Rendering a silver ingot in Blender
Last week's blog resulted in a lot of comments and a long discussion on Discord. They were very useful! I never expected so many people to be so passionate about Malthus and Boserup :)
There were two suggestions that really surprised us and have a pretty big chance of being added to 0.7.0.
"Around999People" suggested turning the XP system into an income system. Others loved this idea and expanded upon it. We discussed it, and we think it has a lot of benefits! Instead of the consumption of a chocolate bar by a colonist resulting in some XP, the chocolate bar is assigned a monetary value, and there's a variable VAT (Value Added Tax) rate.
Imagine the value of the chocolate bar is 10, and the default VAT rate is 20%. The consumption of one bar would result in 2 "money" for the colony, to be spent on productivity upgrades.
Increase the VAT rate to 40%, and you'll receive 4 "money". It will also result in more unhappiness.
The opposite is also true: reduce the VAT rate to 10% and you'll only receive 1 "money", but your colony will be happier.
It might make more sense than calling it "XP", and it gives players another interesting choice. High happiness makes it easier to recruit new colonists, and improves the speed of research. But having a lot of productivity upgrades will make your colonists way more efficient, making it easier to produce food, ammo and science bags.
On Discord, Greedoflashbang and Boneidle suggested hot-air balloons / blimps / hot air boats / airships. Exploring will be an important part of 0.7, and a quicker form of transport than walking will be very useful. I've tried to convince Zun of boats, but he was hesitant. He thinks they're pretty hard to add decently, because of the floating on water + collision + multiplayer. Airships will probably be easier to add. We're almost certain trading in 0.7.0 will not involve colonists/boats traveling from one colony to another, but if we ever add something like that, airships are a lot easier to automatize than boats.
Rendering new icons
Drawing icons for items that have no in-game model has always been hard for me, and there are quite a lot of terrible icons. It felt like a huge improvement when, in 0.6.0, I replaced the ugly hand-drawn bed icon with an icon that was made using a screenshot of the in-game bed. This week, I've been busy replacing ugly hand-drawn icons with rendered alternatives. At the start of the blog, you've seen the rendered silver ingot. Here's what the old and new ingot icons look like:
I think it's a worthwhile investment to replace as many icons as possible with rendered alternatives. Zun was very unhappy with the icon for bronze coins, so I made this:
I worried about hand-drawing icons for all the new happiness items, but I think rendering them is a great solution!
Terrain generation
While I've been rendering icons, Zun was working on the terrain generation. It's taking a while, because we want the new system to meet high requirements:
- More realistic world
- More interesting world
- More beautiful world
- Better performance
- Players should be able to set some parameters, like size of the biomes, amount of flat terrain, many islands vs big continents
- Modders should be able to easily change the terrain
Zun is working on a new system to easily create a large variety of trees, and distribute them among appropriate biomes. Today, he showed me the first version of the new world generation with basic trees. It's starting to look more like what it's supposed to be, and we hope to show you some images and perhaps a video of our progress next week!
Wrist pain
During the last two weeks, I've been struggling with some wrist pain. Sometimes it was barely noticeable, sometimes it prevented me from using my computer mouse. I've been watching my posture and started using a gel pad, but the pain did not go away.
I was worried that the pain might be the start of carpal tunnel syndrome, so I visited the doctor yesterday. He quickly concluded that my wrist joint was perfectly healthy, I should just focus on improving my posture even more. He told me that the act of holding a standard computer mouse is pretty unnatural.
Our wrists don't like moving our hands to the sides all day long. One way to improve this is by using an ergonomical, vertical mouse. Holding a vertical mouse is a bit like how you hold your hand during a handshake. It's a lot more natural. We've bought one, and we hope to be able to tell you what it's like using one next week!
What do you think of VAT, airships and the new icons? Has using a computer ever caused pain to your hand, wrist and/or forearm, and have you found a solution? Let us know!
Bedankt voor het lezen!