Got to hang out with my lovely game developer peers today - including a couple of our fellow streakers ;) It was fun until the thunderstorm trapped us in the cafe - but the extra time was productive for some of us.

I spent most of my time staring at a blank map in tiled trying to figure out what to do with the starting area and how to build the town. I think I may have reached the limits of the free tilesets I'm using. They just aren't inspiring. It's OK when creating completely canned test environments to work on code, but fall short when actually trying to build a real area. I need to force myself to just put together some of the beginning scenarios and block out the key story beats but... it's just hard to be inspired when the art is so far off.

It may be something that I just need to lock myself in a room for a while and force myself to get a handle on it. A couple of the guys were treating their projects with a game jam mentality, with strict deadlines and scope management. I started this project because I was tired of game jams... but it might be time for some of that methodology to come in again. We'll see.

Just to make SOME progress I took another one of the easy tasks off the list and implemented doors you can lock/unlock (if you have the key) and open/close (if unlocked). It will open up a few more gameplay opportunities for sure, along with some new avenues to chew on the ai code.

Added a mechanism where items can be given additional sprites. Beds have a cover sprite which is 2 layers above fixing the npcs always sleeping on top of the covers problem. I implemented it generalized enough that I can add multiple sprites to other items pretty easily. In simple cases, just through the item definition in json. In more advanced cases, I could manipulate those sprites as part of an interaction. I can forsee for instance having a table with objects placed on top of it, which are then removed when interacting with the table.

• I have a story module (still no good term for this) involving characters doing something when people are asleep
• Still undecided how to implement story modules
• But I will need a way to have characters be asleep!
• Why not create a bed item? Creating items is one of my favorite things to do in game programming ever.
• Even though I created it for the story and the other characters, easier to test with player, so lets make a bed the player can use
• Hey, getting in and out of the bed is kind of cool. Wait a minute...
• I currently only have one character stat so far, endurance
• Sleeping in bed should make this go up!
• Run around and do stuff, then go sleep. Such gameplay.

Implemented a basic encumbrance system. No you aren't going to be lugging around the equivalent of a small city inside your pack.

• Today's update will be in lists only
  • lists are cool
  • everyone likes them
  • monday
• I decided to do some world building
  • set the stage for the planet
  • it dictates technology levels and people's philosophies pretty well
  • it plays into the story well also!
• I also started framing the scope of the story
• I'm using the wiki function of bitbucket, which is where my code is as well. It was a bit annoying figuring out how to set up the interlinks, but once I got it working it's fine
• Created a campfire that can be refueled by adding logs to it
• Realized I had interaction with objects in like 3 or 4 places in the code:
  • I started to put them all in the same place, but did not finish
• I thought about working on the ai to get an npc refueling the fire
  • Looking at the json for the npc script, I need to make an editor for the behavior trees.
  • It's just too scary looking