I haven't updated this blog in a while due to me making some rather heavy changes to the underlying game engine. I also wasn't 100% on where the aesthetics are going so I rolled them back to focus more on the game mechanics first.
This however led to a problem where I wouldn't be able to show the project around for a good while, so I decided to show what I'm working on anyways.
Below are 2 gifs of the current build.
Since the previous post I have reduced the size of the hex grid used for world generation, as well as adding a pseudo three dimensional effect to blocks. The 3D effect not only helps the game stand out, but it also greatly reduces the number of blocks I will need for corners and edges (which makes generating random worlds less of a headache) The brown blocks are generic place holders and do not indicate anything related to the art direction.
Another major change I made was to the game's rendering system. Previously it would render 4x scaled up pixel art onto a fullHD canvas. This is what most games do, but it causes some issues related to speed when full screen shader effects start rolling in, causes issues when you have strange screen resolutions, as well as making it difficult to prevent blasphemous situations where a sprite is halfway between 2 pixels. So now the game renders to a 480x270 texture that is stretched to match whatever screen your on. (still matches up to a 4x scale on 1920x1080). Now it is literally impossible for things to be off-grid.
This, however, led to another problem. My in-game user interface and dev tools were set up for a 1920x1080 screen. (see above posts). So I needed to make substantial changes to dev tools in order for them to work properly with the quartered space.
While I was reworking my dev tools I decided to also make some much needed changes to them. I was boasting my prefab editor in earlier posts like it was good, but it was actually bad. Now its less bad!
Quick run down of the changes
- Instead of needing to switch between the 4 grids individually, it now lets you see all 6 supported grids (added 2 more grids) at once and you can edit the one that is selected (in the right pane.
- The origin offset feature I have always wanted to get working is finally working, which will save loads of time during world-gen.
- Placing entities is no longer a guessing game nightmare. It not only shows a little preview of where the entity will be placed when you are hovering over the grids, but it will also place it in the correct spot regardless of the scroll position and offset of the grid you are placing it on. (Drag-painting massive amounts of entities is just for the gif cause it looks cool)
On top of all of that, zooming now works properly.
And yes that is a 3x3 font. If anyone knows how to make a nice 3x3 "5" let me know.
