Weekly devlogs: Rogue Legend 2
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April 3 - Keep Looking Up
Hey look, clouds! I wanted fluffy, realistic and 3D clouds that actually float over the world. The flat or painted-on clouds in most games have always looked pretty cheesy to me, speaking as someone that likes to watch the clouds float on by. Well, now you can in-game! The clouds all have random shapes and sizes and will float over your world based on the wind speed and direction. Once you get your airship you should also be able to fly through them. Next I'll be giving them proper coloration based on current conditions, so you can get big dark rainclouds overhead when it's raining.
Merchant campaign has proper debt repayment and expansion now. At the bank you'll be able to repay your loan, expand your shop, and learn a little more about the guild that has financed you. In the technical side of things that required creating custom schedules for NPCs, and a system for relationships. This will allow me to create more unique characters that you can get to know over time, and give them all personal stories. Getting to know the characters in the world and learning their stories is the main way I plan to present the plot and history of the world. They're pretty Animal Crossing esque now, so the next step is to flesh out their backstories and motivations.
On some world side of things I've been doing some more tinkering with biomes in preparation for dungeons. I've added a plains biome to make it a bit easier for construction, and I'll be tweaking enemy spawns and adding more as we go along. I want pacifism to be possible in the farmer/merchant/explorer playstyles, but you may need to do some running and wall building.
There's also a round of quality of life improvements. The options menu is now accessible from your in-game journal, you can quickly scroll along your actionbar with shift+mousewheel, and I've created a new effect for the block breaking.
Evil Report
Evil spearheads a new initiative to always be pushing the envelope
Continue Reading in the Dev Forums >>
April 11 - A badge for your trouble
Last week brought clouds, and this week is rain clouds!
Clouds will now change based on the conditions, glowing orange from the setting sun or getting dark and gloomy in the rain. As you can see from the gif they'll also grow and get denser when it's stormy out. This all on top of their already procedural floating puffballness from last week.
Another neat thing-that-moves is hair now has some physics to it. It'll sway in the wind and flop about as you run and jump. I've been trying to move gradually away from "hair helmets" and more into realistic hair that's layered and flows.
Anyway with all the pretty stuff front-loaded, most of this week was spent on the new badge screen that you'll find in your Journal. It's a bit like the old journal in the first game, but with more bundles and more rewards. Instead of being a scattered collection of stuff to do, badges are categorized and bundled together into activities for each playstyle. Every badge you complete earns you a reward, and each bundle you complete earns an even bigger reward. Completing bundles is the main way you'll build your airship, discover new recipes, and unlock new things to do in the world. You've got to learn how to ride trains before you can fly, after all. I think that's the saying.
The screen above is a cool dungeon entrance made by ToadTod.
In the world of tweaks we've got some nicer new grass that changes with the seasons, and reduced fuel costs for factories. They've been normalized across the board and should now only cost the equivalent of 2 wood logs (or 1 coal) to get going, and can still be topped up with whatever you happen to have lying around once they're puffing away. Plus a whole lot of bug fixes.
Evil Report
Evil drums up playtesters by keeping a watchful eye out for birds and chirps at them to invite them over. They haven't been taking him up on his offer.
Continue Reading in the Dev Forums >>
August 16 - Room with a view (Alpha 20)
At a glance
- Many FPS improvements
- View distance is larger
- Added basic distant terrain
- Made 1500% optimization to save file
- Made world 1500% larger
- Torch and burning factories now provide warmth, and rain/night cause cold
- And more in the full devlog
I had "birthday stuff" this week. I also decided to spend a week on further optimizations and visuals, since I hadn't worked on them in a while. The results above. Since much of my week was "make things load or execute faster" let's talk about some of the ways I did that.
Chunk loading and unloading is the biggest bottleneck, it's also the most obvious one that I've had the most amount of time to think about and write out a huge list of things that can be done to improve it. The limiter, as always, is time spent on it. If I didn't have my weekly updates I could easily spend another month on it to have a view distance in the kilometers. I'm cutting it off at this week for now though since I consider it more important to have stuff that's worth seeing first.
Anyway, I use object pooling to speed up my load times. Every time an object appears in the world it needs to be created, which takes a lot of time. However if I have objects that repeat a lot, like trees and flowers that are also unloading at the same time, I can just re-use them. So instead of destroying the old tree in the part of the world you left and creating a new one in the part you enter, I recycle the old one to act as the new one. So then I just need to modify and re-initialize its values instead of generating them all from nothing.
Read the full thing in the Dev Forums >>
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Shout outs: Stacey, Revan#4962, Jane McClintock, Elisa Martinez, Ryan Flagg, JMartins, Jade Arrowood, Sean Kane, Angelo Anderson, yoland katamari, Rhonda Seiter, Noble Saffron, Alexa Hobusch, Jonathan Lekse, DMMichael7000, Katie White, Subzotic, JollyGamer, Jayden wingler, Yi Tan, Emma Holloway, Ashley Sullivan, Gillian Tolbert, David R Abbott, Vanda Leipold, Rick Marsh, Brittany DeNicholas, Phillip Hash, Ly Anton-Blake, Bobbie Crane, Amanda Kettles, Anthony Brown, Lou Bliss, Treighton, Pythor Sen, Michael Isberg, Nat, Cory Evans, Krueger82, BestWorseCaseScenario, Damian Steele, Icarus Unleashed, Mark L, Conall Reilly, Alex, keith oneal rogers, Moss, Ash Harkness, William Bamann, Merissa, Patrick Natale, Cam Largent, Thaddeus Johnson, Siren, Donavan Guay, AstroLass, Sam Davis, Chandlor Desper, Lizzie, Jordan, Rincewind, Michael Hamilton, Rob Hale, Vedie V, Mylon Schroder, Nathan, Joseph Mitchell, Jordan Florez, Robert Rich, Rodney O'Dell, Robin Ellis-Foster, Deanna Pyle, Jess, Meme Pitt-Melton, E.D.F., Zee Livezey, Kevin, ryan scott, Kerry Melton, Mary Kieser, SallySparrow132, Lunesolace, DJ_Kelf, Cassandra Keyes, Naomi B, Millergendraft, Nick Soucy, Ellen Mitchell, Melanie Warga, Jeremiah Walker, Bryan Sheairs, Bryan Kempka, chris wilson, Max Hops, Sarah Holland, Joshua David Maddox, Jennifer Smith, Ray Bissonnette, Joe Dalby, Nicholas Zamora, ShortyMcgibble, Mr. Vinclair, mtnman1979@aol.com, KFB_Patreon, eric sun, Bruce Willison, Gundar Wez, Ken Shapiro, Nahellion, Serena Verden, bilbens baggo, Stuart, Brysen Packer, Galygious, Tim Mason, Maxwell Mayer, Gannon Dubay, Thobek, Aaron Teupe, Felix Schmäche, XMrMonkyx ., John, Miss Zilla M, Jordan Brazeal, Kyle Clark, Jake Lane, Adam Ruiz, Phillip P Torchia, Natalie Luttrell, Stefan Gottschalk's, Remora's Jewel, Buffonturtle, jeremy baisch, Zealot23, Shane Andrews, CJMAXP, Chevy Jones, KingHavok1217, Shazear, Curran Vallejo, Steve Rosenlund, Leanna Orr, Ezzela1891, John Nazario, Gordon Alexander Fallon, Jason Clark, Trey Vickory
Their contribution stands as a beacon of hope for all adventurers!
