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Added: 2 new slime types. A hardy pink slime, and a splitter slime.
Added: 3 new randomized weapon racks to the dungeon which can spawn at set locations.
Added: Korean language support to the game. TLoH should now be able to support KR projects.
Change: Weapons will now equip directly to the hand on pickup if no other weapon is currently equipped to the weapons given slot.
Change: Converted settings data and save/load backend to C++. Note old settings data will be reset.
Change: Character creator environment buttons now highlight on hover
Change: Weapon equip anchoring. Weapons should now sit in the player hands better.
Fix: Issue where returning to main menu after death and then going straight back to the sandbox from the main menu would result in a softlock. Issue caused by player HP not being reset on sandbox startup via main menu.
Fix: Mislabelled header on Settings>Controls page. Section was labelled "Combat" when it should have been "Dialog".
Fix: Issue where settings dropdown menus were not highlighting on select
Fix: Issue where the transition triangles would rarely get stuck if the game window was not focused. I've added a fallback check so it should complete the transition even when the window is not focused.
Fix: Issue where odyssey audio tracks were named incorrectly in the Audio compendium
Fix: Issue where equipping an item will unequip the current equip but won't actually equip your selected item until the item currently slotted is unequipped, forcing you to have to click on the item you want to equip twice.
Fix: Issue where the lock on marker was not appearing when hovering over enemies.
Fix: Issue where TLoH projects would not load.
Translation Support
This build introduces language translation support. This means that the game can begin translation to other languages. Translation support doesn’t cover all of the text in the game yet, but it already covers the overwhelming majority of it.
This feature was going to be developed post-combat update(s), however it has been pushed back so many times, I felt it wise to slide in ahead of schedule. It has waited long enough.
If you know a second language or are interested in translating the game to your mother tongue, let me know over on the discord. We have a little channel where translators are hanging out, and we’d love to have you!
Combat News
Also in the news, I’ve added a couple of new slimes. Nothing major. Just a new splitting type, and a simple little tough type. These are very rough test enemies I cobbled together and will certainly require further tuning and some unique design touches if they are to become serious monsters.
I am now working towards the long awaited golem enemy. I’m not sure whether it will be quite as cute as the slimes but I’ll try my best~ After I’ve made this little golem, I would like to make a couple more, at differing tiers of difficulty (i.e. a mid tier golem and a mid-high tier golem). Honestly, I think tuning combat on the player side should be priority before adding more mobs, as the current combat system doesn’t feel as great as I’d like it to, and clunky player vs inherently clunky enemy probably won’t make for good gameplay.
Finally for new additions I’ve made what I hope will be considered a quality of life improvement to weapon equipping. Now, weapons will equip directly on pickup if no other weapon is currently equipped to the weapons given slot. This means that if you drop your weapon, you can pick it up and get back into the fight immediately without having to fiddle around with items in your inventory.
Upcoming Changes
Aside from new MOBs, there are a few combat adjacent objectives I want to check off in the coming weeks.
Firstly, picking up loot and other drops right now feels a little weird. To resolve this, I plan on having 2 ways to pick things up. There will be precision pickup, where you hold right click to aim, and then pick up. The second is proximity pickup, where you have the option of picking up (or interacting with) the closest thing your character is facing towards. This would make picking things up far quicker than the current raycast method, and offer more accessibility to controller users (once support is added there).
Next is the issue of dropping ones weapons. I’ve set things up so you drop weapons on ragdoll. The reason this exists is so I can have enemies blast you with magic beams and throw boulders at you causing you to ragdoll and drop what you’re holding. We may not have scabbards yet, but weapons will finally be getting attached to the player back directly so they won’t fall when sheathed even if you ragdoll. This will make dropping things a lot less frequent. Once we have an enemy that can ragdoll the player, I would like to experiment with having your items drop based on player stats and strength.
While we’re on the topic of stats, weapon stats are to be added fairy soon, and will make the different grades of weapon a lot more impactful.
Last but definitely not least, the final major priority for combat (for now) is the overhaul to combat animations and move sets. I want to completely round out melee sword play and may also touch on gun aiming. As mentioned in previous updates, a point of focus will also be improvements to torch held animations.
