Dev Update: Points of Interests, Island Generation Work, Music, and More

 

Ahoy Mateys!

I wanted to go over some of the things we've been working on over the past month for Salt 2. We are still somewhat early in development so much of the work we are doing is foundational work to get things like the island generation system implemented effectively and other technical behind the scenes work. However we've also been adding new content, music, lore, and a lot of other goodies. So let's dive in! 


New Weapons and Points of Interests



The first step in developing our island generation systems is making sure the islands spawn assets correctly, can randomly generate in the ocean, and a lot of foundational work to keep them performant and looking unique. One aspect we've been working on recently is the ability for islands to place points of interests on them and it look natural on the island. We've added some campsite assets and ancient ruins assets and many more will follow over the course of development. We've also added a new scimitar weapon model. 


Lore and Journals


One of my favorite things about Salt is reading pirate journals, adventurer's notes, and lore books scattered across the world. It adds a sense of personality and history to the game and gives you something new to find as you explore the infinite a sea. So much like in Salt 1, we've been writing a ton of journals and lore books that you'll be able to find scattered across the world. Some are humorous. Some tell a fun story. And some have useful information. 


Music


Another important aspect of the exploration in Salt is the music. Good music can make sailing at sea feel epic, gathering on an island relaxing, and fighting a pirate boss intense. We've been working hard on composing new music that is memorable and unique to Salt. 


Island Generation System



Even though much of the island generation system has been in, we've been tweaking it and working on new aspects of it. We now have it where it can continuously spawn islands as you explore the ocean and we are working on various island types from small to large that can spawn. We've also added in features to allow for spawning flat areas where we can place all kinds of points of interests including markets, fishing huts, ancient ruins, and more. 


As always thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates! 

Salt 2 Development Update: The Sea Awaits

 


Ahoy mateys! 

If you haven't heard, we have announced the development of Salt 2! Whether you are a veteran pirate or new to the world of Salt, we are excited to have you on board during this voyage. Starting today we'll be posting development blogs every couple weeks or so letting you know what's going on with the game and keeping you up to date with development progress. So let's jump right in.

What is Salt 2?


If you're new to Salt and wondering what the game is about or how it differs from Salt 1, let me go over a few things. Salt is an open world pirate exploration game with a focus on freedom and discovery. Your character gets plopped in the middle of an infinite procedural ocean and you are free to pick a direction and explore. The main loop of the game is sailing the seas, finding an island to explore, fighting pirates and picking up quest, and progressing your character. This is not a game focused on ship combat but rather focused on life at sea and exploring the world. 

Although Salt 2 shares a lot in common with the first game, a lot is changing as well. For starters, a complete visual overhaul. We are switching to a new rendering pipeline allowing for much better graphical fidelity. This means brand new models, textures, shaders, lighting, animations, UI, and performance improvements. While the game will still have a stylized look to it, we want everything to feel polished and much better than in Salt 1. We are also implementing a new island generation system for more varied and interesting islands.


In addition to visual changes, Salt 2 will have a much greater focus on crafting, ship upgrades, character progression, and survival mechanics. We want the gameplay loop of exploring islands and the sea to fit directly into upgrading your character and your boat. Your ship will be your home at sea, and we want it to really feel that way. In addition to a deeper crafting and upgrade system, we also want progression systems in many aspects of the game, including talents, levels, and things of that nature.And of course Salt 2 will include brand new quests, more elaborate and interesting points of interests, new gear, better combat mechanics, and new music.

Now, on to what we've been working on recently!

Island Generation System


One major area of focus for development recently has been working on our island generation system. Since our world is procedurally generated, we want to make sure our island generation system has a lot of flexibility to create interesting and unique islands to keep exploration fresh. We've been working on setting up systems to populate islands with various foliage, creating different shapes of islands, and even creating islands that allow for water inland. 

This is something we are still working on and will share more in depth details in a future blog post.

Animations


Another area of development we've been focused on are animations. We've been working on combat animations, swimming, jumping, falling, gathering, and idle animations. We want every action you take in the game to have feedback and feel good. 

