A new version of Emerald Woods, the chill no-combat solo farming, building, and exploration roguelike where you can die, is now available!

Play for free for now (online/windows) at https://slash.itch.io/emerald-woods, we are still in an “Earlier Access” phase, so let us know any suggestions you have in the discord!

Many thanks to the new Early Supporters! Your names will soon be found in a different document generated randomly in the Genco stations. If you want to join them, you can still become an Early Supporter!

This is a small, but important update because of two things.

First, this version includes big changes to the lighting model; the skylight now has limited effect, only affecting places it can reach (so, for example, it cannot reach inside caverns). Portable lights were added, and you can now craft a torch and venture into the unending darkness. Or how unending will it be? Campfires also now work as “point lights” instead of affecting global illumination.

The major reason for the update, however, is a critical fix for a crash when campfires are axed down after restoring a game. It was fixed inadvertently as I refactored more stuffed away from vanilla JS and into TypeScript.

Another cool addition I made was the “stumps”, you can now see the destruction you have caused to the woods just to build your fancy bridges and stuff.

I also made some usability improvements for crafting/cooking scenarios with limited inventory or carry capacity; the game will now account for the ingredients that will be spent, in advance of the crafting and cooking operation, so you’ll be able to grill a piece of meat even if your inventory is full.

I detected some performance issues with the line-of-sight calculations in open areas (like lagoons). This comes as no surprise as the current LoS algorithm uses raycasting and is pretty much unoptimized. For now, some optimizations were started for the data structures that it uses to at least diminish the impact.

Finally, I set up a Sentry.io monitor to detect any crashes that might happen to the brave people testing these early versions. I hope you are having fun too 🙂