itch.io

Already thought that the additional moderation work that comes with it might be one reason.

Didn't even think about streaming though. Thought more about the existence of it in the first place and then maybe a few text and screenshot channels and thats it.

Also an announcement channel automated by a webhook would be nice if itch.io supports something like that, becuase I fire up discord basically every day whereas itch.io i only rarely ever touch as winstone is the only game I have on this platform.

And if it is just us two for a while then that's also fine by me :)

EDIT: I started to create one just so that there is one. Right now it does not have any members other than me and you decide what I should do with it going forth. Delete it? Transfere ownership? Anyways, there you go: < deleted links >

EDIT 2: Obviously you don't like it. It is still there, but I removed all invite links, so noone can join and nobody joined yet. So it is there but abandoned.

Have you ever considdered creating a discord server for the Windstone Community?

Chat about windstone, off-topic chat, leaks, teaser for a new update, automaic webhook triggered announcements, q&a, easy bug reporting organized with threads, quick idea discussions....

I think - done right - it could have potential. Might even help you to grow your playerbase a bit.

Two mechanics used in Witcher 3 that I thought could be beneficial added to the game:

• Hill Sliding
  Whenever possible Geralt from Riva does not fall down hills if not absolutely necessarry. He slides down. Taking no fall-damage. This would solve the problem in this game where - whenever you are near a slope - you fly-glitch down a hill and die.

• Balanced Weight System
  You mentioned that you are experimenting with new weight systems. One way of doing so would be the one from Witcher 3.
  Armor and weapons weight a ton (~5), a few crafting materials a little (0-2) and edebles literaly nothing (0). All in all there is to say that players love horting when they don't know when they going to need those materials.

It's been moved in the last update. It can now be found on top of a mountain. Press M to open the map and you'll see a cave high up in the mountains. That is the new location.

Also, take the crafting material for some campfires with you as you might freeze to death on your way there if you don't. Food, water and a bed might also be a good idea.

I didn't realize there was over lap in the settings menu, or do you just mean multiple elements on different parts of the screen at the same time?

I ment the fact that the menu elements of both "New Game" and "Video Settings" are visible in one and the same screenshot (this is only one example as there are multiple combinations of this)

What is it about the settings menu that you don't like right now?
I was talking about the overlaping of multiple menus. e.g. "loading a save" menu and then graphics menu and switching between all of those submenus.
Those two should be seperate menus. One completely gone when switching to the next.
Not one active and the other one overlaps and the third smirs in there as well and parts of it again getting replaced once the 4th menu button gets clicked and so on... it make not feel like a clean final game...

UPDATE 15:

Positive Feedback (Those changes I like a lot):
+ Cabins and Caves are now indicated on the map drone screen.
+ Cabin and Cave indicators change color when discovered.

Negative Feedback (Those changes I did not like):
- Max carry weight and inventory space has been reduced.
- The toolbelt UI has been reverted to only show when the inventory is open (I want that back, please)

Suggestions:
= Blue eye icon after eating a blue cap mushroom should show correctly
    +maybe add a blink animation once only 5 seconds are left?
+ broken ecsape pod sfx sounds horibble
    - it's more like a spider attack from minecraft than an electrical malfunction...
+ "close journal" and "guide / task toggle" should swap positions
+ custom map marker (add a custom marker using the cursor)
+ where is the suspension bridge? (I kinda liked it and it would still fit even with the new cave)

Bug Reports:
+ overfed display randomly shows for no reason
+ when crafting an item the slots where the consumed materials were are not used (they should be)
+ finding tools should count as crafting them for the journal quests (it is pain to do that every time)
+ menu controls got better but they are still a mess: e.g.

+ what happened here? (terrain is messed up?)
+ It rains inside of caves
+ The quest compass should no longer overlap other UI elements. Um... yea about that... it still does:

This magnificent stone art by Jon Foreman

I saw these stone-circles on reddit and thought about this game. I don't know how something like that could be implemented, but it looked like it could fit in the game. I just posted this here in case it sparks any ideas - now or in the future...

