Tag: updates

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Update 22 live! Music and More

  By development, updates

Update 22 consists of bug fixes, more items added to the world and the addition of new music created by composer Christopher Goering.

Find Christopher’s music at his new youtube channel Shards of the Portal

12 new tracks by Christopher have been added to Windstone. Each play in specific areas and different situations including different biomes, within villages, while underwater, when near a campfire and during certain times of day. The battle theme, originally composed by Threshold Seven, has become a collaboration and has been altered by Christopher. More collaborations and original tracks will be added in the future.

Changes and Additions:

More resources have been added near the starting areas in the Snow Biome.

Many more trees have been added to the Snow Biome and its landscape has been slightly altered in some areas.

Around 500 more objects in the main land have now been added to streaming levels. This may help performance on some systems.
Note: More objects currently in the world will be added to streaming levels in the future to increase optimization. (Objects in streaming levels are not loaded into the game (or your RAM) unless you are in close enough proximity.)

Dragon Egg locations are now marked on the Map

The map should now more precisely show your position in many places.

The main starting screen has been changed slightly.

Bug fixes:

The mouse cursor should no longer disappear when clicking on certain elements in the craft menu.

The craft menu should now be able to be opened after closing it without completely closing and reopening the inventory menu.

An issue has been fixed where the player would start in the center of the mainland even if a different starting zone was chosen.

Some visual glitches have been fixed on the landscape in the Snow Biome.

Some visual inconsistencies in water have been fixed.

An issue has been fixed where the player and wildlife would hover a foot or two over the frozen lakes in the Snow Biome.

An Issue has been fixed where the player would not take damage while in lava.

Starting menu music and intro text music should play correctly when starting a new game.

Starting menu music should NOT play when opening the options menu from the pause menu.

Pausing the game should no longer reset custom volume changes.

Thank you for playing Windstone. Any feedback and bug reports are very helpful and much appreciated.

 

 

Originally posted @ itch.io.

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Update 20

  By updates

First off I want to apologize for how long I left Windstone in a broken state. Although the game itself mostly worked well, the loading times when loading a save slot were ridiculous. This was caused by a bug that occurred when updating the Unreal Engine to a more recent version which allows more functionality and a variety of additions to the game to increase it’s quality, but with a game engine transition comes a huge headache of numerous bugs.

Most bugs including the loading bug are finally fixed but there may be some other bugs that I have not yet discovered that may have cropped up during the game engine transition.

The changes from the last update have mostly been re added to this version except that the custom mouse cursor has been reverted to the standard windows cursor. This however has proven to not fix a bug that I thought was caused by the custom mouse cursor. The only known issue with this update is that the mouse cursor sometimes will still disappear when clicking on certain button in the Inventory UI. You can get the mouse cursor back by left clicking your mouse.

The highlighted inventory slots have also been re-implemented. They don’t work perfectly yet but this is a minor issue that doesn’t really affect game play. I will continue to work on that as I figure out how to get the mouse cursor from disappearing.

A problem has also been fixed that wouldn’t allow you to start a new game in a new starting area unless you restarted the game.

Windstone will now be free once again to play test until April.

Thank you for playing Windstone and any and all feedback to help the game develop is much appreciated.

 

Originally posted @ itch.io on 2019-01-20.

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Update 19 is live!

  By development, updates

Update 19 consists of mostly underlying work to upgrade the game engine. Windstone now uses version 4.19 of the UE4 engine. Windstone will upgrade to 4.20 and 4.21 in the future and with each subsequent update to the UE4 engine when the new versions are stable. As of now, version 4.20 and 4.21 have an issue with the Blueprint Compilation Manager that conflicts with Windstone.

This engine upgrade required many things to change in Windstone’s code, most of which is not apparent to the player, but the end result and development functionality is much better. A visual and performance increase should be immediately noticeable.

Other changes and fixes:

The custom mouse cursor now looks like a stone arrow head again instead of the standard windows arrow.

