Elysian Shadows

I've been following this for two weeks, and think this has great potential. I'm especially interested in how you're creating the map- in one of your videos you talk about how you're adding water and hills to the map and creating the map as you go along. I know that you're wanting to move on from the water system, but I think there's a more clever way to choose what tiles should be drawn on the map.

This article goes very in depth in how a map is dynamically generating using just two main factors- humidity and altitude. Now this is more complex than what you probably need, but it's still very inspiring to read and get ideas from. Basically, you can make the map with "humidity zones" and "altitude zones", with varying levels of humidity and altitude.

Based on a combination of humidity and altitude, the program will decide the appropriate tile to draw, anything from grass to lakes to dry mountains. For example deserts will be in places of very low to zero humidity, in low to medium altitudes. If it's low altitude but very high humidity, create swamps or jungles. It's still oversimplified to how real climates create a landscape but it's good enough for an open ended game like yours.

Instead of having this randomly generated, you can perhaps use a tile editor that only has a "humidity brush" and "altitude brush" (like with a height map) and view them individually as gradients, or see the final product when you combine both.

Sorry for no updates for the past couple of weeks, have had a little to do and also been on a minor vacation. But now I am back, filled with energy as well as ideas, expect to see a new video and a few updates in the coming few days!

I've been following this for two weeks, and think this has great potential.

Cheers!

I'm especially interested in how you're creating the map- in one of your videos you talk about how you're adding water and hills to the map and creating the map as you go along. I know that you're wanting to move on from the water system, but I think there's a more clever way to choose what tiles should be drawn on the map.

Well, yes and no, I basically create a basic randomized "template" map that is ever changing as well as changes and "is being created" as you go along.

This article goes very in depth in how a map is dynamically generating using just two main factors- humidity and altitude. Now this is more complex than what you probably need, but it's still very inspiring to read and get ideas from. Basically, you can make the map with "humidity zones" and "altitude zones", with varying levels of humidity and altitude.

Based on a combination of humidity and altitude, the program will decide the appropriate tile to draw, anything from grass to lakes to dry mountains. For example deserts will be in places of very low to zero humidity, in low to medium altitudes. If it's low altitude but very high humidity, create swamps or jungles. It's still oversimplified to how real climates create a landscape but it's good enough for an open ended game like yours.

I've had a look at the article and it is indeed very interesting but also found quite a few things that would not coincide with the way I want to create my maps. Such as the usage of zones, because I don't want my map to have defined zones of Swamp, Barren etc.

This would also not be good for the way my game plays out because the map that is created in this article is basically a static map that most likely will not change but because of my game I need my map to be completely changeable as in, changing the terrain, clearing water from an area, clearing out swamps etc.

And also how the rivers are created in this article is very nicely done but it would be pretty linear in a way and I need the player to be able to create their own rivers if they choose to do so.

To go in a little bit about humidity and altitudes is that in this article these two things are zone based whilst in my game they're tile based/area based and they're also quite static.

Instead of having this randomly generated, you can perhaps use a tile editor that only has a "humidity brush" and "altitude brush" (like with a height map) and view them individually as gradients, or see the final product when you combine both.

If my maps aren't randomly generated most of the game concept/gameplay falls apart because I want the player to be able to play the game over and over again and it'll always feel fresh and feel like both the player and the world start off from scratch instead of pre-made maps. I used to have a web-based map editor but I felt I wanted to take it to another level and also remove the need to have map designers actually design and create maps as well as remove the static feel of such maps.

Thanks for linking the article, it was very interesting nonetheless and definitely something I'll keep in mind for future projects!

Cheers to everyone! and I should be able to throw up a video or a few pics later of some progress I have made.

Laters
-- Joxno

Finally kicked my arse into working again, I've had a little bit going on which made me unmotivated but now I'm back and basically almost finished the Cloud system inside my Weather system, the only tiny things I have left for the Cloud system is Movement, depending on the temperature of the area they're in, they'll Snow and last but not least, Thunder. Thunder will be created when two or more clouds are in a close proximity of each other.

Here is a tiny pic to show off the progress with the clouds, sadly as I am not a good artist, I whipped up the sprite in about 30 secs.



So far they're drawn, updated and they also rain!

Do tell what you think about it.
Cheers!

Laters.
-- Joxno

This is great! I love your updates for your project. Keep up the good work!

short wrote:This is great! I love your updates for your project. Keep up the good work!

Cheers! I'm glad you like it!

Here's a quick video showing off clouds moving and raining!
Expect to see a move in depth video very soon!



