Nov 3, 2023

Kindred Fates: Combat Arena - FlyPurpleSky

Design

Our mountains got a face lift this week! Previously, we were using an oversized rock texture, which looked like this:

While this looked decent on large mountains from a distance, it had the downside of looking very blurry once the player got close to it. This was especially noticeable in areas that have small cliffs or ledges, like towns. To fix this, we started by making the rock textures smaller, which increases the image resolution but also increases tiling. Not a good look.

So to combat this, we used the same tool that we use to create variety in the colors of the grass, which paints a secondary texture in a random pattern on top of what was originally there. Below is the result with that secondary rock texture blended in. You can see that the tiling is less noticeable than in the previous 2 images, and the detail resolution is also much better when viewed from close up.
While we feel like this is an improvement, we’re not totally satisfied with how it looks yet, so we’ll continue making adjustments. Let us know what you think!

A sizeable selection of hairstyles has been added! Not only does this give the player character more room for customization, but it also means we can create more variety in our NPCs.
We’ve finished implementing all of the cutscenes for our internal milestone! This was one of our major focuses this sprint, so there have been a lot of developments.
- An important human’s custom model has been implemented in cutscenes, and we’re currently replacing their placeholder model in the overworld.
- A few of our cutscenes needed to be linked together. The way we have it set up right now, it takes some coding changes to ensure that the connected scenes flow together seamlessly.
- We’ve started adding music to certain encounters and cutscenes. It’s really amazing what a difference it makes for the tone of these scenes. We’re still experimenting with a few of them to get the timing and music selection right, but the one that’s finished is... wow.
We’ve made adjustments to the density of our volumetric lighting. It can be a tricky balance- with too high of density the colors in the distance look washed out, but with too low of density we miss out on those gorgeous light rays. With some tinkering, it’s in a good place now. We’ve also added code that allows us to change the volumetric light’s color and intensity at different times of day.
A couple different points of interest have been placed in the biome we’re working on. One of these is a fairly significant location that needed to be populated with set pieces and NPCs.
This week we placed some new Kinfolk spawners and other surprises for the player around the biome. We’ve set specific times of day for certain Kinfolk to spawn, which allows us to create even more variety in a given area.

Development

A major focus this sprint was polishing the feel of multiple characters’ combat by changing which abilities they have (in some cases making brand new abilities), and adjusting different aspects of the abilities themselves. In each of these cases, we’re seeing a noticeable improvement. These Kinfolk are becoming more fun to play as, and more fun to fight against.
All damaging abilities are guaranteed to deal at least 1 damage now. Previously, our damage calculations could round down to 0 in some cases, but this was causing some low level Kinfolk to commonly deal 0 damage with their abilities against similarly leveled opponents.
We added code that can specify a character as a target for NPCs to attack. That way, NPCs won’t attack other characters in the area if we don’t want them to.
Bug! Fixes! Galore! This sprint we found a particularly high number of soft locks that prevented progression while testing. Many of these were related to the new cutscenes. We also fixed issues with NPC headlook and Kinfolk followers. (And plenty of other issues that would be boring to read about.)
This isn’t quite a progress note, but we wanted to share that Rob ran into the team’s first “organically spawned” Phantom Kinfolk yesterday! It was a Lumala, and it made for a pretty cool moment. Unfortunately this was in the editor, so it wasn’t for keeps.

Lexicon

Asset: Essentially any in-game model. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.
Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds multiple times per week to test new changes.
Cutscene: A non-interactive video sequence that occurs between segments of the game and depicts part of the storyline.
Editor: (aka Unity Editor) The program developers use to make changes to the game. Developers can test their changes here before their changes are added to a build.
Greybox: A method used for designing large portions of map, dungeons, or other important areas. It involves constructing the general form of the thing in question using placeholder assets and shapes. It’s like a framework so when the correct assets are ready, they can be placed in the orientation that was already laid out. This allows for other developers to work on and around the Greybox before the final art is finished.
Headlook: Code that tells an NPC to look in a specific direction.
Logic: The programming side of any feature. For example, “cooking logic” would be the base level programming for the cooking mechanic.
NPC: A non-player character.
Overworld: The playable area in the open world exploration part of the game.
Point of interest: An area given special care and attention, intended to draw the player’s interest. An abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods filled with strange notes would be a point of interest.
QA: Quality assurance. The people who test the game and report bugs.
Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.
SFX: Sound effects.
Set piece: A model used in the environment, such as buildings, statues, etc.
Shader: An effect that changes how things visually appear in the game. Shaders can do many things to alter overall appearances.
Soft lock: A situation where the game becomes impossible to progress due to a bug, glitch, or flawed logic.
Spawner: Code that spawns Kinfolk or NPC Summoners into the world. We can give them a multitude of settings to spawn based on time passed, or enemies defeated, etc.
Sprint: A two week period used for organization. Our newsletters are released on the last day of our sprint.
Summoner: The people in Hinterlock who can summon Kinfolk.
Tiling: A noticeable repeating pattern on a model or terrain due to using a texture to cover a large area.
Tooling: Dev tools that help improve efficiency.
VFX: Visual effects. Kinfolk attacks, dust clouds, water splashes are all VFX.
xNode: The software we use for handling our dialogue implementation.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on November 17.