And So It Continues
These are just the major priorities. I’ll be checking off other objectives in the background in as we move forward, (such as save slots, enemy drops, enemy spawns in dungeons, trait development, crafting system prep, e.t.c). Projecting a little father, after I’ve improved sword play, we will be getting some spells.
That’s all from me for now. I hope to be back here soon. Thank you all for following along. Please be sure to let me know your thoughts, or if you have any comments and questions.
The dungeon cleanup/unification phase is mostly complete. As for a general overview of what is in this update, we have;
New weapons (axes, staff, spear, swords, sledgehammer, daggers -- placeholder descriptions and stats for the time being)
New materials (gold, arka crystals)
New and reworked dungeon rooms
A dungeon “Goal” room which will teleport you to the start of a new dungeon
Unified and cleaned up dungeon aesthetic
Controls page (note, rebinding will be saved for later)
Item framework rewrite (note, hot swapping items is a little weird right now. I will be correcting this in the next patch)
Lootable gold and coin piles
General dungeon optimisations
We stand on really solid ground, ready to begin introducing puzzles, mobs and more gameplay focused content.
It’s The Little Things – Areas To Improve
After play testing the dungeon myself post clean-up, I’ve noted a few minor additions/alterations I’ll need to make on the side. I haven’t produced nearly as many shelf variants as I would like, and there really should be more loot/clutter spawners scattered throughout the map. Some shelf loot will remain unintractable until I add more. There are also some minor design issues here and there which need to be fixed (mostly to do with skirting around door link points). I also skipped updating the pink fluid rooms as I felt they were in a good enough state, but some minor detailing and a lighting rework would go a long way.
I’ll see what can be done over the weekend, and may issue a little patch at the start of the new week.
Onwards & Upwards
I wasn’t able to completely resolve the engine issues of last week, however, I have gotten better at working around them. At this point I’m holding out for the next engine update to see if that fixes things, and if not a new PC. While disruptive, thankfully, these crash issues don’t bleed over to builds themselves.
Next on the agenda is combat! I will return with more on that soon. For now, I hope you enjoy taking in the new sights.
Be sure to let me know what you think! I’ll see you soon…
Repetition hurts dungeon quality, especially when it concerns feature rooms. It’s not only the case that seeing the same rooms over and over diminishes their value. To a greater extent it also hampers the navigability of dungeons, and limits the amount of variety you can have in a given level as each tile placed pushes you closer to the dungeon’s max size.
To resolve this issue I’ve introduced a tile limit parameter. We can now specify the number of times each individual tile can appear. How does this benefit generation, I hear you ask? Basically, if a tile can only appear a fixed number of times per level, once the limit for that tile has been reached, the dungeon generator will be forced to pick from the remaining set which have yet to reach their limit. This forces the generator to use the full breath of our tile set rather than repeating the same tile placement over and over. This in turn ensures that across multiple generations, each level should feature a similar level of variety.
I’ve already notice a significant improvement in generation quality. There are less endless hallway levels. The appearance of rarer tiles is more predictable.
That being said, there are layers to repetitiveness. Later I will need to tackle repetitiveness across multiple levels. We’re currently sitting at around 20-30 room tiles, and I think to have a multi-level dungeon remain interesting across multiple runs I should be aiming for around 90-100, though this is before evaluating the potential replay value puzzle rooms could hold.
Zoning & New Areas
Alongside this addition of tile limits, a few bedroom, dorm rooms, and hallways later -- the first real sub-zone has begun to take form. At the moment it's just a dorm/barracks area, but I intend to add more rooms which will spruce up the zone. I was thinking this zone could be the “living space” for whatever demonic denizens call this dungeon home. I’m considering adding a lounge, and bathrooms, which themselves could link to a bathhouse or training yard.
I wanted to show this off because it adequately demonstrates this biome idea I’ve spoken of in previous updates. Once we have more prison tiles, sewer tiles, and garden tiles, I’ll be able to do a similar thing there.
Room Decoration & Variation
Thanks to your generous support I was able to get my hands on some new assets which integrate nicely into the target aesthetic. I've gone and made stuff like desk clutter, shelf clutter, and beds semi-randomized, therefore, there will be some minor differences each time a room, desk or shelf pops up. A lot of the clutter (i.e. money, weapons, potions, bottles, etc.), I do plan to make lootable later. This is a part of what will be worked on in the run up to 0.12.0-A.
