Hardland update for 7 March 2019

The full changelist for the update I've now uploaded is some 250 items long, and although most items are related to things outside the demo, I'll list about 150 of them here so that you can get a better picture of what went into it. The next milestone is the first full game beta version. I'll post news about how to access it at the end of next week, once we've completed some additional work for combat and saving, as well as done that ever-so-crucial extra round of playtesting.

FIXED CRASHES

• Don't reload the entity templates each time the player enters a new world. This may or may not help with players running into a bug where the game crashes when templates can't be found.
• A possible fix for a bug where the game crashes in PhysX after loading a new world, because query caches were not correctly deleted.
• Fixed a bug where query cache shape pointers were left hanging if a physics object was first de-activated in updateHide() and later destroyed. This is a possible cause of crashing in PhysX.

OTHER CHANGES (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

• "King's Stake" relic can be acquired from WizardStone landmark.
• "Sleep won't come with enemies nearby." + removed the sleep button if sleeping's not allowed.
• 4 new rock assets for decorating roads: RockFlat01 - 03. Rocks_Grey_Tiny_Multiple_02.
• A few clues about Erp. The ingredients for his recipe are also now in his inventory, to spill when he dies.
• A new interaction type FocusOnly which allows the player to look at secondary targets if there are no primary targets to interact with.
• Accurate collision shape for "Your Mask".
• Added Skeleton, Undead and Goblin encounters to the world map.
• Added activation flags for Healing altars.
• Added hat, fork and knife for Father Bunion.
• Admiral Rodriquez ships appear when boars leave.
• All possible items are visible in the player's inventory container. All the items are in fixed positions. If the player doesn't have an item, it will be only faintly visible. This gives a completionist aspect to the game, and improves the layout and understandability of item equipping and use.
• Area_EasternPort_Goblins defined for Goblin music.
• Barry's Field Shipwreck area polish.
• Brief dialogue for Rodriguez in the northern harbor, after Ulf kills everyone in the Port of Palms. A few more little clues. Finalized dialogue for thieves selling Lock Picks.
• Brief dialogue for the Witch about the Death Dealer's relic. Edited the note on Ishmael's door, and the FarText for the Stone Wizard (now the relic inside the wizard is the voice speaking). Description for the Knight's Key.
• Capra's Book Chest in Limbo Guild corridor.
• Capra's Journal Chest in Interior-CapraWindmill in Barry's Field.
• Cathedral Cliff path decorated.
• CellarGrimaldi has custom chest called "Grimaldi Treasure" which contains random heirlooms and an Union Ring that player can pick up.
• Changed any interactions that are currently non-actionable because you're missing for example a key to open a door, to be focused and highlighted correctly, but their interaction button hidden.
• Changed stacked shovels in CellarHolloway and SkeletonKingTomb to Shovel_Prop with only one as a pickup.
• Cobold Forest has more plants growing, some biome changes and custom weather.
• Concert flute is the "definite" elven flute, made matching textures for the three variants.
• Cork assets on bottles should react properly to scale changes and some of them were missing hide component.
• Custom hat for Tanya.
• Custom inventory icons for Baron's Key, Battered Shield, Catodon Key, Coffin Key, Domovoi's Fork, Forbidden Key, Knight's Key, Mangled Shield, Mayor's Key, Monk's Key.
• Custom texture and inventory icon for Great Cross Shield.
• Custom texture for GoblinStrong helmet.
• Damage animations are played back as regular additive animations instead of actions for all the NPCs.
• Desert area road side grass.
• Dialogue for the goblin king Erp, and a new dream recipe for him. Edited dialogue for the monks guarding the relic in St Fortuna's Rest. Changed "Goblin Healer" to "Goblin Priest."
• Disable cycling when the player is in the Fortuna Church area. Cycling is still allowed when sleeping inside the area, however.
• Disable motion blur for one frame when a camera cut takes place.
• DisableDeathSpawnPositionOrientationRandom and DisableDeathSpawnImpulseRandom base templates.
• Don't pre-simulate the Eldest King to fix a bug where it might float away when teleporting to an altar. Will not happen in the real game, but added to the confusion in dev builds.
• Doubled the transform buffer size for instanced rendering to stop meshes from disappearing. NOTE: Potential performance implications -- CL39735 refers to long spikes as the reason for keeping this buffer small. An error gets output in the error stream if the transform buffer is full.
• DreamDesert indirect lighting and fog fix.
• EjectInventory inner spawn radius increased to prevent tangled objects when opening chests. Also biased it towards top as there's usually more room above chests.
• Elven Citadel uses WoodElf_ElvenCitadel_Generated template that doesn't accept stones.
• Emmeline the Mistress in Cursed Mansion exterior.
• Enemy labels attached to head bones. A more casual idle aggro pose.
