Hardland Release Candidate

FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT

Xbox One and PS4 icons included. This is another very large update, as you may be able to tell by the size of the scroll bar on this page. This update is also different in that it is the first Release Candidate. What it means is we don't have anything on our task list that would prevent us from launching with this version of the game. However, since there only two of us, and a lot more you, you will probably run into a problem that we didn't see, so this update is unlikely to be the very last one, but it is certainly the last big one. This Release Candidate is available right now for you all who are subscribed to the branch "full_beta". Once everyone is sufficiently happy that there isn't anything terrible going on, probably not before uploading a few patches, we'll turn the Release Candidate on for all players by default. Now we just need to prepare some more marketing material and figure out the right release date for the game. We really are that close to done! UI OVERHAUL

While doing the controller UI we ended up improving much of the general UI DYNAMIC WEATHER

Showing every 120th frame to keep the gif size somewhat reasonable. GOBLIN CLUES

FRIENDLY NPC'S CAN BE "PLAYFULLY" KICKED

Grandpa is fine. Hardlandians are tougher than they look. RANDOMIZED HOUSE INTERIORS IMPROVED

Better generation and more sensible villager & item placement. EXAMPLE OF ASSET POLISH

Hires Death Dealer. His items match the promotional illustration. THREADED MAIN MENU LOADING When launching the game it no longer appears frozen. HOW TO PLAY THE RELEASE CANDIDATE

• Go to your Steam Library.

• Right click on Hardland, and go to Properties, then Betas.

• Enter the beta access code WhereTheFoxIs, hit check code, and select full_beta from the drop-down list.

That's it! Steam will download the release candidate for you. GENERAL UI

• 300+ Inventory icons separated from backgrounds and polished.

• Stand up & unmount displayed in the HUD.

• "You are dead. Press E to restart." Shown just like all the other controller tips.

• A hint for eating and drinking in the inventory.

• Inventory and map usage tutorialization. The inventory tip gets shown when you pick up your first item, and the map tip is displayed when you leave Barry's Field.

• Highlighting usable slots when hovering an item.

• Improved the rendering of the undiscovered items.

• Animated confirmation button in dialogue for all control methods.

• Added interaction button animation for all control methods.

• Exclamation marks in the inventory are animated.

• Fixed small gaps between menu containers.

• More visible active item tab.

• Inventory sound effects for all items.

• Fallback sound for equipping plays reliably.

• Hovered icon slot shows the "shadow" item very faintly as not to confuse the player that there's something in the slot.

• Paperdoll "quickslot" ammo counter has the same visual effects as the other places which show it.

• Show an Exclamation mark next to new items in the inventory.

• Don't equip or consume items when using the cauldrons, tree stumps, etc.

• E key works for getting out of the inventory when looting corpses.

• Remove label when riding a Wild Boar.

• The controller / button tip for throwing items.

• Lowered throw bar height.

• Removed texture compression from Menu Atlas as it was quite visible.

• Inventory icon draw order fixes.

• Added new quick slot icons.

• New paperdoll slot icons.

• Icon glow outline when dragging items.

• The highlighted inventory icon is animated.

• Menu uses fade in & out instead of sliding menu elements.

• Juicy pop in & pop out for inventory item icons.

• Added new ease functions: BackIn, BackOut and BackInOut.

• Draw outlines for all text in the GUI.

• Smoothly blend the blurred game screenshot in the background of the inventory and the map when transitioning to these states.

• Quick slot animations are animated when coming back from dialogue or inventory.

• Fade in & out animation for labels.

• Fade in & out animation for player's armor / health / stamina bars.

• Map screen "terrain" fades out much faster than other elements to get a nice graphical effect.

• Most of the HUD is removed when the player dies.

• Fixed a bug where the quick slots were incorrectly displayed when the player HUD was forbidden.

GAMEPAD UI

• XBOX ONE & PS4 controller buttons.

• Switch the HUD layout and icons between keyboard + mouse and gamepad when the player switches from one control method to another.

• LB and RB displayed in the inventory when using the gamepad.

• Assign items to quick slots on the gamepad using B + the directional pad or the stick.

• The layout for the inventory is different with the gamepad.

• Show the quick slots in the d-pad layout when using the gamepad. Match the default buttons to the d-pad directions.

• When using the gamepad, use the shoulder buttons for switching between the different tabs in the inventory.