Nov 3, 2023

Community Newsletter: November 3, 2023

Kindred Fates - FlyPurpleSky

Design

Our mountains got a face lift this week! Previously, we were using an oversized rock texture, which looked like this:

While this looked decent on large mountains from a distance, it had the downside of looking very blurry once the player got close to it. This was especially noticeable in areas that have small cliffs or ledges, like towns. To fix this, we started by making the rock textures smaller, which increases the image resolution but also increases tiling. Not a good look.

So to combat this, we used the same tool that we use to create variety in the colors of the grass, which paints a secondary texture in a random pattern on top of what was originally there. Below is the result with that secondary rock texture blended in. You can see that the tiling is less noticeable than in the previous 2 images, and the detail resolution is also much better when viewed from close up.
While we feel like this is an improvement, we’re not totally satisfied with how it looks yet, so we’ll continue making adjustments. Let us know what you think!

A sizeable selection of hairstyles has been added! Not only does this give the player character more room for customization, but it also means we can create more variety in our NPCs.
We’ve finished implementing all of the cutscenes for our internal milestone! This was one of our major focuses this sprint, so there have been a lot of developments.
- An important human’s custom model has been implemented in cutscenes, and we’re currently replacing their placeholder model in the overworld.
- A few of our cutscenes needed to be linked together. The way we have it set up right now, it takes some coding changes to ensure that the connected scenes flow together seamlessly.
- We’ve started adding music to certain encounters and cutscenes. It’s really amazing what a difference it makes for the tone of these scenes. We’re still experimenting with a few of them to get the timing and music selection right, but the one that’s finished is... wow.
We’ve made adjustments to the density of our volumetric lighting. It can be a tricky balance- with too high of density the colors in the distance look washed out, but with too low of density we miss out on those gorgeous light rays. With some tinkering, it’s in a good place now. We’ve also added code that allows us to change the volumetric light’s color and intensity at different times of day.
A couple different points of interest have been placed in the biome we’re working on. One of these is a fairly significant location that needed to be populated with set pieces and NPCs.
This week we placed some new Kinfolk spawners and other surprises for the player around the biome. We’ve set specific times of day for certain Kinfolk to spawn, which allows us to create even more variety in a given area.

Development

A major focus this sprint was polishing the feel of multiple characters’ combat by changing which abilities they have (in some cases making brand new abilities), and adjusting different aspects of the abilities themselves. In each of these cases, we’re seeing a noticeable improvement. These Kinfolk are becoming more fun to play as, and more fun to fight against.
All damaging abilities are guaranteed to deal at least 1 damage now. Previously, our damage calculations could round down to 0 in some cases, but this was causing some low level Kinfolk to commonly deal 0 damage with their abilities against similarly leveled opponents.
We added code that can specify a character as a target for NPCs to attack. That way, NPCs won’t attack other characters in the area if we don’t want them to.
Bug! Fixes! Galore! This sprint we found a particularly high number of soft locks that prevented progression while testing. Many of these were related to the new cutscenes. We also fixed issues with NPC headlook and Kinfolk followers. (And plenty of other issues that would be boring to read about.)
This isn’t quite a progress note, but we wanted to share that Rob ran into the team’s first “organically spawned” Phantom Kinfolk yesterday! It was a Lumala, and it made for a pretty cool moment. Unfortunately this was in the editor, so it wasn’t for keeps.

Lexicon

Asset: Essentially any in-game model. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.
Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds multiple times per week to test new changes.
Cutscene: A non-interactive video sequence that occurs between segments of the game and depicts part of the storyline.
Editor: (aka Unity Editor) The program developers use to make changes to the game. Developers can test their changes here before their changes are added to a build.
Greybox: A method used for designing large portions of map, dungeons, or other important areas. It involves constructing the general form of the thing in question using placeholder assets and shapes. It’s like a framework so when the correct assets are ready, they can be placed in the orientation that was already laid out. This allows for other developers to work on and around the Greybox before the final art is finished.
Headlook: Code that tells an NPC to look in a specific direction.
Logic: The programming side of any feature. For example, “cooking logic” would be the base level programming for the cooking mechanic.
NPC: A non-player character.
Overworld: The playable area in the open world exploration part of the game.
Point of interest: An area given special care and attention, intended to draw the player’s interest. An abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods filled with strange notes would be a point of interest.
QA: Quality assurance. The people who test the game and report bugs.
Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.
SFX: Sound effects.
Set piece: A model used in the environment, such as buildings, statues, etc.
Shader: An effect that changes how things visually appear in the game. Shaders can do many things to alter overall appearances.
Soft lock: A situation where the game becomes impossible to progress due to a bug, glitch, or flawed logic.
Spawner: Code that spawns Kinfolk or NPC Summoners into the world. We can give them a multitude of settings to spawn based on time passed, or enemies defeated, etc.
Sprint: A two week period used for organization. Our newsletters are released on the last day of our sprint.
Summoner: The people in Hinterlock who can summon Kinfolk.
Tiling: A noticeable repeating pattern on a model or terrain due to using a texture to cover a large area.
Tooling: Dev tools that help improve efficiency.
VFX: Visual effects. Kinfolk attacks, dust clouds, water splashes are all VFX.
xNode: The software we use for handling our dialogue implementation.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on November 17.

