It’s been about three weeks since the last update so let’s go!

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Cartography – Automap

We had made progress on this some months ago, but with all the changes in the design and now that we have procedural terrain, we practically had to remake it from scratch.

We are now generating the base map from the generated (or loaded) terrain, taking into account the heightmap to draw the shoreline as well as icons for the mountains and forests, and then displaying it as the player explores, including the position of the player and adding the discoveries he has made (see below).

I must say that it looks pretty cool.

Discoveries and Findings

This facet of the game is meant to provide the players with a motivation to explore the map. As you walk around you will find things such as animal or plant species, ruins or new cultures. When you find a new one you will have a chance to name it and will earn “stars” based on its rarity. You can always check your discoveries in your journal.

This facet is still very early in progress, it will be heavily based on procedural generation for the description and (2D) appearance of the findings you are making.

Procedural Generation

We invested a serious amount of dev on terrain generation, we are now generating islands using midpoint displacement fractal with preseeded key points and a lot of tweaking to make them look nice, be more controllable, and play well with the base procedural generation we had in place which was 100% Perlin noise.

We are also affecting the base heightmap so that plains look plainer and mountains look more dramatic, by scaling specific portions of the heightmap.

Combat

Combat now takes place on a separate “scene”, so when for any reason the player engages in combat (right now there are just random ambushes) he transitions to a separate area with a higher level of detail

Exploration

Small tweaks on how things are portrayed in the overworld, to give a better sense of scale now that the combat has been moved to a separate scene.

Also, further additions to mouse movement so you can now move in the ocean and enter towns.

Title Screen

Working in the flows for both the Campaign mode and the New Expedition mode, you can now select the campaign (but there’s a single one, the Pacanchique one), or select the “civ” you are going to use for the procedural mode.

Procedural Generation

• Make individual features of towns “land” into irregular terrain when placing them.
• Allow setting the tiling sizes of the terrain layer’s textures.
• Paint terrain with rock texture based on its slopeness.
• Place towns in grass band.
• Prevent trees from being placed in steep slopes.
• Select between premade or procedural terrain based on the selected game mode.
• Paint “dirt” below trees and towns placed in the map with a semitransparent texture mask.

Combat

• Release camera lock on the main unit when entering combat mode.
• Add visible arrows as projectiles for archers.
• Transition to Game Over scene when the main unit dies

Exploration

• Mouse movement in Exploration mode

Strengthened the clouds particle effect, so it looks foggier.

Did some fixes on the “RTS-like” units selection system and some cleanup on the UI.

Speaking about Combat, you can now commanding units to move somewhere or attack a given unit while in combat mode.

I still continue experimenting with the visual style for forests… it’s an endless conflict between preserving the intended “scale” of the world, while avoid it looking too flat while dealing with achieving adequate performance. Fun.

This week we hope to push hard in order to have a playable version of the game that can be tested since we are applying for a government grant.

Behold, the cabbage forest!

Here comes a new update packed with awesomeness!

We made the ambient light much brighter (also during the night, but blueish) and did some work on the sun and moon’ lights to accommodate better to the scene, along with some tweaks on the terrain’ reflection.

We also made the camera hover much closer to the player, in order to both create a better connection between the player and the characters, and to make exploration more interesting (less world visible at a time)

Implemented a first version of the fatigue system, including modifiers. Environment changes will affect the rate at which your expedition gets tired. The hunger system was also simplified, made a bit more abstract and easier to understand and control.

You can now create a camp for your Expedition to recover the fatigue. It will take some time to create and then you can either rest on it or transform it into a town which you can name. The definitive town creation will likely be a bit different tho. You also now you see a title with the day of the Expedition every new day, which now last 3 minutes.

We did further tests with low poly trees for forests, but definitively the texture alone looks better for now. Also switched the models used for Soldiers and Archers, for lighter equipped versions.

The UI was also remade for a higher base resolution (full HD), with placeholder buttons and icons replaced with better-looking placeholder buttons and icons.

Created a new town, “Nueva Esperanza” located on an island near the mainland. Re-imagined the setting (still in progress) but basically, this island is a safe place where a city was established years ago but the mainland remains unexplored and savage, so your mission is to fix that.

Redesigned the town dialog based on a new model with actions and buildings with people inside, also implemented a new “interaction” dialog, to talk with people in towns and access the stores.

Next steps are:

• Replacing the placeholder graphics on the UI, our artist is already conceptualizing these.
• Implement adventure targets in the mainland, temples, towns, and stuff to find.
• Add different enemies in the mainland.
• Implement unit selection and allow setting them to attack a given enemy.
• Allow hiring units.
• Allow equipping units.