Tag: version update

No comments

Update 23 Fixes and Optimization

  By development, updates

Update 23 consists of a few minor changes and bug fixes and the continuation of the seamless level streaming system that optimizes load times and RAM usage by only loading objects in the world when the player is in the vicinity.

You can now load a save directly from the death menu instead of having to reload the starting screen menu. This should greatly shorten load times for some users when reloading a game after dying.

Many more trees, boulders, buildings and resources have been added to the Snow Biome.

The South Western Island has more trees and boulders on the central mountain.

All but two lit campfires have been removed from the large inhabited hut at the center of the map to improve frame rate in that area.

Video settings now persist from the main menu to the game world and through subsequent loads. However, settings will revert to default when shutting down and reopening Windstone. This will continue to be worked on so settings can be saved through shut downs.

All loot baskets now only generate loot upon opening them. Previously the baskets all generated loot at the start of a new game which caused thousands of unnecessary items to be taking up RAM.

All hemp plants, branches and stones on the ground have been added to the level streaming system which results in thousands less items using RAM. (Every tree, boulder, hut, well and building were already implemented)

The entire world of Windstone currently consists of 35,000+ items such as all trees, boulders, plants, huts, baskets and wildlife. At any given time about 6,000 to 8,000 of these items are loaded into the game at once depending on where you are with the newly implemented seamless level streaming system. This number will be reduced to around 1,500 as more items continue to be added to the level streaming system which will continue to improve loading times and performance.

Thank you for playing Windstone!

 

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

No comments

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.

No comments

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.

No comments

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.