Oceans, islands, caves, underground rivers, interactive boats, iron ores and steel, rendering changes, shader changes, engine updates and a lot bug fixing! That’s how we spent our last month of winter. We have so much to share that we will end this introduction right here and go directly to the most important, essential facts.:)

The new old world

This month we’ve finally decided it was high time to stretch the world and make people get lost more often. The well known two islands from the first Alpha are now in the centre of the archipelago and are surrounded by 4 times bigger ocean on which new islands will appear. Actually the first one already did:

OutOfReach_Island3view

Although it may look pretty easy to explore due to the lack of forests, it’s bumpy and hilly enough to provide a good hide out and quite hard to find in the middle of the ocean. And that’s just the outer layer of the island. What’s hidden inside can be explored for example with a boat…

Muscle-powered steamer raft

That’s one of these things we wanted to implement from the very beginning. As the normal oars and sails are too mainstream for our outcasts, we were looking for a way to make sailing more interesting, challenging, and forcing to cooperate. That’s how a wooden raft with 2 ‘mills’, gearboxes, chests and ballista on a bow was born and ocean fights began.:)

OutOfReach_boatsview0

Since engines on the sides of the boat work independently both forwards and backwards the steering needs to be learned and often is decisive whether you hit the rocks, escape a battle or aim at someone.

Probably a short gameplay would explain that better, here’s the boat in action:

Clans, achievements and skills

We always say there is no better work than team work! From now on we enable (and encourage!) you to form clans. Invite your friends, build your fortress together and crush your enemies! We also added skills and achievements to improve the fun and efficiency of your daily outcast tasks. Gaining levels and unblocking abilities is an another reward that you will receive for your hard work of trying to stay alive.

New materials to gather

We’ve finally reached the ‘Iron Age’ in Out of Reach! From now, iron rocks can be mined on the new island. We plan to keep them special and rare so it will be really challenging to make a sword or a full plate armour after smelting iron and charcoal in a furnace.

Graphics, physics and the engine

Another big step for us! We’ve successfully migrated to the new version of our engine and are able to use everything it can offer!:) Here are the most useful features we will all benefit from:
– Physically based shaders to make the graphics more realistic and get us closer to today’s top productions
– Real-time Global Illumination – Better lights, better shadows, lots of things to adjust
– PhysX 3.3! No more collider limits, smoother and faster calculations! Physics engine like this is the most important thing for a MMO game with building features.
– Full support for 64bit environment that lets us work more efficient and lets you play a better game as a result.:)
– Improved linear lightening which we implemented along with one of the latest patches. Although it still needs a tone of tweaking, the textures don’t look washed out anymore and shadows are a lot more realistic.

Changelogs – Out of Reach 0.6.5 to 0.7.7

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