Salt Development Blog

Warning: screenshots incoming. 

Tarzan is up there...somewhere...lurking...

It's important to note that jungle islands are only going to spawn past the 50 degree mark. So get your sextants out and start heading into the deep seas. Once you get past 50 degrees in any direction, you will be able to find these islands. We thought this would be a good way to encourage and reward players for venturing far into the seas. 

One of our main goals visually with this island was to have really big trees and lush plant life. We wanted you to feel like you were under a canopy of trees where you could barely see the sun. As you can see in the above screenshot, the trees can get pretty big and it really gives the island a much larger feeling than the tropical islands you are used exploring. We've also littered the ground with plant life so that the island really feels lush and thick. In essence, we want you to get lost on these islands. 

Okay now I really could use Tarzan's help. 

Lurking on these jungle islands will be a tiger. These will be quick and dangerous wildlife that will kill you on sight. This is our first introduction of enemy wildlife (excluding the giant spiders at night) and we feel that they will fit quite nicely on the jungle islands. As with most things, there will be quests and rewards for killing these tigers so always be on the lookout!

The Huntsman

Presenting the award for most glorious mustache. 

One new friendly NPC you will encounter on jungle islands is the Huntsman. He will provide you with quests and act as a trader, rewarding you for certain goods you find. Be sure to look for him while you are adventuring on these islands! Just look for the mustache and the hat. 

Bait? Nah. I just whistle and they come swimmin. 

Fishing is a really fun part of Salt and we wanted to give players even more reasons to fish. With this update, we've added new fish and a new NPC called The Fisherman that spawns on jungle islands and offers quests and rewards for catching rare fish. He'll usually be hanging out on the shore with his fishing pole and fishing hat. 

In addition to the content listed above, there will also be a new enemy AI that we are calling poachers. They are dangerous and will be roaming these islands so be on the lookout for them. Also with this update will be more secrets and things to discover on your own. We can't wait for you to set sail for your first jungle island and explore the new content is has to offer! 

Once the Jungle Update is pushed, we are going to start working on replacing the current boat models with the new ones (you can view some of those here .) We are also going to start working on implementing an in-game cartography system. This is something that has been missing from the game for quite a while and so we are real excited to finally get it implemented! Being able to chart and map out your world in the game is going to add a lot more fun to exploration. 

As always, please let us know your thoughts and feedback! 

- Will Sterling (Game Audio and Design)

I won't spoil it, but if you've played Salt for some time and been around on the community forums, you've probably heard of The Dark Guardian. The Dark Guardian is a secret boss in Salt that requires a set of secret steps to be completed before he can be found. We knew that this content would likely be missed by a lot of players but that the reward someone would feel for discovering it on their own would be worth it. This adds a layer of depth to the game that you didn't know was there otherwise. 

This depth is something we strive for in Salt. We want Salt to constantly unfold more and more layers of depth as you play. We also want you to constantly be on the lookout for new secrets, and so we believe that by adding secrets into the game it encourages players to continue exploring and to look more closely at the world. 

Another great feature of secrets in a game is the encouragement of sharing these with the community. Lets say you did miss The Dark Guardian and never even knew about him. Well perhaps one day you are browsing the forums and all the sudden you see a screenshot of a boss you didn't even know existed. Perhaps you thought you had completed all the quests and content the game had to offer. Now all of the sudden another layer of depth has unfolded and you want to go back into the world to explore again, looking for something you may have missed. 

This encourages players to share their experiences with others and talk about what they have found. It gives you a sense of pride if you find it on your own, but even if you don't, it gives you a desire to go back and discover content you didn't know was there. 

One of my favorite results of having secrets in a game is what I call the tin foil hat response. Once a player discovers that there are secrets with hidden rewards, they will begin to question and look more closely at everything. That quest you did for the merchant ten times already? Maybe there was something you missed (lower your tin foil hats for this one, it's just an analogy.) That statue you thought was just something visually in the world? Maybe there's something to that. 

This also goes back to community involvement where you can discuss your theories with other players, trying to figure out how to unlock these secrets. One of my favorite aspects we see this occur in is fishing. We wrote fishing with a lot of conditions that need to be met to catch certain fish. I'm always seeing discussion on the community about how to catch certain fabled rare fish such as the blue crab or the dragon fish. These moments add a degree of depth and immersion to a game that goes beyond the gameplay itself. 

With our next update we will continue to add more secrets into the game for you to discover. Even after this update we plan to always add more secrets to Salt so you'll always be left wondering if you've truly discovered it all. 

- Will Sterling (Game Design and Audio)

The main chunk of content in this next update will revolve around the new island type: the jungle island. We wanted this island to be lush and full of plants and trees. Sometimes you can get bored of seeing tropical island after tropical island, so we wanted to add in some variety and a change of scenery. Not only will this new island feature new visuals, but it will also only be able to be found far out at sea. This is one of the first introductions of what we are calling "post 50 content." 

The idea here is that these islands will only start spawning past the 50 coordinate marks. This will encourage players to head out farther into the seas and give them a reason to explore the distant oceans. 

