- Addressed the problem of players being able to fall out of the gameplay area. - Fixed the issue where a player couldn't attack when their attack was interrupted. - Improved Chola's blocking speed, reducing the delay in blocking attacks. - Resolved the combat music loop issue. - Corrected the bug in mini-boss combat mode where Chola didn't consistently remain in combat mode. - Restored the missing waterfall sound effect. - Eliminated an issue where players could become stuck when attempting to climb the edge of a ledge. - Added indicators for miniboss attacks. - Rectified the animation issue where Chola's finisher move failed to connect with enemies. - Adjusted the direction of the parrying visual effects (VFX) to their correct position. - Ambience music loop fix
This document aims to offer more insights into the current state of Fractured Veil for those considering its Early Access purchase. We promised transparency and this is our way of showing our commitment to it.
Being in the Early Access phase, Fractured Veil is a game that is still undergoing significant development, therefore we have several tasks ahead of us before achieving a complete release. After careful consideration, we decided to welcome new players following the completion of our Unreal Engine 5 upgrade, enhancements in performance, and the attainment of a stage where the product is enjoyable.
Community feedback is at the core of the development process, and that’s why having an active player base sending suggestions and bug reports while playing the game is crucial during the Early Access phase.
We are aware that the broader Steam Community will play our game differently compared to the way our Kickstarter Backers did, resulting in very different feedback and data than before, with some new features getting reprioritized over others. More importantly, the influx of new players will make servers thrive, giving us a better idea of how the community engages with the game world when there is a lot going on.
What is included in the first release of Fractured Veil?
As reported in our Steam Early Access notes:
In-depth base building and tiered crafting system
Land Claiming System (Totems) and PvE-Only Zones.
Mutant siege system with base destruction
Dungeons ranging from narrow to open spaces
Harvesting, Hunting, Scavenging to eat, drink and survive
Day/Night Cycle with Dynamic Weather
Hawaiian Weapons, Tools, Clothing, Armor and Items
RPG-inspired Player Progression with Talents, Abilities and Skills
Open world featuring 64 square kilometer map based on the topography of Maui
Complex yet intuitive Character Customization worthy of any role-player
Basic implementation of Fishing.
Our 24/7 Live-Streaming AI Drone.
So, what are the biggest pain points according to the devs and the testers?
Audio / Music
While we did an entire audio system long ago, this unfortunately broke during the engine upgrade. Environments will feel quieter than we want.
We have recently hired a dedicated Sound Designer who will do significant work to improve on this.
Animations
There is a lot to be done on the animation front. We will work on improving the current animations, however animating new assets like weapons, armor and items will have priority.
Performance
We did a big series of performance improvements since we upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.1, making the game run on a wide range of recent graphic cards, targeting a GTX 1070 as the absolute minimum specs for 1080p Low @ 30fps.
We still have some stutters in some areas, especially when loading new zones, these will be improved over time.
The game will soon be upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.3, which has a series of features that should help us significantly improve the current performance of the game.
Lack of Base Defenses
While we do have some spike/metal barricades that can make it harder for raiders to loot your base, we don’t really have systems to defend it while offline. We will partner with our community to find some solutions to base defenses and we’ll share more when the time comes. Until then, the best place to build a long-term base would be a PvE Area.
Expect a dedicated update about this in the future where we talk about our plans for base defense systems.
Dungeons
Our current iteration of Dungeons is more of a demo of what has to come, we have tons planned for them and still much to do. Some are playable from start to finish (Like Sewers and Caves) and others are just partially implemented (Mines).
Currently, Dungeons are shared worlds. Later we will work on instanced Dungeons.
Lack of Social Features
We unfortunately underdelivered on this aspect. At the beginning of Early Access we won’t have any Steam Friend List implementation and it won’t be possible to queue together.
If you and your friends are on the same Veil (server), you may invite each other to an in-game party, play together, give them permission to your base and Totem, and quest together.
To play together with your friends, make sure to select the same region and server in the main menu. If you are currently playing on a server different from your friends, you may change the server from the Veil Travel Station inside the Thorcon. More information is in the FAQs on our Discord.
Lack of Story Quests
While we have a lot of lore written for the game and are currently working on implementing docs and collectables, we don’t have a full story questline yet.
We will implement different quest types along the way, but most of those are planned for the final release of the game. As development continues, you will hear more about this.
We are still working on this. When we implement skins, it will be via Steam DLCs. We are not planning on having paid skins, but we will have some exclusive cosmetics as rewards.
Some Kickstarter Benefits like the Shrine of Missing and Pet Pictures are already in-game.
PvP Balance
PvP did not play a major factor in the game development before Early Access. We know it’s a big aspect of the game that many are excited about, so it is fair to say that changes will happen.
We will likely work with the most dedicated community members to make sure we get proper feedback on everything PvP including Balancing, raiding, hit registration, and so on.
Frequency of Updates
We know many would love us to do even more updates. Paddle Creek Games is a very small team, with a very limited amount of resources.
We hope to continue increasing the size of our team as the game grows, delivering bigger and better updates over time.
Our current plan is to deliver at least one update each month.
Voice Chat
For the longest time, our testers have had the option to use voice chat in-game. This wasn’t working the way we wanted and never reached a quality that was satisfactory to us, not to mention being heavy on performance.
We have decided to remove this feature for the time being.
