May 2020 - Week 35 - Move!

Summary

• Contemplating the future
• Move tool
• Pets
• The sweet sound of industry
• Elevation view for stairs
• Sockventure

Detail

My ambition outstrips my abilities. So I need help, which costs money, so I must pitch for funding or raise money by contracting and saving. There's a pitching event toward the end of May and I need to decide if I'm going to try for that now or wait until I have a more complete vertical slice.

The Move Tool is now complete with dragging to select, moving multiple Dwergs, attacking hostiles and showing a selection rectangle for feedback. Bertha the bear, companion of the merchant in the tutorial, is now in. The pet-relationship between the merchant and the bear is implemented as a bond between them. The pet-bond causes the pet to move beside their owner when they are too far apart. I can see bonds being used to affect Dwerg behaviour, e.g. comforting a sad friend or getting in a social fight with a rival. The Dwergs have still not got to sleep yet but they are tireless workers :-)

Work on the tutorial continued with bug-fixing around moving the dire wolves, framing and following the dire wolves with the camera, having scripts wait for a few seconds and moving the dire wolves off the map. Getting feedback from Frans on the tutorial has been invaluable and this week saw two of his ideas being implemented; using a context-sensitive tool to lock and unlock doors and the selection rectangle when selecting multiple Dwergs.

Audio work this week has included the sweet sound of industry as Dwergs build, mine and chop trees, the rumble and growl of bears and dire wolves, battle music played for the dire wolves and Dwerg combat. We are nearing the end of our list of sound-effects so next week Frans will be focusing on the remaining music tracks and tweaking the mixing of the sound.

Last week I suggested Kitfox Games should consider keeping the single-level view in Dwarf Fortress to help with building into open space. This got me thinking that a much better way to build stairs would be with an elevation, as opposed to a plan, view. This is something I've played with in the past, I've had one play-tester request it and I'm now convinced it is how I want to show stair-building in the tutorial. So that will be my focus for the next week.

Also this week Frans and I have been play-testing Sockventure. This is a challenging platformer with a super-cute sock super-hero as the protagonist, being developed by Nighthouse Games.