Hey gang!

Progress on the next update is sprinting ahead. I'm working hard to get it out as soon as I can and I'm pleased with where it's going. I'm starting to approach a point where I feel like the game is getting close to its 1.0 content and feature requirement. I want to talk about that towards the end of this post. First, let's take a look at some of the new additions to the game...

Kingdoms

Players will have the option to start a kingdom when they begin a new game. After selecting a starting loadout for your game, players will need to select a point on the map to spawn their settler caravan. Once spawned, they can move this party around the overworld map. This will use up the party's resources and may encounter events. The party can then settle the tile they occupy, which claims the tile as their kingdom. If another kingdom claims that tile as well, players will need to defeat any hostile entities in it. This effectively declares war on that kingdom. Choose wisely where you claim kingdom territory.



Players can expand their kingdom territory by sending out parties to settle or claim new tiles. As well, players can send out envoys to interact with other kingdoms to establish trade and relationships.

I'm also designing leadership roles so players can choose how their kingdom is run. Each race will have their own types of leadership to choose which provides unique bonuses:
Humans - King/Queen
Gwdir - Gwnvayth (Matriarch)
Tomek - Chief
Ancients - Primus
Ardyn - Dominus



I'm currently working on a lot of these features, so please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see in the game related to kingdoms!

Labels, Overlays, And Additional UI Options

You'll notice that there is a new additional to the HUD which lets you view lists for things like overlays, labels, selections, and more. This helps clear up the bottom bar from having a million buttons.

Labels

Labels are a new UI feature which detail some of the things in the world, which include: entities, and overworld objects like nations, parties, and tiles. Players can edit each type of label to display specific information. For example, only show the level and profession on an entity label. You can click labels to select the object they represent.



As well, zoom level changes what details are shown so that the maps don't get cluttered with 100 labels.





Overlays

You can also edit what types of overlays are visible. For example, nation borders on the overworld map. Other overlays like jobs, rooms, etc, will be in this list as well.



Selections

Sometimes it's hard to select entities when they are all stacked in a group, so I've added a list that displays entities for your current selections, control groups, roles, and overworld parties.



Multi-threaded Pathfinding (Beware! Technical mumbo jargon ahead)

TLDR; Faster, more precise pathfinding.

For those that are not familiar with threads, let me try to explain. In the old version, when an entity wanted to get across the world, it would start a pathfinding process. Depending on the distance to the target, this could be extremely slow. And, the game would have to wait for this to complete. I had some performance helpers which would delay a pathfinding process if it was too slow (to avoid huge lag spikes), but it meant pathfinding could take a really long time to calculate. Now, in the new version, pathfinding uses 'multi-threading'. Think of a thread as a pathfinding job. The game issues pathfinding jobs to each of the CPU's cores to process in the background without blocking the main game 'thread'. So, the more cores your PC has, the more background pathfinding jobs it can do. As a bonus, these processes are incredibly fast. So, not only do the jobs process in the background, they finish at blazing speed.

This should improve a lot of the pathfinding performance and also fix a lot of pathing inaccuracy I had before, due to some hacks I had to keep your machines from melting into slag.

Development Timeline and Plans

OOOOoook. Time for some real talk. I've been incredibly fortunate to work on Odd Realm for SEVEN YEARS. Wow. I didn't really know how to make a full game when I started. I've had to learn a lot about game design, art theory, shaders, and code architecture. It has been the most challenging thing I've undertaken. By far. And that's why it has taken seven years to get this far. You've been incredibly patient and supportive during this whole journey, and I thank you. Seriously, it would not have been possible without this community. Thank you so, so much!

With that said, I'd like to talk about the 1.0 of the game. It is my goal to have 1.0 done early next year (2024). Hopefully January. Now, I'm going to try my best to get all five races into the game for that date. But, and to be absolutely transparent, I might need to release some things like the Tomek after this version. I'm at the point where I need to start delaying certain features for polish and tuning to make a good 1.0 candidate.

So, why the push for coming out of early access and releasing the 1.0? I want to continue working on Odd Realm for years and years. I love working on it. But, my savings can only take me so far. The game needs to release 1.0 to see any kind of revenue which would support its future development. So, ideally, features like Tomek (if they can't make it!) will still come into the game, just in the update immediately after 1.0.

Anyway, these are all big IFs. Who knows what the future holds. I just want to make sure I'm always giving you, the community, full disclosure. Thank you again for supporting the game with your feedback and positive vibes. I'm trucking along happily on things and hope to have a new beta update out soon. Stay tuned! You all rock!