The custom mouse cursor also now appears at the same spot at the center of the screen when menus are activated.

An issue is fixed that caused the leg armour animation to become out of sync with the leg animation while walking.

A counter measure has been added to help keep from getting stuck in foundations when loading a game that was saved while standing in a building. A better fix is being worked on but this will be determined by how the new level streaming/loading system evolves as it is still a work in progress.

Button highlights in the inventory have been disabled. Upgrading the engine caused them to bug out entirely and much of the inventory drag-and-drop programming had to be changed. For now, the highlights are deemed unnecessary but may be implemented again in the future.

The Details pop-up Widget when mousing over an inventory item now shows after .5 seconds in both the inventory and storage. The position of the pop-up relative to the mouse cursor has also been changed slightly due to the custom cursor. A user setting may be added to change the time delay for the pop-up or to disable it entirely, but that’s in the bells and whistles category for much much later unless enough people want it sooner and protest.

Windstone should now open in full screen by default instead of windowed mode.

It now takes 3x longer for your mental fortitude to become muddled from all effects. If you die now from being muddled you better just stay indoors for the rest of your life.  Some day I plan on adding difficulty levels where the muddled mechanic will be different for each one. For now, keep mushrooms on you and room in your belly to eat them at all times for emergencies and becoming muddled will never be a problem. Most mushrooms increase your mental fortitude. Warning: There are very few mushrooms in the snow biome except for what you may randomly find in storage baskets.

The female proxy character has been added to the dragon. When you are mounted on a dragon (the camera switches automatically to third person) you will now see some of the weapons and armour that you have equipped that are visible on your character in the inventory menu.

The default FOV (Field of View) has changed due to the engine upgrade. It is still not adjustable in options, but it is wider than it was. FOV adjustability is another for the bells and whistles of the future.

Stone arrows now inflict about 2x more damage and Obsidian arrows about 3x more.

Harvesting meat, carapace, hide and feathers from carcasses now will happen with every swing of the knife or hammer (the hammer is only used for carapace). Instead of the Obsidian Knife giving a higher chance of harvesting with each swing, it now allows you to harvest twice as much meat and feathers.

Below are known issues that have cropped up since the engine upgrade and have yet to be fixed:

The LOD system is completely different and may not be as optimized as it once was. This can cause some visual and performance degradation. I will be working on this more as everything is adapted to the new version of the engine.

AI and navigation of wildlife has more issues, especially with the Formicans on inclines and the Ostri in general. For the most part they still seek and attack you in the same way when you are close enough to them, but you may find yourself looking at the wildlife from a distance and thinking, “wtf is that creature doing over there?” as the creature tries to figure out wtf it is doing.

Some stones may not be able to be picked up that were able to be picked up before.  Please let me know if you find any other item that is not able to be picked up (that you knew you could pick up before). Basically every thing should be able to be pickup up or destroyed except for the grass, the pre-existing buildings and some ground foliage.

When loading a game from a save, it may hang at 40% (SaveInterfaceCall) for a few minutes. This did not happen before upgrading to 4.19. I’m working on a fix for this now as this is a huge priority.

Thank you for playing Windstone!

Originally posted @ itch.io, which is also where you can get the game.

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Update 19 coming soon!

  By development, updates

Update 19 is coming a little sooner than expected with a major version upgrade to the UE4 engine. Windstone will now be using a more recent and stable version of the UE4 Engine, Version 4.19.  Version 4.20 and 4.21 have major known issues that conflict with Windstone but transitions to newer versions will happen periodically once these are fixed.  Because of the many changes that needed to happen to bring Windstone to 4.19 (all the way from 4.11)  it needs extensive testing before it is safe to continue with development.  Although the underlying changes are massive, add much more functionality, improve performance and increase visual quality, this update will not have many changes immediately apparent to the player. There are some changes including the addition of the female character while mounted on a dragon as well as visible weapons and armour on the dragon rider that change depending on what you have equipped. A handful of other bug fixes and minor changes have also been made which will be listed in the patch notes. I hope to push Update 19 before the end of the weekend.

