Devlog #13 - Biomes and Traps
Woah. December went quick, and I haven’t blogged in a month. Sorry about that. The good news is there is a fair bit to show off this blog post. So lets get started!
I spent a lot of December working on the map generation. I’ve added a new biome and kind of “split” the map into quadrants.
To the north, you’ll find the tropical biome. Palm trees, ferns and bushes grow here, as well as the new fruit plant, the banana tree.
To the east is the bush-land biome, the OG biome of Dinkum. Kangaroos bounce around here its the only biome you can find billabongs.
In the centre of the map, you can find the desert. Still dry and sandy, like it was before.
And finally, in the south west, you will find the latest addition to Dinkum, the “cold” biome.
This new biome has high cliffs, pine trees and apple trees.
I have plans to show the temperature for your character, maybe in hotter climates you will use more energy if you aren’t wearing a hat, and maybe in the colder climates you will want to rug up. I’ve also thought that certain crops can only grow in certain climates. This is something I’m excited to look into.
Hey, did you notice I redid the UI again? Yeah. It’s probably going to change a couple more times I imagine. The map screen now lets you move and zoom the map around. The mini-map now turns with the character and important icons grow and shrink depending on how close you are to them, so hopefully it’s a little harder to get lost.
Something else I’ve improved that is harder to show, I’ve optimized the multiplayer code. There have been some big changes using map seeds, so now the only data that gets sent is for chunks that have been changed in some way. The game has been using the Unity Networking (Unet) so far, but has been changed to Mirror, a Networking API for Unity built by some awesome users on the unity forum using a far more optimized version of the existing Unet code. Mirror is way more reliable and stable and I’m really impressed at how easy it was to switch over.
And now for something I’m most excited to show, the Animal trap. These puppies can be crafted and used to capture animals for relocation. First, put the trap on the ground and wait for an animal to step on it, or scare the animal onto the trap. I’m working on bait now, so it will hopefully be easier to coax them into it.
I’m excited for the possibilities these give. I imagine capturing animals for domestication, quests to capture hard to find animals and the ability to sell the captured animals.
Anyway, that will do you for a while. I’m back to posting fortnightly.
See you in two weeks!