Development news and patch notes for Antorum Online
(client 0.1.8, game-server 0.1.9, editor 0.1.4) New Features & Content Driving skill added. (#1093) NPC factions: guards and monsters now fight each other, and players can pull or trade aggro through combat threat tables. (#1080, #1077, #1082, #1085, #1081) Weapon & armor mod kits: new mod-kit items and enchantments, smithing recipes to craft them, and shop pricing. (#1109, #1118, #1114) Global…
Damage numbers and health bars now update on the same tick, so hitsplats and your HP finally stay in sync. Attack timing is now driven per-weapon, so weapons land their hits at their own pace instead of a fixed delay. Fixed hits occasionally landing after you had already stopped attacking. Salvaging low-value junk now awards Tinkering experience, so nothing is a total waste. Broken machinery is no…
New Enemy: Defective Utility Bot . Killing them is a reliable method of getting items which can be salvaged into Scrap Metal . New crafting recipes: M. C. Antidote Soda can now be crafted, and iron ingots can be used to craft a pot and a pan . Melting a Vespex Resin Chunk now requires a pot and actually works (it didn't before). Junk items no longer roll a quality tier (no more Driftwood +1).…
Improved the dialog window UI and streamlined the dialog protocol between client and server. Simplified dialog scripting internals for more reliable NPC conversations. Fixed a bug where aggressive NPCs would never engage players. New consumable: Antidote Soda - cures poison. Available at Merri Crate's shop. Bag capacity is now shown in item tooltips. Interaction outlines now use color based on the…
You can now expand your inventory by equipping bags! Every character starts with a base inventory of 16 slots, and bags let you carry even more. There are two dedicated bag slots for now. You can also equip items like the Backpack in the back slot to get even more space. New Items Patchleather Sack - A crude sack providing 2 extra slots. Craft it with 3 Patchleather (Smithing 3). Patchleather Bag…
Minor changes to Intake Facility 45: trainers now reclaim loaned gear, tutorial nodes cap at level 3, and the exit terminal clears your inventory and hands out a starter kit. Training dummies grant combat experience on hit (again), scaling with your equipped weapon. But they have a level cap. New tutorial-only fishing pool and ore vein with faster respawn times. Crafting tutorial uses a new…
This one was a damn pain. Antorum has been running on Unity's built-in render pipeline (BIRP) for most of its life. BIRP is the old default, the one that shipped with Unity for over a decade. It's battle-tested and honestly looks fine, but it's showing its age, and Unity is actually going to deprecate it soon . Since I'm already on the latest Unity version, it felt like the right time to drag…
We improved the site layout across the board. There is now an email verification flow. Not required to play the game, but it's nice to know if a user has a real email we can reach them at. Also, we set up this neat little news system, so this is a test for that!
Hello world. This is where patch notes are going to go. The first update is that Antorum is now live! Create an account and download the game to participate in the alpha playtest.
Players can now express themselves with a variety of emotes, like dancing, waving, flirting, etc. It's an MMO staple, so we had to have it. Emotes are triggered via chat commands like /wave , /dance , and /cheer , but there's also a little window for browsing them. (video unsupported) A character performing an iconic dance. There are currently eight emotes: Wave , Cheer , Flex , Cry , Flirt , and…
Characters in Antorum have been freed from the curse of standing up for their entire lives. They can now sit! (video unsupported) Just put a SeatComponent on an entity and it will become, well, a seat. If the model has a seat-anchor socket, the client will use that as a hint for butt positioning. All in all, this was a pretty simple feature to implement. It works using the activity system, which…
Howdy. This is just a quick status update on the project since I've been a bit quiet recently, but development is going well! The antorum.online website is back online in a limited state, and you can download the client and play. The test server is up periodically as I work on things. Combat Improvements Instead of being client driven, we now properly sync ticks with the server and try to match…
I'm still getting a lot of Antorum work done this summer, but it's been slow going as I try to avoid burnout and enjoy some time away from the screen. Here's a look at some of the recent progress across gameplay systems, scripting, art, and world-building. Monorepo The project originally started with five separate Git repositories: server, client, editor, engine, and assets. At the time, I thought…
Among many other goals, I want Antorum to be easy to build content for. A significant part of that is streamlining the pipelines with which new content gets created, made accessible to designers, and shipped to players. To that end, I've finally taken the time to refactor the entire resource loading system of the client and editor. In Antorum, all items, entities, map data like zones, dialog…
Lately I've been putting more work into NPCs and their interactions with the world and player. One cool thing you can do now is create and assign paths - perfect for patrolling guards, wildlife, cutscene choreography, and other fun stuff. It all works through the new PatrolPathComponent . The new Component is pretty straightforward: it manages a list of waypoint positions/nodes. NPCs can reference…
