Early Access Update #22 – Back in the swing of things
You know what time it is. Grab your tea, or a cold drink if you’re in the UK (It’s bloody hot here for once), and park your buns. It’s update time.
The icon/item system has been so long in the making that I’d forgotten what it feels like to just be able to add stuff! This is the first week that that’s been the case and it’s been great. At the end of the last update, I said I’d work on wolves and a new crop and … I’ve done just that!
There’s some cool stuff coming next week, so let’s take a peak!
Before hitting some new art, let’s quickly talk about crafting. There’s always been the problem that it’s not clear that certain items can only be crafted via a crafting bench. In fact, all building materials can ONLY be built at a crafting bench and I’m on a mission to make that clearer. Here’s my current approach:
Instead of only showing building materials in the crafting bench, you can see them everywhere but there’s a small tooltip to let you know you need a crafting bench to craft it. This still isn’t perfect, in fact, I have plans to further develop the entire crafting system to make it better, but it should solve any crafting confusion in the time-being. Time permitting this will be ready for next week’s update.
Animals are coming! Wolves have been on the to-do list for a while, and while I was looking at animals I found a few old friends that never got implemented.
Starting with wolves, I’ll leave showing them in-game for next week’s update, but here’s a look at the lined up with the rest of Samphi’s animal friends:
Now, as cute as they are, wolves are the enemy. They will attack livestock around the level and it will be up to you and your trusty canine companion to keep them at bay. There will be mechanics surrounding this, like the more tired your pet the less effective they are etc. but they will come later.
While looking through Samphi’s animal sprites I found this creepy fella’.
I made this a while back. The art style is outdated so will be re-drawn at some point in the coming week, but we have a spider! They used to spawn at night time, but for some reason I removed them. I fail to remember why, but they’re coming back!
Now for something a little friendlier. Fish! The pools of water that spawn are feeling too barren, and when you fish you should be able to SEE fish. So here they are:
There are a few colorful fish available and they will spawn randomly. I planning for the different color to be purely aesthetic.
So those are the animals I’m working on. Hopefully, they will help make your worlds feel full of life! I have more livestock planned also, so this is just the start!
As well as wolves one of my other tasks was to add a new crop. I’ve been growing potatoes myself, so thought why not start there! Farming is one of the main skill tree in Samphi so will play a huge part in gameplay. Anyway, here’s the new potato plant showing all 4 stages:
Instead of grass always dropping wheat seeds, it will now randomly drop a variety. For now, it’s still just wheat and potato, but carrots are next on my list and will hopefully make the next update. It shall be a good farming update for sure!
It’s been a while since we spoke about web work, so time for a quick update. I have big plans for Samphi’s website. I want it to be the go to place if you play the game. Map sharing, forums, and a wiki are all on my to-do list, it’s just there isn’t much time to work on things!
Bit of an insight into my schedule, I work full-time Mon-Fri and work on Samphi on the evenings when home. Then on weekends I’m currently decorating my house and do web work on the evening. With only a few hours a week for web, you can see why progress is steady.
But hey, I did some work on the wiki last weekend! If you go to http://www.samphi-game.com/wiki/[item-name] you’ll see a work in program Wiki page for the item.
It’s a real mess right now, but the backend is working great. Time to make it prettier and populate with info.
It’s been a week since 0.2b hit the beta branch, and with one bug reported and fixed it’s time to move it to the stable branch. Have fun with it! Here’s last week’s update that contains the full changelog.
I’ll be finishing what I’ve shown here. It’s mostly just art for now, so now start the programming. God speed Mr. Frodo. Have a great weekend friends. See you again in 7 days. :) Ciao.
As always you can show your support and keep up to date with development by following me here:
Early Access Update #21 – Chests are here … No, really, they’re here
Update time, and this one’s a doozy. Get your tea, let’s get into it.
This week’s update sees v0.2b hit the beta branch and it brings with it a whole bunch of changes. Been pretty busy this week! Let’s get the full changelog posted and then I’ll run through it bit by bit.
