Friday Progress Report 401

Our trees are coming along, here what we have done so far:

Growth: Like all our crops, the trees begin as tiny saplings and grow slowly to adult size, right now they grow pretty fast (14 days) because we want players to have access to wood, we will slow down the growth based on species when we expand the map.

Seasons: Leaves change colors based on seasons, they also fall during winter exposing the low poly branches.



Cutting: The trees can be cut for wood, the stump has to be dug with a shovel. (need to add particles and sounds)



Wind: Trees are affected by the wind, both leaves and branches move. (need to add leaf particles on strong wings)

What needs to be implemented:

Flower and Fruit cycles: once a year trees that can give fruit will go through flowering and fruit cycles if they are adult.

Hosting critters: We want to make tree trunks spawn points for certain critters.

Tree seeds: Trees will first behave like a crop, you have to plant them in a crop tile and their nutrition/water needs will be very demanding, after reaching the sapling stage they stop growing as a crop, the player has to dig them up and replant in normal soil.

Collision: The trees are not GameObjects for optimization reasons, so we need to add a collision mesh that follows the plant shape, will probably involve lots of capsules.

Level of Detail: We are going to experiment with the Impostor LOD system, but I might just make simplified models for the trees, we have to see what is the most optimal.


If everything goes well the update will be out by the end of the month.