Odd Realm - Sleipnir
Hi hi!
That's right, I've got a release date in sight for the Lost Legends update, July 24th. Things are shaping up well, and I'm hoping to release into beta in a couple weeks to get some testing. Let's see what I've been up to since the last dev log.
I've been working a lot on trying to make the game easier to use and less frustrating. I've got improvements in this update for AI and gameplay, but UI is a big part of the pain that I see players experiencing. So, I've put tons of time towards making things simpler, clearer, and more intuitive.
I've done some clean-up on how uniforms work, and are interacted with in the UI. Players can now create uniforms and assign them to a bunch more options. You can still assign them to control groups and professions, but also many other things like skills, gender, effects, etc. This will be key for players that want entities to switch uniforms when in various states. For example, when in combat, and not.
I'm also making uniform priority clearer to help understand why an entity is using a certain item or not.
It can be confusing understanding what a block 'layer' is, let alone what it contains. Block tooltips now have options to toggle the visibility of layers around the block your cursor is on. In the above gif, you can see me toggling the visibility for the block layer above the one I'm on. This is helpful to see what is above and below the selection I'm about to make.
Additionally, I've increased the size of tooltip icons. This should make things a bit easier to see.
The tooltip also shows what is stacked on the cursor's block. No longer do you need to select a block to see that what plants, platforms, items it has. And speaking of items...
You can expand the block tooltip to show a visualization of its contents. I find this extremely helpful when I want to see contents at a glance. You can still see a detailed list and inventory of items within a block, but this is part of a new 'selections' panel.
Much like the block tooltip, I've done lots of work to make it easier to see important info for an entity. Everything is now compartmentalized based on functionality. Attacks grouped together, survival stats grouped together, status effects grouped together, etc.
Much like the block tooltip, you can expand the window to see more, less important, info. This expanded window shows everything that the entity window did, so I decided to remove that window altogether. You can also now see what rooms, jobs, and skills entities are using/doing from here too. Don't worry, there are still other windows to edit these things on a settlement-wide scale. This is just here if you want to see and edit individual info quickly.
I wrote a whole new system for displaying tooltips/text which is much, much more efficient. Tooltips and UI text were a huge drain on performance, and now it runs very fast. This should provide noticeable FPS gains for a lot of the lower end machines, if not for everyone.
I'm finishing up these last few polish items and tuning tasks. Very excited for everyone to see the new changes. Overall, I think this will be a huge improvement for QoL, but you'll also get lots of new content to check out. It's going to be great!
As always, thank you for reading and for the support!
Waylon
That's right, I've got a release date in sight for the Lost Legends update, July 24th. Things are shaping up well, and I'm hoping to release into beta in a couple weeks to get some testing. Let's see what I've been up to since the last dev log.
More UI stuff???
I've been working a lot on trying to make the game easier to use and less frustrating. I've got improvements in this update for AI and gameplay, but UI is a big part of the pain that I see players experiencing. So, I've put tons of time towards making things simpler, clearer, and more intuitive.
Uniforms
I've done some clean-up on how uniforms work, and are interacted with in the UI. Players can now create uniforms and assign them to a bunch more options. You can still assign them to control groups and professions, but also many other things like skills, gender, effects, etc. This will be key for players that want entities to switch uniforms when in various states. For example, when in combat, and not.
I'm also making uniform priority clearer to help understand why an entity is using a certain item or not.
Block Tooltips (And Layers!)
It can be confusing understanding what a block 'layer' is, let alone what it contains. Block tooltips now have options to toggle the visibility of layers around the block your cursor is on. In the above gif, you can see me toggling the visibility for the block layer above the one I'm on. This is helpful to see what is above and below the selection I'm about to make.
Additionally, I've increased the size of tooltip icons. This should make things a bit easier to see.
The tooltip also shows what is stacked on the cursor's block. No longer do you need to select a block to see that what plants, platforms, items it has. And speaking of items...
You can expand the block tooltip to show a visualization of its contents. I find this extremely helpful when I want to see contents at a glance. You can still see a detailed list and inventory of items within a block, but this is part of a new 'selections' panel.
Entities Tooltip
Much like the block tooltip, I've done lots of work to make it easier to see important info for an entity. Everything is now compartmentalized based on functionality. Attacks grouped together, survival stats grouped together, status effects grouped together, etc.
Much like the block tooltip, you can expand the window to see more, less important, info. This expanded window shows everything that the entity window did, so I decided to remove that window altogether. You can also now see what rooms, jobs, and skills entities are using/doing from here too. Don't worry, there are still other windows to edit these things on a settlement-wide scale. This is just here if you want to see and edit individual info quickly.
Performance Improvements
I wrote a whole new system for displaying tooltips/text which is much, much more efficient. Tooltips and UI text were a huge drain on performance, and now it runs very fast. This should provide noticeable FPS gains for a lot of the lower end machines, if not for everyone.
Final Thoughts
I'm finishing up these last few polish items and tuning tasks. Very excited for everyone to see the new changes. Overall, I think this will be a huge improvement for QoL, but you'll also get lots of new content to check out. It's going to be great!
As always, thank you for reading and for the support!
Waylon
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