Weekly update on progress #4

As we're closing on our first deadline (IGF contest last submission date), our focus right now is finishing the first version's gameplay. Current version is 0.3.5.

Static lighting system

Last week we have implemented the last big part of the game's engine: lighting. We've chosen not to go with a ray-casting technique, instead we've rolled our own system. 2 quick screenshots of the result:

Because of the way we keep the world in memory, we generate the lighting locally each time blocks are destroyed or added, doing a light propagation pass to a certain distance and following the faces (right now light propagates by face, not by block).
This should be the last complex piece of code which was missing from the engine, at least until we get to the networking part.

Gameplay

We have finished the design details for what will become the first playable version; we have all the crafting recipes, items, what can each bot/agent do, how the trading will work and what enemies will be in. Most of them are implemented in a basic form already but they still need lots of details added; for example, we've added last week some fun features on the solar power generator: now it tracks the sun's position and it shuts down during the night. Managing your power reserves will be a part of the gameplay even though everything will still work without power, just much slower.

Basic GUI  work

Using our programmer art, we've implemented the GUI system. Right now, the bot's details and inventory are done and the rest of the agents will follow the same style.

With the hard part out of the way (choosing a framework, managing input and refresh events), we can easily add new windows as required.
Not sure if our system of input and commands will work out in the same way till the final version but right now we're trying to implement everything in a "mouse only" way. Left-click selects the options, Right-click cancels the current operation and the scroll wheel chooses between game commands (shown in the main menu) or window commands. Of course there are keyboard shortcuts for most commands but we try to avoid the chain of keys required for almost everything in Dwarf Fortress. Using the mouse should be enough for most gameplay operations.

Architect view

We have worked a bit on this too, to make it less cluttered. This view will be very much used when you plan the layout of the fortress. Not sure if the agents will be visible in that view or just show the terrain; also, we're showing now only a slice of the terrain:

PR/Marketing start

This is also an important aspect and we have started working on it. We got the domains for roobuts.com and brainclipse.com (this will be our moniker for our development team) and we'll fill them with more details and interesting data sometime this week. The future Roobuts forum is installed and almost ready for public.

A week dedicated to gameplay

That's the main focus now; we've already got a working web player (still with some shader issues) and we still plan on making a desktop playable version available to all very soon. Just need some finishing touches on the GUI and gameplay aspects.