The Steam Winter Sale is upon us so we didn’t do anything this month.
jk here is what we’ve been up to.
Junk Cannon
Elliott
This month we are showing off the new Junk Cannon design. The original asset seemed missized, not constructed with a lot of structural support, and seeming as any other building with a gun on top. Now the Junk Cannon has a cleaner and more reinforced design to resemble the other military building (Guardhouse). The pentagon shape will help distinguish it as a unique military structure from others.
When I was constructing the remake for the tower I was worried that the design would not resembled a junky aesthetic if the structure was to aligned with hard solid edges. Attempting to fix this I made the pipes reinforcing the walls to be bent randomly along all sides of the building, as well as leaving the top wooden planks to be more loose than align perfectly
For the gun on the top. Right now its a single barreled turret that can be later upgraded to become a twin barrel.
Building Status
Kobey
We wanted to create a better way to visualize what might be going wrong with your buildings so that you could fix them. We tried doing this with our popup overlays, but they would become very cluttered.
Buildings will now flash red text when they are experiencing an issue like being on fire, not having enough input resources available, production paused due to no empty Storehouses, Storehouses being full, and experiencing low efficiency. We will probably improve this in the future with icons, but for now we felt text would be the most readable for players.
UI
Zomawia
I’ve reworked a lot of the UI design. We don’t have a dedicated UI artist so for now we are going with a clean, modern, minimalist design.
The last iteration of Building Information was kind of ugly, and no one really clicked (or noticed) the buttons. This one is sort of like the first iteration except more cleanly designed with content aware sizing.
I also redesigned the City stats panel to be less obtrusive, easier to read, hold more information, and put in a bar for pollution levels.
Pollution
Kobey
Pollution is the newest system to manage in Buoyancy. Your production buildings will begin polluting the waters around you as they produce resources. If they cause enough pollution in the area around you it will form a pollution pool. Pollution pools will continue to grow if you add more pollution to them. When your city stays inside of a pollution pool it increase your city’s global pollution level. This pollution level effects the rate that Gatherer buildings produce resources as well as contribute to the severity of sickness events.
To prevent pollution pools you shouldn’t leave your city in one location, you should move your city frequently to spread out the pollution so that it doesn’t create a pollution pool. The pollution pools currently are just brown circles in the ocean, but will be improved upon in the future with a more interesting shape and texture.
More Water Updates
Kobey
The water shader had its real time reflections improved. Before I was using a reflection probe to create the reflections on the water, but baking the probe at runtime was expensive. Instead we’re using a grabPass and some UV offsets to create the reflections in the water.
I’ve also added the ability for us to render certain effects only on top of the waters surface using a render texture. This will be used to improve some of our movement trail effects.
Ranged Weapon concept
Zomawia
I threw some assets around to create a gun for the ranged unit. This gun will fire spears/harpoons at top speeds toward hostiles. The gun uses pressurized air from soda bottles to generate the thrust needed to launch a projectile. Pressurized air is generated by a one way valve connected by a hose to the operator’s mouth.
Would this work in real life? Probably not.
Tech Tree Update
Shawn
More techs are being developed for the tech tree. We now have active abilities that become available after unlock. These abilities will have a long cooldown but can provide a great benefit when used. We also have designed tech that will only be available to certain allegiances and/or renown levels.
Effects Update
Shawn
A second pass through of the particles in-game has commenced. With it brought updated water wake trails, pirate boat effects, and a new indication when the player’s city reaches and Age of Prosperity. Some of the effects still need new textures but the general idea for the effects are working.
New Water Wake Trails
The previous effects used for our water trails were… primitive. They worked in a bind when we wanted an effect but couldn’t put too much effort into it. Kobey and I have been working together to utilize shaders and particles to create an all new wake trail around the city foundations and other water-bound movements.
Pirate Boat Effects
The old pirate boat particle effects were rather large and were designed to be seen from afar. While they did achieve that; it was not in keeping with the more realistic scenery we are hoping to achieve. I toned back the smoke and applied our new water wake effect.
Age of Prosperity
AoP has had a lackluster appearance, thus far, with only a text notification to signal the achievement. While more visuals are planned and in the works, I did create an effect to give the player feedback for when they achieve AoP. This effect will play on the town center when the an AoP is reached.
City Wars pt3 and Combat
Zomawia
In my never-ending work for City Wars I’ve got the combat AI functional. I also put in Junk Cannons and Guards setting fires to buildings, and eventually destroying them. Other city Junk Cannons can set your buildings on fire too. Different buildings will hold different stuff: resources, prisoners, and tech points. So it’s not advised to destroy everything unless you don’t care about collecting them.
Also I redid some of the combat code to allow a RNG system with attack ranges and evasion chances depending on what the unit is and what kind of weapon they have. Our initial system was too simple and it was basically a flood of unit damage like World War Z.
Other Updates
- Added some combat sounds (hit, evade, weapon noises, war cry)
- Moved Movement UI panel to City Stats panel
- Ranged Unit code base (no assets yet)
- Guardhouses can be paused to free up some villagers
- Tech Tree: Worker eats on the job
- Tech Tree: Trade Value upgrades
- Building code refactor for UI
Bugfixes
- Rowing tasks not being unassigned quickly enough
- Shady Trader pirates not returning to ship
- Keeping it trimmed and wet