Fellow Dwarves, we are excited to announce a smaller, but significant update: The Outpost Update.
The Outpost Update
The main focus of this update is improving the game’s performance so more players can have higher frames per second. This means more players should have a seamless experience while exploring the world of Orebound. We've achieved this through using imposters on Unreal Engine to reduce the amount of graphics your PC will have to render at a distance, without losing the quality Orebound is known for.
To help improve performance, we also identified areas that were being rendered when they shouldn’t be. This has made massive savings, from an average of 7 million triangles rendered down to, in some places, under 1 million triangles. For our test machines, we've seen increases between 10-20 fps, and we hope for lower end machines this should be greater. We've taken the liberty of using some of this freed up space to increase the foliage. The pine forest is now denser and renders out further, and the grass is now thicker.
A New Way To Build
A highly requested feature we are excited to finally introduce is drag lines for building. Placing individual building pieces takes a while, so the use of our new drag features to help speed up the process of building your base, giving you more time to fully explore your world. Most building pieces can be drag-placed horizontally or vertically, with the exception being stairs, which can be placed diagonally.
Full Quest Rework
As a part of our mission to make the gameplay experience the most enjoyable as we can. The tutorial has been disabled and the onboarding process has seen a full and lengthy rework to replace it. The early gameplay flow is now far, far smoother and more satisfying to play.
Quests will now automatically track and complete for the player, requirements and rewards will display in the quest HUD, and the onboarding has been redesigned to fit around the new Dwarven Outpost building, your centralised point for all expeditions!
Citadel Improvements
We have also been working behind the scenes on improving the Citadel and the overall onboarding process for new players. The Citadel now contains new carpets to help direct players, improved lighting to make the Citadel more lively, and new relay stations.
New Building!
We are excited to announce a new building to the game: The Outpost - a central starting base camp on your dwarven adventure. The Outpost is a perfect starting base, whether you are new to the game or travelled far from your original spawn. A bed, King’s Quest Board and a chest can all be found in the outpost, making it the ideal first build you make.
Mountains!
There is also a change to the generator for the surface. Mountain generation has been reconfigured. No more random seeds where mountains take up most of the map and you’re stuck on a desolate peak, desperately searching for berries and mushrooms to stave off hunger. Instead we’ve toned down how much space a mountain takes up, while bringing them closer together. The result is a mix of valleys and plains along with ridges and ranges to construct your dwarven fortresses in. The extra benefit is the land is a bit more bumpy, and endless flat prairies have been broken up.
To see some of the new update in action, check out our trailer for The Outpost Update here: View game page
Future Plans…?
And now fellow dwarves, as if this update wasn't enough, more food for ye eyes to make your stomachs grumble in hunger and whet your appetite for our future plans. These will not necessarily arrive in order, but plans they are.
1) Forging your own image.
This one in particular we wanted done for this patch, but timing and resources be as they are, it is delayed. The back end continues for the character creator for you sculpt your jaw, choose your braids, colour your eyes like gems and rock. Also introducing a new feature we're calling "the trait system". But more on that will be revealed, later.
2) The landscape shall bloom anew!
Many have remarked the world is pretty and good, and the style unique, and aye, we have gone for style. Though during our changes and musings, we want to make more. Edges on far away hills and cliffs should reveal uncovered ground and sides, and the realm should pop. The mountains will call to ye, lusting to be mined.
3) Glory of the new outposts.
The new dwarven outpost was created by chief engineers, combining stone and wood, with fresh dwarven designs and we know, you want those pieces to incorporate into your dwarven holds. Our plan for that involves a menu recategorization. No more rummaging through lists of stone and wood building chaos like a drunk goblin in a gear bin. We plan to make it that ye shall find pieces laid out neat as a master masons toolkit!
4) Weaving of the world
With the changing of the maps so that the mountains no longer dominate (not that any dwarf is not home within their sacred mountain halls) and vast planes do not stretch for miles beyond, we plan to expose these parameters in your selection, to edit and play with so you can get a world you want to enjoy! Create realms as unique as the self carves runes on ye axe! And of course, with this will come a visualizer, so you can see what surface you'll adventure onto. Of course though, the deep bowels will remain a mystery you have to explore yerself
Patch Notes:
Generation has been changed for mountains, they take up less room and are more frequent, making the world bumpier. This only applies in new games.
New axe model and animation for wood chopping axe
All foliage and camp items have imposters, which are light weight triangle representations when they are far away.
The lorestone at game start finds the ground better.
Finding the start area now has a stronger bias for flat zones (should stop starting up sheer cliffs)
New Rune Line drag system, to drag place buildings. The default hotkey is M.
On player death,if you are in build mode, this will now cancel.
Optimized skeletons using animation budgeting in citadel
The foot IK is now off while in the airship (should stop your feet going in the air while the airship is moving)
Doubled the distance for placing buildings in build mode from 20m to 40m
Can no longer use tools while in a building's UI
Can no longer scroll through hotbar while in a building's UI
Player Inventory should now close along with building UI
Can no longer search for king's quest board with beacon compass
Added New Dwarven Outpost building
Can now use beacon compass to search for Outpost
Added a Barkeep to Citadel who gives out drinks
Quest and game balance changes
Completely disabled the tutorial
Fully reworked the onboarding process to be more guided
Quests will now automatically complete once fulfilled
Added the Dwarven outpost, a new base of operations for the player
Reworked the costs of the Toolsmith, bed and King’s Questboard
Rewritten the lore on the starting Lorestone
Added more relay beacons to the citadel
Added carpets to help navigate the citadel
Changed the default FOV from 90-100
You can now get drunk at the citadel Anvil bar!