This will be the patch notes for 0.9.0.1 and 0.9.0.2 seeing as I didn't put up patch notes for the former.

-Fixed a bug where fire blocks would not give off heat.
-Fixed a bug where you can't plant trees.
-Fixed a bug where pathing through a trap door hatch could sometimes get blocked.
-Fixed a bug where some games wouldn't load because of a corrupted block.
-Fixed a bug where pathing wasn't permitted over platforms with water and some type of prop.
-Fixed a bug where props weren't updating their texture to match rotation.
-Fixed a bug where events won't start if you put all your settlers in a room and lock the door. 'No spawn point found...'
-Fixed a bug where the writer of the game had written discover TWICE in the desert description like some sort of dope.
-Fixed a bug where location markers could have a uniform assigned to them.
-Children can now use the melee combat skill.
-Fixed a bug where games could get stuck in the summer transition screen.
-Re-enabled the game over screen.
-Settlement latitude now affects temperature.
-Fixed a bug where tooltips weren't displaying items or plants unless they were on a platform.
-Fixed a bug where plants could be harvested for their fruit/veg when not fully mature.
-Fixed a bug where props weren't transitioning. i.e., fences.
-Fixed a bug where blueprints weren't transitioning properly when placed in water blocks.
-Fixed a bug where rarely a game could get hung up on saving.
-Fixed a bug where you could place multiple platform blueprints on top of one another.
-Fixed a bug where the build menu was visible when not open.
-When the search feature is used (Shift), the filter will be changed to ALL.
-Fixed a bug where Void Stone blocks weren't being loaded in properly.
-Fixed a bug where certain items could increase attack range without being usable in the attack. This would cause settlers to get stuck in one place while in combat.
-Taiga winter will now has some plants growing from the start.
-Tuned snowing weather to happen more often for taiga winter.
-Fixed a bug where taiga winters weren't having ice platforms develop.
-Fixed a bug where snow wouldn't melt if it occupied the same block as an prop or plant.

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend!

Best,

Waylon

Hey friends!

The time is here! This update has been quite the challenge for me. What started out as a rendering systems optimization re-write at Christmas turned into implementing the Tundra biome. Both were huge tasks for me, the former taking well over a month, and the latter another two! Thanks so much for patiently waiting for me to get this one out into the beta branch.

Before I explain the new temperature system, I just want to put out some warnings. First, this build is NOT backwards compatible with old saves. Second, the first few days of this will likely be fairly buggy. So, if you don't want to find bugs and report them, I'd strongly suggest waiting for this build to be tested and fixed up. I'll probably be putting it onto the production branch in a week or two. I already have a nice list of bugs which I wasn't able to get to, so I'll try to put out a hotfix patch this week for those and any that are reported.

Temperature. How does it work? What's this Tundra biome? Ok, I know a lot of you are thinking to yourselves, the Tundra doesn't have trees! What the heck. Well, I didn't want to create a snow version of the Desert which is, in my opinion, rather boring. So, yes, the Tundra has trees AND it has a warm season! Beware, though. This biome will still require you to put in more effort to survive.

The temperature system in Odd Realm is called Asters and is represented by an asterisk (*). It's a simple scale of -100* to 100*. Things less than 0* start to freeze while things at 100* are on fire. 50* is resting body temperature and you can imagine 40* to be a nice spring day. Each biome and their respective seasons and weather will determine the global temperature shown on the top-right bar, beside the time. As well, the depth you're at slightly affects temperature. High up will be colder, way underground warmer.

Entities all have default Cold Tolerance. This value determines when they will start to take freezing damage. Humans, for example, have a Cold Tolerance of 20*. This means, when the temperature drops below 20*, they will start to lose body temperature. Once body temperature drops below 20*, they'll take damage and eventually freeze to death. Entities will automatically try to warm up at heat sources when they start to freeze, so make sure you build torches and fires. Or, alternatively, equip them with warmer clothing which offsets the Cold Tolerance value. You can see the temperature of the world blocks from the utility menu.

Plants also have a Cold Tolerance, some higher than others. You'll need to plant warmer climate plants in green houses with torches and a skylight to make sure they can survive the colder weather of the Tundra.

Another added feature is that ice and snow can now appear as the weather gets cold. When enough snow builds up, it will create a snow block. Keep this in mind because you can potentially be buried in snow. You can also deconstruct/mine the ice/snow to collect Ice Chunks and Snow Balls which can then be used for building Ice/Snow Walls. Handy for making igloos but remember these will melt in the warmer seasons.

