WHAT'S NEW IN RELEASE 6:
- The first iteration of the new erosion based terrain system (iteration 2 coming soon!)
- Brand new story generator which randomizes NPC items as well as generates character names, titles, dialogue and simple quests
- New set of younger villagers (men & women)
- Save functionality improved so that player position is now remembered and new world is only generated on request in the main menu
- New dialogue and examine camera
- The merchant has the ability to sell and buy items
- Support for item prices
- New sprinting mechanic which consumes stamina (ala Dark Souls)
- More variants of Town Guards, Forgotten Folk, Goblins Villagers and Wood Elves
- Improved Wood Elf animations and plenty of other smaller art asset tweaks
- Unique carry positions for characters and items (Note: throwing characters is currently broken) UI
- Map screen has a much higher resolution than before
- First mockup of the Quests screen (the data is not plugged in yet)
- You can change between the menu screens by pressing M (map), I (inventory) and J (quests/journal). GRAPHICS
- Optimizations
- Toned down film grain during night
- New system for making clouds
- Improvements to the SSAO
What we're currently working on:
- Lots of fixes to the terrain shape, this was just the first iteration.
- There's a land flow map which needs to be plugged into the texture system.
- We should be able to improve the draw distance without impacting the performance.
- We also have a new terrain brush system which allows us to do dunes for desert biome, it's gonna be more prominent in Release 7.
- Better biome distribution to prevent biomes like desert and snow being next to each other.
- Moving Skeletons and Wizards to the Story Generator, adding more complex quests and fixing the various glitches.
- Adding more character variations, hair color, heads etc.
- Fixing the level up effect so it makes all enemies flee temporarily when it happens.
- Making better use of the new cloud system so different locations can have different clouds. One idea is to use it for a fog like this:
Until next time!
- Timo
PS. This is how the villagers looked at one stage, looks ready for an Assassin's Creed :)