Kept working on water, adjusting the shader, blending and surfaces, kind of looks more like lightning crackle though?

Laptop012

Swapped to a wiggle shader instead of the layers moving in different directions.

Laptop013

Added new underwater tiles. One thing I hate about tiles and surfaces is I have to draw all the variations, I can't just paste them randomly over each other

Laptop014

And more!

Laptop015

Much happier with this, kind of combined the previous version's effect with the wiggle so I got the white waves back.

Although sometimes it seems like the blur doesn't work?

Laptop016

Not sure if I want to add separate effects for Swamps, that would mean having to make another surface...

Might be able to get different colour it by changing the Swamp tile colours, if my blend modes are right, but they'd still have the waves. hmmm

2594

Started to make a system to track the Main Quest as well as UI for it.

2593

Realised I was using a load of stuff in this that wasn't needed, for example I had an array tracking how many parts the quests have as well as an array with the part text. I got rid of the tracking array and now just get the index count from the text array! Updated the layout and changed the background window to break things up a bit. Not sure what I'm going to do for Side Quests since that'll need a scroll bar, as well as a list to store them all in (ds_list rather than array since that makes adding and removing them much easier. Actually, maybe a ds_map would be better?)

2595

Updated the Locking system for Doors/Gates, the existing Button system is now superseded by a check for an Unlock Type, such as Keys or a quantity of enemies killed etc.

2596

Mob locks work!

Activating the Beacon locks the gate and spawns mobs, killing them all grants a reward and unlocks it letting you out again! It's set up so that only specific gates will be locked and unlocked by the Beacon so it shouldn't cause issues with key locks or others.

2598

Added vertical Spiked Gates! Also reworked how the little adjoining walls are done so they're automatic instead of me having to plan them out in the room shapes.

2599

Something I need to do is change how objects are placed in rooms, currently I'm just passing the room coordinates to a script and that then places things based on predefined offsets.

I need to set up an array or grid to store the room shapes, then use specific characters to designate what gets made where, that way I wont run into issues like the player being able to walk around gates because there's a gap between the gate and the wall tiles.

Went to heal the player during testing and realised that I didn't update the portrait positions in other menus after the last tweak to them, fixed now!

2604

Time to fix update the Culling System! I want to make The Underground and the caves have the same Chunk System that the main Island has instead of the old "shove everything into one big list" method I've been using X'D

Reduced the culling area so I can see how things are going, hmm, seems I'm not culling some things right...Seating in Houses is being culled even though it shouldn't until the House is culled...

2608

That's not right...that's not right at all! Underground stuff should never be visible on the Island!!

https://i.postimg.cc/ZndHDCvC/ez2609RE.gif

2609

Ok! This is looking much better! Things in The Underground are being culled to their chunks, then being unculled correctly too!

Something I need to think about is the Area parts, for example the Infirmary, they use the same system as Houses so they uncull all of their parts when they themselves are unculls. Thing is Areas are much bigger than Houses so it's kind of overkill?

https://i.postimg.cc/zG2VcpC6/ez2610RE.gif

2610

Oh slight oversight, Chunk Controllers (that deal with weather, animals and spawning new stuff) aren't being culled correctly. There are 4, go to The Underground, now there are none (correct!), but when you return to the Island there's only 1...

Now that's all working, time to update the Title Screen loading. It's basically a small pre-generated island but it does the object creation all at once, so I need to break that up.

First attempt didn't go well, actually took longer...

laptop019

On top of that issue, there's something up with the position of the object generation. I thought it could be offset wrong, or maybe I'd somehow combined two different version of the Title Screen?

laptop017

Went and looked at a Swamp on the Title Screen, the way Reeds were spawning it couldn't be an offset issue, if it was they should still have followed the shape of the Rockland they were near.

Turned out the Load Title code was pulling the first Save Files object data instead of the Title Screens. Should be fixed now.

laptop018

There we go, sorted! Ignore those two bits of grass in the ocean...that was from testing the debug spawning X'D
Eventually I'll hide that loading bar with a splash screen, or a pre-title of some sort, just like our ancestors used to do!

https://i.postimg.cc/yk61ZbTT/laptop020OP.gif

laptop020

Quitting the game also has to load the Title Screen, and it works but it looks like I need to add the World Clean Up to it since there's still noticeable lag when quitting.

I could skip the loading part if I kept the title screen in memory, just culled but I'm not sure how happy I am with that.

laptop021

Bug Fixes and small Changes

• Fixed some rocks not having their collision data be removed upon their destruction.

• Fixed bug causing NPC Houses to not load their furniture if you load-save-load, Refund Arrays where pointing to the wrong things.

• Fixed Wall Flags hanging over things that should be in front of them.

• Fixed deleting/saving Mail not destroying the New Mail List, causing a crash upon re-entering the Mailbox.

• Fixed Cull System not culling some parts of Houses.

• Fixed Cull System not culling overlayers of some parts of House parts.

• Fixed Wall Lights in The Underground not being on the Wall if at the top of the room.

• Cleanup up Cull System code to remove repetition.

• Added ??? Pronouns for unknown supporters.

• Fixed Minimap being updated to include erroneous things like effects.

• Fixed Entities only updating their depth when on the Island.

There's a couple things I wanna look over but that's everthing for now.

Now sure how much I'll get done before January but I will try to keep at it.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and end of year!

Please look after yourselves, stay safe out there and keep being awesome!!