[font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"][size="2"]So this thing has got me hooked. I was just going to pop my head up, write a journal post or two about procedural generation, then disappear again, but I can't stop tinkering. Today, I got some minimal NPC AI going, just a shoe-horn of stuff I've put together before. Simple combat (no visuals yet, need to go back to Blender to do some combat anims), simple pathing (using Recast and Detour), some random patrolling, etc... I also started on the basics of a special effects system, putting together a couple cheesy poof-of-smoke effects to use as generic placeholders until "real" ones are done. I also started work on a resource harvesting system, allowing you to "poof" trees with some magic smoke and turn them into stacks of lumber. Can't pick 'em up yet, but they sit there all shiny and brown, tantalizing you with the thought of all the stuff you might be able to build with them later. Fires, fences, a stick to fight with, all that jazz.

A couple years ago, one of my abandoned projects was a top-down square-tile RPG called Archipelago; the root, incidentally, of my current island generation system. The game kinda sucked; top-down is just a hard perspective to make graphics that look okay for, so I dropped it. But the ideas I had for it have still been milling around in my head: a resource-driven survival hack-n-slash, where you have to rely on your wits and what meager materials you can scavenge in order to survive. What I have created here is, essentially, an "infinite archipelago." If you raft to the edge of the map, it generates a new one for the neighboring island, and you can go on like that fairly near indefinitely (double precision is the limit, baby).[/font]

I've also been putting together an ashlands/volcano tileset to generate some freshly vulcanized island groups, and I have a few tile-types put together that I might use in further sets, though before I go too far with new sets I do need to finish fleshing out what I have, particularly in the department of "doodads" to decorate with. Sticks, rocks, flowers, all that stuff. The tedious detail work that makes austere levels look far more inviting.

I've also been tweaking viewport size and scaling to get the best feel, and lately I've been running with the camera zoomed in just a tad further than it has been. It gives better detail, plus it gives a more intimate feel to the view of your surroundings. I think it makes the feeling of suspense a bit tighter, not being able to see as far. Plus you can see the crafty orange gleam in the goblin's eye.

Maybe it will go somewhere, maybe it won't, but right now I just love the almost exhilarating feeling of being excited about a project again, something that I've been lacking for awhile. Here are a couple more screenies, nothing all that new, but I just like to post the shinies.