We did it! We got a prototype that contains a bit of every mechanic we want to end up with in the final game. Of course, a lot of stuff isn’t implemented yet, but at least we were able to test every “base” part out.

What changed?

Last week we said we were very close to finding a way of making our sphere in tiles. This week we can proudly present to you: the triangulated, code-generated, equal-faced planet we have been hoping to achieve from the very beginning.
Apart from that, we added ranged enemies (pretty self-explanatory), the most important of the items that the enemies can drop, a buff, and something that sadly only seems to work in the editor - I will simply tell you the gist of it.
So, the item we added? A bomb. One that blows up tiles, currently without sparkly effects and dustclouds. The player can defuse them by simpy walking over it, but if they don’t - ka-BOOM, part of your playground will be gone. Don’t worry, you have about 60 tiles in total, you won’t run out that soon. Better not stand on them while they disappear, tho.
As for the buff, and the thing that doesn’t show up in builds: we always have been planning on making these tiles give advantages and disadvantages to the player. These (de)buffs and other events will differ per biome, so you can actually use them to your advantage, while still having to watch out for the negative effects. We did a very simple version of this for the forest biome. Forests generally produce oxygen, which, in this case, allow you to run faster. On the other hand, the trees drop fruits we currently call “coconuts”, and you definitely do not want to be hit on the head by one of those. They won’t show up in the build, due to the very “quick and dirty” nature of the implementation. We found out to late that it only worked in the editor. For production however, it won’t be a problem, as then this dirty code will be transformed into something that actually works nicely.

Biomes

As production draws near and the core of our game is based around the tiles and their biomes, our artists have been hard at work sketching the environment and possible pieces for each biome. After some discussions with the programmers on how to make the custom colliders and different objects, we all have a good idea on how to handle the tiles. The artists know what to do to make it possible for the programmers to get the collision up and running.
We got sketches with different ideas for each biome. A sneak peak into what the forest biome might look like: Sketch made by Tatiana Devos

After the sketching, they will start looking into how to handle toon shading in Unreal and, of course, actually making the meshes of the biomes. Some base vegetation props have already been made, but more will follow next week! Cacti variations for the Desert Biome, made by Tatiana Devos

Next up

Next week will be a recap of the first production week! This means that, well, we will throw almost everything away and start aaaaallll over again. New project, new classes, not really new art assets as there currently are none, except for the tiles. The only thing that will more or less stay the same is the code that generates the planet, as that part just works, and it works as it should. No need to change that up (and no need to go through the hours of researching and testing different geometry and ways of generating stuff).
On the programming side, we will start actually working with a nice structure, taking inheritance into account and making it as flexible as possible - something it, right now, definitely isn’t.
For the artists, as mentioned before, the next step is research into toon shading and the first models of the biomes. As they have not been that present in the prototype itself, there won’t be that much change for them.