Hi all,
It's been a while, but please know I have not been lazy.
I have in fact had a very busy week fixing lots of issues in RoE that had been reported to me and also from my own internal list.
I will give a summary of the patch notes first, followed by some detail if you're interested in that sort of thing. So here goes:
Huge refactor of the Save/Load/Quest system after a large flaw was found.
Dropping items now destroys them (I'm finishing off a salvage mechanic to replace it)
Slow motion now happens less and is based on the last enemy alive in an area (or always for a Boss)
Disabled VR
Removed some Gamepad functions (as I don't currently support it)
Skeethe now has a random chance to increase his gold over time.
Added more random names for Legendary items
Fixed sky/fog issues after Beacon tower scene
Fixed a bug with Quest Boss dying by another creature does not count toward quest goal
Fixed a Vendor issue where they did not show items with Special Powers (little circle)
Fixed an issue with vendors where they ran out of money
Fixed an issue with the Time of Day and weather conditions not resetting on a quest event
Attempted fix for occasionally losing focus on the window for Garum in Helheim castle. Initially seems fixed but needs confirmation
Made TAB and K valid redefinable keys
Updated some hint texts
Fixed some issues with UI regarding opening and closing them at certain times
Found some instances of only one enemy spawning in certain spawners. Fixed that
Attempted fix for Cards losing their powers at some point after changing areas
So as you can see, there's lots of changes and fixes in there and I'll hit on some of the bigger and more interesting changes here.
Huge refactor of the Save/Load/Quest system after a large flaw was found.
NOTE: Due to the size of the refactor and the amount of systems affected in this patch, I strongly suggest deleting all save data and only use Cloud Saving if you need to. Each new patch I release at the moment includes critical fixes, mostly related to Save/Load and of course this means any save data made with previous versions risks being invalid/incorrect/corrupt.
| A typical save folder contents may look like this. |
|---|---|
| If you want to keep your global progress (Soul Fragments) then just delete the files crossed out. |
Just remember, turn off Cloud Saving first, then manually delete the files you want to delete, then launch the game.
This was a biggie. Amongst other things there were issues with starting a new game with the current system. The problem was how the saves were structured. You may or may not know that Save/Load is an absolute horror show unless you're a coder, and even then I've seen many weeping engineers who were assigned to Save/Load :P
So for a mainly designer brained person like me, this was a hellscape beyond anything I could dream up in a game. Essentially Save/Load is just taking a snapshot of the game at any given time, making sure to track every...single...variable that you need to maintain the game just as it was at the point of pressing Save for the player.
Now in a game such as this there are literally hundreds of variables spread across many entities in the game and even separation in the saves themselves with having a Global Progress save which tracks things for the meta game (in future updates). So you can imagine with an RPG it is pretty challenging to get this right. There is no magic SAVE HERE for a developer to run, no super function that just grabs everything you need. it's all manual baby. For someone of my limited brain power that is basically like handing some Ferrari keys to a toddler and saying "Go Drive!".
Okay, a touch hyperbolic but you get my point - it's HARD to do and even harder to do it right and with no bugs.
I can say that I have fixed many issues with this but I fully expect there to be more (please hit a bug report or post on the discussion forums here to let me know please!).
I am one person and testing every single combination of Save/Load at every level and every quest progress state is beyond my means (and time) currently. So I hope it feels better to you and you can start a new game now?
Dropping items now destroys them (I'm finishing off a salvage mechanic to replace it)
This is interesting because from some players who had played RoE for a long time I was getting reports of performance drops, possibly down to shoddy garbage collection or crazy amounts of dropped items from all that looting which weren't been cleaned up.
So because item dropping is rather unnecessary really and handled quite badly in this game as a result of it not factoring into my long term plans for the game, I decided to remove dropping items altogether and instead you destroy them (so be careful!).
Please bear in mind I have a Salvaging system I am working on currently which will replace all this dropping nonsense anyway. You Salvage all that loot you find for various crafting materials, gold and some bonus rare stuff.
In fact, I had already put in some Salvage indicators to the items even though I didn't put the system live yet. In the below screengrab you can see the highlighted icon of a hammer and anvil with a number at the side of it. This number is the amount of random goodies you will get for salvaging that particular item. Obviously the more rare and valuable the item, the more goodies you get if you sacrifice the item. 
Skeethe now has a random chance to increase his gold over time.
You need to be able to sell your items, right? (especially seeing as the Salvage System is not live yet) and I made the poorest merchants in RPG history.
I have now given Skeethe a chance to gain some gold between visits. Currently it is not a sophisticated check and you can actually keep spamming him and see his gold go up over repeated attempts but I figured for now it is good enough to keep you in the money!
Fixed a bug with Quest Boss dying by another creature does not count toward quest goal
My 7 year old son actually found this for me as we were testing some bug fixes. He lured a huge troll up a hill towards a quest boss battle, and the troll having a natural animosity toward the Undead promptly gave the Skeleton Boss a good mauling. Eventually the troll won but we noticed that on it's death the quest was not completed.
I dug around and could see it was checking for the Player to have been the damage/death causer. Ouch.
I mean, I always wanted RoE to have this kind of emergent gameplay where you can come across random factions of enemies who don't get along and they can be fighting. it makes the world feel more dynamic and alive in my opinion but I didn't check the quest goals vs this kind of possibility - so lesson learned!
Made TAB and K valid redefinable keys
A big request was to be able to choose TAB as a redefinable key. I initially left this as the MAP key exclusively for everyone due to issues with how TAB seems to work in Unreal Engine. Any other normal key is fine to choose for this but using TAB for toggling the inventory screen comes with a world of issues for some reason.
Even now, the solution is not satisfactory because despite my best efforts it is possible that pressing TAB to close the inventory will not work IF you have clicked on an inventory or equipment slot, unless you change focus (click) on a different part of the screen afterwards. I could not fix this because if I set those inventory slots to not be focusable then my COMPARE (Hold left shift) function did not show up.
I'm sure a coder would figure this out in two seconds but I tried and tried and eventually had to admit partial defeat. So, you can choose TAB for inventory but you might find it finicky and I apologise for that until I can find the full solution.
No such issues with K though. Pick it for anything. :)
Attempted fix for Cards losing their powers at some point after changing areas
Right up until Early Access release I never had an issue with cards and using them (T), but I've noticed that LIGHT and BATS cards seem to work fine on the whole but SHIELD and PULSE cards do not.
I attempted a fix and it seemed good but I have a feeling this is not fully fixed yet so again let me know if you find more issues.
What's next?
Good question!
I will be playing and testing to find and fix more critical issues, primarily. This is Early Access so I expected some issues but making the build as solid as I can is the priority right now.
I will also be looking into some QoL additions such as Mouse Invert in the settings and a better 'vanity' mode (the current one broke too many things after saving, hence why I removed it!)
After that I will be adding the Salvage mechanic and fixing all the bugs I introduce with that (haha).
I will also do a Crafting pass along with that, so there's more useful stuff to craft with all those materials you salvage!
Beyond that, I of course have lots of content I will release along the way, like Chapter 2 of the story and some new areas and Biomes, but I will be holding off on these until stability and core mechanics are under control.
To anyone who bought the game, enjoys aspects of it and has not refunded - I appreciate you, truly!
I don't get much coverage or love from anywhere and that is my fault, but it means that any words I do get mean so much more to me. I also love getting constructive criticism and suggestions so please message me.
Until next time,
Daz
KLG Games