Biomes, Migrations, and Playtests, oh my!
The last two weeks in Rinthine land have been completely consumed by three things:
1. new content
2. preparing for playtests
3. migration
Lets start with the brass tacks:
New content and features.
Art courtesy: Spider Archivist, in our Discord |
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Happy anniversary!
One of the coolest things that happened this sprint is that Rinthine celebrated one year of development!
To share our excitement and give you a lil' behind the scenes,
we made this devlog - we hope you enjoy!
Cleaning Up the HUD (UI & UX Reworks)
We spent a lot of time tightening up the player interface to give you better screen real estate while keeping vital information clear.
Tighter Player Vitals: The team has spent quite a lot of back-and-forth tweaking the various bars on the players' HUD - considering it's one of the elements you'll see and rely on most, it's important to get it right.
Going by the Numbers: While seemingly-small, these conversations affect the entire game, and tweaking one thing usually affects another. As we get closer to the final build, details matter.
Expanded Toolwheel: Art team built out mock-ups and fresh animations for the toolwheel.
Crafting Book Upgrades: tech art revived some crafting book things with new QOL updates, including a recipe pinning system and a dedicated back button.
Diving into the Water Biome & The Bathhouse
We first mentioned our water zones a couple blogposts ago, but they're under continual construction, and are getting a massive visual and structural upgrade, complete with new flora, fauna, and interesting things to explore.
That's not a water slide: I don't know what the heck that hole is, or where it leads.
Water room Walls: They're not really called "water rooms" but that's what I'm calling them right now. Anyway, the 2D team has spent a lot of time and effort getting things looking right, which can get pretty hairy in a procedurally-generated game. It's still under wraps but we're getting there!
Dynamic Vegetation: To make the bathhouse feel overgrown but readable, we are using a vertex-painting system to dynamically grow moss and algae directly onto the stone. Hanging plants have also been placed into high ledge planters so they don’t clutter the floor or get confused with interactable items.
New Flora & Collectibles: Our 3D team finished up the models for new plants and variations of Wild Mustard, Potato, various sprouting plants, and Carrots - as well as some... other... dirt-based.. things...
Sneaking and Peeking: Oh wait
Looking at my notes here, I just realized I can't really talk about this. Oh well.
Let's see if you can guess: the whole game is procedurally generated - this particular thing isn't. ːsteamhappyː
Migration Station
We've teased multiplayer quite a bit, but what does that actually look like?
Honestly, it involves a lot of tedious, unglamorous work.
We're currently in the middle of a massive project, "migration" which essentially means restructuring the entire game to draw a strict line between server-side and client-side code.
The old project setup was a bit of a mess for network play, so this overhaul is necessary to build a cleaner workflow for our UI, enemies, and items. However, all this work really means redoing a lot of old stuff. Our Technical Designers are essentially re-engineering systems you’ve already seen to work a second time, however, this new structure provides a much better scaffolding for us to add new features in an organized way with multiplayer in mind from the very start.
Once the core code transition is done, we will be moving into a dedicated polish phase, and our main priority will be snappiness, crisp combat feel, smooth movement, and UI responsiveness of the single-player branch.
Here is a look at the multiplayer and under-the-hood fixes our team pushed through this week:
Multiplayer Aggro Systems: Tech design has been working on rolling enemy updates (not updates to enemies that roll, rolling updates).
Smoother Room Transitions: We fixed a bug that caused door transitions to look incredibly janky for the host player. The team is currently syncing the client side so everyone switches rooms seamlessly.
Messaging: added a new event banner panel that broadcasts world/server events to players. (like potential challenges! or mysterious messages about the world...)
Behind-the-Scenes Tools: Our Tech Artist added automated update checkers to our internal Blender and Maya tools to ensure the art team always has the latest software versions. They also optimized the transparent outline shaders directly in the engine.
Rigging & Armor: Our 3D Animator wrapped up the rigging and animation cycles for the new creatures and wearables.
Speaking of migration...
Rinthine will be showcasing at Gamescom in the Indie Arena Booth!
Where: Cologne, Germany
When: 08/26 - 08/30
Exciting & Upcoming Announcements:
➤ Exclusive in-person showcase
➤ NEW features premiering at the event
➤ NEW merchandise giveaways for attendees
➤ First-time booth activity for players
Come visit us in Germany in August!
Lots of people will get a chance to play Rinthine FOR REAL - just like,
PLAY 👏 TESTING 👏
Art courtesy: Dr. Potassium, in our Discord |
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What you've all been waiting for.
The time is once again upon us. Tomorrow, playtesting begins.
"Why," I hear you asking, "has it taken so long? What could possibly have caused us to wait so long to start Rinthining?"
Several things, but one of the most important words is scale.
Everything about this playtest is considerably larger - and a lot of the newest stuff won't even be in this particular build.
More tools.
More creatures.
More challenge.
More things to do and find.
And of course, more people.
Because we're scaling up, we've spent considerable effort building some internal infrastructure to allow us to onboard more players smoothly, and connect their playtests to our diagnostic tools so we can find bugs faster, iterate on feedback more effectively, and make the playtesting process itself far more smooth.
This system is finally ready for testing with a live audience, so this week, fingers crossed, everything goes well. This playtest is, indeed larger, but still limited to make sure things don't figuratively blow up in our collective faces, but we're truly excited to show you what we've been working on.
To register for a chance to playtest, ask questions, divulge secrets of alchemy or cosmology, speculate on the nature of reality, or share funny cat pictures, check us out at discord.gg/rinthine!
We'll have a lot of events, and even have the devs playing with the community, so if you're new here, welcome!
For those of you in the playtest we'll see you tomorrow,
in the labyrinth.
Rinteam
Note from the editor:
This weeks splash art is inspired by the talented @_.fergus.art_!