In Taival, you learn new forms to which your Henki can shapeshift into by a process we like to call “taming”. This process has now been pretty much revamped into a proper gameplay loop, consisting of two separate stages:
You can now equip a notebook & quill to start taking notes of the animal. After studying the animal, you learn its favorite food that you can use later to tame the animal and make your Henki learn a new form! You can use the companions menu to see a PokeDex like view of discovered and unlocked forms. Here you can see a description of the form as well as what foods you found out it likes during the research period
After learning the food the animal prefers, you can place a bowl on the ground and lay down the ingredients, which starts to lure nearby animals! When the animal runs to eat the food, the Henki companion starts mimicking the animal’s movements, and after a while, the Henki learns the new form.
After the process, the form is unlocked to the “PokeDex” menu, and forms can freely be switched there to all unlocked forms!
Fixes (worth mentioning):
Split screen optimization & controller support
The game is now fully playable on split screen!
Online functionality polish
The game is now fully playable online!
Performance optimization and testing
Performance has been optimized a ton, from revamping some mesh generation to reduce vertices, to optimizing a bunch of NPC code loops to avoid lag spikes.
Quality of life
The interactions are improved in the world, with an in-world icon showing which objects can be interacted with and adding proper outlines to the interactable when close enough.
Additionally, literally hundreds of bug fixes, of varying scale, have been applied all over the game, providing a more stable experience. This has taken a big part of this month’s development time but has been really worth it!
We added a ton of items for enemies and creatures. We also added a bunch of misc items, like junk and valuable items to add immersion. Good examples would be a broken tankard handle, or a golden earring!
Creatures and all kinds of enemies in general now have drop tables! Animals have some guaranteed loot that they drop every time and some additional items that they drop by chance (for example a Sarvus will always drop Raw Sarvus Haunch with a chance to drop Sarvus Horn). Also, a lot of breakable boxes and barrels around Taival now drop some loot.
A lot of fixes to animals have been implemented! We fixed/added animations for several animals. We made the colliders more accurate, and animals can now be tamed using specific ingredients found from their home biomes.
We added a lot of secrets, loot and chests, filled areas made earlier with content and added a few new points of interest. Also, we added a few new smaller side quests, and a secret questline to the Jungle area!
We added different kinds of gatherable resources to the world. The player can now equip a pickaxe and swing at a couple of different ores and gems and gather them. Or they can go do some forestry and gather herbs, flowers and mushrooms; each biome has their own plants. Also, you can equip a butterfly net and swing at butterflies to collect them to your inventory and use them at potion making (the potion making part is a feature to be added later on).
Creatures now bark (meaning short lines of dialogue in the background)! They have different bark options depending on their current actions, and each creature race has a library of their own barks! The world feels a LOT more alive now.