Caves and AI Update!
Fellow Dwarves!
Tonight we are setting a build live that we wanted to finish a little earlier this week but needed some fine tuning. We're happy to announce that the cave update is now live to all players.
A new game start will generate multiple types of caves with new and interesting generations to break up just singular flat cave types.
Caves now come in all sorts of variations with different rock types, stalactites and stalagmites! Some caves will have rock formations, some will have camp cut-outs. We've also added more interesting areas to discover.
We're going to keep on building upon this over the next few months to create a thriving area underground.
AI Update
We are aware that players are having issues with NPC's and AI. It's something we are putting as our next focus over the coming weeks as the #1 priority. In our efforts to make AI better in our generated world sometimes we have hiccups. To give you all some idea, because we generate the entire world on the fly in Orebound we have to remove and regenerate the world and its navigation at runtime whilst NPC's are playing with you in that world. In most games that world is pre-baked and once loaded 99% of the time you're good to go. But our entire world can be dug out, changed, unloaded and reloaded on the fly and we have to build a system for that so NPC's can navigate and come in and out of. So it's taking some time to perfect this.
We're now switching our focus to this issue over the coming weeks to try and finalise a solution. Along side that we're hopefully going to be improving combat interactions as well. Today we are pushing out some fixes and hotfixes to all players that should stop the following;
AI Clearing focus when losing sight of target fixed. This was stopping AI attacking after leaving and returning.
AI respawning correctly in camps. NPC's were not respawning correctly after the player left and returned.
AI will now save health, weapon they have and armoured not nor armoured and which enemy you die or leave the area. This was another issue we have resolved.
AI that leave the camp and follow you now remain part of that camp instead of becoming independent. AI will return to their camp instead. This issue was causing NPC's to desync and not perform correctly.
AI delay on movement when flanking. We are aware compared to other games how fast our NPC's move and attack. We've nurffed that slightly and were going to rework it again in the coming weeks.
Combat subsystem fixed ai was pausing and not attacking player.
Added additional checks to stop AI spawning in the air.
Stopping AI falling trough floor
Reducing AI jitter
Fixing defiled watchtower and fixed some materials
Over the coming weeks we would really appreciate your feedback on combat. We are reading that people want it to be better and we're on that now. But what we'd really appreciate is any detailed feedback you have for our combat system. Please feel free to reach out on the forums or discord we'd love to hear it!
Cave Lighting
We have increased cave lighting slightly so you can now see in caves, BUT it would still be better to have a head torch or lamp. We initially had it too bright, then made it too dark. So we're hoping this is a good middle ground we can settle on.
As usual thank you for your continued support! We hope you enjoy the new caves and hope our AI fixes make the NPC's better. There will be more to come soon!
The Dwarven Devs! 
