Keeping up with the newfound tradition, I’ve split the devlog into two parts. One is a 23 min. long video talking about design and what made it and what didn’t in this update. The other one, written here, is more or less dev-talk about things that weren’t mentioned in the video; more catered to devs.

So what’s new?

Last time it was a half-post about XP progressions, and how plans were to “upturn” the classic systems, which is, the test version, is now pushed to the live build. Now that it’s there, anyone can have a good look at it (when it works right, as sometimes the dungeon can bug out), although it’s pretty much useless at this point, as I used it to test my simplified procedural gen approaches (one for dungeon, and another for organic/open world tile gen), and there’s not much to do with those (bunch of empty rooms and placeholder planes). What’s more important is what was added after: Debris and minecarts. I know, revolutionary. But hear me out!

While the core game loop of the game is a simple resource gathering, which to-be-fair isn’t the most thrilling experience in the world, wanted to make it a little more engaging, heck to have some sort of urgency attached to it! That’s when the idea going through with adding falling debris came to be, ‘cos not just adding it as VFX (particles whilst mining), but a physical obstruction that would reward the player for their further exploit. See still image below:

It might not look much, in fact a bit more of a hustle, to force the player to mine additional bits on the map (those big rocks on the floor), but those serve more than one purpose. One is, that now there’s a sort of agency involved with mining, the clearing of the surroundings, as leaving debris all over the place can result in enclosement, and a short-end of a playthrough if mobs encircle and corner the player. The other is that now there’s the option for providing additional resources for the player, ones that wouldn’t drop whilst mining, but be extremely useful in crafting and enchanting in later stages of the game. It also demonstrates/communicates the fact that your actions have consequences for you and your immediate surroundings; which can be either good or bad, depending on the situation. Something you’ll need to be aware of in the world, as everything is interconnected and dependent on one another. Would note that the implementation would need a bit more love, as currently these rocks can fly all over the place, and can land on spots not intended to (like falling off the map); which could tank the FPS at some point…

The other addition was minecarts, acting as mobile chests (rather than modes of transportation), because there will be a point where going back and forth within the mine(s) will become a tedium, as there are plans to implement a weight system to limit the amount of stuff the player can carry. It’s nothing special for now, you put down some tracks, place a minecart, fill it with stuff, and bring it home; see still from the video below.

You can use them all you want (limitless storage for now, probably not forever), but there’s a catch that they can break and by doing so lose half or more of their contents; probably the amount will change in the future. There are further plans to add more life to minecarts, like adding switches and so forth, to ensure a more well-rounded useability for those.

All this took around 2 weeks to make, as the minecarts took a lot of faff to get those working: I’ve ditched the use of splines, I know, and reverted to use points-of-reference to guide the cart. It really didn’t want to come together easily, as I’m using a 2-way communication between the player and the animation BP of the cart (which checks for the rail). Because, wanted to optimize the use of resources, even at this stage, and also wanted to give the option for the player to simply “nudge” the cart if it went off track.

Miscellaneous - Stuff related, but not so much

Arguably not a lot has been added to the game this time around, if we don’t count the previous update with the procedural test (which was a huge step in the right direction). However, things took time away from production, done in the background; won’t bore you with the details, its business stuff, which didn’t go according to plan at all.

Another one was closely related to making that video, or doing anything really, as there were some major technical difficulties (as my workstation is falling apart/blowing up, ‘cos it's that old), which took 2 days off my schedule. So let’s just say that I’m extremely lucky that I can write this at the moment.

What was surprising, and probably contributed to the fact that the video is 23 minutes long, that there were relatively no issues recording the voice over for the devlog. Everything went rather smoothly, too smoothly actually, as I managed to record it in one go. Any of you made a video knows that if you don’t have a recording studio, then you’ve to deal with a lot of noise; which forced my hand last time to speak as fast as humanly possible (waiting for the right moment, etc.). This time, however, there was nothing to be concerned about. Which was very strange, as usually the noise is easily picked up by my janky phone (stuff like toddlers crying/shouting, construction work, etc.), and quite constant throughout the day.

That’s it for now, I suppose.