Obelisk Changelog

V0032 January 8, 2016

• Worked on saving character data

V0032 January 6, 2016

• Continued upgrading in-game UI
• There is now a menu for the inventory and the UI
• Each menu includes 4 buttons:
• equip/unequip
• drop
• use (currently unimplemented)
• info (currently unimplemented)
• Began working on character data storage

V0032 January 5, 2016

• Continued upgrading in-game UI

V0032 January 3, 2016

• Began working on implementing the new character/item sprites
• added races
• Human
• Orc
• Goblin
• Began upgrading the in-game UI

V0031 January 2, 2016

• Worked on river generation

V0031 January 1, 2016

• Finished world generation screen
• screen now has a loading screen, and a world viewing screen to be used for testing
• Added a scrolling to world selection menu
• Worked on map generation
• land is created with a combination of two levels of simplex noise
• land wraps on the x-axis
• added noise for land height, moisture, and weather a block is present
• calculated average temperature based on latitude and elevation
• current biomes and terrain types:
• mountain
• rock
• rocky grass
• forest
• temperate forest
• grassland
• ocean
• beach

V0031 December 31, 2015

• Finished map saving and loading with small 512x256 tile worlds. Larger worlds result in excessively long loading times, which will be addressed next.
• Re-implemented shaders and a day/night cycle
• Created a world generation screen which accepts a seed and world name
• Created a world list to select the world to play on

V0031 December 30, 2015

• Mostly finished saving and loading maps
• Worked on understanding and implementing Simplex noise for map generation

V0031 December 28, 2015

• Continued work on saving/loading maps

V0031 December 23, 2015

• Continued map updating
• began working on saving/loading worlds
• began complex map generation with "plate tectonics"

V0031 December 22, 2015

• Began implementing new textures from kenney.nl
• updating map generation and storage

V0031 December 21, 2015

• Added equipped item drawing and very simple attack animation

V0030 May 18, 2015

• Created and added Sword and Warhammer textures
• Bugfixes with combat

V0030 May 16, 2015

• Work on professions
• Work on items
• Work on combat
• Unarmed combat functional! (Albeit without animation currently)

V0030 May 14, 2015

• Continued work on professions
• Began determining how to incorporate skills

V0030 May 13, 2015

• Continued work on professions

V0030 May 12, 2015

• Finished pathfinding for melee combat situations

V0030 May 11, 2015

• Began reintroducing NPCs

V0029 May 6, 2015

• Finally merged the two version of code that I had after migrating all work onto github

V0028 January 9, 2015

• Began rewriting how map data is stored to be more efficient. 

V0028 January 8, 2015

• Main menu is now functional. More will now be added, and can be easily added, as needed.
• Background work on how my assets are stored.

V0028 January 7, 2015

• Separated shader from the Tile class into its own class.
• Finished the tree class (although it is yet untested. Everything will be untested until I return to school and sync my projects).
• Began working on a new, proper Main Menu with the same UI that is used in the rest of the game.

V0028 January 4, 2015

• Began adding trees.
• Tiles and Blocks are all stored in one package, Map Elements. Eventually everything at each x,y coordinate will just be an array of map elems. For example
• if (10, 5) is just empty ocean it will hold only ocean tile, with the shader for darkness on top.
• if (40, 100) contains a grass and a tree, that location will be an array with a grass tile, a tree, and a shader

V0028 December 28, 2014

• Drew a tree sprite.
• Experimented with new, more effective map generation techniques and data storage.

V0028 December 8, 2014

• Continued work on professions.

V0028 December 3, 2014

• Began exploring how the map is loaded. Much of the loading time is spent on determining which which tiles are walkable and connected to each other, defined as areas. This will be useful knowledge when I need to optimize it more.
• Added a loading screen.
• Began working on professions.

V0027 December 2, 2014

• Finally finished equipping and unequipping! Released V0027

V0027 November 17, 2014

• Continued work on equipment and the inventory. Scene2D UI is endlessly frustrating to work with, but better than any other options so I stick with it.

V0027 October 10, 2014

• Continued UI work on the inventory and equipment.

V0027 October 9, 2014

• Continued UI work on the inventory and equipment.

V0027 October 8, 2014

• Continued UI work with equipping, unequipping, and the inventory.

V0027 October 7, 2014

• Continued work on equipping and unequipping.
• Established four categories for equipped items: Held, Worn, Armor, and Back (such as a backpack or quiver)

V0027 October 6, 2014

• Continued updating item code to work with the new item system.
• Cleaned up a lot of code so that it is easier to read and work with.
• Began working on equipping and unequipping items. The items can be programmatically equipped/unequipped, but the UI for the process is still a work in progress.

V0026 September 4, 2014

• Fixed a problem with the day/night lighting.
• Game no longer has its own cursor (temporarily).
• Created a system for adding items to the inventory. There is currently no way of using or selecting the items though.

V0026 August 21, 2014

• Completed a basic menu for the inventory. Now for adding items to it.

V0026 August 20, 2014

• Learning how to use the UI system. Added an info panel in the top left corner. Currently it only keeps track of health. 
• Added a button to the pause screen to exit to the main menu.
• Began working on the inventory tab.
• Side Note: This wasn't mentioned when I added it, but I created stats for characters. Upon creation, a character will now have strength, dexterity, constitution, aptitude, wisdom, and charisma rolled for them. I'm using Dungeons and Dragons as a model here, with the stats ranging from 3-18 based on three (simulated) rolls of a six-sided dice. The stats don't really mean anything yet, the only one that is used is constitution, with the con modifier being added to health.

V0026 August 14, 2014

• More code cleaning. Updated the libgdx libraries to the newest version. Diving into UI work to continue with the new inventory systems.