• Extensive set dressing near roads and next to Animal Party house.
• Extensive world map decoration. Additional bonfire near Wizard Stone and some other new areas.
• Fern can be cut down. (and it grows back)
• Fixed a bug where "everyone" was called Halli; names and descriptions and stats are now generated based on a random seed from a timer as opposed to fixed one.
• Fixed a bug where animations were not immediately updated after spawning resulting in the T-pose being displayed for the first frame.
• Fixed a bug where any characters brought in using CharacterTransformationComponent could fall through the environment, because the spawner entities get run from far away, and thus the characters are allowed to go through one step in the physics simulation without anything underneath them before being pulled out by the hide system. The hide update for an object is now run right after a transformation or when being cycled in.
• Fixed a bug where incorrect fade durations were applied in transitions after coming out of the intro. Fixed a bug where landmark weather would not have an effect after the weather was changed by TimeAndWeatherChangerComponent. Removed the weather template from Mods.txt as unneeded.
• Fixed a bug where item descriptions can be partially outside the screen.
• Fixed a bug where new entities were not initialized during the first frame causing the characters' gear to appear a frame late.
• Fixed a bug where real interactions were not prioritized correctly over FocusOnly. Fixed a bug where entities with labels could get real interactions which would not, then, be shown. Allowed FocusOnly to work through obstacles.
• Fixed a bug where switching from windowed to full screen would not correctly re-create the world textures.
• Fixed a bug where the default UserConfig didn't set the shader define HIGH_QUALITY.
• Fixed a bug where the menu master volume was not applied to all GUI widget sounds.
• Fixed a bug where the mesh opacity of mesh particles was random.
• Fixed a bug where the player came out dead from inside the Goblin King.
• Fixed a bug where the player's equipment showed up a frame late after teleporting.
• Fixed a bug where the transition from the intro to Hardland didn't work.
• Fixed a bug where the weather particles came in a frame late after teleporting.
• Fixed a bug where the weather particles were both saved and created from scratch with each loading of a world, quickly bringing the number of particles up.
• Fixed a bug where the world textures were not getting re-created when the resolution was changed.
• Fixed a bug where two Goblin King's near each other would play the eating sound every other frame. The memory for the event sound previous frame information was shared between instances of an animation, which was wrong. The implementation also gradually consumed more and more memory.
• Fixed a bug where you could always steal from Baron von Sparkle and Ulf the Wolf. Fixed another bug where Baron von Sparkle wouldn't attack you if you snuck up on him to talk.
• Fixed a bug where you could interact with things from inside a dead Goblin King.
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't get out of Ingrid's tower after the Dream Desert. Portal information is transferred upon entity transformation. Removed unused code.
• Fixed levitating Bonfire at Adventurers' Guild and some additional polish.
• ForkSilver_Prop.
• Freja has a piece of meat.
• Functional version of Chestmaker's chest.
• GoblinTreasure landmark music area defined. Changed some objects.
• Grand Jester's scepter is a golden replica of Elder King's fist.
• GrassLow01_Filler that doesn't remove CPU grass.
• If you go into the Inner Citadel without being enlightened, you will be gated by a dream that takes you back to a campfire on the public side of the Elven Citadel.
• Improved food lists in generator.
• Improved wooden chest behavior.
• Inconspicuous Monk's mission works. Added support for setting animations based on flags. Added support for dealing damage to specific factions only.
• Increased the number of regions created around the starting position.
• IngridEnding and Bonfire Intro road set dressing.
• Inventory icons for broken standard shield, broken round shield. Commander's Shield asset and icon updated to make it more distinct.
• Ishmael's house on top of the cliff in North East corner of the map.
• Key_WitchCoffin on Holloway's table. Some set dressing in his room, moved gold below bed, added book to the nightstand.
• Lady Capra's camp below Ishmael's house.
• Larry's House template warnings fixed, removed obsolete data.
• Linus will be in Snow Peak when the beer delivery to the Mountain Sheep has been completed or sabotaged. Fixed a bug where Isolde, the old lady, would be in her demo main menu position when the demo was not enabled.
• Lorelei dialogue tweaked to from "behind the windmill" to say "in the windmill".
• Made "low settings" look closer to the ground truth.
• Map Markers for Cobold Cave Rocks.
• Map colors for healing altar names are the same as other HUD text colors.
• Markers for harbors. (Eastern Port, Merchant Union, Northlands Harbor)
• MerchantCorpses have Union Rings.
• More detailed textures in Giant Fish and Giant Tavern. Some additional set dressing.
