The last few weeks, we've focused our efforts on polishing gameplay for the first 20-30 minutes of playtime. We still have a ways to go but many bugs have been squashed, new content has been added, and settings have been tuned. Here's some of what we've been up to:
Exposure System
The game is now aware of how exposed the player is to the elements. Your temperature penalty is now calculated based on this, and there are visual/audio cues as well. Precipitation is more affected by the wind the more exposed you are.
Exposure is calculated via a combination of checks:
1. Testing to see if the player is under a roof or not.
2. Testing to see how directly in the path of the wind the player is.
This second check is accomplished via a 3D pathfind between the player and the wind emmitter. The path is then scored on distance and directness of route to calculate the sheltered amount.
Here you can visualize the path the wind follows in debug mode.
General Updates
-Game now starts mid day, to give ample time to get situated before the more difficult nighttime temperatures.
-Adjusted nighttime cold to do damage but not kill you the first night.
-Hunger now has 5 states. The two extremes will effect you: starving hurts your health and well-fed will heal you slowly.
-Loot spawning has been refactored. The old system relied on the nav mesh to spawn loot, and was too finicky in a variety of edge cases. The new system performs much more reliably, but is slightly costlier on level generation. This trade off should be acceptable, because you only need to generate the level one time when you first start a new game.
-Different building types in the game will now have their own loot types that spawn in them, making the discovery of various buildings more important.
-Block placing is now much more intuitive, and shows a preview of the block location. Blocks now snap to player direction as well, so that the player can control orientation of the block.
Look for more updates in the coming weeks as we get closer to early access!
-Trev