Hello my friends!

I hope everyone is doing well and today I wanted to update you all about Odd Realm's 0.10.0.0 version.

I'm making some fantastic progress but I'm still working on finishing things which I had started earlier in the year. Namely, a bunch of room related changes and improvements. I had mentioned in a previous post that I had overhauled the room UI because it was desperately needing some TLC. At the time, I wasn't able to finish that work because I was running into a lot of core game issues and decided to fix that up. As you are all aware, that added quite a bit of time to 0.10.0.0's development timeline. Anyway, now that that stuff is out of the way, I came back to finishing up those room changes/additions. I'm very excited about the changes and I think they are going to add so much to the game, so I want to show off some things.

If you are unfamiliar with the new functionality of rooms, take a look at this article which describes them thoroughly: article.

To summarize, rooms are block designations which can be assigned functions, owner groups, and stockpiles. This means you can mix and match these things to create your own custom room. For example, a Home with a bedroom function, occupant owner group, and food/water stockpile.

But let's take a look at what that would practically look like:


Here, I'm taking the Storehouse room and assigning it to an area that I want settlers to bring items to. The Storehouse is a very basic room that has the sole purpose of item organization. It comes with the following template settings:


'Hauler' owner group: This is a preset that auto-adds anyone with the carry skill active to the room. Each owner group can be assigned to any room functions. In this case, Storage.


'Storage' function: This function, like all functions, can be added to any room and lets entities auto create carry jobs. This will ensure entities move items into this room based on the assigned Stockpiles.


'All' stockpile: This is also a default preset for the room which just states that all item types are allowed. It also shows (as you can see in the gif) which items are currently in the room. Players can mix and match item types with item names. i.e., Resources + Beverages + Coal. Stockpiles are also assignable to any functions. In this case, it's assigned to the Storage function, and, so, entities assigned to the Hauler group will make sure items specified in the stockpile get placed in the designated room area.

At this point, I'm sure you're thinking, 'wait, isn't this just a zone designation?' Yes! That's exactly what this is, but now you have waaaay more control. And because this has all the functionality of zones, I've decided to remove them completely as they are redundant. Don't worry. It's still super easy to designate item areas using this new rooms functionality because everything is already preset.



You can probably imagine how this stuff will work with other room functions. The 'Farm' room, for example. It has your 'Farmer, Forester, and Shepherd' owner groups, your 'Garden, Arboretum, and Animal Enclosure' functions, your 'Food and Water' stockpiles. Now, you don't have

 to have that specific set, and that's the beauty of the system. You could just have 'Farmer' + 'Garden' + 'Seeds' and be off to the races. I have created default templates to designate these things, but you can create and save out your own, and they'll appear on the room designation toolbar.

Outside the room stuff, I've added/changed a few other things:

Players can now hold 'SHIFT' to select blocks which locks the block's tooltip to the window. This lets them inspect the tooltip contents.


Also, I've added the new 'pregnant' and 'companion' statuses to entities that can get pregnant and have companions. Pregnant entities take a few days to have their child. This is really just a little 'realism' touch to replace children randomly spawning.

To wrap things up, let's talk about timelines. I'm still doing a lot of work on the room stuff (little features/polish/bugs/tests), and I'd say I have about 2-3 weeks of work left. After this, I'll need to jump onto getting the beta build ready, which will take 2-4 weeks. I'm shooting for having the beta ready for the end of August, but I don't want to promise anything. That's just my own personal goal. It could easily take longer, but I want to give you all a bit of an estimate because you wait so patiently.

Ok! That's it for now. Hopefully you're stoked about these new things. I really can't wait to get the update out there and into your hands. Thanks again, everyone, for being so supportive and motivating me.

Waylon