Maybe some kind of a nest for the dragon egg? A teleport pad? Or just simply a waypoint marker?

About Update 13:

• The First Drag-Click / Scroll Action directly after a storage is openened does not work
• Raindrops are visible under water
  
• Raindrops tripple up on the border of the screen (left side in this pic) when moving the camera using the mouse
  
• Waypointer is shown on top of the craft button in the inventory menu
  
• I can't tell what it is, but something doesn't look right about the spaceship... Too clean? Too less detail? Stayed too much in one piece and still broke? I can't really tell what it is, but something is wrong...
  
• Wanting to drop multiple items while having the crafting menu open results in the following
  
• Killing the Broodmother you get stuck beneath her (until you mine it all)
  
• Killing the Broodmother is kinda disapointing right now as there are no acheivements or special drops (those are probably planned already, aren't they?)

Those were the bugs I found so far.

All in all a great update!

> confirm that Esc closes the pause menu

New save, new game. Still doesn't work (maybe I need to delete all save files manually... Nope, still not working)

> Did you ever figure out why you're capped at 30fps? There's a possibility that your laptop just can't pull a higher frame rate, but if you can on other games as you stated, you definitely should be able to at least on the main title screen and in map view.

I get 60 fps if I look at the sky..

So... Update 11.

First of all, nice job on the 'E' closes all feature. I really appreciate that.

Now what else....

• [3D Models / Textures] Something is wrong with the characters face. I think it's things like the right eye (her left one) looking in the wrong direction and the spotlight glare making her skin, hair and eye color look a little wierd or something like that - the later could be on purpose or just the color representation of my monitor or graphic settings though, because it looks a little bit better when on maximum graphic settings - the glare still seems to much though aka the lighting to bright.
  
• [3D Models / Textures] I liked the shrimp formician better than the ant one. Especially for this early game area. The ant one could be a good fit for the higer level ones though. Compared to the ant one the shrimp one also looks cuter and facing it you feel more like hunting for sea food rather than attacking an intelligent otherworldly enemy - if that makes sence.
• [Video Settings] A 1600x900 option would be nice as it might strike the right balance between performance and video quality (as it did for me on 'AC Origins')
• [Controls] 'Esc' should also close the pause menu again
• [QOL] Maybe increace the arrow's 'click box' size a tiny bit. They are quite hard to pick up sometimes
• [Acheivements] Why does a crafting task still show up and tell me to craft something I just picked up and now need create a duplicate to finish that task. Maybe chage it to 'craft or find' or 'craft or collect.'
• [QOL] Add small indecators on some bars. E.g. the 'sleep' bar could do with small seperators each hour so you can easily see how much you have to sleep to fully fill it. Same with the fireplace. There a transparent overlay on how much the number of fuel souces you are about to add, adds to the fires duration.
• [Bug] Quickly switching between the activation of two tasks that still need time to finish, overlaps the 'days remaining' texts and makes them hard to read:
  

> Is your gpu software capping your global framerate at 30?

Im getting up to 85 fps on "Rising Worlds" so defnitly not.

> High gpu usage isn't necessarily a bad thing if the framerate stays steady. It just means there's a lot of things to draw on the screen. Fps is the primary concern.

Well it concerns me. I want to be able to touch my laptop without burning my fingers off, even though I dont have to as I use external input devices and a laptop cooler below it so neither i nor the table need to touch it most of the time. The next point would be the long term health of my laptop. The cooler it is the longer all the components stay in good condition.

> not much can be gleaned unless we figure out why your fps is capped

Maybe another bottleneck? hdd, memory, cpu? I'll look into it later.