Here’s the complete changelog:
Added chests
Major Sprite Updates (Redrawn)
->Updated Wheat Sprite
->Updated Dirt/Grass Sprite
->Updated Backing Wall Sprite
->Updated Bed Sprite
->Updated Door Sprite
->Added Pig Alternate Sprite
->Added pickaxe cursor sprite
Minor Sprite Updates (Removed Black Outline)
->Updated Torch Sprite
->Updated Fire Sprite
->Updated Kiln Sprite
->Updated bench Sprite
Re-coded animal movement, they will now try to avoid water
Re-coded doors
Updated the following max stack value
->Update default item stack from 20 to 40
->Dirt Max Stack 20 > 60
->Arrow Max Stack 40 > 80
->Torch Max Stack 10 > 20
Fixed item drop, does not yet apply to all items
Fixed issues when planting trees and wheat
Fixed issue with bucket not emptying
Fixed lighting issue with the furnace
Fixed a bunch of little bugs
Lots of changes, most notably the fact that chests are finally here. Let’s take a look at that!
It feels anti-climactic after all the build-up, but it’s true, the legendary chests are in the game. Bit of backstory for those who are maybe newer to these updates, chests are the reasons Samphi needed a full item system re-write. It’s a pretty sweet moment to finally see them in the game.
Their operation is pretty standard, but just to clarify, chests and the items within them belong to the level, not the currently selected player. The chest and items within it will be shared between all characters that play in that level.
This update also sees a fair few art updates. I broke these down into 2 main categories, major and minor. A major update means I re-drew the sprite, and minor means I just altered it somehow. Instead of showing each individually and having pages of images, I created a scene that demonstrates them all in one go.
The animals in Samphi have always been pretty stupid. They’re still stupid, but hopefully a little less inclined to walk on the bottom of water. They’ve been re-coded so they should actively avoid water and deal with terrain better. The algorithm behind their movement and behavior is something that’s going to be constantly improved upon, so while it still isn’t perfect, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
The following gif show an animal taking avoiding action from the water!
Pretty simple update, and one that I’m open to feedback on, but while testing all this update’s changes I came across a few item stack sizes that I felt needed updating.
The bulk of the update was to change the default stack size from 20 to 40. This effects most items. There were some individual updates also that were as follows:
Dirt Max Stack 20 > 60
Arrow Max Stack 40 > 80
Torch Max Stack 10 > 20
Samphi has always had the ability to drop items, but it’s always been iffy. Now that there is max item stack, and inventory space is at a premium, I spent some time on this feature. When holding an item, hold CTRL when holding an item to drop it.
Items dropped in this way will stay on the ground for 3 minutes and then disappear. They are not saved like the rest of the level, so if you drop an important item then exit it will be lost. If y’all want this behavior changing I can do that.
There’s a few things on the changelog that haven’t been covered, and that’s because they were just small issues that I found and fixed along the way. Here they are:
• Re-coded doors
• Fixed issues when planting trees and wheat
• Fixed issue with bucket not emptying
• Fixed lighting issue with the furnace
• Fixed a bunch of little bugs
Nothing major, but every bug fixed is a step forward. :)
Well, that’s interesting because I’m now free. Work on chests started back in April, and for the first time it’s done and out the way. What we work on now is up to us! Back in the earlier updates I posted a list of things I wanted to complete. We haven’t looked at it in a while, so here’s where we are with it:
Adding Chests
Adding Iron
Adding Sheers
Adding Wolf
Adding New Crop
Going by that list, the next thing I’ll be working on are wolves and a new crop. I also have some other little things planned, but these will be the main ones! Oh, I also have an update planned that will help solve crafting confusion. Certain items require a crafting bench to create, but Samphi has always sucked at making that clear so that will be tackled next.
Thanks all for sticking through these last weeks. Progress has been slow as the item system took all my attention, but that’s done and chests are in. Onwards and upwards. Very happy with progress and look forward to getting stuck into some fresh work.
See you next week all, have a fantastic weekend. :) Ciao.
As always you can show your support and keep up to date with development by following me here:
Update time friends. Pull up your chairs and get your tea ready.
