It has been a little while since my last post - there have been many non-game related deadlines and challenges, but I finally have a bit more time to spend on the game, so I was able to finish a small update earlier this week.
As a smaller part of this update, I was able to optimise the terrain rendering a little, which should help with performance. This does not yet fix the bigger performance issues introduced by a bug I am continuing to hunt, but it should mitigate them.
The “bigger” part of this update is a new dynamic loot respawning mechanic. I had noticed during playtesting that the introduction of the plant groupings had made initial exploration a lot more interesting, as each new area could hold new resources the village needed - but once an area was explored, going back through it was fairly irrelevant. As a result, I decided to give loot a chance to respawn, which means that even already explored areas may hold new treasures.
The loot that can respawn is limited - so there won’t be any new groupings of plants, and so far pirates also don’t respawn - but new loot does include seed chests and rich treasure groups, so it can be well worth the player’s time to take a look. Loot will not respawn in close proximity to settlements, so only the more remote areas are worth checking out again. There is a limit to how many pieces of loot can be spawned in each area of the world at the same time, so removing low level loot can also be advantageous to encourage better loot to spawn in the future.
For a little while, I considered whether I also wanted to include pirates in the respawn mechanic. Considering the respawn already happens exclusively outside of settlements, I felt that respawning pirates may add to the world feeling a bit more alive. However, I ultimately decided against it, because I wanted to preserve the area of control/bottleneck dynamic of the game. If you advance forward and block off a bottleneck, be that with an army or with a forward settlement, you should be able to feel safe behind your military, and your roaming villagers should not be harassed by pirates simply spawning right next to them.
That said, I do like the idea of pirate respawns in general, so will likely introduce something with a future update. Specifically, I am envisioning the pirate fortresses sending out expansion parties to travel to a randomised destination, attacking things along the way. Once they get to their destination, they will establish a pirate camp/outpost there, making further player expansion more difficult. If they run into a defended bottleneck, however, they will likely be defeated there, meaning that you can keep your already conquered areas safe with well placed defences.
Next up, however, will be settlement development - I will keep you updated!
Until next time!