... and I ment it doesn't make much of a difference:

Direction I look:

Nearest:

Near:

Far:

Maximum:

Other Settings:

Interesting. So the map is lightweight - nicely done :)  [only 55% GPU usage]

On another note a "do you want to save" menu would be nice before closing or switching to the main menu. Because if you accedently forget about saving (or don't know yet, that it is a thing), you loose all your progress on close. I expected autosave like any other game like this has and was annoyed when I had to start all over the first few times. And when you die you think it is hardcore all the way the first few times untill you figure out that you can save manually. A "do you want to save" screen would probably guide you towards the idea that you can save manually from the pause menu.

> How does Windstone run for you compared to other games such as Ark or any other game that is large and a seamless open world? Ark is a good comparison because it is built similarly and on the same engine.

I don't have Ark. All I got is

• "Minecraft" Forge with OptiFine, 57 fps, 1920x1017 (windowed mode) => around 30 % GPU usage
• "Rising Worlds" 80 fps, 1920x1080 => around 80 % GPU usage
• "Assassin's Creed Origins" 56 fps, 1920x1080 => around 80 % GPU usage
  • I had this one on 1600x900, which lowered the GPU usage to 40%. Maybe I should try that with your game as well... EDIT: That res seems to be non-existent in your game as well as lowering it to the lowest 16:9 res still doesn't allow for a below 99% GPU usage 60 fps...
• "Just Cause 3" (deleted for disc space reasons, but it ran smoothly)
• "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" 59 fps, 1920x1080 => around 90 % GPU usage

that have a comparable large open world.

Rising Worlds is quite simmilar to your game - not from an lore standpoint, but viewing it from a graphics and gameplay perspective. Harvestable recources (trees even fall when choped down), foliage moving in the wind, etc. Here is a screenshot with performance overlay:

> Could you try running the performance overlay test again and record the difference between view distance settings when looking into the trees? If you do this, make sure it is at an angle where there are many trees far in the background also.

I tried, but there is not much to see, because 1) OBS doesn't like fullscreen apps and I don't know how to record that overlay and 2) the usage at 15 FPS just jumps around the 60% a bit and what you see is more the base randomness of the performance than actual results and at 30 or 60 fps it always stays at 99% and you cant see the usage rising from there...

> Addressing your performance issues.  FPS is of most concern. You should be getting higher fps with the optimization update. Real-time sun lighting and shadows for the day night cycle, and a relatively high polycount and model count in a large seamless world are going to be rough on an older laptop.  What fps are you getting on average in different situations? It should be highest standing at the shore looking out to sea or the sky and lowest looking towards the forest, especially with a lit campfire.

Here is more data on it (notice the NVIDIA Performance overlay in the top right corner):

You were right. Looking at the ocean did reduce the load on the GPU. Looks like the main factor for the high GPU usage is all that foliage (leaves and grass).

Toying around with the graphics settings and looking at the performance, the only option that changed a lot seems to be the FPS setting (logically). The others don't seem to do much (they are something, so keep them in, but the effect is small performance wise).

Maybe a setting for the foliage would be the key to make this game available to more players. One for the amount of leaves / grass, one for the texture detail of them and the third one for disabling the wind animation, might do the trick. A setting to disable the wind animation might also solve another problem I had when the shadows got to twitchy or for people who might experience some sort of nausea because of all the movement.

Also, about the "GTX 550" in the minimum requirements on the title page. Did you mean the "GTX 550-Ti?" If you did, my GPU should well exceed that minimum you set there https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-980M-vs-Nvidia-GTX-550-Ti/m1559...
and almost meet the highest requirements with the GTX 1060 https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-980M-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1060-3GB/m15.... As the GPU is at 100% when I set the game to Lowest Settings and 60 FPS (1080p), I ask myself: Are those requirements still up to date, is this the goal for the final version, or is the plan to push the requirements even further?

You also might wanna define "lower end" in that "Video Settings within the game will allow Windstone to run on computers with lower end processors and graphics cards" statement.

