Milestone Unlocked!
Added 2023-03-28 22:06:06 +0000 UTCIt's a quiet milestone, but the Map Editor's 0.1 is distributable as a build internally, so we can author maps with the tools we've been developing for the past 9 months since Curtis and James joined the project.
This is the first map I've made by hand using the tools.
Once we add procedural generation to this, we'll be cooking with gas.
We're still battling some of the hardest issues in an isometric 2d game like Depth Sorting and layering tile kits, but we can see the result of our Rule Brush, the incredible performance of the tile system, and many of the deeper systems that will drive the game are emerging.
We're doing some serious work on the building and cavern system, which requires a lot of risk like detecting "enclosure," basically if a building is whole or open to the world. Turns out that's very complicated and performance expensive, but everything from lighting to heat exchange will depend on it.
We still plan on the game being based around "local maps" that are linked via a "world map," similar to RimWorld, but the potential that our maps are seamless across the entire world is still, if not a distinct possibility, probably better for what we're trying to do. It'll all depend on how performance intensive towns become, if we need a loading screen as they stream in or not.
But, that's getting ahead quite a bit.
We're still ensuring our rule tiles all work as expected, and the layers of tile data sorts properly, before we move on to adding trees and other doodads to the world.