• The dialogue menu can be used with the directional pad and the left stick. The selection of options is instant and index-based instead of based on a virtual cursor.

• The interaction labels now show the gamepad button.

• Zoom and pan the map using the gamepad.

• Navigate teleports (altars, ports) using the gamepad.

• Buy/sell, steal/put back etc. texts for the various modes the inventory can be in.

• The inventory selection starts from the other container when trading, stealing etc.

• When the item being hovered is already equipped (there are two), pressing X will unequip the equipped item instead of putting the same item in the slot.

GAMEPLAY AND FLOW IMPROVEMENTS

• Dynamic weather.

• Armor regenerates.

• Sleeping recovers stamina.

• Added talking Sleepless Knight in front of the Snow Peak castle to guide the player a bit.

• Extra lighting at Snow Peak gate and castle main door so it's easier to navigate during the night.

• Three additional talking Elder Guardians at Root Hall area.

• Merchant that walks to Little Mitten. Removed his stationary variant.

• Ghoul Merchant walking on the road in Village Vonsmark. Villagers fear him.

• Changed few wilderness wolves to the guard evading "Wolf_Fearful" variant.

• Added custom route for each walking Northern Guard in Snow Peak.

• Added invisible physics colliders to make the Snow Peak Castle exterior stairs walkable for the patrolling Northern Guards.

• The silent band member is carrying a torch to help with night time lighting of that scene.

• Adjusted the villager roads in Snow Peak.

• Added a text sequence for advancing the story in the intro.

• Show the credits in the transition between the intro and the main world.

• If the fox drowns in the intro it is taken back to the campfire.

• Enemies stay away from the Death Dealer.

• Description for the three-pronged pitchfork.

• Dialogue for the patrolling elf at the Citadel.

• Light-hearted NPC "poking".

• Merchants can be kicked and they can retaliate.

• Wizards can be kicked and they can retaliate.

• Mertusks can be kicked and they can retaliate.

• Imps and Elder Guardians can be kicked and they can retaliate.

• Added small reactions to kicking wolves and dogs.

• Lots of custom characters like Mrs Lansbury can be kicked.

• Sheep behavior improved.

• Custom blue outfit and asset for Admiral Rodriguez to make him stand out.

• Goblin clues & greetings are visible for: GoblinBomber_Generated, GoblinBruteArcher_Generated, GoblinMinion_Generated and GoblinArcher_Generated.

• Terracotta vases sometimes spawn loot.

• Functional house doors for Barry's Field area "Cartwright Crossing".

• Connected houses to interiors in Town of Fortuna suburbs.

• Villager variants for randomized interiors that don't walk against walls.

• 12 new interior table layouts.

• 3 variants of GroupRoomMain_RoundTable.

• Multiple tweaks to the interior generation.

• Prevent cellar chests from spawning too tall enemies.

• Forgotten Folk can drop food items.

• Added a bonfire to Port of Palms so it's possible to sleep in that location.

• Added patrolling Port of Palms guard "Brave Lefric".

• Port of Palms set dressing with new "Merchant Cannon" 3d model, vases and sand versions of the Merchant statues.

• Systematic fix to Goblin King sliding issue.

• Reformatted dialogue menu for Mrs Dunyazad at the beach, with a few tweaks, to accommodate her walking route to Root Hall.

• Jerome is in Barry's Field first with his food carriage. Fast travel along the road from Barry's Field to Town of Fortuna.

• Brother Linus doesn't fall through the cathedral floor.

• Chicken, Pigs and the Guild Chicken evade the player at close range.

• Added a sound for kicking the characters.

• Added the missing shoulder piece to the starting player and fixed the other shoulder pad to be the correct template so it shows up in inventory.

• Fixed a bug where Eastern Port Commander's secondary hammer doesn't appear in the inventory.

• Whiteknuckle Wharf physics shapes improved so NPC's don't get stuck on the roads.

• Town Guard Leader helmet can be bought from Merchants.

• Town Guard Leader helmet 3d model polished and added accurate physics shape.

• Skeleton Archer label was too high.

• Root Hall note's use the correct camera.

• "Pentecost Tower" area name.

• Added GroupCartBarrels01, GroupCartBarrels02, GroupCartSacks05, GroupCartTreasure02.

• MEAT_PLATE_SPARSE, FISH_POT_SPARSE.

• BeerStein_Generated.

