Day 10: AI, Clothing and Sleep

All in all, a lot is still to come! I'm releasing in 20 days as part of my own personal 30 challenge. Post-launch I will continue to support the game and live-stream its development for the foreseeable future.

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has supported me during this time. You've given me a great motivation to make something awesome with you all!

Have a fantastic weekend and take care!
-Danny

Waking up

Loved the effect :D

What am I doing?

I'm building a survival exploration game in 30 days, and live streaming the entire thing. Why? Because I'm tired of creating things quietly in the background and never showing anyone. I want to drum up a great community (we already have a great one!) and build something together with you all.

What was done?

We now have a function AI roaming around the map in the form of wolves. They hunt, sleep, eat and wander around the world (even off-screen, its all just data after-all). This tied with the new exhaustion mechanic makes the game feel more horror than before, whilst live-streaming and trying to test the exhaustion mechanic I died quite a few times to the wandering wolves who seem to congregate outside the house I slept in.

The player can now die, thanks to the introduction of the location based health system and the new DoT system (which the wolves use to simulate biting the player, causing them to bleed). Luckily I also introduce a new craftable item: bandages. Which help to stop bleeding and heal the player a tiny amount.

Temperature now is also a very important factor in the game. During the day it can fluctuate and thanks to the new heat distribution system we can now freeze the environment and warm it nice and efficiently. Lighting a fire can stave off cold on the surrounding tiles.

With the temperature we needed something for our character to wear so I added in more craftable items: Deer hats and jackets, plus an Imgur tophat. These items, once equipped, help the player combat against the cold. The animals are also affected by the temperature, I found early on that lowering the temperate to -40C and wearing multiple items of clothing and being near a fire allowed me to kill off all the creatures on the map, handy for debugging!

I also added in a day-night cycle, allowing time to pass (which in turn varies the temperature and in the future, behavior patterns of the animals), added in heights to the terrain allowing the players to climb a mountain and camp up their, away from possible threats. Being higher up though of course means its naturally colder.

Combat was improved to work with the new system too, you are no longer tied to movement on the grid in a strict fashion. The player can move freely with WASD and look / aim with the mouse.

Interactions were added, allowing the player to harvest creatures, light and extinguish fires and sleep / wake up from beds.