We are now getting work done on the tree features, flowering, fruiting and extra spawns
The bushes that grow near trees will now have a flowering stage, and their flowers will be edible, for a more colorful and flavorful spring
Adult trees will have mushrooms growing on them, these are harvestable and also edible
We are also adding a new crop, the Grape vine, we have scraped the old idea of large crops (occupying 4 crop tiles) and decided to make the Grape use the same trellis as the other vines do. But the way wild Grapes spawn will be very unique in comparison with other wild vine crop variants.
0.75.0.3
Changes: Small improvement to rendering forageables
Bugfixes: Fixed a potential watering can error Fixed particles and tree leaves not drawing outlines Fixed not being able to have name fields empty Fixed the camera, the fairy and the NPC step height calculation raycasts from hitting trigger zones
Friday Progress Report 407
Tree Update Part 1 is here!
Edengrall finally has actual trees, right now only non-fruit trees are implemented, but we are working on the fruit trees to release them in the following weeks.
The most basic features of the trees are done, they grow slowly, can be cut down, change colors based on season and lose leaves on winter. Their trunks have collision and you can climb on them.
The features we will develop next are: flowering, fruiting, growth of mushrooms and residing critters (beetles, bees, etc) and planting new tree by collecting their sapplings.
We also added a new feature: Shipwreck crates and barrels, they use the same Scavenging skill as the treasure mounds, but the tool required is the axe instead of the shovel.
We are now taking a short break, but we will soon go back to work to finish the tree update with at least 12 new fruit trees.
Changelog v0.75
Features
Added Trees as a renewable source of wood! Added wild bushes for decoration Added a new tool, the Lumberaxe Added new skills for Forestry, Lumberaxe proficiency and Carpentry Added Carpentry Table (Trees drop logs that must be processed into the Carpentry Table) Added a new critter, the Shonshon Added option to mute eating sounds Sunflower flowers are now harvestable and edible
Changes
Changed the large trees around the map into magical Ladrasil trees Removed all old skill related placeholders Changed the tutorial to reflect the placeholder removals Changed how the water well work, there is no longer a skill related to water extraction Added Shipwreck crates and barrels to certain spots in the beach for easy wood and materials Greatly reduced forage penalty on wild crops to 10% quality loss
Fixes
Improved spawnable rotation variance Fixed the player character walking in place while talking, if you spoke to someone while running Fixed the player character facing the world orign instead of the object they are interacting with occasionally Fixed the clothes cabinet on custom characters, it lets you change your custom model Fixed a small error relating to deleting transforms Increased the speed required to produce sliding particles Improved Daily recap report handling
Friday Progress Report 406
Tree cutting is implemented, each tree type has a different amount of health and several axe hits are required to take one down, they drop logs that you can take to a carpentry table to make planks and sticks.
Almost every feature is done, we only need to do the finishing touches and some test/bug fixing, but we should be able to finish before next friday.
We still need to redo one tutorial step, remove all traces of the old placeholder skills, remove the old placeholder gathering function from the cart and change how the water well works.
This first release will contain: -Removal of old placeholder skills -Forestry and Carpentry skills -New tool: Lumberaxe -3 tree species, 3 bush species -1 new critter
Features like manually planting trees, flowers and fruits will come in part 2 and 3 of the tree update.
Friday Progress Report 405
The trees are being a lot harder to implement than expected, so the update will be delayed for at least one week, we are finding and fixing new bugs every day.
We did manage to implement sub biomes, we can now set smaller parts of a biome to spawn on certain plants, this way we can make tree lines that are still dynamic, but they are contained to certain areas.
We have also implemented bushes, they are just cosmetic, and don't drop anything when destroyed, they can be destroyed with the scythe.
Also the birch trees are now fully implemented and have LOD, collision and can be taken down like the other two trees.
Not much to report without a lot of boring technical talk, we should have some cool stuff to show soon.
Friday Progress Report 404
Pipkin Pippa is going to play the game tonight! This is going to be huge for us!
As for the game progress, we got the particles working when the tree falls, they mimic the current color of the tree.
The proccess to creating a new tree is more refined now, after several optimizations and bugfixes... but still has 43 steps, (normal crops have 25 steps from modeling to full implementation) so adding a new tree will take time, and we are not even done with all the tree features yet.
The Ladrasil has been placed and has collision, it still need the script to change leaves every season (it will work differently from all other trees)
As my brother works on the technical parts I had time to make more trees, I am preparing fruit trees for several fruits that already exist in the game, right now I have modeled Apple, Lemon, Lime and Orange, I am planning to also add Olives, Almond, Cherry, Mango, Peach, Pear, Fig, Avocado. These trees will only be added on the Tree update part 2 since we are starting with non-fruit trees first.
