Lets get to it!

Oh no! Not a great start. I deleted a background that wasn't being used and somehow it broke tile backgrounds.
Turns out that when I made the Save System I didn't take into account the way that Game Maker accesses and references assets.

It doesn't store them as strings but as indexes, so when I loaded the game after deleting a background, every tile that was stored after that one was then off by one in the list.
So I had to change the Save System to instead of saving the index, to save a string which when loaded is replaced with the correct tile background. I also had add a change to the Load System to fix old save files, once fixed I can remove that code as it'll no longer be needed.

2588

Decided I want to add Lava, possibly as a resource but definitely for atmosphere. Best to do it as tiles like the rest of the world, but It'll need it's own surface like Water. I can update the tile collision code to make it so you can't enter it, and add it to the AI collision system so Mobs don't enter it.

First attempt at making Lava, to save time I'm just replacing the Island Water with it instead of having to go to the Caves every time. Some of these look decent, but I need to change the under tiles since they're still blue. Maybe a grey colour would be suitable? Possibly a red but I'm not sure.

Anyone else craving a cheese pizza?

https://i.postimg.cc/fL2j7SCX/monst_Isla2589.gif

2589

Ok, days (a week) later and I have things set up for lava as it's own thing. This was huge hassle, I ended up reworking how the ground is draw again and I've actually managed to get rid of a bunch of stuff I thought was needed but isn't! So it should work better now.

I've changed it so Lava's surface is made at the same time as the Solid Ground Surface, since neither need updated every step. I was also destroying surfaces when I didn't need too causing them to be recreated every step. Now it's just the Water Shader that is.

I also was creating my Water Shader Surface WAY bigger than I needed, and only realised when the lava I was testing was only made upto a certain point. So I've reduced that to ensure it's the size of the view.

2591

Pretty happy with this! Now I just need to sort out he blurring to be less boxy and grid aligned.

I might swap the top lava layer with some perlin noise? I'm not sure yet. It would be nice if it was a bit animated instead of just panning.

2592

And that's my MS Surface Tablet dead. URGHH. Lost a days worth of work, and then 3 days of work time while I wasn't able to do anything.

[4 days lay-tur]

Fortunately my mam has kindly given me her laptop she doesn't use, so time to get that set up!

[Another 3 days lay-tur]

Ok, lets get back to it...where the heck was I?!

I think I might be drawing more world than I need? There shouldn't be as much of a difference between these zoom scales.

Also getting some odd lag in Caves that have Lava, so I need to look into that.

laptop1

That seems better? Was definitely drawing way more ground surface than the view could see, so reduced that. Also with caves I was doing the same thing, except on top of that I was also recalculation the size every step. Fixed. Now I'm just using the view size.

laptop2

Added edge depth to Lava tiles. Also added a quick patch to make it so Water and Lava can't touch, if they do the code updates the water to be a Wall.

Laptop3

Added some gaussian blur to the lava lighting, it's not really that visible

Laptop4

Urm, that's not right...not right at all! Kinda cool though!

Laptop5

Yea, this isn't it either. While I do like the bloom, it's too much, over the player and adds significant lag.

Laptop6

Lol, nope that's not it!

Laptop9

Ok, I think this is as good as I'm gonna get the lava for now. Everything I've tried to do to blur the lighting either hasn't worked or caused significant lag on this laptop, which I'm currently using as the targeted lowest system spec X'D. I can do without the blur, but I'd love to get away from it being so boxy.

But at least I've got it expanding with the other lighting.

Laptop10

Updated the cave gen system to have floor tile variants, new wider vines and banners. Banners and torches can only spawn on Ruin Walls..

Also changed what can spawn on each floor type, adding new mushrooms (some even glow!) and removing grass from Ruins Floor.

laptop7

Drew a hole. Was planning on this just being a tile, but I'm worried about the random chance of the path being fully blocked since there's no way to jump over holes or anything. So instead I've made them objects and shrunk the collision box, that way there should be space to walk between them.

Not sure if I'll make it so you can fall in them, since that means tracking the players position constantly and could cause bugs. Would be cool to have them lead to another floor though...

laptop11

Bug Fixes and small Changes

• Fixed issue with Note System where starting a new game would show the first Save Slots Note, now it's cleared on World Creation.

• Fixed sinking in water, added sink up to head in lava, not that you can stand in lava...

• Fixed Load Game Menu not always showing all Minimap previews.

• Fixed accidentally throwing items when cancelling out of menus.

• Fixed Tiny Animals having invalid Current Room variable.

• Fixed being able to fish on land after loading a save.

• Fixed a collision bug with tiles that let you stand in the top right corner of impassable tiles.

• Fixed Stairs not being added to the Minimap on game load.

• Fixed the spawn coordinates of items dropped from Wall Hangings in Caves and stopped them getting bounced into the Walls.

• Fixed Bushes not dropping items when being cut with Axes.

• Fixed the wrong ground being under mined Walls.

• Cleaned up and simplified Cave Gen Tile Code.

• Updated New Game Minimap previews to be destroyed when not in use.

• Updated collision data for NPC pathfinding, not sure why I removed it but Ocean is now included again so NPC's don't walk into it then get stuck.

• Updated how I'm dealing with Current Room that things are in, legacy code used actual rooms, but when I moved away from that I stupidly still used the room names for the switch statements. Since I want to remove those old rooms I needed to go through the whole project and update those values to strings.

Despite my best efforts I've not been able to get the rest of my work off of the dead tablet, so I think that's it for now. I've got 2 weeks coming up where my gran will be visiting my aunt so that's two weeks I can spend working without other obligations!

Thank you all for your patience and continued support, I really can't express enough how much it means to me and helps me out.

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