hardlandgame

[hardlandgame]

Terrain generation progress report

Terrain generation is undergoing drastic changes. It's like a big construction site which has been dug open and now we need to put the pieces back in. Erik has been making the system node based and Kimmo implemented hydraulic and thermal erosion. The latter allows us to use simple shapes and turn them into realistic end results.

Here's a demonstration of what it does for a simple heightmap sketch:

There's some technical challenges involved which we haven't solved yet: 1. Erosion is a relatively slow algorithm to run on CPU so we might have to do it on GPU. The good part is that it looks very cool while it's happening so a minute or two generation time shouldn't be too bad - and once you've generated the heightmap the world can be saved and loaded really fast. 2. The default draw distance is so near that you wouldn't see much of the nice scenery. In order to increase the draw distance without impacting performance we probably need to use tesselation algorithm for the terrain.

We plan to feed this type of "gameplay map" for the system and the erosion will add all kinds of interesting and chaotic secondary details. This way we can guarantee that the world is in a playable shape and not an entirely chaotic force of nature with everything at Mount Everest height or almost entirely filled with water :)

Final road positions can be calculated with the nearly completed height map so they can be nice serpentine roads in mountain range instead of going straight up. Maybe some landmarks can be added later in the simulation so they will be less eroded. (recently built roads and villages etc.)

At the same time we've finished several smaller features:

-New enemy, Giant Spider:

-Ability for characters to see in the direction where their heads are pointing at, so it's no longer just cosmetic thing if characters turn their heads. (For example: Enemies might spot you while turning their head) -Character labels turn red when they go to aggro mode to make it more apparent that somebody is angry. -Characters tolerate more punishment from their own factions before retaliating. -Dialogue boxes have a maximum distance where they are visible. -Player damage feedback animations added.

We're considering doing a smaller update in-between, depends on how long it takes to finish the new terrain generation stuff.

We will keep you updated on how things progress!

-Timo

[hardlandgame]

Hardland Release 4 is available now!

Improved terrain generation and biome system, I think these are easier to demonstrate with pictures:

Desert biome

Snow biome

Jungle biome

Comparison of old and new method. The new method is angle-aware.

It's still a work-in-progress with certain shortcomings, tons of other improvements coming in Release 5.

IMPROVED LANDMARKS

Goblin Forest: Goblin captain, bonfires, foliage growing neatly on the sides of the path.

Improvements to the fog system. Locations can be much more foggy.

Town Generator has new "huge slot" which allows for bigger objects like this tree group to be generated

LEVEL UP Level up mechanic which boosts max health and stamina. You can get experience by completing quests, killing monsters and eating. It's very basic but will be expanded later once we have another round of iteration with it.

STEALING Characters will get aggressive if they notice you stealing from their inventory. GIF animation: 

http://i.imgur.com/2XNUVIV.gif

FIREARMS Ability to use the blunderbuss, it will be improved with proper aiming later. GIF animation:

http://i.imgur.com/YGKvRkn.gif

NEW ENEMIES The forgotten folk roam the lands:

Speaking of which, do you like these characters with hands or without hands?

(they're currently without hands as we don't yet have a severance system which could recognize limb hierarchies and it would look silly as the hand floats in air)

NEW MAP SCREEN This is nowhere near final but a big improvement compared to what it was.

New map screen (the stuff inside the red box doesn't change yet)

Old map screen

MINIMAP New clearer minimap colors and blue north arrow

Don't worry about the overlapping text clutter in the bottom right. At some point we will replace the text info with proper health/stamina/food/experience bars.

NEW WEAPONS Wooden shield and steel hammer

DAMAGE FEEDBACK If characters lose items they will detach from the exact locations, here's a GIF animation of the goblin captain losing his helmet: 

http://i.imgur.com/4KYPe5G.gif

Death animations playback properly

Characters can follow other characters You cannot interact or carry characters which are in aggro mode (For example: in order to carry goblins you have to sneak from behind and lift them) Improved screen space reflections, screen space shadows, motion blur and temporal AA. Shader performance should also be better.

Various smaller tweaks.

Almost all of us are now working on the terrain generation so in the next update we should have support for several textures per biome and the biome count will increase from 8 to 16.