Nov 3, 2023

Lost Legends Expansion - Nov 2023 Dev Diary

Odd Realm - Sleipnir

Hey gang!

Progress on the next update is sprinting ahead. I'm working hard to get it out as soon as I can and I'm pleased with where it's going. I'm starting to approach a point where I feel like the game is getting close to its 1.0 content and feature requirement. I want to talk about that towards the end of this post. First, let's take a look at some of the new additions to the game...

Kingdoms

Players will have the option to start a kingdom when they begin a new game. After selecting a starting loadout for your game, players will need to select a point on the map to spawn their settler caravan. Once spawned, they can move this party around the overworld map. This will use up the party's resources and may encounter events. The party can then settle the tile they occupy, which claims the tile as their kingdom. If another kingdom claims that tile as well, players will need to defeat any hostile entities in it. This effectively declares war on that kingdom. Choose wisely where you claim kingdom territory.

Players can expand their kingdom territory by sending out parties to settle or claim new tiles. As well, players can send out envoys to interact with other kingdoms to establish trade and relationships.

I'm also designing leadership roles so players can choose how their kingdom is run. Each race will have their own types of leadership to choose which provides unique bonuses:
Humans - King/Queen
Gwdir - Gwnvayth (Matriarch)
Tomek - Chief
Ancients - Primus
Ardyn - Dominus

I'm currently working on a lot of these features, so please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see in the game related to kingdoms!

Labels, Overlays, And Additional UI Options

You'll notice that there is a new additional to the HUD which lets you view lists for things like overlays, labels, selections, and more. This helps clear up the bottom bar from having a million buttons.

Labels

Labels are a new UI feature which detail some of the things in the world, which include: entities, and overworld objects like nations, parties, and tiles. Players can edit each type of label to display specific information. For example, only show the level and profession on an entity label. You can click labels to select the object they represent.

As well, zoom level changes what details are shown so that the maps don't get cluttered with 100 labels.

Overlays

You can also edit what types of overlays are visible. For example, nation borders on the overworld map. Other overlays like jobs, rooms, etc, will be in this list as well.

Selections

Sometimes it's hard to select entities when they are all stacked in a group, so I've added a list that displays entities for your current selections, control groups, roles, and overworld parties.

Multi-threaded Pathfinding (Beware! Technical mumbo jargon ahead)

TLDR; Faster, more precise pathfinding.

For those that are not familiar with threads, let me try to explain. In the old version, when an entity wanted to get across the world, it would start a pathfinding process. Depending on the distance to the target, this could be extremely slow. And, the game would have to wait for this to complete. I had some performance helpers which would delay a pathfinding process if it was too slow (to avoid huge lag spikes), but it meant pathfinding could take a really long time to calculate. Now, in the new version, pathfinding uses 'multi-threading'. Think of a thread as a pathfinding job. The game issues pathfinding jobs to each of the CPU's cores to process in the background without blocking the main game 'thread'. So, the more cores your PC has, the more background pathfinding jobs it can do. As a bonus, these processes are incredibly fast. So, not only do the jobs process in the background, they finish at blazing speed.

This should improve a lot of the pathfinding performance and also fix a lot of pathing inaccuracy I had before, due to some hacks I had to keep your machines from melting into slag.

Development Timeline and Plans

OOOOoook. Time for some real talk. I've been incredibly fortunate to work on Odd Realm for SEVEN YEARS. Wow. I didn't really know how to make a full game when I started. I've had to learn a lot about game design, art theory, shaders, and code architecture. It has been the most challenging thing I've undertaken. By far. And that's why it has taken seven years to get this far. You've been incredibly patient and supportive during this whole journey, and I thank you. Seriously, it would not have been possible without this community. Thank you so, so much!

With that said, I'd like to talk about the 1.0 of the game. It is my goal to have 1.0 done early next year (2024). Hopefully January. Now, I'm going to try my best to get all five races into the game for that date. But, and to be absolutely transparent, I might need to release some things like the Tomek after this version. I'm at the point where I need to start delaying certain features for polish and tuning to make a good 1.0 candidate.

So, why the push for coming out of early access and releasing the 1.0? I want to continue working on Odd Realm for years and years. I love working on it. But, my savings can only take me so far. The game needs to release 1.0 to see any kind of revenue which would support its future development. So, ideally, features like Tomek (if they can't make it!) will still come into the game, just in the update immediately after 1.0.

Anyway, these are all big IFs. Who knows what the future holds. I just want to make sure I'm always giving you, the community, full disclosure. Thank you again for supporting the game with your feedback and positive vibes. I'm trucking along happily on things and hope to have a new beta update out soon. Stay tuned! You all rock!