Buildings

Added, Wells and natural Oasis. Probably gonna make the Oasis a bit prettier, but it works as proof of concept for now!

1804

You can fill your watering can at both.

Added a Merchant Landing Platform, as a way for Merchant Goblins to come to the Island.

1812

Split the sprite and adjusted the depth of the platform, so things look right now. No more walking over the Balloon!

1819

Originally I'd planned on having Docks, which Goblin Merchants could stop at, but there was going to be issues with doing the land check when placing them, it would require 2 types of land; Shallow Water + Beach. A solution to this would have been to split the Dock/Jetty building into parts but I wasn't keen on that. There was also the issue with Goblins not being able to enter water, so I'd have to flip the access value for water cells when a Dock is placed, then flip it again when destroyed.

Instead I've went for them arriving by air, reusing the Debug Hot Air Balloon sprite, with some added bob. I'd like to have bigger airships that would bring multiple Merchants, but a single Platform that can have a single Merchant land on it works for now!

Also added these to the Save System. I think I've got most buildings added, but I really need to go over each one by one and check!

NPC's

Merchant Goblins are now a Job type again. Unlike other Goblins they can't be asked to follow you, can't be housed and can't give you Requests.

1810

They also only hang around for a while...

1816

But I'm not sure if I'll make them need somewhere to stay or not? That's an awful lot of work, which could easily be broken by you destroying the place they would be staying. So I guess for now, they'll just leave by the end of the day.

Fixed the depth issue with landed HAB's, so Goblins don't walk over them

1819

ALTHOUGH, if I get bigger airships...they could sleep onboard?

World Gen

Set up a chance chance system for Oasis to spawn in Deserts as well as for other things in the future, and did a big reworked how world gen works.

As you can see...it didn't work straight away X'D

 [Gif too big]

https://i.imgur.com/ThlDG64.gif

1806

Turns out there was some mistakes in my World Gen code, I was actually overshooting the edge of sub-chunks so I was spawning stuff in the first cell twice (once at the the start sub-chunk and then for the next sub-chunk on the current ones last loop)

1807

But I got that all sorted.

1808

Each Chunk is built from lines of text in arrays, there are different ones for each biome type so I can make Desserts have less trees than Grassland without having to rely on entirely one RNG check for each tree.

Improved their appearance adding an under sprite to avoid player collision.

1809

Unfortunately this gif was made before the spawn fix, that rock shouldn't have spawned on the Oasis!

Items

Made it possible to fill the Watering Can and deplete it's contents when used on Crops. Their capacity is based on their Quality.

1800

Also they can no longer be stacked

1801

Visuals

Added some new sprites for Tools and changed how they animate.

Tried having them as just a rotation of the sprite, looks good for the Axe in certain directions but needs something else

1821

1822

Still needs work. I think offsetting the y value by the frame while facing up and down might look better.

This has kinda messed up the charged effect when using the Axe, so maybe I should change it not be a slash.

Made it better. Took out the rotating sprite for the side versions and replace them with sprite frames, added a movement slash and some x/y offsetting. Only issue is this really doesn't work with the Charged Axe effect, so I think I'll keep this for Tools with a Forward Charge but make more of a 90 degree swing for the Axe.

1833

Added some more JUICE to Rock and Tree harvesting. Will definitely add an accessibility option to turn off the flash.  Also maybe a better way of doing the flash itself.

1837

Currently it's active when the object's scale is bigger than the default, but the Tween I'm using is EaseOutElastic which overshoots the target (the default size) then wiggles back and forth over it till it's equalised, which would cause flashing. I've had to manually adjust the value that causes the flash different for both trees and rocks, would be nice if they were the same.

Trying Particles for Clouds instead of sprites, I think it works well?

1849

Definitely need to figure out how to highlight the player.  Originally I was changing the sprite alpha based on if the player was above or below the Weather area, but doing that with Particles changes it for all clouds (since they share particle settings).

1950

Ok I set it up so Chunks now each have their own Cloud Particle, so I can change their opacity independently. I don't think this should effect performance...

Did a short video for this since there's a lot of moving things and that makes BIG gifs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhnEsU1QKUY

Updated splash particles too land on Objects.

1857

Changed them to land on top with random offset

1858

Not sure hot to stop the main splashes landing on the sides of things though.

1859

I was thinking double up on the emitter but with different depths and offset but the outcome was the same.

Realised there was some issues discrepancies between where the drops were landing and where rain stopped, so I've reworked things, they should be more connected now.

