Jan 1

Mik - Stefaaaaan

Heya,

It´s the first of the month, and not only that but it´s also 2024! The year where this game will (hopefully) be released. To start things of in this years first Devlog: Mik hit 1000 wishlists, which is amazing! Appart of that, I have been working on both Mik and a secret side project of mine yet to be revealed...

anyways here we go (yes this devlog is a lot of text):

Code rework

Like mentioned in last months devlog, I started reworking much of the older unstable and quite frankly shitty code to be more modular and not break all the time. Most notably I reworked the whole way levels are loaded but I won´t bore you with all the details and scripts I changed (I´d also be too lazy to even write all of that down).

Main Menu rework (again)

I added a few new features to the Main Menu:

1. New level loading&loading screen like previously mentioned
2. New Image pixelation fx
3. New scroll bar fx
4. Glow for all text

1. Go to "Code Rework" to read more.

2, Unlike before, where there would be little blocks appear in front of the Images to give the illusion of a pixelation effect, the Images are actually getting pixelated now, meaning that the texture is getting manipulated directly. I did this to make the effect more convincing and versatile to use.

Here is the source code if anyone is interested: https://github.com/Stefaaan06/Unity-Image-Pixelator

3. The scroll bar now has animations when loaded in/out (see more on the video linked below)

4. All the UI in the main menu has a nice glow now!

Video on Twitter: https://x.com/Stefaaan06/status/1741058018018545802

Custom OS

As you may know, the game had some computers. Mostly just models standing around with text on them and not being intaractable, with a few input panels scattered around in the game to allow for little puzzles. I didn´t like that the computers couldn´t be interacted with tho so I set out on a journy to create a costum ingame (fake) operating system.
Now you might be thinking to yourself that this is largely a waste of time and won´t benefit the game that much compared to say... finishing the actual game. I´d agree BUT the beauty of being an independent game developer is that I can just do whatever I want!

Tho I´m aware that making even a realistic fake of an operating sytem would take ages, so my goal is to make it semi convincing and modular. The main goals are: a User system with custom logs for each user. A semi modular application system so I can create different (gameplay related) applications for different locations. And make all of that interactable by the player. Meaning that if the player has access to an Admin account he should be able to delete other accounts, delete logs... etc..... and maybe (very big maybe) even create custom applications? (not sure about this one since it would take even more time to create).

Switching render-pipelines

This is more of an "experimental" thing, but I have started the process of switching from Unity´s built in, to Unity´s Universal Render Pipeline (URP) which is one of the Scriptable Render Pipelines. I made this decision after yearly Unity-event where they announced new features for URP which could be quite useful for this game. Some older features are also not available on the built in render pipeline like Decals or custom render calls.

I said that this is an experimental thing because I don´t even know the results of how the project will look yet. To convert a project from one render pipeline to another one must use a tool to convert many assets, which can take ages if your game is moderatly large, so I have been stucking converting for 100 hours (I wish I were joking...)

TLDR; I started switching Unity render pipelines to get new updates, better optimisation, some new features and a scriptable render pipeline.

Year In Review

As you all now, 2023 has come to a close, so I decided to make a little edit documenting my gamedev progress over this year:

Thats it with this Devlog. Let´s hope that by the end of this year the game will be out and stay tuned for new sneak peeks regarding my rework of a certain old game of mine....

If you´re interested in the game follow me on twitter and join my discord:
https://www.twitter.com/@stefaaan06
https://discord.gg/JXn6Xa4VC4

Jan 1

Update v0.97.0 released!

DinoSystem - Daniel (dev)

This update IS compatible with savegames from previous v0.96.0+!

---> FULL CHANGELOG <---

A NOTE FROM THE DEV:

New year, new DinoSystem update! 2023 presented many challenges and opportunities: one of my family member is very ill, we take care of him, but it's very draining both physically and mentally. I've been ill myself (less serious, luckly), and stopped working out, I'm planning to start again sometime in the future.
On a brighter note, I'm a full time gamedev now, leaving behind my historical gym trainer career: DinoSystem (and potential new projects of mine) is still not my main source of income, but I can now work in a field I truly enjoy, as well as being able to work from home (and take care of my father).
Now, about this update, I did anticipate it would include the meat/fish drying mechanic and a new narrative system, but they didn't make into it and will be added in a future version. There are few additions that could make up for this inconvenience, though, so let's check the changelog!

SYSTEM:

-[Survival] Quitting on Rogue-lite difficulty now produces a new save slot called "Exit Save", instead of overwriting "My Save".
- Autosaves are taken when dawn happens, instead of few moments later.