Overall Feel
The game will have bugs, and we are going to list them in the patch notes. We can’t list every single bug in there and we encourage everyone to join our discord and use /report to share their findings with us.
The game will have some degree of quirks. From the character creator to some animations, hitboxes and overall feel. These are parts of the game we will constantly improve on as we keep developing Fractured Veil.
What is Paddle Creek Games doing to address all of the above?
Game development is unpredictable and incredibly hard. We had our set of challenges but we have found that being transparent and keeping an open communication to our community has helped. We delayed Fractured Veil more times than we wanted, but with each delay, our community has only shown extreme respect and support. For that, we couldn’t be happier.
So, answering the question:
Keep working on the features listed in our roadmap
[/h3]- This is only the first public build of Fractured Veil and the team is hard at work to implement more features and fixes to the game- You can find our updated roadmap in its dedicated article here
Keeping the transparency high
[/h3]- No NDA Approach - Everyone is free to talk about everything.- Frequent Dev Blogs and updates.- Open conversations via Discord and Socials.
Staying Humble
[/h3]- We are really trying our best to show precisely what we are building. - Under-promise and (possibly) over-deliver.
Growing our team
[/h3]- We intend to make our team bigger.- Our resources are not infinite, we are indie, and the speed at which we grow will mainly depend on how Fractured Veil will perform over the first year.
Partnering with our community
[/h3]- Focus groups to gather feedback on specific topics.- Form more partnerships and collaborations with even more Content Creators.- Grow the number of Ambassadors and Community volunteers.- Frequent Feedback Surveys to gather insights on what’s important to our players.
Setting the expectations right
[/h3]- While we can’t guarantee much, we want the community to understand our broader vision for Fractured Veil. - We are committed to updating you on all the latest features coming to the game with regular communications and articles on the state of the development!
Closing words
We still have tons to do and we are just at the beginning of our journey together. We sincerely hope this document has proven our commitment to transparency, cleared some doubts, and possibly contributed to making an informed decision when it comes to buying Fractured Veil in Early Access.
If you still have some other questions, please feel free to ask in our Discord Server.
-Fixed character swapping ladder bug -Fixed overworld wagon animated while paused -Fixed Win32 texture bug -Fixed player damage false pausing bug -Fixed end of level coin count bug -Fixed character swapping light bug -Added sound effect to character swapping
Hi everyone. I've decided to release the next build!
**Old save files will no longer work with this build! (sorry)***
First and foremost I want to note that the combat system (or lake thereof) is nowhere near complete. Since it will take some time to fully flesh out the combat, I didn't want to hold up all the other changes I've been working on. I have some plans to make combat more interesting and will release more details in the future.
Here's what's included with this patch:
Item quality levels: There are 5 levels of quality for crops and foraged items. Currently, the quality you receive is based on your farming or foraging skill. There are still no quality levels for fish but maybe in the future there will be. The sell value of these goods has been decreased significantly for lower quality levels so money may be harder to come by in the early game. Every step up in quality is a 15% increase in the sell value of the crops.
Fertilizers: There are 3 fertilizers in the game now. Water Sipper Fertilizer which causes tiles to retain water so you only have to water once for the lifetime of the crop. Weed Ward Fertilizer which will prevent weeds from growing on the crop. And High Yield Fertilizer which will give you a chance to double your harvest output. Fertilizers can be bought from Melody in any season. They can only be applied on tilled soil or tilled soil with seeds. Once the crop has grown a single day, you will no longer be able to add fertilizer. The type of fertilizer will show up in the crop tooltip when you hover over so you'll know what fertilizer your crops have. There may be more fertilizers in the future.
Combat: There is a new area in the mines with monsters. If you want to avoid combat you can still use the old mines as they were. The sword 'tool' has been changed to the sickle. There are 3 new types of swords that can be bought from Melody that simply do increasing amounts of damage. You'll have to carry these in your inventory and use them like a regular item if you want to do more damage. If you finish the tutorial, wispy will accompany you in the slime-infested mines and he will shoot projectiles at the enemies. I will be exploring adding companions to the game as well as stats for your companions and yourself. Also hopefully I'll be adding rare swords and equipment for combat as well. And more dungeons in the future. Currently the slime mines are simply another way to mine ore but that will change later. Also, with combat I've added health. So now there is a health and energy for your player. If your health or hp drops to 0 you will pass out and wake up the next morning with your energy diminished.
Beach Shack: You can buy the beach shack and sleep there if you like. Just interact with the sign in order to purchase it (if you're rich enough). If you sleep there, you'll wake up there the next day of course. You can hear the waves from inside which is cool too.
A map: The map tab is added to the Menu UI (hotkey m). Each tile represents a scene. There's a star that indicates where you are currently. When you hover over the tile, some details about the scene are shown along with the NPCs that should be in the scene at the current time. The map doesn't drill into each and every scene. For example, if an NPC is in their house, they will be shown to be in the Town scene (or whatever scene their house is located in). The map is a little crude but I hope it is effective enough for now.
Also: Many other bug fixes and improvements. Probably some other things I'm forgetting to mention at the moment.
This patch addresses some technical issues and a few more frustrations encountered to further polish the game. We thank you for taking the time to report all your suggestions and any issues.
No crossroads. You can enter the Difficult Toilet by clicking on the lord near the door of the party. The default level after the party is a Toilet Easy.