> The stuck-in-ground issue was fixed 4 or 5 updates ago as was the raptor/peacock ai. I suspect that you still experienced it because you were using an old save.

You missunderstood: It is under the Positive feedback category. I noticed the change and wanted to say good job - furthermore it is an old save and it works there as well.

I just had an idea about the inventory bug from a while ago, when I looked at these bugged graphics settings:

As it is obviously stored outdated data from an earlier version that causes it, it might have been the same problem back then. Did you change the item storing system or maybe add / remove / rename item attributes around the time it occured?

Maybe I've played, stored items, saved, exited, updated and stared again? Outdated data is the exact cinda thing that causes such loading issues. And updating the slots by swapping new and old items around could have been the trigger to update those old ones to a new standard...

Comments on version 8:

• Graphics on minimum (except for 30FPS and 1920x1080) now again are at 100% GPU usage - I think that was down to 50% before the update (Gotten worse now?). My guess would be, that the fps cap got destroyed in the process.
• Pressing E on a campfire multiple times, now opens multiple menus that are hard to close once you closed the fron one using the button. Only opening and closing the inventory using tab, gets rid of the floating-stuck menu.
• E opens the basket, but does not close it, because the opened basket then becomes the inventory (it just resets the pointer, when it should also close the inventory)
• Is it just me, or does the rain sound like water falling on a sheet metal plate or "Plexiglass" (the sound in the back not the 'splishing' in the front) [low priority]
• Sometimes there are still scenes where I don't see a damn thing... (well I do see something if I crank my backlight up all the way, but then the rest is so bright I can't to look at it anymore)
  
• Can I have doubleclick crafting from the crafting menu? I really like the quick-action doubleclick mechanic.
  Maybe even add it to the nutrish of the baby-drag on raw meat doubleclick. [low priority]
• Sitting in the chair a little bit of looking around would be nice... [low priority]
• Oh, I almost hard-locked my carried pet on save and load (because it drops on load)...
  

Positive Feedback:

• Wave noise is really nice. (Either I did not notice it before or it's new - either way its great)
• Speed increment on the sitting nausea problem worked!
• Changing the peakock ai to being less agressive is nice!
• Bigger stones look good.
• Nice fix on the "Stuck in ground on load" issue

EDIT: and just when I was done with this post, version #9 dropped ...

Me reading the title page of this game after playtesting for weeks and collecting over 18 ingame hours of play testing:

"The insect-like Formicans are your primary enemy.  Your main mission is to exterminate them and their queen."

Oh, so that's what this is all about!

The main reason I started play testing this game were the beautiful screenshots on your main page and that I just wanted to explore this beautiful landscape you created with a baby dragon on my side - and so far I gotta say it did not disappoint :) . Going forward I wanted to share my personal opinion on the future of this game: A main enemy might give direction, but don't let it dominate the game to the point where you are just stabbing Formicans for hours straight. Discovering new items, mobs and areas is way more fun. And maybe even implement a peaceful solution to whatever made Formicans your primary enemy in the first place.

> You can sit in the chair now!

YES! - I get sea sick from the slow animation while at 30 fps, but - WOHOOO! :)

> video settings should save and load properly now

Oh, they are in the save file of a game state... I always adjust them in the main menu and wondered why they are always at max...

The main menu needs to remember the graphics settings as well as it is quite demanding...

On the priorities part I think I need to clarify some things as they didn't come across the way I wanted to...

1) lower default graphics settings at first startup and main screen performance

• If someone wants to roast their pc they can crank up the settings later, but someone on a low end pc can also play it without crashing right the moment they start the game
• also comes together with what i mentioned above with the demanding main screen - idk, maybe replace it by a pre-rendered video? Would that decrease the demand of recources while maintaining quality?

2) gameplay performance (already discussed)

• (add LOD to the trees and consolidate mountain meshes, etc.)