First thing’s first, 0.2a has been moved to the beta branch. I’ve issued a couple of patched since launch and haven’t received any bug reports so things should be pretty stable.
So I’d really hoped I’d be releasing chests today with v0.2b but the game developing gods aren’t playing nice. Sat down to do my testing and turns out I’ve managed to not only break crafting but animal movement also. Your guess is as good as mine as to how.
Now I only need a day or 2 to fix it, but with this strict release schedule, it’ll have to wait until next Friday. If this keeps happening, we’ll look at a more flexible schedule.
A number of key art assets have been updated this past week which include building materials, crops, grass, a new pig alternate and more! It gives the game a different feel and the art is slowly moving towards my vision.
I’ll provide a full breakdown and review of assets and changes in next week’s update, but here’s a quick screenshot that encapsulated them all!
I think we’ll leave it at that. There’s no point covering this content twice, and a full update will be shown next week. Apologies for not having it ready, unexpected bugs are a pain. Do enjoy 0.2a and let me know if you find any bugs!
Well, all the stuff teased at in this small update will be here, including chests. All the content is in, there's just bugs to iron out that I couldn't get done it time for tonight. If you've followed these updates for a while I bet you're bloody sick of hearing about chests. You and me both. :D They're SOOO close. One more week friends and they're in.
That’s all for now. Short and sweet until next time. Enjoy your weekend friends. :)
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Update time guys and gals. Hope you have your tea ready, I do …
So it’s been a week since we moved to version 0.2x and things have gone pretty good so far. I’ve pushed out ~4 silent patches to fix issues, but I think it’s pretty stable! Quick update to show what I’m working on this week.
My usual release schedule is to push new builds to the beta branch, leave them there for a week to iron out any issues, then push to the stable branch. Since so much changed during the move to 0.2x however I’m going to leave it in the beta branch for another week.
I’ll take this opportunity to again stress that updating to 0.2x will mean you lose save data. I explained more about why this is in the last update, but just know I did everything I could to avoid it. Really sorry about that!
The cause of all this madness, chests are almost in the game. They work for the most part, just ironing out a few issues.
It’s about time too! Now that items have max stack sizes I find my inventory is always too full! I have a solution for that however!
So not many people may know this, I don’t recall mentioning it anywhere, but you can drop items. I don’t know how stable this feature is, I’m turning my attention to it this week for the first time in ages, but if you hold CTRL and release an item when dragging it you’ll drop it.
This should help stop inventories clogging up. I’m also looking to tweak the amount of items each stack can hold. There was a good suggestion last week to use a weight system, and I’m going to look at that, but for now if anyone has any concrete suggestions for an item then do let me know. :)
The focus of my next update is going to be farming. I think farming is going to play a big part in Samphi so it’s time to bulk it up a little. I have plans for new animals, crops, items, and enemies to overcome! For a quick start, I’ve created an alternate skin for the pig as I did with the sheep!
I’ve also got plans for potatoes, a scarecrow, crows and a wolf! More of these items will be shown as we get to them, but just know farming improvements are on the way.
The last thing I want to talk about is farming animals. There is an item in the game currently called a fence. It’s simply a fence post, and when you place a few in a row, they create a fenced area. If you then tether (right click an animal with rope selected) an animal, you can drag them to the pen. This system is really rough right now, and will possible cause crashes, so it’s also getting some TLC this coming week.
I really want people to be able to create large, sustainable worlds in Samphi, and as soon as that’s the case things like health and hunger will play a much great part of the game. Currently, there’s no penalty for going hungry, but soon you will have to build a farm, nurse animals, and generally develop a sustainable world.
Exciting things to come!
In one weeks’ time hopefully I’ll have more to show regarding farming! We’ll also get a new build pushed to the beta branch, and will move 0.2a to stable so we’re all ready on version 0.2x to move forward!
Thanks for reading this update, hope you all have a fantastic weekend! I’ll leave you with a quick tip:
Did you know you can save the game by pressing CTRL-S just like most programs. If you do something awesome and want to save the game just hit that combo. The game also auto-saves every 5 minutes, and saves on exit!
