We are going to start posting weekly or bi-weekly progress updates called the 'Friday Devlog'* to be more open and accountable for the progress of Longvinter and to create an archive that anyone in the future could go back and look at.
*We'll try to keep these posts as regular as we can, but some variation on date and time each week is to be expected!
Please, join us on our Discord if you'd like to discuss game changes and additions. All feedback is welcome!
Tent Upgrade: Cabins
@Teo
Come Early Access, you can now make real villages with your friends because this week I added the ability to upgrade the research tent into a cabin by depositing wood into a workbench. This is supposed to be a medium-length, early-game grind. Thanks for the suggestion, Jasmin!
There are 5 different colorways:
- Baby blue
- Blush
- Mint (a personal favorite)
- Lemon
- Barn red
This new addition of cabins required me to go back to one of the first features I made almost exactly a year ago which was the placeable tents. I removed the random rotation which was applied when you place down the tent. Instead, tents (and other placeables in the future) now have 'restricted rotation', meaning that you can only rotate the placable 22.5 degrees on each side. This way you won't have houses that face the wrong way from the players' perspective.
I saw a picture of a place called 'Brändaholm', a community garden by the sea in South-Sweden which has a bunch of cute houses next to each other and those were my main inspiration for the color and detail of the cabins. Making the models took me well over a day to make and adjusting colors and adding detail took a couple of hours on top of that.
You can also share the door code with your friends if you want to have friends over, but that I haven't implemented fully YET!
The interior model is still WIP!
In the coming weeks before the Early Access release, I'm going to make an allotment garden/village placeable set that matches the aesthetic of the cabins. It will have stylized fences, a bench, an old-school village lamp post, and a garden table + chair set.
Sitting
@Sven Nilsson
I was asked by Teo to make a sitting animation and logic for the player character. The process was relatively easy and the results are awesome and cute 🥰 This was also suggested by Jasmin, so thank you!
The current input for sittings is bound to the "X" key.
Buffs
@Sven Nilsson
To make items have more meaning in the game than just giving health or placing we wanted to make a status effect/buff system.
When the player consumes an item it gives the player a temporary status effect that is displayed on the HUD, UI is still WIP. The effect can give the player resistance to cold or make the player run faster.
We will also implement this system to hats, which will give permanent effects that last as long as you have the item equipped.
New Items!
@Sven Nilsson
New telescopic Reel
This week I have added more items to get some meat around the game mechanics, and to make the world have more items to discover.
Here is a list of recently added items:
- Metal parts: Used for crafting items.
- Juniper wood: Obtained by chopping down new juniper trees (model WIP)
- Juniper and wood planks: Crafted by combining tree type in crafting bench.
- Sugar beets and seeds: Can be planted and crafted into sugar which is used for cooking
- Flour and bread: Wheat can now be crafted into flour that can be crafted to bread and croissant
- Cake: Can be cooked on the stove and heals a lot
- Berry jams: Every berry can now be crafted into a jam. These give more health
- Telescopic Reel: Acts like a fishing rob but has more range to catch those deep-sea fish (WIP)
- Different ammo sizes: We added max ammo that can be added to your gun and added 25 and 50 sized ammo boxes
- Snack bar
- Energy drink: Gives you a small amount of energy and a small running speed buff
- Crafting & cooking books: To make it easier for players to know what can and cannot be crafted/cooked I made books that show every item that can be crafted and how to craft them.
Other changes
- Added 10 new achievements
- Added energy symbol on the consumable items inventory icon
- Added item icons for Energy Drink, Flour, Croissant, and Tarp
- Added a slight tilt to the player camera when placing items to make the items easier to place down where you want them
- Re-added caught fish notification
- Removed random rotation when placing a tent. Using restricted rotation instead
- Increased tree health by about 300%
- A few bug fixes
