Hey everyone, wow that was a short month! I hope you're all doing well!
I spent most of this month doing optimisation work, getting things working better, faster and smarter!
Here's some highlights, lets start with some little things!
(Hmm, seems GJ doesn't display outside gifs/videos? If you want to see everything without clicking on each image use the Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/february-game-78193048 it's the same post 
)
Grass Wiggle
https://i.imgur.com/Vz4wEER.mp4
Realised I wasn't happy with how the Grass rotated around a central point when you collide with it (like it does with crops and when you hit a tree), so I've changed it to be static at the base and only wiggle at the top!
Reeds/Swamps
Added Reeds to Swamps, I'd prefer them not to be placed on the edge tiles but that's gonna take some figuring out. Be careful collecting them, you can loose them to the swamp! (Might change that...)
https://i.imgur.com/Po4QiKY.mp4
I've changed how Swamps spawn, I wasn't happy with how the Swamp spawn rate made them as single tiles. Now they're actual areas mostly surrounded by Dark Grass areas, although not sure how happy I am with Rockland spawning inside them. Probably want the game to pick Swamp OR Rockland as an area.
Dashing/Rolling
https://i.imgur.com/UkStet2.mp4
I've been wanting a way to get stuff from trees if you don't have an axe (to avoid softlocks), so I thought a Dash/Roll would be good. It's not quite right but it's working so far!
https://i.imgur.com/Wz2YzGn.mp4
V2! Now it works on all Solid Objects, but only damages Trees!
https://i.imgur.com/xJhwcAS.mp4
Doesn't really work with hats though...going to have to draw more hat frames >:|
https://i.imgur.com/TrK9hIz.mp4
V3, less random bounce.
https://i.imgur.com/KzvBV4t.mp4
V4 final? Increased frame count, changed it to a single roll instead of being based on time. Also reduced knockback bounce bounce amount.
WorldGen
RIGHT this is the big one! I did loads of little fixes here and there to try and reduce the generation time. It worked, but not a lot, but then I thought "Why draw all the tiles?" so the game no longer places tiles in every cell of the map and instead just draws them in the view from the Level object!
This is with just the little fixes.
https://i.imgur.com/LEgMR5K.gif
This is with the only screen tiles. SO FAST!
https://i.imgur.com/XXn2Z43.mp4
Shame the shader was messed up XD I did fix that though!
https://i.imgur.com/ScnfWue.mp4
...in two tries.
Had to rebuild the Shoreline. I was replacing the tiles on World Gen, instead I'm storing the change in a grid and then when I go to draw them it substitutes in the one stored.
https://i.imgur.com/oTnIlQd.mp4
I've always planned on adding less squared shoreline eventually but this works for now...
https://i.imgur.com/7MFZ0vm.mp4
Reworked the connector tiles between land types, these were originally tiles over the main ones, so I've replaced them with some extra grid data, which draws them if the base tile needs them.
Some slight errors though like these incorrect corners, I'll fix that!
https://i.imgur.com/ts8WbYZ.mp4
The connector tiles work again, and with no more hard edges 😊
Now Swamp merges nicely with both Grass and Dark Grass.💚💚
https://i.imgur.com/sbqX2UF.mp4
Reworked the spawning of World Entities although I seem to have messed up the rocks here XD
https://i.imgur.com/rpvVOaq.mp4
Need to work on the layouts of Trees/Rocks/Grass as I'm only using the 1 here and it kinda clusters them in a pattern. But they all work properly again, also things seem faster?
https://i.imgur.com/QvCz3dO.mp4
30~ seconds to load this massive world seems alright? That might vary on other computers so once I've got more done I'll have to do some testing elsewhere!
Urgh, this all broke Terraforming, at least the edges anyway. T_T Didn't really change anything but it's not checking and skipping Swamp...
https://i.imgur.com/eWId9PA.mp4
And it's working again, and with much less code!
https://i.imgur.com/aktGv8c.mp4
And so is the random vegetation spawns from Hydration Potions, and is destroyed by Effloresce Potions!
https://i.imgur.com/jfAm6uy.mp4
Huzzah! I didn't break Snow! I was really worried when I took out the old tile based system it would mess this up!
https://i.imgur.com/X33gtrK.mp4
And it still works with Roofing!
https://i.imgur.com/rJXwnC9.mp4
General Optimisation
Ive added 2 extra lists each to store my Rocks/Grass/Trees since going through massive lists doing stuff lags. I'm also not running them all in the same step, I think it's stable? Check the object counts in the bottomleft.
https://i.imgur.com/TlelDU0.mp4
Decided to cap them each at 8000, if all lists are caped it wont spawn anymore. Might lower that because that's kind of a stupid big number of things to exist in the world. I'll probably reduce that some more, as nice as having 8000 grass looks, it's kind of unnecessary.
WorldGen
Been doing some tests with different values for the World Generation, I kind of like these settings. I set it to save the Minimap surface as a PNG for easy viewing.
https://i.imgur.com/q4xS2P1.gif
I'm liking the Swamps, but I need to change the Rockland. As it is the Rocklands spawns inside the Swamps, ideally I'd like it to pick one or the other.
Maybe I can do it based on location, or chunk. Something I don't like about this is the amount of Shore sand (yellow without grain), that's only supposed to be near the water but it kind of goes anywhere.
Another option would be to check adjacent tiles for Swamp/Rockland and make more, if it doesn't find any pick one at random.
Debugging tool
Ended up building a menu for quick and speedy generation of worlds and testing the different settings, with a choice to loop it. Now I can just pick some settings and set it away in the background making a bunch of png's.
https://i.imgur.com/0ZJbPBU.mp4
HUD
Updated the Pickup indicator to increment if you got the same item as the last one. Not sure if I should add Quality to the check and display?
https://i.imgur.com/ocS25nC.mp4
Goals
You might have noticed I've added a new supporter goal...I've got some low priority features I want to add to the game, but things are real tight right now and can't justify the time needed, so I figured I should start adding them as goals to encourage more supporters which in turn will give me more time and resources to work on them.
First up is Animal Breeding, currently Animal numbers are limited to the amount made on World Gen, although there is no way to reduce their numbers either.
At $30 a month OR 20 Patrons/Kofi Subs I'll add the option for Animal Nests to allow you to breed two Animals of the same type together.
I'll also set up Animal Abilities and add a chance of Animal Offspring to be a Shiny which will have a different Ability to the base type.
Each Animal type will have a specific Ability, such as Wildboars "RUMMAGE" ability which gives them a chance of finding hidden Underground Mushrooms when following you!
Thanks
Thank you so much for reading and for all the support you give. You're all awesome and your interest in my silly Goblins means the world to me.
I hope you all have a great month, keep being awesome everyone! 
3 comments