We love to add rpg elements in Salt and so with this update we wanted to add some new quests. These new quests will of course come from a new friendly npc. You will only be able to find this npc on the jungle island and he will act as a trader of sorts, giving you awesome gear and loot that is exclusive to him. 

In addition to new quests and a friendly npc, this island will also feature new enemies! We have added in a new enemy animal that will be exclusive to jungle islands and a new enemy humanoid. Each of these enemies will have a specific loot table featuring new weapons, armor, and items. In addition to this, we've also added in a new a boss. He will be tough to defeat. That's all I can say. 

With the new jungle island update we are also adding in some new fish that you can catch around these islands. In addition to the new fish, there will also be a new fisherman npc. He will act as a trader that will give you really nice loot in exchange for those super rare fish you catch! 

We love secrets in Salt and this update will certainly feature some of those. These secrets will be hard to discover but reward you nicely should you figure them out. Our goal by the end of development is to have a lot of secrets in the game so you'll always be left wondering if you've truly found them all. 

This update will also feature some improvements in the ways trees render in the game. This will improve the way they look and will improve performance on islands with a ton of trees. You can read more about this here: Speed Tree

Over the upcoming weeks we'll be adding some final touches to this update such as a way to get the new boat, some new resources, and balancing and testing. We will keep you updated and will likely be pushing this update to the testing branch soon. 

- Will Sterling (Game Design and Audio)

Nowadays Steam can be pretty crucial for your success as a small independent team. When we originally released Salt we weren't on Steam, but quickly realized we needed to be. And so we launched a Greenlight campaign and watched as our little Salt game garnered interest and eventually was Greenlit! We were thrilled to say the least and were very excited to be able to bring Salt to the Steam community. 

We're a small team (three people and only two coders) but we knew we needed to work on getting new content out for Salt and pushing the game forward. Some updates went quicker than we expected and some took a lot longer. Overall though, we're pretty happy with a lot of the changes we've been able to make to the game over the past year. Thanks to the very constructive feedback from the community we've been diligent on trying to make the game more fun, adding more content and polish to the overall experience. Here's a look at a few of the major changes we've made over the past year: 

Update 1.3 - Merchant Quests

Early on we knew we wanted Salt to be more than just exploration. We wanted Salt to have adventure, and this meant adding in a lot of RPG elements as the game developed. One of the first RPG elements we added were merchant quests. Originally, merchants just sold items and didn't have the little question mark you see today. Adding these quests opened the door for us to add purpose behind a lot of the content in the game, give you direction and a sense of objective, and reward you for taking part in these quests. 

Update 1.3.1.0 - Ship Customizations

Mmm...cozy. 

This was perhaps one of my favorite updates. In this patch we added the ability to customize the ships you create and find throughout the game. This meant you could add beds, paintings, tables, storage chests, and more. Ship customizations really allowed you to personalize your boat and make it your home. 

Update 1.3.1.1 - New Island Generation System and New Grass

John liked to refer to this update as the Cataclysm. Essentially with this update we made some major changes to the way the islands generate, allowing for a much more robust system and much better looking islands. Since the entire world is basically procedurally generated, we wanted this system to be the best it could be. We also updated the grass in this patch and made it look way better. This was a highly requested feature and we were glad to finally be able to bring this to the game. 

Update 1.4  - Dawn of the Story

This was probably one of our largest content updates in the game. Our desire with this update was to implement the first portion of the main quest and storyline. Although Salt is very much an open and free to do what you want game, there is a story and purpose behind the world. We wanted to give players a way to discover this story and progress along a main quest line. In this update we added inns, new quests, new enemies, and a lot of new rewards. 

Update 1.5 - New Interface

Our original interface was pretty bad and was merely meant to be a placeholder. This was an update that we, along with the players, were definitely looking forward to. With this update we completely overhauled the user interface and inventory system, allowing for more organization, intuitiveness, and completely new content such as player stats. Though we've still got a few tweaks we will likely make to the interface, this overhaul was much needed and I feel really progressed the game forward in terms of polish and experience. 

Update 1.5.1 - New Models

I won't lie, the old pirate models still hold a certain place in my heart. They were so horribly ugly and disfigured that you really couldn't help but like them. That being said, we knew we needed to replace these models. Our goal with the new models was to keep the look in the same art style of the game, but to have them far more polished. We are very happy with the way the new models turned out and with the new animations they have as well. 

In addition to a lot of these major changes, we've also done a lot of work under the hood and work to spread out the content in Salt. Over the past year we've added new island types, new enemies and bosses, secrets, a ton of new items, lore books, quests, and of course a lot of bug fixes and improvements. 

We've still got a good ways to go, but we are excited to work with the community through this process and make the game as fun as possible. Here's a list of just some of the content we'll be adding to Salt in the future: 

- More island types
- Multiplayer
- Remainder of the main quest line
- Weather
- Factions

We sincerely want to thank all of you who have played Salt and helped us guide the game in the right direction. There is absolutely no way this game would be where it is if it wasn't for the support of our community and the feedback we get from you guys. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts! 

- Will Sterling (Game Audio and Design)