Alpha 4 is now available! This will be the last free alpha release, the basic gameplay loop/functionality is established and it’s time to move on to the next stage. Thank you to everyone who has given feedback so far, you’ve been a great help in shaping the game. There’s much more to do of course, and I will keep posting regular news updates.
Major changes:
- New designation system – Lots of experimenting went on with the designation system. I was finding the current system for marking trees to cut, water sources to use, etc inadequate. It required too much clicking and didn’t suit the nature of the game. After a few failed attempts I went with a left-click-and-drag system, where the player can designate areas and tasks in any shape they want. To accommodate this, I had to change the previous left-click-and-drag to scroll the map to right-click-and-drag to scroll. A small annoyance, but I think it was worth it.
- First step towards shaders – The day/night cycle lighting changes were previously “faked”, meaning I just drew a completely black sprite over the screen and adjusted the transparency depending on time of day. This was a problem because I couldn’t make the areas where fires were burning brighter. I’ve switched to using shaders for lighting changes now, which should allow for more flexibility in the future.
- Pierce and slash damage – Animals now have individual pierce and slash damage values (e.g mammoths deal massive pierce damage while lions deal moderate pierce and slash damage). Clothing protection for each type of damage works properly now as well. It’s based on the body part hit so a helmet will only reduce damage if the head is struck.
- Doubled length of 24-hour cycle – What a difference this makes! It feels like a better pacing and now when I reach winter, I am actually worried where the next meal will come from.
Other changes:
- First step towards animation – fires now flicker
- Options menu changes now saved on game exit
- Autosave function added to help with bug reporting (can be set to autosave every minute)
- Fixed zooming in/out causing most UI elements to zoom as well
- More tweaks to aggression system
- Snare traps working – immobilises animals
- Fixed music not looping
- Bug fixes
I want to call the player’s tribe members something else besides “tribe members”, but not sure what… Pokkians? Pokkers? That sounds a bit rude. Open for suggestions.
Hello dev, I’ve been trying to start a game, but for some reason it just crashes when I click “Generate World”. I can’t get it to generate any world at all but the program can run through everything in the menu with no problems. Is there any checklist of things I need to run a game correctly? Things I’ve done so far that didn’t work:
• Redownloaded the zip file and re-unzipped.
• Ran program as administrator.
• Adjusted compatibility.
• Changed any variation to world generation (i.e. map size, organic, height, rockiness, tutorial mode, etc)
I don’t know where else to ask for help, if there is a specific place for these kind of things do show me the way. Thank you in advance.
Hi letsjustplaythisgame, thanks for letting me know about the problem. I re-downloaded the file and generated a world just in case there was something wrong with it, but the file seems to be fine. Could you let me know your computer specs? You can send me an email at enquiries@pokingwatergames.com if you prefer.
Also there’s no specific help section/forum yet, posting here is fine.
Oh, thank you for the fast reply! Commenting here is faster too, so I’ll just continue to post here, just in case anybody else encounters the same thing as me.
System Model: Aspire 4810TG Laptop
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Solo CPU U3500 @1.40GHz, 1400 Mhz, 1 Core(s), 1 Logical Processor(s)
RAM: 3GB DDR3
VGA: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
If I’m missing any specific information that could help discern what’s wrong, let me know.
Hi there,
I think the problem is your graphics chipset doesn’t support shaders :(. I’ve made some changes and added a version 3.9 that removes this requirement, but you won’t be able to see the day/night cycle and the colors won’t be as vibrant. You’re not missing out on much yet, but I think going forward I’ll have to make shaders a requirement.
Anyway try 3.9 and see if it works!