June Update | Injury & Skill System, Colonist Customization + More
Hi everyone!
A lot of things happened in the last weeks and yesterday I've uploaded a new update video.
It's about the new injury system, the new skill system, colonist customization, an updated science system (core mechanics finished) and more. I've also written all important information in the blog below.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Injury System[/h2]
At first I've implemented the new injury & status system for the colonists which has some very basic mechanics for now and can handle 3 different types of effects.
Temporary Effects:
These are effects like starving. (It's only one in the game at the moment)
Injuries:
This effect will be added if a colonist gets hit by a bullet, an arrow or another projectile.
It does direct damage and has the ability to bleed for a certain time with a specific amount of damage per hour. If it stops to bleed or is medicated, it starts to recover.
Bleeding:
The bleeding effect is a summary of all bleedings which are caused by injuries and the bleeding damage is calculated and handled by this particular system. This means that if all wounds have stopped to bleed - then this effect is recovering. It can be seen as the regeneration of lost blood.
In connection with the injuries I've added a background system with body parts which have different chances to get hit and different impacts on the direct damage as well as on the bleeding effect.
At the moment there are these parts and chances:
There are 2 other ways to hurt a colonist and the first is a hit by an explosion (which only adds a deadly and not bleeding injury on a random body part for now) and the second is a hit by a flamethrower. Both of them are not completely finished because they require some special network commands / managing and this will be added when I will implement the full network functionality of the combat manager.
[h2]Skill System[/h2]
The next point on the list was to create a skill system for the colonists and here are the 9 basic skills which are currently in the game:
Each skill has a max level of 30 and in addition a colonists can have a talent for one or more, which increases the amount of skill points they will get for a related activity by 50%. I've also added some kind of a skill tree and it works in the way that with every skill level a colonist gets an attribute point - with these points the player can select an attribute from the skill tree which has an effect on this colonist.
At the moment there are 2 different types of attributes in the skill trees to select:
Speed:
This increases the speed to finish a certain job - like tree cut, mining or researching speed.
Diligence:
This increases the amount of items which will be spawned if a colonist finishes a job - like harvesting a plant, mining a block or cut a tree.
There are also background attributes which will be added if a colonist reaches the 6th level of a skill and with every additional level the effects of them are increased by 1%.
For example with the skill Forester:
[h2]Science System[/h2]
In the science system I've changed the layout of the technology tree as well as of the technology panels and then I've integrated the 2 related attributes from the skill system which were the research speed and the chance of fail.
For now the chance of fail is calculated from the related skill level in the following way:
One problem with the science system was, that the researching speeds of multiple colonists were summed up to the final speed. For example: If I had 3 colonists with 100% research speed on 3 science tables, then they researched with 300% in total which was much too fast.
Therefore I've added 2 modifiers to balance this issue:
Team Project Modifier:
This speed modifier is applied if 2 or more colonists are researching the same science point.
The calculation:
Cross Project Modifier:
This speed modifier is applied if 2 or more different science points are researched at the same time.
The calculation:
Note: The unique research speed of each colonist is handled by this system too.
With these updates the core mechanics of the science system should be finished.
In the future I only have to add more technologies and a few new types of science points.
[h2]Colonists Customization[/h2]
There is a new customization menu where the player can select a hat, a coat and a shirt for each colonist and in addition I've added the functionality that some clothes can have multiple colors. This means that if I have a shirt with a tie for example, I can select one color for the shirt and another color for the tie. It's now also possible to choose if a colonist should wear a shirt outside or inside of the trousers.
At the moment clothes can be changed as often as wanted without any costs - the player only have to select a new outfit and send the colonist to a commode or a wardrobe.
[h2]Additional Updates[/h2]
Tree Cut Functions:
Before this update the player had to select every single tree to mark it to be cut. Now it's possible to select an area.
Destruction Manager:
The destruction manager can now handle colonist job cancel operations - like if a job to destroy a construction element or to transport an item to an item zone became invalid by the collapse of a building structure.
Furniture:
I have added 2 new models which are the small commode and the desk.
Colonists Path Navigators:
The navigation functionality for the colonists can handle changes of the run speed over the network now. (this was added in connection with the skill system)
I hope you all have a good day,
Cheers!
Discord | YouTube | Reddit
A lot of things happened in the last weeks and yesterday I've uploaded a new update video.
It's about the new injury system, the new skill system, colonist customization, an updated science system (core mechanics finished) and more. I've also written all important information in the blog below.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Injury System[/h2]
At first I've implemented the new injury & status system for the colonists which has some very basic mechanics for now and can handle 3 different types of effects.
Temporary Effects:
These are effects like starving. (It's only one in the game at the moment)
Injuries:
This effect will be added if a colonist gets hit by a bullet, an arrow or another projectile.
