Hey friends!

The time is here! This update has been quite the challenge for me. What started out as a rendering systems optimization re-write at Christmas turned into implementing the Tundra biome. Both were huge tasks for me, the former taking well over a month, and the latter another two! Thanks so much for patiently waiting for me to get this one out into the beta branch.

Before I explain the new temperature system, I just want to put out some warnings. First, this build is NOT backwards compatible with old saves. Second, the first few days of this will likely be fairly buggy. So, if you don't want to find bugs and report them, I'd strongly suggest waiting for this build to be tested and fixed up. I'll probably be putting it onto the production branch in a week or two. I already have a nice list of bugs which I wasn't able to get to, so I'll try to put out a hotfix patch this week for those and any that are reported.

Temperature. How does it work? What's this Tundra biome? Ok, I know a lot of you are thinking to yourselves, the Tundra doesn't have trees! What the heck. Well, I didn't want to create a snow version of the Desert which is, in my opinion, rather boring. So, yes, the Tundra has trees AND it has a warm season! Beware, though. This biome will still require you to put in more effort to survive.

The temperature system in Odd Realm is called Asters and is represented by an asterisk (*). It's a simple scale of -100* to 100*. Things less than 0* start to freeze while things at 100* are on fire. 50* is resting body temperature and you can imagine 40* to be a nice spring day. Each biome and their respective seasons and weather will determine the global temperature shown on the top-right bar, beside the time. As well, the depth you're at slightly affects temperature. High up will be colder, way underground warmer.

Entities all have default Cold Tolerance. This value determines when they will start to take freezing damage. Humans, for example, have a Cold Tolerance of 20*. This means, when the temperature drops below 20*, they will start to lose body temperature. Once body temperature drops below 20*, they'll take damage and eventually freeze to death. Entities will automatically try to warm up at heat sources when they start to freeze, so make sure you build torches and fires. Or, alternatively, equip them with warmer clothing which offsets the Cold Tolerance value. You can see the temperature of the world blocks from the utility menu.

Plants also have a Cold Tolerance, some higher than others. You'll need to plant warmer climate plants in green houses with torches and a skylight to make sure they can survive the colder weather of the Tundra.

Another added feature is that ice and snow can now appear as the weather gets cold. When enough snow builds up, it will create a snow block. Keep this in mind because you can potentially be buried in snow. You can also deconstruct/mine the ice/snow to collect Ice Chunks and Snow Balls which can then be used for building Ice/Snow Walls. Handy for making igloos but remember these will melt in the warmer seasons.

I've also added some new plants, trees, and animals, but I'll let you find them as you play. :)

Here are the patch notes:

-Re-wrote rendering systems to be faster.
-Deconstruct is now clear/remove and can be used to clear things like grass, snow, ice, as well as deconstruct things you've built. You can also use it to cut tree leaves if you wish to make a tree fort.
-Grass now grows when it rains.
-Snow now lands on surfaces facing the sky when it snows.
-Fixed a bug where saplings could be cut for infinite wood.
-Cancelling stacked blueprints will now only cancel the top blueprint first.
-Fixed a bug where the game would start to lag when you have many blueprints and settlers but not the required items to build.
-Fixed a bug where cut/harvest weren't getting drop chance bonuses from increased level.
-3 new trees: Iro, Caelum Oscula, Pala.
-Tundra biome can now be settled.
-Tree leaves can now be cut.
-3 new plants: ice root, sikari, and weep wisp.
-Changing the camera layer when following a settler will now disable the follow.
-Water will turn to ice in cold seasons.
-Fixed a bug where certain jobs weren't being cleared if the block they occupied was no longer valid. i.e., Platforms being built at a fishing spot but the fishing job still being started/completed.
-Added STONE STOOL. Y'all happy!?
-Switched 'Hide Overlay' hotkey from left-shift to left-alt.
-Fixed a UI bug where carried items would show repeating.
-Fixed some pixel perfect issues with season/weather background of the time menu.
-The cursor 'click point' has been moved to match the cursor finger icon more accurately.
-Added temperature system to game. Entities now have body temperature and can freeze to death. This can be avoided by building heat producing props or equipping them with warm clothing.
-Plants are now damaged by cold weather. Each plant has a cold tolerance amount they can withstand. Going below this will damage them over time. If their health drops to 0, they will die.
-Current weather is now shown on the time bar.
-Six new entities: Stradken, Rabbit, Owl, Nightwing, Gharox, Deer.
-Added medium leather.
-Added stone and wood icebox which adds 120 hrs to decay.
-The block temperature will now affect the total decay time of items.
-Added a blueprint to create ice chunks from snow balls at the firepit.
-Fixed an issue where the wrong hotkey was displayed for the 1/5 increment key.
-Cut and harvest are now one job. The overlay will show a green dot when the plant is mature and will produce items.
-Fixed some cursor bugs where the cursor wouldn't show entities as selectable if they were in the air.
-Tuned food decay times to take longer.
-Added wood and stone icebox props which keep food from decaying longer.

As I said, I've got a list of things I wasn't able to get to and I'll be focusing on those to get this build ready for production. There's a lot of UI/tooltip info I need to update and add for communicating temperature better, as an example. Plus, I need to update the tutorial to convey all these new systems.

Once this update is on the production line, I'll probably take a small vacation to regain some energy. When I'm back I'm going to focus on ONLY content for the next big patch. Items, props, events, discoveries and more things for our pals the Ancients. :)

Thanks!

Best,

Waylon