Ymir "New Dawn": progress update

[p][/p][p]I've invested a lot of effort into increasing the feeling of immersion into the world: Extra work on more biome specific animals, birds, atmospherics, weather, citizens talking, sound ambiance...[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Finally it's there: the basic core of battles is functional again.
That includes battle resolutions on the server side, and display on the client side.
This wasn't just repairing the old code, because the changes in terrain (which now has slopes and not just vertical edges between tiles) also requires an overhaul of how movements and pathfinding works for troops during battles.

A big change is that movement speed of troops is now variable: they will slow down proportionally on slopes.
That means archers on top of a moat will get much more time to fire at incoming enemies, even if they aren't protected behind a built wall.
[/p][p][/p][p]Cavalry visuals have also been improved compared to legacy: now they move with inertia, which makes their movements feel more natural and also gives their charges much more visual impact as they accelerate and pass through the enemy.



Melee behavior of units in general has also been improved, notably to better prevent the problem of all units piling up into a single tile, making things visually confusing.

However, only the most basic battle systems are functional. I'm still missing many more specific mechanics: embarking on rafts to cross water, climbing walls, and breaching palisades.
Because of how pathfinding has been modified, these mechanics have to technically remade from scratch instead of just updating/repairing the old code, so there's significant work remaining to get battles fully functional again.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I have added a facultative mod to the game called 'Sentient Swine'. It's an option that you may choose to tun on in the game options if you wish.

If turned on, and provided you have installed on your machine a tool called 'Ollama', it will toggle the ability for your Porcos to express themselves: speech bubbles in-game will occasionally show you what a Porco is saying or thinking about.



Each Porco has its own personality traits, background, and opinion of the player's leadership (based on the overall loyalty of the territory). They will comment on Policies they don't like, current events, or their personal stories and woes.




But on top of that, you can actually choose to respond and chat with any of them.
And after some discussions, you may receive a small notification telling you if you've actually improved or reduced this Porco's opinion of your leadership, which makes you earn or lose a symbolic 1 Politic Point (this feature might be limited only to solo & realtime games though, for obvious reasons).



This is just an option to make the game feel more lively, and to have fun with.
I'm aware this feature might not be for everyone, and if anything, I did it mostly for myself because if you had told me as a kid than one day you'd have the possibility to play a city-building game where you can actually chat with your citizens, it would have felt like an awesome scifi fantasy... so i did it.



This option also significantly increases your system requirements if turned on, because with Ollama the model runs entirely on your machine and nothing goes online.
Running a local LLM consumes a lot of VRAM in particular and therefore requires a good modern graphics card.

[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]A big part of the last 3 months of work has been spent working on various technical optimizations.
Not much to show here, despite it being a LOT of work.
I've completed these main projects amongst other things: [/p]

• [p]optimized things related to camera movements and collisions, increasing framerate and fluidity of movements.[/p]
• [p]implemented a 'contraction hierarchy' for pathfinding. It's an essential feature to optimize battles because it allows to instantly know the movement cost between 2 points in a territory. During a battle, each troop has to repeatedly do that to assess the priority of all its possible objectives.[/p]
• [p]significantly optimized loading times of larger cities with lots of elements.[/p]
• [p]optimized collisions with terrain (used for the mouse and for the camera).[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

[p][/p][p]Many new animal types have been added, to finalize making each biome more unique.





Hippos will sometimes appear on shores of freshwater in Savanas.




[/p][p]You'll also find alligators (which can be exploited for leather), in savannas and tropical climates.

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[/p][p]Gazelles have been added in Savannas.


[/p][p]Giraffes, a mostly cosmetic animal for savannas.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Bisons, found in the steppes.



White Yaks, found in cold tundras.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Beavers, in continental and colder climates, will be a source of a new resource type: fur.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Seals, in nordic sea shores, will be source of fat and oil.[/p][p][/p][p]
Penguins, in the glacial poles.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]All the previous animal types have also been reworked and re-rendered with higher resolution, to match the new animals.
Below are some examples:


New Elephants, 50% more angry.


New Cows, redesigned to look less domesticated.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New Buffalo.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New Capybaras.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New rabbits, new animations!

