Hey guys, it's been a longer while. Since the last update, it almost felt like it was our world that was being destroyed. I thought it was long overdue for some status update. At the very least, I should let you all know that I'm doing ok and development is still ongoing.

What's up

My work on Soulash had to slow down in recent months due to pandemic scare, my second child growing up and requiring more attention, looking for a bigger apartment, and some changes in my day job. I've recently taken a new position at SeaChange International as a Systems Architect / Tech Lead, which came with a new set of challenges and, honestly, being that much more draining. Unfortunately, it all impacts Soulash, as I often don't have the strength to push forward during the week evenings, being able to spend at most 1 - 2 hours instead of solid 4 every day as I used to for the last 3 years. On the flip side, I'm coding less at work and I'm hungry for more, so at least motivation is not an issue.

Simultaneously, being very hard doesn't mean impossible, and I'm sure moving away from Soulash would be a lifetime regret for me. While the progress is slower, and I can't deliver the patches every 3 months anymore, I'm still committed to getting Soulash to where I envisioned it. This gets us to the good news. 

Where Soulash goes from here

Soulash v0.5 is already more significant than any previous update. The primary focus remained as planned, improvements to AI, but it went into much more. As all of you noticed, the current AI is very simplistic. Their primary action is just wandering around the world aimlessly, to eventually meet their impending doom at the hands of the player character. It works decently well, as it adds some unpredictability to the encounters. But the goal is better immersion and to eventually let AI change parts of the world where the player is not around. Imagine going to the amazons first and ignoring Kabula, giving them a bit more time to prepare some defenses and call for guards or mercenary groups to help them survive. Alternatively, having an event play out in the far corner of the world that changes its landscape. The goal is to improve replayability and have more diverse experiences playing in the same world, but based on player actions and random events, change during playtime. The full scope will probably take a couple of patches, but I've already taken the technical steps to support this vision, mainly by rewriting parts of the code to support running chunks of the world on a different thread, parallel to the chunk loaded for the player. And by adding a generic mechanism of production actions for AI, but also available for the player, which I'll explain in a moment.

Improvements to AI

Let's focus on what's coming in the foreseeable future, probably September or October. The first notable addition will be production actions, a generic mechanism that makes it possible to mod activities to Soulash that produce something. We already have such actions, namely woodcutting, mining, butchering, skinning, and fishing. I've migrated them to the new generic system, which includes new actions like "harvesting" and "threshing" to introduce a food chain to the villagers of Mansfield and Kabula. The food production looks as follows:

• By having a harvester tool (scythe, for example) equipped, you may use the harvest action on a wheat field to acquire wheat.
• You may then use flail to produce grain and straw from wheat.
• Straw may be used as a crafting resource to create a straw hat (had to reference one of my favorite anime), for example, while the grain can be milled down to flour at a new stationary tool - mill.
• Wheat flour is also a crafting resource, that can be used in cooking to bake bread.

And that's the whole production chain from a wheat field to bread. Now imagine this - it takes only a couple configurations in JSON files to add new tools, recipes, and actions. Very easy to add new options to the game. But the most crucial point here is - AI will already know how to use them. You may restrict some of these behaviors on a per entity basis in the Entity Editor, to prevent (or enable) things like scheming unicorns digging in the mountains. Yeah, who knows what they are up to. I mean were, I'm sure it was just some long forgotten, obscure bug.

There are more actions like that coming to the game in Soulash v0.5, that will be available for enemies and the player. Repairing action is also one of them, something many of you requested. It will come in a limited form, so recycling the items will still exist in the game, but longevity of  essential pieces of gear will be extended (although not infinitely). Repairing will be crucial for the new artifacts, which I will describe in the next section. The primary purpose of production actions is to improve upon crafting, to be able to produce more resources, and bolster the possibilities of craftable items, introducing cooking and alchemy, but also the creation of other single-use items like spell scrolls. Even though they are called production actions, their usage is more vast than that. Here are a  couple of modding ideas that may be introduced into the main game:

• Creating a door to the treasure room that requires heart of the boss to be opened. 
• Crates and chests that may be opened for loot. 
• Ritual at an altar, or desecration of them to summon avatars of angered gods. 
• Traps and disarming actions.

 A lot of potential. I'm sure some of you creative types will find a way to do amazing stuff with it. One more thing that may interest some of the more experienced players out there. The unification of these mechanics allows to spawn multiple items from a single action, including specifying the chances of drops. This means that butchering corpses may produce more than just meat, for example skulls, bones and more to be used in alchemy, rituals, cooking (I heard elven ears are a delicacy in some parts of the world).

Artifacts & consumables

The next significant addition to Soulash in v0.5 will be more consumables and artifacts. In the current released version it's mostly bandages that you come across, but much more is on the way. All consumables and artifacts will also be usable by AI. Usable items may now unlock any ability for a limited number of uses that depend on the stack of items or durability of a single piece of equipment. That's were repairing may come handy, because strongest abilities will drain durability of items very fast. The new multi-use items that give access to abilities are artifacts, the new, 4th quality of randomized gear. Any enemy in the game may spawn with an artifact quality item that unlocks some ability and makes it a lot more dangerous - to be taken down for sweet loot. There are 24 artifacts added to the development version right now, all with unique graphics. Just like abilities that they provide, more may be modded into the game. Consumables like scrolls and alchemist potions are in the process of being created so if you have some fun ideas, it's the best time to share them at community boards!

Game rebalance & improvements

The early game (level 1 - 4) will get easier. Many of you found the very first level to be the toughest to get through, so the strongest nerf was applied there. At the same time, enemies of levels 6 - 13 will be much more difficult. It was a bit too easy to steamroll at times, and the addition of new tools to the players arsenal would only deepen the issue.

Mods and editors will receive significant improvements, to the point I'll have to add a separate section describing only changes to that part of the game. Logging will be improved to be able to identify issues with new content more quickly. Random resource components will be able to respawn entities after a specified duration, useful for regrowing wheat or vegies during playthrough, but could include respawning enemies if someone would like to mod it in. Some supporting options will be available for potential graphical mode - allowing to disable 3d effects and drawing all glyphs on a tile instead of only the top one. I'm in the process of looking for a graphic designer that would be able to make a good looking tileset for Soulash, so maybe some day we'll have some more options than just ASCII. For now gameplay still comes first. Many modding related fixes will be included, thanks to barlth, who took the time to toy with different systems and help me debug some critical issues.

Summary

And that's it, folks. You know where things go from here and what to expect in the next major update. I hope to get that patch ready for you in about 2 months. The game is not dead, and I'm doing fine as well. I hope you guys are well too, and you'll enjoy the next stage in Soulash development as much as I've been enjoying creating it. See you soon!