V0025 August 13, 2014

• Cutting, pasting, and cleaning the ActiveEntity/ Character classes in preparation for a new and improved item and inventory system. The new system will reflect the broader change from the top-down shooter that the game was to the top-down RPG that it is meant to be.

V0025 August 12, 2014

• Finished working on A* pathfinding. The paths always seemed to prefer diagonals over horizontals or verticals, even when the latter is more direct. The algorithm now works properly.
• Implemented the walking animation, created an easy way of adding more types of animations in the future.
• Cut a lot of old code that wasn't being used and just adding clutter.

V0025 August 10, 2014

• Started working on fixing A* pathfinding/entity placement in the world. Implemented the new sprite, without animation so far.

V0025 August 8, 2014

• Finished the area generation code. All that is left on that front is handling how to add new tiles when a tile becomes walkable.
• Added a new texture for stone and broken up stone.
• Changed lighting so that it is rendered last, therefor having it render over everything but the UI.
• Finished the lighting engine. I may go back much later to make lighting smooth, however I am completely satisfied with it for now.
• Created a new top-down character sprite with two walking sprites to begin animating it.

V0025 August 6, 2014

• Wrote the code for a flood fill algorithm expanding in four directions based on walkability.
• Added a walkability property to tiles. Doesn't really do anything now, but it will be useful when there are tiles that can't be walked over, such as water.
• Expanded the area code to make it more effective.

V0025 August 5, 2014

• Began outlining what I need to complete before the game can move out of Pre-Alpha. Alpha is still a long way away, but organization allows me to be more productive with my limited time, and gives more motivation.
• Thought I had finished the area filling algorithm, until some bugs popped up that made me realize I was going about it wrong. Started working on a proper flood filling algorithm now.

V0025 August 2, 2014

• Continued working on movement. Took some time to begin the lighting engine. There is now a day-night cycle, and I've implemented a way to add lights.

V0024 July 7, 2014

• Mostly finished with the basics of the movement, although upgrades are ongoing. Began working on the new combat system.

V0024 June 30, 2014

• Continued work on new movement, and began merging NPC + Biot Classes with the player class. The hierarchy now goes Entity -> Character (Replaces NPC) -> Biot/Player.
• Entity is an sort of object not part of the terrain, such as characters or projectiles. Character is a complex entity that can perform actions, such as a player or NPC.
• Still ironing out bugs resulting from this merge and simplification of code.

V0024 June 28, 2014

• Began work on new player movement. Going to use a simple RTS style of movement, commonly found in MOBAs. I weighed the pros and cons of this system vs. the old one, and I realized that this system is just much more simple while style being enjoyable, which will allow me to concentrate on more important and beneficial additions rather than tinkering with movement indefinitely.
• Completed basic movement, based on the AStar pathfinding I used with the NPCs. Right click the desired location to move there. Now I need to update all of the surrounding systems. First up will be combat + targeting.

May 29, 2014 - June 27, 2014

• I apologize for the lack of communications from me. I've had to postpone work on Colonist temporarily due to lack of time, seeing as I'm graduating high school and starting a summer job. Once things settle down, probably around July, I should be able to get back to coding.

V0023 May 28, 2014

• I finished 4 of the different forms of sprites for the Player and Biots, forward-facing, back-facing, right-facing, and left-facing. I will still need to draw the animations for each direction now, but I'm going to take a brief interlude to integrate these sprites into the code.
• I created code for the simple sprites without animation, and they are now functioning. The only problem is that a lot of the detail is lost due to the fact that it is scaled down. I'm not sure what to do about this yet.

V0022 May 27, 2014

• I continued work on the new character sprites in aseprite. I'm trying to add more detail to these sprites, and possibly even some walking animations, so this is going to take some time. So far, I have created four template sprites from which I can create the others.

V0022 May 23, 2014

• Main objective for today is to continue work on the new side-view sprites. Considering how bad of an artist I am, it is taking a decent amount of time, but I'm happy with how they have been turning out so far. I've been using photoshop, which is proving to be quite unfriendly towards more pixelated art. For this reason, I'm probably going to switch back to using aseprite, which is what I used before.
• I also changd the NPC movement code slightly so that the NPC will move to the center of each tile on it's path, and not the corners as it was before.

V0022 May 21, 2014

• I'm considering transition back to a somewhat different way of drawing characters. As opposed to a top down view, I would use more of a traditional side view. I was initially hesitant to use this sort of view in a top down, real time game, but I want to at least try it. It will make movement much, much easier, and collision detection much simpler. Not to mention, this system will allow for much more personalization and individuality among different characters.
• To begin this process, I'm starting to draw new character sprites.

V0022 May 20, 2014

• Worked on meshing the new paths with the current movement code of the NPCs.
• Managed to get NPCs following the path. Still some known issues to work out, but it no longer crashes without good reason. The bare bones of the pathfinding are finished!

V0021 May 19, 2014

• Made considerable progress on A*, I'm starting to create paths that make sense. They seem to prefer diagonals rather than straight paths, but otherwise the path created is the most efficient I've been able to get so far. The path is also able to avoid blocks. 
• The next step is teaching the AI to follow paths. This is going to involve rewriting much of the movement code.

V0020 May 16, 2014

• Continued work on A*
• This is taking longer than anticipated, but I believe it will be worth it.

V0019 May 15, 2014
(Note: this is only the first entry in the changelog, development has been ongoing for a considerable amount of time before this changelog was created)

• Continuing work on A* pathfinding:
• Started the day with the problem of the path created being very inefficient.
• Realized that my open list needed to be a priority queue, spent some time changing that over and writing the comparator for it.
•  Unfortunately, even with the priority queue, the path created is not the shortest possible path, so I will need to be working on this once again tomorrow.