As always you can show your support and keep up to date with development by following me here:
Early Access Update #18 – Hold onto your butts, 0.2a has landed
No, you’ve not read that wrong. Over a month since the last update, the item system re-write is complete and has been pushed out in 0.2a to the beta branch. We have a little bit to cover so get your cup of tea ready and sit back.
All updates over the last few weeks have documented the trials and tribulations of the item system re-write well, so I won’t cover it in much detail. The bottom line is Samphi now has a new item system that can deal with multiple item stacks. A seemingly small change on the surface, but massive in under-the-hood.
Given how much of the game changed for this, and how many possibilities it opens, I felt this was a good time to roll over to 0.2. Chests still aren’t in yet, they’re the whole reason we had to do this! but they will be next week. The game is now set up to accommodate them, I just didn’t have enough time to squeeze them into this update and we need to get testing ASAP.
Something I’m very aware of is the size of the item stacks. I think they may be too small, so I’m going to be looking for your feedback on this one. Have a play, and if you think an item should have a greater/lower stack size or stack/not stack altogether then let me know. Tweaking and getting these right will be a gradual and on-going process that starts today. :)
Another major thing 0.2 brings is partial language support for Italian, Spanish and Turkish. I say partial because it only effects items and their descriptions. UI text is soon to follow, however, so as we go forward this will get better and better.
I’d like to remind people that I’m always looking for translation volunteers, particularly Russian! If you’d like to help out drop me an email at greeny@greenygames.com.
I showed the new graphics in an update a while back, and they’re now in the game. For now, it’s just the settings and language menu, but I intend to roll this out to different parts of the game gradually. Please do let me know what you think!
Right, major systems explained, here’s everything that 0.2a is bringing to the table:
<*> Fixed bug in menu with menu going behind terrain etc.
<*> Fixed bug in settings menu where pressing ESC would leave windows behind
<*> Implemented language menu in settings. Language effects item names and descriptions, more will come soon.
<*> Added new art in new style in settings menu.
<*> Implemented new item system. Samphi now supports multiple stacks of items and items now have max stack sizes. This means you'll loose your items I'm afraid. :( Sorry!!!!
<*> The crafting system also got a big change-up, something along the lines of a 50% re-write. There's still things I'd like to change here, but we can do them later and they'll be MUCH less disruptive.
Time for a warning. A massive portion of Samphi has been re-written here, so there WILL be issues. As usual, 0.2a will be pushed to the beta branch, and instead of keeping it there for one week, I think I’ll keep it there for 2. Make sure as many bugs are found as possible.
Also, I’m really sorry about this, but your item data will be lost. :) I tried everything to make that not the case, but this new system needed a more flexible saving system. I’ve always been open about Samphi save data. I don’t encrypt it or anything, I think that’s so stupid. If you want to give yourself 1,000,000 of an item, then be my guest.
To try to soften the blow of the changeover, I’ve written an article that explains the new save data format. If you want to move your old item over, read that article and you’ll know how to add items to the save file.
Now that this big update is out I’m going to spend a few days on web stuff. My website for Greeny Games has been down for weeks now, and the Samphi website is feeling derelict. I don’t post articles there yet so I want to spend some time there.
The wiki system is going to be a big part of that also and I’d like to get it in a functioning early version very soon.
Now that this is complete we can get back to adding content! I have chests and new crops on the list immediately, so let’s start there. I also have a cool idea for the main menu that I’d like to explore and want to continue moving the older graphics over to the new. This graphical changeover will take a while, so you’ll notice more and more changing as the updates roll through.
Have a fantastic weekend, and enjoy 0.2! Great things are coming!
As always you can show your support and keep up to date with development by following me here:
Bet you can’t guess what I’ve been working on this week … Bloody icon system. Things are actually going really well, but there’s nothing to show for it since it’s all engine work.
Instead of spending a while pulling together random images to justify an update I’m just going to leave this week very thin and get right back to work. After spending so much time on this system I figure the time’s better spent on actually coding! :)
So, quick sitrep from me this week then I’ll be off:
The core of the item system has been successfully re-written
All function surrounding items now need to be recreated
Items are currently function in the game at a basic level
The new system is much more flexible and allows the game to move forward
So that’s where things are at right now. :) Going well!