Sailing Mechanics


We've also been spending some time implementing sailing mechanics and new ocean mechanics. We want sailing to feel epic at times with massive waves and relaxing other times as you sail into the sunset. A lot of work is being done on ship physics and deciding the sweet spot between realism and fun. 


We are so excited about the development of Salt 2 and can't wait to share more progress with you in the coming weeks! If you are interested in getting development updates you can sign up for our newsletter or join our Discord.

Salt Leaving Early Access Next Week!



Ahoy Mateys!

We are very excited to announce that Salt will be leaving early access next week! We also wanted to let you know that the price will be increasing from $14.99 to $19.99 upon full release.

It has been a crazy journey over the past few years creating this adventure and an honor to have such a dedicated and helpful community. The overall response to the game has been incredibly positive and supportive and for that we are thankful.

If you don't know, we're a small team at Lavaboots of only three members. When we set out to make Salt we knew it would be a big task but we loved the idea of creating a massive world for players to explore. We knew early on that we wanted feedback and help from the community so we chose to release onto Steam Early Access. Since then Salt has changed a lot.

Here's a look at just some of things we've added since early access release:

- Main quest line
- Over 50 side quests
- Multiple quest characters 
- Merchants and mysterious places to discover 
- Hundreds of items, weapons, and armor
- Different island types
- New enemy types and wildlife
- Boss battles
- Secrets
- Multiple new ship types
- Weather 
- Multiplayer

In addition to that and a whole lot of other changes, we also added steam achievements, cloud saving, and a lot of polishing and bug fixes.


Next week we'll also be pushing a small update with some fun new changes including macros for emotes, a new ship, a mountable compass boat upgrade, healing arrows, and some bug fixes. We will also be keeping an eye out for new bugs and issues that arise and fixing those even after release.


Again, we are incredibly thankful for your support and are happy to finally be releasing Salt as a full game! Thank you for reading and thank you for participating in the journey.



- The Lavaboots Team

A Look Back At 2017


Ahoy Mateys!

2018 is here! We are excited for this year as we will be releasing Salt out of early access soon. We've been working on Salt for over three years now and we're pretty proud of where the game has gone. We are a small team (three members) and Salt was a pretty big game for us. It was also our first official game and we are excited to start working on new projects. Over the next few weeks we will be focused on general polishing, bug fixes, adding some additional content, and getting Salt ready for an official release.

Today I just want to go over some of the content we worked on last year. Overall, 2017 was a great year for Salt. Here's a look at some of the content we released this past year:

Multiplayer



Perhaps our favorite update, multiplayer, finally came to Salt. Multiplayer was something that you all had been asking for for a long time and we were happy to finally be able to implement it. While it was challenging and came with a lot of hurdles to overcome, we are happy with how it turned out. Being able to sail the seas with your friends completely changed the way the game felt. There's something really fun about exploring an unknown world with others and sharing in the experience with your friends.

New NPCs and Discoverable places


Over the course of 2017 we added in multiple new NPCs along with a bunch of new quests and items. One of the first major updates included an NPC known as The Composer that allowed you to find or create musical instruments in the world. We also added in the Blacksmith, Sea Treasure Hunter, and the Sea Collector. In addition to the NPCs, we also added in some new places to find such as abandoned campsites and trader villages!

We've tried to put a lot of quests and things to find on islands in Salt so there will always be something else to do over the horizon! 

Weather


Another major update in 2017 was the introduction of weather. In that update we made a lot of new changes including new lighting, clouds, fog, and thunder storms. Weather in Salt really helped the world feel much more dynamic and created a nice sense of atmosphere. 


Additional Changes

In addition to the major updates listed above, we also worked a lot on polishing and adding other miscellaneous content. Here's a list of some other things we implemented in 2017: 

  • Steam cloud saving
  • Steam achievements
  • New music and audio changes
  • Sea Treasure
  • Birds
  • Challenge chests
  • Combat improvements (parrying)
  • Ship cannons
  • Player avatar and armor customization
  • Inventory and UI updates


The feedback of the community has been invaluable in the process of working on Salt. You all have had so many great ideas and have helped us make Salt into a much better game than we could have made alone. So thank you so much for your support! 

