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 past week was spent continuing the development work on the aspect of the 4x Mechanics pertaining to Region Cells. Quick reminder:
Divided into 9 main areas (3x3)
Each Area divided into 100 (10x10) Cells
Cells procedurally populated with Resource Nodes or Empty
Resource Cells and Empty Cells randomly occupied by Obstacles, Perils
Cells must be Cleared of Obstacles & Perils to be Claimed
Surveying & Incidents
Surveying & Surveying Incidents were the big item this week. The logic is simple:
Each Cell contains a few Landmarks (5 on average)
Those landmarks are Surveying Spots
You must Survey at least 2 Landmark out of 5 to be able to Claim the Cell
Surveying more than 2 Landmarks decreases the likelihood of the Cell getting Contested
While Surveying a Landmark, an Incident may occur
Incident type & gravity is determined by your current Notice value
The higher your Notice value the higher the risk level of the Incident
Currently, Incidents are, from lowest to highest risk:
Wildlife is caught at unawares
Tracks spawn. Follow them to an Event
A Patrol is caught at unawares. Avoid, Escape or Ambush it
An Ambush falls upon the Player: Escape or Overcome
A Deadly Ambush falls upon the Player: Escape or Overcome
At the moment, only one Incident per Cell per Day can be triggered
At the moment, all events are generic and placeholder. Later on, Arrays will provide variants of events
Next Up
Camp & Base Mechanics: Once Surveying is fully functional, we will move towards improving Camping mechanics as an extension of Hearth Mechanics and Landmark objects, well as beginning to implement Base-Building Mechanics.
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:
- Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame - Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winterfallgame - Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/willyouovercome - Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/ERANgnbSeV
Thank you very much!
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 monday had no Dev Update and as a matter of fact, the week was quiet on the social media front as it featured a mix of necessary "rest" (not) and focus on work due to the difficult and generally underwhelming previous week. So today we're ready to return and report on how the contents of Update #7, about Cell Mechanics, were followed up on.
4x Mechanics and Cells
Reminder:
Divided into 9 main areas (3x3)
Each Area divided into 100 (10x10) Cells
Cells procedurally populated with Resource Nodes or Empty
Resource Cells and Empty Cells randomly occupied by Obstacles, Perils
Cells must be Cleared of Obstacles & Perils to be Claimed
So, here are the development items of this past week:
Cells now have a Landscape value and a Primary Content value.
Landscape will determine the type of Asset spawned in the Cell and general environmental parameters:
Waterland (water-themed environment: river, pools, swamp...)
Wilderness (countryside-themed environment: grass, rock & trees)
Woodland (forested, forage-rich, harder to navigate environments)
Wasteland (mostly open environments, generally bare, predator-rich)
Primary Content sets the gameplay theme for the Cell (Currently simple coloured cubes.)
Waste: The cell is empty of any special/specific content
Obstacle: Clutter the Landscape, must be destroyed to make Navigation easier
Resource: Can be Harvested
Hostile Camp: Spawns Hostiles
Settlement: May spawn Friendlies
"Dungeon" Entrance: Meant to lead to an explorable "Interior" space
Primary Content Rules determine the object size and spawn occurrence of objects
Waste & Obstacles make up 60% of Cells
Resource Cells make up 20% of Cells
Hostile Camp Cells make up 10% of Cells
Settlement Cells make up 5% of Cells
Dungeon Entrance Cells make up 5% of Cells
Most above objects have HP and can be destroyed or harvested if properly equipped
The above items serve as much for procedural generation as they do serve for manual world-building guidance.
For example, we can either load a pre-made level and adapt Cell Contents to it, or generate a new Cell Grid and build based on the settings of each Cell. We are still a bit of a long way to being able to procedurally generate fully functional worlds but that is not really the goal. The goal is to use procedural generation in conjunction with manual building.