GRAPHICS:

- High/low fog effect is now much more common.
- Added a subtle distorsion effect to low fog (only on GFX Quality = High).
- Several ambient effects, as well as leaves/clouds direction from wind, are updated much more often (every 0.1 sec instead of 1 sec).
- "Screen Sharpen" effect (renamed to "Normal Map", see below) tweaked to be more subtle.
- Tree canopies parallax relative to zoom level improved to produce better results at very low zoom.
- Sky and sky reflection parallax now scales correctly with current zoom level.
- Red Mushroom now has white dots, to make it more easily distinguishable from the brown one.
- Dynamic shadows intensity tweaked to be slightly more apparent in some instances.
- Haze effect from warm climate tweaked in intensity and improved in quality, and reduced the excessive flickering.
- Screen lightning stops when the game is paused.
- Minor improvements to the particle system.
-[Survival] Added a subtle trail to fired projectiles.

-[Survival] Character arms resolution improved.
-[Survival] Added a blur effect to tree canopies at very high zoom (only on GFX Quality = High).
-[Survival] Player droplets from wetness disappear asap after the "dry up" action.
-[Survival] Improved some character animations (and now scale better with the actual action speed).

AUDIO:

- Improved wall/door damage and destruction sounds.
- Animal distant death sounds can be heard from farther away.
- Tweaked volume/pitch of tree falling sound, based on tree size.
- Added some button click sounds that were missing.
-[Survival] Tweaked volume/pitch of some player actions sounds.

INTERFACE:

- Improvements to the Settings interface:
...... Added a new tab to the general settings screen called "Screen", which groups settings related to screen effects/features.
...... Setting "Screen Mode" renamed to "Mode".
...... Setting "Video Quality" renamed to "GFX Quality".
...... Setting "Screen Sharpen" renamed to "Normal Map".
...... Setting "Master Volume" renamed to "Main Volume".
...... Made small tweaks to some settings tooltips.

-[Survival] Improvements to the Character creation/info screen:
...... Character creation screen now appears at the start of island generation, allowing the player to create their character during the loading time, instead of waiting.
...... Character creation/info screen layout rearranged, having most UI panels upward, and the tooltip on bottom.
...... Strength text panel is now isolated and changes color based on Strength level (red, yellow, green).
...... Character creation/info screen now appears fading, and the character zooming in.

-[Survival] Side alert text notifications (showing when a stat/skill changes) are more precise and don't trigger several times in a row.
-[Survival] Structure blueprint rotation speed sligthly reduced (during build mode).
-[Survival] Added some variations to the "you're scaring fish away" message.
-[Survival] Mousehover on Stomach icon now shows "Fullness:" instead of "Total:", for clarity.
-[Survival] Stomach icon is even smaller from emptiness.
-[Survival] Damage text shown when failing to repair a tool is now violet.
-[Survival] Improved UI logic about attack recoiling.
-[Survival] Poisoning and Health damage screen effects last for longer before disappearing.
-[Survival] Sun/warmth screen effect is more visible and responsive.
-[Survival] Temperature and Health UI bars now update in a gradual fashion.
-[God] In the God UI, "beds" renamed to "lakebed".
- Landmarks map mode is much darker during night, preventing it from being exploited to increase visibility.
- Several UI screens (like character creation/info screen, loading screen) now fade when appearing/disappearing.
- Island snapshot requires less milliseconds to be taken, making it less intrusive.
- "Pine Cone" renamed to just "Cone", for simplicity.
- Added a couple new loading hints.
- Added a subtle shadow to some UI texts.
- Improvements to settings interface layout.
- Minor improvements to UI panels color.
- Inspect cursor icon made smaller.
- Removed Plug In Digital and Playful Oasis logos from main menu.

SETTINGS:

- Added a new "Auto-Zoom" setting, allowing to enable/disable the newerly added auto-zoom feature, which automatically alters the zoom level during some actions like Aim Mode (check the SURVIVAL list for more info).
- Added a new "Droplets" setting, allowing to show/hide the screen droplets accumulating from rain exposure, water, sweating (the feature was previously enabled at GFX Quality = Medium +).

SURVIVAL:

- Added the ability to eat pine nuts from Pine Cones:
...... You can quickly check if a Cone has pine nuts by performing the "Check" action, all Cones have a small chance to have from 1 to 5 pine nuts.
...... As you eat the pine nuts from it, the Cone becomes cracked and can no longer be planted, nor spawns a tree when it degrades, but can still be used as fuel.
...... Pine nuts are very densely packed in calories and some proteins, also source of B vitamin, but no water; this is all multiplied by their number in the Cone you're eating.
...... Eating pine nuts from spoiled Cones will not cause any sickness to the character.