• Coconut gives 65% stamina.

• PigMedium loot adjusted.

• Dialogue for Gooseberry after he's saved.

• Dialogue for Ingrid guiding the player.

• Some dream recipes were using "Pumpkin" instead of "Pumpkin01_Pickup" making it impossible to get into those dreams.

• Added "Beholder Road Tower" into an empty area just before Snow Peak - helps with orienting the player as the tower is visible from very far away.

• Added "Adso Graveyard Tower" between Port of Palms and Port Pulgar.

• Pentecost Tower area name.

• Names for the endings.

• Root Hall note reading uses correct camera.

• Eastern Port Tavern has two more bandits, small winebarrel to the counter and some other minor set dressing.

• Goblin Cathedral pickups moved so the location is less cluttered.

• Goblin Tavern hatch is hidden beneath a carpet to reduce the amount of close proximity interaction targets.

• Added custom entraces for all dreams. (instead of EntranceTest)

• Dream Desert has several possible entrances.

• Open cart for Jerome. It switches to empty variant when he reaches Town of Fortuna.

• Staff_MertuskRoyalty_PlayerWeapon spawns in EasternPortTavern after Praakh leaves.

• Ulf duplication bug fixed. If Ulf is already investigating the murders then remove the option of poisoning the Huntsman's Heel.

• Ulf's minions couldn't be killed because: "BoarGuardFodder_EasternPort_Barracks_Fighting" didn't have correct factions.

• Ulf's minions no longer do the annoying "push" against their targets when striking.

• Start player has 60 coins which is enough to pay for the journey from Barry's Field to Town of Fortuna and replaced "HamPlate" with "Key01" as player already gets healing item from the blind lady. Added 1x Hardland Brew and 1x Lockpick for Loamie's corpse.

• Chakkamadan will now sell you the Mertusk Staff after the embargo is lifted. He also has dialogue to acknowledge when Mrs Gooseberry leaves with her son.

• Merchant Crystal is stolen once Ulf leaves Port of Palms.

• Sheba can be killed in the boss fight. She does a lot more damage.

• Custom player variant for Ingrid Dream.

• Teleport out of the Ingrid dream when selecting "Wake up now."

• Disallow the inventory in the Mangled Dream.

• The Dream Desert ties into the intro drowning with its soundscape. Ingrid's Tower ties into the cave under the Frozen Lake.

• Additional set dressing in Dream Desert.

• Improved the sinking to the Frozen Lake and the pond in the Elven Citadel.

• Removed stamina bar in the Feast Dream.

• The Red One talks in the Feast Dream.

• Shortened versions of the Goblin King recipes.

• Added a handgun next to Second Secretary Luceratia's body.

• Prevent jumping when rising up from a campfire, after getting knocked out, etc.

• An exit text sequence for the Heaviest Dream.

• The cobold theme is played when in the Cobold Cave dream and after the sacrifice. The sacrifice itself improved.

• There is a short text sequence from the Cobold Dream back to the campfire.

• Tweaks to the formatting for Ingrid's dialogue in the tower.

• New text sequence for entering the dream desert.

• New text sequence for leaving the Frozen Lake.

• Start around the corner under the Frozen Lake.

• Wake up in the small pool of water in the Frozen Lake.

• Descriptions for the three wands, and the Royal Mertusk Staff.

• Added flock of sheep to the empty stretch of road in the intro.

• Intro's coffin jumps towards the player until you talk to it.

GAMEPLAY AND FLOW - SPOILERS SECTION

-Deathbed dream.

-Dialogue for the fox inside the deathbed.

-New dialogue for Elena before and after the deathbed.

-Brief dialogue for Jane and Mary, concerning Larry.

-Additional set dressing of the docks at Blue-Light Bayou. (3 discoverable items)

-Additional set dressing at Whiteknuckle Wharf.

-Dialogue for Maudey Dhu in the dream.

-You can read what Maudey Dhu says all the way from the edge of the scene.

-Tavern has a new entrance for the situation where player spawns in his regular size.

-Moved the two Wood Elves in Snow Peak so it's easier to sneak behind them.

-Edited Tamara's dialogue to explicitly mention the Wild Mantra.

-Tweaked Tamara's Horned Lodge dialogue to specify "five" truths.

-Eject the tappen far enough from the well in the witch's garden so that they won't get stuck in the well.