I've also added some new plants, trees, and animals, but I'll let you find them as you play. :)

Here are the patch notes:

-Re-wrote rendering systems to be faster.
-Deconstruct is now clear/remove and can be used to clear things like grass, snow, ice, as well as deconstruct things you've built. You can also use it to cut tree leaves if you wish to make a tree fort.
-Grass now grows when it rains.
-Snow now lands on surfaces facing the sky when it snows.
-Fixed a bug where saplings could be cut for infinite wood.
-Cancelling stacked blueprints will now only cancel the top blueprint first.
-Fixed a bug where the game would start to lag when you have many blueprints and settlers but not the required items to build.
-Fixed a bug where cut/harvest weren't getting drop chance bonuses from increased level.
-3 new trees: Iro, Caelum Oscula, Pala.
-Tundra biome can now be settled.
-Tree leaves can now be cut.
-3 new plants: ice root, sikari, and weep wisp.
-Changing the camera layer when following a settler will now disable the follow.
-Water will turn to ice in cold seasons.
-Fixed a bug where certain jobs weren't being cleared if the block they occupied was no longer valid. i.e., Platforms being built at a fishing spot but the fishing job still being started/completed.
-Added STONE STOOL. Y'all happy!?
-Switched 'Hide Overlay' hotkey from left-shift to left-alt.
-Fixed a UI bug where carried items would show repeating.
-Fixed some pixel perfect issues with season/weather background of the time menu.
-The cursor 'click point' has been moved to match the cursor finger icon more accurately.
-Added temperature system to game. Entities now have body temperature and can freeze to death. This can be avoided by building heat producing props or equipping them with warm clothing.
-Plants are now damaged by cold weather. Each plant has a cold tolerance amount they can withstand. Going below this will damage them over time. If their health drops to 0, they will die.
-Current weather is now shown on the time bar.
-Six new entities: Stradken, Rabbit, Owl, Nightwing, Gharox, Deer.
-Added medium leather.
-Added stone and wood icebox which adds 120 hrs to decay.
-The block temperature will now affect the total decay time of items.
-Added a blueprint to create ice chunks from snow balls at the firepit.
-Fixed an issue where the wrong hotkey was displayed for the 1/5 increment key.
-Cut and harvest are now one job. The overlay will show a green dot when the plant is mature and will produce items.
-Fixed some cursor bugs where the cursor wouldn't show entities as selectable if they were in the air.
-Tuned food decay times to take longer.

As I said, I've got a list of things I wasn't able to get to and I'll be focusing on those to get this build ready for production. There's a lot of UI/tooltip info I need to update and add for communicating temperature better, as an example. Plus, I need to update the tutorial to convey all these new systems.

Once this update is on the production line, I'll probably take a small vacation to regain some energy. When I'm back I'm going to focus on ONLY content for the next big patch. Items, props, events, discoveries and more things for our pals the Ancients. :)

Thanks!

Best,

Waylon

Hello friends!



This is just a quick update to let you know the beta update for the new Tundra biome is pretty much ready to go. I'm going to push it live this Monday, March 30th. The only things it will not have are the new events/underground discoveries. I didn't have time to add those and will be doing so while the new update is in beta. So, those will go in to version 0.9.1.0.

Other than that, it has loooots of new goodies. My Monday post will have a more detailed breakdown of everything that has been added.

There will be a week or two of fixing beta issues and adding some new events for Tundra following this update. I anticipate this update having a lot of strange bugs/issues because it introduces a lot of new systems. After that, I'll move everything to the production branch.

Once this Tundra update is out of the way, I'm going to begin work on a big content/tuning update. By content, I'm referring to, events, items, props, blueprints. I'm going to avoid adding any new UI features or game mechanics. I wish to solely focus on world building as I think this has seen the least amount of attention. I have a unique world and history I want to show you and, so far, I've avoided doing so in order to flesh out the game's foundation.

I also want to take the time to thank all of you for supporting the game and for having so much patience, waiting for me to finish this Tundra update.

Thanks!

Waylon

Friends!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with this update. I'm very close to putting this next version of the game out onto the beta branch.

This week I was wrapping up the temperature system and how it affects entities and the environment. I also updated a lot of the UI to better communicate weather, block temperature, entity temperature, and so on. Here are some gifs showing various UI additions:













This temperature system is neither Celsius nor Fahrenheit. It's just a simple -100* to 100* scale. Anything below 0* starts to freeze and anything above 90 has a chance to catch on fire with 100* being on fire. 50* is the comfort zone for critters. Imagine a nice summer day with a breeze. 70-80* would be more tropical/desert weather and 20-40* would be fall/spring for taiga and voidlands. Tundra has very cold spring/winter/fall seasons but a moderate summer which will allow you to grow things and prepare. Weather and day/night will also affect the current temperature on top of the season.

