead of 50 gold coins:


Day and night was a bit clunky before. It's been replaced with cleaner solution which can create smooth blends between any weather conditions:


Lots of new objects and foliage:


Main menu has several graphics options so it should run ok even on an older computer.



The world generation is still heavily unfinished and makes the separate elements seem way more unfinished than they are, that's why we've included the Training Grounds sections where you can see more easily how the gameplay mechanics work.

Our next step is to move manpower to the world generation and move it to the next level.

Leave a comment

Hardland's visuals have often been mentioned so we thought it would be nice to do a video breakdown of the technology behind it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbtsQEgcx_g


The distance based fading of sound effects works properly so the audio from this point onward won't sound out of place like in the earlier gameplay video. The whole sound system is quite close to complete. The next task on the audio side is replacing the placeholder sounds with Hardland tailored sounds.

Anyone interested in seeing the inventory & item slot system in motion?

-Timo

See 1 comment

The game has been Greenlit thanks to you awesome people! Still lots of work remains on our side. At the moment we're working hard to get the first playable version to Steam Early Access - it will only be a small taste of the full game we plan on creating.

WHY EARLY ACCESS?

Having a feedback loop with the players is something which allows us to make better design decisions as they are being made - which should lead to a much better game compared to developing it behind a curtain.

BELOW IS A VIDEO TO DEMONSTRATE OUR LATEST PROGRESS

Ilmari Tiitinen composed the first ambient track of music and it can be heard in the video! On the audio front we've also got the basic sound system in place. Temporarily we're using placeholder sounds from our earlier games as we finalize the audio systems. For example it's still missing the ability to fade by distance. That's why in the video you hear these seemingly random loud voices. Once Tapio Liukkonen gets going with his sound fx magic it will sound a ton better and more consistent!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoqWAkaC9i0


TECHNICAL BREAKDOWN OF THE VIDEO

We've listened your feedback on combat animations and the whole animation system is in process of getting a big upgrade. In order to sell the "impacts" we also added dynamically created weapon trails which adds lots of motion to the strikes.


(screenshot of weapon trails)

New enemies: Skeletons can have different armor and weaponry, they come in many sizes. Some of them are weak, some are headless, some are huge like the Skeleton Champions.


(concept art)

Enemy AI has received a large overhaul: their combat behavior is much more natural as the enemies move around the player and pick their shots.

In addition to turning heads and eyes characters can now turn their upper bodies towards points of interest. In combat it improves the overall feel when characters have a better ability to look at each other.

ITEMS

Items can be switched and they all have unique properties: damage, special spawns, armor and physical size which determine the exact hit area. Players can pick up characters, gravestones, vases, pretty much everything. All that stuff can also be thrown and broken - lifting and throwing stuff expends stamina so player has to be careful when trying to lift heavy objects when in combat.

ITEM SLOTS

Item slots are working, characters drop all their items once they die. The slot list: BeltItem, Body, Hat, Knee_L, Knee_R, Mask, Shoulder_L, Shoulder_R, Weapon_L, Weapon_R and two ring slots.

Texture streaming works and we're using texture compression as well to make it run faster.

For footstep sounds were using sensors which are attached to both feet and once the sensors make a contact with the ground the system plays a footstep sound. It works pretty well even for complex feet motions.

INVENTORY

Inventory screen has more features and is starting function like it's supposed to.
Visually it's still very ugly but don't worry - it'll look great once finalized:



It should end up looking more like this mockup:



Dodging and blocking are some of the things we're currently improving. Both will probably be connected to the stamina. You can see experimental version of the blocking animation in the early part of the video.

MAIN MENU

Main menu now has graphics options you can choose from, music and sound fx sliders, invert mouse, invert pad etc.

ICON

There's an actual icon:

"History Channel" look-a-like and the chicken version didn't work out. Latter is fun but feels a bit too much like the Farming Simulator :)

-Timo

See all 3 comments