Fellow Dwarves! We hope you’re doing great! Tonight we are putting the Food and Farming update live!
This update is quite a large one so it’s taken us just over 5 weeks. We want to explain why!
Starting off with some annoying news. We have had to postpone the Brewking and the Orge map release that was scheduled for today. We have made great progress here but we need to do more and we’re not quite happy with the quality. The Brewking and the Ogre map is a custom bespoke map with its own quests and it’s taking slightly longer than expected. We have rescheduled this for the next major update in January 2025. We’re sorry for doing this to our fellow dwarves however we were not satisfied with the quality and we already had much to do. However, here's a sneak peak of the level.
Everything else from here is good news!
After the launch of Orebound we identified some of the larger issues that were in the game. This being optimisation, bugs, crashes, navigation issues etc. We rapidly got to work fixing these issues and put out hotfixes and two large updates to help with these things.
Some of the bugs were deeper than we initially thought. Be it on older pc’s lower end CPU’s and the likes.
We knew when we set out to make Orebound we would need to try and push some limits or we would end up being just another factory game.
This is not where we wanted to be because although this probably would have led us to short term success it wouldn't be a long term impactful change to the genre that would be interesting and expandable over the longer term.
What we have been doing over the last month is watching, listening, gathering feedback from the community and from refund notes ( this is a horrible place ). When we launched we knew our roadmap would change with feedback.
We didn't initially want to put a roadmap out because we agreed that when thousands of players hit the game that would just burn the map because we would listen to that feedback and change it anyway.
What we’ve learned since launch is that you all want more in all areas, which is great and that’s what we intend to do. However some areas need more work than others, totally understandable and we wanted to get a decent approach on this.
What we initially set out to do was to work on all areas at the same time and bring the game up at an even pace. However we have actually changed how we are going to approach this.
What we are now going to do is focus all our energies into one or a few places at one time. So going forward that’s likely what you’ll see in our update patterns.
What this means now is that we are going to make a roadmap that focuses on specific areas for the game and release those accordingly. We’re hoping to have something to show you all in Jan 2025 on the exact development trajectory for Orebound!
All that being said, we have a lot to share today!
Technology
In the back end, we have part integrated the unreal engine Gameplay Ability System for hunger and inebriation. GAS is incredibly powerful with it's abilities, effects and modification system which is going to allow us to do a lot in the future. We visualise different food giving different buffs to speed, health regenerations and a whole host of other possibilities we are fleshing out. It also comes out the box with multiplayer support and replication, saving us a ton of time with what we'd have to test with our old current system that is being phased out. We are still in the process of integration, but it's such a big technological change that it's worth being mentioned.
We have also been implementing and improving a full quest system and quest tracking system into the game.
Farming!
New farming system with placeable farm plots in small, large, small with earthstones and large with earthstones.
Earthstone integrated farm plots produce more and are faster.
New sprinkler that the farm plots need to grow, included an automated sprinkler system.
New foods, barley bread, and boar bacon sandwich.
A new hunger mechanic with 4 hunger states. Starving, hungry, satiated and well fed.
During starving, you will take continual damage until dead or hunger is restored.
When satiated, health will regenerate by a small amount.
When well fed, health regenerates at double the well satiated rate.
When dieing, 35 hunger will be restored every time.
Hops and barely is now split, into hops, and barley, and growable on the farm plots.
Changes to the icon for the hops and barley instead of that wheat icon.
New growable, berries and its seed.
New growable, mushrooms and mushroom spores.
Brewing!
He have also introduced brewcraft to the game. This will allow players to brew ales and whiskeys and have a fun time! You'll be able to restore health and hunger, but there might be some side effects...
New Building Pieces
Bug fixes.
Some of these are for the previous 0.0.0.50d patch
Some input control fixes.
Fixes for orc weapon offsets
Switching hotbar forces end of blocking
Back end boar spam when failing to find a path should stop
Fixed bug when cave foliage wasn't spawning
Fixed player not being at save location
Scrolling to empty hotbar removes last details of button
Custom Foliage
We are starting to add more fully custom foliage to the game to add more variety to the world.
Tutorial Level
Orebound is a huge and complex game, we have received many requests for a tutorial so here it is!
We’ve added a new map in which a new player can exclusively learn the core basics of Orebound through a series of quests. This was one of the highest request things from new players. Now you can practice -Collecting basic resources -Making tools using the crafting bench -Using the Ore Navigator to search and mine for resources within the Voxel world -Unlocking new tiers in the Research station -Smelting ingots & using them to craft items in the blacksmith -Making use of the Kings Market to earn money -How to place the portable drill for early-tier automation -Making use of wild plants to make food -Hunting boars and how to get food out of them -Mining automation with a large belt fed drill -learning about steam power with water pumps and boilers -Basics of in game combat -Practice fighting goblins -Achievements for completing the new level
Changes / Fixed
Performance optimizations for the Factory side of the game. Players should notice better performance on large factories.
Fixes and polish to various UI.
Fixed the auto-boiler having the Water on the wrong side in the UI.
Future
More work on factory optimizations, including more performant and efficient ways to render belts and their items, as well as better backend handling of inventories and the entire factory backend process.
Soon we will release an in depth update road map of what our plan is for Orebound. Also we hear you. You all want multiplayer!
We shall keep hammering the anvil!
Thank you!
The Dwarven Developers.