Early Access version is available from Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/321980

[hardlandgame]

HARDLAND Modding Tutorial #1 - Chicken Rampage

Chicken rampage

YOUTUBE VIDEO HERE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7E_QaVj8eg

THIS IS A QUICK TUTORIAL TO SHOW YOU HOW YOU CAN CREATE AN ANGRY CHICKEN ARMY, MODIFY SOME TREE & GROUND TEXTURES AND CHANGE THE WEATHER.

(We're working on a WIKI site with more extensive instructions and examples)

Normally we use Photoshop but I wanted to demonstrate this with free tools.

In the video I'm using GIMP for texture editing. (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/) For text editing I'm using a free text editor called Notepad ++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.6.9.html)

After you're equipped with a text editor you need to locate the asset files. Instructions for locating the asset folder can be found in the video. The video also shows line numbers which have to be edited and what the changes are.

World configuration files are in this folder: SteamApps/common/Hardland/Mods/Hardland/Config/World.txt

Weather configuration files are in this folder: SteamApps/common/Hardland/Mods/Hardland/Config/Weather.cfg

All textures are in this folder: SteamApps/common/Hardland/Mods/Hardland/Textures/

Textures are saved as TGA files and the game automatically converts them into DDS format. Depending on the situation there's two or three texture files for each 3d model. One ending with "Albedo" and another one ending with "Normal". For certain foliage objects there's also an "Alpha" texture.

Hardland uses physically-based lighting and that's why we have the following textures:

ALBEDO Red, Green and Blue channels hold the color information of the object. The Alpha channel holds the Metalness value, where white is 100% metal and black is totally non metal. You can use almost black (4% brightness which has RGB value of 10, 10, 10) for most objects if you have no idea what to use.

NORMAL Red, Green and Blue channels hold the normal map. RGB value of 127, 127, 255 is fine if you don't have tools to do a proper normal map. Alpha channel holds the specular intensity. It defines how sharp the object highlights appear. Alpha value of 0 gives very wide and faint specular highlight, 255 gives a very sharp and bright specular highlight.

ALPHA Red, Green and Blue channels of this texture hold the emission property. It's can be kept completely black because we might remove the feature in future because it's not used much. Alpha channel is the more important channel as it can define the shape of your object. Black means completely transparent and white means completely opaque. You can use this to create tree leaf shapes etc.

The latest version is progressing very well, the town generator in particular has received a considerable improvement. Now the houses are aligned properly to the closest road, there's space for different house sizes, fences and foliage is generated next to the roads etc. (not on the road) There's also slots for towers on the city wall. You can see some of the improvements in these comparison screenshots:

Old Town Generator:

New Town Generator:

(The very first shot and the latter half of the video was made with new town generator, the rest of it was with the old generator)

Cheers, Timo

[hardlandgame]

Hardland Early Access is now available!

The Early Access version can be purchased from Steam for 14.99 USD: http://store.steampowered.com/app/321980/

Keep in mind the game is still very far from finished but these are some of the features we did since the August pre-alpha:

In general we had a very high priority on gameplay systems. Generic character rigs which allows player and NPC's to wear items in various configurations. It means player can wear skeleton shields and weapons and the skeletons can wear the chicken mask etc. The transition to the new system is still ongoing so there's some limitations on what certain characters can wear.

Examples of player equipment configurations:

The inventory and item equipping system is much better than before with all the stats connected to actual data. You can see the Armor value update if you remove armor pieces:

Various skeletons, all equipped with the new rig and item slots:

Accurate damage shapes for all weapons and objects. Here's a screenshot of the collision shapes lined up in Blender:

Body parts have quite accurate collision shapes as well. If pick up an object and if an enemy strikes at you it will likely hit the object you're holding.

Animation system has been rewritten to allow for upper body and lower body direction to be different. For example: strafing while blocking.

Combat AI improvements, the enemies don't stack in one place like they used to. Instead they flow around the player more naturally, though there's still room for improvement in their AI as they get stuck on objects: 

Throwing system is connected to damage so you can inflict damage to enemies by throwing items at them:

There's a better stamina system. Jumping, blocking, lifting and throwing spend stamina.