Additional items taken care of as far as Cells are concerned:
Distribution rules for Landscape & Primary Contents
Landscapes matching to Environment Mood Mechanics
No Settlements & No Claims in 3-cell Radius around Hostile Camps
Cells procedurally generated & manually editable
Hearth Mechanics
The Hearth is close to the center of the play experience since it's not only your respawn point in case of Woe (defeat), it's also the point from which you will perform many character interactions, as well as the spot by which you will ultimately construct your base. Currently, Hearth work is divided in two main parts:
Basic Mechanics: how to build a Hearth, Hearth "life" and depletion, replenishment and so on
Advanced Mechanics: Camping interactions: healing, bushcraft, base-building
As of the following items, we are now 100% done with the Basic Mechanics:
Changes to Hearth "HP" tracking: now displayed at all times near Player Stats
Adjustments to Hearth HP Depletion through Time & Weather
Hearth Depletion turned off in Gauntlet Mode
Hearth Mechanics now complete
Misc
Fixed Collider Deactivation Issues on Push/Pull Box, making it impossible to Climb on after usage
Currently Working On
Surveying: Mechanics involved in exploring Cells to assess their contents, opportunities & perils
Surveying Incidents: Rules and mechanics for triggering gameplay events while Surveying
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:
- Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame - Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winterfallgame - Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/willyouovercome - Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/ERANgnbSeV
Thank you very much!
Greetings,
To secure and speed up the release pace, and minimize the occurrence of such delays, you can support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame
Last monday, we talked about the design work going on regarding the "4x" aspect of the game, that is Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate, in the same way you have it in strategy games of that genre, except here adapted to RPG gameplay. I quote:
So this past week, groundwork to be able to soon begin implementation of such mechanics was the focus.
First of all, we set off to rebuilding the world through a Demo map whose specifics and goals are:
25x25km
Divided into 9 main areas (3x3)
Each Area divided into 100 (10x10) Cells
Cells procedurally populated with Resource Nodes or Empty
Resource Cells and Empty Cells randomly occupied by Obstacles, Perils
Cells must be Cleared of Obstacles & Perils to be Claimed
So it follows that during the week we worked on implementing some of those key points:
The World Space is now divided into Cells
Cells have 5 Statuses: Occupied, Cleared, Claimed, Contested, Inhabited
Occupied Cells are populated by configurable challenges posed by hostile inhabitants
You must defeat those Inhabitants to Clear the Cell and then be able to Claim
A Claimed Cell will be "developable" for your own use
At the moment, there is no "own use" to Claim the Cell for, but that's coming along. The whole framework to make sure the above targets were met took up the bulk of the week. Dev Hands-On preview below, in the Dev Scene from Hell.
This is a scaled down version of a single 10x10 Cells regional layout, about 10% of real size.
We are now sorting the further developments that will take up most of the workload this week: there is much to do, there are many different things that we could do that would take us in all kinds of directions, so as usual the goal will be to make the most sensible choices towards staying on track to increase the playability of this version. Some of the likely targets in the very near future:
Cell Contents (Primary): Cell theme/Main Cell feature (Obstacle, Resource, Hostile Camp, Settlement, etc)
Cell Contents (Secondary): Additional, lesser features, in a Cell (Item, Interactive, Encounter, etc)
Procedural Generation Rules: Proportions and distribution rules to the spawning of Cell Contents
Surveying: Mechanics involved in exploring Cells to assess their contents, opportunities & perils
Once all that is solved, the next step for this system will be to move towards greater interactivity in the context of Base Building, because Claiming Cells and harvesting Resources is all well and good, but useless if you do not have a Base to give purpose to those efforts.
Still Pending Fixes
- After Boss Bot spawn, all bot spawns in subsequent waves are Boss Bots
- Make Hearth undepletable in 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
- Camera Tweaks & Small UI Fixes
- Implement basic "Monsters" for Cloudedness Hazard
And as usual, you can:
- Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/winterfallgame - Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winterfallgame - Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/willyouovercome - Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/ERANgnbSeV
Thank you very much!