It does direct damage and has the ability to bleed for a certain time with a specific amount of damage per hour. If it stops to bleed or is medicated, it starts to recover.
Bleeding:
The bleeding effect is a summary of all bleedings which are caused by injuries and the bleeding damage is calculated and handled by this particular system. This means that if all wounds have stopped to bleed - then this effect is recovering. It can be seen as the regeneration of lost blood.
In connection with the injuries I've added a background system with body parts which have different chances to get hit and different impacts on the direct damage as well as on the bleeding effect.
At the moment there are these parts and chances:
- Body (55%)
- Stomach (10%)
- Liver (10%)
- Lungs (10%)
- Kidneys (10%)
- Heart (5%)
There are 2 other ways to hurt a colonist and the first is a hit by an explosion (which only adds a deadly and not bleeding injury on a random body part for now) and the second is a hit by a flamethrower. Both of them are not completely finished because they require some special network commands / managing and this will be added when I will implement the full network functionality of the combat manager.
[h2]Skill System[/h2]
The next point on the list was to create a skill system for the colonists and here are the 9 basic skills which are currently in the game:
- Forester
- Miner
- Farmer
- Construction
- Crafting
- Medicine
- Science
- Combat for range weapons
- Combat for melee weapons
Each skill has a max level of 30 and in addition a colonists can have a talent for one or more, which increases the amount of skill points they will get for a related activity by 50%. I've also added some kind of a skill tree and it works in the way that with every skill level a colonist gets an attribute point - with these points the player can select an attribute from the skill tree which has an effect on this colonist.
At the moment there are 2 different types of attributes in the skill trees to select:
Speed:
This increases the speed to finish a certain job - like tree cut, mining or researching speed.
Diligence:
This increases the amount of items which will be spawned if a colonist finishes a job - like harvesting a plant, mining a block or cut a tree.
There are also background attributes which will be added if a colonist reaches the 6th level of a skill and with every additional level the effects of them are increased by 1%.
For example with the skill Forester:
- Forester level 6 (+1% speed, +1% diligence)
- Forester level 10 (+5% speed, +5% diligence)
- Forester level 20 (+15% speed, +15% diligence)
- Forester level 30 (+25% speed, +25% diligence)
[h2]Science System[/h2]
In the science system I've changed the layout of the technology tree as well as of the technology panels and then I've integrated the 2 related attributes from the skill system which were the research speed and the chance of fail.
For now the chance of fail is calculated from the related skill level in the following way:
- Science level 0 (10% chance of fail)
- Science level 5 (5% chance of fail)
- Science level 10 (0% chance of fail)
One problem with the science system was, that the researching speeds of multiple colonists were summed up to the final speed. For example: If I had 3 colonists with 100% research speed on 3 science tables, then they researched with 300% in total which was much too fast.
Therefore I've added 2 modifiers to balance this issue:
Team Project Modifier:
This speed modifier is applied if 2 or more colonists are researching the same science point.
The calculation:
- 1 colonist (100% total, 100% per colonist)
- 2 colonists (135% total, 67.5% per colonist)
- 3 colonists (151% total, 50.3% per colonist)
- 4 colonists (162% total, 40.5% per colonist)
Cross Project Modifier:
This speed modifier is applied if 2 or more different science points are researched at the same time.
The calculation:
- 1 point (100% total, 100% per science point)
- 2 points (160% total, 80% per science point)
- 3 points (180% total, 60% per science point)
Note: The unique research speed of each colonist is handled by this system too.
With these updates the core mechanics of the science system should be finished.
In the future I only have to add more technologies and a few new types of science points.
[h2]Colonists Customization[/h2]
There is a new customization menu where the player can select a hat, a coat and a shirt for each colonist and in addition I've added the functionality that some clothes can have multiple colors. This means that if I have a shirt with a tie for example, I can select one color for the shirt and another color for the tie. It's now also possible to choose if a colonist should wear a shirt outside or inside of the trousers.
At the moment clothes can be changed as often as wanted without any costs - the player only have to select a new outfit and send the colonist to a commode or a wardrobe.
[h2]Additional Updates[/h2]
Tree Cut Functions:
Before this update the player had to select every single tree to mark it to be cut. Now it's possible to select an area.
Destruction Manager:
The destruction manager can now handle colonist job cancel operations - like if a job to destroy a construction element or to transport an item to an item zone became invalid by the collapse of a building structure.
Furniture:
I have added 2 new models which are the small commode and the desk.
Colonists Path Navigators:
The navigation functionality for the colonists can handle changes of the run speed over the network now. (this was added in connection with the skill system)
I hope you all have a good day,
Cheers!
Discord | YouTube | Reddit