[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Fishes are back ingame, but there's now more than one type of fish.
However to keep resources simple, they all still produce the same single common 'fish' resource.




There are now 4 main fish types: Carps and Trouts for freshwater, Herring and Salmon for sea water.
Carps and Herrings are 'small' fishes, and they will now spawn globally on all water shores. It means you're pretty much guarantee to have a baseline of exploitable fishes on all bodies of water.[/p][p][/p][p]
The 'larger' fishes, Salmons and Trouts, still work in a more similar way as in Legacy: territories have random amounts of resource spots, sometime none, and therefore you'll find them in 'spots' in deeper waters.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
Butterflies appear over bushes, adding a more bucolic ambiance to green landscapes.[/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]Noisy frogs will spawn around reeds and other freshwater plants.


Tiny crabs sometime appear on sea shores.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Birds are back, with their own unique behavior! [/p]

• [p]they can land on trees and favor them as landing spots.[/p]
• [p]then also like to join other nearby birds (and sometimes curious of any other animal)[/p]
• [p]they get spooked when a nearby bird flies off, causing them to often move in groups.[/p]

[p] [/p][p]Sparrows are the main basic bird. In tropics, they are replaced by noisy parakeets.

[/p][p][/p][p]As bigger birds, Herons will appear near freshwater shores whenever frogs are present. [/p][p][/p][p]
It might seem like a useless low priority thing to focus on, much like all the 'useless' cosmetic animals, but i believe it was worth focusing on the sky atmosphere as it ends up adding a lot to the feeling of immersion into a unified world.

First i added a clouds system, which combines a flat cloud sheet and 3d cloud models, giving a lot of depth and perspective to the landscape views.[/p][p]
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I have also added volumetric lighting to my 3d engine, which adds a lot to the ambiance especially when cloudy or overcast.

The "depth-of-field" blurr has been reworked: blurr is now separated between atmospheric and camera focus and you can disable the camera 'tilt shift' minuature effect, while keeping the blurr from the atmospheric distances.



The atmospheric blurr is based on humidity, so visibility will tend to be sharper in a sunny nordic tundra compared to a humid rainforest.




Fog has also been added, with various combined types of fog to create more diverse atmospheres.[/p][p]


[/p][p][/p][p]Dynamic weather has also been added to the game.[/p][p] [/p][p]Each territory now has a weather type assigned to it, which will evolve dynamically in time.
Sunny, cloudy, overcast, rain... These weather types will change the ambiance of your city and will also eventually be connected to gameplay mechanics in the future.[/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]With rain, the ground becomes wet and reflective, the atmosphere thicker, and wind increases the foliage movements.
I have particular attention to the sound ambiance, with different rain sounds based on intensity, or forest vs opened area.
Distant thunder can be heard from storms happening multiple territories away.

The clouds and atmospherics fade when you zoom out, so that the camera view never collides with the clouds sheet.
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Road networks are now implemented, meaning that only the roads connected to the 'road stele' building will count as valid in a settlement.
Buildings with no road access will display a warning icon.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]As work progress on New Dawn, focus on graphical content will increase, to replace the placeholder 2D buildings of Legacy.

I worked on many new props, especially a set of pottery themed ones, and primitive tents for all the level 1 camps.
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]Thanks to these i've used my Asset editor to make new buildings such as the level 1 Hunter.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p] [/p][p]New level 1 gathering camp[/p][p][/p][p]

[/p][p]New wood gatherer
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]New clay camp & potter[/p][p][/p][p]The editor has also been reworked, with now a new right side panel with previews of props and models, and the ability to drag and drop objects into the scene.
This will facilitate my work on building assets, but also improves a tool that could be used for modding in the future.

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As you can imagine, making such a new game will take a lot of time.
It's quite a desert crossing for me as it leaves the legacy game un-updated for all that time (causing a natural drop in interest and sales) while this 'new game' still has a long way to go.
Any support on Patreon is REALLY more than welcome.
It is rewarded with a special Discord room where i discuss and share daily updates about the progress of "New Dawn" with my Patrons, and an exclusive access to the New dawn WIP builds so you can see it for yourself on your PC![/p][p][/p][p][/p]