Updated: Mar 14, 2022
To secure and speed up the release pace, and minimize the occurrence of delays, you can support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame
This past week, most of the work went into continuing to implement mechanics for Camp-building, the central feature of Wilderness gameplay. As a matter of fact, one of the very first public screenshots produced for Winterfall illustrated that system:
Beware, oldie! But those were also simpler times.
It's another big system that's crucial to get out of the way because it combines various components into one experience within the greater experience. It's another rabbit hole, of the type Winterfall is full of but thankfully, that one is pretty limited in scope. The interplay of systems just adds design & development complications, and we can't address anything linearly, but that is the way those things work. If we'd wanted it straightforward gameplay-wise, we'd have stuck to a Metroidvania or a souls-like!
So let's get into this week's developments and where that takes us concerning the plan in the coming weeks:
- A camp can now be created by Surveying a Landmark and plopping down a Hearth (fire)
- The Camp area is then contoured by little markers
- Camp space is made of tiles, on which can be placed Camp Facilities
- At the moment, Camp Facilities have to exist in the Player Inventory first (will change)
- Camp Facilities can be moved around and rotated 90% before placement
- Camp Facilities can be un-placed (currently by pressing n to enter "un-place mode, but will change)
- Un-placed Facilities return to the Player Inventory (will return to Camp Inventory later on)
- A Sleeping Spot can be designated and used
- The Sleeping Spot is your Character's respawn location in case of Woe (gameplay defeat)
- Using the Sleeping Spot will pass the time to the next day
- A tent can be placed over the Sleeping Spot
Another oldie featuring a camping snapshot
Next developments in the coming 2-3 weeks:
- Master/Slave logic to Facilities, so we can add extensions to placed Facilities
- A little bit of UI work, for Camp and Player Core Stats
- Adrenaline Mechanics (base Stamina multiplier when in-combat and targeted by Hostile)
- Conditions Effects: Hunger, Thirst, Injury & Exertion stacking debuffs as they increase
- Basic Buffs/Debuffs for various purposes: Traits mechanics, Items, and actual Buffs/Debuffs
- Mood Spells: Character Mood used to purchase Buff/Debuff Effects at Camp for the next day
All those will flesh out the Survival gameplay by bringing all its systems closer together.
The step after these should be some work on streamlining Urges & Environment Interactions, implementing some Crafting mechanics, some Itemization and additional Camping developments/improvements.
It's a lot of work, it's slower than we'd like, but it's a vast vision so it's important to remember that what matters with the little time we're given is what we get to do, not what we would like to do. Crucial mindset here with something of this scope.
Again, thank you for your continued interest.
Updated: Mar 14, 2022
To secure and speed up the release pace, and minimize the occurrence of delays, you can support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame
Today our Dev Blog post will take a somewhat different form as we will mostly use it to evaluate the work done in 2021 and the work yet to do in 2022.
2021 was a pretty good year for Winterfall's development as we managed, against still unfriendly odds, to take care of a lot of systems and mechanics. Some were old work that we salvage from the previous version of the project, some were entirely new systems, some were adaptations.
By now you are all aware of the composite nature of Winterfall: part survival game, part base building, part life sim, part grand strategy, all-around ARPG. The goal of the game, as stated previously, is to allow you to either play in a traditional goal-oriented, short play sessions manner, or a complete responsive sandbox that doesn't have to end, where you do whatever you want and the game has an answer for your every choice and action of note. Some of you will want to explore endlessly, others will just want to watch their characters go through daily life. Those are the scenarios we have to design solutions for: building the platform for your memorable stories and unforgettable experiences. All of this, of course, in a hand-designed world so big you should never be able to say "I have seen everything here".
So let's take each broad category of gameplay and comment on the things we did in 2021.
Survival Game
In 2021 we:
- Restored Stamina Loss & Regeneration functions
- Restored the Survival Needs/Conditions system
- Restored Inventory Functionality & Consumables, with Equipment Logic
- Tied all those aspects together
- Began revamping the Camping & Camp-building mechanics
- Built the Grid/Cell-based Exploration & Surveying System
- Implemented Core hostile Patrol Mechanics
- Implemented Core Tracking mechanics
- Implemented core Surveying Incidents Mechanics
- Updated Core Weather & Hazard Mechanics accordingly
- Implemented Hearth & Respawn Mechanics
- Implemented Woe (Defeat types) Mechanics and assorted (Grit, Recovery, etc)
- Vastly overhauled Notice Mechanics (think a deeper version of the Stars system in GTA)
Base-Building (Outpost)
In 2021 we:
- Implemented Outpost Primary Stats
Food
Supplies
Treasure
- Implemented Outpost Secondary Stats
Readiness (convertible into Sentinels & Usable for Action Expeditions)
Resourcefulness (convertible into Explorers & Usable for Exploration Expeditions)
Goodwill (convertible into Agents & Usable for Relation Expeditions)
Labour (convertible into Specialists & Usable for Labour Expeditions)
- Implemented the Outpost RTS Camera
- Implemented Outpost Core Resources Management (Food & Supplies)
- Implemented Outpost Quality of Life & Security Meters
- Implemented Outpost Crisis Mechanics in case of low Core Resources
- Implemented basic Crisis Events & Interplay with Outpost Stats (type, gravity of Crisis, etc)
- Implemented physical tile-based Outpost building & customization
- Implemented Facility menus, inventories & upgrade slots
- Implemented Core Facility types and their extension relationships
Life Sim
- Restored & Expanded the Environment Mood System
- Restored the Character Mood System
- Built the Character Interactions, Relationships & Emotions System
- Built the Character Lifepath Generator (gameplay & choices-based Story Generator)
Grand Strategy
- No specific items implemented in 2021, although connected to Base-building & Life Sim aspects
ARPG
In 2021 we:
- Improved Attack Inputs and behaviours across the board
- Fixed Camera Snap combat mechanics & aligned attacks with Camera look direction
- Dealt with various quality of life elements
- Applied many fixes and improvements to various Controller issues
And much more.
