Month: April 2015

Last week we got all the animals actually in the game and fixed some issues ( like tiles not beeing animated properly ), to be ready to make a new showcase video about the different biomes. We added support for water and flying NPCs ( for fishes and ambiant birds ).

We added cliffs at last, to avoid the black hole beneath terrain tiles when there was too much height difference.

Also made my first basic shader. A really basic brightness and color balancing shader to change the tint and light depending on climates. Its now part of a really basic “post process” with a vignette effect and a “sun halo” to add atmosphere when zooming out. It mainly makes a difference in sunny climates ( arid and desert ) , that are now brighter and tinted in yellow.

 

 

We’re going to start preparing for the greenlight now, and will also be preparing a new video to show off the world and region regenerator with all the reworked biomes.
Also we’ve been redesigning the choices of basic ressources available for each climate to make things more climate-specific in order to improve trading possibilities.
Vegetables are splitted in 3 ressources and we’re adding a few new ones like dates for arid climates. Some ressources wont be naturally present but you’ll be able to introduce them in the region.

Basically it will go like this :

Main food sources

• Nordic : Potatoes, apples
• Oceanic : Wheat, carrots, apples
• Continental : Wheat, carrots, apples
• Mediterranean : Wheat, figs, tomatoes
• Arid : Wheat, chickpeas, lettuce
• Desert : Dates, lettuce
• Tropical : Corn, rice, beans, bananas

Main alcohol resources

• Nordic : cider  (apples)
• Oceanic : cider  (apples)
• Continental : cider  (apples)
• Mediterranean : wine  (raisins)
• Arid :  beer  (barley)
• Desert : beer  (barley)
• Tropical : rhum  (sugarcane)

Main cloth resource

• Nordic : wool ( sheep)
• Oceanic : wool (sheep)
• Continental : cotton
• Mediterranean : linen ( flax)
• Arid :  linen ( flax)
• Desert : linen ( flax)
• Tropical : wool ( llamas)

Basic animals
Many will be available to introduction in foreign climates, like chicken. Also some animals are specific to relief regions ( like llamas, sheep ) or regions with direct water access.

• Nordic : rabbits,  sheep; mammoth, fish
• Oceanic :  rabbit, cow, sheep, horses, fish
• Continental :  cow, dog, llamas, horses, fish
• Mediterranean :  dog, cow, goats, horses, fish
• Arid :  ostriches, buffalo, goats, camels, elephants, fish
• Desert :  ostriches, buffalo, goats, camels, fish
• Tropical : capybaras, buffalo, chickens, llamas, elephants, fish

 

Back to work!

We’re still adding new animals :
Caipibara, water buffalo, llama … and ducks (cosmetic).

 

The region generator is almost complete now and completely database driven, replacing the old crude external generator of the Alpha 1 ‘prototype’.
This means each resource has its own database settings to tweak the odds of appearing in a region, how it appears and where. Compared to before when all that was hardcoded, this allows to easily add new resources and tweak the balancing of the game if some things appear to often or not.
Resources have different types of localisation whether its forest trees, rocks, shore plants, animals… Their odds of spawning can depend on climate, water proximity, relief or terrain fertility.
There’s still some settings to tweak and bugs to solve, but its now mostly functional.

Below a bunch of screenshots of different random regions from this new generator :

Not much news lately : in the past week we’ve been busy moving to a new place! Also one of our machines died in the process, which makes things a bit more complicated.