Devlogs
September 2022 release 1 (22.09_1)
Busy, busy, busy this Summer, enjoying some time with the family and soaking up some sunshine and rest. Still time for tweaking though, so I have a new release with some tantalizing tidbits to see!
Lots of little bits and pieces in this release, as I push further towards a stable baseline on which to create actual game content. On that note, I'm maintaining a Trello board of all the outstanding platform bits and pieces, if you're interested:
https://trello.com/b/a8lnLPa5/hide-and-seek
Bug Fixes
- Absolutely, definitely fixed the bug where the mouse cursor doesn't appear in dialogue UI! Found the root cause (incorrect component parent) and fixed it for good!
- Weather now ends more gradually when change is triggered by a quest.
- Save and load are now working. See below for info.
- Fixed issue with background music not looping properly.
- Some performance fixes, specifically around shadow and object culling and terrain mesh optimization. With these changes, I'm seeing significantly higher FPS than before. Hopefully, I can continue to tune this more!
New Features / Enhancements
- Built out the "Main Map" functionality and I'm really pleased with how it's looking. Hit <M> to bring it up, and you'll see:
- Zoom in and out that give you any level of detail you want.
- Icons in place for Quest Givers, Home, and Quest Objectives.
- Settlements now appear with their names on the map once they're discovered.
- Save system is now in place for many systems and objects. The following will be saved and restored on load, either from the main menu or in-game:
- Selected character and position.
- Inventory and quick access items, including items equipped.
- Spawned quest items, either in inventory or spawned if not yet collected.
- Quest and Dialogue states.
- Started to add some Quality settings under "Core Quality". I'll tweak these as I go, to try to give some options around performance and quality. I strongly recommend sticking to "Balanced" for now, that gives the nicest trade off of quality and performance.
- Added an "Unlock FPS" option under Video settings, though with current optimization I'm not sure how high this will go!
- Added a new settlement in the mountains, "Torr Haggard"
- Added the Inn, the "Frozen Spitoon" and its loveable bar keep, Big Eddie.
- Added some roads, houses and some decoration. Lots more to do here, but it's coming together.
- Added new Lake and Island Zones, with plans to build out more settlements and points of interest.
- Starting to flesh out the environment, with points of interest and content.
- AI - much more performant AI, with individual, tuned Finite State Machine models for each character. So far, we now have:
- Deer and Stag - only come out in the daytime, graze randomly, deer will flee at the sight or sound of the player. Stag is more robust, and won't flee - in fact, he will defend himself if attacked.
- Wolf - only comes out at night, and will randomly howl at the moon. Will not attack the player unless attacked itself.
- Rabbit - this guy just hops along, grazes, and looks around. She'll flee is she hears the player or is attacked.
- Fox - not shy, this guy, so will tolerate the player. Will flee if attacked.
- Enemy AI - creatures will only be spawned at night but are very aggressive to the player and animals.
Internal
- Updated packages:
- Unity: 2021.3.8f1.
- GeNa: 3.3.21
- Gaia: 3.2.6
- HDRP Time of Day 1.1.0
- Soul Link Spawner: 1.2.6
- Quest Machine: 1.2.29
- Dialog System: 2.2.30
- Added a "Debug Canvas", with buttons to trigger various things for testing. You can toggle this with the <5> key on the keypad.
- Please use with caution, as some things may not like being triggered out of sequence.
Known Issues
- Still lots to be done with performance, as we're not getting anywhere near the FPS we should.
- Load and save can be "finicky" and will be tidied up over the coming releases.