Better Chests
No longer will you need to worry about being flash banged when opening a chest (that woud make for a funny trap). I made an improved animation with some extra SFX. It’s quite wondrous if I do say so myself. We also have some variant chest modes to work with. I'll either link chest design to loot grade or location. It would be good if I could convey to the player whether or not a risky to reach chest is worth their time.
Pink Fluid Fixes & Additions
The TF fluids were found to be harbouring some bugs. Peen length reduction was not being made completely visible to the player, and voice pitch / modification was found to not be working due to an error in the script. These issues have now been fixed.
The fluids have also been rebalanced to ensure the various changes move at a similar rate. Prior to this, hip and thigh changes were developing far too slowly. Additionally, there is now some progression. In the case of male characters, certain changes won’t occur until peen length has been reduced to a certain level. This does mean you can now tank most changes by maintaining a large enough shlong. I’ll come back and refine this in a later update.
As for additional changes, I’ve rounded out the feminization status effect with waist size reduction, nip size increase, and face feminization. It is now a complete genderbender. Finally, the innate Magu trait has been factored into the status effect.
Additional Changes & Fixes
Updated the bullet impact VFX to be more in keeping with the game style.
Updated potion bottle design. I've wanted something like this for a while. Different potion sizes are now a lot more distinct in appearance.
TF sewers now feature platforms which are totally safe and you can totally use to avoid the pink liquid. Totally.
New TF sewer room tile.
New library sub-room tile.
Bullets are now less likely to phase through surfaces they’ve been set to collide with.
You will no longer get stuck and soft locked when running into the corner of a physics door.
Player description in the character creator and reflection screen is no longer broken. Shorthand tags used only for the player are not recognised by the new tag detection introduced in 0.11.0-A. The tags have now been updated to use the regular format. Note, tags visible in the Short reflection description are just placeholder. The system is working as intended.
Minor changes to entrance and prison design.
Coming Up
It’s time for a clean-up and optimisation pass. I recognise there’s definitely a disparity in quality between some of the older and newer rooms, as well as inconsistencies in texture style, lighting, and models. Like I did for the last major sandbox map update, I’m going to strive for unification and consistency.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, there will also be new loot and weapons coming in. This is all in anticipation for what I want to be focusing on next. That being combat, crafting and cooking. These are all tied to one another. Combat improvements, monster drops, new mobs, crafting and cooking. After the clean-up phase, that’ll come next.
There are a few other things on my radar which I may get to in the next update or update after. Save slots (mostly for character creation atm), the controls page, haste potion, and torch animations. Next update will drop in a couple of weeks, so my hope is that I'll have time to make some headway on other things.
That's all for now. Thank you all for joining me today. I wish you all a lovely rest of your weekend. Till next time~
Hear ye, hear ye! A new update has arrived for thee. Care to give it a try? If you haven't already, be sure to check out the new Mini Log for details on this update~
I've been hard at work cleaning up all the rooms which were still in a bit of a prototype state, and I’ve begun to fill out those room interiors. There’s no time to loose so let’s get right into it.
The garden/courtyard area looks incredibly different. So different I highly doubt anyone realised this is what it was going to be from the initial block out alone. I wanted to create this as a kind of safe zone. A place where you might be able to cook and set camp within the confines of the dungeon. It also has an increased chance of connecting to a pool of restoration.
The generator can now take multiple variants per tile and this is the first of many. What started as a barracks turned into something closer to a quarters / communal area. Still a work in progress. The room feels a bit too open. More work will be done on this.
A couple of you have rightly mentioned that the pool rooms were looking a little bare. I couldn’t agree more and decided to do a bit more work on it. I'll probably fill all those empty cubbies with candles and possibly have some loot spawn inside them. Around the ground I plan to have destructible pots containing coin. There’s more to be done, but even in its current state, it’s looking much better than before.
Taking a step outside the pool room...Viewing the door from the gardens...
