Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
This week we managed to navigate through the final mechanics and implementation details of the new itemisation and outfit generation systems. We can easily define a fine grained level of wealth and elegance, a theme of colours and some other parameters from which to generate a complete outfit, and by extension a character's "wardrobe". This determines what garments might be worn, their relative quality, the combination of materials and fabrics they might be made from, the grade of those materials and so on. There is also a component of context for the outfit, purpose and social convention.
This will create characters that are distinct and recognisable for their level of wealth, role and situation, allowing for subtle differences even at similar stations. It has a lot of future applications, but also some immediate ones for persistent arena NPCs and meaningful differences within the same tiers, and new randomisation features for more important encounters in story.
Expanding on that context, this touches on various aspects of how we define objects within the game. Objects have attached origins, manufacturing processes, components with their own origins and so forth. Even in the revised arena, caravans and traders will arrive from different regions bringing appropriate goods for sale. It's a process, and it will over time require a growth of content, but we need to finalise how all this data is defined to support all applications and functionality.
Anyway, we've figured out the last details of how all this works, and we've also implemented the automatic patching system we discussed, which will automatically keep content and save games up-to-date if and when we modify the parameters of any object. We've also completed our new item design tool, in which we can configure an item's randomisation parameters in detail, preview the results of randomisation or also design specific items in detail. It's very cool to see, but hard to describe, so we're thinking of doing a little stream or video of it in action once the update is out.
We're confident enough with how this is all set up now to go ahead and permanently convert everything to the new formats, including save games, so we're just about to do that and see how it all comes together.
Happy New Year, and have a great week!
-the BM team
This week we managed to navigate through the final mechanics and implementation details of the new itemisation and outfit generation systems. We can easily define a fine grained level of wealth and elegance, a theme of colours and some other parameters from which to generate a complete outfit, and by extension a character's "wardrobe". This determines what garments might be worn, their relative quality, the combination of materials and fabrics they might be made from, the grade of those materials and so on. There is also a component of context for the outfit, purpose and social convention.
This will create characters that are distinct and recognisable for their level of wealth, role and situation, allowing for subtle differences even at similar stations. It has a lot of future applications, but also some immediate ones for persistent arena NPCs and meaningful differences within the same tiers, and new randomisation features for more important encounters in story.
Expanding on that context, this touches on various aspects of how we define objects within the game. Objects have attached origins, manufacturing processes, components with their own origins and so forth. Even in the revised arena, caravans and traders will arrive from different regions bringing appropriate goods for sale. It's a process, and it will over time require a growth of content, but we need to finalise how all this data is defined to support all applications and functionality.
Anyway, we've figured out the last details of how all this works, and we've also implemented the automatic patching system we discussed, which will automatically keep content and save games up-to-date if and when we modify the parameters of any object. We've also completed our new item design tool, in which we can configure an item's randomisation parameters in detail, preview the results of randomisation or also design specific items in detail. It's very cool to see, but hard to describe, so we're thinking of doing a little stream or video of it in action once the update is out.
We're confident enough with how this is all set up now to go ahead and permanently convert everything to the new formats, including save games, so we're just about to do that and see how it all comes together.
Happy New Year, and have a great week!
-the BM team