Currency has been reworked. Instead of coins there are various representations for different monetary values. It's also an optimization because you can display one gold cup instead of 50 gold coins:

Day and night was a bit clunky before. It's been replaced with cleaner solution which can create smooth blends between any weather conditions:

Lots of new objects and foliage:

Main menu has several graphics options so it should run ok even on an older computer.

The world generation is still heavily unfinished and makes the separate elements seem way more unfinished than they are, that's why we've included the Training Grounds sections where you can see more easily how the gameplay mechanics work.

Our next step is to move manpower to the world generation and move it to the next level.

[hardlandgame]

GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGY video

[hardlandgame]

SKELETON CHAMPIONS gameplay

The game has been Greenlit thanks to you awesome people! Still lots of work remains on our side. At the moment we're working hard to get the first playable version to Steam Early Access - it will only be a small taste of the full game we plan on creating.

WHY EARLY ACCESS?

Having a feedback loop with the players is something which allows us to make better design decisions as they are being made - which should lead to a much better game compared to developing it behind a curtain.

BELOW IS A VIDEO TO DEMONSTRATE OUR LATEST PROGRESS

Ilmari Tiitinen composed the first ambient track of music and it can be heard in the video! On the audio front we've also got the basic sound system in place. Temporarily we're using placeholder sounds from our earlier games as we finalize the audio systems. For example it's still missing the ability to fade by distance. That's why in the video you hear these seemingly random loud voices. Once Tapio Liukkonen gets going with his sound fx magic it will sound a ton better and more consistent!

The skeletons are a small tribute to the legendary Ray Harryhausen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoqWAkaC9i0

TECHNICAL BREAKDOWN OF THE VIDEO

We've listened your feedback on combat animations and the whole animation system is in process of getting a big upgrade. In order to sell the "impacts" we also added dynamically created weapon trails which adds lots of motion to the strikes.

New enemies: Skeletons can have different armor and weaponry, they come in many sizes. Some of them are weak, some are headless, some are huge like the Skeleton Champions.

Enemy AI has received a large overhaul: their combat behavior is much more natural as the enemies move around the player and pick their shots.

In addition to turning heads and eyes characters can now turn their upper bodies towards points of interest. In combat it improves the overall feel when characters have a better ability to look at each other.

ITEMS

Items can be switched and they all have unique properties: damage, special spawns, armor and physical size which determine the exact hit area. Players can pick up characters, gravestones, vases, pretty much everything. All that stuff can also be thrown and broken - lifting and throwing stuff expends stamina so player has to be careful when trying to lift heavy objects when in combat.

ITEM SLOTS

Item slots are working, characters drop all their items once they die. The slot list: BeltItem, Body, Hat, Knee_L, Knee_R, Mask, Shoulder_L, Shoulder_R, Weapon_L, Weapon_R and two ring slots.

Texture streaming works and we're using texture compression as well to make it run faster.

For footstep sounds were using sensors which are attached to both feet and once the sensors make a contact with the ground the system plays a footstep sound. It works pretty well even for complex feet motions.

INVENTORY

Inventory screen has more features and is starting function like it's supposed to. Visually it's still very ugly but don't worry - it'll look great once finalized:

It should end up looking more like this mockup:

Dodging and blocking are some of the things we're currently improving. Both will probably be connected to the stamina. You can see experimental version of the blocking animation in the early part of the video.

MAIN MENU

Main menu now has graphics options you can choose from, music and sound fx sliders, invert mouse, invert pad etc.

ICON

There's an actual icon:

"History Channel" look-a-like and the chicken version didn't work out. Latter is fun but feels a bit too much like the Farming Simulator :)

-Timo

[hardlandgame]

CRAFTING MASKS

Wear the chicken mask and all the chicken in the world will like you!

Masks let you hide your true identity. You can get new masks by delivering the required ingredients for the Guild Master. He is world-renowned warrior and taxidermist who resides at the Adventurers' Guild.

Ingredients can be found by slaying & looting creatures. Of course it's harder to find the rare or unique creatures.

Wear the ghoul mask and all the creatures in the world will fear you!