Dev Diary 9 - Town Generation Tool - Part 1 Recreating 450BC Jerusalem
In this Dev Diary I'm showcasing a look at a generated version of Jerusalem that, after hundreds of iterations, I am more satisfied with.
I've been developing a Town Generator Tool that could be used to semi-automatically generate the 52 towns that will be featured in Rectifying Zion. While its not possible to have the process completely work hands-off, it will definitely decrease the amount of hours to spend on each town. For this version of Jerusalem, the generation process took less than 2 hours and no further editing was done afterwards.
What the generator tool does: - Randomly place Buildings (Sectors indicate which buildings to use in a specific area). - Manipulate the terrain below and around each building to conform to it's doors and mesh. - Calculate a Walk-ability Map (for painting paths on the Terrain; can also be used for NPCs). - Calculate paths from Door to Door and Paint on the Terrain.
The generator allows adding in "landmark" buildings. This would be items like market plains, walls, gates or even roads, that the generator would be aware of and then generate the town from.
My Terrain Generator Tool helps add in the Cliff textures and Terrain Details like grass, trees and rocks.
I'm hoping to get this Town Generator Tool released on the Unity Asset Store, soon. Let me know if you are interested.
Join our Steam Community forum: https://steamcommunity.com/app/939610/discussions/
You can also donate or get involved through our website: https://quasistellar.co.za/get-involved
Game website: https://www.rectifyingzion.com
Open World Build 4
For our in game mini-map the idea was to create a seamless transition from the game world to a 3D overview map - zooming out from 3rd Person to the overview map and then zooming back in to 3rd person when closing it. In Build 4 the zooming out works pretty much as I would like it to be. The zooming back in is still WIP but I decided to move on as it's a bit less important right now.
Here you can see the zoom out to mini-map.
Then in the Mini-map you can use the mouse to zoom in and out and pan around the map and click on a town to fast travel to it.
And then, next up is the creation of Villages/Towns/Cities. Here's a quick look at a generator I started working on. I'll give some more details on the next update.
Dev Diary 7 - Open World Build 3 Preview
Our new Open World build is live. Here's a quick in game preview (spoiler) of the new real world Jerusalem and Israel open world. Not perfect yet, but getting there (towns/villages not added yet).
Dev Diary 6 - Generating Regions
Hay everyone!
Thank you to all those who purchased a copy, end of January, during our sale!
For this Dev Diary I decided to just write a post instead of recording a video. Needed to save some time but still wanted to give an update.
Progress is being made on the generation of the specific regions. There are multiple regions mentioned in Nehemiah to indicate where the different builders/helpers lived from around Jerusalem. I definitely want to include some quests that require the player to travel to these areas in order to recruit these people or handle issues that keep them from working.
Here are some comparisons of the generated regions with their locations in Google Maps:
Next is to get the player and horse into this, and then a Steam release!
Development Road Map
See Road Map graphic:
Is this project dead?
Yes, its been over a year since I was able to touch on it but this year looks much better.
What's changed?
As I am only able to work on Rectifying Zion part-time, all other work has kept me crazy busy since about November 2022. A lot of stuff that I had to tend to after hours has been cleared out. Unfortunately I still cannot work on it full-time but the extra time slot, that I had to use for other projects, is now open.
Are you the only one working on this project?
At the moment, yes. I am hoping to get help this year. Some of the tools and integrations that I am developing will be made available to the Unity community and hope to get contributors for testing and possibly also for development through there as I'm sure they will be handy to more developers out there.
When do you expect to complete Rectifying Zion?
My goal is to have it done this year. Probably near the end of the year.
I'm really grateful to those who have shown interest in Rectifying Zion and especially those who have purchased Early Access on Steam. I'm very excited and thrilled to get this game out and into the hands of players world wide.
Dev Diary 5 - Heightmap Finalization
In this dev diary I'm going through the process of finalizing our real world Jerusalem and Israel heightmap and also showcasing a bit of the terrain generator that I'm working on.
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WXbg9RHcXQ Or join our Steam Community forum: https://steamcommunity.com/app/939610/discussions/
You can also donate or get involved through our website: https://quasistellar.co.za/get-involved
Game website: https://www.rectifyingzion.com
Early Access update (Build 11.2)
Hay everyone!
Build 11.2 has finally been uploaded.
For this update we've added an in-game character creator and graphics settings menu to the game play test build.
Please test and give us feedback/comment on our Discord server or here in the Steam Community HUB. We are more active on Discord though and may take a while to reply on Steam.
When you think things are gonna go as planned they just don't. And here we are 4 months later...
Finally we have the Open World test build uploaded and ready to test for the first time.
This update is big. The Open World terrain assets are just about 15GBs alone.
While there's not much you can do yet, its 470 square kilometers, chunked up, and streamed from your hard drive. This opens the way for a whole lot. I'll be adding some GPS functionality to it in a next update so you can see or go to a real world location in game.
Also in this update I've added a launcher from which you will be able to open up each test build. This update now includes the Game Play build (Jerusalem area) and the Open World build. You can also view our News feed and Send feedback directly from the launcher.
The Game Play build has also been updated with minor changes with an updated character/combat and horse controller.
Please support us by purchasing Early Access or sharing with your friends!
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WXbg9RHcXQ Or join our Steam Community forum: https://steamcommunity.com/app/939610/discussions/
Dev Diary 3 - Open World
Our 3rd Dev diary for Rectifying Zion. We are showcasing the first working prototype of the final open world that we want in the game. The map shown at the end of the video is approx. 450km square of an actual height map of Israel.
We also have an update coming this weekend ːsteamthisː