The game has vehicles now! This is a feature I've wanted to experiment with for a while, and after a lot of groundwork, the first iteration is complete. Your browser does not support the video tag. This feature pretty much entirely works around the newly introduced VehicleComponent and RiderComponent . A VehicleSystem handles mounting and dismounting, ticking vehicles and their riders, and…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. Over this past year I was able to invest in something I have wanted to do for a long time: new character models. Not only was this a major lift from an art perspective (Thanks Gustaw !), but it also required a lot of work on the technical side. To make it easier to…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. Now that gathering skills are in a better place, I turned my attention to the core crafting skills. I want them to be familiar and consistent, but unique in their own ways. For example, Cooking is more focused on experimentation and recipe discovery, while Smithing…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. For the past few months, I've been making a lot of bug fixes and changes to the item system to support improvements to the three main gathering skills: Fishing, Foraging, and Mining. The core thing to support were the concepts of item quality and derived stats.…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. Happy New Year! The most recent addition to the game is one of the biggest yet - Time. (video unsupported) (time scaled up x1000 in this clip) Time will now pass in the world, creating distinct morning, afternoon, evening, and night phases. I took the opportunity…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. I've been spending some time figuring out how to improve the feeling of progression in the game. Player Characters should have the freedom to experiment with different combat styles, skills, and items, as well as have access to lots of content relating to all…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. One of the new features I worked on this year is Tile Blending. It's now possible to have smooth transitions between two different tile types, which is really nice for stuff like pathways and finer terrain details. Each tile now has background, foreground, and mask…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. Been a while since I made a post. Got a few things in progress over here, but a cool thing I just got done is Doors. (video unsupported) Doors are just entities with a server-side DoorComponent. They can be locked, but I haven't implemented keys or any way to…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. I made some minor improvements to the character creator, making it look nicer and also adding the ability to rotate your character. Here's a peek at how it's looking so far. (video unsupported) You may notice it's a bit more simplified compared to the character…
NOTE (2/12/2025) NOTE! This post was originally written about a fork of Antorum that has since been merged back into the main project. Something Antorum was missing was structures. Seems like that would be pretty important for a game in an urban setting, so I've started experimenting with some new editor features. I started with walls, to keep things simple. You can paint them onto the terrain…
Another year has passed! It probably wasn't as productive for the game as it could have been, but honestly that is a sign that it's time to move on. So not to disappoint anybody, but that is kinda the main theme of this post - I think the game is done. I've achieved just about every goal I set out for myself with this project, and learned so much in the process. I wanted to make a tiny mmo based…
I avoided adding Mining to Antorum for a long time. I kinda wanted to expand the Salvaging skill instead, making a gathering profession around breaking down old machines and equipment as the only way to get metals. However I decided that didn't really fit the game setting, and traditional mining made more sense instead. I don't deny that Antorum is a pretty standard fantasy world, but that was…
Something that's finally been implemented is audio sources. Now I'm able to place ambient sounds throughout the world, and the atmosphere has really improved because of it. The server doesn't care about the audio sources, but they are synced to players as part of the clientside map data. The details are not super interesting. Other Stuff Back when I implemented rest as a health regeneration…
The Ritual skill has been a bit lackluster for a while now, and not as useful as it could be. So, I added item enchantments as a way to augment your gear in the mid to late game. They aren't accessible until the higher levels of the Ritual skill, and are expensive, but skilled casters can create enchantment scrolls for themselves or others to use on equipment. Enchantments can modify stats or add…
I've been taking a pretty big break from Antorum this summer. I'm just trying to get some fresh air and sun and all that. However, I did spend a bunch of time making modifications to the item system. An individual item can now have a "property bag", which is a JSON object thats persisted in the database and modifiable by any system in the game. This is extremely useful for any data that is…
There's a bunch of new stuff in the works for Antorum. The biggest thing is probably Lua Scripting. To test and prove out the scripting system, I built the tutorial for the game, or at least the first iteration of it. It's been helpful to feel out any requirements for the scripting system, as well as get a bunch of basic script endpoints set up so that other quests down the line can take advantage…
I've been chipping away at more content and bugfixes for the game. Not a lot of screenshots to share, so this will be a quick update. Poison In the codebase, the functionality is called "Poison", but it basically just refers to any spell effect that deals damage over time. Spiders now have a venomous bite, and being inflicted will "poison" you, dealing damage over time. You can fix this by…
I'm still working on new additions and fixes to support the next alpha test, which I am hoping to start up in May. Map of Antorum I added a map item to the game. Each new character is given one for free. It is pretty basic, and doesn't even show where the player is. You'll need to use your surroundings, compass, and map to get your bearings. As part of this work, I added the ability to render…
There's so much new stuff in the game, I'm starting to lose track of it all. So, I guess it's time to make another dev log. This one will be pretty speedy. These days I'd rather use the writing time to just work on the game itself. Thanks for reading. An important thing that happened recently was a tiny friends and family alpha test! There were around 10 players, and the server was running for…
