development update #17
Hello and happy new year to everyone,
This post will be a bit short but there are more pictures to look at than last week so hopefully that makes up for it. There is no update to the build this week but for sure there will be one next week.
Not everyone is back from holiday so it was just me sitting at the computer and typing for the past two days. I spent today and yesterday fixing lots of little things. Mostly code related. I am always looking for ways to simplify game logic. Every so often I leave myself little notes in the code when I see something that can be simplified or rewritten in the future. I fixed quite a few of these little tasks and it feels really good indeed.
One of these tasks was to add back water ripples to objects that are floating on the surface. This also works for fish now. When a fish swims up to the surface it will cause a ripple. If it pokes it's head out of the water entirely then there will be a little splash. Very small detail but it adds to the magic.
I have also added some more lists in the inspect mode ui. These show all the food and medicine that is present in the aquarium. There will be more lists added as time goes on so players can have full knowledge of all that is in their aquarium. This will help to select things that might be accidentally hidden inside another object or obscured behind thick vegetation.
Here is the latest from the work being done on the plumbing system. It wont be visible like this in the actual game but it serves as a visualiser for us so we can make sure all the numbers are correct. This system is grid based, objects will snap together cleanly so connecting up pipes and devices is simple and not tedious. If any of you have played the game "Besiege" it is similar to how their mechanisms are constructed. There will be lots of progress made with this system this month.
There is not much to show for the career system. Most of the work done for it has been on paper and we have played around with UI design ideas. There has been a little code written too. It is quite different that other parts of the game because it operates similar to some business software. In the way that the player accepts jobs via a sort of website and corresponds with clients and storyline characters. It feels work to work on but so exciting to see it coming together.
I have also been spending far too much time on youtube watching let's plays of games. Specifically the parts of games where it shows the in-game tutorial. I am not sure that there is even a fun way to teach players how to play a game in this fashion without becoming boring. Even when I play a game for the first time I always skip the tutorial and then after ten minutes I go back and do the tutorial because I understand nothing. I hope it is not just me that does this. Stealing Taking inspiration from other games in this fashion is incredibly helpful. It serves to help us figure out what does not work well. Fishery will be a game with a lot of things to learn and it is going to be a challenge to teach players all they need to know without becoming boring. Watching how other games do it is a good way to quickly figure out how things should not be done. Once we eliminate most of the bad ideas what is left should be quite good. It also allows us to try and innovate in this area if possible.
I also managed to break the fish flocking some time this afternoon so I must fix that asap. I am sure it is just one weird line of code that did it. Thank goodness we are not uploading a new build this evening.
Well I hope you are all feeling relaxed and optimistic for the year ahead. I better get back and fix the damage I did to the flocking system.
The Fishery Team
This post will be a bit short but there are more pictures to look at than last week so hopefully that makes up for it. There is no update to the build this week but for sure there will be one next week.
Not everyone is back from holiday so it was just me sitting at the computer and typing for the past two days. I spent today and yesterday fixing lots of little things. Mostly code related. I am always looking for ways to simplify game logic. Every so often I leave myself little notes in the code when I see something that can be simplified or rewritten in the future. I fixed quite a few of these little tasks and it feels really good indeed.
One of these tasks was to add back water ripples to objects that are floating on the surface. This also works for fish now. When a fish swims up to the surface it will cause a ripple. If it pokes it's head out of the water entirely then there will be a little splash. Very small detail but it adds to the magic.
I have also added some more lists in the inspect mode ui. These show all the food and medicine that is present in the aquarium. There will be more lists added as time goes on so players can have full knowledge of all that is in their aquarium. This will help to select things that might be accidentally hidden inside another object or obscured behind thick vegetation.
Here is the latest from the work being done on the plumbing system. It wont be visible like this in the actual game but it serves as a visualiser for us so we can make sure all the numbers are correct. This system is grid based, objects will snap together cleanly so connecting up pipes and devices is simple and not tedious. If any of you have played the game "Besiege" it is similar to how their mechanisms are constructed. There will be lots of progress made with this system this month.
There is not much to show for the career system. Most of the work done for it has been on paper and we have played around with UI design ideas. There has been a little code written too. It is quite different that other parts of the game because it operates similar to some business software. In the way that the player accepts jobs via a sort of website and corresponds with clients and storyline characters. It feels work to work on but so exciting to see it coming together.
I have also been spending far too much time on youtube watching let's plays of games. Specifically the parts of games where it shows the in-game tutorial. I am not sure that there is even a fun way to teach players how to play a game in this fashion without becoming boring. Even when I play a game for the first time I always skip the tutorial and then after ten minutes I go back and do the tutorial because I understand nothing. I hope it is not just me that does this. Stealing Taking inspiration from other games in this fashion is incredibly helpful. It serves to help us figure out what does not work well. Fishery will be a game with a lot of things to learn and it is going to be a challenge to teach players all they need to know without becoming boring. Watching how other games do it is a good way to quickly figure out how things should not be done. Once we eliminate most of the bad ideas what is left should be quite good. It also allows us to try and innovate in this area if possible.
I also managed to break the fish flocking some time this afternoon so I must fix that asap. I am sure it is just one weird line of code that did it. Thank goodness we are not uploading a new build this evening.
Well I hope you are all feeling relaxed and optimistic for the year ahead. I better get back and fix the damage I did to the flocking system.
The Fishery Team