January has been a month of steady progress in tiny steps. In preparation of the expansion of the forest, I have fixed a number of bugs, tweaked a few features and added some pleasant details.

Unreal Engine is completely designed for multiplayer (match-based multiplayer, not the server-based multiplayer required for The Endless Forest, although there is a lot of overlap on the client side). As a result it is in fact a little tricky to make things happen only on the individual player’s computer. This is why in the current alpha, the dance music is such a jumble: every player starts a new iteration of the song. I think I have fixed this now, but I haven’t tested it in an online context (which is surprisingly hard to do in Unreal Engine). The video was recorded with two clients on a single computer (so the music still sounds messy).

In the same vein I have set up a system for local effects and added the floating particles to it. And I have implemented the falling leaves (with procedural animation rather than baked), the flying doves, and the scurrying squirrels. All of these happen only on the local player’s computer. For performance reasons and also because it would make quite a mess when many deer gather.

The motion of the deer avatar has been improved, especially when walking towards a destination such as another deer or a tree to rub. But this might need another pass. I have also removed the bug that would allow the deer to try to rub against grass and ferns next to trees. And two deer should find each other now when sniffing.

The flower antler spell casting has been fixed so that you don’t keep the flowers after giving them away. Some hard edges of tree trunks have been smoothed. And the initial camera view doesn’t end up in the floor anymore.

None of this is very spectacular but it all needs to be done. And better now than when the forest gets bigger, multiplying the problems. We will need to step up the pace a bit if we want to achieve our goal of finishing the remake in the fall. Hopefully that will be possible.

Thank you all for your support. Please spread the word about the fundraising. Since this is taking longer than we had estimated, we could use some extra support.

— Michaël Samyn.