A valid question at this point is, ‘Why mess with it in the first place?’.
Well, the item system has always been janky. Samphi started as just a fun project. The goal initially wasn’t to create a full commercial game, so whenever I wanted a feature I bodged it in.
I realise bodge is a British word, so here’s the definition according to Google!
That’s how much of Samphi was built; a mess of bodges. As the icon system grew I continued the bodge, adding features however possible, but it reaches the stage where to move forward you have to start again. You can only bodge so much! That’s why the re-write.
Hopefully I’ll have the items system to show; Get some screenshots of some double item stacks or something. Some form of graphical confirmation of the engine work that’s been done. I said in the last update that I had crops and a new animal planned, which I do, but just didn’t get round to them for this week. All focus is on items for the time being.
So, short update. :) There’s only so many ways of saying I’m still working on items, but rest assured they’re coming along great; just slower than originally anticipated.
Have a great weekend all, and speak to you in 7 days!
As always you can show your support and keep up to date with development by following me here:
Early Access Update #16 – v0.1e stable, more graphics and language menu
Update time friends, these come so fast!
Work is still focused on the time system re-write. Great progress has been made though! Not quite ready to show anything, 99% of it is under-the-hood, but we’re getting there. I do have a few things to show however!
Before we get started, something has been on my mind the last few updates, so let’s talk about it. Would you prefer weekly updates like this with less in them, or more substantial updates every 2 weeks? I like the frequency of weekly updates as we stay in touch more often, but I always feel like I don’t have enough to show.
Any feedback here would be really appreciated. :)
Right, onwards.
In the madness of working on v0.f I neglected the previous build and it’s been in the beta branch for the last few weeks. That’s now been moved to the stable branch, so you should get an update to Samphi tonight. Here’s a reminder of what that update brings:
Samphi is now compiled with Windows YYC, so we should see a speed increase! According to GM, YYC can " increase your games performance by a hundred-fold". Let me know how this goes.
Hopefully fixed a bug where music was playing twice in the menu. I say hopefully because I could never recreate it, but I put something in place that should stop that ever happening.
Fixed a bug where feeding honeycomb to your dog would cause the game to crash.
Fixed a bug where small items disappear in water and the ground.
In-between my coding jobs I’ve been continuing to move the graphics over to this newer style. I’m really loving it! The settings screen has been updated, and the inventory screen has. Here you can see them side by side:
What do you think? It’s a bit hard to make a judgment when the art is so isolated like this, but I love the new style and font. As you can see, the font of these updates has been moved over also! Feedback appreciated.
The last few updates have mentioned and showed some things to do with language, and a language menu has made its way into the game this week. In the main settings screen there’s a new ‘Language’ option that will show the following menu:
Really simple way to select a language. When the next update comes out this won’t likely be 100% plugged in. It will change the name and descriptions of the items, but probably nothing more. That consists of more work, and this update was already taken too long.
The next update … Who bloody knows. :D I’m bored of talking about icons, so I’m sure you’re bored of hearing about them.
I have a few new crops planned, and a new animal! Hopefully, will have some art for those to show. No doubt I’ll also move more UI over to the new style, so stuff there also. Depending on what you guys think about my first point on update frequency, this will either come next week or the week after. Please do let me know.
Just want to say thanks for your patience. I wish I could pump out updates to Samphi much faster that I am but it’s just not possible. I work full time and am a one-man-band. I love Samphi and am very excited for the path we’re on, we’re just traveling down it steadily for now. :) But please know that increased update times is purely down to circumstance and the size of the updates, not any diminishing passion for the project.
I’ll work on Samphi indefinitely until it’s the game I have in my mind. We’re still right at the beginning of that journey. :)
Okay, rant over. Go enjoy your weekend, speak soon.
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Well, it’s been another solid week of engine stuff so unfortunately there’s really nothing to show. :( Instead of not putting out an article, I figure instead why don’t I explain exactly what I’m taking so much time doing, and why I need to re-code the item system in Samphi.
