Game update (kind of boring though)

Sorry for not posting in awhile... I've been busy at work redoing some of the fundamental systems of the game. I rewrote the player and npc movement (and collision and other stuff involving moving and interacting with the world) to use a cartesian grid system for logic and an isometric projection for the game's visuals.

I should have been doing this from the start but I already wrote movement/collision code for a more conventional style of movement (from the failed rpg game attempts) and it seemed like reusing and adapting that was working. But it became clearer over time that uh... it had some problems. Making a game that's got an isometric perspective has a lot of weird challenges if you program the game like you would a regular, top-down kind of perspective. It has some weird challenges regardless but especially if you try to fake an isometric projection! While the systems as they were worked decently they were janky, getting pretty messy, full of weird workarounds, it was sucking and my gut feeling was "... this would suck to keep working with if it were a full game..."

So after experimenting and implementing some basic things in a fresh project I felt like it would be worthwhile to gut the player movement, npc movement/behavior and the needs objects placement system and replace them with the new movement stuff I had made.

I've attached a video that shows a few recordings of stuff going from the fresh project to putting it in the actual game.

(the video named "ff new movement system stuff.mp4")

There's actually two reasons why I wanted to replace the existing movement/path finding systems with a new, better one:

-Npcs could find paths to needs objects better/more frequently, resulting in more fun, lively NPC behavior.

-The system for placing needs objects and the player decorating their living spaces would be vastly improved.

This is the new system for placing needs objects. This one I put on youtube since there's no naked characters in it:

https://youtu.be/4BRH0dhb1Jg

A big issue I ran into with my new system was the processing time it took to make the collision grid when the player enters a room. The game would hang for multiple seconds when entering a large room! Which is no good, no one likes waiting a long time to go from one room to another! (I don't... as much as I love older games I don't miss long load times). I've attached a video showing/explaining an optimization I made (which is pretty much "build the collision grid over time, not all at the same time")

(the video named "ff optimization.mp4")

Sorry the videos aren't narrated and kind of sloppily put together... It's been like 2 weeks since I posted and I didn't want it to be even longer.

There's still stuff that isn't working properly yet though. So all that needs to be fixed before a new update to the demo... sucks that there was a ton of regression in terms of functionality. However the only stuff that's impacted is the movement and interaction related stuff, the GUIs, audio manager, saving/loading, the story system, all that is still working and once I fix all movement/interaction stuff you won't notice that behind the scenes you're moving on a regular grid and what you see is an isometric projection of that grid.

Sooo unfortunately I haven't made a ton of pretty stuff to look at... I did make a couple of whacky needs objects though. You may recognize the likeness of this golden dragon urinal...

There will be a tiiiny bit more stuff to see in the demo on the next update too. You'll be able to go in this cave...

I did some stuff on one of the backgrounds for the city... there needs to be a sleazy motel for something in the story and thought it'd be fun if it looked like something you'd find in the first village of a fantasy rpg or something. It's adapted from this medieval house on opengameart:

https://opengameart.org/content/medieval-medium-house-interior

Bobby's is kind of inspired by the general look/vibe of Hooters buildings. A lot of them have a like... metal? Sort of? Ribbed roof and I saw one with a cool arch thingy around the door so I added that to my take on a Hooters-type building.

I also made the background for an area you'd go to later on- this is Lake Monster, where the famous Lake Monster Creature supposedly resides (The Lake Monster Creature is this world's version of the Loch Ness monster) It's not entirely finished though but it currently looks pretty good I think.

That's about it for work I've done on backgrounds though.

So yeah sorry for the lack of stuff... I got really wrapped up in redoing the movement and it was a bit of a rollercoaster. At first it seemed like a good idea, then it started seeming like a bad idea, then I kept working at it and it started to seem like a good idea again. But then when I started putting it in the real game and trying to make the interaction system work again it seemed like a bad idea... but then I got that working and it seemed like a good idea again. I really didn't want to post about failing so I'm glad I was able to make it work.