- Added the Auto-Zoom feature:
...... Auto-Zoom automatically alters the zoom level during some actions like Aim Mode, moving the camera farther away from the character, or like Crafting/Butchering/Sleeping/etc, moving the camera closer to the character.
...... Added a new "Auto-Zoom" setting, allowing to enable/disable the auto-zoom feature.

- Breath system tweaked and rebalanced:
...... Maximum Breath is now directly influenced (reduced) by Body Muscle/Fat: the heavier you are, the less breath you get.
...... Breath consumption from moving and jumping is no longer increased by body weight (as the latter now reduces max Breath), but is directly amplified by Fullness, especially if over 100%.
...... Breath mechanics tweaked to improve balance for both Normal and Realistic+ difficulties.

- While repairing an item, the chance to damage it now triggers only if failing the action, not during it, and reduced maximum damage from -5 to -3.
...... When failing to repair, chance to damage the item is 50% and is reduced with Crafting over lv.100 (down to 10% at lv.110).

- Bleeding reworked: Health loss is now always -1, but as Bleeding severity increase, the chance for the blood loss event to trigger is higher (this both for the player and animals).
- As the character is about to die (< 1 Health) a black screen starts showing, until the screen becomes fully black on death.
- Fullness is no longer calculated by stacking solid and liquid stomach content, but in a different way that allows to still eat if the stomach is nearly full of liquid, and drink if it's nearly full of solid.
- It's still possible to eat or drink with Fullness over 100% and below 110%.
- Effect of Metabolism on max Kcal/Hydration inverted: faster metabolism now increases max kcal/hydration.
- Body Muscle impact on Muscle Soreness decay reduced to 40%.
- Base Gathering chance increased by 25% for resources obtained from mushroom, stone, tree and fern.
- Chance to "waste" a resource when gathering from a fern/tree rebalanced (generally reduced, especially for fruits).
- Chance to receive damage/bleeding from some actions (es. Butchering) is now reduced even further by the associated skill (from 33% to 16% at 100 lvl skill).
- Chance to to fail crafting/building due to poor skill increased, but chance to subsequently destroy components reduced.
- Skill contribution to nearly ALL actions speed increased by 25%, this is particularly impactful for First Aid and Butchering.
- Chance to pass out at 0 Stamina decreased even further during movement and actions.
- Low Stamina alerts and blinking screen effect frequency reduced while doing actions keeping the character "awake".
- Low Stamina starts to cause slow movement penalties when below 40% (was 50%).
- Lighting fire action success chance revisited to receive less penalty from air humidity, and slightly increased base value.
- Carcass freeze penalty to butchering actions speed increased (this was actually a bug, as the value was intended to be as it is now).
- Improved melee attack precision (sometimes it did not land the attack despite the weapon hitting the target - might still happen, but less frequently).
- Improved the way the character adjusts their position before starting an action requiring a Shovel.
- Digging actions skill increase rate slightly rebalanced.
- Endurance skill increase calaculation reworked to allow the skill to raise also from moderate Breath drain (taking into account difficulty), and tooltip updated.
- It's no longer possible to plant a tree too close to another planted tree spot.
- Improved how items held by the character are dropped when it is hit by a Triceratops/Ankylosaur.

ANIMALS:

- Smaller carnivores will no longer consume meat directly from a carcass, but as they bite it, a Meat is spawned and then eaten.

- Smaller animals will no longer collide with much bigger ones (as they can crawl below them), and will therefore also pursue food located below a bigger animal.
- Herbivores, when eating from a plant, consume 2x more of its energy.
- Animal health loss rate from starvation/dehydration increased by 50%.
- Slightly improved predators -> prey selection logic, making them a bit more proactive.
- Didelphodon health reduced to 40% (it's finally one-shottable!).
- Bleeding reworked: Health loss is now always -1, but as Bleeding severity increase, the chance for blood loss event to trigger is higher (this both for the player and animals).
- Slightly reduced chance of T-Rexes fighting before mating.