If you’re not into looking behind the scenes, then this update won’t be for you I’m afraid. Feel free to pop back next week! For those interested, let’s get started.
The following changes are required of items, and are the reasons behind the re-write. I’ll address each in turn:
Ability to deal with multiple item stacks
Ability to save items in chests
Ability to load custom item names/descriptions
Moving items from string IDs to numeric IDs
The first problem we’ll look at is with item stacks. To accommodate chests, and other future plans, Samphi needs to be able to deal with multiple stacks of the same item. Currently, all item data is stored in a single list that looks something like this:
The amount of each item is tracked by the game, not the icons, so that means if you create two icons for the same item they can’t have independent amounts. For example, if you have one stack of apples in a chest, and another on your hot bar, each time you collect an apple they will both go up, and both show the same amount.
This is the biggest issue with items as this list system is heavily used in most areas of the game code. It was silly to set the game up like this in the first place, but if everyone knew everything right off-the-bat we’d all be professionals. What I’m currently doing is moving away from this main list and instead store quantities in each icon.
The second issue that needs addressing is changing the way the game saves/loads items. Currently all item data belongs to the player, and is stored in player data files. That means you can’t really store items in a chest. With the current system, if you created a chest in a world, then used that world with a new character, the items wouldn’t be in the chest. Not very useful.
To fix this, the game needs to save items that the player currently has equipt in the player data, and save items in chests to the world save file. This isn’t really a bad job, and shouldn’t take much time.
This one’s also not a big issue but goes along with the icon re-write. Currently, icons’ names and descriptions are hard coded. That means in the actual object itself in code I set these values myself. In order to support multiple languages freely, this value needs to be set externally.
I’ve moved items to loading their data from an external ‘.sam’ (my extension that’s functionally the same as .txt) file based on what language is currently selected. A system like this means it’s very easy to add more languages, and allows users to configure their own descriptions and names for items should you wish to do so. When the next update comes out there will be support for English, Italian, Turkish and Spanish. :)
This one is very programmy and won’t result in any changed functionality. Very simply, icons are currently distinguished by their name. So, I know the apple item is an apple because its name is ‘apple’. This isn’t ideal for a number of boring reasons, so I’m moving over to a numerical id, so I’ll know the apple icon is an apple because it will have an ID of 1.
Once all of these things has been done Samphi will have a MUCH more stable and flexible item system. We’ll be able to have multiple item stacks, chests, customizable names and descriptions etc. It sucks because it means that periods go where the game doesn’t seem to change, but hopefully this post illustrates some of things that are happening under the hood. :)
Next update there'll hopefully be something to show from this boring engine work! Maybe get multiple item stacks running, then getting those other smaller jobs complete.
Either way, I'm making good progress with this work, so be it in the next update or the one after, I can see the end of tunnel and dev can get back to adding game content!
Hope you all have a great weekend, and if you have any questions drop me a comment!
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Early Access Update #14 – Ciao, Hola, and Merhaba. Also, new graphics?
Update time friends.
Most of the work that’s happened this week is engine stuff with items, but ther're some cool things to show including a new art direction! Let’s get to it.
Thanks to some great members of the Samphi community Samphi will soon be available in Italian, Spanish, and Turkish. There’s some work that needs doing to incorporate the translations into the game, but we’re well on the way thanks to these great people!
ShortyDevil
MrCrakgueir
Levent
dimo9854
Notice anything different about this menu?
Apt readers out there might notice something different with that last screenshot of the language selection … It’s created with a new aesthetic.
Samphi’s graphics is an uncertain subject. I’m a programmer, so all art in the game is programmer art and has gone through many revisions since the project started. Here’s a screenshot from a few years ago!
Things have come a long way since then, but Samphi still doesn’t look how I envisage it should do. As I created the language selection screen I started playing with this new aesthetic, moving towards a more pixelated, softer, somewhat more cartoony aesthetic that I’ve always envisioned for Samphi.
You can see the difference more clearly when you put the old settings menu next to a new WIP one using this same aesthetic:
I like the newer aesthetic a lot more. It’s less flat and much more how I envisage Samphi. What to you guys think?
