Hello Everyone.
April was a productive month. We managed to get more basic systems in place such as the main menu and a proper loading and exiting routine which is not as trivial as it might sound.

Savegames and settings

Another point was the whole user settings. We can store and load settings and savegames for multiple users. Savegames will also have backward compatibility as this game is in constant progress during the alpha. We do that by simply having a converter from one version to the next once something has changed. Of course, just basic UI but it does its job.

Character models

I also hired a 3D artist who is doing the unit models. It is important to get the workflow final right now. The ideas I had for the characters previously were rather complex but in hindsight, as many things, some aspects are unnecessary. You can barely see any close details at the scale we are going to have. I wanted to be able to show starving people by actually making them thinner for example. But before I wrap my head around that lets first implement all that, it would still be possible to do it if it turns out to be a good idea, which I doubt.

Still I wanted to have variation and flexibility, so I came up with a modular system that is not too complex. We only use 4 mesh and texture parts that are combined on runtime: body, head, hair and misc (accessories like hat, backpack or additional clothing). We can define rules and presets on which parts are going to be combined. So a butcher at to work can look appropriately and when he goes home he could wear normal clothes again.

Each part has its own texture and all are packed in one quadratic texture. We target 512 pixels but for the game 256 pixel is enough so we have room for other purposes like close-ups or citizen portraits. Each part has UVs that match the smaller textures simply to make texturing easier, to prevent errors and simply stay more flexible. Most humans stay below 800 triangles and we can implement LODs if we have to.

Game economy

We still gnaw at the whole production process. For sure we did other things this month but it also turns out to be more time consuming as intended. But we are close to the goal, the AI system is in place and citizens successfully transfer resources form a storage to the production facility. All we got to do now is to start production and put those resources back to the storage. The whole AI decision is in place like when to get resources from where based on what should be produced.

A bunch of resources and products are in place. One that is working I will go and port over the old terrain system and distribute some resources which can then be gathered.

Gameplay wise we will then be equal to the current version of Endciv. The UI is another big topic but it should grow over the next two months as well. Before that I will update to Unity 2018 as there are quite some new features that we should build on.