Originally posted @ itch.io.

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Update 13 is live

  By playtesting, updates

Update 13 includes some bug fixes and a simple but much needed change to the building system.

Building items that you place can no longer be accidentally picked up by simply pressing E. You now must double tap E to pick up a building piece.

A menu may be added in the future to give to option to pick up/repair/lock in place/etc. but for now, requiring E to be double tapped quickly to pick up a building piece should mitigate accidentally picking them up when trying to pick up other items such as a tool on the floor or when trying to open a basket. There is no indicator yet in the game that lets you know that you can double tap E to pick up a building piece, but this will be added as the building system is worked on.

Right clicking on a building piece will still move it and can cause accidental movement of building pieces when trying to move a basket or other item. This will be addressed in the next update.

The Dragon Hatchling should now spawn when hatched even if inside a building or something is overhead. It still may be safer to hatch outside, but hatching inside will help to find any more problems.

The Dragon Hatchling should now be able to navigate more effectively in player-built structures but this needs more testing.

The items that were left near the starting area in the last update have been removed (glider,raft and various weapons) These were placed there for my own testing purposes and I simply forgot to remove them. Kill those Antelopeees and cure their hides! 😀

 

Download it at itch.io.

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Update 12 is live!

  By development, playtesting, updates

After a little break to gather feedback and wait for bug reports to safely continue development I’ve been working on Windstone again  over the past few weeks. Update 12  was scheduled to be a large one but unforeseen issues have caused the necessary migration of Windstone to a fresh project file in UE4 due to compiling errors. This caused a lot of settings to revert to default and a lot of combing through the scripting and play testing was necessary to get Windstone back to where it was in Update 11 and subsequently delayed the release and lessened the planned content of update 12. There may be unknown issues caused by the migration that may not be found until more testing is done.

The raft functionality was the last known issue that needed fixing and is done but it still may be buggy. Feedback on the raft will be very much appreciated.

Update 12 also has a few new changes including the most requested feature: click-to-attack instead of hold-to-attack. You can simply click once to punch, swing a weapon or harvest with a tool. Additionally you can hold left click to swing your weapon or tool continuously.

The Blue Cap Mushroom objective has been removed as it caused unnecessary distraction from other parts of the tutorial for many play testers. You can still find and use the mushrooms as normal on your own time.

Run speed while holding a weapon or tool has been increased from 75% to 90% unarmed run speed.

Although there may be other unknown issues due to the project migration, the only obvious change left to fix is the visual quality of the ocean surface. As it was not a priority, doesn’t affect gameplay and I wanted to get an update out ASAP, I left this for another update. The migration caused the visual settings of the water to revert and will take some tweaking. It may change drastically as the former ocean surface was somewhat of a placeholder.

I know some of you were hoping for a larger update but this will be the start of much more frequent updates and I will address the issues and recommendations from feedback on this forum as a priority.

Thank you to all who have taken the time to playtest Windstone and give feedback. A big thanks to those who donated and for the streamers and youtubers who helped bring more players to Windstone.

Stay tuned for many updates more frequent updates in the near future.

 

Update 12 can be downloaded from itch.io, as always.

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Update 11 Delay

  By development, playtesting, technical, updates

Update 11 will be delayed due to unforeseen compiler errors. The newly optimized build of Windstone runs great on my end, but when I package it for distribution there are errors that cause the build to fail. I believe these errors are due to broken redirectors which are trying to find and load objects that have been deleted from the project. Once these errors are fixed I will upload the new build. It should not take more than a day or two.

 

Originally posted @ itch.io

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Game updates December 2017.

  By development, screenshots, updates

Various fungi have been added which tie into the mental and physical gameplay mechanics. The edible mushrooms have different effects, such as causing or preventing drowsiness and mental clarity. Some are also poisonous, but might be worth eating when the benefit outweighs the cost.

The cave system has been populated with light-emitting crystals to help guide the player in some areas of the cave.