-All tappen goes to the Death Dealer if lost (they are all unique now), and they stack in the cauldron identically.

-Fade out and back in when travelling with Opie, Rogriguez, and Jerome. Also when going through the Smuggler's Hole.

-Better soundscapes for several playable dreams: Mangled, Ghost Dealer and Giant Wolf.

-Added "Fiery Stash". Snake Wand can be found there.

-Lucas relic quest can be completed by killing Ulf. Also if Ulf and the boars retreat Port Pulgar.

-Guildmaster's Catodon Sands quest line fix. You can start carrying the Guildmaster even if you haven't opened the Catodon Gate yet.

-Crimson Belmont never appeared in the tavern after player is back to normal size. Which in turn caused proper flags not to be set and Dream Wizard information to not be visible.

-Secret ending gameplay improvements.

-Completing the game adds information to the main menu.

• POLISH & BUG FIXES

• The sound of rain when it rains. Added support for an ambient loop in a weather definition.

• Different weathers can make use of cloud speeds, scales and different textures for cookie textures without snapping artifacts.

• Point light shadows use blue noise to get rid of banding artifacts.

• Fixed two villagers at Port of Palms who tend to fall into the ocean.

• Cobold Forest polish: Characters don't fall from the air, player doesn't get a level up in the beginning.

• Removed WaveAnimationComponent from Olga's grave.

• RemovedOptimizationRemoved shadows from water ripple particles.

• Performance problem fixed in one of the endings.

• Added missing geometry and fixed light leaks in one of the dream scenes.

• Added water ripples to Belmont's fish tank.

• Don't use "GroundWater" materialName to check which particles to spawn, use much more accurate height based "material" check to spawn the water rings.

• Cursed Mansion wall geometry fixed. Made the exterior mask more accurate.

• Cursed Mansion interior weather tweak.

• Queen's Pool Dream environment physics shape improved.

• Grimaldi Dream scene polish.

• Father Bunion uses character shading.

• SpiderGiant's label attached to head bone.

• Rotgerius label attached to head bone.

• Freja's label attached to head bone.

• Rotgerius' label attached to head bone and positioned correctly.

• The Purple One has a purple cane to make him easier to spot in the dark.

• Hires pedestal for Merchant Crystal.

• Matching the water ripple shading to water surface.

• On low and medium settings the particle buffer is upscale is blurred slightly with blue noise.

• Clear SSAO to black instead of white to prevent sky artifacts.

• Fixed geometry gaps in Marquardt Mansion.

• White Libary particles don't expire.

• Ghost rendering changed to double sided.

• Added better "Box with a hole" object that doesn't have the horizon glow artifacts.

• Coconut loot spawner needed "makeDynamic" so they don't float in air while spawning.

• Moved Green Merchant labels higher.

• Eastern Port boats don't sink when jumped on.

• Remove Mertusk nose and hand collision shapes so it doesn't throw player out of level geometry.

• MetalSpike_RootHall is invulnerable.

• Decorated BonfireIntro with some additional flowers.

• Moved two trees in the intro so there's no shadow on Loamie's face.

• Snap mode support for entrances.

• Lion's Mouth exterior gate label one notch higher so it doesn't overlap with Locke's head.

• Moved Merchant Union guards slightly away from the pillars.

• Treasurers in Merchant Union cannot walk out of their posts.

• BeerStein 3d model bottom sections are more detailed.

• Added 3 Undead_Piece 3d models.

• New "TorchHolder_SnowPeak" 3d model.

• Desert_GroundAlignedDust_Interior_Particles.

• Rotated GroupCartTreasure01 so it doesn't intersect with the cart.

• Undead blood splatter.

• Invalidate motion vectors when the camera changes to get rid of smearing artifact.

• masterDirectLightIntensity, masterAmbientLightIntensity, masterPointLightIntensity, masterParticleIntensity and masterFogIntensity are updated before usage.

• Big Ben label height fixed. Made him stationary. The house he is guarding is boarded up.

• Fixed a potential crash where the entity library would get torn down while loading still took place.

• Removed unused files to save memory.

• Town of Fortuna Imp's wooden pedestal is static and doesn't glitch when kicked.

• Mr. Pickwick chair is static.

• Father Bunionin table is static.

• Accurate collision shape for Cactus.

• Accurate collision shape for Closed Piano.

• Accurate collision shape for Meat Piece.

• Accurate collision shape for the sleeping guy at Animal Party.

