Hello everybody!
We are happy to announce that Northern Lights version 0.2.0 is now LIVE on STEAM.
This is our first major update, which is focusing on improving stability and core functionality of the game, along with various fixes to issues that have been reported by the community.
We are also aware that the development pace seems a bit slow between the updates but we want to remind everyone that there is a lot of work involved in fixing and improving the game, and we are only three developers working on the game full time!
Changelog 0.2.0
- Added support for changing control bindings. (and preparation for future controller support)
- Added support for inverted mouse look settings.
- Added support for metric-imperial unit conversion .
- Added support for skipping cutscenes in game.
- Major improvements to AI performance and spawning count.
- Major improvements to ground loot spawning count.
- Major improvements to footstep sounds.
- Major improvements to world streaming & unloading performance.
- Major improvements to snow rendering at night.
- Major improvements to overal interactibility with world objects.
- Mending and shredding are different UI panels now.
- Fishing yields smaller fish more often now.
- It is possible to take all items in a storage structure at once now.
- It is possible to craft the max possible ammount of a blueprint, as a separate craft button.
- Map opens focused on the player location rather than centered now.
- Map also displays location names under the icons now.
- Quests display heads up notifications when starting or updating now.
- Stats on HUD now blink red when too low.
- Fires now display their burning time left when hovering mouse on them.
- Improvements to River Village locked house's mechanics & loot.
- Tweaked carcass harvesting tool decay values.
- Tweaked bonfire warmth bonus.
- Fixed issue causing nature objects to not disappear when harvested. (branches, trunks etc.)
- Fixed issue causing looting to not work correclty if the character is walking while pressing E on smaller objects.
- Fixed issue causing corpses to not yield sub-items in container items. (i.e. empty bottles without the content)
- Fixed issue causing shivers to have incorrect audio clips in russian.
- Fixed issue causing fishing huts to display as bridges on map.
- Fixed issue causing heads-up text to get stuck on screen when leaving to menu.
- Fixed issue causing heads-up text to not scale correctly with non 16:9 aspect ratios.
- Fixed issue causing fire UI to no longer update time while opened.
- Fixed various collision issues.
- Fixed various localization text.
Future plans and Roadmap
Along with the upcoming fixes and minor improvements, from now we will also focus on overhauling the game and user interfaces to make the gameplay more intuitive and to get rid of as much redundant menus and user actions as possible, along with making the game more immersive.
Our plan for the near future is to improve existing gameplay features, add new gameplay elements, add more locations and landmarks to explore, and to make the interfaces easier to use and more intuitive to the end user. Improving the performance of the game, along with the graphics fidelity, will also remain one of the top priorities.
We will release an updated roadmap with more details shortly.
Update on the Chinese Localization
As some of you might know, we promised to add Chinese Language support with this update.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that we encountered some issues with our previous Chinese translator, this is not yet possible.
We are currently looking for a new chinese translator and we will see how we will go about it in the near future. We will post another update as soon as we figure it out!
Note
P.S. We want to remind everyone that Northern Lights is in an Early Access state so there might still be a lot of bugs to be ironed and a lot balancing to be done.
Because of this, we encourage everyone to use the Report A Bug button found in the Game Menus in order to reach to us about possible issues! Also don't forget to join our Community and Discord Server where we have chats dedicated for feedback and new ideas!
Thank you for reading and for all your support and understanding!