Wednesday, August 13, 2014

New Textures, New Systems




I've been logging a large amount of coding hours lately, working on the new lighting system, movement, inventory, combat, and a whole list of game components. I've also been creating some new art, some of which will hopefully make it to the final game (the character sprite for example). The big change is that I've finally locked in as having a top down view for the characters. Here's a rough list of what I've accomplished since the last release:

  • Completely implemented A* pathfinding in place of the previous movement system for all entities, including the player. Simply right click a tile, and your character will move off.
  • Added a modular character animation system, with a simple walking animation to start with. 
  • Added a lighting system with a full day-night cycle. The background work for adding lights is also existing.
  • Cleaned up the code a significant amount, removing much of the code from old systems that are no longer viable. Also began commenting to organize some of the code. 
These changes all add up to a rather different game than the last release. In fact, all of this upgrading actually leads to less visible playability at the moment. All one can do at the moment is walk around and explore the world. Of course, for the purpose of testing, I will be releasing it like that for anyone interested. I'm currently in the process of establishing the inventory system. After that is finished, a release can be expected!

In the meantime, stay tuned to the changelog for day-to-day updates with discussion of features!

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Lights!

     I've been unfortunately busy this summer, however I did find time yesterday for a considerable amount of coding. I used some of the time to continue working on the new movement and combat systems. However, I also tackled a part of the game I'd been meaning to work on for a while: Lighting!
    Colonist now contains a full day-night cycle, where one second in reality equates to one minute in the game. In addition, I've started developing code for adding lights, although I have yet to add any objects to create light.