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[telkoth]

haha I wish it were more interesting, but they didn't get to that point: the colonists were looking for Wood, but it seemed there was none available, so they were simply abandoning the job.

[telkoth]

stuff I did during the work week:

• I added support for building projects that require no materials, and implemented the Campfire, possibly the only building that will be material-less (but who knows what the future might hold…) it's possibly worth mentioning that the campfire currently does nothing, except be animated
• when a colonist is building, he now spends 1-2 seconds each time a material is delivered, instead of half a second
• made the days shorter: a game day now passes in half an hour, instead of a full hour (so: various timing tweaks; I doubt this is the last time)
• increased the density of wood and berry bushes in Oregon (also a sort of timing tweak: distance == time)
• got in some code related to starvation. colonists now have a “health” meter, which will probably never be precisely revealed to the player. when a colonist is without food, health suffers. health also suffers when a colonist is without sleep, and ALSO suffers – though to a much lesser degree – when a colonist feels unsafe, unloved, and/or unesteemed. the idea is that if a colonist’s health reaches 0, he or she dies, but as the game develops, a low health alone may have bad effects, such as susceptibility to sickness or infection, reduced work efficiency, a greater need for sleep, etc.
• found a different painterly texture (as you can see! )
• made a moon graphic, based on a real photo of the moon; it’s not yet visible in-game
• thought a lot about the UI. I grabbed my phone, picturing the game on it, and moved my left thumb around, to see where a comfortable range is, and where I might, therefore, place buttons. I sketched up a little heat map based on this but the UI starts to take up a lot of space this way... so I think, in the end, it will just make more sense to get rid of the buttons on the left altogether, and make all commands available via contextual popups. ex: clicking on a tree would give two options “chop” and “chop and collect wood” (the latter would automatically give “store” jobs to each piece of wood yielded); if the tree already has a job, then those options would be replaced with a “cancel order” option.

I hope to get some more-interesting stuff done this weekend, before Christmasly adventures take over my life for about a week

[GiglameshDespair]

Maybe have a choice between having just pop-ups or not? Because on phones that lack sensitivity (like every touchphone i've ever had) it's always been a bit hit-and-miss tapping on something.

And is that sleeping person lying through the buffalo?

[MaximumZero]

Maybe have a choice between having just pop-ups or not? Because on phones that lack sensitivity (like every touchphone i've ever had) it's always been a bit hit-and-miss tapping on something.

And is that sleeping person lying through the buffalo?

Hey, man, oxen are warm. Nothing wrong with using one as a blanket. You know, beside the fact that they're nearly 2,000 lbs and smell like wet dog ass.

[telkoth]

haha yeah, he's sleeping outdoors. later, you will assign house ownership (like assigning bedrooms in DF), which the colonists will then sleep inside of. right now, shantys and cabbins are decorational. (and having to sleep outdoors should definitely have a negative impact on their mood, or, later, depending on the weather, be impossible and/or unhealthy.)

you already have to click on two things, ex: the 'collect' order button, and then a tree (the verb, then the noun). I'm just going to switch the order around, basically... so it becomes noun, then verb. so touch issues won't be any better or worse, but the game will only have to show the verbs that are possible for the noun clicked, rather than all the verbs all the time, not knowing which noun you'll choose (and taking up screen space, or requiring a scrolling verb menu, which would require MORE touching/clicking action).

I think that's what I'll work on today.

[GiglameshDespair]

yeah, during winer or so colonists sleeping outside should try to find a fire to sleep by or else they freeze to death. Maybe fires can just have an ambient bubble of warmth around them? During winter you'll want to build lots of fires around to keep your people warm, but they have to be restored with wood so you have to stock up.

[telkoth]

having to maintain the fires in some way would make sense, as would fires offering protection from the cold!

I redid most of the UI today, however I realized I'm going to need a specialized "build stuff" screen/menu, and haven't yet designed it. I made a demo video to show how the new UI works; I also ramble about things like sleeping and swimming which are incomplete but in-progress: http://youtu.be/_60CpNM0H2U

[telkoth]

I just got back from Christmas adventures with my dad. I took the train out to visit him, which was a 12-hour ride each way! oof! the upside was there was plenty of time to program (especially since the latest nVidia drivers apparently crash all the games on my laptop! nrr!)