The first months of 2022 will be about completing Survival, Base-Building and ARPG functions towards installing the Gameplay Loop in its fundamental functionality:
Venture out in the wilderness
Survive
Experience Adventures
Bring back resources
Build your Outpost
Which will later expand to accommodate functions such as
Recruit Followers & Companions
Send out expeditions
Colonize the map
Deal with Crises
Fulfill Character Lifepaths
Deal with inter-Character Drama
Advancement on the RPG Progression mechanics (leveling up, etc) is also in the crosshairs.
Thank you for your patience and support as we keep making progress in the huge task of building Winterfall against all odds: technical, financial and even personal. The commitment remains 100%.
Updated: Jan 5, 2022
One of the big tasks occupying us at the moment, besides general development, is map work. Now this is a big story in and of itself within the context of all the big stories of struggle present in this game's development.
I've personally spent almost a decade trying to figure this problem out, from the ground up, and starting from a place of no game development experience.
The idea was always to offer a very large, realistic "manually built" world to play in, not a procedural one where the whole map is generated randomly. In those procedural worlds, you can't really design the world's geography and you also don't tend to get landmasses and landscapes that feel real or make sense.
There was also the imperative of making that landscape work in terms of scale and proportions, which was something of a struggle when working with the usual methods. Most of the mountains you see in our previous screenshots and videos would rise up to impossible heights if they were in the real world, something over 10.000+ meters altitude. Not ideal.
Want some impossibly steep mountains? On the other hand, those slopes are a skiing heaven...
RPG worldbuilding also tends to make mountains and mountain ranges a single thing, where you have flat land then suddenly you get a mountain wall and it's either more flatland on the other side, or nothing at all because the mountain serves as a barrier.
In reality, mountains tend to come in massifs, very intricate in detail, with valleys, dales, flats, passes and all kinds of such things. As an avid mountain-hiker, that is what I wanted to get in Winterfall.
That was more realistic... but less interesting to look at and unworkable on a large scale!
So that's a bunch of requirements: very vast lands, realistically shaped and proportioned, following natural landscaping logic.
So, fighting with many of Unity's constraints and restrictions for years, I've tried a bit of everything thinkable to until it very recently got to the point of being able to realistically entertain the prospect of building the world in mesh (3d objects) tiles, tile by tile.
It's a big world, too... Below, part of the Northwestern quadrant of the map.
As some of you can tell, this above map (and its the southern part that you don't see here) is based on parts of Corsica. As a matter of fact, those who have experienced it first hand and know it, will be able to recognize it in-game: mountain passes, summits, plains, valleys, it's all there. The coastline has changed and now there are regions that don't exist in-between the main regions, or some coasts are now foothills, but all in all it's there.
So, as you can imagine, easter eggs, references and such things, may be present, both in the game map and in the real world locations.
Several things made building that world true to size previously impossible but thankfully that's a problem that now belongs to the past. Once the new method was locked in, it took a bit of experimenting, some custom shader programming, and we got somewhere.
Initial results were not very conclusive...
The following screenshot shows you an in-editor (and in-progress) terrain tile. The attached heightmap picture shows you where that tile is on the greater map, and it also shows you 1/4th of the initial intended world size.
The tile is 4x4km.
So yeah, that's a lot of tiles.
But it makes producing, optimizing and developing each region a lot easier, on top of ensuring that even an empty world will look great and distinctive.
Steps of our seasonal shader at work for seamless transitions. Work in progress!
Paying homage to the beauty of this land was also very important to me, and so that's why I wanted to make sure that it was all there, incorporated in the game world's geography. At the same time, I couldn't just go for a 1 to 1 copy: first of all, the game world's not supposed to be an island, then Corsica is quite small, it also has no plains to speak of, only mountains, so I couldn't have had all the landscapes I wanted and needed.
This is what things look like in Blender, before the terrain gets imported and processed into Unity. Some familiar with the geography of Corsica might even recognize the area.
It will take some months to produce this entire tile set of regions, but that's fine. It took a decade to reach this solution, and typically, the hardest and longest part is solving the production problem. Once it is solved, everything flows much faster.
Thank you for reading and see you very soon with Dev news: we completed the Inventory system rebuild finally and will be moving on to the last major system of our list: Camp-building.