Stay tuned in the next few weeks for more updates on Salt's official release. 

The Multiplayer Update is Now Available


Hey everyone! 

Prepare to sail the seas with your friends and go on a new adventure! Today we are officially releasing the multiplayer update. We want to thank everyone who has helped us test multiplayer and for your feedback and suggestions. 

In order to play multiplayer all you need to do is make sure Salt is up to date, invite your friends on Steam in the main menu, and start up a game! If you don't have any friends to play with, head over to our discord and check the multiplayer or lfg channels. Once you've joined a group, you can then either choose to create a new game or load an existing game with the same seed as the host. 

In addition to multiplayer this update also includes other changes such as the addition of NPC villages, a revamped inventory system, tons of balancing changes, and bug fixes. You can read the full list of patch notes below. 


As always, we'd love your feedback and thoughts. If you encounter any bugs, please let us know and we'll work on those as soon as possible! 


Patch Notes: 


- Added multiplayer.
- Added trader villages.
- Added a new npc that can spawn in high places.
- Spiders can now drop Adventurer's Satchels, which contain some loot.
- Improved gamepad UI navigation.
- Adjusted stats on some items.
- Adjusted drop chances on some items.
- Changed the item icons for some items.
- Added new items to some loot tables.
- Added a new rope sound when you use climbing ropes.
- Fixed an issue where certain meal buffs could be stacked.
- The Jungle Fisherman and Huntsman are now both a guaranteed spawn on jungle islands.
- Added strong plant fibers as a possible drop from some crates.
- Deer and tigers now change orientation based on the slope of the terrain.
- Lowered the cost of the maiden ships from the sea collector slightly.
- The windy sail item is being phased out of the game. If you have one one your boat, it will automatically remove it and give you a replacement item.
- Lenvell should now be in an inn when he is needed.
- Fixed a bug where Lenvell would fail to tell you a location.
- Added a new icon to an item's description to let you know that it cannot be traded or sold.
- Torches no longer burn down while resting.
- Added a new hotkey (T by default) which equips/unequips a torch if you have one.
- You can now rest at the starting island campfire.
- Reduced lag spikes that would sometimes occur when looting an item.
- Updated one of the ambient sounds to reduce the intensity of a bird chirp.
- Increased the chance for some enemies to drop health potions and bandages.
- Added recipe to craft bandages from spider silk.
- Increased capacity of crates from 5 to 12.
- Fixed a bug where deer challenge chests would sometimes open before killing all the deer on the island.
- Fixed a bug where jungle challenge chests would not spawn.
- Made all NPC campfires not burn out.
- Fixed NPCs not navigating around some ruins properly.
- Dirt mounds now orient to the slope they are on.
- Updated inventory UI to include pages, new tabs, and sort option.
- Improved performance of inventory UI.
- Increased stamina bonus from alpha stag set.
- Increased stats on alpha stag cloak.
- Made fishing take a little less time, and capped the max amount of time it takes to catch a fish in a single cast.
- The cartographer now offers to erase a wrong island for you for some gold.
- Interacting with sailboat wheel and raft oar no longer causes your main hand item to un-equip.

The Multiplayer Update is Now Available For Testing!


Hey everyone!

Get ready to explore the world of Salt with your friends and go on a pirate adventure! We wanted to let you know that you can now help us test out the multiplayer update! We are releasing the update on a special multiplayer branch and we want you to help us test and find last minute bugs before an official release of the update.

This update not only includes cooperative multiplayer, but also some other new additions such as NPC villages, bug fixes, and a lot of balancing changes. We are so excited to finally be at this point in multiplayer development and want to thank you all for your patience.

