Here's the update:
Another late night for me. I ended up shuffling some arrays around after some efficiency insights. Of course, I thought it would take maybe 20 min, and it took something like 4 hours in the end. But it is finished and I think I increased the speed quite a bit.
I added Terrain tracking to the game. These include designations like Forest, or Grassland, or Domestic areas (buildings, roads, etc.). These will be used for spawn wild creatures and will govern some of the available actions, such as only being able to Fish into a water-based terrain tile. These will also govern other ecology aspects such as plant spawning in vacant spots. I'd like to have a system such that when Spring roles around and trees are dropping all sorts of seeds nearby that some of these seeds should spawn seedlings into vacant forest tiles. Grasses should do the same at all times of the year to nearby Grassland tiles via their runners. The interesting effects will be seen at the border regions when tree seedlings spread to the grasslands and convert the tile to a Forest tile. Therefore if your peasants are told to leave the forests alone, they should recover over time (albeit a long time). I would also like to see random branches generated in heavy winds and dying trees to fall over in the forests to allow for "dead-wood" collection. Therefore your peasants can build some primitive houses without harming your trees and lumber reserves. Without forests, there will be few deer or boars to hunt and few nuts to collect as well.
I added some Sodding skills, specifically one can now dig for mud and dig for clay at the Bank terrain found near brooks, mountain streams, and lakes (Not that I have any map generation set yet). Once I get basic soil maps in place, clay will be moved to only clay soils. I will probably allow for soil digging at any location, such that with the addition of water, one can create a mud ball found for free at banks. What is the mud ball good for? Well, many primitive structures can be made with mud and branches. And even wattle and daub houses require much mud (primarily the reason the sodding skill even exists, although I folded brick-making into it as a single skill).
I will probably start working on terrains and creating a test map that offers a variety of features. I may try to add elevation to the game and make use of my height-Map arrays. The main reason for this is create water terrains for creature AI to deal with decreasing thirst. It would be evil to program physical needs into the creatures before they can be met by the environment, although it'd make hunting easy.
After I get these issues worked out, I'll start on the combat model so I can finally go hunting.
I already have death implemented, creating creature corpses that can be cut (via the Hideworking skill) into hides and a carcass (which is butchered into bones and meat objects). I was originally going to have individual items track their size and volume in order to track larger and smaller hides. However, since there will be much resource gathering in the future Manor mode, these aesthetics will become less important once the game leaves Survival mode. So now items will be segmented into volumes based on item quantity, such that an animal will drop a number of "Hide" objects based on the size of the animals skin, each hide object represents a fixed unit of animal hide sq. footage. The quality of individual items will still be tracked, keeping stacking limited to items of the same quality category: "Crude", "Rustic", "Average", "Superior", and "Masterwork". I may use this to determine the number of such quality items based on the animal and the skill of the butcher.
Anyway... once I feel there is a basic survival game in place. I will begin to continually release the game for alpha testing as I continue to work. Please bear with me.
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Topic: Fief: A new game idea (Read 47110 times)