Laters!
-- Joxno

Great, all the features of your weather system seems to be cool ! By the way, will the water / snow from clouds remain, or will it disappear after a while ?

omg square clouds are badass.
can you make the cloud part change shape slightly as it moves ?

The game's looking really good so far, great job.
I really like the clouds btw.

Heyo guys! Quick off-topic sentence, Skyrim is really time consuming and BF3 campaign as well!

And before I go into anything else, time to answer your questions.

Teser0ck wrote:Great, all the features of your weather system seems to be cool ! By the way, will the water / snow from clouds remain, or will it disappear after a while ?

Cheers! and yes the water as well as snow will remain and later on evaporate in due time.

k1net1k wrote:omg square clouds are badass.
can you make the cloud part change shape slightly as it moves ?

Hehe, Cheers! Yes I could with a few more lines, then again I'm not sure yet, all cloud shapes are randomly generated as well as the "fluffs" disappear as it rains/snows.

So, a couple of days ago I thought to myself "This SQLite database + Wrapper isn't quite doing it for me".
Which ended up with me coding my own database system, a pretty basic one, just 1 file that has the Meta data for the Table structures and then each Table has its own file. It works pretty nicely and is actually better for my game than SQLite + Wrapper was.

Mostly why I decided that my game needed it's own Data handling system was because I couldn't do anything with the SQLite stuff nor the Wrapper, I didn't really feel like digging into the Wrapper code and change stuff as well as the wrapper I was using only supported Windows/Linux and did a few things... badly.

Yesterday I spent around 10 hours implementing the new DB system into the game, ran into quite a lot of problems but eventually it all got solved. So now I have my own database system and the game is yet again platform independent.

So without further ado. Here is a quick snapshot of the console and game in the background.



Laters!
-- Joxno

Heyo guys, I've finally gotten around to making a video.

I tried to keep it short but ended up being a little longer than I had anticipated, hopefully it'll keep you interested all the way through if you decide to watch it. I talk about my newest changes and changes I haven't yet shown or covered such as Water System, Weather System and my new DB system and a few other goodies.



Hope you enjoy!

Laters!
-- Joxno

Sorry about bumping thread,Just been away for a little, but thought I'd quickly share a screenshot of what I've been up to lately

wow. this is really great stuff. i've been fairly active on the forums since joining the ES team, but it seems that i discover cool threads like this that i didn't know existed. development looks really good. i think my favorite thing is the little pixel character... and the slightly Harvest Moon undertones

Joxno wrote:Sorry about bumping thread,Just been away for a little, but thought I'd quickly share a screenshot of what I've been up to lately

I don't care if it's been 5 years, you have a right to bump your own thread with relevant updates whenever you want man! Great to hear you're still working on this and making good progress. The new screeny looks great man, keep it up!

I didn't see this post before. This looks awesome so far.

Joxno wrote:Heyo guys! Quick off-topic sentence, Skyrim is really time consuming and BF3 campaign as well!

Yes it is.

Joxno wrote:So, a couple of days ago I thought to myself "This SQLite database + Wrapper isn't quite doing it for me".

I am curious about this. I was planning on using SQLite for a data-driven game that's currently in the design stages. What exactly about SQLite wasn't meeting your requirements? I'm sometimes guilty of extreme NIH syndrome myself, but databases are one thing I won't allow myself to reinvent.

Cheers everyone! I'm very happy you all like it.

Nokurn wrote: I am curious about this. I was planning on using SQLite for a data-driven game that's currently in the design stages. What exactly about SQLite wasn't meeting your requirements? I'm sometimes guilty of extreme NIH syndrome myself, but databases are one thing I won't allow myself to reinvent.

Well, it didn't take too long, only about 2-4 hours of work but it was worth it. Actually for a number of reasons,
I was using a wrapper that wasn't very portable to different platforms and didn't have support for my Macbook. I felt that it was actually getting too slow for what I wanted to do. I didn't feel like it had the correct functions that I wanted to use as well as I couldn't make specific changes that would benefit my game.

On top of this, I have to constantly save Data to my DB which meant that SQLite would sometimes completely lag the game, and also meant I had no way nor time to change how I wanted it to save.

So all in all, it turned out pretty nice.

Now onto the good stuff! I've been working for about 10 hours or so now and would like to show off parts of my newest implementation, The Empire System.
To explain briefly, this is the system which will take care of the Empire AI. This is a rather large system that I have spent the last 2-4 weeks designing and implementing, the System is built up from 10+ Sub Systems which handles resources, structure creation, projects, job management etc.

Here is a small teaser of the Structure->Project->JobManager systems in action.