Morningstar Update March 2023

Hey! I was writing this update on March 31st before I realized, it's April 1st in the rest of the world, and nobody will believe anything we post til the 2nd. :p

So here it is on the 3rd!

The big news update our Patrons received in private, but here it is for everyone wandering by:

Our Map Editor is up and running!

We've dedicated all of April to workshopping the editor tools ahead of beginning the Proc Gen Open World and Combat Arena development.

What this means for the game is that our long term goals of having robust modding tools has begun to get its first major trial under fire as part of our development pipeline.

We've established a system of Overrides using Symbol, our internal definitions and file paths, that allows any user access to the XML definitions and Art Files, so you can add new terrain types, or basically anything, to the game without requiring Unity.

The Editor itself is also distributable as an EXE, so if you want to author custom maps or proc-gen content blueprints, you can do it the same as we can.

This means that Project Morningstar will have massive potential for modding to extend the game far beyond its vanilla lifespan for years to come, letting the community take advantage of these systems to do incredible things. Since the game has been engineered from the ground up to utilize these methods and make accommodations for anything you could throw at it -- this has cost us man hours and a lot more design work to ensure the longevity of this system through development, but it has been worth it.

The editor is used for things like, laying out the explicit buildings a town type MUST HAVE, and also creating Blueprints by which the town can fill its generation needs with random buildings sorted by type, size, and faction. This will allow us to have ProcGen, creating novelty, but guided by a Designer, so there are no MineCraft towns cut in half by canyons or RimWorld outposts where 1000+ tribals can spawn in raids from outposts with 10 guys around 5 square huts full of granite beds. 

We also did our final revision of the Roofing System, cutting down the number of pieces required substantially, and sorting the layers in a way that MC Esher would appreciate. This should open a more viable path to AI and player chars using roofs, and possibly, if we're ready for a headache, maybe even placing buildings on top of buildings -- but no promises there. That's still a tall order and we'd rather not struggle with the performance and usability issues.

We also began working on an interface solution for the age old problem of isometric games: what happens when something the player needs to see goes behind a wall to the north of something? 

Obviously, the lame solution is that the North walls are non-passable, and blocked off to building. 

But a more reasonable solution is a "cut out" shader is used to reveal useful things, like enemy AI or creatures, items and workstations/facilities, which the player's characters should know about.

We also decided we'd put the power in the player's hands, creating a 3 layer toggle system.

Layer 1, everything is on: Roofs, Walls, Cliffs.

Layer 2, Roofs and South Walls turn off, as well as Cave Roofs.

Layer 3, Everything turns off that isn't flat to the ground, and a black outline is left where buildings and cliffs exist. 

We'll try this system out as we work on the editor and merging in the combat system & character controls this April.

Speaking of Character Controls, that's also been on our list. 

We tried out a system of having firearms be flat, only using 1 sprite, but everybody hated it. So we're back to using 8 directional sprites. 

We also took our time redoing the old Prototype weapons with new spiffy sprites that fit out now established art pipeline. I'm excited to work on these for the other factions. the Acavii start with an A, so they've received the most work as our prototype through Pre-Alpha development. 

This month, you should be seeing feature complete Maps from the Map Editor, with trees, rocks -- all the things that make a natural environment. That should begin our march into May, where we will begin to transition over full time to the Combat Arena Demo, where it's just pure melee and ranged combat in a series of Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch Thunderdone style encounters. 

This combat system will likely be our first public demo, while we prepare the Open World and Building system, and all of its rudimentary balance. We may get lucky and these will just be modes within our public demo. We'll see how this year goes!