This whole redesign forced me to adding a new function for the generator. Since the standard door was too big for the new pool room, I've introduced a system which lets me control the general door type for specific rooms (e.g. Big, Medium, Smol, etc.). I could use this to force locked doors, gates between areas, and force special doors to spawn in front of "boss rooms". More commonly, I'll be applying small doors to bedrooms, study’s, and recreational type rooms. The kind of rooms you'd expect to not have giant grandiose doors leading into. Also on the topic of doors, I've added a wall variant which appears as a boarded up door. This is just for aesthetic more than anything, but it does build the illusion of a dungeon larger than it really is. Leaving the wall of a connection point blank can look pretty boring, hence my move to have them randomly spawn torches, or chests in front of them. More wall variants will come in the future to give dungeons more visual variety.
The prison has been improved. I would say it looks pretty empty right now. I may add more verticality to the room. Cells running up the walls or cages hanging that you can platform over. I found my staircase models were a little too short in some cases. As you can see above, it doesn't quite reach the ground on its own. I had to add a little extra step. I'll hop back into the modelling chambers and figure things out. Some more work to be done here, but it's coming together nicely.
A quick note on my long term plans for the prison. Like the TF sewers, this room is meant to eventually act as its own biome. We'll eventually have more prisony type blocks branching off of it so it manifests as s seemingly contiguous prison block.
There are a few more rooms which have been cleaned up. Spiral staircase, double staircase, the balcony treasure room. I've put the arena to one side for now, and removed it from generation. It will come back once I've cleaned it up and it's ready to house a boss.
One last note on generation. I've tweaked the spawn parameters so that for the current update, some of these newer rooms and designs will be easier to fine. It's not representative of what final generation will be like.
Status Effect Updates
This is the last thing I was working on just before pushing this update out. The status effect display now has a timer and shows the name of the status effect on screen.
Also, you might have noticed a new status effect. Slow. This status effect slows you down. I added this to slow down the player when wading through liquids. Being able to sprint through liquids at full speed does look pretty weird.
On the backend I have developed the additional status effect Haste, which as the name implies speeds you up. I will be bringing this in as a potion. Maybe in the next update. We will see.
Torches
I've added a new handheld item to the game. You can pick it up at the entrance to the dungeon. It’s a torch! When you're holding it, it lights up your surroundings. At the moment it self-ignites. Maybe in the future I'll add more interactive functionality, such as give you the ability to set things on fire. At the very least, I should make it so that torches extinguish when in liquid.
There are no dedicated "torch held" animations at the moment. It currently uses the same animations as a held sword. I am working to fix this. While we're on the topic of animations, I've made it so that when the player health is reduced to 1 heart they’ll enter a critical health state and hunch over like they're injured. I may add more visual effects and sfx to accompany this in the future.
Fixes
We love to see fixes. The dialog issue affecting the peen tags has now been resolved. I found this was caused by a flaw in my tag detection code. Tags are composed of 3 parts. Prefix, character id, and suffix. For example "entity.pc.p" is the raw tag for a characters johnson. "entity." is the prefix, "pc" is the character id, and ".p" is the tag suffix. When the system tried to extract the id by searching for the prefix and suffix, the ".p" component of ".pc" was mistakenly identified as the suffix which in turn caused the whole tag to be thrown out, and for me to realize my code was terribly flawed.
Long story short, yesterday I ripped out all the tag detection code and replaced it with a simple regex. Way more reliable, a few hundred lines shorter and easier to debug. It should have been regex from the get go, but hey, c'est la vie.
In other fix news, I've unbroken the auto close on sandbox doors. That being said, I may change those to physics based doors, as I like the feel of them, and contrary to appearances, the player does not have telekinesis, yet. Finally I've rebuilt the broken lighting for the character creator main scene.
Upcoming
And that brings us to the end of the mini log, which ended up being not so mini. I intended for this to be a quick overview, but this has turned into quite the log.
I have a number of more room variants lined up. Both for regular rooms and obstacles. I'll also be making some updates to the existing TF obstacle rooms. I do want to address the issue of repetition soon with a parameter which will restrict the maximum number of allowed instances of a given room per level. I couldn't do it this week as it turned out to be more of a design banaza then variant development, but next week I'm going all in on room variants.
Not this week, but maybe next week once the new variants are in, I'll need to go on another optimisation tirade. This time focused on material bloat and size reduction (optimisations, not the fetish).
Please be sure to let me know what you think! We're on a roll right now. I'll do my best to keep it up. I'll be coming out with a meta post early to mid-week on the topic of update cadence, and goals. Next build next weekend. I'm shooting for saturday.
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