Edengrall News

The trees are being a lot harder to implement than expected, so the update will be delayed for at least one week, we are finding and fixing new bugs every day.



We did manage to implement sub biomes, we can now set smaller parts of a biome to spawn on certain plants, this way we can make tree lines that are still dynamic, but they are contained to certain areas.

We have also implemented bushes, they are just cosmetic, and don't drop anything when destroyed, they can be destroyed with the scythe.

Also the birch trees are now fully implemented and have LOD, collision and can be taken down like the other two trees.

Not much to report without a lot of boring technical talk, we should have some cool stuff to show soon.

Pipkin Pippa is going to play the game tonight! This is going to be huge for us!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


As for the game progress, we got the particles working when the tree falls, they mimic the current color of the tree.



The proccess to creating a new tree is more refined now, after several optimizations and bugfixes... but still has 43 steps, (normal crops have 25 steps from modeling to full implementation) so adding a new tree will take time, and we are not even done with all the tree features yet.



The Ladrasil has been placed and has collision, it still need the script to change leaves every season (it will work differently from all other trees)

As my brother works on the technical parts I had time to make more trees, I am preparing fruit trees for several fruits that already exist in the game, right now I have modeled Apple, Lemon, Lime and Orange, I am planning to also add Olives, Almond, Cherry, Mango, Peach, Pear, Fig, Avocado. These trees will only be added on the Tree update part 2 since we are starting with non-fruit trees first.

Added the Carpentry table, the Carpentry skill, the Forestry skill and the Lumberaxe tool skill, as well as removed all the old placeholder gathering skills (the ones that used the cart by the town's exit).

Trees will be dropping logs and you will have to process them in the carpentry table (craft your own or use the one near Mint's shop.

This week most of the work went towards getting the LOD working, each tree has 3 levels of detail, full details on cluseup, impostors (dynamic billboards) when at midrange and simple billboards at long range.

The problem setting up the LOD is that the trees change colors and grow, so we need to take all of that into consideration and make a system with dynamic LOD that reflects the current state of the tree, and that took the whole week.

Bamboo plants have been changed to drop bamboo instead of wood planks, right now the only use for bamboo is splitting it into sticks at the carpentry table, but we have plans for bamboo building pieces for a nice beach property look.

We have decided to split this update into parts, the first one will probably launch in two weeks, it will have Dark Oak for hardwood, Edenian Lightwood and Birch for softwood. We will add the Ladrasil as a permanent landmark, all the old placeholder tress will be removed. The new wood working skills will be added and the old placeholder skills will be removed.

Tree Update part 2 will include the fruit trees, including the trees of wisdom growing golden apples inside Edengrall and apple tree seeds in the shop.

Full tree trunk collision working, you can stand in the branches just fine. The collision only exists when the player is nearby, so it shouldn't affect performance.

Right now my brother is working on the LOD models, we are using an Impostor system, where the LOD model is a dynamic billboard instead of a simplified model, which is even more efficient (but very hard to set up), when he is done we will check how many trees we will be able to have existing in the world at once, but looks like large forests will be possible.

As for which trees we will have, at first there will be 3 dynamic and 2 permanent types

The dynamic trees will grow in the wild and the player will be able to plant them eventually:
-Edenian Lightwood (on the picture) for Softwood
-Dark Oak (background) for Darkwood
-Apple Trees as our first fruit trees.

Permanent trees will exist on the world at fixed positions and cannot be destroyed or added.
-Ladrasil are the fairy trees, these magical trees will have more relevancy when the fairy colony mechanic is fully implemented, they will also be points of interest useful for nativation when the map is expanded due to their unique appearance, here how the trunk looks like (leaves for it are not implemented yet)

-The other tree will be Trees of Wisdom, a magical variant of the apple tree that only exists inside the city of Edengrall, they will replace all the random birch trees inside the city gardens, and they will produce seedless fruits during early summer. These trees were created with alchemy by the founders of Edengrall and the secrets for recreating them is lost with their disappearance.

We need at least two more weeks to get something playable out.

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.