I've been working hard to add new skills and activities for players in Antorum Online. There have been three new skills added to the game: Armorcrafting, Weaponcrafting, and Salvaging. Armorcrafting Armorcrafting is pretty self explanatory - it's a skill that allows players to craft armor! Your browser does not support the video tag. First equip a Hammer (purchased from a trader), then interact…
This month, I finally got around to implementing item combinations. It wasn't that large of an addition, but was required for some crafting stuff I have planned. Down the line, it will also be useful for quests. To define a combination between two items, you add an entry to combos in an items definition file. Here is an example of a combo for the egg item: [[combos]] type = "combine"…
I've been working on banking for about a month now. It was supposed to be a simple feature, but as I got started I realized that the inventory required a few fixes to support it. I mentioned some of those fixes a bit in the last dev log, so I won't really cover them here. The Vaults The Vaults of Antorum have been opened, allowing players to bank their materials, equipment, and coins in a safe…
This month has been super productive for the game, just because of the holidays. It's not like I'm traveling anywhere this year during my time off work. I finally managed to implement a client-side item cache (same idea as the world cache), as well as make the biggest content update that the game has seen so far. I also dusted off some unannounced stuff that I'm ready to talk about. Overall, I…
Here's an overview of some of the random improvements I've been working on recently. This stuff didn't really add any new gameplay, but a few features were polished and improved. Minimap Blips A long time ago I probably mentioned that the minimap was unfinished, missing blips for players and other entities. I finally took some steps to correct that. Check out this blurry image: The white dots are…
Something new this month is Zones! The map can be split up into distinct named areas, like in pretty much every open world game I have ever played. Here is a (2x speed) video of me crossing into a zone, and then into a sub-zone. Your browser does not support the video tag. The Dead Valley is a mountain pass that I felt like decorating with dead trees and other forest detritus. It is still in early…
The Fishing skill brings a new foraging opportunity to the Isle, allowing players to kick back and cast a line out into Antorum's vast waters. The lakes, streams, and surrounding oceans are now home to a variety of fish, just waiting to be caught, thrown on a skillet, and made into a fine meal. "Fish Nodes" are essentially just forage nodes that have a drop table instead of just a single output…
The Herbology skill allows players to take advantage of the wide array of fauna growing on the island. Ingredients can now be harvested and used for things like potions, cooking, or just to be sold for a quick coin or two. "Forage Nodes" pretty much work identically to how item spawners work. An forage node spawner entity is placed in the editor, and the desired forage node entity is specified as…
Something I have been sitting on for a while is character creation and customization. This feature took a good bit of time, as it required changes to the database schema, login flow, and clientside player replication. I also had to make a bunch of 3d models for hair styles, beards, etc. Everything is still pretty rough, but at least now there is some variety in characters on the island. Included…
Antorum has shops now! This feature was done a couple months ago, but I was too busy to write a new dev log, so here it is now. I also needed a place to actually put merchants/shopkeepers, so I started building the first town on the island: Belmart. There are plenty of art assets that need to be finished and work to be done on that front, but I'm pretty happy with the town layout and the small…
Lately I've been tinkering on some stuff that is either related to the recent world engine changes or was blocked on those changes. I have been waiting a long time to add some concept of "entity regions" into the game, and having that done basically means that the entire game world is no longer regarded as one large room with all players within it. As entities move around the island, they are…
Antorum is a small island right now, but I've been planning on making it larger for a while now. I didn't spend time optimizing the terrain for this in the early days of the project, so I had to do a bunch of work to get the code in order. Terrain data should be easier to stream on the client now, and objects such as trees and entities will no longer be processed if they aren't in sight. As usual…
Recently, I've been working on adding the cooking skill to the game. The core implementation is done, but I left a lot of room for improvements and polish while I iterate on it. Consumable items were already implemented, so along with this addition it's now possible for players to cook various foods and eat them for healing and other benefits. Recipes and Cookware To cook, players need to be at a…
I've been making improvements to entities, to make them more data-driven. Previously, if you placed an entity in the game world and wanted to customize some property on it, you would have to create a new and unique entity file. Obviously I can't build a whole game like that so I decided it was time to go back and work on this stuff. Entities can now be given a property bag in the editor, by typing…
The game has seen some major improvements since the last post! I'm not ready to talk about all of it yet (Entity updates, NPC updates, new NPCs, new items), so I will save that for next time. Tile Paint Tool I finally got around to implementing the tile paint tool. As usual when adding some new data to the map, I had to update the world format on both the client and server. The world format now…
Antorum has trees now! This post is mostly going to be a quick photo overview of those changes, as there isn't much technical stuff to discuss. The editor now has a tree tool, which can be used to quickly place trees (randomizing scale + rotation). Placing trees also updates the walkmap, so characters cannot walk through trees. Here's a bonus screenshot, it's a closer view of the first armor set,…