Development Newsletter: May Development Updates

As we approach the end of the Demo's development period, I will slowly start to shift the development focus back to the main game. However, there are still a few changes coming to the Demo before that happens. This month major changes to the gameplay continued, with a focus on new spell mechanics, new locations, and new enemy NPCs.

May Updates: New Dungeons, Spells, & More!

New Dungeon Locations

This month two new dungeons were added to the Hermit Demo. The dungeon entrances are also being revamped as well.

New Enemy NPCs: Wights

A new enemy NPC type (Wights) was also added this month. Wights are deformed undead that move more like animals than people. They attack with their bare hands and have a very high chance of causing infections.

Wights will also have a chance to drop Luminescent Eyeballs, which are required to craft the new Starlight spell.

Starlight Spell

A new spellcraft (Starlight) has been added to the game that allows players to cast a light wherever they are looking. This is a magic alternative to torches. The light can be recast quickly, but only one light can be active at a time (so casting a new one will cause your previous light to expire).

Summon Spider Spell & Spider Biome Restyle

Much earlier in the month the Spider biome was completely restyled,l and new items/magic were also added.

The spider biome now features fibrous egg spawners, which are both a food source and an ingredient for a spell that can summon a spider to attack nearby enemies for you.

Minor Dungeon Bosses

New minor dungeon bosses have been added to the end zones of the new dungeons. The main goal with this dungeon update was to add new locations for Demo Players to explore. Previously, the Demo contained only one main dungeon.

In the main game, however, dungeon-crawling is common - and so two extra areas were added to ensure the Demo captures this aspect of the main game.

Multi-Channel Tracing for Bows & Deployable Targets for Homesteading

A significant change has been made to the way that bows work. While players won't immediately notice a difference in how bows look, this is a significant change under-the-hood and it means that bows will have much better/more consistent aiming at distances and at different types of objects.

Players should now be able to hit enemies with a bow from quite far without missing.

From a technical standpoint, what's changed here is that bows now perform multiple types of traces before determining a firing path for the projectile. This ensures that the object behind the player reticle is always hit, and that the closest trace always wins. The result is that aiming is much more reliable. While in the past it was possible to miss from some firing positions, this is no longer the case and bows in general are now much more effective weapons.

A new deployable homesteading item has been added: Archery Targets. These are a decorative asset that can be deployed in home areas, and the targets can be picked up from behind in order to move them.

Various Area Changes

There is now an additional wooden gate surrounding Gravenstaad's lower area, and some other game areas have been adjusted slightly as well.

UI & Game Art

Inspect widget & Compare widget

The inspect item widget and compare item widget are now significantly larger. Both of these widgets will now auto-detect the player's mouse position in the viewport and draw the widget position accordingly.

This should mean that the widget now never gets drawn off screen, and that the widgets are easier to use/more readable (usually without having to scroll to see weapon/armour stats).

New Key Art & Steam Page

The game has been updated with new Key Art Assets that more closely match the look at feel of the game.

The new Logo & Key Art were created in 3D using Unreal Engine 5 and Blender. A Devlog showcasing the creation process for the new art assets is currently in development.

Difficulty Mode Selection

Difficulty mode selection is now a separate window during character creation. This helps to make sure players don't miss this during setup, and it also has room for longer explanations so that it's clear to players what each difficulty setting does in terms of gameplay.

Optimizations & Fixes

CPU Optimization & Cloth Simulation Settings

The demo should run more more smoothly on low-mid range hardware than before, and CPU usage spikes should be less frequent.

• Over the past month a larger number of CPU optimizations have been made to the game characters and some components

• Several expensive particle effects have been changed or removed

• There is now an option in the game to disable cloth simulation in the graphics settings, which will further help improve the game's performance on low-mid range hardware

Donkey Companion Summoning / Following Improvements

A major thorn in the side of players has been the Donkey becoming stuck or not coming when called. A number of improvements are underway here and you should expect this to continue to improve over time. Right now, the Donkey summoning distance has been reduced from 80M to 35M. This means that you don't need to move very far before calling the Donkey will force it to respawn. This swill help to prevent the Donkey from becoming stuck far away, and if the Donkey does become stuck, you don't need to move very far at all now before calling with force a position reset. Other changes here include:

• More donkey spawn locations have been added

• Some known areas where the donkey could become stuck have been adjusted or added to the NavMesh as Obstacles

Other Changes

A number of other minor changes and fixes have been shipped this month, including:

• Reduced the weight of raw meat

• Reduced the weight of spectacles

• Weight will be renamed from 'Kg' to just 'Weight', since specific weight measurements aren't clear / don't always make intuitive sense

• Fixed bug with fish texture appearances

• Fixed an issue with new crafts not being discoverable on older save games

• Bitter extract can now be crafted from scraper berries, which treats infections slowly over time; this is less effective than using an Artificial Leech (which treats infections instantly), but can significantly reduce the duration of infections and is very easy to craft

• Better spell projectile behaviour; player spells (other than Starlight) now have better auto-targeting and path prediction for hitting NPCs that are uphill or downhill without missing; a fix for this on NPC spells is also in the works

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!