Posted August 27, 2021 by Commodore Shawn
It's been a pretty productive week for Bronze Age Tribes.
The new mesh renderer for the world is up and running, and the world looks better than ever. Jagged color transitions are gone, and there are even sandy beaches and variations in water color by depth. Glaciers even rear up higher than the surrounding land.
I also added the first set of developments. Developments are improvements that your pops can construct on tiles to increase production beyond mere foraging.
The starting set of developments includes three types of farms, and two types of urban centers. In the future urban centers will only be able t be built in settlements (as opposed to semi-nomadic tribes) but for now anyone can make them.
The different farm types generate different resources: barley generates food, flax generates production, and grapes generate luxuries. Urban centers generate wealth and luxuries, while ports generate wealth and trade. In the future urban centers (and ports) will also be able to contain a special building in their center, as well as supporting multiple pops per tile.
Right now the only penalty for lacking food is stopped population growth. This isn't a very meaningful penalty. The next feature will be applying a proper penalty for starvation. When a tribe or settlement's net food production is below zero, the pops will start taking damage. The lower the food deficit, the more damage pops will take each turn. There will also be a one turn buffer, so a tribe/settlement can be in the negative for one turn before damage starts accumulating.
When sufficiently damaged, a pop will die, and be removed from the world.
After starvation, the last remaining feature I have targeted for Milestone 0 is saving and loading. I'm not sure how involved this will be, as I've never done anything with saving or loading state in Godot.