Greetings, Erthians! It’s time to summarise what has been changed inside the Ertha Beta over the past month. This is not an exhaustive list — just the things that are worth mentioning for the end-user experience.
Groundwork is being laid for the upcoming Ertha Beta update in October. Developers are actively working on: Graphics, Multiplayer, Land Generation, Terrain Editing, Property Building, Inventory & UI Systems, and more (… even war mechanics!).
We are well aware of the fact that our community wants to see quick progress. The Ertha Beta is now ready for that! Taking some time to fix and adjust what we’ve already released, and also work on our back-end systems, was necessary to ensure our progress forward is as smooth as it can be!
Here at Ertha HQ, we are incredibly excited about what’s to come over these next few months. Get ready for some jaw dropping updates that will be rapid-fired until the end of this year!
ERTHA BETA PATCH NOTES (AUG 1st — SEP 1st)
FEATURES
- Terrain Generation and Terraforming systems are coming soon! Currently only available for developer testing, this feature will generate an approximation of a landscape based on the area of the world your tile represents. Flatten areas out for building, raise mountains to create stunning vistas, and decorate your landscape as you see fit with our terraforming tools.
- Bug Reporting feature has been added. In the Main Menu, there is an icon you can click to access a report form in order to send feedback and bugs you discover in the game to the development team.
- Player data has been reworked into a new structure on the database. Old characters should automatically migrate or be told to remake their characters.
CONTENT
- A minigame has been added to one of the interior environments.
- More player customization options have been unlocked to demo at character creation.
- All entertainment park environments have been updated with proper mesh colliders, allowing players to explore inside.
- “Forgot Password” and “Player Count” removed from the main menu. Once we have these features working, they’ll be re-implemented.
- Quiz reward popup has been moved to the end of the quiz, as to not interrupt players as they answer questions.
- Main Menu now supports TAB key to cycle through input fields.
- Main Menu is now accessible from the login screen.
- Volume adjustment settings save to your specific device instead of your account, and apply immediately after the game launches.
- Cars now only honk at you if you cut in between them, or move in front of them when they’re trying to actively drive. No more loud noises for walking across a crosswalk!
- Ground terrain details, such as grass, now render differently depending on the graphics level chosen.
- Very Low, Low, and Medium will not show any ground detail at all in Top-Down Camera view, but will reduce the amount of details shown in First-Person View.
- High, Very High, and Ultra will show ground details in both camera modes, and increasingly show more density and detail as the graphics options increase.
- Anisotropic Filtering is enabled by default for High or above graphic settings. A later advanced graphics options setting will allow players to change this manually.
- General traffic behavior improvements.
- Quiz skills are now tracked on the in-game character sheet after you’ve gained a level in them using the Quiz system.
- Quiz continues playing even after a level up has been completed, previously having ended prematurely.
- General improvements have been made to the breakout minigame located inside select building interiors.
- General improvements have been made to traffic behavior.
- Leaderboard demonstration has been removed from the end of Quiz, soon to be re-enabled once the feature is fully functional.
BUG FIXES
- Several instances of floating trees and vegetation have been snapped back down to earth for trying to escape.
- Quiz experience now accurately reflects the level purchased at character creation.
- Footstep sounds blend more smoothly between first person, and third person camera views.
- Footstep sounds no longer play twice in interior views.
- You can no longer pan the camera along the ground in Top-Down View unless the pan input began over terrain in the first place. This stops a couple floating UI elements dragging the camera around when you try to scroll them.
- All instances of “Hunt” changed to “Hunting”.
- Exiting a quiz no longer breaks going back to globe view.
- “Sleepless” character trait now properly applies a bonus to your maximum energy count (16 -> 24).
- Vehicles no longer rudely honk at you from outside of buildings while you explore interiors.
- A material used for one of the player discoverable secrets has been fixed to use the URP rendering pipeline.
- Canceling a quiz and then resuming it will no longer break the quiz if you tried to load another module afterward.
- “Hours Worked” is tracked for each individual quiz skill, rather than globally across all tasks the character has performed since character creation.
- Quiz will no longer be paused when you attempt to exit, in order to avoid exploitative behavior of reading a question, and pausing to consider the answer with no consequence.
- After completing the milestone requirements to go to the next difficulty of a quiz, the next level of quiz should now unlock.
- Breakout games no longer throw a fatal error under certain circumstances.
- Character creation no longer gets stuck if an invalid amount of AP was attempted to be spent.
- The UI for the character panel in Victoria scene now follows the expected sizing standard.
- It’s no longer possible to mountain climb over the edge of the map in the Hilo demo scene.
- Main menu now preserves locked cursor state if accessed from first person or interior views.
- Several UI elements in character creation have been re-labelled to be more clear.
- It’s no longer possible to see the outline of a structure you’re inside by looking straight down.
- Old character data should now allow you to proceed to character creation.
- Victoria scene UI has been fixed to not show an incorrectly sized profile panel.
- Spawning inside the KuCoin building will actually face the interior instead of a wall.
- Sound volume normalization improvements.
Ertha is an MMO 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) game with extensive opportunities to satisfy one’s need for curiosity, competitiveness, and social recognition through roleplaying in a vast geopolitical map.
With three distinct characters to select from and endless possibilities to alter them, players themselves will be the creators of their own narrative and wealth both in virtual and real worlds.
Welcome to Ertha
