Hello!
Lots of stuff going on and lots to finish up before Dreamhack Winter next weekend. :)
Most of my recent work has been put into improving functionality and to a degree also visuals.
One of my main improvements has been to implement a sort of drag and drop typ system for roads and blocks so that players won't have to place one after the other and can instead select areas to build on. In a "normal" city builder where building occurs on a 2D plane, this kind of functionality wouldn't be much of a hassle to implement, but given Atmocity allows players to build in 6 directions things become a bit more complex.
For roads I've opted for a start and end position with a midpoint in between. For flexibility, using the scroll wheel players can swap the midpoint to change where the road goes.
The way this works is that when starting a build process, the world direction is checked and locked in. Players will then be able to plop down their road on that specific plane. When they need to switch planes they need to initiate another process (mouse click). I have found when testing, that this works fairly well since most of the time you need to navigate the camera to a new location when building on different planes anyway.
For blocks, the plane is checked and then using the scroll wheel players can switch build direction between xy, xz and yz.
This system will allow players to fairly quickly build areas ready for development. It also removes some of the camera micro management that was required before, when you'd have to move the camera around to place blocks in specific locations.
As for visual improvements, I've mostly focused on improving roads from their previous flat planes into being actual 3D. Not a huge difference, but it does look better in my opinion to have the sidewalks slightly raised.
I've started working on some decoration pieces as well. Once the game releases on early access, a fair bit of time will be spent adding objects that players can use to improve their cities visually. These will mostly just be for decorative purposes. Here's a sort of "balcony" piece I've prototyped:
Cars are still being worked on, I'm almost done with the texture after having done the mesh (a fairly simple one). I'm also still working on movement, so I didn't get around to fixing up traffic rules yet. Hopefully I can get this done in time for Dreamhack. :)
Surprisingly, this past week I also came across a fair number of bugs that have now been neatly squished! :)
/ Dispersing Minds