Friday Progress Report 403
Added the Carpentry table, the Carpentry skill, the Forestry skill and the Lumberaxe tool skill, as well as removed all the old placeholder gathering skills (the ones that used the cart by the town's exit).
Trees will be dropping logs and you will have to process them in the carpentry table (craft your own or use the one near Mint's shop.
This week most of the work went towards getting the LOD working, each tree has 3 levels of detail, full details on cluseup, impostors (dynamic billboards) when at midrange and simple billboards at long range.
The problem setting up the LOD is that the trees change colors and grow, so we need to take all of that into consideration and make a system with dynamic LOD that reflects the current state of the tree, and that took the whole week.
Bamboo plants have been changed to drop bamboo instead of wood planks, right now the only use for bamboo is splitting it into sticks at the carpentry table, but we have plans for bamboo building pieces for a nice beach property look.
We have decided to split this update into parts, the first one will probably launch in two weeks, it will have Dark Oak for hardwood, Edenian Lightwood and Birch for softwood. We will add the Ladrasil as a permanent landmark, all the old placeholder tress will be removed. The new wood working skills will be added and the old placeholder skills will be removed.
Tree Update part 2 will include the fruit trees, including the trees of wisdom growing golden apples inside Edengrall and apple tree seeds in the shop.
Friday Progress Report 402
Full tree trunk collision working, you can stand in the branches just fine. The collision only exists when the player is nearby, so it shouldn't affect performance.
Right now my brother is working on the LOD models, we are using an Impostor system, where the LOD model is a dynamic billboard instead of a simplified model, which is even more efficient (but very hard to set up), when he is done we will check how many trees we will be able to have existing in the world at once, but looks like large forests will be possible.
As for which trees we will have, at first there will be 3 dynamic and 2 permanent types
The dynamic trees will grow in the wild and the player will be able to plant them eventually: -Edenian Lightwood (on the picture) for Softwood -Dark Oak (background) for Darkwood -Apple Trees as our first fruit trees.
Permanent trees will exist on the world at fixed positions and cannot be destroyed or added. -Ladrasil are the fairy trees, these magical trees will have more relevancy when the fairy colony mechanic is fully implemented, they will also be points of interest useful for nativation when the map is expanded due to their unique appearance, here how the trunk looks like (leaves for it are not implemented yet) -The other tree will be Trees of Wisdom, a magical variant of the apple tree that only exists inside the city of Edengrall, they will replace all the random birch trees inside the city gardens, and they will produce seedless fruits during early summer. These trees were created with alchemy by the founders of Edengrall and the secrets for recreating them is lost with their disappearance.
We need at least two more weeks to get something playable out.
Friday Progress Report 401
Our trees are coming along, here what we have done so far:
Growth: Like all our crops, the trees begin as tiny saplings and grow slowly to adult size, right now they grow pretty fast (14 days) because we want players to have access to wood, we will slow down the growth based on species when we expand the map.
Seasons: Leaves change colors based on seasons, they also fall during winter exposing the low poly branches.
Cutting: The trees can be cut for wood, the stump has to be dug with a shovel. (need to add particles and sounds)
Wind: Trees are affected by the wind, both leaves and branches move. (need to add leaf particles on strong wings)
What needs to be implemented:
Flower and Fruit cycles: once a year trees that can give fruit will go through flowering and fruit cycles if they are adult.
Hosting critters: We want to make tree trunks spawn points for certain critters.
Tree seeds: Trees will first behave like a crop, you have to plant them in a crop tile and their nutrition/water needs will be very demanding, after reaching the sapling stage they stop growing as a crop, the player has to dig them up and replant in normal soil.
Collision: The trees are not GameObjects for optimization reasons, so we need to add a collision mesh that follows the plant shape, will probably involve lots of capsules.
Level of Detail: We are going to experiment with the Impostor LOD system, but I might just make simplified models for the trees, we have to see what is the most optimal.
If everything goes well the update will be out by the end of the month.
Friday Progress Report 400
Living tress are progressing well! The tree already grows from a sappling to full tree, the leaves change color and texture during the seasons (unlike crops that change based on when they were planted), they are affected by wind and by the player moving through the leaves.
Next we will add the Axe, make them cuttable, add collision (including in the branches), flowers and maybe fruit too.
While my brother worked on the techinical side of the tree shaders I made a new critter, meet the Shonshon, a cute and funny, cat and bunny hybrid
It spawns on caves during late summer to autumn, and as most other critters of their type, yes they are edible too.
