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Monday Dev Update #12

Greetings,


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


Last week, we talked about the new features in the Incident System: Animal Spawn, Tracks Spawn, Patrol and Ambush. Over the past week, we extended some of those features in various ways. As we are not quite done and satisfied with the degree of completion of so said features, let's reserve them for next week's dev update, where we'll be able to talk about them in greater detail. Let's show instead some pretty pictures and talk about World Rebuilding.



The attached screenshots were taken in the rebuilt/salvaged version of a number of areas (all in the same general region) that have appeared previously in the Winterfall social media posts as well as videos. Maybe you'll recognize some of them.


Building the game world for Winterfall has been one of the most challenging aspects of the work over the years. Mostly in three ways:

  • First, learning the tools and fundamentals of level building and all the mistakes and sins that go with it,

  • Then, trying to come up with custom solutions to fulfill requirements for how things must work (assets, work process management, etc)

  • Finally (going on at the same time as the other two), losing the work a few times due to various incidents.

Like pretty much everything else about this project, complete satisfaction is not there yet. There is a level of engineering that is still beyond our means that would solve the bigger issues. So there too, it's important to be able to content oneself with the state of things as they are, knowing that the future will get things closer to how they "should" be.

One of the bigger changes I'm looking forward to in the future, will be to the way worlds are actually built. Right now, it's individual, hand-placed little items (there's hundreds of them, mostly rocks). Every tree, every platform, every wall, every rock, anything that's part of the environment is one item, at its given scale, put there by a manual process. There is no procedural generation or such.

It's very time-consuming but I like it because it creates very personal things and the work process puts one in a kind of meditative state: you need to focus, but not focus hard, so while your immediate attention is on the task, your mind can wander off.

It's kinda fun and produces very interesting results, but it's far from ideal.

It was actually something that took me a ton of time to get into initially because I never liked the process of making landscapes and environments out of stacked, combined and overlapped objects, always thought it was messy and counterintuitive... but the freedom you're allowed is kinda limitless, so...

Anyways, the big future change I'm looking forward to is getting custom "area islands" built as single objects so that instead of placing every little item manually, "world island objects" can instead be put together in the scene. It will scene building, processing, and will also make modding much easier.

If instead of placing 1000 objects in the scene to build a decent landscape with a proper level of detail, you can get away with placing 25 and get a result that's not only as satisfying visually, but also more economical in terms of processing power and required skill level, that can only be better.

For now, we work with the little stuff, with the single pieces and the individual props. The screenshots come out well, the landscapes are pretty nice, it does the job. Eventually though, there'll be that migration. When it occurs, I'll be more than relieved!


And as usual, you can:

Thank you very much!

Monday Dev Update #11

Greetings,


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


Last week, we skipped the Monday Update because we were still embroiled in the same tasks described the week before and did not get to make considerable progress. There was little point to going over the same stuff again just for a couple dev items.

Thankfully, the latest week was not as plodding and we managed to take care of a number of features to keep improving the system. Should there be no accident this week, we'll come out of it with the Survey/Incidents system fully functional in its core form.


The system now features the following types of Incidents according to the following logic:

  • Animal Spawn

    • Animal Spawn occurs at the lowest Notice level (0-1)

    • An unaware animal or critter wanders by into the player's environment

    • It offers the player an opportunity to ambush the animal

    • Pending: Some animals may alert their environment if they detect the player before he does

  • Tracks Spawn

    • Tracks spawn occurs at the next Notice Level (2-3)

    • The player can hold F near a Track to Inspect it

    • The next Track will spawn, the player can seek it out and repeat the process

    • Tracks spawn in a curve, to avoid criss-crossing and backtracking

    • Pending: At the end of the trail, a Tracking Outcome event plays out

  • Patrol

    • Patrol is the mid-level Notice incident (4-5)

    • An NPC Patrol spawns in the distance

    • Patrol NPCs/Bots flock together

    • Patrol NPCs/Bots walk to the nearest Hostile Camp

    • The Patrol has a Detection Radius

    • If caught in the Detection radius, the Player has a limited amount of time to escape Detection

    • The way the Player behaves (crawl, crouch, crouchwalk, stand idle, walk, jog, run...) impacts Detection

    • The Escape Detection Countdown is shown

    • If Detected, the Player can fight off the Patrol

    • Pending: Alt Goal: If Detected, the Player must Escape to a Hiding spot

  • Ambush

    • Ambush is the higher-level Notice incident (6-8)

    • An NPC/Bot Ambush spawns upon the Player

    • The Player can fight off the Ambush

    • Pending: Alt-Goal: the Player must Escape the Ambush

  • Deadly Ambush

    • Deadly Ambush is the highest-level Notice incident (9-10)

    • A very dangerous (boss-level) NPC/Bot Ambush spawns upon the Player

    • The Player can fight off the Ambush

    • Pending: Alt-Goal: the Player must Escape the Ambush

Except for the PENDING object, the above mechanics are implemented and functional. Patrol allowed us to bring back some semblance of Stealth mechanics, where the way you move (or don't) impacts your detectability and will therefore reward sneakiness.

Here are the next immediate steps for the system:

  • All Mechanics

    • Implement Incident Notifications

  • Patrol Mechanics

    • Double Detection Area Radius Size

    • Obstacles should create dead zones in Detection Areas

    • Auto-Refill of Escape Detection Countdown by 1/second after 3 seconds out

    • Implement Escape Mechanics

  • Ambush

    • Implement Escape Mechanics

Currently, all Incidents are the same, but this system will ultimately evolve towards generating specific Incidents/Incident Scenarios based on external parameters.


In the next string of updates, I would like to see some final improvements brought to Gauntlet Mode so to be able to publish a playable build. I would also like to go return to some fundamental RPG gameplay: stats, inventory and so on. But first things first, finishing Incidents!


Still Pending Fixes (low priority items at the moment)

  • Gauntlet Mode: After Boss Bot spawn, all bot spawns in subsequent waves are Boss Bots

  • Gauntlet Mode: Add and configure Interaction Goal, Defeat All goal and Protect Goal

  • Finish fixing timing Issues on the remaining Combat Attacks (inputs 3 4 9 and 10)

  • Fix Sprint's Stamina Cost & Passage of Time & add Cooldown

  • Camera Tweaks & Small UI Fixes

  • Implement basic "Monsters" for Cloudedness Hazard


And as usual, you can:

Thank you very much!

Monday Dev Update #10

Greetings,


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 week, we'd like to thank our new Patron, Noira Fayn. Noira has been an amazing modder for Mass Effect and Dragon Age. So we're honoured to receive her patronage.

This past week was spent continuing the development work on the aspect of the 4x Mechanics pertaining to Region Cells. We finished implementing the Surveying logic and making adjustments and behaviour fixes, as well as general fixes to the Cell Content spawn placeholders.


The primary objects that were taken care of this week were the Ambush incident and the Patrol incident.

You can watch them play out in this commented Dev Snippet:



Still Pending Fixes (low priority items at the moment)

  • After Boss Bot spawn, all bot spawns in subsequent waves are Boss Bots

  • Add and configure Interaction Goal, Defeat All goal and Protect Goal

  • Finish fixing timing Issues on the remaining Combat Attacks (inputs 3 4 9 and 10)

  • Fix Sprint's Stamina Cost & Passage of Time

  • Camera Tweaks & Small UI Fixes

  • Implement basic "Monsters" for Cloudedness Hazard


And as usual, you can:

Thank you very much!

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