VEGETATION:

- Seed propagation and mechanics improved: for each seed only one plant is born, and a fruit (not planted, but decaying naturally) now produces a plant in the exact same spot it was located, instead of multiple ones in a random nearby location.
- Vegetation energy loss from producing fruits/seeds reduced substantially.
- Tree minimum Trunk threshold is now 10 (instead of 50) making younger trees much faster to chop down.
- Vegetation color variation due to energy/age is now a bit more evident, and changes in a gradual fashion.
- Burned trees are a bit darker and now show/leave a carbonized (darker) trunk.
- Trees occasional Leaf drop rate reduced greatly.
-[Survival] Reduced distance before which tree canopies are hidden when close to the player.

STRUCTURES:

-[Survival] Building skill contribution to condition of built structures reduced a bit.

OBJECTS:

- Leaf speed from wind tweaked to be more variable depending on leaf wetness.
- Item luminosity at mouse hover/drop/X key tweaked to be much stronger with darkness, and more subtle in daytime, and also take into account light from fires.

TERRAIN & MAP:

- Island generation logic improved:
...... Island generation produces better vegetation patterns/population, according to season.
...... Island generation produces better pond/lake number and size, according to season.
...... Island generation produces more initial animals.

- Improved collision box (and shadow shape) for mountains and boulders.
- Burned terrain decay rate is 20% slower.

FIRE:

- Fire propagation logic improved to allow fires to spread more naturally following the wind.

OPTIMIZATION:

- Color calculation for some instances (especially vegetation) optimized to use less GPU.
- Mouse hover texts logic reworked and optimized to use way less CPU.
- Several optimizations to sounds/effects logic, allowing many of them to play/show only when needed.
- Optimized how vegetation moves with wind, in order to use less CPU.

FIXES:

- Fixed ambient light not correctly updating with GFX Quality = Low.
- Fixed some subtle texture glitches when a sprite is downscaled a lot (es: due to low zoom level).
- Fixed a nasty bug that caused game-breaking glitches if accessing the Manual from the main menu, and than start a new game.
- Fixed a bug causing ferns to be tagged as "red" without being visually red, and vice-versa in some instances.
- Fixed snow terrain sometimes forming on top of sand, then adjusting its Z position after a few minutes.
- Fixed the "save window size" button not restoring the correct game window size, but making it bigger.
- Fixed some minor issues with the save button.
- Fixed animals spamming "trapped!" text and not always reacting as supposed to when surrounded by obstacles.
- Fixed young Didelphodons sometimes exiting their lair (and often getting lost) for no reason.
- Fixed a rare instance where animals would get permenently stuck while eating or drinking.
- Fixed a bug causing animals to get sometimes stuck/trapped near the coast while migrating.
- Fixed Pteranodons not showing damage text when struck by lightning, as supposed to.
- FIxed shadows from fire becoming permanent in some rare circumstances.
- Fixed smoke effect and Leaf not updating to wind direction for a few instants after being created.
- Fixed context menu appearing at right click on some UI elements (God slide bars).
- Fixed game UI panels being draggable during exit menu/settings/manual.
- Fixed +/- buttons sounds glitching in some circumstances.
- Fixed window size not being remembered correctly when quitting and resuming the game.
- Fixed Ferns not updating their color as soon as they grow from young to adult.
-[God] Fixed mousehover text on flying Leaf showing "missing cursor text".
-[Survival] Fixed permanent and glitchy fire particles caused by dropping a lit torch onto a Fire Pit.
-[Survival] Fixed items not always keeping the intended Z order when used in some player actions.
-[Survival] Fixed Egg unearthing action not being performed with a Shovel as intended (and suggested in the action tooltip).
-[Survival] Fixed snoring sound playing also when the associate setting is disabled, and still playing in the menus at high volume.
-[Survival] Fixed character occasionally freezeing while Digging if the Shovel used gets destroyed.
-[Survival] Fixed Butchering using the wrong weapon (on back) if starting the action while holding a non-weapon item with the left hand.
-[Survival] Fixed a bug causing the attack animation to freeze when attacking with a Stone/Sharpstone and breaking it.
-[Survival] Fixed a bug causing all previously planted seeds to be totally overridden by any new seed planted, causing them to chance species.
-[Survival] Fixed a bug causing planted tree mousehover text to show a message different from the one shown at planting action (optimal terrain -> bad terrain).
-[Survival] Fixed aiming reticule not being transparent as soon as aim mode is started (in order to signal that ranged attacks are disallowed, being it on top of the player).
-[Survival] Fixed pressing ESC during character creation causing the game to become unresponsive.
-[Survival] Fixed island snapshots not showing God info panels during Survival Mode.
-[Survival] Fixed some action alert messages not triggering the appropriate sounds.
-[Survival] Fixed "missing cursor text" showing on mousehover over sun exposure icon.

Daniel