TaleSpire Dev Log 92

Let's talk props.

There are a lot of smaller assets in the game. Stuff that doesn't feel like it should hinder movement, but does. I'm talking about floor torches, table plates, cheese wheels. You know the ones. It can be pretty annoying at times and breaks immersion. 

So we're working on the concept of props. Props will be like those mentioned above. Things that decorate our world but doesn't necessarily obstruct creatures in any way. There are a couple of things we're trying to achieve with props. 

The primary focus was to have them not get in the way (as seen above). So we're working on having them move out of the way. 

The secondary focus (although arguably equally important) was to add a second layer of customization to tiles. 

Moving out of the way is interesting. As seen above the torch "rods"? Move out of the "creatures'" way when it tries to occupy the same space. This type of movement is a relatively simple setup and utilizes Unity's Physics engine, which gives us the benefit of its internal optimizations (which I'm sure people would argue about).  It doesn't have quite the "juice" I would like, however. It needs some wobble and some nice lerping. It also currently move around the creature as it fights to get back to its original location rather than deciding on an offset position; this is one of the reasons why this is still work in progress. I'll write more about this later as it develops.

The second focus was the ability to customize more. So this would be the ability to add more props to a tile as well as remove existing ones or replace them.  We're doing this by adding slots and conditions rather than free placement which will allow us to help our systems handle props but also giving the artists the power to make some decisions about how their tiles being decorated.

This isn't a great representation of what the final placement system will look like. it's just what I haven't currently for testing. More about this in future posts.

Have fun! Until next time....

PS: We're getting ready for a new wave of alpha keys. Look out for that sometime next week.