Entity temperature is affected by the block they currently occupy. This block temperature will lower the entity temperature IF it's lower than the entity's cold tolerance. Cold tolerance is a stat which can be buffed/debuffed by items, inherent abilities, and effects. Humans have a default cold tolerance of 20* and their resting body temp is 50*. This means that if the block temperature drops below 20*, the entity's body temperature will start to lower to match. If it drops below 20* then the entity will gain the freezing status and will start to take damage. Very similar to the hunger/thirsty status. You can keep your entities from freezing by providing warm spaces (torches, fires, braziers, provide areas of heat) or equipping them with better clothing. Wool clothing can drop the cold tolerance to -10* which means the entities won't lose body temperature in weather of -10* or greater. But, if a snow storm sweeps in and drops the temperature to -20*, then you better make sure they have a warm house to hunker down in.

A biome's temperature will also affect things like ice, snow, and plants. Each plant has their own cold tolerance. This means that you'll be able to keep plants alive during winter in a greenhouse with heating and sunlight but probably not if you leave them outdoors in the cold. Likewise, snow and ice will melt when spring rolls around.

So, what's left to add to this update? I'm still working out some of the smaller dynamics of ice and snow melt. After this I need to add the new animals (3-4 new) as well as some new events. This is probably about 2 weeks of work. With those things ready, I'll be able to submit the new version to the beta branch to start to get help finding bugs. :)

That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

Waylon

Hey gang!

I hope you have all had a wonderful week. I've been working hard on the Tundra and wanted to give you a progress update.



The last two weeks I finished adding the core biome content (excluding fauna). This includes 3 new trees, 3 new plants, all the tuning and data for the seasons and weather, and, lastly, ice!



Much like the snow buildup I've shown in previous dev blogs, ice will appear as you get further into cold seasons. Ice has the added functionality of providing a path above water and can be deconstructed in order to gain access to water/fishing again.

As well, regarding trees, I've now made it so you can build in the canopy of trees and have settlers walk around in there. This lets you make tree forts if you so choose.



Lastly, this week, I worked on improving two systems which were a bit buggy or slow. I didn't plan on working on these this week but they were VERY annoying and needed to be addressed. The first is the item spawning. It should now spawn items faster but also with less chance of failing because an open point isn't found. The second is blueprint item requirement awareness for builders. In live builds, the game can receive some pretty heavy framerate drops because settlers will think they can start building a blueprint when, in fact, the required items are not available. Sure, the item exists in the world, but another settler could be carrying it or has reserved it for use in building meaning it really isn't available to build with. These added checks will ensure settlers won't iterate through every single blueprint trying to find the item requirements that aren't there which is very expensive CPU-wise.

This weekend and next week I'll be tackling the temperature mechanics finally!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Waylon

Hey gang!

Wanted to give a quick update on how things are going with the Tundra update.

I'm making really great progress. I've added a new system to the world which lets me display effects on blocks which opens up the possibility of snow/dust/rust/burns and other similar visual treatment. This system is hand because it can transition over previous textures making things like snow have a more natural appearance.

I've combined this new effect system with the weather system which creates a really cool building up progression:



The above showcases how the winter season progresses. As it snows, the snow will build up on surfaces that are open to the sky. I can think of a couple other fun uses for this such as ash falling from the sky if you are in a volcano biome (which I want to add one of these days).

As well--and I know SO many of you have waited for this--I've added in grass regrowth for when it rains:



The grass will fill appear on top of blocks that allow natural growth such as dirt.

This next week I'll be implementing temperature. The core system should be easy to add but I'm guessing I'll need to add a lot of UI to help communicate why snow is melting or things are setting on fire. I anticipate this system will take me a week to add. Once that's up and running, I'll be implementing the biome specific things such as new animals, trees, plants for the Tundra. I'm hoping to have this update ready and good to go for the end of Feb but no promises! ;P

I'm feeling really good about these additions and I think they make the world feel much more alive. Can't wait to share them with you!

Have a good weekend!

Waylon

Hey friends!

This is a rather brief update on game progress and where I'm at.

The last few weeks I was updating some old systems that were poorly written/designed. That's pretty much done but I'm still working out some of the bugs that arise as I go along.

I'm also in the process of adding more natural 'platforms'. Platforms are more of an internal term for any floors that the game can have. For example, grass, wood tile, clay shingles, snow, etc. The bottom face of the game's block, essentially. Natural platforms are ones which appear on their own in the world. The two which I'm working on are grass and snow. Before, grass and snow were simply texture swaps to the grass platform. When I entered a new season I'd swap those textures. Now, those platforms will appear based on the tuning information for weather and season. So, when it rains, grass for that season will naturally grow and appear on dirt blocks. In Winter, if it's snowing, snow platforms will appear on all surfaces exposed to the sky. So, you'd have snow on your rooftops and such. All these weather and season sets are now tuned based on the biome. So, you'll no longer see that weird snow bug in the Tropical biome.

