Hey everyone!
Today's dev log will be rather dull because I don't have a whole lot of new content to show off. I'm at the stage where I'm working on bugs, polish, and finishing implementation for previously shown features. That's good, though, as that means the date for putting this update into beta is drawing near. I hate not being able to tell you guys a specific date for when that will be. I want this to be my last dev log before then, but due to the scope and complexity of the update, there's a lot of hidden tasks that arise as I go. This update is more like a sequel than it is a general update and as a result is an absolute ton of work for me. Thank you for understanding that, and for being patient with me. :)
Now, I've seen a few comments recently about how long this update is taking and some have even expressed that there is nothing in this next update so I wanted to recap some of the things that have been added:
-Tech tree. Allows for Humans to unlock magical props/items.
-Capturing mechanic and respective props.
-Diets. Allows players to specify the diet by race and indicates what foods are harmful or have negative long-term effects.
-Unlimited save slots plus a bunch of extra save info is now displayed.
-Variable map sizes. Maps can now range from 16x16x16 up to 256x256x64.
-New hills biome variation which allows for previous biomes to be flatter.
-Player progression is now saved to realm, rather than tile. Things like diets, uniforms, tech tree unlocks, currencies, etc, will be saved even when the player's settlement is lost.
-Players can now settle any tile, even ones they've abandoned or had a game over at. Also, game overs will not force players to start a new settlement. The game will continue to play for as long as they player wishes. They can choose to start a new settlement at that same tile, or start a new game, or load the last save.
-Room functionalities. Players can now mix and match room functionality to allow for more specific room clusters. i.e., A room with a bedroom, kitchen, and workshop could be set as a room template that you name 'home'. The game has several default templates, but players can add/remove/edit new templates if they choose. Rooms can also be placed on several z layers.
-Combat and move order entity states have been re-written to be less buggy.
-62 new tools and weapons.
-A billion QoL improvements: draggable windows, lists for active zones/jobs/rooms, modifier keys for hotkey edits, tooltip additions/improvements, better text contrast, item and entity tracking can be added/removed/edited on the top bar and clicking top bar items will take you to the next point, and much, much more!
-Entities will no longer be able to scale any height. They can climb a max of one tile up, but will need ladders/stairs to climb higher.
-Light permeates the ground layers now. This is to allow for better exploration underground, like you'd see in a game such as Terraria.
-Save/load speed improvements and general performance improvements. I re-wrote the entire backend of the game to allow for bigger maps and so the game's performance has been drastically improved.
-Transparency for a bunch of textures. Because I re-wrote the renderer, I'm able to properly do transparency for things like glass. You can sort of see in the below gif that the house has some transparent windows as a roof.
And the list goes on... There are a million smaller changes, fixes, and polish tasks I've done over the year and if you'd like to see them, you should check out the Trello where I jot down finished tasks, or checkout my previous dev logs.
One small thing I can show you is that a lot has been added to the game's overlays. Above you can see what's displayed when building, for example. One addition is the path permission up/down arrows to indicate where entities can move up (green arrow) and down (red arrow). With the new restrictions on climbing height, this is an important bit of info, which will help players plan out castle walls and such.
Ok, back to work for me. Thank you so much everyone for your feedback and encouragement. I appreciate this community.
Take care