Hardland Release 6 is available now!

WHAT'S NEW IN RELEASE 6:

• The first iteration of the new erosion based terrain system (iteration 2 coming soon!)

• Brand new story generator which randomizes NPC items as well as generates character names, titles, dialogue and simple quests

• New set of younger villagers (men & women)

• Save functionality improved so that player position is now remembered and new world is only generated on request in the main menu

• New dialogue and examine camera

• The merchant has the ability to sell and buy items

• Support for item prices

• New sprinting mechanic which consumes stamina (ala Dark Souls)

• More variants of Town Guards, Forgotten Folk, Goblins Villagers and Wood Elves

• Improved Wood Elf animations and plenty of other smaller art asset tweaks

• Unique carry positions for characters and items

(Note: throwing characters is currently broken)

UI

• Map screen has a much higher resolution than before

• First mockup of the Quests screen (the data is not plugged in yet)

• You can change between the menu screens by pressing M (map), I (inventory) and J (quests/journal).

GRAPHICS

• Optimizations

• Toned down film grain during night

• New system for making clouds

• Improvements to the SSAO

What we're currently working on:

• Lots of fixes to the terrain shape, this was just the first iteration.

• There's a land flow map which needs to be plugged into the texture system.

• We should be able to improve the draw distance without impacting the performance.

• We also have a new terrain brush system which allows us to do dunes for desert biome, it's gonna be more prominent in Release 7.

• Better biome distribution to prevent biomes like desert and snow being next to each other.

• Moving Skeletons and Wizards to the Story Generator, adding more complex quests and fixing the various glitches.

• Adding more character variations, hair color, heads etc.

• Fixing the level up effect so it makes all enemies flee temporarily when it happens.

• Making better use of the new cloud system so different locations can have different clouds. One idea is to use it for a fog like this:

Until next time!

• Timo

PS. This is how the villagers looked at one stage, looks ready for an Assassin's Creed :)