Another week, another progress update!
This was the last "summer week" with kids at home before returning to my usual work schedule! I used all that "holiday energy" to tackle some tedious technical tasks I've postponed for the past few months.
The first big achievement is the new "item registry" system that makes adding new items to the game easier by an order of magnitude. In terms of code, it was quick to implement, but upgrading every part of the game that used it took a bit longer.
The second thing I'm happy about is that I'm now using a texture packer. But what's a texture packer? It's a tool that takes X images and produces a single one with all of them in it, along with an extra file containing all the positions. I know it's not that impressive, but it's vital for in-game performance. Your graphics card tends not to like switching between a thousand textures in separate files. Having a clean texture packing workflow will allow me to add new textures into the game quickly and without breaking the old ones.
Lastly, I've finished to clean my asset folder in order to remove sources and unneeded files. It was not ideal shipping the previous build of the game with some extra dead weight.
With the new item registry in place I'm looking forward next week to start implementing the improved and shiny dynamic crafting system. Back to "less technical stuff, more content and features" \o/
PS: don't forget you can wishlist Greenfeet Haven on Steam, so you don't miss when it's out!