Poking Water Games

Activity Summary Week 15, 2015

For the week from 6 Apr to 12 Apr I’ve been working on:

Increased influence expansion ability at game start
Meeting point can create new humans
Added cooldown to GoalTreatPain
Implement tribepanel showing effect summary for each human
Added querypanel viewing stored objects inside query object
Improved mapmenu positioning
Add decayrate to querypanel for anything with non-zero amt
Implement sound request 3
Fix crafting using water progress bar
Fix influence area shrinking not showing boundary properly
Mapmenu dynamic drawing priority based on context
Turned off symptoms list autoremove to stop it removing other effects
Fixed decay rates for all objects not functioning
Added autostore defined in XML for creating objects
Experimented with finer heightlevels (failed, reverted)
Added failchance defined in XML for creating objects
Refactored mapmenu, removing lots of old menus
Changed some UI boundary ints to floats
Fixed tribe panel initialisation order incorrect
Cleaned up xml readers and added string validation
Fixed FloatToString conversion for non-decimal values
Add functionality for one tick updating for debugging
Reduced injury penalties to prosperity
Increased prosperity value of each Pokian
Activated task progress saving for craft tasks
Added butcher to querypanel for carcass
Craft tasks now use adjacent materials in case they get pushed off original cell
Fixed progressbar texture not loading on game load
Fixed clicking on cell not deleting existing mapmenu and creating new one
Added malaria to air infection list

By Parsley|April 12th, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Activity Summary Week 14, 2015

For the week from 30 Mar to 5 Apr I’ve been working on:

Removed movement speed changes due to height differences
Split motor speed into landspeed and waterspeed
Implement preference of amphibious water animals to idle near water sources
Disabled water changing the movement cost of hex
Added godmode function for soaking water
Implemented fish as a cell effect in rivers
Rearranged cell effect draw order so it shows above water
Added fishing task designation to UI
Refactored taskToHuman assignment
Added GoalFishing for human AI
Added condition for fishing locations, only near running water
Foreign tribes also have prosperity value now
Display foreign tribe prosperity in Diplomacy panel
Foreign tribe prosperity unknown if discovery level too low
Implement crude win condition, when prosperity higher than all other tribes
Randomise tribe prosperities over normal distribution
If stockpile created from pit building, set default to allow edible
Reaching 50% of a foreign tribe’s prosperity increases discovery level
Decreased threshold for discovering foreign tribe name to 1
Changed harvest from true/false to probability of harvest
Probability of harvest reduced by each harvest attempt
Harvest successful no longer affects object’s harvest rate

By Parsley|April 6th, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Tribe Of Pok: Iterating on the Water Mechanics

It’s been over three years since I started working on Tribe Of Pok. Over that time I’ve grown as a developer and found better ways of doing things. One example is water flow mechanics. It’s one of the first things I worked on and has undergone several iterations.

When I was a newbie programmer with barely any experience, I was creating a new object for every unit of rain that fell and then destroying it when it evaporated or soaked into the ground. If you have any experience as a programmer, you’ll know how disastrously bad of an idea it is to create/destroy hundreds of objects every second. That implementation was quickly scrapped when my frame rate dropped to 10 FPS every time it rained.

Next, I tried storing the amount of water in each tile and performing water calculations only on the tiles. Performance was much better. All I had to do was +1 for every unit of rain that fell and -1 for every evaporation/saturation event. Simply calculate the height of each tile to determine if water can flow into it from an adjacent tile.

However when it rained, the ground would become blanketed in a layer of water. Hills would be just as saturated as valleys and there was nowhere for Pokians to hide. As a side effect, dry ponds would never completely refill since much of the water was stuck on higher ground. I fixed this by introducing movement to saturation. In effect, the water in the soil was “flowing” downhill just as the water above ground did.

Now water was flowing somewhat realistically and wasn’t hampering gameplay.

A year or so later I added rivers. Rivers form long, narrow paths that move in one direction. However with the simulation as it was, water moved in a random direction with each update. Sometimes water would flow into an adjacent hex. Then on the next update it would randomly decide to flow back into its starting hex. The result was water taking too long to go downriver. For particularly long rivers, the water evaporated before it even reached the other end of the map!

To fix this, I’m cheating by teleporting water from the high points to the low points along the river. Eventually I’ll replace teleporting water with a better method. In the meantime, I’m iterating and improving other aspects of the game.

By Parsley|March 30th, 2015|GameDev|2 Comments

Activity Summary Week 13, 2015

For the week from 23 Mar to 29 Mar I’ve been working on:

Fix buttonslider scrolling offset in sidesubmenu
Fixed various minor issues with gather and extract sidesubmenus
Gather task number of times to perform action implemented
Extract ground should auto create task to store items now
Fix tree not disappearing when extracted
Fix extracting rock destroys rock
Integrated extract object into goalcreate
Add check when harvesting so if object harvest == false, stop trying
Add starting fire noise
Fixed broken xml for extracting causing infinite loop for task
Integrated extract ground into goalcreate
Add cooldown functionality in brain
Clean water goal cool down added
Influence area only draws borders now
Fixed berries not being tagged as an object in xml
Fix sidesubmenu disappearing when something clicked
Stop pit autoopening stockpile panel and instead create notification event informing player
Shortened wordy tutorials
Fixed notifications incorrect positions set
Fixed various issues with button list positioning
Fix creating new stockpile making duplicate forbid/allow all buttons
Added many checks to prevent crashes
Options page resolution changes immediately when resolution selected
Cleaned up object drawing function
Implement colour changes for homos based on tribe affiliation

