Biomes are a pretty big deal in procedurally generated games and they will be a really big deal when it comes to Survivors of Ragnarok as well. I've thought about setting up the biomes to be small chunks of the game world, but that simply left a lot to be desired.
Now what if each biome was a completely separate game world? That's what we have in mind.
Take a look.
Now, we spent a fair bit of time working on the isometric engine for this new world and there is still plenty to be done.
For one thing, this new isometric world needs to be randomly generated. These photo's are just some stuff I put together by hand once the engine work was finished.
After that, the saving and loading of each game world needs to be done. It shouldn't be an incredible feat to accomplish, but it will require some interesting file structures. (Think about how many maps will need to be saved in a 50x50x10 isometric game world!)
Finally, it is important to note, that each biome will need it's own generation algorithms to insure every biome has it's own unique look and feel. That very well may be the most time consuming task of them all.
So, although we don't have an update for you quite yet, we have big things in the works for you.
I hope you look forward to the new Biome system as much as we do.
Looking good. I bought this ages ago and never really got into it, will definitely be revisiting this now.
i was just trying to figure this out, i think I call this a "tileset" really but i like the word
in my code I store such things in arrays of course, I tend to serialise the data for stuff like this manually. So you say an interesting file structure, well it's more like 0,0,0,10,0,0,10,0,0 no pun (in a string). In your case probably a 3d array with ints as the ref key to the tile.
The real trick for procedural generation is having a seed number that recreates an entire level, the memory saving trick of old was that you walk about the level and the locations and stuff of objects where not in an array structure but being randomly placed as you moved around.
Isometric suits better =)
Good job guys!
Wait, so the isometric engine is for the world selection, or are you completely transitioning to isometric?
The isometric stuff is just for selecting each world.
Hello, this sort of thing keeps me smitten with you guys and a die hard loyal fan.
Do you mean that each biome will be it's own world?
Will there be variance in the world, such as deserts, oceans, rivers, ETC?
Requests/Suggestions on Biomes:
I. Dynamic Pixel based volumetrics: In the case of water for instance, maybe only 10 pixels deep would animate, and 1+Xpx would be effected by say a boat.
II. Color Pixel based terrain elements: '
---II A. IE: *Magnesium - E9EEEB, *Bismuth - BA9EA5, *Gold - A89147, *platinum - EDEDEF, *lead - 8E8E90, *Silver - B2BBB6
Everything would be able to be drawn just as normal, but using a pallete of defined colors. Also, custom elements X3.
---II B. This would allow for you to have physics on the per pixel level for terrain generation and would also make custom crafting of prefabs such as turrets, tools such as weapons, or something awesome like fireworks, or weather baloon.
Gameplay Requests/ Suggestions:
Dwarves Poop: I am requesting some non-traditional, but I feel very needed build elements. Can you please have the following needs:
*A place for your Dwarves to defacate. Options raning from a hole, or river, to a outhouse, or eventual toilet.
*The need to make aquaducts to advance. Opens options for bathing halls (which Dwarves love), forging, ETC.
*Over hunting and fishing. So, basically you can wipe out your food sources if your Dwarves are to greedy.
Jmol.sourceforge.net
Oh yes, that's the idea. By making biomes separate large worlds, we will be able to REALLY make them look different. Deserts would be long rolling dunes of sand, we might even set up different parameters for plant growth, water evaporation, distance of mineral deposits from the surface. The parallax backgrounds will also be unique to each biome and that will add a lot of character to each one.
As for anything pixel based, or heavy with true physics. It's just not in the cards for the system we have. The whole thing is based around the idea that the WHOLE world is living. That means we try to keep large 1000 block long stretches of game world fully active at once.
Water flows globally, plants grow globally, all creatures are active and have AI globally. We don't want creatures to spawn in and out of the game world, or have water stop flowing x distance away from the players location because it's volumetric(although it is somewhat volumetric at this point, each block holds something like 8 "units" of liquid, which fully interacts with other game objects (or will more fully in the future).
As for the waste and water management you are suggesting, well that just sounds awesome. We could have "waste" water that's brown and flows just like regular water, if it contacts other water supplies it will taint them and poison the dwarfs.
In keeping with the overall feel of the game, we wouldn't just let you watch the dwarfs pull their pants down and pop a squat, but we could implement buildings like an outhouse that releases waste liquid when used.
The minerals thing is also interesting, right now, the minimap is a pixel version of the game world, so at the very least, the link with all the colors associated with different colors would make an excellent reference for what colors to make minerals on the minimap. Again, I'm hesitant to do any thing "per pixel" as it's important the games runs reasonably and with the goal being to make a fully active game world.
Any info on the next update?
*tumbleweeds*