These new changes open up a lot of fun possibilities because I can now have varying seasons per biome, varying season lengths, unique seasons, unique weather per season, etc. For example, I could have the dust storm weather in the Desert spawn things like sand. Or, I could add a unique season to the Voidlands where everything is chaotic, weird plants growing out of control, temperatures swinging about wildly. That's just spitballing, but can see the potential.

After this, I'm jumping onto implementing the temperature system itself. This is what I was describing in my last post. Namely, biomes having a baseline temperature which is affected by weather and season. And then having props control temperature. Heating a house, keeping a greenhouse warm enough to grow crops and so on.

Anyway, the combination of re-writing a lot of the core game and adding in these new features has resulted in a very long wait for a new game update and I apologize for the delay. I know it's easy for games to seem like they are abandoned in this genre but have faith that I'm still trucking along. That's why I like to do my normal weekly updates. This one, however, is just impossible to get out at that normal cadence. Thanks so much for all your patience.

Best,

Waylon

Hello friends!

Happy New Year! Hope you all are having a great 2020 so far.

Today marks one year since I released Odd Realm on the Steam store. I wanted to take the time to thank you for coming with me on this journey to make this little game. Your patience, feedback, support, and friendship has kept me going.
I'm also going to talk about what I'm currently working and what's next for the game but first I thought it would be fun to share some of the game's progress and history.

At the end of 2016 I was working as a Gameplay Programmer at a game studio and I desperately wanted to make a game on my own. I had been saving up for about five years to have enough money to live off of in order to do this. Originally, I had planned on quitting my job to make a little adventure game where you played as this sword-wielding, amnesia-ridden, fella trying to solve a mystery in a strange, fantasy world.


This is the first scene of the game. You awake from a cryostasis in this cave/bedroom.

It was turning out to be a fun prototype but the art demand was WAY over my head. At this time I was also playing a bit of our much loved predecessor, Dwarf Fortress. I loved the game but I couldn't stop thinking about a version of it with cute little pixel people moving around the world. The image in my mind was very clear. What you see in the game today, is exactly what I envisioned.


One of the earliest gifs from around March, 2017. As you can see, I re-did everything... multiple times...

So, I made the decision to hand in my notice and try and take a swing at making a DF-lite game where you simply tried to keep some pixel peeps alive. I really didn't intend for the game to be 1/10000 of the depth of DF. I actually just wanted to make a small experience in about a year and a half and release the game and move on. Ha. Ha. Ha.


lol. 'Home Zone.' Another super early gif testing out zoning.

Well, the more I worked on the game, the more systems and features became necessities. This wasn't a bad thing but I only really had two years to ship the game before money ran out. Cut to two years later, Jan 10, 2019, and the game comes out in Early Access! Even after two years, the game was nowhere near what I wanted it to be. Even today, three years later it's not. And I'm ok with that. It has grown into something I really love and I plan to keep working on it until the Ardyn are done. About ten more years. Joooking, of course.




Some more modern gifs from recently.

That leads into what's next!

This has been my first week back to work full time since the holiday began. I decided to start work on adding temperature mechanics to the game. In order to do so, I need to re-write my core code to be faster to allow for the additional CPU overhead of temperature and such. Unfortunately, this means a longer wait for updates than usual. This update has a required a lot of fundamental changes, so I need to slowly go through and test everything because these changes affect a lot of things.

If all goes well with the temperature feature, I should be able to jump onto implementing the Tundra biome! :)

Thanks again for an amazing year. Here's to many more!

Your pal,

Waylon

Hey everyone!

This is a brief post to let you know that I won't be as active on the forum/discord or uploading any updates until the new year. I'll be away visiting family and I need to take a little break from development. I WAS going to move the beta changes to production before heading off on vacation, but it doesn't seem wise to do so as I won't be available to fix things while away. Plus, there are some performance issues in the beta that shouldn't make it into the production version and I want to fix those when I return.

Lastly, I wanted to wish you all a happy holiday and new year if you're celebrating that. Thank you for such a great year. It truly has been an honor to work on the game with this community. :)

All the best,

Waylon

Hello!

Real quick update to inform you all that I've uploaded a small build with fixes for the following:
-Ore not showing up on the mining overlay.
-Ore being visible when it hadn't been uncovered yet. Unfortunately, already visible ore will still be visible on saves pre-0.8.24.1 as they get saved as visible. Post-0.8.24.1 saves should be good to go.
-Incorrect item text showing when items were reserved via the inventory panel.
-Weeds will now have 'time to mature' displayed on tooltips.
-Changed shift increment to ctrl (plus added a special hotkey option in settings so you can change it yourself) in order to avoid overlays being hidden when trying to increment items by 5.
-Removed some debug logs which would occasionally drop framerate.

Thanks!

Waylon