Development Newsletter: March Development Updates

This month, major changes to combat gameplay continued development. This included finalizing work on the new creature locomotion and more.

March Updates: Combat, Visuals, and More

Creature Locomotion & Combat Changes

This month many new significant improvements were made to the combat and locomotion:

• Finished work on the new 1-handed and 2-handed sword animations and combos

• Finished work on the new dodge ability

• Finished work on new creature locomotion

• Added a new monster using the new locomotion system, which players might encounter somewhere on the map

• Finished work adding new creature locomotion to the Warglers at/around the riverside cave

Gameplay Visual Improvements

This month many new significant improvements were made to the gameplay visuals, including:

• Moved the game over from the default UE tonemapper to AGX for better visual fidelity

• Made significant improvements to gameplay color and light balance through postprocessing

Before:

After:

• Redesigned sign posts to be more aesthetic

• Redesigned lamp posts to be more aesthetic

New Main Menu and Load Screen

The main menu and load screen visuals were also updated since the last newsletter. A wallpaper version of the new load screen visual is also available at the top of this article.

Deployable Armor Stands

This month armor stands were introduced. While the major theme of this month was polishing combat gameplay and improving landscape / road visuals, some development time was also spent on this new asset to help bolster homesteading gameplay. In the future several more deployable home upgrades are also planned.

• Created the new 3D and 2D assets for armor stands

• Armor stands can now be deployed in play homes, acting as a container that also displays an armor piece

• The armor stand recipe can now be discovered on new playthroughs when the player first encounters dry wood and discovers its associated crafts

Armor stands can be picked up and moved just like any other home deployable upgrade. They can only hold armor (no helmets, boots, or other items) and update their visuals to match the armor currently being stored. This way, players are able to put all of their collected armors on display at home.

Other Changes (Shipwrecks, Sand Spawners, and more)

• Added sand harvesting sites throughout the game, which significantly bolsters player ability to craft lots of spells (since glassware is a major bottleneck for spell crafting, it was important for sand to be widely available so that players can craft a larger quantity of spells more easily)

• Added a new shipwreck area and quest

• Added many new bug fixes and gameplay input improvements

Supporting the Project

If you've been enjoying the Hermit Demo and want to help support the game, some things you can do to help support the project:

• Consider leaving a positive review for the Demo Page! It helps the game a lot, and allows me to focus more of my time on development rather than having to divert that time and energy toward advertising

• Share the game Demo with friends / Discord servers you know might enjoy it

• Submit bug reports using the reporting tool: if you find an issue, let me know. I can't reply to every report, but I do read them all and I make an effort to fix every issue that I can reproduce on my end

Thank you all for your continued support of the project!