• Most main landmarks have descriptions. TextSequences has a new watermelon dream. Kuolema's Armor and the Secret Key have descriptions. Edits to Gus's dialogue and the generic thief vending menu.
• Papakha can be acquired from Snow Peak.
• Particles can be rendered to offscreen buffer to so it's possible to change their resolution.
• Player damage effects changed.
• Praakh doesn't fall through the docks.
• Pre-simulate the snow falling down.
• Put the Wish of [Whatever] in a chronological order. Added an inventory slot for the Old Diary Page (Elena's mother's diary page).
• Reformatted dialogue menus for Rodriguez, to make him respond differently if you've already spoken to him at another port when you book a voyage. FarText for the Raving Lunatic. New description for the Death Dealer's relic. Minor edits.
• Removed all old style shouts and reactions.
• Removed expiration component from bone props.
• Road leading to Village Vonsmark cleaned up so it's not possible to fall into the crack between the road and the wall.
• Rolling cloud shadow popping fix.
• Separated ports and altars from each other as teleporters.
• Shortcut between Town of Fortuna Cathedral and Town Well.
• Simple terrain radiance for low TerrainRadiancePS_LowQuality.
• Sir Kuolema scene polished in Village Vonsmark.
• Skeleton King Tomb ghouls are sleeping at first, they wake up when "VergerMet" flag is set.
• SkeletonKingTomb polish, added custom ghoul brain chests.
• Skip expensive lighting calculations on low settings.
• Some additional set dressing in Snow Peak.
• Sort point lights according to view distance to reduce flickering in Cobold Cave and other scenes with more than 32 point lights.
• SpoiledWatermelon pieces scale according to parent size.
• Terracotta Vases don't need label.
• The 500 gold is used when the player actually teleports with Rodriguez, not when the map screen opens up. Make the teleport markers usable directly in the exported files.
• The Fortuna Church relic-stealing sequence works. The worshipping monks act as relic guards, too.
• The Harlequin One has new dialogue about relics (replacing the dialogue about the staff). The monks in St Fortuna's have edits to their dialogue about stealing the relic. The Provider, Prophet, Miser, and Mystic masks in the Glass Passage have two sets of FarText: one before the stolen mask is returned, one after. New description for the Silver Fork; moved two-pronged Pitchfork description to three-pronged Pitchfork.
• The foliage appears on the frame after teleporting.
• The relic guards in the Fortuna Church talk about the evening instead of midnight.
• The scene with Ingrid at Fortuna's grave will reset if you start running away from it. Sleeping at the campfire after talking to her will function correctly, and turn the campfire into an unlit one again.
• Town of Fortuna cathedral book stand no longer breaks when kicked.
• Town of Fortuna wizard area polished.
• TownWell landmark polished.
• Traveling with Rodriguez no longer takes you through the dock into the water at the destination.
• Unhealed Wound (Limbo Guild) can be accessed in all situations.
• Unified map screen text colors with inventory screen.
• Unique Goblin King "Erp the Knightcrusher" at Goblin Treasure.
• Unique asset and icon for Lucretia's hourglass.
• Unique inventory icon and mesh for King's Western Fist.
• Unique inventory icons and meshes for 3 King's Splinters. (arc, bent, branch)
• Unique inventory icons for the three flutes.
• Unique items and their icons for Sir Kuolema: left and right spaulders, armor, spear and two shields (player can equip the other).
• Unique marker for the ship to improve harbor readability.
• Wave animation fades out with distance.
• Weapon icons unified and added missing HammerSmithFortuna.
• Weather changes immediately after teleporting.
• Weather tweaks, better implementation of MoonHalf template.
• When unmounting Freja or any ridable wild boars, the player won't disappear anymore. Furthermore, any items collected will be correctly retained.
• Windmills are visible on the map.
• Witch Mathilda despawns and appears correctly in her house after the town well scene. Improved her coffin special effects.
• You can teleport out of Altar Malpris to three individual healing altars (001-003). Fixed what appears a bug in teleport visibility evaluation.
• You talk to the Commander automatically inside Ulf's villa after sabotaging the Merchant Union vault gate to ensure certain information is passed and the quest activated correctly. Kazik won't stop you from getting out of the vault after having the final conversation with Ulf (he didn't stop it before either, but acted as though he would). You don't have to go through the entire final conversation with Ulf to get the Catodon Key; he'll leave it behind for you to collect if you didn't get it from him, and you'll also get the relic. Various bug fixes related to the final conversation.
• You won't spend the ticket with Rodriguez if you select the same port.

P.S. At least a few people have requested that the old version be made available alongside the demo to scratch the open-world itch while waiting. The old version is playable right now by right-clicking Hardland on Steam, selecting properties, and pointing to "release_26" in the dropdown menu of the beta tab.