Morningstar Updates October 2022

October was a critical month where A LOT of behind the scenes stuff got done, but not as much visually stunning as last September was with all the new isometric art.

This month's list of major milestones includes:

#1 -- Kent got the sprite sorting system for characters integrated with James's unique system, and we now have a working character generation UI which can save & load as well as produce random and custom characters. 

#2 -- James has reworked some of the quirks of sprite / layer sorting on characters and weapons, so long spears can now thread through trees without flashing in front of objects and the character holding them while animating. He also added much more to the skinning system and the stats system, so we can display health and injuries/bonuses, on the HUD. Wound man is also coming along on a new implementation. 

#3 -- Allegra and I continued our art march, adding more facilities and workstations to craft all the things our economy needs.

#4 -- Curtis has continued his work on our Terrain Generation Rules, applying the edges to the solid terrain tiles that our procgen system will use. He's also been hammering away on some optimizations and developer tools that are absolutely essential long term. 

This doesn't seem immediately very impressive to an end user, but to a developer who knows what's happening it is absolutely very cool.

Each individual tile in Morningstar's world has layers and layers of data, and all the coordinates that power the system using the old methods of games like, say RimWorld, would require a long and uncomfortable hang as it eats up CPU time to process all the placement and deletions of tiles across a vast area. Sometimes up to multiple seconds of hang time. (SOS users remember our ship tiles taking so long.)

Our system above is affecting tens of thousands of tiles at once, and layering them, in realtime.

This is huge for many reasons.

We know we'll have many Characters and Creatures destructing and constructing the landscape.

(The roofs will have edges and remain static when edited in the future -- first pass to show it working!)

Wildfires will be burning huge swathes of grass and stuff, leaving behind ashes. Miners will be cutting up cliffs and farmers transforming terrain. This can happen with dozens of events per second, and having an architecture that is fast, convenient, and reliable is a must have. Especially as we add lighting volumes to caves and pathfinding on the realtime navmesh.

Supporting this is the new Terrain Editor, which is a WIP this month and likely the rest of November. 

We had to stall work on the Overworld to fit this feature in, but it's vital to continued efforts of the core gameplay loop where James and Kent are focused. 

With the Map Editor, we can edit maps in realtime the same way dev mode will work for players in game, exercising the same tools used in gameplay. We can also save and load maps with all items in position for the first time, and instead of relying purely on procedural generation, we can handcraft map locations that are unique and specific for quests.

We will also have a Wizard to help us load our tilesets, so artists and designers can quickly see what pieces of the tiling kit is missing and fill in gaps, and quickly edit the tiles in biomes that make locations unique. Here we also manage the sound of footsteps and impacts of projectiles, as well as other effects (like lava) or soil fertility that are attached to the rules. 

You can then paint with these to ensure the kit has no malfunctioning art assets. 

I'm excited to have this system's first blush designed. 

Save Our Ship fans will remember the Creation Kit that we made for that mod, so we could save & load ships. We'll be doing the same here for our game. creating templates that can then be called by the Procedural Generator to fill towns and quest sites with hand made locations -- no funny box villages like RimWorld or MineCraft here. The best of both worlds in natural feel landscapes and human logical towns.

And if you remember Star Edit, it will be familiar to you as well. The isometric perspective, the sprites, the square nature of both that old system and SOS's -- you'll be right at home. :)