Hello Everyone! Sorry for the lack of a development update in April. Not much happened that required a whole log. Over the past month, I’ve been making a number of improvements to the game and smoothing out the mechanics. With all that said, let’s jump right in!

BUILDING THE WORLD

Over the past month, I’ve begun shaping the map to my liking. I’ve increased the size of the island and have made some improvements to the systems that allow me to make changes to the terrain a lot easier. The old trees have been replaced with brand new conifers, and they look a lot better in my opinion.

I’ve also added new locations to the world. These new locations include a small wooden fortress home to raiders and a small town home to neutral NPCs. I’ll be continually adding new locations throughout development.

LOOTING SYSTEM

I’ve also been working on the looting system. Before, the game would start and it would spawn an item via a random number. It would spawn items all over the world, which obviously would not be good for performance.
So I made some good changes. Loot now only spawns in a certain radius of the player. Once the loot is out of range it will deactivate the gameobject, but won’t change what loot is there until you restart the game.
Loot now has spawn rates. This means some items can spawn more frequently than others.
Different locations can produce different loot. For example, a military camp would most likely be a good spot to look for modern weaponry.

CRAFTING

This month, I’ve also began to tackle crafting. Crafting will revolve around crafting benches. Certain items will require a different level of a crafting bench. For example, if you wanted to craft a makeshift axe, you could do so straight from your inventory, but if you wanted to craft a better axe you’ll need a crafting bench.
Crafting benches will have 2 levels. You’ll also be able to craft items straight from your inventory without a bench.
I made the maximum number of different types of materials you’ll need for a single item 3. This means you’ll only need 3 different materials. For example, a makeshift axe requires wood, stone, and rope to craft.

NOTE: ITEM IMAGES ARE 100% PLACEHOLDERS. TAKEN FROM GOOGLE FOR TESTING PURPOSES.

GRAPHICAL IMPROVEMENTS

I’ve made a number of graphical improvements since the last update. Volumetric lighting has been introduced. This helps create better lighting effects and adds glorious god rays.

Terrain textures have been greatly improved as well. Post processing as been updated, but will always be configurable in the settings for lower end PCs.
With these changes came a decrease in performance, so to compensate I was forced to reduce the water quality, lower the density of the grass on the map, and reduce shadows. These aren’t that noticeable, but I wanted to make it clear that I’m not making the game look as great as possible at the expense of performance.

OTHER CHANGES AND ADDITIONS

A bunch of quality of life changes and additions were made to the game. I’ve implemented a screenshot feature that allows you to take screenshots with or without the HUD. As of right now, all the screenshots save to your games folder, but I’m working on a way to allow users to change the location.
I’ve also began implementing NVIDIA Ansel. This allows you to create free camera screenshots with awesome filters! However it’s been causing a lot of issues with terrain rendering.

I’ve also implemented a great asset from the Unity Asset Store called GRAPHY. GRAPHY allows users to check their FPS (Avg, Min, Max), Ram Usage, and Audio. It also gives a good way to run tests and see where I need to make optimizations. If I see that a certain area of the map is dropping frames, I can make the adjustments needed. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll keep it in for all users or if I’ll keep it for development only.

That’s all for this month! I’ll see you next month with even more updates!
~ Isaac