Since these updates happen so frequently there’s often not too much to show. Same goes for actual game updates. Since they come frequently, progress is slow and gradual. Would you prefer this or prefer updates less often but more substantial. When all is said and done, the game would still progress at the same rate, but updates would feel more substantial.
I prefer this. Small regular updates so we have a regular conversation, but would just like to check that you feel the same way. Let me know. :)
Boring item work is all that’s due for now I’m afraid. Hopefully get chests in and a new crop in the next couple of weeks. I really want a new crop, and also want to re-draw wheat, so that’s certainly near the top of the list. Oh! I also have something cool planned with the menu, but I’ll leave that for the next update!
I’ll leave you with a fun(ish) fact. Samphi has 46 items! Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic weekend. See you in 7 days. :)
As always you can show your support and keep up to date with development by following me here:
Early Access Update #13 – Localization update, performance increases, and the C word
Hi friends, update time.
So last week’s update was a short one. In summary it read: ‘I’ve been working on chests, they’re just been difficult’. Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t changed much! In fact, if anything, it’s worse. Turns out the item system needs a good ol’ re-write.
Not to panic, let’s all just laugh it off …
In the last update I demonstrated that the latest problem with implementing chests was that Samphi needs to be able to deal with multiple item stacks in order for them to work correctly. Unfortunately, that’s currently not the case, and to implement that means a re-write of the item system.
Bit more info; All item info is currently stored in a single list, so while we can have two icons, they both use the same data values such as quantity; they’re not individual stacks which they need to be. There’s also an issue with saving and loading items. The current system is designed around working with a single instance of each item, and to enable that to load/save multiple of the same type also requires some work.
All of this is 100% doable, just it’s not something I couldn’t fit into this update, but rest assured I’m working on it! Over the next two weeks I’ll be taking the item system back to the ground and doing a full re-build. This will allow multiple item stacks, loading/saving of multiple items, and in turn will enable chests to work correctly.
Sorry it’s taking so long. That’s the last I’m going to talk about the C word. The next time it makes an appearance in an update will be when they make it into the game. Still, there’s lots to be excited about in this update!
v0.1e hit the beta branch today and it’s brought with it something very exciting! Samphi is made in Game Maker, and Game Maker has an export tool call the YYC. Without getting into too much boring detail, it’s basically a tool that makes the game run faster. For the first time ever Samphi is exported with it so we should see some speed increases.
According to GM, YYC can " increase your games performance by a hundred-fold". We won’t see a performance upgrade quite on that scale I don’t think, but do let me know if you notice the game being a bit nippier!
Along with the performance upgrade, I’ve also fixed a few bugs in this update, so here’s the full changelog:
Samphi is now compiled with Windows YYC, so we should see a speed increase! According to GM, YYC can " increase your games performance by a hundred-fold". Let me know how this goes.
Hopefully fixed a bug where music was playing twice in the menu. I say hopefully because I could never recreate it, but I put something in-place that should stop that ever happening.
Fixed a bug where feeding honeycomb to your dog would cause the game to crash.
Fixed a bug where small items disappear in water and the ground.
Getting Samphi translated into as many languages as possible has always been a goal of mine, and thankfully a number of great people from the community offered their help! I’ve spent a bit of time collecting together all of the text that is currently in the game and collated it into a Google docs sheet, so those wanting to offer their help can now do so!
I’ll post these instructions in the discussion also, but if you’re wanting to help translate Samphi, send me an email to greeny@greenygames.com. I’ll send you an invite to the appropriate Google doc. Hopefully over the next few versions we can start incorporating more language options. :)
The item rebuild will be most of my work unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I always feel these updates are boring. From my perspective it’s a huge update as part of the engine gets a re-write, but from the player’s perspective nothing changes! If I do my job correctly, you won’t know anything has changed!
Because of this I always end up trying to sneak in other work, such as the updates to the sheep so there’s something visibly different, but that takes time away from the core work that needs doing. Downside of being a one-man-team I guess.
Hope you’ve all had a great week and have an even better weekend. I wish there were flashier updates to show, but we’re going to have to put some time into engine work for a little while. :)
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