I also took the opportunity to make my dad and step-mom play the game while I sat and (mostly) silently observed. I got some good notes on things that were not intuitive, and made a few UI improvements as a result, from little things like making buttons look more like buttons (not just different-colored text), and adding *nom* text above colonists’ heads when they eat.

I’ll try to get a video up showing off all the new stuff… in the meanwhile, a list:

• squirrels! they run around in an animated fashion; it’s super adorable
• all bushes now start with SOME berries (either my dad or step-mom – I forget – assumed bushes were useless because the first one they found happened to not have berries on it, and therefore no interactions possible)
• on the colonist popup, there’s now a bit of text telling you what that colonist is doing (ex: “storing wood”). my dad kept saying things like “what’s that guy doing?” and trying to click on them to find out – fair enough!
• trellises, on which you can grow Blueberries (and Redsberries >_>) – these also look pretty adorable
• refactored tons of code handling building up the context menus when clicking on objects
• people can get sick (influenza! testing out the moodlet-like system; will add more ailments later) and die! it needs serious tweaking, though: they’re all basically doomed as things stand now
• added event log, along with a notion of “important” messages. important messages are shown on the top of the screen when they come in (ex: “so-and-so has died of sickness!”, “so-and-so finished building a shanty.”), and a history of all messages can be seen from the pause screen (including those for less-important events). this was another UI thing to try and give you feedback about what’s going on; to see that your actions are having results.
• temperature which fluctuates over the day. I’m using historical data for Oregon City as the basis for your colonies’ weather (in terms of record high and lows, and average high and lows, by month). I decided to get complicated with it and keep track of energy coming in from the sun (depending on time of day and cloud cover), energy leaving to space (based on cloud cover), energy getting into the earth, and energy radiating out from the earth. it’s creating a pretty nice curve, but a slightly exaggerated one: temperatures get ~10C too high and too low right now. cloud cover and precipitation simulations have not yet been created (cloud cover is currently fixed). weather will be an important factor for colonist mood and productivity.
• progress bars on constructions which are in-progress. again: my dad was unsure when work was actually getting done, and was always looking for things that might tell him.
• an introduction story screen when starting a new settlement (“In 1848, your small band of five colonists left their hometown of Independence, Missouri for the territory of Oregon…” etc). this helps explain the “embark” screen (both my dad and step-mom thought that they were choosing one of the five colonists to take; not that they got all five). it also tells you what you’re doing in the game, and why, as well as the sorts of troubles you might expect to face.

so there's that! a lot of UI focus, which is always good, but also some good new mechanics stuff, and some code maintenance...

again, I’ll try to get a video up tomorrow or so to show this stuff off. I may even have some more weather stuff sorted by then

[MaximumZero]

Neat additions! Love to see progress like this.

[GiglameshDespair]

Nice.It's slowly growing...

[iceball3]

Idea for combat: Make it sort of like that game, Pata-pon?

[GiglameshDespair]

...maybe not.

[coolio678]

I don't think having to push all those button combos would really fit the game. So far it seems fairly "hands-off" in it's approach to things, where they're fairly simple controls, but get fairly complex under the hood. so having to repeatedly tell a colonist to move and attack would go against that. I think a simple "here are your orders, execute them as you see fit" sort of deal would work, where you tell a colonist to run on sight, or to run when wounded, or fight to the last breath. Each having their own bonus', and also being affected by the colonist's personality (cowards are more likely to freeze/run than a brave person, etc.)

[telkoth]

that game looks wonderful and crazy [just watched that video of the boss battle]. I'd love to try it out - it looks fun - but unfortunately, the most recent PS I have is a PS2

for A Little Wilderness's combat, I've had two vague-ish thoughts:

1. something like what coolio678 has described; something like you see in RTSes, or Dwarf Fortress. you give orders like "attack stuff here", and they take care of moving themselves around, etc.
2. doing something WEIRD, like an old console RPG where you zoom in on battle and now it's totally different; has its own rules (keeping in mind a touch/one-button-mouse interface).

I think option 1 is the more obvious choice, would probably be easier to code (than option 2), and would fit into the game flow naturally. option 2 could give the game somewhere to shine as being unique AND fun, but I think it'd be hard to pull of RIGHT; there's a high risk of it being jarring; too removed from the rest of the gameplay.

for now I think I'm happy to not have to decide I've been coding assuming I'll take option 1, but if a really compelling option 2 presented itself, I'd love to make the switch.

[GiglameshDespair]

Option 2 does sound a little jarring from the whole feel of the game i've seen so far.