What's new at Wolfire - Early May

Merlyn here. I'm a game producer for Wolfire, and I've been working here since September 2016. You might recognize me from Discord, or for some of my writing on various social media posts.

What's new at Wolfire?

Most of Wolfire is working on a new game. I'd love to say more about it but I can't just yet. A few of us also continue to work on making Overgrowth better.

We're about to release an Overgrowth 1.2.5 hotfix. It should fix the game crash on launch when using an older AMD GPU.

We're also working on the Overgrowth 1.3 release, which should be out within a few weeks. The focus for this release will be:

• Better game controller support (including menu navigation, and a controller rebinding menu)
• Better dialogue localization support
• Several editor and modding improvements
• Several bugfixes

If you have the game on Steam and want to try out the 1.3 patch early, you can use our unstable nightly build ("internal_testing").

To switch to that branch, open your Steam Library -> Right click Overgrowth -> Properties -> Betas tab -> switch from "NONE" to "internal_testing" -> press OK -> wait for the download to complete.

If you do switch to internal_testing, please note that it hasn't gone through a test pass yet. It might have bugs and crashes, and is likely to be incompatible with more script-heavy mods. Please report any new bugs in that branch to bugs@wolfire.com

Here's the current change log for 1.3 -

Gameplay:

• Added walking and bound it to left-control by default
• AI increases aggression a bit, while they are the group leader
• AI's player attack prediction is now cleared on respawn
• AI's "got hit by leg cannon" count now is cleared on respawn
• Added check box in settings menu to quickly enable/disable frame rate display (without having to enable debug UI)
• Added more details to frame rate display (min, max, average FPS, and sub-ms frame times)

Level changes:

• Overgrowth Story -> Canyon Ambush: Removed one of the 4 enemies in the first wave
• Lugaru Story -> Village_3: Moved Skipper up a bit so they're not sitting inside the ground
• Therium 2 Story -> s2/b2: Fixed a visible object underside

Input:

• Made it possible to navigate the main menu and pause menu with game controllers
• Made keyboard (and controller) navigation in main menu go to expected spot more often
• Added ability to rebind game controller inputs in game
• Added per-controller rebinding support
• Added ability to rebind game controller axis sensitivity and dead zone
• Added mouse button rebinding support
• Improved key binding text in tutorials
• Made auto camera not target non-awake characters

Localization:

• Moved existing Overgrowth, Lugaru, and Therium 2 dialogues into separate files, to make them easier to localize
• Added better support for dialogue being stored in a separate file, and not inside your_level.xml
• Added better support for migrating to separate dialogue file, from inside your_level.xml
• Added settings in-game to select the current language
• Added locale-specific file overlay paths system, similar to (but separate from) the modding system

Editor:

• Changing the level now silences whatever song was previously playing (including title screen music)
• Added quick item loader UI (CTRL + L)
• Added the ability to add connections to and from hotspots
• Added ability to connect and disconnect objects in the object inspector
• Added button to open dialogue editor from object inspector
• Added support to "Launch custom GUI" in the object inspector for hotspots
• Stopped the editor from updating when the game is paused (avoids accidental level changes)
• Added an toggle option to enable/diable editor-only drawing of boxes around groups
• Moved collision paint visualization to "view" menu
• Made sliders work properly when dragging outside window bounds
• Added numpad enter support for text entry fields

Modding:

• Added an angelscript API to make hotspot connections filterable, and programmatically controllable
• Added HasVar functions to hotspot object, level object, movementobject in angelscript
• Added Get*Var functions to hotspot object in angelscript
• Added Query*Function functions to hotspot object in angelscript
• Added all GUI functions to hotspot scripts
• Made ASCollisions object available in level scripts
• Updated Angelscript version to 2.32.0
• Updated Dear ImGui to 1.53 (and updated Angelscript API)
• Added an Angelscript function for keeping backup files when writing data/text to a file
• Added new input/game controller handling functions to Angelscript
• Added some previously missing Dear ImGui functions to angelscript ["parameter stacks (current window)" functions]

Bug Fixes:

• Attempted fix for crash when launching the game on old AMD GPUs
• Changed "Could not open GameController" error into a log message instead of a dialog
• Fixed issue with dialogue preview only working once
• Fixed some problems connecting objects to characters in editor
• Fixed knocked-out characters not breathing
• Fixed NPCs not doing idle head movement
• Auto Camera setting no longer moves the camera while paused
• Fixed issue with number ("float") sliders when frame rate is high
• Fixed bugs in our custom Dear ImGui text coloring extension
• Added a better error message when failing to save a zip file (i.e. navmesh or collision painting data)
• Added better error message when an asset accidentally references itself during load (cyclic reference)
• Fixed some bugs causing angelscript debugger to not update
• Fixed some crashes in angelscript hot reload
• Fixed game hanging instead of properly crashing on certain fatal errors (Windows and Linux)
• Fixed issue where QueueDeleteObjectID didn't delete blob shadows
• Fixed potential crash if fire_object_id is -1 when calling FirePreDraw
• Made "Did not find song" not spam log (when not adding certain hotspots to level)
• Made mouse_event_time and last_controller_event_time script variables update correctly
• Fixed some memory leaks in the main menu/pause menu UI code

Testing: (likely to be removed from the 1.3 release, and held for further refinement until a future release)

• Added optional "bloodthirsty" AI trait. Given to wolves by default, but can give to other species
• Updated all levels with wolves to tweak their aggression and the parameters for the "bloodthirsty" trait
• Added ability to set the current level's terrain, from Scenegraph -> Level -> Terrain -> Browse. Starts in preview mode, and you cannot edit the map or save changes until committing the terrain changes
• (test-only, won't be in any official patch) Added "wolf combat" mod campaign, that just lets you quickly play through all the levels with wolves in them