3) controls

• I differentiate between controlls and keybinds. Controls is how you control the game using the preset keybinds. Things like closing any menu, getting into the pause screen and back using one key -> ESC. If controls don't work properly, players get stuck in menus and get frustrated. To prevent that, make sure that every element type has it's propper logic, you'd expect from a first person parspective game:

• Menu - Enter by <KEY>, exit by <KEY> or ESC
  
  • E for opening a chest inventory, but only half way closing it with the same key is an inconsistency for example
  • "This is an ongoing process as making the ESC key close all menus as well as using the same button used to open menus is complex but a priority for user friendliness." - This basically.
• Hud - Enable by <KEY>, Disable by <KEY>
• Movement - Start by pressing <KEY>, stop by releasing <KEY>
• ...
• Add map movement using mouse? zoom? etc.
• ...

Keybinds are - as you mentioned - a lower priority. I just thought you might want to add them to the settings file while you are at it. That's why i put them in brackets. Same with saving video settings.

Once performance and controls are solid, you can start expanding the content. Here are some ideas:

• add more details to the item description once an item has been fully explored aka eaten or used. How much hunger it restores takes, how much base damage it deals, etc.
• improve map by adding waypoints (and remove spinny compass thing) / fast-tavel
• split the regions into animal spawn zones
  • increasing difficulty away from spawn
  • themes: beach = shrimp, forest = wolf & antilope & peacock, hills = tardigrades (and add them to the map on discovery)
• add more items, mobs, locations, story, etc. - but i can see from the game files you are on that already...

No, i haven't. It must be exceedingly rare. (And yes I've been up there and tried getting out of the loaded chunk and quickly back in - if something like chunks exists in this game - saving and loading the game, opening the near chest under the waterfall. But it didn't happen again)

If I were you, I'd just put that bug in a box with all the screenshots provided and stop looking at it until someone else stubles apon it again and provides more information. (In a github project I'd create an 'issue', but something like that doesn't exist here, does it?)

Right now performance (with saving video settings) and controls (with adjustable keybinds) should be priority.

Once you have those two you might be able to get more players and therefore more testers that don't give up on it after the first few seconds because of those two and maybe then someone else stubles apon more info about that tiny, item texture, loading issue.

But as I don't know much about unreal engine or the current state of your codebase, that is just my opinion.

You're right. Put all my video settings (except for the frame rate - kept that on 30 Hz) from minimum back up two steps and the fading is back - and quickly put them back down after, because I don't want my laptop to turn into a barbecue grill...

> You can remove the compass by simply clicking on a different quest to make that one active. If the dragon quest is the only one you have, you can hide quests in the journal

Thx for the tip. The first one with the switching takes a while to figure out, but works. The second one with the hiding sadly doesn't include the compass, but it's good enough for now.

Congrats on the fire - just saw that it loads now. Gotta try it with a drag egg some time...

I just came to the point where I saw the waypoint thingy for the first time... I really like your effords, but I think it's irretating :/ Maybe a simple marker on the map or a small waypoint when you look at the location on the screen - in form of a beacon if you want - would be better

Good work on the cooking though - it works again.

As a sidenote: Sleeping is kinda different now - it just freezes the screen for a while and the cursor can be moved... could also just be different grafics settings though...

About update 4 and 5:

> Fixed an issue that may cause the player to become stuck inside a Tardigrade corpse.

I got stuck under a Werewolf corpse when I killed it exactly in the moment it was above me and I was in crouch position.
Do you think that got fixed with it? When I look at the install date and the last played date... I don't know if I experienced it before or after the last update...

>Wildlife should no longer pursue you if you are inside a cabin. Instead of clipping halfway through the wall while trying to get to you, they should run away.

Nice one. I completly forgot to tell you that one - it was really wierd the first time I played. Good to hear that this is fixed now.

the one with the fire is simply that it goes out when you load the game - same with the doors. Nothing really breaks here, it's just that the lit (for doors the open) state isn't saved and therefore doesn't get loaded once you load a saved state. That's all.