By Parsley|March 29th, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Activity Summary Week 12, 2015

For the week from 16 Mar to 23 Mar I’ve been working on:

Removed building allow/disallow objects menu
Integrated building allow/disallow with stockpiles
Autoassign stockpile to pit if built on non-stockpile cell
Added functionality to open different manage panel tabs depending on context
Amount of water that fits in cell takes into account objects in cell
Fixed freezewater not taken into account in height calculation
Fix water flowing not taking into account water already in cell
Added wood to item designation, query panel now activates properly
Fixed cook meat for fire not initialised on game load
Implement harvest sound effect
Added functionality for crafting sound effects
Fixed textbox backspace misaligned
Fixed textbox backspace being registered as character
Implement latest art assets
Destroy option added to query panel for buildings
Influence expansion breakdown in prosperity panel
All objects have durability variable
Put durability decay in xml
Combined tree and bush into plant category
Added functionality so any object can be harvested, not just plants
Ant mounds destroyed if cell becomes wet
Added bear to xml

By Parsley|March 22nd, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Activity Summary Week 11, 2015

For the week from 9 Mar to 15 Mar I’ve been working on:

Fixed task ground type not remembered when game loaded
Fixed crash bug when dropping task objects
Fixed bug with bleeding too fast
Added AI for injured humans seeking out healing consumables
Add to disease tooltip when consumables are helping body parts recover
Clicking extract button shows extractable cells
Clicking gather button shows harvestable cells
Expanding influence does not reduce culture rate anymore
Add ant mound resource to xml
Generalised harvestable so can be applied to non-plants
Made ant mounds flammable
Added edible ants to xml
Reduce noisiness of rivers
Fixed bug with progressbar not being deleted when object destroyed
Optimised getting objects around influence area
Removed plant and fire menu and added its functions to query panel
Refactored query panel
Implement query panel for tasks
Reimplement query ground
Stopped gathering and extracting on cells with a building

By Parsley|March 16th, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Activity Summary Week 10, 2015

For the week from 2 Mar to 8 Mar I’ve been working on:

Shaman creates notification when high chance of rain
Fixed human query panel not showing all tooltips
Shaman reduces duration of some sicknesses
Prosperity panel breakdown splits pains into sicknesses and injuries
Fixed prosperity calculation not done on game start
Created bodypart class for individial body parts
Wounds automatically recover over time
Eating herbs helps with wound recovery
Pregnancy progression displays in query panel
Fixed pains sticking in query panel when they have been cured
Add blunt damage type
Refactored code relating to damage from bipedals, animals and buildings
Fixed MeleeDamage not being calculated on game load
Cuts and bruises take into account clothing protection
Remove most hardcoded references to “Weapon” and “Tool”
Bodypart damaged over 100% is disabled permanently
Permanently damaged hands unable to hold objects
Cut and bruised legs cause humans to slow down
Added levels to bleeding effect
Pierce is more bleeding, slash is more cuts, blunt is more bruises
Querypanel show bleeding severity
Querypanel indicator if body part completely broken
Fixed tooltips sometimes not showing if button image cropped

By Parsley|March 9th, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Activity Summary Week 9, 2015

For the week from 23 Feb to 1 Mar I’ve been working on:

Lowered aggressive threshold for animals
Building menu tooltip shows building values
Fixed crash on exit when building menu open
Sounds for animals added to XML
Added object sound volume changes depending on camera view
Animal getting hit plays sound for jaguar, mammoth and horse
Extracting from trees or rocks plays sound
If drag scrolling in combat mode, don’t set movement of selected people
Refactored query panel
Added functionality for actions from query panel
Implement sound assets 2
Removed redundant profession variable, replaced with assigned profession
Added Shaman profession
Remove lion, add giant sloth, remove calling every animal “Mammal”
Changed adding general tasks area to take into account influence area
Ability to automatically cook food near a camp fire
Profession tribe panel limit selecting shaman profession to initiated only
Added sickness duration variable
Added disease duration reduction property to herbs
Pokians take into account nourishment amt when looking for food
When all symptoms discovered, show illness on human query panel
Fixed bug with immunity reset when loading game
Sick Pokians now seek disease reducing consumables where appropriate
Once illness shows on query panel, add progress bar for how long it lasts
Fixed minor memory leak in query panel
Fixed minor memory leak in lighting function
Fixed clicking on UI caused combat mode units to deselect

By Parsley|March 2nd, 2015|Activity Summary|0 Comments

Added check for fire before human begins trying to cook meat
Tone down animals wandering, will only wander within a small radius if idling
Decrease influence threshold before it starts costing culture
Fixed bug causing culture rate to grow 24 times faster than normal
All carcasses changed to skull and crossbones for now
Reduced aggressiveness of jaguar and sabretooth
Volume changes by player saved to xml
If zoomed out, ambient sound plays quieter
Ambient sounds detect within a set radius of view centre rather than whole camera view
Fixed bug where item in toolbox without ability would stop items with ability from working
Implemented first set of sound effects
Created KeyMap class to handle keyboard mapping
Added WASD scrolling
Added option to change speed of WASD scrolling in menu
Create TribeData class to store tribe features
Display counter to button slider for current position
Only warriors will stop their current actions when entering CombatMode
Fix bug with cancel task call not cancelling task all the time
Crafting objects fail changed from alert to notification
When influence expanded, should update PanelSummary straight away
Added ForceDisplay influence area when building menu open
Edge map scrolling selection changed to slider bar