January Update (1/29/23)

Changelog:

• Added 4 small open world maps to explore

• Finished weather change system and fixed lighting bugs with water during rain storms

• Improved shrine visiting and added prototype travel map system

• Improved map functionality with drag-drop and zoom

• Redesigned inventory system with toolbar and more intuitive drag-drop system

• Improved loot drop system

• Added new foods and healing items

• Added shrine collection boxes for storing unused items

• Added birds, dragonflies, and frogs

• Improved fishing mini-game

Planned for next month:

• Add item trading system for unified crafting and merchant UI

• Add reputation system

• Re-add and fix AI for larger animals (wolves and deer)

• Refine old maps and add 1 new biome

For backers: A new build is currently available for beta-testers on Discord!

December Updates

Procedural generation wasn't producing the results I wanted and I decided to change course and continue manually creating the levels from before. Procedurally generating rice fields and nice-looking villages was virtually impossible without making them grid-like and unnatural. Also, as a lot of people mentioned the levels become increasingly repetitive and generic with procgen, so overall this might be the better approach.

A cool features I added is the ability to cut grass now. It uses a cheap render target and vertex shader so it comes at very little performance cost!

I made some progress on the handmade map includes a new swamp area that looks more swampy and humid than before. I also added some new mangrove trees.

From the feedback I received from playtests, I decided to change the quick item system to a tool bar and also remake the inventory system to function more like minecraft/terraria. Ronin Trail is a survival game and I feel this type of structure is more suited for the genre.

November Updates

I made some more progress with infinite procedural generation. Rivers are now generated more natural looking and I was able to create paths using the same code (basically very narrow rivers).

Paths use a Manhattan noise function combined with basic Perlin noise so that all path's connect in a sort of grid shape while also still looking like convincing hiking trails. I'd eventually like to figure out a way to account for steep terrain using slope derivatives somehow but it will come at a cost to performance/generation time.

I was able to divide the land into biomes and create convincing paths to travel through. The concept was to travel to different biomes and the further out from the starting location you go to, the more difficult the enemies. The difficulty would be indicative of the distinct biome you're in.

I got foliage and clustering to work well.

The river rocks look just as good as they do on my handmade landscapes.

I'm a bit concerned with how long it's taking to make any progress with procedural generation. It's been coming down to a lot of trial and error with combining noise functions and trying to tweak the code to get exactly the results I want.

For backers

There will be no beta tests available yet. The procedural generation experiment I've been doing hasn't produced results I'm satisfied with and it will take time to put it in a deliverable state.