The thing that does break (again in the sence of resetting a variable) is the timeoput for a dragon egg in front of that fire.

The bug with the default textured slots felt like a loading bug as well. As if the items weren't in the cache anymore and had to be loaded in from the save file once more. Replacing the bugged / unloaded slots with a not bugged item apparently did the trick by triggering that loading mechanic.

> No idea why cooking broke. Can you confirm if it only breaks after saving and loading?

After saving and loading the fire and doors reset (as before the update). I just simply can't cook at all now... or did you change the mechanic? Is it still "droping on ground and moving with right-click", isn't it?

> I also removed the ability to craft baskets for storage for now. That is part of the most recent update. This is until I can figure out why storage items disappear from crafted baskets. Am I correct that only happened to you with crafted baskets and not baskets that are already in the world?

Oh, we might have talk past each other here: I never crafted any storage containers! Not even baskets! I only ever used containers already present in houses or caves. The only furniture I crafted so far is a bedroll and a few campfires.

> Sitting in the chair is in the works.

yay :)

Also: thx for adding a skip button to the intro.

Hi, it's me again

Good news first:

Positive Feedback:

• Good work on the bow. It's way more fun now that you can see where you aim. You can even use the knuckles as an indicator where you are shooting
• Help text interaction indicators are nice
  • maybe you could add one for cooking as well? (It's broken btw - more about that later)
  • also show what you need to repair an item?

Bugs:

• open basket with E and close with ESC to get a walk-around inventory - you can even open and access it where ever you go with tab
  (simmilar wierd stuff with m > tab > m)
  
• Why do you need a firestarter to add wood to an already burning fire? (ok this might be a tiny thing that's just not implemented, yet)
  
• somehow I got locked in the Drag menu without a cursor (could have been the Alt + Tab-ing out that many games don't like)
  
• Cooking broke for some reason. Meat does neither snap into place nor show any coocking progress.
  

Comments:

• I really want to sit in this chair...
  
  

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Windstone\Saved\SaveGames

Thx, found them!

Where does this game store save files?

I wanted to start a fresh game, but before I do that I wanted to backup my savefiles in case I need them or accedently overwrite some of them.

> Once all regions are open, the dragon will grow to "rideable" size

Man, I'm already looking forward to that :)

Did I miss out on any of the main locations while testing?

I found 5 houses, the dragon egg, the loot bundles behind each of the two waterfalls, four types of hostile mobs (chrimp, peacock, wolf and tardigrade - i know they are named differently but i like how close they are to reality, so that is what they are to me), a glowing flower and a lot of different mushrooms (which i did not all eat yet)

Minor thing, but tool switching during an animation doesn't switch the animation.

Example:

1) use hammer, 2) press 3 for knife

3) now you are now hammering with a knife

other way around you would be stabbing with an hammer

as I said - minor thing but well there is that...

Thanks.

(For some reason i was looking for it in the north of one of the islands the whole time - obviously I couldn't find it there...)

> There was a dynamic map that showed an icon for your position, but the entire world changed so I need to remake the map.

Thought so, as I saw the old windstone versions from a few years back.

Could you add a red dot to the height map i posted that tells me where the spawn is? I'm just curious.

Is there a map of the world? This would help exploring it. Combing through the game files, all I could put together are these three hight maps. But I have no idea where the spawn or the waterline is... Could you please help me with that?

Note: The real height map would be over 80 MB, so this is just a small, quality reduced, 3 MB jpg of the real thing.

It did :)

this is now my third try to hatch it..

Try 1: I sleep to long - fire goes out - egg timer resets

Try 2: I accedently go to the main menu and have to load the game I saved - fire resets (because fire and doors reset on load...) - fire is out - egg timer resets

Try 3: ... got it! Man this guy is cute :)

just added the cubbord location last second

and maybe there was also a save and load event somewhere in this...