Hello, dear Greenfeet friends! May the grass be soft under your steps!
The game's systems are really starting to take shape! There is still a lot to do, but for the first time since the beginning of the project, the task backlog is decreasing. This means that I'm registering fewer issues and ideas than I'm actually fixing/completing. It's a huge motivational boost, and working on the game has been really pleasant lately.
We might actually be a few weeks away from the completion of all the major systems related to visual appeal, readability, and progression. The future will tell!
New flowers and crops
I've finished implementing all the seasonal flowers. Each plant species will flower during specific seasons and go dormant during others. I've also finished migrating every crop to the new "bumpable plants" system.
Foundations and intra-tile movements
A long-standing readability issue has been solved this week: greenfeet being too far from what they are working on. There is now an intra-tile movement system that allows greenfeet to go to the edge of a tile. Crafting, cutting trees, or mining feels more natural. And as a bonus: furniture and structures being built are now displayed as a foundation instead of an icon.
Performance improvements
I spent many hours investigating the game's performance and improved it by approximately 30%. There is more room for improvement, but that's enough at this stage of the development. I also fixed an issue related to the "click-to-photon" delay. A frame is rendered every 16ms, which means that if you move or click the mouse at the beginning of a frame, your input is visible on the screen 16ms later, which is quite noticeable. I'm now using a Bevy plugin to fix that, and the game feels much more responsive than before.
Bugfixes
- Fixed some structures not being built because of pathfinding and job status issues.
- The default World zone is no longer selected when clicking on an empty tile.
- Regressions introduced by the new plant rendering system were fixed.
That's a wrap for this week, thank you for reading!
PS: don't forget you can wishlist Greenfeet Haven on Steam, so you don't miss when it's out!