1860

The main problem with Particles is there's no way to tell them to stop at a specific point, so I've had to dust off the old distance = speed * time to calculate it XD

Also removed any randomness for rain speed/life in the particles, but I should be able to still have different speeds if I adjust the life to keep the distance the same? Otherwise the Cloud will be created in a different place?

Wait..I just found out that Weather Depth was 10x what it should have been!?! FIXED!

1862

Oh, and I had remove the y stretch on the rain particles because with them being stretched the splashes weren't lining up right, they HAVE to spawn in the centre of the particle that created them, so this makes that look better.

UI

Added a Portrait animation for when you eat, and by necessity variables for Player Appearance. Guess that means I should rebuild the Appearance UI soon!

1838

I even set the animation up so it gets cancelled if you eat again before it's finished, shame I couldn't keep the Heart Emote going. Maybe I can change it to a particle so I can have it over the UI? These ones are just sprites but if I swapped all my other emotes from objects to particles that would save performance too!

Realised I could replace this whole thing with Particles, so I scrapped it all and did that. Now I'm only using two variables, one to tell the UI to draw the portrait, and a timer to change that value to an emote once the food has hit the mouth.

1840

Also added different reactions. This probably wont be used for the player, unless there's bad food (Baked Banato?), mostly just for when Gifting NPC's things.

1841

Updated how food works slightly, food can now drain Health or Mana! O.O

Currently Drain and Regen are separate buffs/timers, not sure If I should combine them so they override each other?

1854

Built the UI for letting you change your appearance. There'll be some way to do it in game via NPC or such, rather than using the Main Menu, that was just for convenience while testing :D

1845

What I've built is kind a janky. While I am only keeping the face parts array in memory during the animation, I do have blank slots in it from where, for example, Facepaint R is just using  Facepaint L's sprites but flipped and offset (Goblin faces are odd pixel wide so flipping makes them off by 1 pixel). This shouldn't cause any problems it's just a little ugly to look at the gap.

Also for parts which are mirrored, like the Monocle or Eyepatch, instead of having a second entry for spr_Monocle I've set it to "MIRROR" and got a check to use the previous array value instead. Again this should cause any issues (unless I make a wrong entry) but it does look ugly XD

Optimisation

Checking how well things are set up by doing some stress tests. 100 Goblins? Seems fine?

[Gif too big, too many Gobo's!]

https://i.imgur.com/loaAHIc.mp4

1823

700? Not so much, even with their movement code turned off

1825

Or with movement on, but the draw code off

1826

Or both! XD

1827

I'll probably end up limiting how many Goblins you can have at once, but I'm sure there's more optimisations I can do to make things better. Currently there's no Culling system in place for them, so that should cut things down a bit if they're spread out, but won't help if there are 100+ on screen at once.

Bug Fixes and small Changes

-Fixed a bug where World Gen would duplicate the 2nd to last object in a terrain shape's row.

-Fixed a bug where World Gen would not place anything in the last column of a chunk.

-Fixed a bug where World Gen would check the wrong collision cell when attempting to place objects.

-Fixed World Gen; Chunks were populating beyond their boundary, causing things to be placed in adjacent Chunks.

-Fixed Crash bug with Merchants when you try to move to the Sell section when you have nothing to sell.

-Fixed a bug where ending a Goblins Introduction text made you leave the whole interaction.

-Fixed a bug where the Buy/Sell menu caused conversation text to be instantly displayed.

-Fixed a Crash bug when moving from Sell to Buy menu when Merchant has too few item types to buy.

-Fixed Goblins mouth position not resetting when leaving conversations.

-Fixed Merchant Buy list being shorter than it should have been.

-Fixed Delete Menu's selector box being offset incorrectly.

-Fixed an oversight which stopped Goblins facing different direction when using the Hot Air Balloon.

-Fixed Goblin Eyebrows not being effected by the Hair Palette.

-Added Nature Object (Oasis etc) to the Save and Map Systems.

-Added Error Wiggles to Buy/Sell Menu.

-Added Cactus as an item that can be gained from chopping Cactus instead of Plant Fibres, you can eat it which heals you but you take damage over time. It can also be crafted into Plant Fibres.

-Removed mirrored face sprites and replaced them with code

Thank you all again for all of your support and interest, it really helps me out a lot and it means the world to me! Please stay safe out there and look after yourselves!

Patreon/Ko-fi Shrine