• Fixed bugs related to the Dream Desert.

• Fixed bugs in isOnlyVisibleFarTextChanged.

• Fixed a bug where you could drown in Cobold Forest.

• Fixed a bug where the player couldn't stand up after loading the game from the first save.

• Fixed a bug where the transition from one altar to another would do the loading during a visible frame. Fixed bugs with calling the spawning update.

• Fixed a bug where GUI lists would crash if they had less than one screens worth of items.

• Fixed a bug where the player stats in the inventory didn't update for the gamepad.

• Fixed a bug where, if the needed to exit during loading, you would crash because of the wrong freeing order for buildGamePaths().

• Fixed a bug where Boneman's label was over his face.

• Fixed a bug where player could kick lockpicks to "death".

• Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck trying to sit down in Ingrid's chair in the tower when running & interacting.

• Fixed a bug where the request for finishing sleeping could get stuck in a true state, causing dream-related sounds not to trigger correctly.

• Fixed a bug where the first stage of drunkenness replaced all the underlying ambience in the game.

• Fixed a bug where the game was trying to set 3D-parameters for a 2D-sound.

• Fixed a bug where the player can temporarily sink into the 8m-objects by running into them due to the way their contacts are modified. Don't do contact modification with the player.

• Fixed a rare crash.

• AddedOptimizationSpread entity transformations over multiple frames when the Apple of the Eye is thrown. Added support for postponing non-critical entity transformations.

• Optimization: Don't spawn the ground particles for equipped items. This helps the performance of entity transformations somewhat.

• Deprecated the exclusive full screen and switched to just using a windowed mode (either normal or borderless full screen) with a sequential flip mode which, coupled with rendering to a smaller buffer, gives the same kind of performance profile as a full screen exclusive would, but without all the awkwardness both in the code and for the user experience. Also, ClipCursor() is now used confine the mouse cursor the window area when capturing the mouse, which is more robust than setting the cursor position to the center each frame.

POLISH & BUG FIXES - SPOILERS SECTION

-Sir Kuolema's shield couldn't be picked up.

-Made Samarkand armor pieces unique so player can retrieve them from the Death Dealer.

-Exclude "Dream of Masks" and "Dream of Shields" from automatic recognition of item types so they don't get mask or armor stats.

-Martha's Pie couldn't go into the inventory preventing her quest to be completed.

-The giant pumpkin in the witch's garden sets a flag upon death prevents it from getting created again upon save game migration.

-The masks in the Adventurers' Guild say Examine instead of Talk.

-Cobold Forest was spawning lots of stuff out of level bounds.

-Fixed a bug where the item pointers would get lost if there was one weapon in the quick slot and one weapon in the inventory, and the player opened up the witch's cauldron or an outhouse. This bug would then manifest itself as the quick slots getting cleared during a save/load cycle.

-Fixed a bug where the Great Heart dream didn't display the level-up text. The level-up didn't get applied on the waking side, either.

-Fixed a bug where descending from the court in Root Hall would hide the HUD permanently.

-Fixed a bug where Freja would run off towards the kennel whenever you would stop riding and no longer had her in focus.

-Fixed light leaking in Interior-CellarHolloway.

-Added the sound of the heart beating to the Talking Heart dream.

-Added some brighter particles to the Talking Heart Dream.

-Intro storm transition polished, added dedicated weather for it.

-Animal Party weather tweaked.

-Prettier weather in Cobold Forest.

-More dramatic weather for Ingrid's ending.

-Elder King's Heart is "gently" animated and has a label attached to it.

GRAPHICS

• Sky and clouds are marked on the material ID map which enables much cleaner sky & cloud rendering.

• Updated water rendering that uses material ID map to its advantage.

• Better smoke rendering. (Bonfire smoke rendering uses meshes to get proper depth writes)

• Thin rim lighting

• SSS effect.

• Particles can be attached to the terrain height map.

• Shadow cookies repeat less in the far distance.

• More interesting Ghost rendering.

• Visual glitches on Ghost characters fixed with u_ghostDistortWeight shader uniform.

• Fixed Root Hall lantern particles. (they were rotating in weird angles)

• Fixed a shadow flicker bug at high refresh rate monitors.

• Ambient Occlusion splats for ship, shipwreck and ship bridge.

• FogColorNight values added and defined.

• Optimization: Shadow pass skips clouds.