Here is how to access the multiplayer branch:

- Right click Salt in your Steam library and select "Properties".
- Select the "BETAS" tab at the top of the properties window.
- Enter the access code "playwithfriends"
- Select "multiplayertesting" from the drop down list.

Once you are in the main menu, you can click on the friends icon in the top right hand corner of the screen and invite your friends to play with you!


Current Patch Notes: 



- Added multiplayer.
- Added trader villages.
- Added a new npc that can spawn in high places.
- Spiders can now drop Adventurer's Satchels, which contain some loot.
- Improved gamepad UI navigation.
- Adjusted stats on some items.
- Adjusted drop chances on some items.
- Changed the item icons for some items.
- Added new items to some loot tables.
- Added a new rope sound when you use climbing ropes.
- Fixed an issue where certain meal buffs could be stacked.
- The Jungle Fisherman and Huntsman are now both a guaranteed spawn on jungle islands.
- Added strong plant fibers as a possible drop from some crates.
- Deer and tigers now change orientation based on the slope of the terrain.
- Lowered the cost of the maiden ships from the sea collector slightly.
- The windy sail item is being phased out of the game. If you have one one your boat, it will automatically remove it and give you a replacement item.
- Lenvell should now be in an inn when he is needed.
- Fixed a bug where lenvell would fail to tell you a location.
- Added a new icon to an item's description to let you know that it cannot be traded or sold.
- Torches no longer burn down while resting.
- Added a new hotkey (T by default) which equips/unequips a torch if you have one.
- You can now rest at the starting island campfire.
- Reduced lag spikes that would sometimes occur when looting an item.
- Updated one of the ambient sounds to reduce the intensity of a bird chirp.
- Increased the chance for some enemies to drop health potions and bandages.
- Added recipe to craft bandages from spider silk.
- Increased capacity of crates from 5 to 12.
- Fixed a bug where deer challenge chests would sometimes open before killing all the deer on the island.
- Fixed a bug where jungle challenge chests would not spawn.
- Made all NPC campfires not burn out.
- Fixed npcs not navigating around some ruins properly.

This Week at Lavaboots: Villages and Multiplayer Progress


Hey everyone!

First, if you haven't downloaded our most recent update, 1.9.6, you can do so now! That update added a lot of new features but most importantly included weather. Weather is something we had been wanting to add for a long time and we were thrilled to finally have it implemented in Salt.

Today I wanted to talk about a couple things we've been working on recently as well as give you a progress update on multiplayer. As you can probably imagine most of our time has been spent working on multiplayer and trying to get it out as soon as possible. And so we want to give you an update on that progress as well.

Here's a quick look at what we've been working on.

NPC Villages


One suggestion we've heard quite a bit from players is the desire for a small friendly village with some new NPCs. Well that's something we decided to work on and will be releasing along with the multiplayer update! 

The villages will contain three new NPCs: a chef, outfitter, and a trader. The chef will allow you to trade in certain meat or fish for a cooked version of that item. The cooked version will give you some sort of small buff for a temporary amount of time after eating it. The outfitter will mainly carry chest and head gear that will change the visuals of your character. The trader will act very similarly to a merchant and occasionally have different items for sale when you see him. 

These villages will be able to spawn on large natural islands in addition to other content. 


Multiplayer Progress


Multiplayer is closer than ever to being done and we are entering into some of the final stages of testing. One major area we've been working on recently is testing three or more players. We spent a good bit of time making sure everything worked with two players but we still needed to test three or more. As you can imagine some things are broken and not working correctly and so we've been spending the past few weeks really ironing out those issues. We are making some great progress in that area and feel like we're getting close to it being ready. 

In addition to that, we've been working on syncing some of the last pieces of content in the game, particularly boss fights. We want to make sure most things sync up correctly between players and there were a couple boss fights in the game that had some complex stages to them, and so we've been working on making sure that syncs up properly. 

All in all multiplayer is coming along great and is nearing public testing stage. We will keep giving you updates in that regard so stay tuned in the coming months. 


As always thanks for reading and we'd love to hear your feedback! 
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